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Andrej Grubačić

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Andrej Grubačić
Andrej Grubacic speaking at the 2010 [San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair].
NationalityYugoslav
Occupation(s)Activist; lecturer (San Francisco Art Institute and the Z Media Institute); author; historian.
Known forAnarchism; propagation of anarchist social theory.

Andrej Grubačić is an anarchist theorist, sociologist and activist with a Serbian background who has written on anarchism and the history of the Balkans. An advocate of an anarchist approach to writing history, Grubačić is one of the protagonists of "new anarchism",[1] and a member of the anti-authoritarian, direct-action wing of the global justice movement.[2][3][4][5] A partner with Peoples' Global Action and other Zapatista-influenced direct action movements, Grubačić's primary political investment is in Balkan struggles.[6] He is a co-founder of Global Balkans network of Balkan anti-capitalists in diaspora. His writings and interests range from anarchist or 'participatory' education to the anarchist world-systems analysis, and from the hidden history of American democracy to the history of decentralized communities and mutual aid in the Balkans.[7] His affinity towards anarchism arose as a result of his experiences as a member of the Belgrade Libertarian Group that derives from the Yugoslav Praxis experiment.[8]

Political activism, anarchist theory and anarchist pedagogy

Grubačić co-founded the Global Balkans network of the Balkan anti-capitalist diaspora,[9] the Research Institute for the Global Movement at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia,[10] the Yugoslav Initiative for Economic Democracy, Kontrapunkt magazine, and ZBalkans–a Balkan edition of Z Magazine,[11][12] where he sits on the editorial board.[13] He is or has been active as an organizer in networks such as Planetary Alternatives Network, the post-Yugoslav coalition of anti-authoritarian collectives DSM!, Peoples Global Action,[14] the World Social Forum, Freedom Fight[15] and as a program director[16] for the Global Commons, where he works with Immanuel Wallerstein, Katherine Wallerstein and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Together with Robert Posavec, he is responsible for spreading the idea of participatory economics in the Balkans.[17] He is a member of Retort collective, a collective of radical intellectuals based in the Bay Area.[18] He is a member of Bound Together Books in San Francisco, a collectively-run anarchist bookstore. He is active with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies).[19] He is involved with the mutual aid project with five prisoners on death row from Lucasville Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He is one of the historians of the 1993 Lucasville rebellion, when 450 Lucasville prisoners, including an unlikely alliance of the Aryan Brotherhood and Gangster Disciples, rioted and took over the facility for 11 days.[20]

Patrick Bond ranks Grubačić as a global justice proponent alongside Dennis Brutus, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader, John Pilger and Howard Zinn.[21]

Academic career

Following the collapse of Yugoslavia, Grubačić was based in Belgrade, before leaving his position as a teaching assistant of History at the University of Belgrade (due to tensions relating to his political activism).[22] Later the world-systems theorist and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein invited him to SUNY Binghamton in New York, United States. Grubačić was a graduate student there and worked at the Fernand Braudel Center on anarchist implications of world-systems analysis.[23] Later, he moved to San Francisco.

Publications

Together with anthropologist David Graeber he authored an important theoretical and programmatic piece on Anarchism for the 21st Century. Later, he teamed up with legendary activist and historian Staughton Lynd to write the book Wobblies and Zapatistas, which was internationally well-received.[24]

He went on to edit The Staughton Lynd Reader, and offer a new programmatic proposal for the "libertarian socialism for the 21st century," inspired by Lynd's work. Anarchist circles know him for his work as an anarchist educator, and he taught this topic to generations of students at Z Media Institute in Boston.

As of 2009 Grubačić has started work on a book developing an anarchist version of world-systems analysis with David Graeber.[25] He works as a lecturer at the Z Media Institute, the San Francisco Art Institute, and until recently the University of San Francisco.[26][27][28]

Grubačić works as a guest host of the KPFA radio program Against the Grain. As an anarchist propagandist and educator, Grubačić travels around North America giving talks, lectures and workshops on the history of anarchist education and on his idea of solidarity-centered anarchism.

His works include books in Balkan languages, chapters and numerous articles related to the history and utopian present of the Balkans.

Selected books

  • Grubačić, Andrej (2003). Globalizacija nepristajanja (in Serbian). Novi Sad: Svetovi. ISBN 86-7047-422-0. OCLC 64097747. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  • Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. PM Press. 2008. ISBN 9781604860412. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  • Andrej Grubacic (2010). Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |2= (help); Text "publisher PM Press" ignored (help) [29]
  • Staughton Lynd (2010). Andrej Grubacic (ed.). From Here to There: The Staughton Lynd Reader. PM Press. ISBN 9781604862157.[30]
  • Anarchism Reader
  • Noam Comski, Politika bez Moci. Izdavac: DAF Zagreb, 2004. ISBN 953-6956-01-2.
  • Chris Spannos, ed. (2007). "Participatory Balkans". Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century. AK Press. ISBN 9781904859789.
  • Uses of a Whirlwind

Articles

Reviews

Wobblies and Zapatistas recounts a radical history and connects activist political movements and generations.

Global capitalism has suffered a major blow in the past year, the largest economic turmoil since the 1930s fuelling political discussions on possible alternatives to the current economic model. For those seeking alternatives to mainstream historical narratives, Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History is an important read. Spanning from the Cold War to the 1990s expansion of market-driven free-trade policies, this engaging book offers critical historical reflections on events that have shaped contemporary politics.[31]

The World Social Forum, in its near decade of existence, has popularized the slogan “Another World Is Possible.” Although many on the left may agree, and there is broad agreement about the nature of the world we live in and the shape of the one we wish to create, there is less agreement on how to create that new world. Wobblies and Zapatistas, a conversation of sorts between longtime anarchist activist Andrej Grubacic and Staughton Lynd, who for the last 40 years has been one of the iconic figures of the U.S. left, is a contribution to resolving that argument—or at least turning it into a productive discussion.[32]

More theoretical and frankly meandering is Wobblies and Zapatistas,... The conversation starts out with the Chiapas rebellion and the Industrial Workers of the World—“the Zapatistas of yesteryear,” in Lynd’s phrase—but makes brief stops with the community organizing efforts of former steelworkers in post-industrial Youngstown, the 1946 general strike in Oakland, the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, and the 1980s revolutionary upsurges of Central America. Lynd ties it all together with his concept of “accompaniment”—basically, throwing one’s lot in with oppressed, sharing the burdens and risks of their struggles.[33]

This volume brings together two radical intellectuals from alternative political traditions for an extended conversation about theory, activism, and the state of radical politics today. Throughout their conversation, Staughton Lynd, the civil rights organizer, antiwar activist, lawyer, and radical historian, responds to the probing questions of Andrej Grubacic, the radical sociologist and activist from the Balkans.[34]

See also

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Citations

  1. ^ Lynd, Staughton; Grubačić, Andrej; O'Hearn, Denis (2008). Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. Oakland, California: PM Press. p. 245. ISBN 9781604860412. Retrieved 2009-12-30. New Anarchism is a term that Andrej Grubacic uses to describe the most recent reinvention of the anarchist thought and practice. What distinguishes the new anarchism of today from the new anarchism of the '60s and '70s, or from the work of US-UK based authors like Murray Bookchin, Paul Goodman, Herbert Read, Colin Ward and Alex Comfort, is its pronounced global perspective. Some of the useful essays on new anarchism include David Graeber's "New Anarchists" in A Movement of Movements: is Another World Really possible?, ed. Tom Mertes (London: Verso, 2004); Andrej Grubacic, "Towards Another Anarchism" in World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, ed. Jai Sen and Peter Waterman (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2007). A good introductory essay by David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic, "Anarchism or the Revolutionary Movement of the 21st Century," is available on line at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/9258. see also Leonard Williams, "The New Anarchists," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 31, 2006, online, pdf, 2008-05-07 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p152623_index.html. {{cite book}}: External link in |quote= (help); More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)
  2. ^ See a review of Andrej Grubačić's first book Globalizacija Nepristajanja [The globalization of refusal], described as "an activist manifesto for our times": Ambrozić, Dragan (2003-11-13). "Kako podneti budućnost". Vreme (in Serbian). Belgrade. ISSN 0353-8028. Retrieved 2009-12-30. Krajnje redak slučaj našeg predstavnika na svim značajnijim alterglobalističkim skupovima poslednjih godina, i autora koji se često pojavljuje u značajnoj inostranoj periodici – ovo je zanimljiv dokument i jedina naša alterglobalistička knjiga koju možete naći. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |trans_title= (help)
  3. ^ Williams, Leonard (September 2007). "Anarchism Revived". New Political Science 29 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1080/07393140701510160
  4. ^ Grubačić interviewed on Against the Grain Pacifica Radio http://www.againstthegrain.org/tag-directory/grubacic
  5. ^ Life After Social Forums http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/life-after-sf.htm
  6. ^ "Civilno društvo?", B-92, 9 June 2004
  7. ^ Major Serbian newspaper interviews Grubačić http://www.novine.ca/starevesti/intervju/intervju27.html - see also a Marxist critique of Grubačić's political thought http://www.11teza.net/kuda-idemo
  8. ^ http://www.hour.ca/news/news.aspx?iIDArticle=18381
  9. ^ Noam Chomsky on Grubačić's contribution as an activist scholar from the Balkans https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
  10. ^ Sen, Jai; Anand, Anita; Escobar, Arturo; Waterman, Peter, eds. (2004). El Foro Social Mundial: Desafiando imperios (in Spanish). Editorial El Viejo Topo. p. 85. ISBN 9788496356108. Retrieved 2009-12-26. Andrej Grubacic es [...] uno de los fundadores del Instituto por la Investigacion del Movimento Global de la Universidad de Ljuljana (Eslovenia). {{cite book}}: More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/andrejgrubacic
  12. ^ http://freedomfight.net/cms/index.php?page=z-magazin
  13. ^ Rebick, Judy (2002-05-01). "My Interview with Andrej". rabble.ca. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
  14. ^ http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/new/en/discuss.htm
  15. ^ Freedom Fight in conversation with Andrej Grubačić http://www.ainfos.ca/07/feb/ainfos00264.html
  16. ^ http://www.greatrehearsal.org/symposium.html
  17. ^ Michael Albert interviews Andrej Grubačić http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/9970
  18. ^ Retort in Portland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSueyfA7oM
  19. ^ https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
  20. ^ Lynd and Grubacic, Wobblies and Zapatistas, p.113
  21. ^ Bond, Patrick (2006-07-10). Civil society on global governance: facing divergent analysis, strategy and tactics. Paper presented to the International Society for Third-Sector Research: Bangkok (PDF). International Society for Third-Sector Research. p. 5. Retrieved 2009-12-29. Table 1: Five international ideological currents [...] Political current: Global justice movements [...] Exemplary proponents[: ...] D. Brutus [...] N. Chomsky [...] A. Grubacic [...] N. Klein [...] R. Nader [...] J. Pilger [...] H. Zinn
  22. ^ Major Serbian mainstream news paper interview http://www.novine.ca/intervju/intervju-1006-grubacic.html
  23. ^ http://www.readysteadybook.com/Article.aspx?page=davidgraeber
  24. ^ WorkingUSA, Vol. 12, No. 3., pp. 521-524
  25. ^ http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2007/get_out_of_the_library_and_into_the_stre
  26. ^ http://www.usfca.edu/artsci/fac_staff/G/grubacic_andrej.html
  27. ^ http://foghorn.usfca.edu/2009/04/students-protest-popular-adjunct-professor-not-rehired/ Keep Andrej Grubacic at USF Student Protest
  28. ^ http://www.sfai.edu/data/pubs/SFAI_CourseSchedule_Fall_2010.pdf San Francisco Art Institute:Teaching 2010
  29. ^ Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia
  30. ^ From Here To There: The Staughton Lynd Reader
  31. ^ http://www.hour.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=18578
  32. ^ http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=WobsNACLA
  33. ^ "Mexico Unconquered and Wobblies and Zapatistas", War Resisters League, Bill Weinberg, 2009-11-02
  34. ^ "Debating how to change the world", International Socialist Review, Issue 67, September–October 2009, ERIC KERL


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