Content uploaded by Steffen Böhm
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Steffen Böhm
Content may be subject to copyright.
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
This article was downloaded by:
[University of Bath Library]
On:
27 January 2010
Access details:
Access Details: [subscription number 773568398]
Publisher
Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-
41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Social Movement Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713446651
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements in and beyond Capital,
the State and Development
Steffen Böhm
a
; Ana C. Dinerstein
b
; André Spicer
c
a
Management Group, Essex Business School, Colchester, UK
b
Department of Social & Policy Sciences,
University of Bath, UK
c
Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour, Warwick Business School,
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Online publication date: 13 January 2010
To cite this Article Böhm, Steffen, Dinerstein, Ana C. and Spicer, André(2010) '(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social
Movements in and beyond Capital, the State and Development', Social Movement Studies, 9: 1, 17 — 32
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14742830903442485
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742830903442485
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social
Movements in and beyond Capital,
the State and Development
STEFFEN BO
¨
HM*, ANA C. DINERSTEIN** & ANDRE
´
SPICER***
*
Management Group, Essex Business School, Colchester, UK,
**
Department of Social & Policy Sciences,
University of Bath, UK, ***Industrial Relations and Organizational Behaviour, Warwick Business School,
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
ABSTRACT In this paper we interrogate the demand and practice of autonomy in social movements.
We begin by identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: (1) autonomous practices vis-a
`
-vis
capital; (2) self-determination and independence from the state; and (3) alternatives to hegemonic
discourses of development. We then point to limits associated with autonomy and discuss how
demands for autonomy are tied up with contemporary re-organizations of: (1) the capitalist
workplace, characterized by discourses of autonomy, creativity and self-management; (2) the state,
which increasingly outsources public services to independent, autonomous providers, which often
have a more radical, social movement history; and (3) regimes of development, which today often
emphasize local practices, participation and self-determination. This capturing of autonomy
reminds us that autonomy can never be fixed. Instead, social movements’ demands for autonomy are
embedded in specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts, giving rise to possibilities as
well as impossibilities of autonomous practices.
K
EY WORDS: Autonomy, anti-capitalism, theory, impossibility, social movements
Introduction
Recently we have witnessed the increasing importance of autonomy in many social
movements across the world. This usually involves a struggle for self-determination,
organizational self-management and independent social and economic practices vis-a
`
-vis
the state and capital. Autonomous practices are particularly widespread in Latin American
social movements (see Hellman, 1992). Some well-known examples include: the
Caracoles and the Good Government Councils (Juntas del Buen Gobierno) run by the
Mexican Zapatistas; the community projects run by the Movement of Unemployed
Workers and the occupied factories run by the Movement of Recovered Enterprises, both
in Argentina; the Federation of Neighbourhood Councils in El Alto, Bolivia; and the
settlements run by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers in Brazil. There are also
many examples of autonomous movements in Europe (see Katsiaficas, 2006), including
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/10/010017-16 q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14742830903442485
Correspondence Address: Ana C. Dinerstein, Department of Social & Policy Sciences, University of Bath,
Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. Email: a.c.dinerstein@bath.ac.uk
Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 9, No. 1, 17–32, January 2010
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
the Disobedienti in Italy, Autonomen in Germany, the Movement of the Unemployed in
France, the various manifestations of the alter-globalization movement, such as Des
Papiers pour Tous and People’s Global Action. In North America the principles of
autonomy have driven many attempts to create alternatives to corporate domination
including Indymedia, the Processed World Collective, and the Open Source movement.
In Asia claims for autonomy have been at the heart of many peasant movements, such as
the struggle against genetically modified crops in India. In Africa the political autonomy of
various ethnic groups from colonial powers and now multinational corporations has been a
pressing and consistent theme in social movements. In the Pacific various indigenous
peoples’ movements have long been concerning themselves with preserving their
autonomy from both intrusive state and corporate influence. Some of these regional
autonomy movements have become global in nature. For example, the Italian Social
Centre movement has inspired the founding of other social centres throughout the world.
Similarly, Indymedia rapidly developed from one collective in Seattle to a worldwide
network of over 150 collectives today. It is therefore not surprising that we have also
witnessed a surge of interest in autonomous practices amongst movement intellectuals (see
Graeber, 2002; Shukaitis & Graeber, 2007). Two examples of this intellectual interest are
Holloway’s call to ‘change the world without taking power’ (Holloway, 2002a), and Hardt
and Negri’s influential series of books (1994, 2001, 2004) outlining a theoretical and
political justification for autonomy.
Some social movement theorists have registered the importance of autonomy as a central
aspect of many new social movements. For example, Offe (1987) points out that one of the
distinguishing features of ‘new social movements’ is their focus on ‘non-institutional’
politics and their attempts to craft a voice and practice that are autonomous of existing
bureaucratic structures such as unions, corporations and the state. Similarly, Scott (1990)
argues that one of the central aspects of the ideology of new social movements is the
‘autonomy of struggle’, which involves ‘the insistence that the movement and those it
represents be allowed to fight their own corner without interference from other movements,
and without subordinating their demands to other external priorities’ (1990, p. 20).
Given the importance of autonomy to many movements, it is surprising that this theme
has not been substantially examined by social movement theorists. In this paper we would
like to address this gap by working through two arguments. First, we engage with the
existing literature, asking what exactly is meant by the concept of autonomy. We argue that
autonomy is usually defined as either a process of labour self-valorization, negation of state
power, or as alternative to hegemonic forms of development. Second, we discuss central
potentials, weaknesses and contradictions with the concept of autonomy. We argue that
autonomy of social movements vis-a
`
-vis the state and capital is both possible and
impossible. Impossible, because the practice of autonomy is bound up with the ‘new spirit
of capitalism’, emphasizing autonomous and flexible forms of economic organization,
including the increasing incorporation of social movement activities into the neoliberal
service provisions of the state. In this way, autonomous movements must be seen as part of
the hegemonic system of capital and the state. Yet any hegemony can only ever be partial
and incomplete (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). That is, within the impossibility of autonomy
there are possibilities of autonomous practices that challenge the very hegemony they are
part of. Hence, our argument is that autonomy constitutes both a possible and impossible
aspiration, as autonomous spaces embody and disclose the contradictory dynamics between
the swinging movement between integration and transcendence (Bonefeld, 1994).
18 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
What is Autonomy?
Autonomy has been used to characterize social movements as varied as global networks
of computer programmers, unemployed workers in Argentina and squatters in Italy. The
variety of practices described as autonomous make it difficult to clearly define what
autonomy actually is. A good starting point may be looking at the etymology of the
term. Autonomy is derived from the Greek words auto (self) and nomos (custom, law),
hence meaning ‘the custom or law of the self’ (but note the difficulties of translating
nomos; see Ulmen, 1993). The concept of autonomy initially entered modern thought as
a way of referring to ‘self-legislation’, whereby the autonomous individual carries out
its will on itself by itself (Schneewind, 1997). Kantian conceptions of autonomy were
largely used to refer to the ability of the self to generate – on its own terms, using
reason – a set of moral principles. This stood in stark opposition to a situation where
our morals are handed to us from systems of thought and belief, such as religion. Rawls
nicely sums up such a conception when he says that ‘acting autonomously is acting
from principles that we would consent to as free and equal rational beings’ (1971,
p. 516).
Political thought moved the concept of autonomy from the individual to the collective
level by referring to autonomy as self-legislation or creating a group’s own custom and
law. As Chatterton points out, ‘the Oxford dictionary describes it as “the right of self-
government, of making its own laws and administering its own affairs”’ (2005, p. 546).
From there, we can define autonomy as governed by self-established rules, self-
determination, self-organization and self-regulating practices particularly vis-a
`
-vis the
state and capitalist social, economic and cultural relations. Autonomy also entails ‘mutual
aid’ and an ‘impulse fuelled by present and past hardships such as hunger, poverty and
subjugation’ (Foran cited in Chatterton, 2005, p. 545), and ‘a demand to be heard
and recognized, it is a battle against “nautonomy” [Held, 1995, p. 163], repression and
marginality’ (Chatterton, 2005, p. 546). Finally, the project of autonomy is essentially
collective (Katsiaficas, 2006), as it involves a group working together in common to
construct alternative ways of living, rather than simply an individual seeking to assert their
subjective autonomy against a dominating group (see also Pickerill & Chatterton, 2006).
Beyond these minimal points of agreement, the concept of autonomy seems to be
infested with many meanings (Thwaites Rey, 2004; Katsiaficas, 2006). Drawing on our
own reading of the literature, we argue that there are three broad strands running through
discussions of autonomy. The first involves autonomy from capital, comprising demands
for the autonomy of workers from the movements of capital as well as autonomy from the
domination of the political economy by workplace unions. This is based on the
assumption that autonomy primarily involves the creative ‘self-valorization of labour’
(Negri, 1991). The second strand involves autonomy from the state and comprises
movements that seek autonomy from groups that work through state power such as
political parties and trade unions. This is based on the assumption that autonomy largely
involves ‘practical negativity’ (Holloway, 2002a), which deconstructs state power. The
final strand in debates about autonomy involves the rejection of colonial domination and
developmental dependency. These calls are typically characterized by ‘defensive
localization’ (Escobar, 2001) and a focus on preserving locally specific forms of
knowledge. In what follows we discuss these three strands in the debate about autonomy
in more detail.
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 19
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Beyond Capital
The first discourse of autonomy we have identified involves autonomy from the capitalist
mode of production, which is articulated, for example, by the Italian Autonomia
movement. At the centre of this movement is the doctrine of ‘working-class self-
valorization’. Negri’s (1991) notion of ‘self-valorization’ highlights how value, creativity
and innovation in production are always created by workers themselves, rather than by
capital. This involves ‘a process of valorization which is autonomous from capitalist
valorization – a self-defining, self-determining process which goes beyond the mere
resistance to capitalist valorization to a positive project of self-constitution’ (Cleaver,
1992, p. 129). For Negri, workers are the source of all creativity and value. The
implication is that ‘self-valorization’ contributes to a project of liberation from capital
because it facilitates the creation of autonomous spaces disconnected from the capitalist
labour process. The idea of workers’ ‘self-valorization’ became embodied in Italian
Operaismo (Workerism), which transformed into Autonomia in 1973. This movement
brought together a group of organizations including Potere Operaio and Lotta Continua,
and they published the journal Quaderni Rossi (for a historical account see Ginsborg,
1990; Katsiaficas, 2006; Wright, 2007). They ‘advocated “renunciation of precisely that
form of mass struggle which today unifies the movement led by the workers in advanced
capitalist countries”’ (Tronti cited in Finn, 2004, p. 108). This amounted to a rejection of
labour or communist party run unions who would negotiate dutifully with employers.
Instead, proponents of the Autonomia movement championed informal modes of
resistance such as sabotage and wildcat strikes. As the movement developed, it sought to
broaden the definition of autonomy as an attempt to be autonomous of the capitalist work
relationship altogether. As Negri says: ‘Marx insists on the abolition of work. Work which
is liberated is liberation from work. The creativity of communist work has no relation with
the capitalist organization of labor’ (1991, p. 165). This is a decisive departure from
most union politics of the past century, which has focused mainly on the battle
for ‘improvements’ in the labour process for workers (see also Spicer & Bo
¨
hm, 2007;
Wright, 2007).
This desire to escape from the capitalist work relationship is given further force by what
Negri and others see as the rapidly changing composition of the working class in the so-
called post-industrial society. They argue that, in advanced Western economies at least,
there is a move away from industrial production of things towards post-industrial
production of social relations (for a similar argument see Amin, 1994). This has involved
not only a quantitative change in the number of people engaged in the service sector as
opposed to the industrial sector but also a qualitative one. Autonomists argue that while
‘material’ labour may have been hegemonic during the industrial era, ‘immaterial’ labour
has become the hegemonic form of labour during the post-industrial era. This involves
labour that produces immaterial goods, such as emotions and affects, knowledge and
culture (Lazzarato, 1996). One important implication of the rise of immaterial production
is that labour moves outside the walls of the workplace, and begins to take place in all
aspects of society. This results in the emergence of what Negri calls the ‘social worker’
(operaio sociale), whereby labouring becomes something that is autonomous of capitalist
forms of production. This ushers in the ‘emergence of the labouring subjectivity that
claims its mass autonomy, its own independent capacity of collective valorization, that is,
its self-valorization with respect to capital’ (Hardt & Negri, 1994, pp. 278, 280).
20 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
This implies that the most important sites of production are no longer the factory but the
social factory, i.e. self-organized networks in society. Hardt and Negri give some
examples of such networks, including social centres in Italian cities, the open source
software movement and the global Indymedia movement. The reason why these
movements are autonomous is because they seek to create social value through producing
accommodation and performance space (social centres), software (open source software)
and media information (Indymedia) in a way that goes beyond capitalist relations while
operating within what is called a post-Fordist regime (Virno, 2004).
Beyond the State
A second discourse of autonomy focuses on autonomy from the state. This involves an
attempt to escape from state legislation and determination and often rejects the possibility
of creating social change through the state. According to this conception, autonomy
involves a negative movement whereby all forms of state power are not only subjected to
ongoing and rigorous critique but are even simply rejected outright or ‘forgotten’. This
approach is associated with Open Marxism, an intellectual movement that developed in
the UK in the 1980s and 1990s within the Conference of Socialist Economists. This
movement shares a number of important characteristics with the Italian Autonomists such
as questioning the dynamics of capitalism, and seeing labour as the only constitutive
power.
Open Marxists part company with Italian autonomists by arguing that it is not enough
just to reverse the polarity between capital and labour. For them, it is necessary to dissolve
it (Holloway cited in Bonefeld et al., 1995, p. 164). Second, Open Marxists advocate the
idea that autonomy from capital must include autonomy from the state. Finally, Italian
Autonomists, such as Negri, conceive of autonomy as a Spinozian positive movement of
self-valorization, which supposedly moves beyond capital through creativity and
innovation. In contrast, Open Marxists argue that autonomism must be negative
(Holloway, 2008). Autonomy, or the search for it, involves the ability to say ‘no’ to
existing forms of power and domination, which powerful bodies, such as the state, seek to
impose on you. Inspired by Adorno’s (1973) conception of ‘negative dialectics’, Holloway
et al. (2008) conceive of autonomy as a struggle for negation, offering a possibility of
understanding identity as non-identity. Instead of focusing on the positive assertion of an
identity, Holloway (2002a) argues that autonomism lies in practices of subjective ‘doing’
which involves ‘practical negativity’: ‘doing changes, negates an existing state of affairs.
Doing goes beyond, transcends’ (2002a, p. 23; see also Dinerstein, 2005a, b). This focus
on ‘practical negativity’ means that autonomy involves actions that try to pull apart
existing structures of power.
Perhaps the most important implication of ‘practical negativity’ is the rejection of the
idea that radical social change can be delivered by taking control of the state. For
Holloway
the world cannot be changed through the state. Both theoretical reflection and a
whole century of bad experience tell us so ... the state is just a node in a web of
power relations. But will we not be always caught up in the web of power, no matter
where we start? Is rupture really conceivable? (2002a, p. 19)
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 21
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Along similar lines, the Turbulence Collective (2007) argues that the problem with
engaging with the state is that it often discounts all the non-institutional spaces in which
political struggles actually take place. That is, most social movements seek to ‘move’
precisely to avoid traditional, institutionalized political spaces, and particularly those that
make up the state. Thus, the central aim of such movements is purposefully anti-
institutional in so far as it involves attempts to transform ‘public discourse, by making
legislation unenforceable, or simply through their power of self-management and
autonomous self-constitution’ (2007, p. 596).
Zapatismo is a clear example of attempts to engage in autonomist action without taking
state power. This strategy (implemented after more mainstream revolutionary approaches
failed) does not fit into any pre-conceived categories of what revolution should look like
(Holloway & Pela
´
ez, 1998). The core of ‘the newness of Zapatismo is the project of
changing the world without taking power ... Zapatismo moves us decisively beyond the
state illusion’ (Holloway, 2002c, pp. 156 –157). For Holloway, the state illusion ‘puts the
state at the centre of the concept of radical change’ (2002c, p. 157). For him, the state is a
political form of the capital relation. His point is that the struggle of the Zapatistas is far
wider reaching, as it seeks to transform life itself, not just the closed circuits of state
power.
Beyond Development
Alongside claims that autonomy involves the creation of forms of life beyond capital (e.g.
Hardt & Negri, 2001) and practices that struggle in, against and beyond capital through the
negation of state power (e.g. Holloway, 2002a, 2008; Bonefeld, 2008), there is a third
discursive tradition of autonomy that emerges specifically out of a post-colonial context,
calling for self-determination and self-organization of nations, people and local
communities in the face of a seemingly all-encompassing hegemonic system of
development that has produced international inequalities on an unprecedented scale. This
tradition divides into two main fields: dependency theory and post-development theory
(see Blaney, 1996). Latin American dependency theorists (e.g. Furtado, 1967; Dos Santos,
1970; Cardoso & Faletto, 1981), argue that what they see as the underdevelopment of their
countries in the global ‘periphery’ can be explained by the social, political, cultural and
economic domination exercised by hegemonic powers in the rich countries of the North,
making the periphery dependent on the centre. Their analysis claims that what prevents
Latin American countries from developing is a lack of autonomy from a world system
dominated by powerful elites in the ‘developed’ North (Wallerstein, 1974). Post-
development theorists (e.g. Esteva, 1987; Escobar, 1989; Shiva, 1989) critique this line of
argument for being too wedded to Eurocentric conceptions of stage-like processes of
‘development’ and for being too focused on the politics of the state. Specifically, post-
development theory identifies a ‘development imaginary’ that is so wedded to the state and
therefore uniform powers that local cultures and differences are overlooked and even
overpowered. Escobar (2001, p. 149) therefore calls for what he calls a ‘defensive
localization’. This emphasizes autonomy from universalizing knowledges dominated by
the hegemonic imaginary of the North.
Despite a rich debate between dependency theorists and post-development theorists,
there are also many commonalities such as an emphasis on autonomy from various forms
of political and economic colonization and local forms of economic activity, cultural
22 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
production, social development and knowledge (Blaney, 1996). This approach to
autonomy not only targets capital (as Negri does) or the state as a (political) form of capital
(as Holloway does) but universal forms of modern knowledge. A second distinguishing
feature is that it does not work through affirmation (Negri) or negation (Holloway) but
through a process of preservation. That is, this approach builds on autonomy by preserving
existing practices that are threatened.
The strategy of achieving autonomy through preservation works along two competing,
yet related, lines: on one hand, dependency theorists seek to preserve local modes of
development in Southern countries. This is said to be achieved by disconnecting from
worldwide systems of capital accumulation and imperialist state oppression, and
simultaneously strengthening national economies, cultures and social development
programmes (Furtado, 1967; Cardoso & Faletto, 1981). Post-development scholars, on the
other hand, seek to preserve local histories, cultures and knowledges in the face of
development. In their view, ‘development’ is geared towards ‘developing’ a country along
the pre-determined stages through Northern modes of organizing such as non-profit
organizations, corporations, schools, universities, and particular government departments
and institutes (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998). To appear as a legitimate ‘developing’ nation-
state, a Southern country therefore needs to mimic the institutions of the nation-states of
the North. In this way, it becomes increasingly difficult for those being ‘developed’ to
define their own problems on their own terms (Illich, 1976). Post-development theorists
therefore seek to craft an ‘alternative to development’ (Escobar, 1992). One example of
this kind of alternative is La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement. This
international network of peasant organizations has been struggling against hegemonic
modes of Northern development, which is often imposed on local, Southern communities,
particularly peasants and smallhold farmers, who are being displaced from their land by
big agro-businesses. La Via Campesina puts an alternative vision of autonomous
development forward, highlighting local, community knowledges, self-determination and
ecological sustainability based on long-term views, rather than short-term profits.
Limits of Autonomy
As we have argued so far, there are three main discourses of autonomy: self-valorizing
movements which create positive spaces that are autonomous from capital (e.g. Hardt &
Negri, 2001, 2004); movements that negate the power of the state in various ways (e.g.
Holloway, 2002a, 2002b, 2005); and movements that struggle against colonialism and
hegemonic forms of development, emphasizing self-determination and self-organization
of nation-states (e.g. Furtado, 1967) as well as local communities (e.g. Escobar, 1992). We
have noted that these discourses differ in terms of: what people should be autonomous of
(capital, the state, development); how people should strive to achieve this autonomy
(creation, negation and preservation); their main theoretical axioms (self-valorization,
practical negativity, dependency and defensive localization); and paradigmatic examples
(Italian Autonomia, Mexican Zapatismo, La Via Campesina). While we have been seeking
to differentiate between these different discourses of autonomy, it should be clear that
there is a large degree of commonality between them.
Given the importance of the theme of autonomy, it is surprising that its limits have not
been discussed at greater length in the literature (for exceptions see Balakrishnan, 2003;
Stahler-Sholk, 2007). In the remainder of this paper, therefore, we hope to engage with the
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 23
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
limits of the discourses of autonomy. In particular, we would like to ask: how autonomous
are auton omy movements? To put this another way, we would like to examine the
relationship between autonomy and new forms of capital (neoliberalism), new forms of
politics (democracy), and new forms of development. We will argue that, despite the
discourse of self-determination and self-organization at the heart of autonomous
movements, autonomy cannot be seen to be detached from accumulation processes of
capital, nor from liberal democracy, nor development. Rather, it is intertwined with these
modes of social life, which autonomous social movements seek autonomy from. By
making this argument, we show that autonomy cannot claim to have an essential ‘ground’,
a space which is completely ‘beyond’ capital, the state or development. In fact, we argue
that autonomy should be understood as a permanent and ongoing struggle within each
of them.
Our argument is informed by the work of Laclau (1990, 1995, 1996) and Laclau and
Mouffe (1985), for whom society should be understood as impossibility (see also Bo
¨
hm,
2005; Spicer & Bo
¨
hm, 2007). This means that, on the one hand, society (or what they call
hegemony) is possible because of what they call the ‘logic of equivalence’ (Laclau &
Mouffe, 1985, p. 130), which aligns different discursive actors in such a way that a specific
identification and subjectification is created. The discursive production of what we
discussed above as dominant forms of development is an example of such a hegemonic
discourse. On the other hand, however, this seemingly all-encompassing hegemony can,
according to Laclau and Mouffe, only be partial and incomplete. What they call the ‘logic
of antagonism’ disrupts any apparent stability of the ‘logic of equivalence’, pointing to the
fundamental impossibility of ever achieving a total and perfect arrangement of social
actors. A hegemonic regime should thus always be thought of as contingency and
impossibility, as it will always be characterized by the existence of manifold resistances
and counter-hegemonic forces. The striving of social movements towards autonomy is part
of precisely these resistances to hegemony.
In and beyond Capital
As we have already argued, one discourse of autonomy involves the active creation of
value in a self-valorizing way that is autonomous of capital (Negri, 1991). However,
recent critical work on capitalism and the contemporary workplace suggests that
movements of self-valorized labour may not just create a life beyond capital. Rather,
forms of worker self-valorization help to create new regimes of capital accumulation. In his
study of New York’s Silicon Ally, for example, Ross (1998) traces how the ethos of
autonomy, liberation and ‘cool’ has come into contemporary ‘dot.com’ workplaces. The
rejection of large bureaucratic organizations has led to a new form of more flexible and
expressive working. The result is a workplace where one can express and experience
freedom, but also a workplace plagued by a chronic sense of anxiety and insecurity.
Employees are not only required to do their assigned task but also to show how original,
autonomous and self-organized they are. Others have argued that contemporary
companies demand that employees ‘be themselves’ at work (Fleming, 2009).
This typically requires a significant amount of work to display how individual and
indeed autonomous one truly is as employee or worker.
What these studies capture is capitalism’s continuous attempt to yoke employee
autonomy to regimes of capitalist accumulation. This observation finds support in
24 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2006) argument that the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ we witness
today was the perverse outcome of demands for autonomy by social movements in the late
1960s. The result was a radical flattening of organizations, increasing flexibility, and
ultimately the rise of a new ‘projective’ form of capitalism that relies on autonomous work
arrangements. What this means in practice is a large-scale expansion of sub-contracting,
entrepreneurialism, and flexibility in the workplace. Boltanski and Chiapello conclude that
calls for autonomy have not produced a more just and a freer world, as intended. Rather,
the call for more autonomy has led to the current reality of insecure work relations.
Each of these studies reminds us that autonomy does not point beyond contemporary
modes of capitalist accumulation. Rather, demands for autonomy are at the heart of many
attempts to reform the workplace and indeed the wider economy. Indeed, one might argue
that just as the shift towards large-scale union organization mirrored the growth of
increasingly bureaucratic corporations, so too does the rise of autonomy movements
reflect the increasing flattening and flexibility of contemporary firms. Thus, it is
impossible to see autonomy as something that is autonomous of social relations of capital.
That is, autonomy does not simply point beyond capital; it is also part and parcel of
contemporary efforts to regenerate capitalist accumulation and work organization along
more flexible lines.
In and beyond the State
Alongside claims that autonomy involves a degree of independence from capitalist
accumulation processes, we have also argued that autonomy is conceptualized as the
practical negation of state power (e.g. Holloway, 2002a). However, recent work on
changes in the running of states suggests that autonomy has become increasingly
incorporated into policy. On many occasions, autonomy movements deliver what were
previously state services and ensure the governance of a population. For example, in Latin
America the community work of autonomist movements sometimes replaces municipal
functions (Dinerstein, 2008b). Similarly, in Great Britain and North America the
restructuring of the neoliberal state has relied on a shift in the provision of services from
the state to either the private or non-profit sectors (Rhodes, 1994; Leys, 2003). One result
of this shift has been that what were once radical social movements often become bodies
that deliver services for the state (Ungpakorn, 2004).
Getting social movement organizations to fill in institutional voids left by the shrinking
state has been represented in glowing terms by many governments. For example, New
Labour in the UK has celebrated the expansion of social movement organizations
providing various services as a step towards an engaged and active civil society,
community empowerment and also autonomy. Indeed, increasing autonomy of both
individuals and communities has become a central plank in much ‘third way’ policy
making in recent years. The mechanisms that are recommended for creating such
autonomy range from building a stronger enterprise culture, encouraging leadership, and
developing a great sense of participation and community well-being (Bo
¨
hm & Land,
2009). The result is that the ‘practical negativity’ (Holloway, 2002a), articulated by some
autonomous movements against the state, has actually become embedded into official
state-based discourses. Indeed, citizens are now routinely encouraged to stop relying upon
the state to deliver services and to autonomously develop and provide services for
themselves and their own communities.
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 25
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
This link between the practice of autonomy and recent policy making is sharpened by
some critics who have pointed out how discourses of autonomy actually amount to a tacit
agreement with neoliberal politics of slimming down the state. For example, from a
traditional Marxist perspective, Ungpakorn (2004) argues that the weakness of civil
society and ‘new social movement’ theory lies in that both assume that there is no
alternative to free market capitalism and parliamentary democracy. Likewise, Nineham
(2006) sees the emergence of autonomism as a reaction to the weakness of the left, and by
in large as a diversion and distraction from the real issues of politics. He provides a
Trotskyist analysis that emphasizes strategy, leadership and the importance of an
enlarging movement that can eventually challenge the power of the state and hence take it
over. He acknowledges some of the achievements of autonomist movements, but in the
end sees them as distractions or even as counter-productive. While such critiques are
often crude, they remind us how the activities of autonomous groups may in some ways
be essential to delivering many of the localized services of the slimmed-down,
neoliberal state.
However, as will be shown below, this interpretation does not account for two things:
first, that autonomous practices constitute a genuine form of construction of ‘dissident
meanings’ to the state’s discourses (Cornwall & Brock, 2005). Second, that this form of
integration of autonomous practices into the state is contested as social movements use the
design and implementation of ‘social policy from below’ in their local communities as a
tool for insurgence and anti-hegemonic resistance (Dinerstein, 2008b) (e.g. the Zapatistas’
health centres and autonomous schools in Chiapas).
In and beyond Development
In addition to struggling against capital and the state, social movements often call for the
autonomy, self-determination and self-organization of nations, people and local communities
in the face of a seemingly all-encompassing hegemonic system of development. However,
recent changes in development discourses suggest that these calls for autonomy are, in fact,
part of how contemporary development policies are implemented and legitimized. In a recent
critique of the buzzwords used by development, Cornwall and Brock (2005) argue that today’s
development orthodoxies place significant emphasis on local specificity and involvement of
those being ‘developed’:
Poverty reduction, participation and empowerment come together in mainstream
development discourse in a chain of equivalence with ownership, accountability,
governance and partnership to make the world that the neoliberal model would have
us all inhabit. Dissident meanings are stripped away to ensure coherence. But some
of these meanings might be recuperated through a similar strategy of using chains of
equivalence that link these terms with other words to reassert the meanings that have
gone into abeyance. In configuration with words like social justice, redistribution
and solidarity, there is little place for talk about participation as involving users as
consumers, nor about poor people being empowered through the marketization of
services that were once their basic right. Nor is there a place for development
solutions that fail to recognize how embedded richer countries are in the fortunes of
others (Cornwall & Brock, 2005, p. 26).
26 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
This ethos is captured in a seductive mix of terms such as ‘poverty reduction’,
‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’. These give contemporary development discourses a
sense of local specificity and appeal. They suggest a world where everyone gets a chance
to take part in making the decisions that affect their lives (2005, p. iii). The result is that
instead of shunning autonomy, contemporary development discourses actually seeks to
harness it – at least as a legitimating discourse.
In many ways, autonomy can be linked by development ideologues to a range of
neoliberal concepts, such as governance and enterprise culture. For example, micro-credit
schemes link calls for autonomy with more traditional market-based solutions of providing
credit to foster entrepreneurial opportunity (Rankin, 2001). In this way, it becomes clear
that discourses of the autonomy of local communities do not point completely beyond
development. In fact, they seem to be intertwined with contemporary attempts to reform,
for example, the World Bank’s approach, focusing more on ‘social development’
(Vetterlein, 2007) and emphasizing participation of local communities (Stiglitz, 2002).
That is, calls for autonomy, self-determination and self-organization at the level of local
communities have been, more or less, incorporated into development knowledge. It is
precisely these ideas that are espoused in textbooks on development and practised by
various development consultants.
Conclusion: (Im)possibilities of Autonomy
As we have argued, autonomy is often posed either as a positive process of worker self-
valorization (Negri, 1991), a practical negativity involving the negation of state power
(Holloway, 2002a, 2008; Bonefeld, 2008), or as the preservation of the autonomy of
nations, people and local communities from hegemonic regimes of development (e.g.
Furtado, 1967; Escobar, 1992). We have argued that autonomy cannot be completely
fulfilled. This is because capital, the state and discourses of development continuously
seek to ‘recuperate’ autonomy and make it work for their own purposes. However,
autonomous practices are rarely completely captured by existing institutions. This
means they continue to produce the possibility of resistance and change. Thus, we want
to conceptualize autonomy neither as a positive force of unconstrained creativity nor as
part of the ongoing movement of negative dialectics. Instead, we rather emphasize the
antagonistic tension between positive forces of creation and negative dialectical
challenge involved with autonomy. Attending to this moment of clash and
confrontation, and following the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), we understand
the concept of autonomy as (im)possibility. This implies two things. First, the practice
of autonomy is possible only because it is never complete. Instead, autonomy remains a
kind of hope which different groups seek to actualize and experience. That is, because
autonomy is never completely captured by any of the practices which are done in its
name, it remains a promise that social movements can continue to appeal to. But
because autonomy never completely reveals itself and always remains as a possible
promise, it can be appealed to in many different ways. This can create the possibility of
antagonism and struggle around what autonomy itself might mean and how it might be
actualized. This means autonomy becomes a site of political struggle over what it could
possibly mean in practice. For instance, the introduction of autonomous practices into
the corporate workplace does not involve a complete capture of notions of autonomy
by capitalist interests. Rather, it opens up autonomy as a potential site of struggle in the
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 27
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
workplace. This opens up new possibilities both in terms of how work is done and how
this is resisted.
The second implication of such an understanding is that autonomy itself is (im)possible,
as autonomous social movements are always embedded in specific social, economic,
cultural and political relations that one cannot simply escape. This historical situated
understanding certainly questions the idea that autonomy can simply be posited either as a
positive social force, which immediately creates new ways of being (Negri, 1991), or
indeed the idea that autonomy is a ‘practical negativity’ that can refuse state power
(Holloway, 2002a), or as totally taken up by capital and the state. We do not see autonomy
as a ‘good outside’ which allows an escape from politics into a pure space of self-
determination. Rather, autonomy is an antagonistic political demand. Moreover, because it
is a fairly broad demand – one could call it an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau, 1995) – there are
likely to be many different significations attached to this demand for autonomy. This
suggests that there is likely to be antagonism between different claims for autonomy.
These different claims around what autonomy might be certainly open up a space of
tension. But they also create a situation where there is debate and struggle around what
autonomy might mean. This has the advantage of creating a new site for political struggle
and a new way of thinking and doing politics. It also opens up the possibility for
articulations between antagonistic forms of autonomy. For instance, what are the possible
links between autonomy movements in the West (such as the Open Source movement) and
autonomy movements in the South (such as indigenous peoples’ movements seeking
recognition of traditional knowledge)? How are articulations being formed between these
different autonomy movements through focus on ‘nodal’ issues which link them together
in unusual ways (for instance debates about intellectual property rights)? Another set of
questions would focus on how demands for autonomy might be extended into new and
unusual parts of social life. What would a demand for autonomous economies look like,
for instance? How might autonomous environmental politics proceed?
This, then, is the antagonism at the heart of the concept of autonomy: on one hand,
autonomy opens up frontiers of resistance and change towards radical practices, an equal
society and self-organization. On the other, there is always a danger of hegemonic regimes
to take up the call for autonomy and incorporate it into their own projects (Boltanski &
Chiapello, 2006). Our argument is that it is politically naive to believe that autonomy can
be conserved as a pure space which social movements actualize through their various self-
organizing practices. It is also politically fatalistic to assume that when powerful groups
such as capital and the state inevitably recuperate autonomy into their projects, it somehow
destroys this claim. Rather, we approach autonomy as a site of struggle. It is caught in a
contradictory dynamic of both radical demand and recuperation. It is this antagonism, this
ongoing struggle over the term, that makes autonomy an embraceable and politically
promising position.
For us, autonomy entails the ‘permanence of negation’ (in Bonefeld, 2008). In other
words, autonomy constitutes a terrain on which both negation and affirmation coexist,
interact and unfold. The example of the Piquetero movement in Argentina is enlightening
(Dinerstein, 2003, 2005b, 2008a, 2008b). On the one hand, the Piquetero identity emerged
as a rejection of the concept and materiality of unemployment; against ‘the unemployed’.
Thus, at their roadblocks the Piqueteros called into question unemployment and social
exclusion, creating autonomous spaces for the reinvention of social practices.
Autonomous practices allow the ‘unemployed’ to reject state classification and forge
28 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
both an identity of resistance, i.e. Piqueteros, and the creation of organizations, alliances
and social interactions that facilitate the realization of their autonomous projects. The
Piquetero identity was in turn complemented with a new form, i.e. ‘unemployed workers’;
a category which comes to signify those who are recipients of employment and social
programmes but work in autonomous community projects run by the Piquetero
organizations. On the other hand, the Piqueteros’ project of autonomy requires
reaffirmation as it relies on state resources (social and employment programmes). That is,
unemployed workers and Piqueteros are somewhat subordinated to the logic of the state
and reclassified as ‘the unemployed’ by the state through policy (Dinerstein, 2003, 2005b,
2008b). Thus, one of the most celebrated examples of an autonomy movement developed
through precisely the kind of tension between affirmation of autonomy and recuperation of
autonomy by the state which we have talked about in this paper. It is through the
consistent, ongoing and often uncomfortable struggles between these two positions that
autonomy remains alive as a political project among the Piqueteros and other social
movements.
Acknowledgements
This paper is inspired by the authors’ research undertaken under the umbrella of the Economic and Social
Research Council’s (ESRC) Non-Governmental Public Action (NGPA) programme. The authors would like to
thank the ESRC for its support (ESRC grant numbers: RES-155-25-0029, RES-155-25-0007). Thanks are due to
the participants of two workshops where this paper was previously presented: NGPA and Theory (LSE, 10 May
2008) and NGPA in Latin America (University of Bradford, 16 May 2008). The authors are especially grateful to
the journal’s editors, two anonymous referees and to Ingolfur Blu
¨
hdorn, Werner Bonefeld, Sergio Costa, David
Harvie and John Holloway for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
References
Adorno, T. W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Amin, A. (Ed.) (1994) Post-Fordism (Oxford: Blackwell).
Balakrishnan, G. (Ed.) (2003) Debating Empire (London: Verso).
Blaney, D. L. (1996) Reconceptualizing autonomy: the difference dependency theory makes, Review of
International Political Economy, 3, pp. 459–497.
Bo
¨
hm, S. (2005) Repositioning Organization Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Bo
¨
hm, S. & Land, C. (2009) No accounting for culture? Value in the new economy, Capital & Class, 97,
pp. 75–98.
Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, E. (2006) The New Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso).
Bonefeld, W. (1994) Human practice and perversion: beyond autonomy and structure, Common Sense, 15,
pp. 43–52.
Bonefeld, W. (2008) Emancipatory praxis and conceptuality in Adorno, in: J. Holloway, P. F. Matamorros &
S. Tischler (Eds) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism, pp. 122 –148 (London: Pluto).
Bonefeld, W. et al. (1995) Open Marxism, Vol. III (London: Pluto).
Cardoso, F. & Faletto, E. (1981) Depende
ˆ
ncia e Desenvolvimento na Ame
´
rica Latina: Ensaio de Interpretac¸a
˜
o
Sociolo
´
gica (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar).
Chatterton, P. (2005) Making autonomous geographies: Argentina’s popular uprising and the ‘Movimiento de
Trabajadores Desocupados’ [Unemployed Workers Movement], Geoforum, 36, pp. 545–556.
Cleaver, H. (1992) The inversion of class perspective in Marxian theory: from valorisation to self-valorisation, in:
W. Bonefeld et al. (Eds) Open Marxism, Vol. II, pp. 106–144 (London: Pluto).
Cornwall, A. & Brock, K. (2005) Beyond Buzzwords: ‘Poverty Reduction’, ‘Participation’ and ‘Empowerment’
in Development Policy, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Overarching Concerns
Programme – Paper No. 10 (Geneva: UNRISD).
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 29
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Dinerstein, A. C. (2003) Power or counter power? The dilemma of the Piquetero movement in Argentina post
crisis, Capital & Class, 81, pp. 1 – 7.
Dinerstein, A. C. (2005a) A call for emancipatory reflection: introduction to the forum, Capital & Class, 85,
pp. 13–16.
Dinerstein, A. C. (2005b) Entre el e
´
xtasis y el desencuentro. Los desafı
´
os de la rebelio
´
n, in: A. Bonnet,
J. Holloway & S. Tischler (Eds) Marxismo Abierto. Una visio
´
n Europea y Latinoamericana, pp. 147–186
(Buenos Aires: Herramienta).
Dinerstein, A. C. (2008a) Here is the rose, dance here! A riposte to the debate on the Argentinean crisis, Historical
Materialism, 16(1), pp. 101–114.
Dinerstein, A. C. (2008b) Lessons form a journey: the Piquetero movement in Argentina, in: W. Bonefeld (Ed.)
Subverting the Present – Imagining the Future: Insurrection, Movement Commons, pp. 231–246
(New York: Autonomedia).
Dos Santos, T. (1970) Dependencia e Cambio Social (Santiago: CESO).
Escobar, A. (1989) The professionalization and institutionalization of ‘development’ in Colombia in the early
post-World War II period, International Journal of Educational Development, 9, pp. 139 –154.
Escobar, A. (1992) Imagining a post-development era: critical thought, development and social movements,
Social Text, 31/32, pp. 20–56.
Escobar, A. (2001) Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of globalization,
Political Geography, 20, pp. 139–174.
Esteva, G. (1987) Regenerating people’s space, Alternatives, 12, pp. 125 –152.
Finn, B. (2004) From the mass worker to the multitude: a theoretical contextualisation of Hardt and Negri’s
Empire, Capital & Class, 83, pp. 101 –132.
Fleming, P. (2009) Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Furtado, C. (1967) Development and Underdevelopment (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Ginsborg, P. (1990) A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988 (Harmondsworth:
Penguin).
Graeber, D. (2002) The new anarchists, New Left Review, 13, pp. 61–73.
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (1994) Labour of Dionysus: A Critique of the State Form (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press).
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2001) Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin).
Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge, Polity).
Hellman, J. (1992) The study of new social movements in Latin America and the question of autonomy, in:
A. Escobar & S. Alvarez (Eds) The Making of Social Movements in Latin America. Identity, Strategy and
Democracy, pp. 52–61 (San Francisco: Westview).
Holloway, J. (2002a) Change the World without Taking Power. The Meaning of Revolution Today (London:
Pluto).
Holloway, J. (2002b) Class and classification: against, in and beyond labour, in: A. C. Dinerstein & M. Neary
(Eds) The Labour Debate: An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, pp. 27–40
(Aldershot: Ashgate).
Holloway, J. (2002c) Zapatismo and social sciences, Capital & Class, 78, pp. 153–160.
Holloway, J. (2005) No, Historical Materialism, 13, pp. 266–284.
Holloway, J. (2008) Negative and positive autonomism. Or why Adorno? Part 2, in: J. Holloway, P. F. Matamorros
& S. Tischler (Eds) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism, pp. 95–100 (London: Pluto).
Holloway, J., Matamorros, P. F. & Tischler, S. (Eds) (2008) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political
Activism (London: Pluto).
Holloway, J. & Pela
´
ez, E. (Eds) (1998) Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico (London: Pluto).
Illich, I. (1976) Deschooling Society (London: Pelican).
Katsiaficas, G. (2006) The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the
Decolonization of Everyday Life (London: AK Press).
Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso).
Laclau, E. (1995) The time is out of joint, Diacritics, 25(2), pp. 86–96.
Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s) (London: Verso).
Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
(London: Verso).
30 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Lazzarato, M. (1996) Immaterial labour, in: P. Virno & M. Hardt (Eds) Radical Thought in Italy, pp. 133 –146
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Leys, C. (2003) Market-driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest (London: Verso).
Meyer, D. & Tarrow, S. (1998) The Social Movement Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Negri, A. (1991) Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse (New York: Autonomedia).
Nineham, C. (2006) Anti-capitalism, social forums, and the return of politics, International Socialism. Available
at http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id¼161&issue¼109 (accessed 20 October 2008).
Offe, C. (1987) Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics: social movements since the 1960s,
in: C. Maier (Ed.) Changing the Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Evolving Balance between the
State, Society, Public and Private in Europe, pp. 63 – 105 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Pickerill, J. & Chatterton, P. (2006) Notes towards autonomous geographies: creation, resistance and
self-management as survival tactics, Progress in Human Geography, 30, pp. 730 –746.
Rankin, K. N. (2001) Governing development: neoliberalism, microcredit, and rational economic woman,
Economy and Society, 30, pp. 18 –37.
Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap).
Rhodes, R. (1994) The hollowing out of the state: the changing nature of public service in Britain, Political
Quarterly, 65, pp. 138–151.
Ross, A. (1998) No Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press).
Schneewind, J. B. (1997) The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Scott, A. (1990) Ideology and the New Social Movements (London: Routledge).
Shiva, V. (1989) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed).
Shukaitis, S. & Graeber, D. (Eds) (2007) Constituent Imagination (London: AK Press).
Spicer, A. & Bo
¨
hm, S. (2007) Moving management: theorizing struggles against the hegemony of management,
Organization Studies, 28(11), pp. 1667– 1698.
Stahler-Sholk, R. (2007) Resisting neoliberal hegemonization: the Zapatista Autonomy Movement, Latin
American Perspectives, 34, pp. 48–63.
Stiglitz, J. E. (2002) Participation and development: perspectives from the comprehensive development
paradigm, Review of Development Economics, 6, pp. 163 –182.
Thwaites Rey, M. (2004) La autonomı
´
a como bu
´
squeda, el estado como contradiccio
´
n (Buenos Aires: Prometeo).
Turbulence Collective (2007) Move into the light? Postscript to a turbulent 2007, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in
Organization, 7, pp. 588– 600.
Ulmen, G. L. (1993) The concept of nomos: introduction to Schmitt’s ‘appropriation/distribution/production’,
Telos, 95, pp. 39–51.
Ungpakorn, J. G. (2004) NGOs: enemies or allies?, International Socialism, 104, pp. 49 – 63.
Vetterlein, A. (2007) Economic growth, poverty reduction, and the role of social policies: the evolution of the
World Bank’s social development approach, Global Governance, 13, pp. 513–533.
Virno, P. (2004) A Grammar of the Multitude (New York: Semiotext(e)).
Wallerstein, I. (1974) The Modern World-system I. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press).
Wright, S. (2007) Back to the future: Italian Workerists reflect upon the Operaista project, Ephemera: Theory &
Politics in Organization, 7, pp. 270–281.
Steffen Bo
¨
hm is Reader Lecturer in Management at the University of Essex. He holds a
PhD from the University of Warwick. His research focuses on the political economy of
organization and management. He is a co-founder of the open-access journal Ephemera:
Theory & Politics in Organization (www.ephemeraweb.org), and co-founder and
co-editor of the new open-access journal Interface: A Journal for and about Social
Movements (www.interfacejournal.org) as well as the new publishing press Mayfly Books
(www.mayflybooks.org). He is author of Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave)
and co-editor of Against Automobility (Blackwell) and Upsetting the Offset: The Political
Economy of Carbon Markets (Mayfly).
(Im)possibilities of Autonomy 31
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
Ana C. Dinerstein is a Lecturer in Political Sociology in the Department of Social and
Policy Sciences, University of Bath. She holds a PhD from the University of Warwick. Her
research focuses on the political sociology of globalization, movements of protest and the
state in Latin America, with a focus on Argentina. She is co-author of The Labour Debate
(Ashgate) and author of Between Rebellion and Institutionalisation. Social Moveme nts
and the Dilemma of Autonomy in Latin America (Palgrave MacMillan - Non
Governmental Public Action Series, forthcoming 2011).
Andre
´
Spicer is an Associate Professor (Reader) at Warwick Business School and visiting
research fellow at Lund University in Sweden. He holds a PhD from the University of
Melbourne. His research focuses on the political dynamics of organizations. He is the
co-author of Contesting the Corporat ion (Cambridge) and Unmasking the Entrepreneur
(Edward Elgar)
32 S. Bo
¨
hm et al.
Downloaded By: [University of Bath Library] At: 11:33 27 January 2010
