Call for Papers

In an era when ecological emergencies are often minimized by authoritarian regimes displaying ecocidal tendencies—or reframed through fascist rhetoric—this international and multidisciplinary conference aims to reexamine both historical and contemporary relationships between anarchism(s) and ecology(ies).

Since the latter half of the twentieth century, anarchism has come to be recognized as one of the political traditions most closely aligned with ecological thought. Its rejection of centralized authority, its decentralizing vision of socio-economic organization, and its prefigurative ethos have all contributed to this association (Toro, 2021; Grillet, 2026). Yet the foundations of political ecology were established much earlier, at the turn of the nineteenth century, by thinkers such as Pierre Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus, as well as through the communal experiments of free communities (Linse, 1986; Gould, 1988; Maitron, 1992; Masjuan, 2000). Anarchism, in contrast to the prevailing industrialism of the “machine age,” distinguished itself from both liberalism and other socialist currents through its alternative conception of modernity: one shaped by romantic imaginaries and practices rooted in peasant and artisanal cultures (Probst, 2024). This conference invites reflection on how libertarian legacies have informed or subtly permeated environmental struggles from the 1960s to the present.

Designed as a transdisciplinary forum, the event seeks to explore the elective affinities between anarchism(s) and ecology(ies) across diverse contexts and periods. It aims to investigate the socio-intellectual conditions that have enabled articulations of anarchist and ecological thinking, from their nineteenth-century origins to their contemporary reconfigurations. The analysis will encompass the variety of anarchist ecological strands—social ecology, primitivism, bioregionalism—by examining their scientific and activist roots and their reinterpretations within movements such as anti-nuclear, feminist, animal rights, and anti-speciesist struggles (Zerzan, 1994; Sale, 2000; Bookchin, 2019). Given anarchism’s inherent heterogeneity and resistance to centralization, the inquiry will focus on two key dimensions: the density of activist and intellectual networks (Bantman & Altena, 2015) and the nature of its characteristic social practices—strikes, free communities, libertarian pedagogy, trade unionism, and mutualism (Manfredonia, 2007).

Anarchism’s significance extends well beyond its European “Golden Age” (1871–1914), manifesting in diverse forms shaped by historical and geographical contingencies (e.g. communism, squats, ZADs, or non-Western anarchisms). It has also recurrently hybridized with other critical traditions, including feminism, anti-colonialism, and primitivism. Submissions are therefore encouraged to address authors and experiences self-identifying as anarchist, while employing a broad, historically situated understanding of ecology that avoids anachronistic projection of contemporary concerns about climate change or planetary boundaries.

Since the nineteenth century, environmental issues—from workers’ health and industrial pollution to deforestation, landscape preservation, and mechanization—have intersected with social movements and influenced certain socialist milieus (Audier, 2017; Löwy & Sayre, 2020). Within this framework, the conference proposes engaging with the notion of environmental reflexivity, understood as “the complex, historically situated, and often quite distant ways of thinking about the consequences of human action on the environment” (Fressoz & Locher, 2010).

This transdisciplinary and transhistorical conference welcomes contributions from history, political science, sociology, art history, anthropology, geography, and related fields. Its central focus is the dialogue between anarchism(s) and ecology(ies), fostering interdisciplinary exchange and advancing a nuanced understanding of their intersections. Papers may examine the so-called “Golden Age” of anarchism (1871–1914), the interwar years, the rise of political ecology (1960s–1990s), and its contemporary reconfigurations (1990s–present). Within this scope, four main axes of reflection are proposed:

1. Nature(s), Science, and Popular Knowledge

The rise of anarchism in the nineteenth century coincided with major transformations in scientific understandings of nature, which increasingly became the object of technological intervention. While the new discipline of ecology introduced an original perspective on living organisms, movements grounded in vernacular knowledge also emerged (Ambroise-Rendu et al., 2021), as some thinkers warned of environmental degradation such as deforestation and soil exhaustion. Rather than perpetuating a nature–culture divide, new conceptual frameworks in anarchist and socialist milieus linked social and political thought to ecological concerns. Kropotkin and Reclus, for instance, articulated organicist or naturalist models emphasizing the individual’s development within their environment (Taylan, 2018).
Throughout the twentieth century, the mutual entanglement of ecological warnings and environmental activism revealed convergences between anarchist thought and political ecologies, exemplified by the influence of Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.
Special attention may be given to the artistic dimension of anarchism—visual arts, poetry, music—as a form of eco-political expression, offering a sensorial critique of industrial modernity and proposing alternative relations to the natural world.

Suggested questions:
i. Do anarchist theories propose an original ontological regime? How do they articulate the concept of “nature” within their emancipatory political project, and what internal debates do they generate?
ii. How have anarchists engaged with, politicized, or disseminated scientific or vernacular ecological knowledge?
iii. How have environmentalists in turn received and reinterpreted anarchist conceptions of nature?

2. Political Economy, Technology, and Anarchism

From its origins during the industrial revolution, anarchism confronted the dilemmas of technological progress. Some currents viewed machines as potential instruments of emancipation, while others critiqued the technicization of life. Figures such as William Morris and Edward Carpenter articulated aesthetic and ethical critiques of productivism (Jarrige, 2014).
This axis seeks to map internal tensions in anarchist thought regarding industrialization, mechanization, trade, energy infrastructures, commodification of life, and spatial organization (city/countryside, centralization/decentralization). It invites reevaluation of technology’s role in libertarian projects: What might an anarchist conception of technology entail? Which forms of production are compatible with egalitarian and ecologically sustainable societies?
Empirical approaches—examining consumption patterns, cooperative practices, self-management, and activists’ occupational profiles (workers, farmers, engineers, artisans)—will enhance understanding of how anarchist communities relate to nature, technology, and economy, while rethinking the boundary between “natural” and “artificial” needs.

Suggested questions:
i. How have conceptions of technological progress evolved within anarchist thought?
ii. What forms of production and consumption do anarchists envision or enact?
iii. How do socio-professional milieus shape anarchist politicization of nature and economic practice?

3. Theories and Practices of Social Change

Anarchist and environmentalist theorists and activists have developed multiple strategies for achieving radical socio-ecological transformation. These strategies generate recurrent debates on relations to the state, the legitimacy of violence, and the social actors seen as agents of change (Manfredonia, 2007; Bookchin, 2019).
This section also focuses on prefigurative practices—the effort to embody desired forms of life in the present—challenging the myth of revolutionary rupture. Such practices include popular education, lifestyle experimentation, and bodily or moral “self-reform” (Baubérot, 2014; Coste, 2023).
The section further explores encounters and tensions between anarchist and ecological activists in shared movements, addressing the circulation of practices, ideological transfers, and mutual critiques.

Suggested questions:
i. Which strategies and repertoires of action—sometimes in competition—do anarchists and environmentalists adopt to foster ecological and social change?
ii. What is the role and status of prefigurative practices within these mobilizations?
iii. In what ways have anarchist actors influenced environmental movements (e.g. Rio Tinto, Larzac, Notre-Dame-des-Landes)?

4. Convergences and Divergences: Circulations, Hybridizations, and Debates

Despite shared genealogies and modes of action, anarchist and environmentalist movements have also diverged sharply at times. Yet their numerous areas of convergence—anti-militarism, anti-nuclear activism, anti-speciesism, and resistance to large-scale industrial projects—invite systematic analysis. Persisting research gaps concern the treatment of “life,” class struggle, and spatial scale (localism vs. internationalism).
This axis therefore welcomes studies of historical and contemporary hybridizations and debates, focusing in particular on tensions surrounding gender, sexuality, race, and coloniality.
Ecofeminist and eco-queer theories have revitalized critiques of the naturalization of social relations, often in dialogue—with or opposition to—certain anarchist currents. From Edward Carpenter’s libertarian vision of love (Alicia, 2019; Cleminson, 2019; Lecerf Maulpoix, 2021) to contemporary analyses of care, reproduction, and subsistence (Pruvost, 2021; Rimlinger, 2024), these perspectives open renewed questions about embodiment and ecology.
The section also considers how anarchist and environmentalist discourses engage—or fail to engage—with the colonial and racial matrix underpinning fossil capitalism (Dupuis-Déri & Pillet, 2019; Moore, 2020), and the contemporary challenges of decolonial ecology, ecological debt, and climate displacement.

Suggested questions:
i. How do anarchist theories and practices circulate within ecological movements, and vice versa?
ii. How are questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment integrated—or marginalized—in anarchist and ecological activism?
iii. How are race, coloniality, and global environmental justice addressed within these theoretical and activist spaces?

List of References

Ambroise-Rendu, A.-C., Hagimont, S., Mathis, C.-F. et Vrignon, A. (2021). Une histoire des luttes pour l’environnement. Paris : Éditions Textuel.

Ardillo, J. (2018). La Liberté dans un monde fragile. Écologie et pensée libertaire. Paris : L'Échappée.

Audier, S. (2017). La société écologique et ses ennemis. Paris : La Découverte.

Bantman, C. et Altena, B. (2015). « Problematizing Scales of Analysis in Network-Based Social Movements », dans C. Bantman et B. Altena (dir.), Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies. Oakland : PM Press.

Baubérot, A. (2014). « Aux sources de l’écologisme anarchiste : Louis Rimbault et les communautés végétaliennes en France dans la première moitié du XXe siècle », Le Mouvement Social, n° 246, p. 63‑74.

Beaudet, C. (2011). Les milieux libres : vivre en anarchiste à la Belle époque en France. Saint-Georges-d’Oléron : Les éditions libertaires.

Berlan, A. (2021). Terre et liberté : la quête d’autonomie contre le fantasme de délivrance. Saint-Michel-de-Vax : Éditions La lenteur.

Biehl, J. (1998). The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism. Montréal : Black Rose Books.

Bonneuil, C. et Fressoz, J.-B. (2016). L'événement anthropocène : la Terre, l'histoire et nous. Paris : Éditions Points.

Bookchin, M. (2011). Une société à refaire : vers une écologie de la liberté. Montréal : Écosociété.

Bookchin, M. (2017). Notre environnement synthétique : la naissance de l’écologie politique. Lyon : Atelier de création libertaire.

Bookchin, M. (2019). Changer sa vie sans changer le monde : l’anarchisme contemporain entre émancipation individuelle et révolution sociale. Marseille : Agone.

Carpenter, E. (2025 [à paraître]). Des jours et des rêves. Paris : Le Pommier.

Carroll, A. (2019). New Woman Ecologies: From Arts and Crafts to the Great War and Beyond. Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press.

Carter, A. (1999). A Radical Green Political Theory. New York : Routledge.

Clark, J. P. et Martin, C. (dir.) (2004). Anarchy, Geography and Modernity: The Radical Social Thought of Élisée Reclus. Lanham : Lexington Books.

Cleminson, R. (2019). Anarchism and Eugenics: An Unlikely Convergence, 1890-1940. Manchester : Manchester University Press.

Coste, T. (2023). « Vivre en Robinson. Georges Butaud et Sophie Zaïkowska, anarchistes et végétaliens (1898-1929) », Mil neuf cent, n° 41, p. 95‑116.

Dupuis-Déri, F. et Pillet, B. (2019). L'anarcho-indigénisme. Montréal : Lux.

Ferdinand, M. (2019). Une écologie décoloniale : Penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribéen. Paris : Le Seuil.

Fourment, E. (2021). Théories en action : appropriations des théories féministes en milieu libertaire à Berlin et Montréal. Thèse de doctorat en science politique, IEP de Paris.

Fressoz, J.-B. et Locher, F. (2010). « Le climat fragile de la modernité », La Vie des Idées [en ligne].

Gould, P. C. (1988). Early Green Politics: Back to Nature, Back to the Land, and Socialism in Britain, 1880-1900. Brighton : Harvester Press & St. Martin's Press.

Grillet, L. (2026 [à paraître]). « (Over)Greening Anarchism. Toward An Environmental and Contextualist History of Anarchist Ideology », dans J. Faure, M. Humphreys et D. Laylock (dir.), Handbook of Ideology Analysis. New York : Routledge.

Jakobsen, O. D. (2019). Anarchism and Ecological Economics. A Transformative Approach to a Sustainable Future. Londres : Routledge.

Jarrige, F. (2014). Technocritiques : Du refus des machines à la contestation des technosciences. Paris : La Découverte.

Kossof, G. et White, D. F. (2007). « Anarchism, Libertarianism and Environmentalism: Anti-Authoritarian Thought and the Search for Self-Organizing Societies », dans J. Pretty et al. (dir.), The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society. Londres : Sage, p. 50-65.

Lecerf Maulpoix, C. (2021). Écologies déviantes. Voyage en terres queers. Paris : Cambourakis.

Linse, U. (1986). Ökopax und Anarchie: eine Geschichte der ökologischen Bewegungen in Deutschland. Munich : DTV.

Löwy, M. et Sayre, R. (2020). Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature: The Enchanted Garden. Londres : Routledge.

Maitron, J. (1992). Le mouvement anarchiste en France. Paris : Gallimard.

Manfredonia, G. (2007). Anarchisme et changement social. Lyon : Atelier de création libertaire.

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Masjuan, E. (2000). La ecología humana en el anarquismo ibérico. Barcelone : Icaria.

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Moore, J. W. (2020). Le capitalisme dans la toile de la vie : écologie et accumulation du capital. Toulouse : L’Asymétrie.

Morris, B. (2017). « Anarchism and Environmental Philosophy », dans N. Jun (dir.), Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy. Leiden : Brill, p. 369–400.

Peirera, I. (2017). « Pierre Kropotkine et Élisée Reclus, aux sources des théories anarcho-communistes de la nature », dans V. Bourdeau et A. Macé (dir.), La Nature du socialisme. Besançon : Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, p. 393-407.

Pelletier, P. (2021). Noir & vert : anarchie et écologie, une histoire croisée. Paris : Le Cavalier Bleu.

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Probst, M. (2024). Anarchistische Ökologien. Eine Umweltgeschichte der Emanzipation. Berlin : Matthes & Seitz.

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Rimlinger, C. (2024). Féministes des champs. Du retour à la terre à l’écologie queer. Paris : Presses universitaires de France.

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Sale, K. (2000). Dwellers In the Land: The Bioregional Vision. Athens : University of Georgia Press.

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Toro, F. (2021). « Stateless Environmentalism: The Criticism of State by Eco-Anarchist Perspectives », ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, vol. 20, n° 2, p. 189–205.

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Submission guidelines

Contributions from members of the scientific and activist community are encouraged. Priority will be given to the work of doctoral students and recent graduates, and submissions from master's students are also welcomed.

Proposals should include the following:

• The title of the call to which they belong

• The discipline or form of engagement to which they belong

• Five keywords

• A bibliography

• The text must be anonymised

The word count must not exceed 500 words. This includes a presentation of the materials, methodology, and the positioning in relation to the literature, issues and themes.

Submissions must be sent in .doc or .docx format to the following address: ecologiesanarchistes@proton.me

Schedule:

30 March 2026: Deadline for submission of proposals

June 2026: Notification of acceptance or rejection of proposals

5-6 November 2026: Conference

Scientific Committee

● Emeline Fourment (Université de Rouen-Normandie/CUREJ)

● Florian Gaité (École supérieure d'art d'Aix-en-Provence/ACTE)

● Emilie Hache (Université Paris-Nanterre/Sophiapol)

● Samuel Hayat (CNRS/Cevipof)

● François Jarrige (Université Bourgogne-Europe/LIR3S)

● Anna Trespeuch-Berthelot (Université Caen Normandie/HisTéMé)

● Alexis Vrignon (Université d’Orléans/POLEN)

Organising committee

● Thomas Coste (Université d’Évry/IDHES)

● Léo Grillet (Sciences Po/CEE)

● Cy Lecerf Maulpoix (EHESS/CEMS)

Organisation