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
Andrej Grubačić speaking at the 2010 San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair.
NationalityYugoslav
OccupationProfessor and Department Chair of Anthropology and Social Change (California Institute of Integral Studies); author; world-systems theorist
Known forStudy 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

On Rojava

See also

Citations
  1. 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.
  2. Williams, Leonard (September 2007). "Anarchism Revived". New Political Science 29 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1080/07393140701510160
  3. Grubačić interviewed on Against the Grain Pacifica Radio http://www.againstthegrain.org/tag-directory/grubacic
  4. Life After Social Forums http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/life-after-sf.htm
  5. 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
  6. Noam Chomsky on Grubačić's contribution as an activist scholar from the Balkans https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
  7. 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).
  8. http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/andrejgrubacic
  9. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-12-16. Retrieved 2009-12-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. Rebick, Judy (2002-05-01). "My Interview with Andrej". rabble.ca. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
  11. http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/new/en/discuss.htm
  12. Freedom Fight in conversation with Andrej Grubačić http://www.ainfos.ca/07/feb/ainfos00264.html
  13. http://www.greatrehearsal.org/symposium.html
  14. Retort in Portland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSueyfA7oM
  15. https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=56
  16. Lynd and Grubačić, Wobblies and Zapatistas, p.113
  17. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-06-16. Retrieved 2009-12-04.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  18. http://www.ciis.edu/Academics/Graduate_Programs/Anthropology_and_Social_Change.html
  19. http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/2007/get_out_of_the_library_and_into_the_stre
  20. Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia
  21. From Here To There: The Staughton Lynd Reader
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