Political Sociology alternative politics

1. Political Sociologyalternative politics Week 10 Dr Alice Mah

2. Lecture Outline • Alternative politics and the politics of imagining • Post-capitalist politics? • Utopian and dystopian politics • A case study of alternative politics • Conclusion and seminar questions

3. Alternative politics • This week we will expand our notion of the political to consider political alternatives • beyond the electoral politics of the state • beyond the limits of capitalist liberal democracy and ‘neoliberalism’ • beyond ‘traditional’ forms of political action such as political parties • beyond old and new social movements… • Is ‘another world possible’? And if so, what would it look like? What would it be based upon? • Role of the imagination, of utopian thinking, and provocative idea of ‘post-capitalist politics’ (Gibson-Graham 2006)

4. The politics of imagining • The act of imagining the nation, city, or community encompasses questions of identity, belonging, aspiration, memory, equality, and social justice • ‘Imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991): very influential argument about the nation as a socially constructed, imagined community that people perceive that they belong to • Different ways of imagining political alternatives: writers, artists, activists, developers, urban planners, city council officials, students, professionals • Different implications of visions (struggles over space, developments, participation, voice and representation)

5. Alternatives: imagining better futures • Imagination plays a vital role in how futures involving different patterns of individual and group activities on issues of public concern in the field of civic engagement are conceived and pursued. • The role of ‘imagining better futures’ in community development policy and practice: • question of how local communities make and engage with their own histories to imagine their futures • emphasis on community participation, co-production of knowledge, the role of the arts, creativity, non-rationalistic modes of thinking, • grassroots alternatives to top-down urban planning

6. Gramsci’s ‘pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will’ • Harvey argues that there is a need to overcome the barrier of Gramsci’s famously invoked ‘pessimism of the intellect’, to recognize the contingent nature of the comment: We are not in prison cells. Why, then, might we willingly choose a metaphor drawn from incarceration as a guiding light for our own thinking? Did not Gramsci also bitterly complain before his incarceration, at the pessimism which produced then the same political passivity, intellectual torpor and scepticism towards the future as it does now in our ours? Do we not also owe it to him, out of respect for the kind of fortitude and political passion he exhibited, to transform that phrase in such a way as to seek an optimism of the intellect that, properly coupled with an optimism of the will, might produce a better future? (Harvey 2000, Spaces of Hope, p. 17)

7. Post-capitalist politics? • Post-capitalist politics: an idea proposed by J.K. Gibson-Graham, the pen-name of feminist political economists Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham • ‘The argument: it is the way capitalism has been ‘thought’ that makes it difficult to imagine its supersession. It is therefore the existing knowledge of capitalism that we hope to delegitimize and displace’ (Gibson-Graham 1996: 3). • Focused upon the limiting effects of representing economies as dominantly capitalist, and the idea that economies are always diverse and always in the process of ‘becoming’ • Linked to ‘communities economies’ research network and collective http://www.communityeconomies.org/, a group of researchers and activists who are interested in new imaginaries or visions of the ‘economy’.

8. World Social Forum: example of post-capitalist politics based on: • – an understanding of economy as a diversified social space, inhabited by everything • from worker cooperatives to sites of enslavement, new forms of commons to forced • privatization, market transactions to gifting and gleaning, sweatshop labour to • household-based caring • – an ethical and political rather than structural conception of economic dynamics • – the centrality of new economic subjects and ethical practices of self-cultivation • – the role of place as a site of becoming, and as the ground of a global economic • politics of local transformations • – the everyday temporality of radical change • – the uneven spatiality and negotiability of power, which is always available to be • skirted, marshalled or redirected through ethical practices of freedom (while at the • same time making them necessary) (Gibson-Graham 2006)

9. The Occupy Movement • MalihaSafria (2012) links the economics of occupation of Occupy with other movements, including sit-down strikes in US factories in early 20th C., more recent farm and factory occupations in Brazil and Argentina, and the Arab Spring. • ‘The architecture of OWS speaks to at least one of the movement’s basic points: how society can and does organize partial production and distribution of goods and services outside market mechanisms.’ (MalihaSafria 2012, ‘The Economics of Occupation’ http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Maliha_Safri/Economics-of-Occupation.pdf)

10. Links between the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring • Role of new social media • Twitter hashtag # for organizing protests • International solidarity expressions via social media • Important or overstated/exaggerated? • Relationship to ‘conventional’ media and forms of protest? • New forms of politics (transnational, networked)? • Arab Spring: revolt or revolution? role of ideology, religion? • Occupy: question re: unity of vision, role of anarchism, and question of legacy/impact

11. UTOPIAN AND DYSTYPIAN POLITICS

12. “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth looking at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.” (Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism)

13. “The end of utopia is something that seems to suit our contemporary experience of society and politics on the world scale.” (Bann 1993, p. 1) “The literal meaning of utopia, “no place”, has been so reified that today utopia (no place) usually has no place in a constructive discourse.” (Bletter 1993, p. 48)

14. The politics of utopia • Utopian thinking has been widely discounted since the 1970s economic crises, seen as linked to authoritarianism, totalitarianism, communism, modernist notions and assumptions of ‘progress’, and past failures in relation to social and political events (especially the former Soviet Union) • Epitome of anti-utopian thinking: Margaret Thatcher’s ‘There is no alternative’ • But many urban scholars have argued for the value of utopian perspectives in developing political and economic alternatives to neoliberalism and capitalism (cf. Pinder 2002; Harvey 2000; Levitas 2010) • In Spaces of Hope (2000), Harvey argues for the importance of utopian thought in the present era, where utopian theories have fallen out of favour. He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, called “dialectical utopianism,” a vision of a more equitable world of work and nature.

15. The politics of dystopia • Often in dialectical relation to utopian political imaginaries: hyperbolic, apocalyptic urban excess, decay, decline, commodification, stigmatization, conflict, violence, anomie • Examples: ‘noir’ literature and film genres (e.g. as Raymond Chandler’s novels and Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner are described in City of Quartz): emphasize conflict, violence, corruption, struggle; moralizing edge • Futurist dystopias: social commentary and exaggeration of contemporary inequalities and problems (Metropolis, Aldous Huxley’s LA inspirations, LA School’s idea of LA as a ‘laboratory of the future’)

16. Utopian and dystopian films • ‘Metropolis’ (1927, dir Fritz Lang about the early modern city and its social divisions) • ‘Pickpocket’ (1959, dir. Robert Bresson, a reflection on crime and survival, set in Paris) • ‘Two or Three Things that I Know about Her’ (1966, Jean-Luc Godard), radical and relatively hopeful view of Paris • ‘Chinatown’ (1974, dir. Roman Polanski, American neo-noir, set in 1937 Los Angeles) • ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese, crime & prostitution in NYC) • ‘Wings of Desire’ (1987, dir WimWenders about the divided city of Berlin) • ‘La Haine’ (1995 film; violence and racism, riots in Paris banlieues) • ‘Bladerunner’ (classic dystopian film based on Los Angeles, 1982) • ‘City of God’ (2002 film; a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro) • ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ (2002 film; precarious lives of migrants in London) • ‘The Wire’ (HBO Series set in Baltimore; crime, drugs, poverty, police) • ‘Treme’ (HBO Series set in post-Katrina New Orleans) … and many more examples across a range of genres, popular, sci fi, etc

17. Utopian and dystopian film clips • Bladerunner opening scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaR5wVL9x2I • Taxi Driver ‘clean up the city’ scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKdqwgrK96w • This is Hamilton: urban politics website and documentary, inspired by Harvey http://thisishamilton.com/

18. A Case Study of Alterative Politics News from Nowhere and Next to Nowhere, Liverpool Bold Street (from my forthcoming book, Port Cities and Global Legacies, 2014)

19. News from Nowhere • Est. 1974 as a radical bookshop, named after utopian novel by William Morris • One of UK’s only remaining radical bookshops • Intense history of struggling to survive amid anti-left attacks throughout the 1980s • Not-for-profit, non-market basis of financial survival: appeals to public for funding, coop • Women’s workers’ cooperative since 1985, based on non-hierarchical anarchist and feminist principles. • A whole range of radical and community books, pamphlets, magazines: anarchists, socialists, feminists, LGBT, black, anti-racist, green, new age/spiritual • Upstairs: office of Nerve, alternative grassroots community magazine; recent issue published on ‘alternatives to capitalism’ • Downstairs: Next to Nowhere Liverpool Social Centre

20. ‘Next to Nowhere’ • Liverpool Social Centre ‘Next to Nowhere’ est. 2007: a volunteer-run, radical, do-it-yourself space for meetings and events, also runs a Saturday vegan café. • Aims and principles: • ‘We created the social centre to be part of efforts to bring about a fair, free and sustainable society - one without hierarchy, discrimination, or the exploitation of people, animals and the planet for profit. We believe this is only possible through the direct action of ordinary people against capitalism & the state. • The centre exists to support anyone acting to defend themselves and their communities against attacks by business and government, locally and globally, and those acting in solidarity with them, through direct action, campaigning work, education, and sharing skills and resources. • The social centre is not just a meeting space; it is intended as an example. We work non-hierarchically, we maintain our independence as far as is possible, we claim to represent no one but ourselves and seek to facilitate, not control, the resistance of others.’ http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org/

21. Conclusion • Alternative politics highlights the importance of ‘imaginaries’ and ‘visions’ in shaping political realities and futures, • Links to new, global, and grassroots social movements but more of a focus on different vocabulary (imaginary, utopia, post-capitalist, radical…) • Explores political imaginaries beyondthe limits of electoral politics, political parties, capitalist liberal democracy, and traditional social movements.

22. Seminar questions • Share and present your selection of different essays published in openDemocracy, and how these are examples of ‘alternative politics’ • Think of your own utopian city or polity. What kind of politics, society and economy would it be based upon? • Critically assess the role of ‘utopian’ thinking in relation to urban politics and alternative politics more widely.