Savannah Hawk

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hernandez, Sarah

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

In examining a spatial locality known as an infoshop I analyze how conceptions of autonomy, egalitarianism, and applied anarchy, are lived out in a present day anarchist space. Infoshops, or anarchist and anti-capitalist multi-use resource centers, serve many functions. They exist to provide a shared meeting space, lending library, and often host organizations and events such as cooperatively-run social justice collectives or anarchist reading groups. In my study I investigate one of the oldest infoshops in the Untied States, and the actions taking place within it, through ethnographic observations as well as in-depth interviews with members of the site. In examining this infoshop I use a prefigurative framework. Prefiguration, is the theoretical concept meaning ‘to anticipate or enact some feature of an ‘alternative world’ in the present as though it has already been achieved’. I found that enactment of anarchism, and prefiguration, was experimented with through the group’s engagement with horizontalism, do-ocracy and the site as free and open. Furthermore, I discuss personal political identities within the site, the way the site deals with abusers and the infoshop as a platform for the spread and deepening of an anarchist ideology through media creation, events, and informal accountability. I believe that my research brings new factors for scholars of preformed anarchy or anarchist sociology to consider. I find that in assessing a prefigurative framework it is important to include factors such as how long the site has existed for and how that might hinder political actions, especially political actions that build upon more current understandings of equality; the importance of factoring in the nuances of the population comprising the group, such as how personal political identity effects the opinions individuals hold and how that influences the space in diverging ways. And lastly how we, as scholars, can view these sites with occurrences of prefiguration and anarchist action amongst their non-political elements in a way that continues to recognize the capacity for infoshops to act as places of trial and error, or spaces of becoming.

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