Anarchy:About

(Symbol Disambiguation)

Contact

In general, please email questions, suggestions, and feedback to Dan.

If you see a mistake or misrepresentation, please contact us right away so that we can either correct it or set you up with an account so you can edit it yourself.

Note on colonialism and representation

Part of our goal with this website is to challenge Eurocentric conceptions of anarchy. Thus, we try to show that the European-derived Anarchist tradition sits within a much broader set of anti-authoritarian, participatory and autonomous practices around the world and throughout human history.

There are several dangers, however. First, we run a risk of misrepresenting non-European groups, of trying to fit them into categories where they may not belong or want to belong. As Peter Gelderloos puts it, "we could easily fall into the accustomed eurocentric pattern of manipulating and exploiting these other cultures for our own ideological capital." To try to avoid this pattern, we aim to quote and cite voices from the groups we study, and we make note of the biases that European authors carry when they/we write about colonized cultures. Moreover, we try point out that many of the groups we study are still involved in struggles against domination, and we include links for where readers can learn more and get involved in solidarity work. As Gelderloos writes, " After all, if we are inspired by certain other societies, shouldn’t we do more to recognize and aid their ongoing struggles?" See "The_Tricky_Topic_of_Representation".

A second trap involves our inclusion on this website of "participatory" and "autonomous" examples that practiced and/or practice slavery, genocide, and other extreme forms of oppression. Some could argue that this website's inclusion of classical Athens, the New England town meetings, and the Zionist kibbutzim on this website is to whitewash these societies' violence against people they did not consider citizens. We respond, however, that including those examples is important if we are to understand how horizontality can sometimes be put in the service of exclusivity and atrocity.

Our Culture is Free Culture

• When we say "free" we mean freedom. Libre, not simply gratis. Think free software, not the watered-down term, "open-source".
• We're proud hackers, people who enjoy "playful cleverness". If you see that term here, know what it means before you criticize.
• Our Equation: You + Your Computer(s) == Empowerment & Self-Defense.

User Accounts

To edit this wiki you must request an account, since we've been spammed too often already :/

Searching

This website uses the MediaWiki search engine as the default. Unsuccessful searches are often caused by searching for common words like "have" and "from", which are not indexed, or by specifying more than one search term (only pages containing all of the search terms will appear in the result). You may also search this website with DuckDuckGo.

Software Requirements

Ogg Theora Movie Player

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PDF Viewer

This website contains PDF documents. A current version of Evince is recommended for best compatibility. For alternatives, see this comparison.

Newer Browser

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• See our Web browser tips for info on making your browser smarter and more secure.

JavaScript & SSL

Enabled by default in most browsers.

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Privacy

We're currently working on a detailed privacy statement. One of the focuses of this wiki is privacy on the Web, so we take it very seriously. Be sure that we don't share or sell your data, spam you, data-mine you, or other nasty practices practiced by entities like Facebook. However:

1. Search engines like Google may spider this website and archive information from it.
2. MediaWiki keeps detailed logs of edits to this wiki. Even pages/edits that are deleted remain for a very long time (maybe indefinitely) and accounts are never deleted, just blocked.
3. We are hosted by DreamHost and can't make promises for them or guarantee they wouldn't submit to legal or police action. As far as we can tell, DreamHost is a privacy-respecting Web host.

• DreamHost policies:
  • Privacy Policy
  • Acceptable Use Policy
  • Terms of Service.
• Most DreamHost policies only apply to their customers. For users/editors of this site, this statement is probably most important:
  • "[DreamHost] may also collect the URL from which you linked into our site, your IP address, and your browser type and version, all of which are collected in an anonymous manner without being linked to any of your personal information."

The Internet is a big place and information wants to be free. So, as a general rule, don't post anything potentially illegal or anything you wouldn't want made public.

Development

This website is maintained by:

• Diggity

Copyright and Licensing

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MediaWiki is free software available under the GNU General Public License. Tango icons are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

All other content on this site is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, unless otherwise stated. Please contact Diggity for copyright and licensing inquiries.

Submissions

All edits and other contributions to this site (i.e. anything you add or change on this wiki) are considered released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Please be aware of this when you post. We have some nice boilerplate text below the editing window that states this, so don't say we didn't warn you :)