Andrej Grubačić
Andrej Grubačić is a US-based Yugoslav world-systems theorist, Balkan federalist, and university Professor who has written on autonomous zones and mutual aid in world history. He is the grandson of Ratomir Dugonjić, Yugoslav partisan leader and communist revolutionary. One of the leading contemporary theorists of anarchism, Grubačić was a prominent member of the now defunct antiglobalization or global justice movement.[1][2][3][4] Grubačić is a long standing friend of the Kurdish freedom movement and one of the most prominent supporters of the democratic revolution in the Kurdish region in Syria, also known as Rojava. His writings and interests range from comparative world history of exilic ("non-state") spaces and autonomous zones to the neo-marxist world-systems analysis, and from comparative historical sociology to the history of mutual aid. He is an active participants in the World-Ecology, and social science editor at PM Press. He taught at the University of Rojava in Qamislo. [5]
Andrej Grubačić | |
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Andrej Grubačić speaking at the 2010 San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair. | |
Nationality | Yugoslav |
Occupation | Professor and Department Chair of Anthropology and Social Change (California Institute of Integral Studies); author; world-systems theorist |
Known for | Study of exilic spaces or autonomous zones in world history; anarchism; Left Yugoslavism and Balkan federalism; world-system theory; Rojava and the Kurdish freedom movement; |
Political activism
Grubačić is a long standing friend of the Kurdish freedom movement and one of the most prominent supporters of the democratic revolution in the Kurdish region in Syria, also known as Rojava. He is one of the leading advocates of Balkan confederalism. Grubačić co-founded the Global Balkans network of the Balkan anti-capitalist diaspora,[6] [7] the Yugoslav Initiative for Economic Democracy, Kontrapunkt (magazine), and ZBalkans–a Balkan edition of Z Magazine.[8][9][10] He is or has been active as an organizer in networks such as the post-Yugoslav coalition of anti-authoritarian collectives DSM!, Peoples Global Action,[11] the World Social Forum, Freedom Fight[12] and as a program director[13] for the Global Commons. He is a part of Retort collective, a collective of radical intellectuals based in the Bay Area.[14] He taught at Z Media Institute in Boston and at University of Rojava in Qamislo. He is a member the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies).[15] He is involved with the mutual aid project with five prisoners on death row from Lucasville Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He wrote about 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.[16] He wrote extensively on the California prison rebellion of 2011 and the so called Short Corridor Collective of the Pelican Bay prison (2009-2013).
Academic career
Following the collapse of Yugoslavia, Grubačić left for the United States. He moved to Binghamton University where he participated in research working groups at the Fernand Braudel Center on implications of anarchist Anthropology for world-systems analysis.[17] In 2008 he moved to San Francisco and worked in the sociology department at the University of San Francisco and urban studies department at the San Francisco Art Institute. He founded the department of Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. [18] His interest in world systems analysis and anarchist anthropology has influenced his research perspective, which includes experiences of self-organization, voluntary association, and mutual aid on the world-scale. His ongoing research on exilic spaces in the modern capitalist world system considers how spatial expressions of concentrated mutual aid are produced and reproduced on the outside/inside of capitalist civilization. Exilic spaces and practices refer to liminal and non-state areas relatively autonomous from capitalist valorization and state control. His principal research focus is on the autonomous "cracks" peopled by Don Cossacks, Atlantic pirates, Macedonian Roma, Jamaican Maroons and Mexican Zapatistas. This research is included in his UC Press book Living at the Edges of Capitalism. Co-authored with Denis O'Hearn, the book is a winner of the 2017 American Sociological Association PEWS prize for Distinguished Scholarship. He is the author of several important essays concerning the intellectual impact of Kurdish sociologist Abdullah Öcalan. He is an active participants in the World-Ecology, a global conversation of academics, activists, and artists committed to understanding human relations of power, production, and environment-making in the web of life.
Publications
In 2006, Grubačić teamed up with activist and historian Staughton Lynd to write the book Wobblies and Zapatistas
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.
His most recent academic book is Living at the Edges of Capitalism, co-authored with Denis O'Hearn and winner of the 2017 American Sociological Association Political Economy of the World-System (PEWS) Book Award.
His other works include books in Balkan languages, chapters and numerous articles related to the history and utopian present of the Balkans, anarchism, and radical sociology. Grubačić worked with David Graeber to develop an anarchist version of world-systems analysis.[19]
Grubačić is a Professor and Department Chair of Social and Cultural Anthropology at CIIS California Institute of Integral Studies.
Selected books
- "Living at the Edges of Capitalism
- Grubačić, Andrej (2003). Globalizacija nepristajanja [The globalization of refusal] (in Serbian). Novi Sad: Svetovi. ISBN 86-7047-422-0. OCLC 64097747.
- Grubačić, Andrej; Lynd, Staughton (2008). Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. PM Press. ISBN 978-1-60486-041-2.
- Grubačić, Andrej (2010). Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia. PM Press. [20]
- Staughton Lynd (2010). Andrej Grubačić (ed.). From Here to There: The Staughton Lynd Reader. PM Press. ISBN 978-1-60486-215-7.[21]
- 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 978-1-904859-78-9.
On the Balkans
- "Don't Mourn, Balkanize! Interview
- "The Staughton Lynd Reader Interview"
- "Wobblies and Zapatistas Interview"
- "Don't Mourn, Balkanize! A Vision for the Balkans"
- "Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary Movement Of The Twenty-first Century", ZMag, January 6, 2004. Co-authored with David Graeber.
- "No State, No Nation: Balkan Federation", Zmag
- "Towards Another Anarchism", World Social Forum
- "In Support of Professor David Graeber", Infoshop.org, May 11, 2005.
- "El Encanto Irresistible del Anarquismo Global", Tortuga
- "Caligula's Horse", CounterPunch, February 2, 2008.
- "A Global Left: Survey of European Left Movements", Nadir
- Grubačić, Andrej (2003), "Neoliberalizam, korporatna globalizacija i pedagogija", in Kneževic, Miloš; Ristić, Mihajlo (eds.), Vreme globalizacije: zbornik, Book 7 of Edicija "Treći milenijum", Belgrade: Dom kulture "Studentski grad", ISBN 978-86-7933-015-4, retrieved 2009-12-28
- Grubačić, Andrej (2004), "Towards another anarchism", in Sen, Jai; Anand, Anita; Escobar, Arturo; Waterman, Peter (eds.), World Social Forum: challenging empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation, pp. 402, ISBN 81-88251-17-8
- Chomsky, Noam. Mediji, Propaganda i Sistem [Media, Propaganda and the System]. Sto Citas (in Croatian). 9. Introduction by Andrej Grubačić. Zagreb. ISBN 953-7060-01-2. Retrieved 2010-01-03.
On Rojava
See also
Citations
-
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.
- Williams, Leonard (September 2007). "Anarchism Revived". New Political Science 29 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1080/07393140701510160
- Grubačić interviewed on Against the Grain Pacifica Radio http://www.againstthegrain.org/tag-directory/grubacic
- Life After Social Forums http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/life-after-sf.htm
- 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 Archived 2009-01-07 at the Wayback Machine
- Noam Chomsky on Grubačić's contribution as an activist scholar from the Balkans https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
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Sen, Jai; Anand, Anita; Escobar, Arturo; Waterman, Peter, eds. (2004). El Foro Social Mundial: Desafiando imperios [The World Socal Forum: challenging empires] (in Spanish). Editorial El Viejo Topo. p. 85. ISBN 978-84-96356-10-8. Retrieved 2009-12-26.
Andrej Grubačić es ... uno de los fundadores del Instituto por la Investigacion del Movimento Global de la Universidad de Ljuljana (Eslovenia).
- http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/andrejgrubacic
- "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-12-16. Retrieved 2009-12-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- Rebick, Judy (2002-05-01). "My Interview with Andrej". rabble.ca. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/new/en/discuss.htm
- Freedom Fight in conversation with Andrej Grubačić http://www.ainfos.ca/07/feb/ainfos00264.html
- http://www.greatrehearsal.org/symposium.html
- Retort in Portland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSueyfA7oM
- https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
- Lynd and Grubačić, Wobblies and Zapatistas, p.113
- "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-06-16. Retrieved 2009-12-04.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- http://www.ciis.edu/Academics/Graduate_Programs/Anthropology_and_Social_Change.html
- http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2007/get_out_of_the_library_and_into_the_stre
- Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia
- From Here To There: The Staughton Lynd Reader
External links
- Exiting Capitalism with Andrej Grubacic
- Radio Discussion on exile with Andrej Grubacic
- Letters and Politics - The Life & Times of Gavrilo Princip with Andrej Grubacic
- Grubacic detained by Japanese immigration authorities
- Andrej Grubacic takes listeners on a stroll through radical historical moments and movements in anecdotal stages
- Andrej Grubacic on Organizing in the Age of Obama
- Andrej Grubačić's rousing presentation at the 2009 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair about the ideas and issues covered in "Wobblies and Zapatistas"
- 4th Balkan Anarchist Bookfair
- Andrej Grubacic at ZSpace
- Grubačić (in German)
- Grubačić (in Spanish)
- Grubačić and the Serbian State
- Interview with Freedom Fight
- Andrej Grubačić at Worldcat Identities
- Link Simon Critchley and Andrej Grubacic talk about neo-anarchism, Obama, and political mobilizations on KPFA 94.1 FM.
- Keep Andrej Grubacic at USF Student Protest
- Economic global unrest grabs the attention of CIA and US Military. What are they worried about? We'll ask Andrej Grubacic, author of Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxist and radical history