Organising is politics made durable. From co-operatives to corporations, Occupy to Facebook, states to NGOs, organisations shape our lives. They shape the possible futures of governance, policy making and social change, and hence are central to understanding how human beings can deal with the challenges that face us, whether that be pandemics, populism or climate change. This book series publishes texts that explore how politics happens within and because of organisations. We want to explore how activism is organised and how activists change organisations. We are also interested in the forms of resistance to activism, in the ways that powerful interests contest and reframe demands for change. These are questions of huge relevance to scholars in sociology, politics, geography, management and beyond, and are becoming ever more important as demands for impact and engagement change the way that academics imagine their work. They are also important to anyone who wants to understand more about the theory and practice of organising, not just the abstracted ideologies of capitalism taught in business schools.

Our books will offer critical examinations of organisations as sites of or targets for activism, and we will also assume that our authors, and hopefully our readers, are themselves agents of change. Titles may focus on specific industries or fields, or they may be arranged around particular themes or challenges. Our topics might include the alternative economy; surveillance, whistleblowing and human rights; digital politics; religious groups; social movements; NGOs; feminism and anarchist organisation; action research and co-production; activism and the neoliberal university; and any other subjects which are relevant and topical.

‘Organizations and Activism’ will also be a multidisciplinary series. Contributions from all and any relevant academic fields will be welcomed. The series will be international in outlook, and proposals from outside the English-speaking global North are particularly welcome.

This book, the first in our series, offers an exemplary and beautifully lucid contribution by bringing together the social movements of the early 21st century, the technologies of social media and virtual organising, and theories of anarchism and cybernetics. In Anarchist Cybernetics: Control and Communication in Radical Politics the Scottish activist and academic Thomas Swann applies theory and politics to contemporary examples, and wants us to think hard about selforganisation – that is to say, about forms of coordination that do not assume that human beings are too stupid to organise themselves.