New award to examine the constitutionalising practices of anarchist and anarchistic groups

Alex Prichard (Exeter) and Ruth Kinna (Loughborough) have been awarded £249,496 by the ESRC Transforming Social Science scheme for their project titled 'Anarchy as Constitutional Principle: Constitutionalising in anarchist politics'.

Dr Prichard is an equally weighted co-investigator on this project which will be based at Loughborough. This grant scheme looks to support risky work that pushes the limits of social science knowledge. The 18 month project will transform how we think about anarchy in political discourse and practice.

The plan is to work with anarchist groups to understand how anarchy acts as a constitutional principle that shapes them both formally and informally, and to see how anarchy is understood as a principle of order. Contrary to popular belief, anarchist groups, practices and principles are replete with norms and more or less formal rules, many even adopting formal constitutions. The aim is to take insights from this empirical work and rethink the nature of, and institutions needed to secure, freedom in a post-statist world order.  Given recent attempts to rethink constututionalisation in radical ways in the Occupy camps, as well as Iceland and most recently in the Rojava region, this is a timely and much needed attempt to think imaginatively about future world orders.

The project outline can be found here.