Liberal democracies are backsliding worldwide. Could anarchy help?
For many, anarchism may conjure scenes of disarray and chaos, or perhaps even riotous punk rock shows in dingy basement venues. But in this video, the historian Sophie Scott-Brown, a self-described anarchist, reframes anarchism as a movement that can be practically applied to, and even strengthen, contemporary liberal democracies. In a wide-ranging interview, Scott-Brown discusses the form of anarchy she ascribes to – pacifist, centred on direct democracy, and not inherently opposed to all forms of leadership structures – as well as the thinkers and personal experiences that influenced her.
Video by the Institute of Arts and Ideas
videoHistory
In Stalin’s home city in Georgia, generations clash over his legacy
20 minutes
videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
videoPhilosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
videoMeaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
videoEthics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
videoVirtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
videoPolitical philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
videoPolitical philosophy
Beyond the veil – what rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?
6 minutes