Civil disobedience

Radical geographers have been preoccupied with Marxism for four decades, largely ignoring an earlier anarchist tradition that thrived a century before radical geography was claimed as Marxist in the 1970s. When anarchism is considered, it is misused as a synonym for violence or derided as a utopian project. Yet it is incorrect to assume anarchism as a 'project', which instead reflects Marxian thought. Anarchism is more appropriately considered a protean process that perpetually unfolds through the insurrectionary geographies of the everyday and the prefigurative politics of direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary association. Unlike Marxism’s stages of history and revolutionary imperative, which imply an end-state, anarchism appreciates the dynamism of the social world. In staking a renewed anarchist claim for radical geography, I attend to the divisions between Marxism and anarchism as two alternative socialisms, wherein the former positions equality alongside an ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism while the latter maximizes egalitarianism and individual liberty by considering them as mutually reinforcing. Radical geographers would do well to reengage anarchism as there is a vitality to this philosophy that is missing from Marxian analyses that continue to rehash ideas–such as vanguardism and a proletarian dictatorship–that are long past their expiration date.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. The spatial implications of centralized hierarchy are also questionable, employing a vertical ontology, wherein horizontal organization is deemed inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet scale represents both a theoretical dis-traction from grounded everyday particularities and a ‘master-signifier’ by providing a point de capiton, or anchoring point, that rests on the exclusion of unconsciousness–the knowledge that is not known¬. Thus the point de capiton is the (Archimedean) point at which an essentialist illusion of fixed meaning is created, as scale is unconscious of geography’s ‘hidden enfolded immensities’. The discourse of scale accordingly dismisses the openness of rhizomic politics by predetermining the political as an arborescent register. Yet the inevitable terra incognita that scalar hierarchies produce becomes a powerful resource for the oppressed, which is why anarchist direct action often proceeds outside of authority’s view. A flat ontology has significant resonance with anarchism, imparting that politics should operate horizontally rather than vertically. This ontological shift suggests that we need not wait for the emergence of a ‘greater’ class-consciousness, as one can immediately disengage capitalism by reorienting economic landscapes in alternative ways. Consequently, a human geography without hierarchy gains significant traction when we reject scale and embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

Published, The Bible and Interpretation, June 22, 2018
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2018/06/and428022.shtml
While Sessions’s appeal to biblical authorization has failed, the larger question is why. Is it that the Bible has been interpreted adequately and rejected by modern society? Or, might it be that a flawed interpretation of a Biblical text has been wielded to support a problematic ordinance, calling for a closer look this notorious passage from Romans? Indeed, the latter is the case, and here’s why.

In December 2009, political attention was turned towards the
15th UN Climate Conference, COP15. For the Global Justice Movement (GJM) this provided an opportunity to promote their agenda. The use of online media conjured up memories of the success of alternative media in mobilising large-scale protests around previous WTO and G8 counter-summits. However, the COP15 saw a turn to the use of what can be termed mainstream – online sites among activists. Drawing on a case study of the activist network NTAC, we explore how YouTube served both the purpose of reaching broader publics and of mobilising for confrontational direct action within activist circles.

The intent of this chapter is to re-imagine and apply the term " civil disobedience " to the cyber domain. The full extent of how it can apply will be analyzed in a framework of the evolutionary rights of protest. Traditional civil disobedience is a " performance " via visual and physical mediums, while cyber disobedience is essentially a digital performance with difficulty in attributing true ownership of the act. This is an interesting antithesis to the physical protestor, who uses strategic visibility, threat of arrest, and popular backlash against state behavior as vital aspects of the disobedience. These variables are noticeably absent in cyber disobedience.

In this article, I deconstruct the concept of legitimacy (notably in the form elaborated by Max Weber) by emphasising its conceptual complicity with the notion of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Derrida's critique of Austin's theory of performativity, I elaborate another, non-ontological 'concept' of legitimacy, located before and beyond sociological methodology, International Relations theory, and performative ontologies of power. This legitimation-to-come signifies the structural fallibility and pervertibility of the performative, and instantiates the archi-originary force of an unconditional resistance, conditioning both the position and the deconstruction of ontologies of sovereign ipseity (ipsocracy). Pursuing the efforts of Cynthia Weber and Rob Walker, I attempt to sketch the implications of this post-performative legitimacy with respect to the protocols of legitimation of International Relations theory and sociological methodologies, through an analysis of their persistent ontological presuppositions.

This work analyses the public perception of the role of privateers and their transition to pirates and examines both negative and positive outcomes in various areas like diplomacy, international trade, legal, racial and gender issues. The entire topic is examined through various cases of pirates including Bartholomew Roberts, Sir Henry Morgan, Thomas Tew, William Kid, Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Edward Teach, Samuel Bellamy, Mary Read, Anne Bony or Henry Avery as well as historical records including letters, trials and pamphlets. Further, this essay discusses an interesting development of piracy from state-funded expeditions into utterly illegal activity driven by various reasons. Particularly the transition between legal, semi-legal and illicit separates England and Great Britain (from 1707 onwards) from other colonial powers such as France, Spain or Dutch. Despite the fact that they all issued privateering licenses and therefore they had to face similar problems connected to privateering, the outburst of piracy in the case of England was so dangerous that England (Great Britain) during the late 17th and early 18th century was called a “nation of pirates”. Hence, this work analyses both legal and practical actions against pirates in British colonies and their effectiveness after 1715. The last part of this essay is dedicated to piracy regarding an alternative way of life for disadvantaged social groups in the 17th and 18th century and contemporary negative or positive portrayal of piracy. The role of liberated “Negroe” and “Mullato” slaves is also examined throu

Taking Rights Seriously is concerned above all with due process, both in law and politics. In this respect, his theory of law and critique of legal positivism frames his theory of politics. He conceives both law and politics in terms of a "right to equality," the aim being to show individuals equal concern and respect. However, whereas he regards legal process as a matter of principle, orientated toward viewing our relations with others in terms of justice, he treats political process as dealing only with policy and focused on promoting the general welfare. The result is an account of law and politics that is original yet idiosyncratic. Though he sees rights-based judicial review as legitimately trumping utilitarian democratic decisions, his account of legal deliberation is in its way democratic, as his view of civil disobedience illustrates, and could apply as much-if not more-to legislatures as to courts.

Author accepted version can be seen at: https://www.gdblunt.com/publications

This article is premised on the idea that global poverty is the foreseeable and avoidable by-product of the international system. This position is held by many cosmopolitans, but rarely do they deal with the consequences of this claim. This paper will examine the idea of a right to resistance in the face of global poverty. It will argue that a right to resistance is a necessary component of the political conception of human rights. It will also be argued that it is latent in some major documents and declarations to the point that it can be considered an emerging practice.

The rest of the article can be found by following the link: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/676705

In this article, I engage with Derrida’s deconstructive reading of theories of performativity in order to analyse Max Weber’s sovereignty/legitimacy paradigm. First, I highlight an essential articulation between legitimacy and sovereign ipseity (understood, beyond the sole example of State sovereignty, as the autopositioned power-to-be-oneself). Second, I identify an originary force of alteration, an unconditional deconstructibility of sovereignty, foreign to the order of performative legitimacy. This disjunctive force implies an essential fallibility of the performative. The differential co-implication of legitimacy and sovereignty suggests an irreducible coloniality of law and language, but also points to an unconditional resistance located in the radical interpretability of the law, beyond determined positions of powers, dominations, sovereignties or resistances.
My reflection is triggered by a reading of Cynthia Weber’s theory of ‘performative states’, describing sovereignty under the form of an impossible ontology, which leads me to elaborate the notion of legitimation-to-come as a non-ontological ‘concept’: this unconditional legitimacy, beyond sovereignty, binds beliefs and phantasms to the unpresentable force of the event. Pursuing the efforts of scholars such as Rob Walker and Cynthia Weber, I sketch the implications of this archi-performative force of legitimacy with respect to the methodologies of International Relations and sociology, in view of elucidating the persistent ontological presuppositions of these disciplines.

"""How does a revolt come about and what does it leave behind? What impact does it have on those who participate in it and those who simply watch it? Is the Greek revolt of December 2008 confined to the shores of the Mediterranean, or are there lessons we can bring to bear on social action around the globe?

Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come is a collective attempt to grapple with these questions. A collaboration between anarchist publishing collectives Occupied London and AK Press, this timely new volume traces Greece’s long moment of transition from the revolt of 2008 to the economic crisis that followed. In its twenty chapters, authors from around the world—including those on the ground in Greece—analyse how December became possible, exploring its legacies and the position of the social antagonist movement in face of the economic crisis and the arrival of the International Monetary Fund.

In the essays collected here, over two dozen writers offer historical analysis of the factors that gave birth to December and the potentialities it has opened up in face of the capitalist crisis. Yet the book also highlights the dilemmas the antagonist movement has been faced with since: the book is an open question and a call to the global antagonist movement, and its allies around the world, to radically rethink and redefine our tactics in a rapidly changing landscape where crises and potentialities are engaged in a fierce battle with an uncertain outcome.

Contributors include Vaso Makrygianni, Haris Tsavdaroglou, Christos Filippidis, Christos Giovanopoulos, TPTG, Metropolitan Sirens, Yannis Kallianos, Hara Kouki, Kirilov, Some of Us, Soula M., Christos Lynteris, Yiannis Kaplanis, David Graeber, Christos Boukalas, Alex Trocchi, Antonis Vradis, Dimitris Dalakoglou and the Occupied London Collective. Art and design by Leandros, Klara Jaya Brekke and Tim Simons. Edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou of Occupied London.

Occupied London is an anarchist collective writing on all things urban. Since 2007, the collective has worked together to publish an irregular journal, offering a platform for discussion within the global social antagonist movement, and featuring contributions by writers and collectives from around the globe, including Nasser Abourahme, Zygmunt Bauman, Franco Berardi, Klara Jaya Brekke, Manuel Castells, Mike Davis, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Christos Filippidis, David Graeber, Richard Pithouse, Marina Sitrin, Antonis Vradis, and many, many more. Since 2008, the collective has maintained a wildly popular blog, “From the Greek Streets,” providing up-to-the-minute coverage of the urban revolt of December 2008 in Greece, and examining the impact and legacies of the revolt and the crisis that followed. http://www.occupiedlondon.org | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog)

AK Press is a worker-run, democratically-managed publisher of anarchist and radical literature. Founded in 1990, AK Press is a ten-person collective of committed anarchists, spread between Oakland, Baltimore, and Edinburgh, working hard to publish more than twenty new titles each year, and distributing thousands of other titles from like-minded publishers around the globe. (http://www.akpress.org | http://revolutionbythebook.akpress.org)"""

The present research is aimed at investigating through a mixed-method approach the
dimensions underlying the psychosocial constructs of obedience, disobedience and the
relations between them. To this end, we consider the attitudes toward (dis)obedience
being socially constructed, and we chose the theory of social representations (Abric, 2003;
Moscovici, 1961) as the theoretical framework of this study.
The data, collected on a sample of 190 individuals, allowed us to define these social objects,
reducing both their complexity and polysemy.
Obedience and disobedience were both seen by research participants as contextdependent
behaviours, neither positive nor negative, per se. Also, both related to the
concept of authority (individuals, institutions, and society). However, while obedience was
mostly considered an uncritical response to laws, social norms or physical authorities,
disobedience was defined as an active, conscious line of conduct. Theoretical and practical
implications of these findings are discussed.

This is published in  'Social Philosophy and Policy' Volume 32 / Issue 01 / Fall 2015, pp 51-73.

Imagine that you are a farmer living in Kenya. Though you work hard to sell your produce to foreign markets you find yourself unable to do so because affluent countries subsidize their own farmers and erect barriers to trade, like tariffs, thereby undercutting you in the marketplace. As a consequence of their actions you languish in poverty despite your very best efforts. Or, imagine that you are a peasant whose livelihood depends on working in the fields in Indonesia and you are forcibly displaced from your land by a biofuels company because corrupt government officials have stolen the land and sold it to the company. Or, suppose that you work on the coast of Bangladesh but find that increasingly you are unable to cope with salination resulting from sealevel rise – a product of anthropogenic climate change.
These, I believe, are cases of global injustice. My question is: What are those who bear the brunt of global injustice entitled to do to secure their, and other people’s, entitlements?  Often people focus on the duties of the affluent to respect and uphold the rights of the disadvantaged.  This is understandable. But there is a striking omission.  Rarely do people analyze, or even mention, what those who lack their entitlements are entitled to do to secure their own rights. This is my focus in this paper. More specifically, I examine what agents are entitled to do to change the underlying social, economic and political practices and structures in a more just direction.

This chapter examines the tension between the justification and the punishment of civil disobedience, and theorists' common solutions to it, by focusing on two central questions: First, should the state punish civil disobedience? Second, should the civil disobedient accept punishment? It presents the theoretical lay of the land on each of these questions, with particular attention to American jurisprudence on civil disobedience. The third part takes a step back to ask anew, how should we think about civil disobedience?, and uncovers some problematic assumptions behind the common theoretical approach to the "problem" of civil disobedience.

Mohandas Gandhi is civil disobedience’s most original theorist and most influential mythmaker. As a newspaper editor in South Africa, he chronicled his experiments with satyagraha by drawing parallels to ennobling historical precedents. Most enduring of these were Socrates and Henry David Thoreau. The genealogy Gandhi invented in these years has become a cornerstone of contemporary liberal narratives of civil disobedience as a continuous tradition of conscientious appeal ranging from Socrates to King to Rawls. One consequence of this contemporary canonization of Gandhi’s narrative, however, has been to obscure the radical critique of violence that originally motivated it. This essay draws on Edward Said’s account of travelling theory to unsettle the myth of doctrine that has formed around civil disobedience. By placing Gandhi’s genealogy in the context of his critique of modern civilization, as well as his formative but often-overlooked encounter with the British women’s suffrage movement, it reconstructs Gandhi’s paradoxical notion that sacrificial political action is the fullest expression of self-rule. For Gandhi, Socrates and Thoreau exemplify civil disobedience as a fearless practice of fidelity to truth profoundly at odds with liberal conceptions of disobedience as fidelity to law.

Le mythe de la désobéissance d’Adam définit le paradigme anthropologique chrétien. L’étude résume les réflexions des théologiens sur ce qui passe pour avoir été le premier acte d’un être humain : action d’un individu particulier, l’acte de désobéissance a pourtant eu la capacité de changer la nature de l’humanité entière ; il représente donc aussi le seuil où un acte peut modifier la nature de celui qui l’a accompli et où un individu en arrive à modifier son genre.

Western democracies determine the extent and limits of free expression largely within rights-based frameworks. As captured by Mill's classically liberal 'harm principle', expression is permitted except insofar as legislatures and courts deem it to cause some unacceptable harm. Yet we can identify distinctly democratic principles very different from the standard liberal principles. Revisiting democratic theory, we discover that questions of legal legitimacy invariably become questions of civic participation; and civic participation is nothing if not expression. It is no exaggeration to suggest that Western political philosophy altogether begins with that observation: Plato's Crito presents the West's first systematic enquiry into the question of legal legitimacy – that is, the question of when the law can bind us through moral rightness, beyond sheer physical coercion. The law binds us precisely to the extent of the freedom we have enjoyed to disagree with it.

This paper argues that, far from being a merely defensive act of individual protest, civil disobedience is a much more radical political practice. It is transformative in that it aims at the politicization of questions that are excluded from the political domain and at reconfiguring public space and existing institutions, often in comprehensive ways. Focusing on the reconstitution of the political community also allows us to reconceptualize constituent power. Rather than portraying it as a quasi-mythical force erupting only in extraordinary moments, constituent power can be conceptualized as a dynamic situated within established orders, transgressing their logic and reconfiguring them from within. Civil disobedience as a transformative and potentially comprehensive practice aimed at reconstituting the political order can then be seen as an internal driving force keeping this dialectic in play. A concrete example can be found in protests and border struggles by irregularized migrants. They show how unexpected forms of civil disobedience manage to politicize symbolic and institutional structures that are usually taken for granted or naturalized and thereby removed from politicization, such as borders and citizenship. In this way, they exemplify not only the defensive/reactive but also the constituent/transformative force of disobedience.

Craft and design has had a dialectical history since early modernism, where craft often sided with the romanticism of the 'arts and craft movement', while design became primarily market-led and allied with mass production, industrialism and consumerism. This conflict, which deepened through the twentieth century, is now exhibiting signs of reconciliation. What happens at the borders between design and craft today, when a new generation of makers trespass and extend across this raft, to combine post-industrial design, open source shared engagement and net political craft?

"This course focuses on the planning and design of cities from a radical perspective. It investigates how the planning of urban space has been critiqued in the literature and the everyday approaches to planning that have been employed by individuals and communities. In challenging rigid and modernist approaches to planning theory we will examine key themes, concepts, and theories which define the study of planning theory from what can be considered an anarchistic, or anti-authoritarian perspective. You can expect to gain a critical understanding of and appreciation for emancipatory approaches to planning theory, which will allow students to consider alternative configurations of space and power in keeping with the course’s radical approach.

As a fourth-year course, our approach within the classroom will be largely theoretical, where you are required to think critically about the concepts we explore though your engagement with the readings and during our meetings. At the same time, the course involves a hands-on component that requires you to directly engage with the community on a topic or issue of your choosing. This two-sided approach is considered an important pedagogical exercise in that it breaks down the proverbial “Ivory Tower” in bringing theory outside of the academy and into our shared streets and neighborhoods. The course itself is run as a seminar, which means that it requires your active participation."

There is a common tendency to categorize as civil disobedience acts of resistance that one approves of, even when the acts in question violate common marks of civility. This article proposes a different strategy, namely, to think about uncivil disobedience—to wit, principled lawbreaking that is covert, evasive, violent, or offensive. The first section explains the problems with the two main approaches to civil disobedience and sketches a basic conceptual account of uncivil disobedience. The rest of the paper seeks to justify at least some forms of uncivil disobedience even in supposedly legitimate, liberal democratic states like ours. The second section argues that uncivil disobedience can do much of what civil disobedience does, while the third section argues that uncivil disobedience can do and say valuable things that civil disobedience cannot do or say. In particular, it identifies the potential value of incivility for subordinated members in democratic societies allegedly committed to mutual reciprocity.

The familiar irony of ‘real existing socialism’ is that it never was. Socialist ideals were used to legitimize regimes that fell far short of realizing those ideals – indeed, that violently repressed anyone who tried to realize them. This paper suggests that the derogatory concept of ‘the criminal’ may be allowing liberal ideals to operate in contemporary political philosophy and real politics in a worryingly similar manner. By depoliticizing deep dissent from the prevailing order of property, this concept can obscure what I call the legitimation gap. This is the gulf between (a) liberal accounts of state legitimacy, and (b) the actual functioning of liberal states. Feminists have long pointed out that the exclusion of what is deemed ‘personal’ from political consideration is itself a political move. I propose that the construction of the criminal as a category opposed to the political works similarly to perpetuate unjust forms of social power.

I offer a conceptual framework for assessing the normative legitimacy of coercive disobedience—involving threats, disruption, force, and deceit—by social movements. A standard liberal view is that while coercion may be required to resist authoritarian regimes, it is illegitimate in a democratic state since it conflicts with majority rule and mutual respect. In restricting disobedience to a form of moral persuasion, this perspective neglects how social power andmaterial interests can distort the conditions for open, fair deliberation. I offer a principled defense of coercive disobedience, not only in repressive states but in plausibly democratic societies. I argue that coercion can be justified on democratic republican grounds as ameans to collectively contest objectionable forms of political domination. The use of coercion can be justified as a surrogate tool of political action for those who lack effective participation rights; as a remedial tool to counteract the dominating influence of powerful actors over the process of democratic will formation, and as a mobilizational tool to maintain participation and discipline in collective action. I conclude by proposing democratic constraints on the use of coercive tactics designed to offset the potential movements themselves become a source of arbitrary power.

In this paper I seek to criticise the use of Agamben's criticiism of the (rule of) law by focussing on civil disobedieince as a complementary process of politico-legal pressure, and by doing so suggest hat depictions of the 'state of exception' that regard it as destrcutuve of the rule of law misunderstand its role in the dynamic of legal development

This book examines a wide range of dissident practices, from street protests to political poetry, in an attempt to demonstrate that they are becoming an increasingly important aspect of global politics. The author draws on several case studies, including an analysis of the events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The theoretical discussions focus on how people influence the course of politics at a time when boundaries between domestic and international spheres are blurring.

This essay discusses whether civil disobedience is an option for Christians in light of Paul's teaching in Romans 13. Using canonical and rhetorical criticism, and including a very brief section noting some important examples in the history of interpretation, the essay concludes that Romans 13 does not preclude the possibility of civil disobedience for Christians. The essay does not discuss the conditions under which civil disobedience might be right or necessary, though it does outline some theological and moral boundaries that mark faithful Christian civil disobedience.