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Occupy and the constitution of anarchy
- Author(s):
- Ruth Kinna (see profile) , Alex Prichard, Thomas Swann
- Date:
- 2019
- Group(s):
- Anarchism, Republicanism
- Subject(s):
- Political science, Political participation, Power (Social sciences)
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Occupy Wall Street, constitionalism, co-operation, Political theory, Activism, Power
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/kmnf-ww52
- Abstract:
- This article provides the first comparative reading of the minutes of the General Assemblies of three iconic Occupy camps: Wall Street, Oakland and London. It challenges detractors who have labelled the Occupy Wall Street movement a flash-in-the-pan protest, and participant-advocates who characterised the movement anti-constitutional. Developing new research into anarchist constitutional theory, we construct a typology of anarchist constitutionalising to argue that the camps prefigured a constitutional order for a post-sovereign anarchist politics. We show that the constitutional politics of three key Occupy Wall Street camps had four main aspects: (i) declarative principles, preambles and documents; (ii) complex institutionalisation; (iii) varied democratic decision-making procedures; and (iv) explicit and implicit rule-making processes, premised on unique foundational norms. Each of these four was designed primarily to challenge and constrain different forms of global and local power, but they also provide a template for anarchistic constitutional forms that can be mimicked and linked up, as opposed to scaled up.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 3 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
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