Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, scholars across disciplines have been theorizing about a crisis of citizenship. It is routinely argued that trends in globalization are undermining the conventional features of political membership, namely, its spacial, political, and cultural dimensions. This crisis of citizenship discourse parallels with a renewed interest in anarchist theory. In recent years there has been a proliferation of scholarship on anarchism’s supplementary role with regard to new social movements and anti-globalization activism. What is less appreciated in this literature is the degree to which anarchist theorists not only anticipated the crisis of citizenship but that they have been positing alternative modes of citizenship, variations of what is commonly called active citizenship. This paper outlines some of these trends and it seeks to illustrate what contemporary expressions of anarchist citizenship look like by way of the activist communes that emerged in Russia after the Bolotnaya Square protests in 2011.