Gaard Kets

In the wake of the assembly movements that emerged from 2011 onwards, a lively academic and activist debate developed around the question of organization. Various political theorists have proposed an ‘ecological’ approach to social movements, which allows us to perceive them as contingent combinations between various activist repertoires and organizational forms. Rather than prioritizing either a ‘horizontalist’ or ‘verticalist’ logic of organization, both are often at play within a social movement, where they compete with or complement each other. This article contributes to this ‘ecological turn’ in social movement studies by adding a historical perspective. We argue that a key revolutionary event – the Paris Commune of 1871 – could be read as a ‘distributed ecology’. This historical application allows us to better recognize the merits of an ecological approach for contemporary radical-democratic theory and practices and helps us to appreciate the significance and radical potential of recent social movements.

We are facing a time of profound political instability, environmental crisis and a clear distrust of the democratic system. In this situation, authoritarian positions appear to be gaining ground, promising hope and security in response to the uncertainty and precariousness of the present moment. The left’s traditional strategies have become obsolete, and the alternatives for new ecological transitions seem unconvincing to those who are largely excluded from the system. In this situation, the following special issue proposes local political prefiguration as a democratic repertoire that allows us to act in the present in order to imagine the societies of tomorrow. Specifically, it presents three contributions from which to reflect on past and present political prefigurations, taking into account historical and contemporary forms of organisation and institutionalisation that envisage a new emancipatory order within and beyond the state.