Community as an Activist Concept
Channel: redemmasvideo
Date: 22/06/2012

Workshop presented at the Mobilizing and Organizing From Below Conference in Baltimore, MD, June 1-3, 2012.  For more coverage, go to http://indyreader.org/mobconf.

Facilitated by AK Thompson The concept of "community" has played an important role in shaping contemporary radical struggles--and with good reason. In a context defined by alienating capitalist social relations, the affective and strategic bonds of community have often been seen as an important source of counter-power. Nevertheless, "community" has also been marshaled by constituted power itself as a category and strategy of ruling. How, then, should those committed to radical social change relate to the category? In order to help break with accounts that present "community" as a self-evident good, participants in this session will be encouraged to consider case studies in which activist recourse to the concept has produced ambivalent results.

AK Thompson is a Toronto-based writer, social theorist, and activist. His publications include Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements / Social Research (Fernwood, 2006) and Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (AK Press, 2010). Between 2006 and 2011, he served on the Editorial Committee of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.