Iberian Anarchism in Environmental History

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a renewed interest in anarchism from both social movements and critical academic circles. When tracing the genealogy of anarchist perspectives since the nineteenth century, radical geographers have pointed out the importance of the anarchist movement in Spain, and particularly in the city of Barcelona. During the 1960s and 1970s, authors like Murray Bookchin shared an interest in social ecology with a militant passion to vindicate the historical significance of Spanish anarchism and the achievements of anarcho-syndicalist collectives in the 1936 revolution. Before interest in these perspectives faded among critical geographers in the 1980s and 1990s, the experience of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was key to the research on the relation between social anarchism and the environment. In the context of the emergence of political ecology and environmental history in Spain during the 1990s, I examine the scholarship on human ecology and Iberian anarchism, first developed by Eduard Masjuan in the journal Ecología Política. Masjuan’s doctoral research, supervised by Joan Martínez-Alier, delved into the rich debates on urbanism and birth control that took place in anarchist circles from Catalonia to Latin America between 1860 and 1937. Masjuan’s research constitutes an essential reference to explore the depth of the environmental dimensions of Spanish anarchism during these years and has informed degrowth discussions on population and the collective ethics of self-limitation. Despite the impact of Masjuan’s research, I argue that the environmental history and political ecology of the 1936 revolution is still to be written. I show some examples of work to date, from urban water management under anarcho-syndicalist principles to collectivised urban agriculture. Finally, I point out that, while not always acknowledged, the influence of anarchist practices can also be found in the research on today’s social movements carried out at the Barcelona school of political ecology and ecological economics.