Rhetorical and Everyday Aspects of Anarchist Informal Education

Abstract

Darya Litvina, intern researcher at the Center for Youth Studies, National Research University — Higher School of Economics — St. Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, second prize winner in the Analytical Study Competition. Email: litvina.darya@mail.ru

Yelena Omelchenko, Ph.D. in Sociology, Professor in the Sociology Department, Director of the Center for Youth Studies, National Research University — Higher School of Economics — St. Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, second prize winner in the Analytical Study Competition. Email: eomelchenko@hse.spb.ru 

The anarchist community is used to analyze informal education patterns inside radically politicized youth communities. The paper studies how informal education system is related with everyday activists’ practices and identifies structural organization of this system and its consistency with political and philosophical attitudes in the community.

It has been discovered that, despite severe criticism of formal education system, education remains highly appreciated by anarchists. Thus, they mostly trust informal education channels, as independent sources of information. Social space of informal education is represented by communication, i.e. adherents translate key anarchist values through everyday interpersonal communication and demonstrate their belonging to the community through reference to important texts, names, and events. An informal education system in a subcultural environment is formed the same way as formal systems are formed: knowledge is selected, legitimized, optimized, and reproduced in compliance with ideological principles. Ideology is transparent in informal education, unlike in formal one. Subject areas of anarchist informal education are integrated in activist and political projects and related to anarchist philosophy and everyday life. As individuals are involved into informal education practices based on alternative interpretation of existing economic, governmental, and social structures, it results in changing their vision of the world and reorganizing their essential strategies and everyday practices.

The analysis has demonstrated how informal knowledge systems can replace formal ones and produce new forms of sociality, changing not only parlance but also lifestyle, activities, and consumer practices of adherents.