Mixing sociology with anarchist studies on the side?

[herbertmarcuse]

Howdy friends:

I recently had a chance to listen to a podcast from Against the Grain that featured a Canadian named Max Haiven which really got me thinking about radicalizing some of my own ideas a little bit more. I know that this might sound strange but I think that subjects like gender and race don't seem to interest me as much as the anarchist political stuff (Ex: Occupy Sandy). Likewise, there is so much political stuff that anarchists do that resonates in the fields of squatting and alternative eco communities that might make sociology actually more radical and useful to the lay-public. What do you yall think? Could sociology mix with anarchism studies on the side?.Would it be embraced by sociology institutions or face rejection and even censorship?

Link to podcast:

http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/619/coming-wed-103112

HM

[RefurbedScientist]

Howdy friends:

I recently had a chance to listen to a podcast from Against the Grain that featured a Canadian named Max Haiven which really got me thinking about radicalizing some of my own ideas a little bit more. I know that this might sound strange but I think that subjects like gender and race don't seem to interest me as much as the anarchist political stuff (Ex: Occupy Sandy). Likewise, there is so much political stuff that anarchists do that resonates in the fields of squatting and alternative eco communities that might make sociology actually more radical and useful to the lay-public. What do you yall think? Could sociology mix with anarchism studies on the side?.Would it be embraced by sociology institutions or face rejection and even censorship?

Link to podcast:

http://www.againstth...ming-wed-103112

HM

Thanks for sharing the podcast. In short, my answer to your main question is yes please! I think that, in so far as it can challenge any of the prevailing assumptions in sociology, an anarchist paradigm should be part of sociological conversations. Political and economic sociology has institutionalist, statist, Marxist varieties, etc., but I don't think we learn much in the way of an anarchist alternative (nor do I even know what that looks like).

But, on your critically important final question, I think anarchism's relative marginality in sociology does not bode well for a warm reception to self-declared anarchist scholars. There might be more room for that in anthropology or geography. However, if you were to put your interest in anarchist political sociology into dialogue with other paradigms, especially around a well-defined substantive topic, then I could see you getting some real traction. For example, I would love to see a challenge to social movement theory's privileging of formal organizations questioned a bit in light of Occupy's extreme horizontality.

I don't think your post is about admissions, per se, but it's generally ill advised to make explicit one's theoretical commitments in a statement of purpose.

Now, if you mean studying anarchists politics according to the standard political sociological theories (as opposed to studying politics with anarchist theories), then I see no reason why that wouldn't be a valid topic, if framed delicately.

[ohgoodness]

It is an interesting idea but to my ears - radicalizing sociology and making it more accessible to the public would be opposite in a graduate program where the focus is on research. I see such work either becoming increasingly theoretical within the fields of elites, power, organization etc to a point where you would attend conference simply to debate the meaning of x in the context of y. Or you would end up studying "grass roots" in action.

Either way - as someone who finds Albert Jay Nock to be an daily inspiration - if our paths ever cross and you confuse anarchism for occupy then jostling shall commence.

Finally to answer your real question - I doubt anyone find this to be offensive or unworthy of scholarly pursuit. Being accepted to change sociology, however, might need a very fine statement of purpose...

[Darth.Vegan]

Confuse anarchism for occupy? Tell that to David Graeber.

Anyway, there are a number of anarchist sociologists. Check out Richard Day, Bob Torres and Raj Patel to start.

[ohgoodness]

Confuse anarchism for occupy? Tell that to David Graeber.

Anyway, there are a number of anarchist sociologists. Check out Richard Day, Bob Torres and Raj Patel to start.

There's a reason he's at Goldsmiths...

[Darth.Vegan]

There's a reason he's at Goldsmiths...

Yawn.

[jacib]

So last spring, when we were trying to woo a student (who was choosing between us and an anthro department and not going in to academia at all), I sent her the following email about anarchist "role models" we already have. Notice that none except Graeber actually study anarchists--it's perfectly possible to mix good, empirically-based, social scientific work with anarchist thought without having to carve out an "anarchist studies" (I think the comparison with "Non-Bullshit Marxism" is a great one--guys like Adam Prezworski and Erik Olin Wright are big deals even within mainstream political science and sociology, respectively; the first few things I read by Prezworski, I didn't even know he was a Marxist), though an anarchist addition to social movements literature might also be interesting and worthwhile (be careful: just like after the 2007 crash, every economic sociologist thought about studying the financial crisis, I expect a lot of young social movements people will be studying Occupy, so you'll have competition when it's time to get on the job market). There are also a lot of radical geographers out there, especially in Europe, who are increasingly interested in anarchism, but I know little about them. Anyway, I believe an anarchist sociology would necessarily draw a lot on the guys below, possibly adding in Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone, even though he's not an academic and he is (more troublingly) a vocal NAMBLA supporter.

Anyway here's the email I sent this kid about anarchism in academia (and that there's no reason people can't build on this work in sociology) that I thought worth sharing:

Woo okay, so I don't know if you remember but I said I'd send you something on anarchist academics who weren't full of shit (compare with "

Non-Bullshit Marxism

"); without further ado, here are five (white male) academics whose work is implicitly or explicitly anarchist, some more utopian than others, but all very empirical and pretty fucking awesome:

1. David Graeber (

wiki

). It's funny that he's famous now for coining "We are the 99%". He's done a lot of random work, including an ethnography of direct action, and his book

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

is pretty popular--it got reviews in a lot of major places, and from what I've read is quite good, particularly for ancient history, but less so as the economy gets more complex. I saw him speak and he kind of reminds me of a curmudgeonly troll who hangs out under a bridge, but that's neither here nor there. It was a weird lecture in part because I felt like I was in the minority of the audience in that I did not believe that "the global collapse of capitalism" was immanent. I have heard his book,

Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value

is quite good theoretically (it's about how value is attributed to things), but I haven't read it. What I can recommend are:

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

(

full pdf available for free online

), which is a book that we kept in our bathroom in college which is a great place for it; it's a fun, thin little volume that you can pick up and put down easily. I'd also recommend his wonderful essay on bureaucracy (with its cute little critique of Foucault) called

"Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity"

and his really great essay on Mauss, MAUSS, gift economies, the annoyingness of trendy French intellectuals, and so much more called

"Give It Away"

(I think most "anarchist" academics rightly put Marcel Mauss at the center of their cosmos). His wikipedia page also links to a ton more articles that he's written.

2. James C. Scott (

wiki

). Pure badass. Started out as an anthropologist, but now is referred to as a political scientist as much as an anthropologist. If you don't know his book

Seeing Like a State:

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

, check it out. You'll love it. Here's

a summary/review

of the book from the New York Times. His concept of "legibility" is something I think you'll like it. A lot of his terms have become common ("weapons of the weak", which looks at how people refuse to comply without resorting to open protest/revolt, comes from his book

Weapons of the Weak

). He's just amazing. His most recent book is called

The Art of Not Being Governed.

Here's a

pdf of the first chapter

. Easier is just a video of him giving a lecture [gradcafe note: for some reason, gradcafe won't let me link to this video. Anyway, it's cornell [dot] edu/video/?videoID=625] on the book (downloadable, so you can listen to it on your long commute--you won't miss much just having the audio). I have a big crush on him and I'm not ashamed of it. My adviser and him know each other and I keep trying to hint to we should bring him here for a talk.

3. Pierre Clastres (

wiki

). Again an anthropologist, his

Societies against the State

, a book I've only read tiny snippets of, is supposed to be a pretty great rebuttal of some of Marx's theories about early societies. He seems to be the best known "anarchist" academic temporally between Mauss and Scott. He was apparently supposed to be Levi-Strauss's intellectual heir, but died young (at 43). Clifford Geertz wrote a (slow, meandering, not that great)

review of another of Clastres's books

in the New York Review of Books, which he uses to muse on the future of anthropology.

4. Marshall Sahlins (

wiki

). Another anthropologist, still alive and at Chicago (I know, I know I should be convincing you to do sociology, and I still think you should, but I can at least point out that all these "anarchist anthropologist" are simultaneously much more fun and empirical, worrying less about theory and more about evidence, than the mainstream of anthropology). I don't know whether he'd ever describe himself as anarchist, but again he's just a badass. I know his work less well, but his 1966 article on

"The Original Affluent Society"

can be seen as influencing three above (its title is a play on a then popular hugely popular book about America called

The Affluent Society

by John Kenneth Golbraith). I like his work on Captain Cook too though that's not particularly anarchist, nor is particularly not anarchist; it's just plain good work. He not coincidentally runs the press that published Graeber's

Fragments

. The first book put out by the press is worth reading, too; it's call

Waiting for Foucault, Still

(

again, free PDF

; the "still" I think got added with the second edition, so yes, it's a pun on Beckett). He wrote it originally as "after-dinner entertainment" for some big anthropology conference, and it's a lot of jokes mixed with insightful, pithy observations. One section entitled just "Orientalism (dedicated to Professor Gellner)" reads in its entirety "In Anthropology there are some things that are better left un-Said." That's about as funny as an academic joke is going to get. Why I'm mentioning it is because I think the sections "Poetics of Culture, III" (pg. 20-23) and "Borrrrrring" (pg 73-76) and "The Pseudo-Politics of Interpretation" (pg 15-16) are wonderful chapters that summarize why I, personally, feel more comfortable in sociology than anthropology.

5. Marcel Mauss (

wiki

). Durkheim's nephew. I think Graber's essay on him is wonderful. I can't wait to read

The Gift

with students once I'm a real professor. Marcel Fournier (a sociologist) wrote the biography of Mauss.

It's pretty interesting that many of these guys, Clastres and Scott most clearly, are not interested so much in how to smash capitalism and governments and hierarchy and all of that, but in how to escape from it and avoid it, and how this avoidance plays out in real life experiences. [gradcafe addition: there's probably an anarchist examination of "the underground economy" waiting to happen] Anyway, I know that's a lot of writing and links, but those five guys are just all huge badasses I totally admire and whose ideas surely infect my own work, even if my work is explicitly "not political".

-[Jacib]

Edited November 12, 2012 by jacib

[jacib]

Confuse anarchism for occupy? Tell that to David Graeber.

There's a reason he's at Goldsmiths...

Yawn.

Yo, I'm curious if there's some academic gossip about Goldsmiths that I don't know about.

[gilbertrollins]

Graeber's economic history is wrong. We have evidence of trade going back to about the beginning of language, millennia before anything even resembling a state pops up. The settled agriculture --> states --> trade --> hierarchy and social decay idea is a myth. Money was made to facilitate exchange. That's not an economics textbook fantasy -- its an empirically verified phenomenon. Natural monopolies accrue to units of account and stores of value (money) because they load onto networks. Microsoft Office becomes a standard, and national languages for the same reason -- the utility of using such a good increases in the number of people adopting the technology. Such a monopoly lends itself to State control (as do other goods accruing network externalities), but there is a gigantic difference between states capturing a monopoly and abusing it, like say debasing coin to pay for arrows to fight wars with, which causes inflations which disrupt commerce and make everyone poorer (and is why central banks are now independent -- not because of a monetary conspiracy), and the State creating money, or highways in the first place (also originally privately, and locally owned and taken care of well into the late 19th century).

OP: If you're interested in anarchy I'd suggest some work by Elinor Ostrom on stateless coordination of market failures, and an intermediate microeconomics textbook. Occupy is not anarchism. Squatting is not anarchism. Dumpster diving is not anarchism. It's confused teenage rebellion. Getting along with people without central authority and violent enforcement is anarchism -- and the remarkable thing about prosocial mores is just how much anarchy we witness in societies with enormous states.

Edited November 12, 2012 by econosocio

[gilbertrollins]

Also -- Mauss' ethnography is wrong, though intuitively appealing to modern scholars who would like to look back on indigenous origins and attach noble savage daydreams to "original" commerce. Malinowski, an equally if not more notable anthropologist than Mauss visited the same Trobriand islanders and showed that there was a decided organization of property, exchange, and division of labor among fishing parties.

I'm not saying reciprocity is not a form of social exchange, and it would be ridiculous to claim its not a centerpiece of the foundation of ethics and trust in social structure -- but an substitute for monied arbitrage it is not.

[gilbertrollins]

And while we're at it -- Polanyi's Great Transformation has been shown to be wrong in empirical fact by economic historians for the last four decades, though his insights on embeddedness are obviously important.

[ohgoodness]

Yo, I'm curious if there's some academic gossip about Goldsmiths that I don't know about.

Not academic as such. It is rather my subjective of that school based on the fact that lots of hip young Europeans go there, spend a couple of years in London and then end up with nothing much to show for it. It's a preachin-to-the-choir kind of place.

[gilbertrollins]

Yo, I'm curious if there's some academic gossip about Goldsmiths that I don't know about.

Graeber got denied tenure at Yale. To conspiracy theorists, the rejection of their theory is prima facie, sufficient evidence to support the claim: "You're lying because you're a conspirator!" "No, I am not lying and not a conspirator." "Precisely! I'm posting that on the internet." It is a really empty way to reason, but persists. Notably the entire theory of false consciousness seems to rest on the same foundation.

If your research looks to your colleagues more like political advocacy than professional research, you're not going to get tenure.

Edited November 12, 2012 by econosocio

[gilbertrollins]

For example, I would love to see a challenge to social movement theory's privileging of formal organizations questioned a bit in light of Occupy's extreme horizontality.

I fail to see what is particularly egalitarian about an organization of people lead by Adbusters, the world's best-selling counter culture magazine produced by well-to-do Canadian art directors, a very loud and upset assistant professor from America's ivy league.

[Darth.Vegan]

OP: If you're interested in anarchy I'd suggest some work by Elinor Ostrom on stateless coordination of market failures, and an intermediate microeconomics textbook. Occupy is not anarchism. Squatting is not anarchism. Dumpster diving is not anarchism. It's confused teenage rebellion. Getting along with people without central authority and violent enforcement is anarchism -- and the remarkable thing about prosocial mores is just how much anarchy we witness in societies with enormous states.

yawn.

[RefurbedScientist]

I fail to see what is particularly egalitarian about an organization of people lead by Adbusters, the world's best-selling counter culture magazine produced by well-to-do Canadian art directors, a very loud and upset assistant professor from America's ivy league.

You've confused a few categories here.

First, I said horizontal, not egalitarian, and I was referring to its organizational structure, not the distribution of wealth among those involved. How well-to-do its "leaders" are has, at least on the surface, little to do with the extent of horizontal organization, lack of hierarchy, diffuse power to incentivize and coerce, etc. Whether or not those conditions are in fact present in Occupy is up for empirical validation, I suppose. But from my experiences, Occupy approximates them about as well as any (mass) movement has.

Second, you've referred to Occupy as an organization. It's better understood as a loose coalition of organizations enlarged by a mass of otherwise unaffiliated individuals, at least in New York and, perhaps, other major metro centers. The best term we have for it is social movement, which are usually composed of many organizations and constituents.

Third, while Adbusters was of course an initiating organization, the extent to which it lead or leads Occupy is unclear at most and, in my estimation, probably very minimal. The very absence of Adbusters' or any other single organization's hegemony over the movement is precisely what makes it organizationally non-hierarchical, along with its well documented organizational forms (e.g. People's Mic) and, perhaps, ideology.

Fourth, and minor, I don't see how magazine sales exclude an organization from acting in an anarchistic fashion or moving toward anarchy. Corporations can exist under anarchy (as some libertarian-type anarchists might tell you).

It seems like you've mixed up anarchist with concepts like working-class, popular, egalitarian, anti-corporate. While these concepts do commonly figure into anarchistic conversations, they are not inherent to anarchism.

I think the lack of consensus here illustrates precisely why an anarchist sociology would be in order. What exactly constitutes an empirical case of anarchism? If not Occupy, then what? That's a rhetorical question, but I hope it suggests to the OP that we do indeed need this kind of research.

[gilbertrollins]

yawn.

Hugs.

[gilbertrollins]

"First, I said horizontal, not egalitarian, and I was referring to its organizational structure, not the distribution of wealth among those involved."

Most sociologists would argue the distribution of wealth in any organization correlates rather tightly with its structure.

"It seems like you've mixed up anarchist with concepts like working-class, popular, egalitarian, anti-corporate. While these concepts do commonly figure into anarchistic conversations, they are not inherent to anarchism"

That would be true of Occupy kids who have no idea what they're screaming about, but I am not confused on my definition of anarchy. I'm glad we agree though that that a majority of anarchists are under-read extremists with incoherent ideas and no working alternative to current-form institutions other than to camp out in public parks, pick dinner out of a dumpster behind Domino's, and use Starbucks bathrooms without buying anything.

"Corporations can exist under anarchy (as some libertarian-type anarchists might tell you)."

Indeed. That's why they call it anarcho-capitalism. In most academic parlance anarchy means the absence of the State. The State is currently and has always been absent from a majority of social organization. Anyway, if large voluntary associations of people frighten you, note that more than half of GDP accrues to workers, a long-run stable trend. And note that a majority of businesses are small, with no discernible uptick in the size or prevalence of publicly traded companies.

"I don't see how magazine sales exclude an organization from acting in an anarchistic fashion or moving toward anarchy."

I don't either. I see a whopping contradiction in such a market organization consistently publishing vitriolic criticisms of market organizations, and suggesting that anarchic organizations, like those it would hope to inspire, are non-market.

"Third, while Adbusters was of course an initiating organization, the extent to which it lead or leads Occupy is unclear at most and, in my estimation, probably very minimal."

I seem to remember Adbusters and affiliate websites publishing twitter feeds and otherwise acting as information clearinghouses for reports on the activities. My point is not that Occupy, and even Adbusters aren't emergent, anarchic social phenomena. My point is that their self-styled definition of anarchy as anti-market, anti-government, anti-hierarchy, and anti-everything-else denies the facts of the hierarchy which allows them to set and agree on institutional standards and conventions, coordinating action. Nobody bought tickets to fly to NY and scream at bankers with use-value.

"Second, you've referred to Occupy as an organization. It's better understood as a loose coalition of organizations"

Combinations of organizations are not organizations? That flies in the face of organizational theory from modern network theory all the way back to the Federalist papers, at least, and probably before.

I would argue that the sort of organic emergence of social structure is in fact how all social structure emerges at first. Hierarchy emerges from that process because ideology and leadership help coordinate action. It's not clear that anything like organizational flatness does or can exist, or that such a situation is ethically or materially desirable. The alternative extreme, monopoly, certainly isn't desirable. The best solution seems to be something in between, with organizations allowing enough vertical mobility internally, and competition internally and externally, to prevent hierarchy from ossifying into the sort of conservative dominion you're rightly worried about.

[RefurbedScientist]

@econsocio: Points well taken. I'll limit my response to making what I think is an important distinction we haven't drawn out yet and discussing its implications. It should also be noted that we haven't defined anarchy yet, but I'll leave the interpretation open-ended for now.

The distinction cuts our question three ways.

1) We can study the anarchist characteristics of Occupy. That is the extent to which it is internally anarchic (here I use anarchic to mean without a hierarchical authority with hegemony/monopoly on decision making and coercive power).

2) We can study the anarchists in Occupy. Those would be self-identifying anarchists or members of anarchist organizations.

3) We can consider the extent to which Occupy is a pro-anarchy organization that promotes anarchist political objectives, simply put the dissolution of a state.

In the first, case, we might evaluate the movement's strategies, tactics, ideology, rhetoric, organizational structure, objectives, and relationship to other actors along anarchist lines, perhaps arguing that its more/less anarchist than it is socialist/welfare statist/bourgeois/whatever or arguing that its more/less anarchist than its own branding. In the second case, we might look at the role of anarchists in the Occupy movement, their political objectives and skill, the resources they offer, the internal conflicts they cause, etc. I think we would agree that the third case is a non-starter; I've seen very little to suggest that Occupy is a pro-anarchy movement.

It seems to me like you've made points that touch on the first two of these questions. First, that Occupy is not so without hierarchy as it would have us believe. Second, that anarchists in the movement are inauthentic and/or ineffective. I looks like we agree that Occupy, taken as a movement, is not advancing anarchist goals.

I'm not going to make a strong argument about the second of those critiques, but I'd like to see the evidence in support of your claim "that a majority of anarchists are under-read extremists with incoherent ideas and no working alternative to current-form institutions." My anecdotal experience would suggest otherwise, but I wouldn't ask anyone to take my word for it.

As for the first critique, I'll base my response on this point you make: "My point is not that Occupy, and even Adbusters aren't emergent, anarchic social phenomena. My point is that their self-styled definition of anarchy as anti-market, anti-government, anti-hierarchy, and anti-everything-else denies the facts of the hierarchy which allows them to set and agree on institutional standards and conventions, coordinating action."

It's an interesting argument. First, as we've already laid out, it doesn't look like Occupy has a self-styled definition of anarchy, though its anarchist element might. Second, there's no reason why anti-market, anti-government, etc. ideas necessarily preclude the possibility of a decision-making form that coordinates action and establishes collective expectations and norms that is fundamentally non-hierarchical. I say "fundamentally" because Occupy does use a division of labor which manifests in, in a given moment, an individual facilitating meetings, an individual managing outreach, an individual leading trainings. But these roles are remarkable fluid and, even if they weren't, the distribution of decision-making power does not seem systematically tied to role in the organization. (Caveat: does this mean Occupy's horizontality is not marred by inequalities of race, class, gender, ability, etc. that are part of the larger structure in which is operates? Absolutely not. But, as I will maintain, anarchy and equality are quite different things.) The fact of Occupy's history of action in spite of/because of its internally anarchic structure (relative to most mass social movements, not to mention other types of organizations) suggests to me that hierarchy is not a necessary precondition to action. Whether it's a precondition to political success or organization durability is an entirely other question.

[Darth.Vegan]

That would be true of Occupy kids who have no idea what they're screaming about, but I am not confused on my definition of anarchy. I'm glad we agree though that that a majority of anarchists are under-read extremists with incoherent ideas and no working alternative to current-form institutions other than to camp out in public parks, pick dinner out of a dumpster behind Domino's, and use Starbucks bathrooms without buying anything.

This is so beyond offensive it's not even funny, you are so inherently bigoted towards "anarchists" there would be no point in even debating this. The only thing I would say is that you should check your assumptions at the door and stop stereotyping folks. It's clear to me that you're a total prestige snob, and frankly that sort of discourse has no place in sociology. Also, you trash Graeber's scholarship and reference his inability to be granted tenure at Yale as proof that he produces lousy research, yet seem to completely ignore the fact that schools like Yale hardly give tenure to anyone the first time around. As has been pointed out here more than once, Stanford (as an example) has not granted tenure in decades.

[RefurbedScientist]

And for what it's worth, I see now that my initial statement might have been a bit unclear. I said:

For example, I would love to see a challenge to social movement theory's privileging of formal organizations questioned a bit in light of Occupy's extreme horizontality.

I was hoping that some kind of "anarchist sociology" would shake the dust off the tired out theoretical debates in social movement studies. I did not mean to suggest that Occupy has no formal organizations and should be studied as an example of anarchy, but rather that an anarchist alternative to say, state theory or resource mobilization or what have you, would be a new take on a novel movement.

I can see how that might have been reasonably interpreted otherwise. It's a distinction between an "anarchist sociology" and a "sociology of anarchy", much like some differentiate sociology of culture and cultural sociology.

[gilbertrollins]

That's well argued and organized. I'm not sure if I have the energy to respond well.

"that a majority of anarchists are under-read extremists with incoherent ideas and no working alternative to current-form institutions"

Self-identifying anarchists on the radical left wear black to protests, bring lemon juice in spritz bottles to neutralize the tear gas, are the ones who break Nike town windows, and actually fight the cops. They are also the gutter punks you see camping out on the street, wasted, begging for money to feed their dog. They hop trains. They dumpster dive. And a couple few of them have written poorly-conceived rationalizations of social parasitism as "anarchy." See "Evasion" and "Days of War Nights of Love" published by the Crimethinc. collective. I grew up with these people. Most of them have hepatitis infections and are on methadone now.

Add to these suburban lackies college students like the NYU undergraduates who "occupied" their cafeteria sobbing about tuition rates, an amalgam of social movements waving a mish mash of signs about oil, whales, gender, and whatever other injustice can be loosely associated with some form of social power, give them all a two-week old comprehension of the word "hegemony," and there you go. Occupy: the most impotent and incoherent protest to have ever happened in America, which had the gall to proclaim its association with Tunesians and Libyans getting shot for wanting electoral politics.

So I've pretty well shown my cards on that front.

As far as the theory of anarchy goes, and of the inevitability of hierarchy, I just read a very good working paper on an experimental public goods game, where subjects were willing to pay money to appoint a "punisher" (leader) who only had to punish the worst cases of free-riding in the game (defection) in order to maintain cooperation. It was a bargain to everyone involved, increasing the product and trust of the entire group. http://econ.ucsd.edu/~l1gee/pdfs/Gun_For_Hire_Combined.pdf

You've got Coase's theory of institutional hierarchy too. Mitigating all behavior through market exchanges would be inefficient in the costs accruing to all the negotiation, so people rationally submit to command hierarchies. It's not a perfect theory, but it helps us along. From the sociological side, you have ideology and social norms, and culture. These are all necessarily a hegemony. I have no power over large scale social forms. The French structuralist idea that they need to be therefore deconstructed by a specialized class of philosophers is pretentious, and an impossible task anyway. Social norms coordinate behavior. Bosses coordinate behavior. You and I have little to no control over these forces individually -- in aggregate we all affect their outcome with purposive action though. That's symbolic interactionism, Mead etc.

I'm saying that recognizing the ubiquity of bosses, norms, and other hierarchies in social organization shouldn't depress us, because we all volunteer to such a system, which coordinates a wealth of positive outcomes, in the market, on little league teams, in Church, and even (shiver) probably in government.

Organizational flatness is a 21st century organizational consultant's daydream. Also read a paper by Kieran Healy on open source software development illustrating it's decidedly hierarchical. http://kieranhealy.org/files/drafts/oss-activity.pdf And you can consult Mark Neuman's book on Networks: there's a chapter at the end where he explains preferential attachment. Academic citation networks, the distribution of wealth, and a myriad of other social networks follow a power law distribution. Hierarchy is a fact of social organization, and we would do better to at least entertain the idea that it's on some margin a beneficent social structure. That's after all how one tests a hypothesis -- by leaning hard against it. If you believe hierarchy is a bad thing: examine the case for it. Lean against it.

My point on anarchy is that social institutions are self-sustaining. Laissez faire does not require general equilibrium theory and Pareto-improving trades for ethical justification. People take care of themselves and one another. States have a bad track record of doing precisely the opposite, especially in their recent (and historically more common) aristocratic and totalitarian incarnations -- which created abysmally more stratification and oppression than anything going on in a modern market democracy.

[gilbertrollins]

This is so beyond offensive it's not even funny, you are so inherently bigoted towards "anarchists" there would be no point in even debating this. The only thing I would say is that you should check your assumptions at the door and stop stereotyping folks. It's clear to me that you're a total prestige snob, and frankly that sort of discourse has no place in sociology. Also, you trash Graeber's scholarship and reference his inability to be granted tenure at Yale as proof that he produces lousy research, yet seem to completely ignore the fact that schools like Yale hardly give tenure to anyone the first time around. As has been pointed out here more than once, Stanford (as an example) has not granted tenure in decades.

Graeber's political advocacy may or may not have had anything to do with his tenure decision. I didn't create the hypothesis -- his defenders did. I attacked Graeber's scholarly work on the warrants he avers. How does that make me a bigot? Does reading economic history make me a bigot? Does considering his argument in comparison to widely accepted, primary-sourced research that is decades old in economic history make me a bigot?

Personally I consider myself an anarchist. I used to live in a truck, slice. I'm not the Harvard conservative you're picturing.

Frankly I'd love to argue with Graeber, and want to do much more work in historical sociology to get the Scientific Creation Stories about ancient trade and states straight. Obviously not enough work has been done here.

I might point out that you responded to one of my earlier posts with "yawn." I think it's clear who came to the table married to his priors and ready to dismiss.

^though not nearly the sort of anarchist who goes to Occupy rallies. Just a guy with profound faith in voluntary association, for economic and

sociological reasons

Edited November 13, 2012 by econosocio

[RefurbedScientist]

@econsocio: Thanks for your response.

I think we've got our wires crossed. I want to clear up one thing. You've written,

Hierarchy is a fact of social organization, and we would do better to at least entertain the idea that it's on some margin a beneficent social structure. That's after all how one tests a hypothesis -- by leaning hard against it. If you believe hierarchy is a bad thing: examine the case for it. Lean against it.

I'm in no way arguing for the unassailable merits of anarchy or flat organizations nor against the possible merits of hierarchy. I'm not making any such normative claim. I'm merely arguing (a) that Occupy makes for a good case study for the OP's "anarchist studies" interest because (2) it is distinguished from other mass movements in North American history for its non-hierarchical structure, lack of directive authority, and diffuse responsibilities for the establishment and maintenance of norms and ideas.

In fact, the points you are making are quite valid, though immaterial, I think, to the matter of whether or not Occupy makes for a good object of study for an anarchist sociology.

*Edit* By way of qualification, I think your normative criticism of Occupy (not to mention anarchist activists) is neither germane to the question at hand nor very scientific, whereas most of the rest of what you said was well argued and evidenced.

Edited November 13, 2012 by SocialGroovements

[gilbertrollins]

My definition of anarchy is voluntary association. Not an absence of power. Not an absence of hierarchy. Inter- and intra-institutional mobility are as I see it essential to mitigating the corrosive tendencies of hierarchy. But I think on the other side of that continuum, flat organizations are just as corrosive.

My intention wasn't to offend anybody. All of the behaviors of movement anarchists I brought up are proud flags these kids wave around. I've eaten dumpstered food. I've been to the Rainbow gatherings. And when I watch videos of college students or high-school dropouts getting pepper sprayed it makes me extremely sad -- sad for the confused ideological motivations of both sides of the fight. I'd rather approach the situation with a critical analysis in hopes that we can better understand social coordination than watch people scream at each other in the street.

And yes, I am extremely optimistic about the state of the world and the progress we are making materially and socially. That I think is a necessary dialectical transition in a discipline which has since Compte, Rousseau, and Marx abhorred the social forms it witnesses.