IAS Grant Awards

The IAS Board of Directors was pleased to award grants to the following individuals for January 2001 (actual board meeting held February 10, 2001 due to weather delays):

$2000 to Caitlin Hewitt-White, for her study, "Gender in Current Anti-Globalization Activism in Canada." Using Canadian examples, her project will assess the potential effectiveness of the current anti-globalization movement in resisting capitalist globalization and in reconstructing a society based on freedom, equality, cooperation, and justice. First-hand information will be gathered from activists, which will then be analyzed within broad social and political themes to discuss the challenges that face the anti-globalization movement in not only resisting capitalism, but also in confronting oppression in all its forms and in all spaces. In the face of a rejuvenated movement, this project will hopefully help us to correct on-going problems such as sexism within the left. Caitlin is a student at the University of Waterloo and is active in the Peak Collective and Guelph Action Network.

$1500 to Jessica Lawless for her article and documentary, "Racializing Anarchism Then and Now." This piece focuses on the re-emergence of anarchism in the broader public sphere since the protest in Seattle and subsequent international anti-globalization protests. Addressing both anarchist and non-anarchist identified audiences, this study will counter mainstream mediated portrayals of the anarchist protestors as ahistorical, violent, young, white males who are incapable of offering a viable critique of society. In particular, it will argue that the mainstream media has agitated public anxieties toward young people who identify as anarchists by relying on racialized and racist constructions of "blackness" and urban uprising, taking the focus off the issues being raised and putting it instead on issues of law and order. Jessica, currently a graduate student at Claremont Graduate Univeristy, has been active in many areas, including women's self defense, social work, and as an organizer of various anarchist collectives in Seattle.

$2000 to Andrés Peréz and Felipe del Solar for their book Chile: Anarchist Practices Under Pinochet. As the title indicates, this piece focuses on anarchist practices and organization under Pinochet's military dictatorship from a political as well as cultural perspective. The study will span Pinochet's reign, beginning in 1973, to the present, by tracing the social manifestations, organizational relationships, and political contributions of anarchists. Andrés Pérez is an international free-lance journalist and writes for the national political magazine Ercilla. Felipe del Solar is studying history at the Universidad Cató lica de Chile, and has taught at Infocap, the university of the workers, in Santiago, Chile.

$500 to Will Firth for his translation of three Russian writings, "Russian Capitalism and Globalization" by the MPST (the local Moscow group of the KRAS-IWA) from a 1999 collection of essays entitled The Return of the Working Class. The second piece is actually two essays on Nestor Makhno, one by Russian anarchist Ida Melt; and another by N. Sukhogorskaya, originally published in Nestor Ivanovich Makhno (ed. VF Verstyuk, Dzvin Publishers, Kiev 1991). The first piece in an anarcho-syndicalist look at the economic and power structures in the USSR and contemporary Russia and examines how they fit into the world economy; and the real-existing labor movement in Russia and draws conclusions about the kind of autonomous, anti-capitalist workers' movement which would be needed to combat rampant neo-liberalism. The Makhno pieces are of a historical nature, incorporating recent research on Makhno and his wife.

If you are interested in applying for a grant, please send a SASE to the IAS at P.O. Box 1664, Peter Stuyvesant Station, New York, NY 10009; or print an application from our website.  

Perspectives on Anarchist Theory - Vol. 5, No. 1 - Spring 2001