Anarchist Studies Network

Anarchist Studies Network Conference 9

26-28th August, University of Manchester, UK

31st August, online

More Than Human Anarchism

What does it mean to think, feel, and act in more than human ways? How do anarchist theories and practices shift when rivers have rights, when forests resist extraction, when animals are political subjects, when humans extend beyond the biological, when technologies act against us, and when the Earth itself becomes an active participant in struggle? Can anarchism truly be anarchism if it is anthropocentric? Or does anarchism already contain within it the seeds of a profoundly more‐than‐human worldview?

More-than-human anarchism can be framed as a site of tension (anarchism rejecting more-than-human elements), as a politics of relation (anarchism with the more-than-human), as a philosophical and ethical orientation (anarchism as more-than-human), or as a horizon that exceeds current categories entirely (anarchism beyond the human).

When anarchism is understood as a response to the more-than-human, scholars and activists may focus on suspicions of corporate-owned Generative AI, or resisting ecological devastation, confronting extractive capitalism, building multispecies justice practices, or engaging in environmental direct action from land defence and climate sabotage to community rewilding, herbal medicine and decolonial ecological education.

More-than-human can also be a catalyst for anarchist organising and imagination – nonhuman solidarities invoked in ecofeminist and Indigenous anarchisms, the tactical affinity with landscape and place in guerrilla and clandestine struggles, or the vibrant cultures of punk, art, and literature that celebrate animals, ecosystems, and the Earth as co-conspirators in revolt. Cyberpunk imaginaries encourage us to think about humanity in synthesis with technology and the digital sphere, and even under the current dominance of tech-oligarchies activists continue to scrape out spaces to explore more-than-human technologies,

Going further, anarchism may be understood as a philosophy rooted in a world of interdependent beings, entangled agencies, and lively materialities. The social is never purely human; political life emerges from innumerable relational forces, animate and inanimate, whose tensions, cooperations, and frictions constitute the fabric of existence. Any attempt to reduce this polyphony to a single dominant logic risks reproducing the hierarchical patterns anarchism seeks to abolish.

Finally, anarchism itself can be a site of conflict and creativity when approached from a more-than-human perspective: How do individualist, social, green, queer, Indigenous, posthuman, and eco-anarchisms collide, overlap, or mutually inform one another? How might anarchist commitments be reconfigured when moving from human liberation to multispecies flourishing? Or even to post-human evolution beyond our biological limitations?

To explore these provocations, the 9th International Conference of the Anarchist Studies Network invites paper submissions addressing More-Than-Human Anarchism as a central theme.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of suggested topics. Anarchist engagements with the more-than-human might include:

• multispecies justice, ecological mutual aid, and kin-making practices;
• anarchist critiques of anthropocentrism, human supremacy, and the category of “the human”;
• Indigenous anarchisms, land-based politics, and decolonial ecological relations;
• animal liberation, vegan anarchism, and interspecies solidarities;
• eco-anarchist strategies, including land defence, sabotage, and prefigurative ecological alternatives;
• posthumanist, new materialist, and animist approaches to anarchist thought;
• the political agency of landscapes, weather, infrastructures, or technologies;
• climate breakdown, disaster response, and anarchist ecological organising;
• queer ecology, crip ecology, and anarchist challenges to normative human embodiment;
• rewilding, permaculture, and anarchist experiments in multispecies commons;
• the role of nonhuman forces in social movements, uprisings, and everyday life;
• speculative anarchist futures including solarpunk, bioregionalism, and multispecies world-building.
• potential uses of Generative AI towards anarchist ends;
• grassroots tech collectives and the alternative technological worlds they envision and build;
• cyberpunk imaginaries or human/tech synthesis and digital worlds built by us and for us;

If you find yourself Less-Than-Interested in these suggestions, you are welcome to propose a paper or panel related to anarchist theory and practice that has less to do with the conference theme.

We welcome submissions from scholars, activists, artists, and all those exploring or experimenting with more-than-human anarchism, but please note that knowledge-sharing is an essential component of the conference.

Panels and streams on a particular theme are welcome, as are non-traditional presentation formats, such as performances, exhibitions, workshops, among others. Abstracts should be sent in English (but we accommodate papers in any language). Please indicate if you wish to present in a different language.

Abstracts should be no more than 350 words and need to be send by 31st March 2026 via the following form:

Please indicate whether you want to present in person or online. In case of the latter, please also indicate your time zone. The in-person conference will take place in University of Manchester, UK, 26-28th August. Online day will take place on 31st August. We are likely to be able to support a small number of participants with travel and accommodation costs. Please indicate whether you will need support and a rough estimate of your expenses, should you need it.

Please do get in touch with any specific questions, needs or comments and we will do our best to meet them. We can be found at asn.conference@protonmail.com.

The ‘Anarchist Essays’ podcast was launched in September 2020 by Loughborough University’s Anarchism Research Group (ARG) and the journal Anarchist Studies. The series currently comprises 40 episodes which have been downloaded over 20,000 times in over 89 countries.  

We have recently secured funding from The Lipman-Miliband Trust to support a series of paid contributions to the podcast from individuals in communities typically underrepresented in academia. To that end, we are seeking 5 ‘essays’ from individuals who may face barriers to inclusion in academia, including, but not limited to: scholars from BAME backgrounds; LBGTQI+ and non-binary scholars; disabled scholars and scholars marginalised due to economic class or other factors. 

A typical episode of the podcast lasts 15 minutes (approximately 2000 words) and an honorarium of £150 will be paid for each contribution. These episodes will be released in December and January 2022/3.   

If this is of interest, please send essay proposals of no-more than 150 words to Matthew Adams (m.s.adams@lboro.ac.uk) by 1^st September 2022. There are no restrictions on the topic of the essays, but applicants are encouraged to listen to previous examples to gauge tone and content. Successful applicants will be notified by October 2022 and arrangements made for recording their essays.  

Jesse Cohn, Kathy Ferguson, Ruth Kinna, Saul Newman & Alex Prichard

Call for Papers: Anarchist Futures

This roundtable explores the history, purpose and some of the insights and innovations in Anarchist Studies over the past fifteen years. It was recorded for submission to the Political Studies Association’s 2022 online conference, and features five longstanding members of the Anarchist Studies Network and the North American Anarchist Studies Network: Jesse Cohn, Kathy Ferguson, Ruth Kinna and Saul Newman. The discussion is chaired by Alex Prichard, co-convenor of the ASN from 2006. The roundtable will be published as a Critical Exchange in Contemporary Political Theory.

Find out more about the Anarchist Studies Network here: https://anarchiststudiesnetwork.org/ The Anarchist Studies Network is a Specialist Group of the UK Political Studies Association.

This video is brought to you by Loughborough University’s Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/poli… .

You can follow us on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/arglboro

Our music comes from Them’uns (featuring Yous’uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365

Anarchist Studies Network // 7th International Conference // Online

Call for Papers: Anarchist Futures

Often called idealists, dreamers, unrealistic, anarchists have a complex relationship to the future. We imagine it, theorise it, work for it. We try to bring it to the present. We draw blueprints of what it might be like. We nurture connections that reflect our hopes. We imagine new worlds, living in the future whilst changing the present. However, utopian thought can be considered both an incentive and a discouragement to action. Its complexity and relationship to the future is particularly meaningful for anarchists. After all, how can political thought be fully understood without projecting ourselves and collectively into the future? Anarchist utopias from the early News Of Nowhere (William Morris, 1890) to The Dispossessed (Ursula K Le Guin, 1974) and other recent fiction has underlined the role of imagining the future in order to build a better world. 

Anarchist Futures is a call to think about possibilities, gaps and interstices where anarchist futures exist. It is an encouragement to walk the bridge of time and make the future present. It is a hope that we can draw lines of solidarity and community which redefine the current state of affairs so that the future is anarchist. 

The 7^th International Conference of the Anarchist Studies Network will be held as an online event on 24^th-26^th August, subject to change to hybrid if we find a suitable location. ASN conferences aim to broach new frontiers in anarchist scholarship and encourage cross-pollination between disciplines. We also invite people who don’t usually reside in or feel comfortable in academia to do workshops, talk about their work, projects, plans and build connections.

The central theme for this conference is Anarchist Futures. A list of suggested topics includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• How do we imagine the future? What does an anarchist society look like?
• How do we imagine a world without prisons, the state or police?
• How did anarchists in the past imagine the future? Did we get there?
• How does literature and art envision an anarchist future?
• How do we act for the future now?
• What is needed to change the future?
• Who are the actors of change? 
• What is the role of imagination in changing the world? 
• What is the relationship between anarchist theory and the future?

As usual, ASN also welcomes submissions that do not reference the main topic but are related to anarchist theory and practice. We also welcome panels and streams on a particular topic. We particularly welcome submissions outside the traditional academic format, such as performances, exhibitions, workshops, among others. We are happy to accommodate papers in any language, but please send an abstract in English. Please indicate whether you want to present online or in person. Abstracts should be sent by 30 April 2022 to asn.conference@protonmail.com

We aim to facilitate and accommodate all accessibility needs, including but not limited to wheelchair access, hearing loops, quiet rooms, child-care and material support for low-waged participants.  Please do get in touch with any specific questions, needs or comments and we will do our best to meet them.