Talk:Self-managed social center

centri sociali ¶ needs sources

The italian is the more rooted and widespread movement of autonomous social centers in Europe and also the world, with Rome as it's pulsing heart with more than 51 center active and occupied as per october 2018. Rome also has the largest occupied space of this kind in Europe, FORTE PRENESTINO, occupied since 1987, with his 13 acres of space this occupied military fort is a hub of multicultural activities and home to the largest italian festival of printed art (CRACK). The centri sociali of the most important cities across the whole country such as LEONCAVALLO in Milan, PEDRO in Padua, ASKATASUNA in Turin, CPA in Florence, OFFICINA 99 in Naples, are occupied from a minumum of 15 to 30 years. Due to this these places count now several generations of activist who changed over the years as well as being deeply rooted in the neighborhoods they are in. Some of them have some type of deal with local authorities, still, these places mostly remain outlaw and off the grid and police is never allowed inside. Most italian centri sociali may offer a wide range of services (unless most of the nort european squat) to their communities including legal counseling and language courses for immigrants, gyms as well as team sports (an entire parallel movement called palestre popolari connected to centri sociali see popular gym with courses about boxe and other fighting sports exponentially growing in the last few years), reharsal rooms, bars and restaurants, typography etc. Services and events at centri sociali are offered usually at accessibe low costs or often for free.

Hi @WizoHC, do you have reliable, secondary sources for this info, from newspapers or magazines with editorial oversight? Wikipedia requires these types of sources to verify claims. czar 23:43, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

RiP UK Social Centre Network page

I'm really saddened to see UK Social Centre Network got merged into this page. I wouldn't have minded if the information contained in the table and the details on various projects had been inserted here, but that isn't the case. Loads of decent information has been lost. And there doesn't even seem to have been a discussion about it!? Mujinga (talk) 23:40, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

it's back Mujinga (talk) 09:19, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Developing this page

I think this page is a good start but needs a lot of work. Here's a few suggestions:

• The coverage of Social centres in the United Kingdom is so low as to be nonexistent, only 121 Centre is mentioned by name
• Centres that are referred to and have their own wikipages eg Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh are not linked which seems weird
• The merge that trashed the infoshops page lost quite a lot of information. For example this diff shows that the following projects with their own wikipages were mentioned before and now are not:

Projects now unmentioned
ABC No Rio
Boxcar Books
Camas Bookstore and Infoshop
Civic Media Center
Coffee Strong
Firestorm Cafe & Books
Internationalist Books
The Old Market Autonomous Zone
Spartacus Books

• The recently renamed infobox at the bottom of the page is now supposed to sync with this page, but lists lots of projects which are not mentioned. Indeed adding them would be a great way to get rid of the US bias in the article

Mujinga (talk) 09:36, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

(1) You're welcome to edit the page, though I'd be mindful of its scope: (2) This page is an overview of the concept, not a listing of every instance. It's only worth mentioning specific venues if the sources invoke the venue to make a specific point about the concept in overview. There is a category page for anyone who needs a listing of every instance. (3) The point of the navbox (not infobox) is to navigate between pages—the navbox itself does not become justified by mentioning more of its items within the main article. (4) re: "trashed", anyone who views that diff can see the unsourced state of that article. I've already asked you kindly to drop this invective. czar 10:13, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

• 1 well yes you are also welcome to edit, in fact you created the page but didn't put in the info then, that's why i need to point it out now. don't you think Social centres in the United Kingdom should at least be linked? you didnt reply on the US bias .. let's hope some other people will edit and make the article more balanced
• 2&3 well, my point is that those projects are now not present AT ALL (not in the page and not in the box) whereas they were originally
• 4 in light of the previous point, "trashed" seems the right word to use to me, since useful encyclopaedic information has been deleted. "drop this invective"? i'm actually pretty good natured but if something frustrates me i will say so. Mujinga (talk) 09:43, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

There is no deadline and no obligation for anyone to write the entire article overnight. re: US bias, I'm not seeing the issue. There at least as many sentences dedicated to UK and Canadian social centers/infoshops/free skools as there are to those in the US. re: Social centres in the United Kingdom should at least be linked, you recently recreated that article, so you know the answer for why it wasn't linked. re: mentioning those social centers in prose, my point remains that in an overview article, the only reason to mention a specific venue is when it makes a larger point about the topic concept as a whole. Otherwise it is sufficient to leave the individual instances listed in their individual category. re: "trashed", no, this is the wrong word because it is tendentious. Assumption of good faith is foundational to WP's editing community and you've already been admonished for not showing it. No, I didn't pejoratively "trash" any content that warranted keeping, and if you want to edit collaboratively, certainly you can think of a more reconciliatory way to communicate your disagreement. czar 10:48, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

first off i am impressed you can accuse me of being tendentious today whilst throwing around words like abysmal. WP:OUCH comes to mind. further, i do not consider myself monished in the slightest, your buddy didn't even familiarise themselves with the matter at hand. anyhoo i don't intend on taking the bait.

so to return to the matter at hand, the point is that information that was previously on the infoshop page which was "merged" to this page is now not present at all, not even in the box. the page about social centres in the UK was also "merged" here with an almost total loss of information, although at least some projects are in the box, although my argument is that this is not enough. i hope that this time round you understand this. i am not a mindreader but i am guessing you are taking this personally because you made this page, that would be unfortunate. i do hope you'll notice my original comments were not addressed to you at all, but rather made on the talk page of the article to help improve it. AGF goes both ways.

Mujinga (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

There is a difference between describing the state of an article's sourcing and characterizing another editor's actions.

the point is that information that was previously on the infoshop page which was "merged" to this page

The edit summary explains why the article was redirected, not merged. (Same for Social centres in the United Kingdom.) No one has said that the content was "merged" besides you. I recovered any reliable sources that could be useful, but otherwise the content needed to be rewritten from scratch for the repurposed scope. Moreover, this common sense action should be obvious to anyone reading through the prior state of that article and its sourcing.

Don't gaslight me. The moment you made this about "trashing" other articles—a smear you have repeated in multiple other talk pages now—your condescension was not directed at anyone else. If you actually want to improve the article, I've responded to all of your suggestions, but I don't find their assumptions sound. czar 10:20, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Gaslighting? What a truly unpleasant thing to say Mujinga (talk) 10:49, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Developing this page 2

There seems to be quite a bad case of WP:OWN going on here. I've recently made some edits to improve the page, cleaned up the behind the scenes mess and removed the improve tag. Now I see the frontside edits have been mostly reverted, for spurious reasons. Content moved to Infoshops has been replaced again here leading to unnecessary duplication, the infant list of notable projects has been booted to a list presumably with the hope that it will then be deleted, summaries linking to other pages have been deleted. Not for the first time on wikipedia I'm observing a problem where someone with little knowledge uses one or two sources to create an article which may correspond to how they see the world but doesn't really represent how things are, especially globally. I actually don't really like the phrase 'autonomous social centre' but i've been prepared to let that slide as a loose catch-all term as long as the page reflects that these self-managed projects are multipurpose and always responsive to local contexts and needs. However, what we basically have here is a protected page of twaddle with undue weight focusing on infoshops and free schools. I've done my best to purge - Western anarchists have long created enclaves in which they could live their societal principles of non-authoritarianism, mutual aid, gifting, and conviviality in microcosm being probably my favourite remaining example. Mujinga (talk) 11:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't like the phrase "autonomous social center/re" either, but it's the most prominent phrase used by secondary sources for the encompassing concept. I'd respond on points, but as I've already said in above sections, in other talk pages, and now in reply, I'm not sure who your audience is—as you've been so condescending to me, I clearly can't be it. Yes, infoshops and free schools are clear components of the "autonomous social center" superset, thus warranting their weight of coverage as components. My edit summaries offer reasonable rationales for my actions as they have for years across many other articles. I'd be happy to elaborate in good faith but won't respond to future messages as caustic as the one above. czar 20:21, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi Czar, how nice you took it upon yourself to answer me again. My intention here is to develop the page, not to converse with you, hence the section heading. We are now on version2 because of the debacle above which ended up in the serious allegation you made that I was gaslighting you.

I am of course not addressing only you, if i wanted to do that I'd use your talkpage (although i can't say that goes very well), instead i am addressing future editors who will hopefully improve this page (and not be immediately reverted by you). It's already proved pretty much impossible to work with you here for the reasons I gave above, just as at Social centres in the UK and anarchist archives, so I'm actually fine with ignoring your hostility and arrogance. Unfortunately you seem to carry that attitude with you for years already so i don't think it's likely to change.

However, I do now have to pick you up on one thing though. What secondary sources are you referring to regarding your usage of 'autonomous social centre/center'? Out of the 13 references on this article, I can find the phrase in only one source, namely Noterman & Pusey. And they are misquoting Atton. This doesn't seem a strong basis for your claim to have found a common name, especially when there are more obvious choices available. Mujinga (talk) 15:06, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 1 October 2019

Autonomous social center → Self-managed social centre – Multiple secondary sources describe this phenomenon as ’self-managed social centres.’ The descriptor ’autonomous social centre’ is not backed up by the sources in the article or indeed in the broader relevant literature Mujinga (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

The pages for “social centre” on wikipedia are a bit of a mess, since the term ‘social centre’ refers to different things in different places. Nowadays social centre redirects to community centre, which certainly needs some work. Anyway that’s a different issue, just stated here for context.

I propose this page is renamed Self-managed social centre and I’ll give my rationale below. The move would then also rename the connected list to List of self-managed social centres, a list which should really be on this page until it is built up enough to stand on its own two feet.

I have already made this page move, unfortunately it was immediately reverted. I’ve asked several times now for secondary sources to explain why the page should be called by ‘autonomous social centre’ but the debate has become acrimonious and I haven’t seen any sources so here we are.

Social centres are known by different names in different places, in my experience ‘autonomous social centre’ is indeed used by a few projects and other names are also used such as resource centre, action centre, anarchist centre and so on. ‘Self-managed social centre’ crops up frequently in different countries. However, it’s better of course to go to the secondary sources.

As i have already said in discussions above, the term ‘autonomous social centre’ (henceforth ASC) can be found in only one source currently used in the article, namely Noterman & Pusey, and they seems to be misquoting from Atton (another source) since he doesn't use that phrase himself. The name ‘self-managed social centre’ (henceforth SMSC) on the other hand is mentioned by Casaglia, Lacey, Piazza, Pusey and Trapese. That’s five out of the current references. This already provides compelling reason for a namechange.

Maybe we should also look further afield, so let’s look at a sampling of the broader relevant literature by different authors from different places:

• Colau - Mortgaged Lives - social centre not mentioned at all
• Martinez - 'The Occupation of Squares' - SMSC
• Owens - Cracking the Movement - social centre not mentioned at all
• Pusey - 'Social Centres and the New Co-operativism of the Common' - SMSC
• Starecheski - social centre not mentioned at all
• Steen et al - City is Ours - both ASC and SMSC mentioned

So a quick review of the literature from various countries seems to back my assertion that 'self-managed social centre' (SMSC) is the most frequently used common name over and above the ambiguous use of plain old 'social centre.' I have many of these books and journal articles on my bookshelf so I'm happy to go deeper here but I don't see the need right now.

Finally, let’s check 'self-managed social centre' against WP:NAMINGCRITERIA:

• Recognizability – I hope my reasoning above has made this clear
• Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English. - this is tricky because social centres go by different names but worldwide 'self-managed social centre' is the most often used term
• Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects - yes!
• Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects - we do need to differentiate this sort of social centre from other community centres, the 'self-managed' part does that perfectly
• Consistency - The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles - yup, this page is parent to Self-managed social centres in the United Kingdom and Self-managed social centres in Italy

• Support as nominator. Mujinga (talk) 14:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

---

• This is solely a matter of what natural disambiguation sources use most often to distinguish these spaces from other social/community centers. In my reading of the sources, "autonomous" was far more often the qualifier than "self-managed," which I mainly saw used in relation to the specific Italian movement (translation of centri sociali autogestiti/centri sociali occupati e autogestiti). But in English-language sources, "autonomous" was far more often used as the disambiguator when discussing the English-language movement (USA, UK, etc.) as an outgrowth of the "autonomous movement"/"autonomous network" and with relation to prominent examples such as the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh. Here are the examples, including from the authors cited above:

  There are numerous examples of the links between autonomous centers across Britain (p. 294)
  The Anarchist Teapot therefore served as an infoshop, if we use the Infoshops Network’s (n.d.) definition: Infoshops (autonomous centres, reading rooms, free cafes—call them what you will) are a little piece of anarchy in action. Run by collectives, often from squatted premises, they provide autonomous space for people to meet, chat, and—not surprisingly!—obtain in-formation. (p. 296)
  — Lacey, Anita (August 2005). "Networked Communities: Social Centers and Activist Spaces in Contemporary Britain". Space and Culture. 8 (3): 286–301. doi:10.1177/1206331205277350. ISSN 1206-3312. Note that the sole mention of "self-managed" here is in relation to the Italy—otherwise "autonomous" is much more prominent.

  This article will use interviews with participants, as well as the authors own experience in the movement, in order to link the creation of social centres and autonomous spaces with the concept of the common(s). It argues that the production of social centres and autonomous spaces creates new commons which embody experimental and prefigurative demonstrations of self-management and are examples of the new cooperativism in practice. (p. 177)
  Social centres and autonomous spaces are a more recent development along this trajectory. Social centres and autonomous spaces have a rich history across Europe. (p. 178)
  Squatting and autonomous spaces were also an important part of the anarcho-punk counter-culture here in Britain during the 1980s. Spaces opened during this period, sometimes called “autonomy clubs,” including the Autonomy centre in Wapping, the Autonomous centre of Edinburgh (ACE), and the Station in Gateshead. (p. 179)
  Social centres are self-managed “autonomous spaces.” (p. 176)
  — Pusey, Andre (2010). "Social Centres and the New Cooperativism of the Common". Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action. 4 (1): 176–198. OCLC 744314571.

  Autonomous spaces: There's a storm brewing in every teacup. (n.d.). Do or Die!, 8, 130-132.

• Sources such as Casaglia and Piazza (mentioned above but note that both are literally adjacent articles in the same journal) solely use "self-managed" in relation to the Italian translation. But when quoting literature from outside Italy, Piazza says:

  Also Martìnez (2012) has included the squatted Social Centres inside the wider squatters’ movement—involving also squatted houses, non-squatted autonomous Social Centres, rural squatting and tactical squatting like the occupation of squares—in which they play a key political role.
  — Piazza, Gianni (March 2018). "Squatting Social Centres in a Sicilian City: Liberated Spaces and Urban Protest Actors". Antipode. 50 (2): 500. doi:10.1111/anti.12286. ISSN 0066-4812.

And those were just looking at the sources invoked in the requested move. (And happy to pull from the additional sources in the bibliography if other editors aren't able to retrieve.) When I compiled and read the sources on first draft of this article, "autonomous" was most often the term used to disambiguate this type of social space from others. When "autonomous" and "self-managed" were used as direct synonyms, "autonomous" was more prominently used as the qualifier for the center/space. On balance, if "autonomous space" is preferable over "autonomous social center," I could also see that being supported by the spirit of the sources. czar 12:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)