The Spunk Archive
Spunk Home Page Subject Catalog Directory Catalog Up a level

The Institute for Anarchist Studies

The IAS

The Institute for Anarchist Studies helps foster the theoretical development of anarchism by awarding grants to writers working on themes pertinent to anarchism.

We believe it is necessary to create a space for critical scholarship outside of the conventional sources of intellectual work in our society; therefore, we are not associated with any university or mainstream publisher. The competitiveness and specialization of academia tends to depoliticize theory and stifle independent, inter-disciplinary social criticism. The publishing industry is generally more interested in sales than substance. At the IAS we support theoretical work because of its critical significance and social relevance.

The IAS, one part of a larger movement to radically transform society, is internally democratic and participatory. We believe that means and ends should coincide. Our structure and methods reflect our conviction that individuals can work together without hierarchy to build the preconditions of a free society.

What We Do

The IAS is involved in three primary activities.

The IAS awards grants to writers who are attempting to contribute to the critique of domination and the vision of a free society. We give grants for essays, books, and translations on the basis of several considerations, including the importance of a work within a comprehensive and reconstructive critique of domination, the financial need of a particular author, and the author's plan for completion and distribution of the finished work. As examples, we might support studies of the general dynamics of domination, the history of anarchism, and/or the relationship between art and utopian politics. We award a total of three thousand dollars in January and June of each year in sums of five hundred to three thousand dollars. The deadlines for grant applications are December 15th and May 15th. The first step toward applying for a grant is to write for more information and an application (enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope). Please note that we do not fund projects such as newsletters, magazines, organizations, or demonstrations.

The IAS is actively engaged in fundraising in order to give out regular grants and support daily operations. We are also creating an endowment for theoretical work relevant to anarchism that will exist for generations to come. The IAS is generously supported by donors of varying economic circumstances. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the IAS.

Finally, we produce a biannual newsletter and will sponsor a variety of projects in order to nurture a broad, intensive discussion of theoretical concerns pertinent to anarchism.

Institute for Anarchist Studies
P.O. Box 7050
Albany, NY
12225 - USA
http://members.aol.com/iastudy/Default.htm

"The IAS was founded in the spring of 1996 to fight for radical, anti-authoritarian scholarship. We are alarmed by the current scarcity of serious, politically committed scholarship on social contradictions and the possibilities of social transformation. We believe it is necessary and possible to revitalize this type of theoretical work, and that this requires the construction of politically engaged organizations dedicated to this purpose.

Thus the IAS was formed to support critical scholarship on social domination and radical ideals of freedom - the two constitutive concerns of anarchist theory. The IAS supports this work in a variety of ways, although we are focused on providing financial assistance to writers. Our assistance takes the form of grants, and we award an annual total of $6000.

We initiated the IAS grant program to ease the economic burdens imposed upon authors who question social hierarchies. While material rewards are generously allocated to writers who justify social domination or shrink from social contradictions, those who struggle to articulate radical ideals are often forced to abandon or dilute their work in order to survive. This, of course, is neither accidental nor a permanent condition of advanced intellectual work, but one way among others that social criticism is suppressed.

Our grants will challenge this. They will give authors some relief from the brutalities of economic necessity and thus help them write pieces that confront the existing order. IAS grants will enable writers to do things such as take time off of work, hire childcare, or purchase a plane ticket to an archive, thus affording them time and/or research materials that would otherwise be unavailable.

This will help writers produce rigorous works that sustain and deepen radical social criticism. For example, this January the IAS awarded grants to Murray Bookchin and Alan Antliff, whose inquiries into anarchist history will help us hold on to the anarchist tradition and engage it more critically. The IAS also awarded grants to Paul Fleckenstein and Kwaku Kushindana, both of whom will subject contemporary affairs to an anti-authoritarian analysis. "

Chuck Morse,"Some Comments on the IAS" Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Vol. 1, No. 1 - Spring, 1997