Alex Khasnabish

Alex Khasnabish is a socio-cultural anthropologist by training, whose research interests lie in the following areas:

• culture, power, and resistance;
• globalization, transnational activism, global justice, and social movements;
• democracy and political philosophy;
• political histories, political ecologies, political imagination, and narratives of socio-political struggle and transformation;
• anti-capitalism, anarchism, and grassroots alternative-building.

His research program and theoretical and methodological approaches are marked by a deep interest in sociological and anthropological perspectives, globalization studies, political philosophy, and a commitment to productive and challenging interdisciplinary engagements. His work has focused upon the reasons for and consequences of the resonance of Zapatismo – the political philosophy of the Zapatista movement located in Chiapas, Mexico – upon diverse communities of political activists in Mexico, Canada, and the United States.

Currently, his research interests focus upon the radical imagination and its relationship to movements for radical socio-political transformation. In this vein, my research program considers the emergence of powerful new projects aimed at envisioning and constituting new forms of community beyond rather than simply against dominant social, political, economic, and cultural formations. He is particularly interested in the ways in which new radical imaginations are envisioning socio-political transformations beyond rather than within the state form and, instead of conceiving of struggle within the hegemonic/counter-hegemonic binary, are engaged in articulating new visions of life lived in common. As a political landscape, these projects of radical social transformation are fundamentally engaged with the task of reimagining and rearticulating new ways of relating – between people, to the environment, and to the non-human life with which this planet is shared. The project he is currently working on, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is entitled "Radical Imagination: A Research Project About Movements, Social Change, and the Future" and focuses upon exploring the radical imagination in the context of radical struggles for social change in Halifax, NS.

Dr. Khasnabish's website can be found at http://www.alexkhasnabish.com.