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Direct Action: An Ethnography

4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 · rating details · 159 ratings · 22 reviews

Anthropologist David Graeber undertakes the first detailed ethnographic study of the global justice movement. The case study at the center of "Direct Action" is the organizing and events that led to the one of the most dramatic and militant mass protests in recent years--against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Written in a clear, accessible style (with a minimum...more

ebook, 600 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by AK Press

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Oct 02, 2010 Tinea rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anarchism-and-activism

I'm gonna go ahead and call this a great book. Graeber set out to do something huge and he totally did it. So like, first of all, mad props. There is craft, care, and handiwork evident throughout the book; Graeber really attempted to fashion an anarchist ethnography, a story and interpretation for outsiders of a culture to which he belongs, positing theory and conclusions without ever resorting to sweeping generalizations, simplification, or dismissals of diversity. The book itself can be viewed...more I'm gonna go ahead and call this a great book. Graeber set out to do something huge and he totally did it. So like, first of all, mad props. There is craft, care, and handiwork evident throughout the book; Graeber really attempted to fashion an anarchist ethnography, a story and interpretation for outsiders of a culture to which he belongs, positing theory and conclusions without ever resorting to sweeping generalizations, simplification, or dismissals of diversity. The book itself can be viewed as a direct action, a conscious process of redefining ethnography from patronizing colonial narratives and empty post-colonial relativism to an example of a people's ability to critically define their culture for themselves.

The first 200 pages of Direct Action are a case study in story form of the organizing and action of the Quebec City FTAA protests (a similar narrative can be found in You Are G8, We Are 6 Billion: The Truth Behind the Genoa Protests). A stunning amount of time is devoted to meetings, both in the case study and in the later 70+ page chapter titled "Meetings." I was getting pretty skeptical of Graber's artistic vision as the book began to reflect the exhausting qualities of my own life seemingly trapped in endless collective and organizing meetings-- but that was the point. Graber makes the case that the real magic of direct democracy occurs in meetings when people take the time and energy to enact consensus process. What happens on the street is simply the end result of a much greater and more important direct action project-- meetings are the new world being enacted in the shell of the old, where freedom from hierarchy is consciously brought to life. Graeber's definition of direct action is "insisting on acting as if one is already free" (207). This is something anarchists do a bad job of communicating to the public. Our visibility comes in the form of giant puppets and smashed windows, two images Graeber explores at length, but images that do not convey the practical vision of what a new world could look like, inherent in intentional, mindful meeting process.

Other highlights from this book include the fairly minimal theorizing that Graeber undertakes, always with much hesitation and care to specify his own ideas from that of a more general "anarchist milieu." Graeber posits that anarchist theory derives from its practice, instead of the other way around (for example, Marxists, Leninists, etc base their strategy on realizing the theorizing of some dude). Like his ethnography itself, something cannot be anarchist if it isn't performed using anarchist (non-hierarchical, decentralized, direct) process. The global justice movement's anarchist backbone meant that while the uprising was meant to resist "an unaccountable world neoliberal government that sought to suppress existing democratic rights in the name of corporate power," the movement's participants "were determined to organize the whole action according to directly democratic principles and thus provide a living example of how genuine egalitarian decision making might work" (210).

The chapter on "Direct Action, Anarchism, and Direct Democracy" was a joy to read, because it was obvious how much pleasure Graber finds in the philosophical underpinnings of direct action praxis. I do too. He defines anarchism as a process: "a constant mutual exchange between inspirational visions, anti-authoritarian attitudes, and egalitarian practices" (222). True consensus building is kind of a sacred act... there's a part about the evolution of N. American consensus practice from Quakers, for whom that form of decision making is sacred (cant find the quote). Anarchism is a kind of revolutionary ethics, a moral structure through which to interpret the world.

Graeber pulls a lot from feminist theorists like Patricia Hill Collins, demonstrating that feminism is inseparable from anarchism. He credits the women's liberation movement in the 70s as offering the critique of 60s/70s centralized, hierarchical revolutionary practice that resulted in searching out new forms of decision making and the embracing of Quaker-style consensus, affinity groups, spokescouncils, and facilitation. Moreover, it was feminism that made the crucial leap beyond passive '68 situationism, waiting for the revolutionary moment to happen, to today's continual insurrection, the understanding that revolutionary moments much be actively created by the participants: "action is only genuinely revolutionary when the process of production of situations is just as liberating as the situations themselves" (533). The "domestic" labor of creation, cleaning up, and caring for people must be embraced and understood as an inseparable part of revolution.

The book ends with a chapter devoted to "Imagination," a last part of life that capitalism has separated out into specific roles (the elites imagine new products, the oppressed imagine the needs and desires of the elites so to best cater to them and avoid violence). "Direct action" calls for the embodiment of all forms of labor-- productive, domestic, and imaginative in each person. I couldn't help thinking of
Margaret Killjoy's book on anarchist fiction, Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction, as an example of Graeber's claims to the power of anarchist imagination in opposition to the mindnumbing, stupid random violence of capitalist policing.

This book was not a final, defining history of a time period, but instead reads like a whirlwind of ideas first gathered and offered out to readers. It's fascinating and inspired a lot of conversations with friends as it inevitably became a huge part of my life for a few weeks, generating questions, disagreements, insights. I've spent a lot of time narrowing down what this book is and isn't about. "Direct action" is a huge name, but this book is specifically about the anarchist, direct action element of the North American global justice movement, centering around the NYC Direct Action Network, DAN. Graeber barely touches on other forms of direct action-- there's nothing on collective living, worker-owned cooperatives, ALF/ELF actions, agriculture, or much of anything outside of East Coast North America summit resistance, diy punks and mostly white urban youth culture. Which is fine; Graeber amply demonstrates that this limited story needed to be told, and he tells it humbly, though with considerable excitement. I believe in this project, and its clear Graeber does too.
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Aug 22, 2009 Stevphen Shukaitis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With "Direct Action" David Graeber has written an important and timely book. If, as he argues, the ideology of the global justice movement, is embodied in its practices, then it really doesn't make sense to try and understand it by some generic or superficial description of its stated ideologies. Rather, it would have to begin from an analysis of movement building practices and organizing, and what kinds of collective compositions they create and sustain. In other words, it would necessarily inv...more

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Aug 27, 2010 Sebastián rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist, attempts to create an ethnographic study of the global justice movement. He details the participatory democratic process used by anarchists and radicals in the organization of protests against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in 2001, and then describes radical culture, examining its arguments, ideas, symbolism, and meeting structure.

While a fascinating read, keep in mind that Graeber's intended audience are people who are relatively new to the movement....more

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Feb 26, 2008 Andre rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ethnography, activist, anarchist

An insightful and invigorating glance at activist culture. I read it before it was even done and I couldn't wait for it to come out. I recommended it to many people before it was even published!!!!

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Jul 11, 2012 Sean Estelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: activist-literature

I've been reading this book for six months, so it feels extremely good to finally be done with it. David Graeber, a radical anarchist anthropologist, wrote this ethnography in 2009, 2 years before he helped organize the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is telling, as much of the ethnography talks about actions from the early 00's, with the Global Justice Movement. Graeber spends the first third(ish) of the book talking about the events leading up to a specific action in Quebec, and what actuall...more

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May 24, 2011 firesandwords rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: culture, police-prisons, theory, movements, 2010

http://www.politicalmediareview.org/2...

To many anarchists, the idea of an “ethnographic study of the global justice movement” may seem problematic. Whether it be matters of security culture or the question of an outsider coming into a culture and telling the rest of the world about them, people I’ve talked to, without knowing Graeber’s work, often seemed skeptical. In Direct Action: an Ethnography, however, David Graeber blurs the false dichotomy between theory and practice by writing both as a...more http://www.politicalmediareview.org/2...

To many anarchists, the idea of an “ethnographic study of the global justice movement” may seem problematic. Whether it be matters of security culture or the question of an outsider coming into a culture and telling the rest of the world about them, people I’ve talked to, without knowing Graeber’s work, often seemed skeptical. In Direct Action: an Ethnography, however, David Graeber blurs the false dichotomy between theory and practice by writing both as a sincere participant in the global justice movement as well as an observer and theorist of it during the protests against the FTAA’s 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, 2001.
A furtherance of this theme, his book is not only intellectually stimulating and compelling, but activists get a lot of practical material from it too. His detailed reconstructions of consensus-based meetings, meeting structures, street actions, mini histories, revealing conversations and police tactics are of tremendous use to activists who wish to reassess and better their democratic processes, as well as their tactics for direct actions. Describing the platform of egalitarian decision making processes as a springboard for developing anarchist theory, he highlights the “theory-derived-from-practice” theme that anarchists have always had affinity with and the complications of organizing with undemocratic, hierarchically organized groups.
Having participated in similar actions and meetings, many of the issues of privilege, acceptable tactics and police repression ring true to my, and many other’s experiences during large direct action demonstrations against “Globalization” summits, and during the meetings up to and following them. Seeing how, in great detail and context, one particular action unfolds is something that activists would do well to pay attention to, especially because nothing as extensive and specific to one action, to my knowledge, exists. The entirety of the book, however, is not just about one particular action; it is the very idea of direct action, so central to anarchist practice, that is at the center of this study.
Whether it is the hostilities between primitivists, class-struggle anarchists and “small-a” anarchists, the revolutionary implications of blocking a street and throwing a party, or a history of radical community spaces and direct action in new york city, much insider information about this movement gives light to aspects many of its participants may not even be fully aware of.
Although it is touched upon briefly, what could be useful would be a history of direct action that theorizes the transition from direct action and sabotage as tools used by working people (working class, in the narrow sense) to tools used by generally college-educated middle class activists. Graeber does discuss the possibility that actions like the one detailed in this book might not even be classical definitions of direct action.
Graber suggests that revolutionary movements have always taken place at the intersection between upward and downward class and social mobility- as alliances form, both physical (in terms of resources, funding) and theoretical (dissemination, ideas, art) between artists, writers, theorists, and workers.
This case study, as much as the actions he describes, itself has radical implications- that one can be both an ethnographer and a participant who is not a faceless, subjective figure. Graeber has found a crucial intersection between radical politics and scholarship where neither are sacrificed for the sake of the other.
For further reading:
The Battle of the Story of the “Battle of Seattle” by David Solnit (Editor), and Rebecca Solnit (Editor). AK Press
Direct Action & Sabotage: Three Classic IWW Pamphlets from the 1910′s. By Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, Walker C. Smith, & William E. Trautman. Charles H. Kerr labor classics
The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life by George Katsiaficas. AK Press
Fragments Of An Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber. Prickly Paradigm Press
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Aug 19, 2011 Dylan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, favorites

First of all, I read this book with theory in mind, despite the fact that Graeber sees theory in ethnography as largely irrelevant. Nevertheless, Graeber's main theoretical objective seems to be to reintroduce the idea of alienation, an important idea associated with Marxism that was seemingly banished from social discourse in the wake of the widely ramifying disillusionments of 1968. His argument hinges on what he calls the "politics of imagination" to which he juxtaposes the modern hegemony of...more First of all, I read this book with theory in mind, despite the fact that Graeber sees theory in ethnography as largely irrelevant. Nevertheless, Graeber's main theoretical objective seems to be to reintroduce the idea of alienation, an important idea associated with Marxism that was seemingly banished from social discourse in the wake of the widely ramifying disillusionments of 1968. His argument hinges on what he calls the "politics of imagination" to which he juxtaposes the modern hegemony of a "politics of violence." For the sake of brevity, these are simply fundamentally different conceptions of the "real" as understood by regular people. The politics of violence asserts (implicitly) that the fundamental reality that society is based on is essentially the rule of force. The politics of imagination, on the other hand, always present in art and revolutionary moments, and revived in the contemporary anarchist movements that comprise Graeber's ethnographic subject, acknowledges that imagination underlies all social reality. Even the rule of force requires an underlying imagination of social possibility, however narrow, in order to be realized in practice. When, instead, imagination is free of such restriction, the presumed necessity of the rule of force completely disappears. Popular recognition of this openness of possibility can only come after an acknowledgement of existing alienation, which is the direct outcome of the subordination of imagination to the rule of force. This, Graeber argues, is why art and revolution are so often in close company.

Direct action is distinguished from other forms of political practice by its "pre-figurative" character, its incorporation of the ideals of the revolutionary imagination into the actions we take within the present context which we ultimately seek to change. The implication, I think, is that any revolution worth having must begin, not after the strategy and tactics and aspirations are worked out presumably by the "smart" people, but instead revolution begins in that very process of imagining revolution. This means any egalitarian society can only be created through an egalitarian process, something along the lines of the consensus process that Graeber documents in detail. This is the basic meaning of direct action: acting as if one is already free. The bulk of the book is concerned with this nitty gritty business, as Graeber describes his participant observation experiences with the Direct Action Network in the planning and execution of a massive protest against corporate globalization in Quebec in 2002. A very engaging and informative read.(less)

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Mar 06, 2013 jess b marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

Another DNF! womp womp. I'm sure this book is very good (she said, with stout devotion to David Graeber, her current academic crush); it just wasn't quite what I was jonesing for. What I wanted was basically more of what's in Debt and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology; what this is, instead, is kind of a trip diary of some of Graeber's activist activities. It seems pretty interesting, and I may return to it in the future, just, again, not really what I want to be reading at the moment.

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Feb 13, 2010 Andreas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: politics, anthropology, bought-or-own-it

A massive book at 550+ pages. It is a very worthwhile ethnography of 21st century anarchist movements, direct action, and consensus democracy. Fascinating reading full of insights on how these practices of democracy come about in everyday practice rather than through some grand theoretical vision.

My only gripe with the book is that it is too long. It could have been edited a lot tighter, losing perhaps a 100 pages in the process and making the argument a little less repetitive and a little more...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Joy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

David Graebers background in anthropology makes everything he writes fascinating. If you are interested in the process of grassroots activism and organizing this is a mandatory read.

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May 13, 2010 Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: activism, anarchism, anthropology, cultural-studies, ethnography, globalization, history, prison-industrial-complex, police-abuse, sociology

Jesus Fucking Christ! This was a marathon book for me. Took over a year to read with a 6 month break. BUT what wonder--what treasures--what gold!! I love graeber's writing--detailed, to the point, great analysis, interesting perspectives...gah. And here--direct action and anarchism! With his own experiences to highlight both. AND there's some theory at the end! I liked the end and the beginning. The middle gets mushy but that might be because i took a 6 month break and because I recall him talki...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Ryan Hickey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A necessary read for any activist who believes direct action with a diversity of tactics is the only way to build a movement.

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Jan 31, 2013 Shawn Cassiman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read this book as OWS was taking off-timely! Wonderful discussion of tactics and the anti/alter globalization movement.

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Aug 10, 2010 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anarchism, anthropology

"What is it like being an (anarchist) activist today?"

it all might look a bit (no very) silly to some, but the fun and clumziness testify to the hope and real potential of what these people are doing. In my (very limited) experience, now in Europe, his description is spot on.

A bit of theory here and there (problematic structure for this though), including many things refreshing and with remarkable simplicity/clarity, although it can get a bit tedious at times. Perfect inbetweener when you're rea...more

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Aug 20, 2009 Shaun marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I'm currently judging this book by it's f__king beautiful cover...

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Apr 12, 2009 Angelina marked it as to-read · review of another edition

when is this book coming out!?

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Jul 24, 2010 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was thinking of doing an abridged edition of this book for a university press - that way it could be assigned for classes. (I felt it was important to publish the long version first, if only for documentary purposes, because so much history would otherwise be lost. But obviously it cuts down on the book's appeal, even though it was designed so you can skip around in it and don't have to read the whole thing.)

So what do people think: which parts would definitely have to stay, and which are disp...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Mirza Sultan-Galiev rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anarchism, culture

Blahhh...

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Feb 01, 2012 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: activism, cultural-studies-and-anthropology, politics

Update: This was one of the main books we recommended at Skylight for folks coming looking for a way to think about and understand the Occupy movement. How awesome was it to be able to hand people something with a blow-by-blow account of consensus process in a direct action context? So awesome that I guess the publisher's out of stock and now we're waiting for a reprint.

[From 2008] It's actually finally out! For real! (year and a half late, I think?) Now I just need to find a copy.

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Sep 14, 2009 Jose rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It arrived at the AK Press warehouse today...its a beautiful 550+ page book!

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Nov 23, 2009 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: revolutionary-reading

Outstanding. David Graeber gets so many things right, and what he says that isn't true oughta be.

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Jun 21, 2012 AK Press added it · review of another edition

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Shelves: anthropology

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About David Graeber

David Rolfe Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist.

On June 15, 2007, Graeber accepted the offer of a lectureship in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he currently holds the title of Reader in Social Anthropology.

He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his te...more

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Books by David Graeber

Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire

Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

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