Paul Chatterton

There’s a rather cool new online publicationcalled Atlas. Ive written a piece. Read the article here.

One of my articles from 2006 in the journal Antipode called “Give up Activism” and Change the World in Unknown Ways: Or, Learning to Walk with Others on Uncommon Ground’ has been selected amongst only 82 other articles for inclusion in a five-volume major reference work just published called ‘Human Geography’ (part of the SAGE Fundamentals of Geography series edited by Derek Gregory and Noel Castree). The book looks great and is worth a look. See http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/human_geography-contents.pdf

I have just written an article with come colleagues form our Community research company ‘Leeds Love it Share it’ called ‘Building resilience and well-being in the Margins within the City’. You can download it and read a summary here

For the last ten years I have been involved in the journal ‘City’ – one of the most cutting edge and critical journals in urban studies. We have just launched a new website with free article downloads, analysis and information.

See the website at: http://www.city-analysis.net/

FREE ARTICLES downloadable in new Paper Symposium on ‘Autonomy and Activism’ published by Antipode, Geography’s radical journal.

FREE @ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.2010.42.issue-4/issuetoc

Antipode, Geography’s long standing radical journal of Geography, is pleased to announce a special symposium of papers called: ‘Autonomy: The struggle for survival, self-management and the common’ (Vol 42:4). This symposium has been pulled together by Paul Chatterton, from the University of Leeds, cofounder of the MA in Activism and Social Change (www.activismsocialchange.org.uk) and the ‘Cities and Social Justice’ research group in the School of Geography.

The articles in this paper symposium aim to reflect the rich and creative desire of autonomous political activism that has flourished over the last decade through the anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist movement leading to new tactics and ideas for resistance and alternatives to capitalism such as climate camps, anti-roads protests, social centres, squats, free schools, teach-ins and hacklabs.

These articles are all concerned with the urgent political tasks of promoting self management and building practices and spaces embedded in commoning as survival routes out of the capitalist present. They are framed by a backdrop of the need for urgent change. Their concepts, case studies and provocations invite us to dwell further on this preoccupation and to force solutions into existence. The hope is that the papers presented here will stimulate much needed further writing, research and action from academics, campaigners and activists on the desire for autonomy – a desire that points to survival routes out of this capitalist present through building capacity for self management and the development of the common.

Contributors to the Special Symposium are leading academics and activists from across the world directly involved in the practice and theory of autonomous politics. They include:

John Holloway who lives in Mexico and is author of several landmark books on autonomous Marxism including most recently ‘Crack Capitalism’ (Pluto, 2009) and is one of the leading commentators on the Zapatista insurrection.

Gustavo Esteva is writer and activist and author of numerous books including the classic text ‘Grassroots Postmodernism’ (Zed Books). He is currently involved in many grassroots struggles in Oaxaca, Mexico, including the Oaxacan Popular Peoples Assembly (APPO) and “La Universidad de La Tierra” (“The University of the Land”)

Chris Carlsson and Francesca Manning. Chris Carlsson has been an activist and writer in San Francisco for a number of decades and was involved in setting up the magazine Processed World in the 1980s. He is a dedicated nowtopian, developing this idea in a recent book (Carlsson, 2008). Francesca Manning is pursuing these ideas at the CUNY Graduate Centre.

Massimo de Angelis is Professor of Political Economy at the University of East London and is author of one of the key books on commoning and value struggles (De Angelis, 2007). he is also editor of the website and online publication ‘The Commoner: a web journal of other values’ (www.thecommoner.org.uk

Jai Sen, writer and activist from India who has been involved in the World Social forum Movement since its inception, continues this theme with an article on open space. Sen is Director of ‘India Institute for Critical Action: Centre In Movement’.

The Free Association who are a writing collective based in several locations some of whom are involved in publishing the magazine ‘Turbulence: Ideas for Movement’ and write at www.freelyassociating.org.

All the papers are FREE to download in Volume 42:4 and include:

• Paul Chatterton. Autonomy. The struggle for survival, self-management and the common
• Gustavo Esteva. The Oaxaca Commune and Mexico’s coming insurrection
• Chris Carlsson and Francesca Manning Nowtopia: Strategic Exodus?
•  John Holloway Crack capitalism. The Crisis of Abstract Labour
• The Free Association. Antagonism, neo-liberalism and movements. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast.
• Jai Sen. On open space Explorations towards a vocabulary of a more open politics
• Massimo De Angelis The Production of Commons and the “Explosion” of the  Middle Class

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.2010.42.issue-4/issuetoc

I have just contributed an article to a special issue called  ‘Cities, Justice, Conflict’ in the journal Urban Studies.

My article is called ‘So What Does It Mean to be Anti-capitalist? Conversations with Activists from Urban Social Centres‘ and can be downloaded here.

I have helped pull together a book through the journal ‘Antipode’ i co-edit. The book was pulled together to celebrate 40 years of the journal. The chapters also appear as an issue of the journal and the articles can be downlaoded here.

You can also buy the book on Wiley’s website.

On April 4th I will be speaking at the Electron Festival (Festival of Electronic Culture) in Geneva

More information here

Just before Christmas, I appeared on the regional BBC Look North evening News in a series organised by BBC Look North weatherman, Paul Hudson.  The series was part of the countdown to the UN Climate change talks in Copenhagen last December. The BBC wanted to profile Drax powersation as it is one of the main reasons why the Yorkshire region has the largest carbon footprint in the UK.

You can watch the clip below. Scroll to about 5 mins in for the start of the Drax feature. In this clip, the production manager at Drax powerstation, Peter emery states that Drax will reduce its carbon emissions by 20% by 2011 based on 2006 figures. This seems a huge and promising decrease, and I am currently seeking clarification on these figures.

I also did a follow up interview on Look North two days later, in response to the launch of a new multimillion pound nuclear research facility in the Yorkshire region. Again i made a similar argument that we need to make a transition to a low carbon economy not through coal or nuclear, but through demand reductions, energy efficiency and a shift to renewables. Watch how well those arguments were received!

Here is an article I wrote in the run up to the UNFCC conference in Copenhagen happening right now. It has been published on the Red Pepper magazine’s website here.