When it comes to the American state, violence and control occur at a level beyond most of the US’s state competitors. While perhaps uncomfortable for the average American to reflect upon, the following are simply uncontroversial facts: for example, despite purporting to be the freest country, the US has the world’s highest incarceration rate, wit…[Read more]

What would happen if a college instructor asked students to design their own syllabus, figure out what they wanted to learn, and run a class on their own? In other words, how would a classroom work if established on anarchist principles? I conducted my own socio-pedagogical experiment within a class on the subject of anarchism to answer these very…[Read more]

Amazon.com exemplifies modern capitalism’s ethos of market dominance through digital technology. Amazon’s one primary objective: making as much profit as possible. To achieve this goal, Amazon uses multiple, common strategies: monopolistic practices and increasing market-share, vertical integration, political lobbying, and tax avoidance. This cha…[Read more]

There is no established intellectual tradition of an “anarchist-sociology”—yet. A vibrant synthesis of anarchism and sociology has yet to be generated, whether that synthesis would be mere subject matter or a subfield within Sociology, or if it were an established ideology or theoretical tradition. Here, we compare these two distinct tradi…[Read more]

Society is not only structured by major hierarchical institutions, but also by the unwritten rules, called norms, that govern the practice of daily life within those institutions. Peoples’ unreflective observance of these norms helps to perpetuate inequality and domination in society. Norms are transmitted…[Read more]

The use of Native American nicknames and symbols by US college athletics is a long-standing practice that embodies various forms of authoritarian oppression. One type of authoritarianism is that of patriarchy and it has been present in the struggle over the nickname at the University of North Dakota, the ‘Fighting Sioux’. This article explores phi…[Read more]

Although there is widespread agreement among academics that critical thinking is an important component to the college classroom, there is little empirical evidence to verify that it is being taught in courses. Using four sections of introductory sociology, we developed an experimental design using pretests and posttests to assess students’ c…[Read more]

Tactics are the techniques and actions used by social movements that implement strategies for the purpose of achieving goals. For anarchist movements, tactics can assume a reactive, diagnostic, or destructive force for opposing hierarchy, repression, and inequality. Tactics can also assume a proactive, prognostic, or creative force that promotes…[Read more]

Anarchism has not had a noticeable impact upon sociology. The two traditions diverged in their interest in society and their relationship to it. This paper contrasts the practitioners or thinkers of one tradition against the other. The analysis shows some strong antagonisms, many instances of close analysis and critique of each other’s p…[Read more]

Significant differences exist in Americans’ support for force between the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War, even when holding all demographic variables constant. Nearly every group decreased their support from 1991 to 2003, including men and women, Whites and racial minorities, people with high school degrees or higher, nearly all age c…[Read more]

Racial justice social movements often fragment when their goals do not seem completely achievable. Former participants in the radical Black freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, most of whom were Black Panther Party (BPP) members (and also participants in the Black Liberation Army) and identified with Marxist-Leninism, became disaffected with…[Read more]

Howard J. Ehrlich (1932–2015) was, unabashedly, an anarchist and a sociologist. His life, work, and legacy not only exemplify anarchist sociology but may also qualify him as the very first self-conscious anarchist sociologist in the United States. Ehrlich’s life and work was important due to the considerable imp…[Read more]

This paper explores how incorporating localized historical acts of racial injustice into Sociology courses can have a variety of pedagogical and social impacts. The use of one such event, the 1918 lynching of 13 people in South Georgia, led to the formation of the Mary Turner Project (MTP). We document the organization’s work as well as its i…[Read more]

Most leisure research does not consider collective action and social change, while most social movement research overlooks carnivality and spontaneity. A counter-example is the alternative bicycling movement critical mass (CM), a rebellious, liberatory leisure and cultural event. CM is goal-oriented and a libidinal expression of participant…[Read more]

Although the period of highest activity for anarchist movements peaked in the early 1990s, such movement continues in the present. Contemporary antiauthoritarian movements are a product of the 1950s and New Left, as well as the USSR’s demise. Antiauthoritarian movements are either explicitly anarchist or implicitly anarchist (thus, simply…[Read more]

Objective. Propose a conceptualization of trust that acknowledges varying levels of power between trusting partners. The weak, positive statistical correlation between social and political trust conceals very different experiences of trust. While many people possess either high or low levels of both forms of trust, others have divergent levels of…[Read more]