HUMANITY, NATURE, AND THE ANARCHIST IDEAL

Social geography is the study of how landscape, climate, and other features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of its inhabitants (and vice versa). Frenchman Elisée Reclus (1830Reclus ( -1905, a progenitor of the discipline, believed strongly in the rights and abilities of people to manage themselves in relation to their local bioregion, free from rule by a remote, centralized government. His approach to anarchy was unique in its emphasis on the environment -Reclus understood that a mindset that encourages one person or people's domination over another must, in the race to profit from natural "resources", also foster domination over nature. Like the social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the biosphere. The first half of the recently--published Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus, edited and translated by John Clark and Camille Martin, forms a comprehensive critical survey of Reclus' philosophy and political theory, including biographical information and historical context. The "modern" manifestations of oppression (including the concentration of wealth and power, surveillance, racism, sexism, and ecological degradation) that concerned Reclus in late--1800s Europe, the United States, and Central and South America are indeed still strikingly -infuriatingly -present. The second half of the book consists of translations of several pieces from Reclus' extensive oeuvre, some of which have never before appeared in English translation. AS: Can you describe how anarchy - specifically the kind based in mutual aid and environmental responsibility in service to a greater good illuminated here by Reclus, and by you in your book The Impossible Community, differs from other conceptions (or misconceptions) of anarchy, and how it might (as contrasted with other ideologies) be useful to us now? John P. Clark: The world is rife with misconceptions about anarchism. The most historically and theoretically grounded definition -the one that goes back to classical figures like Elisée Reclus -is quite simple: anarchy consists of the critique of all systems of domination and the struggle to abolish those systems, in concert with the practice of free, non--dominating community, which is the real alternative to these systems. Anarchy is the entire sphere of human life that takes place outside the boundaries of arche, or domination, in all its forms -statism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, racial oppression, heterosexism, technological domination, the domination of nature, etc. It rejects the hegemony of the centralized state, the capitalist market, and any hybrid of the two, and seeks to create a society free of all systematic forms of domination of humanity and nature. It envisions a society in which power remains decentralized at the base, decision--making is carried out through voluntary association and participatory democracy, and larger social purposes are pursued through the free federation of communities, affinity groups, and associations. Anarchism is not merely about a transformation of social institutional structures, however. As further discussed in my book The Impossible Community, it also encompasses a fundamental transformation of the social imaginary, the social ideology, and the social ethos. Communitarian anarchism assumes that social transformation, to be successful, must encompass all major spheres of social determination. It recognizes that there are ontological, ethical, aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of anarchy or non--domination. According to Reclus and other communitarian anarchists, these are not just vague ideals to be achieved in some future utopia; rather, such a transformation is immediately realized here and now wherever love and solidarity are embodied in existing human relationships and social practice. Anarchism is strongly committed to "prefigurative" forms of association, and to the idea of "creating the new society within the shell of the old." In fact, the communities of liberation that we create here and now do more than "prefigure" the ultimate goal; they are actual "figurations" of our ideals, actually giving a form, or a face, to them in the present. By demonstrating that the most deeply rooted social order arises not out of coercion, oppression, and domination, but out of mutual aid and cooperation, communitarian anarchism is a truly revolutionary project. In working to regenerate community at the most fundamental level, it seeks to reverse the course of thousands of years of history in which relations of solidarity have been progressively replaced by market relations, commodity relations, bureaucratic relations, technical relations, instrumental relations, and relations of coercion and domination. The ecocidal and genocidal effects of such relations compel us to consider whether we will remain on history's present catastrophic course, or seize the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the flourishing of both humanity and the whole of life in the biospheric community. In the work of Reclus we find universally accessible, immediately implementable alternatives. Reclus cites some of the anarchic forms of human community that have made up much of world history, and remarks that "the names of the Spanish comuñeros, of the French communes, of the English yeomen, of the free cities in Germany, of the Republic of Novgorod and of the marvelous communities of Italy must be, with us Anarchists, household words: never was civilized humanity nearer to real Anarchy than it was in certain phases of the communal history of Florence and Nürnberg." Today we can add the names of many movements that span the century since Reclus: the collectives in the Spanish Revolution; the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement; the global cooperative movement; the rich history of libertarian intentional communities; the Zapatista Movement; radical indigenous movements throughout the world; the global justice movement; and recently, the "horizontalist" practice of the Occupy Movement.

Antipodefoundation.org, 2013

Philosophy and Geography I: Space, Place, and Environmental Ethics , 1997

: 57-65.] This biography by Marie Fleming is highly recommended as a comprehensive, readable survey of the life and ideas of Reclus. The book is a revised and improved edition of Fleming's earlier The Anarchist Way to Socialism: Elisée Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism, which was already the best source of information on Reclus in English. While the only other extensive study in English, Dunbar's Elisée Reclus: Historian of Nature is useful for those interested in Reclus as a geographer, Fleming's work is far superior as a presentation of Reclus as a complex human being and a fascinating historical figure. She gives the events of his life a rich context in nineteenth-century European history, in the radical milieu of that period, and, most particularly, in the events and ideas of the anarchist movement of the epoch. Where the work is weakest is in the area of theory. Fleming hardly mentions Reclus' most important work of social theory, L'Homme et la Terre, an impressive six-volume study, and she makes only a few brief references to other theoretical discussions.

The objective of this work is to take a brief journey in the life and work of the French geographer Élisée Reclus, from 1872 to 1889. For that, this work presents a picture of his involvement with the anarchist movement and of how he sought to bring such theorizations of freedom closer to geographic thinking. The approximation between geography and anarchism was achieved by establishing bonds between Reclus and other anarchist characters of his time, who constituted a circle of studies around geography and communist anarchism.

G. S. Dunbar, 1977, in Historical Geography, Vol. 14, No. 1 & 2, pp. 22-25.

Terra Brasilis, 2016

Normally, Elisée Reclus is not thought of as a Latin Americanist geographer, given that the majority of his life was lived in Europe, and most of his geographical travels were in Europe and neighboring lands. Similarly, as a geographer, he is primarily known for his research and regional writing projects that are global in scope. In addition, if Reclus is remembered outside of geography's circle of historians, it is for his political writings and commitments. Reclus has always had a place in the pantheon of anarchist and decentralist thinkers and activists, but his geographical work seems to undergo periodic rediscovery by new generations of geographers. As this paper demonstrates, we are in the midst of one of these revivals or rediscoveries. Unlike the generation of the 1930s, when figures such as Lewis Mumford and Carl Sauer were looking back to Reclus and others for their decentralist and regionalist inspirations, or during the 1960s when New Left geographers were excavating past legacies for serviceable guides to radical theory and praxis, today's geographers as well as social theorists might find in Reclus both old and new ways of conceptualizing chorologies, ecologies, and politics. I think it is especially encouraging that Latin American geographers, especially the younger generation, have taken an historical turn, and begun to investigate the grounds of their own national and regional foundations. Of course, the roots and vitality of any local, regional, or national geographic tradition are those that are "home-grown" and locally generated and grounded. Thus, getting to know one's precursors and those that have paved the way to the present is all to the good. But this is not to say that non-local or non-national geographic visitor, observer, and/or commentator has no agency or impact on a tradition, or in this case, the development of geographical thought and practice in a particular place. It is in this context that I would like to provide an overview of Elisée Reclus' connections and contributions to Elisée Reclus' Latin Americanist Geography Terra Brasilis (Nova Série), 7 | 2016 Latin Americanist geography. To date, Reclus scholars have directed little attention toward Reclus' travels in, and writings on, Latin America. Agreeably, this paper promises to make major advances in furthering our knowledge of Reclus as Latin Americanist geographer. 2 Elisée Reclus traveled only twice to Latin America during the course of his long, intensely politically engaged, and highly productive scholarly lifespan. His exposure to Latin America immediately preceded the start of his scholarly career. In self-exile from Louis Napoleon's 1851 coup d'etat, after year in England and Ireland he traveled to Louisiana where he resided for two years (1853-1855). Tiring of Louisiana and its slavebased society, Reclus left in late 1855 for New Granada (Colombia) with stops in Cuba and Panama. Initially he intended to settle in Colombia, but his plans for colonization failed and he returned to France in 1857 after less than two years in the Santa Marta region. While his travels were more in the youthful Wanderjahre mode than systematic geographical investigations, these early Latin American experiences helped set his career compass on a life devoted in part to geographic description and synthesis. His only other Latin American exposure was to Brazil, where he traveled with his wife in 1893 to meet with geographers and scholars. In his biography of Elisée Reclus, Paul Reclus (1964: 124), clearly states that Reclus not only visited Brazil, but also Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Further evidence that he actually made these Southern Cone side trips is lacking, though it could be confirmed in correspondence that I have not consulted. The trip to Brazil and perhaps beyond was forty years after he first viewed the New World tropics in route to New Orleans. In the interim he had achieved global renown for both his geographical scholarship and his political advocacies and activities. If one includes mid-19 th century Louisiana as more a peripheral part of Latin America than a fully incorporated precinct of Anglo-America, and a good case can be made for this, then Reclus' Latin American travels and residence spanned not quite four years out of his seventy-five. Compared to most geographers specializing in the region, or those geographers native to it, Reclus' credentials to comment on its geography might be questioned. However, Alexander von Humboldt, perhaps single most noted and notable figure in Latin Americanist geography's genealogy, spent five years traveling and investigating Cuba, northern South America, and Mexico. Certainly Humboldt's thousands of printed pages on his Latin American travels and research stand as a monument to his industry and authority. Reclus' published output on Latin America falls short of Humboldt's, but still weighs in at more than two thousand pages. Whereas much of Humboldt's reportage was derived from his own experience and fieldwork, little of Reclus' Latin American writings can be so credited. Nevertheless, Reclus rendered and synthesized a vast literature, primarily from secondary sources, into his own distinctive and authoritative voice and vision. It is this portion of Reclus' voluminous geographical writings that needs to be analyzed and commented on if we are to begin to evaluate Reclus and his production in the context of Latin Americanist geography. This paper then, is perhaps a beginning to this much larger-scale assessment. Reclus' Latin Americanist Publications 3 Reclus' Latin American publications fall into several categories. They include his first book,

This paper, based on primary sources, addresses the early anarchist ethnography of Élie Reclus (brother of the more famous French geographer Élisée Reclus), placing it in the context of anarchist geographers’ elaboration of the theory of mutual aid, as well as in the construction of a scientific discourse opposed to racism, colonialism and Eurocentrism recently addressed by international literature on this group. Drawing on the double critical frame of present-day anarchist anthropologies and cultural geographies addressing the debates on otherness, postcolonialism and differences, this paper analyses an early but radical attempt to build a scientific discourse on empathy and understanding of different cultural standpoints in the political context of an explicit denunciation of colonial crimes by all nations of European culture, as well as scientists’ complicity therein. I argue that European science at the time of imperialism and evolutionism was not a homogeneous field, but a battlefield where heterodox and nonconformist thinkers tried to develop different discourses in order to build cultures of solidarity linked to a consistent political action. Keywords: Reclus brothers; Anarchist geographies; Anarchist anthropologies; Anti-colonialism; Otherness