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Self-managed social centers, also known as autonomous social centers, are self-organized community centers in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchism, can include bicycle workshops,
infoshops Infoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, self-managed social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer ...
, libraries, free schools,
free shops Give-away shops, freeshops, free stores or swap shops are stores where all goods are free. They are similar to charity shops, with mostly second-hand items—only everything is available at no cost. Whether it is a book, a piece of furniture, a ...
, meeting spaces and concert venues. They often become political actors in their own right. The centers are found worldwide, for example in
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
, the United States and the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. They are inspired by various left-wing movements including anarchism and
intentional communities An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, ...
. They are
squatted Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
, rented, or owned cooperatively.


Uses

Self-managed social centers vary in size and function depending on local context. Uses can include an
infoshop Infoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, self-managed social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer ...
, a radical bookshop, a resource centre offering advice, a hacklab, a café, a bar, an affordable gig space, independent cinema or a housing co-operative. As well as providing a space for activities, these social centers can become actors in opposing local issues such as
gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ec ...
or
megaprojects A megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. According to the ''Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management'', "Megaprojects are large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost $1 billion or more, take many years to develop a ...
. Alongside protest camps, social centers are projects in which the
commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons c ...
are created and practiced.


History

Western anarchists have long created enclaves in which they could live their societal principles of non-authoritarianism, mutual aid, gifting, and conviviality in microcosm. Some of these community sites include Wobbly union halls (1910s, 1920s), Barcelonan community centers during the Spanish Revolution, and
squatted Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
community centers since the 1960s. They share a lineage with the radical
intentional communities An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, ...
that have periodically surfaced throughout history and are sometimes termed
Temporary Autonomous Zone ''T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone'' is a book by the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) published in 1991 by Autonomedia and in 2011 by Pacific Publishing Studio (). It is composed of three sections, "Chaos: The B ...
s or "free spaces", in which a counter-hegemonic resistance can form arguments and tactics. Anarchists outside the class-struggle and workplace activism tradition instead organize through autonomous spaces including social centers, squats, camps, and mobilizations. While these alternative institutions tend to exist in transience, their proponents argue that their ideas are consistent between incarnations and that temporary institutions prevents government forces from easily clamping down on their activities. A free, or
autonomous In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ow ...
, space is defined as a place independent from dominant institutions and ideologies, formed outside standard economic relations, and fostering self-directing freedom through self-reliance. These nonhierarchical rules encourage experimental approaches to organization, power-sharing, social interaction, personal development, and finance. Social centers can be squatted, rented, or owned cooperatively. They are largely self-maintained by volunteers and often close for reasons of burnout and reduced participation, especially if participant free time wanes as their economic circumstances change.


Italy

Since the 1980s, young Italians maintained self-managed social centers (''centri sociali'') where they gathered to work on cultural projects, listen to music, discuss politics, and share basic living information. These projects are often squatted, and are known as ''Centro Sociale Occupato Autogestito'' (CSOA) (squatted self-managed social centers). By 2001, there were about 150 social centers, set up in abandoned buildings such as former schools and factories. These centers operate outside state and free market control, and have an oppositional relationship with the police, often portrayed by conservative media as magnets for crime and illicit behavior. The Italian cultural centers were sometimes funded by city cultural programming.


United States

In the United States, self-managed social centers primarily take the form of infoshops and radical bookstores, such as
Bluestockings ''Bluestocking'' is a term for an educated, intellectual woman, originally a member of the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society from England led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), the "Queen of the Blues", including Eli ...
in New York City and Red Emma's in Baltimore. Since the 1990s, North American anarchists have created community centers, infoshops, and free spaces to foster alternative cultures, economies, media, and schools as a counterculture with a do-it-yourself ethic. These social spaces, as distinguished from regional intentional communities of the midcentury, often seek to integrate their community with the existing urban neighborhood instead of wholly "dropping out" of society to rural communes.


United Kingdom

The rise of social centres in the United Kingdom as cultural activity and political organizing hubs has been a major feature of the region's radical and anarchist politics. For example, the
1 in 12 Club The 1 in 12 Club refers to both a members' club and the building in which it is based, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Owned and run by its membership as a collective based upon anarchist principles, its activities include social and pol ...
in Bradford provides a café, a children's play area, a bar, an
infoshop Infoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, self-managed social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer ...
, large meeting areas and concert spaces.


Infoshops

Infoshops are multi-functional spaces that disseminate
alternative media Alternative media are media sources that differ from established or dominant types of media (such as mainstream media or mass media) in terms of their content, production, or distribution.Downing, John (2001). ''Radical Media''. Thousand Oaks, ...
and provide a forum for alternative cultural, economic, political, and social activities. Individual infoshops vary in features but can include a small library or reading room and serve as a distribution center for both free and priced/retail alternative media, particularly media with revolutionary anarchist politics. While infoshops can serve as a kind of community library, they are designed to meet the information needs of its users rather than to compete with the public library or pre-existing information centers. For alternative publishers and activist groups, infoshops can offer low-cost
reprographic Reprography (a portmanteau of ''reproduction'' and ''photography'') is the reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means, such as photography or xerography. Reprography is commonly used in catalogs and archives, as well as in th ...
services for do-it-yourself publications, and provide a postal mail delivery address for those who cannot afford a post office box or receive mail at a squatted address. In the 1990s, available tools ranged from no-frills
photocopiers A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
to
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
software. Besides these print publication functions, infoshops can also host meetings, discussions, concerts, or exhibitions. For instance, as activist video grew in the 1990s, infoshops screened films and hosted discussion groups that, in turn, encouraged debate and collective action. The infoshop attempts to offer a space where individuals can publish without the restrictions of the mainstream press and discuss alternative ideas unimpeded by homophobia, racism, and sexism. Organized by political activists, infoshops are often independent, precariously self-funded, and unaffiliated with any organization or council. They too are often staffed by their own self-selected users as volunteers and like the anarchist media they distribute, operate on inexpensive, borrowed, or donated resources, such as secondhand computers and furniture. As a result, infoshops and other marginal institutions are often short-lived, with minimal income to pay their short-term leases on rented storefronts. Infoshops sometimes combine the function of other alternative venues: vegetarian cafés, independent record stores,
head shops A head shop is a retail outlet specializing in paraphernalia used for consumption of cannabis and tobacco and items related to cannabis culture and related countercultures. They emerged from the hippie counterculture in the late 1960s, and ...
, and alternative bookstores. But foremost, infoshops disseminate information, serving as library, archive, distributor, retailer, and hub of an informal and ephemeral network of alternative organizations and activists.


Free schools

Anarchists, in pursuit of freedom from dogma, believe that individuals must not be socialized into acceptance of authority or dogma as part of their education. In contrast to traditional schools, anarchist free schools are autonomous, nonhierarchical spaces intended for educational exchange and skillsharing. They do not have admittance criteria or subordinate relations between teacher and student. Free schools follow a loosely structured program that seeks to defy dominant institutions and ideologies under a nonhierarchical division of power and prefigure a more equitable world. Classes are run by volunteers and held in self-managed social centers, community centers, parks, and other public places. Free schools follow in the anarchist education lineage from Spanish anarchist
Francisco Ferrer Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (; January 14, 1859 – October 13, 1909), widely known as Francisco Ferrer (), was a Spanish radical freethinker, anarchist, and educationist behind a network of secular, private, libertarian schools in and aroun ...
's Escuela Moderna and resulting modern school movement in the early 1900s, through the predominantly American
free school movement The free school movement, also known as the new schools or alternative schools movement, was an American education reform movement during the 1960s and early 1970s that sought to change the aims of formal schooling through alternative, independe ...
of the 1960s. The American anarchist
Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...
, who was prominent in this latter movement, advocated for small schools for children to be held in storefronts and to use the city as its classroom. In one example, a free school in Toronto grew from the closure of a
countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
community café with the opening of an anarchist free space. It sought to share ideas about how to create anti-authoritarian social relations through a series of classes. All were invited to propose and attend classes, whose topics included: 1920s
love songs A love song is a song about romantic love, falling in love, heartbreak after a breakup, and the feelings that these experiences bring. A comprehensive list of even the best known performers and composers of love songs would be a large order ...
, alternative
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
, street art, and
violence against women Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against women or girls, usually by men or boys. Such violence is often con ...
, though the longest running classes introduced anarchism and related politics of syndicalism and libertarian socialism. The course instructors served as facilitators, providing texts and encouraging participation, rather than as top-down lecturers. The free space also hosted art events, parties, and conversational forums. Other initiatives were short-lived or nonstarters, such as an anemic lending library and free used goods table. Another free school in Nottingham found skillshare-oriented classes with more traditional pedagogy more popular than sessions on radical education. Similar to free schools, free university projects are run from college campuses most prominently in Europe. Organized by volunteer student collectives, participants in these initiatives experiment with the process of learning and are not designed to replace the traditional university.


See also

*
List of self-managed social centers Self-managed social centers are community spaces which often feature music venues, infoshops, bicycle workshops and free schools. In French, they are termed espace autogéré and in Italian Centro Sociale Autogestito (CSA), or Centro Sociale Occ ...
* Halkevleri * People's House


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links


Directory of self-managed social centers
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