CIIS Anthropology and Social Change

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CIIS Anthropology and Social Change

Anthropology and Social Change is a small, innovative graduate department that focuses on activist scholarship, militant research, and social justice.

Follow for weekly memes/videos on activist Anthropology: Anarchism, Marxism, Rojava, Zapatismo, Anticolonial, Decolonial, and Indigenous Resistance, Climate Justice, Tranarchy, Abolitionism, Revolution, Resistance etc. + occasional online public talks. We offer online Doctorate and Master’s degrees.

12/17/2025

For students in need of a practical activist-oriented elective! With Ramsey from Sasha from and Will, writer for etc.
ANTH-6174 Activist Media Writing Editing (1-1 Credits)
I wrote something incisive and political, but who is going to publish it? This intensive course will integrate the political economy and practice of writing, editing, and publishing.
This intensive course will integrate the theory and practice of producing radical radio. We will explore the many issues that emerge in covering movements or causes that one is part of, or sympathetic to, and examine the questions that arise from utilizing the radio medium.
This seminar will examine the history of organizing and different models of community organizing, including direct actions, mass mobilization, social action, and grassroots empowerment and advocacy.

11/27/2025

Follow and watch this space for info on the next David Graeber Memorial Lecture, a tribute to our friend David, who left us too soon. Tentatively planned for February, 2026. A co-production of and a number of other academic departments worldwide! ❤️

11/21/2025

Got a political project outside the boom and bust of election cycles? Curious about our mostly online MA+PhD in Activist Anthropology? Use our link in bio to sign up today for our Dec. 2, 2pm Pacific Time Info Session with founding department chair, Andrej Grubačić.
Our distinctive department focus is on nonstate spaces, those real utopias in the cracks and fissures of capitalist and state dominance. Faculty and students work with imprisoned people, indigenous resistance movements, maroons, radical unions, and many other human beings in struggle. Our programs consist of online synchronous coursework that can be undertaken from anywhere in the world, plus a week in October and a week in February building camaraderie and solidarity at the CIIS campus in San Francisco.
Join us to learn more!

11/20/2025

Our next public event! Free with pre-registration, use our linktr.ee in bio to sign up!
Join the Anthropology and Social Change Department at ClIS for an intimate conversation with Inés Durán Matute and Rocio Moreno, as they discuss their latest book, “Saberes Para Otros Mundos Posibles” (Knowledges for Other Possible Worlds)- a powerful exploration of education, justice, and imagination.

11/19/2025

Link in bio to sign up for our next public event, free with pre-registration!
Join the Anthropology and Social Change Department at ClIS for an intimate conversation with Inés Durán Matute and Rocio Moreno, as they discuss their latest book, “Saberes Para Otros Mundos Posibles” (Knowledges for Other Possible Worlds)- a powerful exploration of education, justice, and imagination.

11/12/2025

Use our linktr.ee in bio to sign up! Livestream or in-person at campus, San Francisco. A production of 🌽
Seedkeeper, author, mentor, and founder of Sierra Seeds, Rowen White is a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. With the increasing industrialization of our food and the erosion of biodiversity within cultural contexts, Rowen works to guide and mentor mindful eaters and food/seed sovereignty leaders in their capacity to lead, vision, and nourish a deep-rooted transformation.

For Rowen and many others, cultivating a culture of belonging needs to be at the heart of food systems change—inviting a diversity of perspectives and voices, cosmologies and values. Integral to a more just and beautiful food system is the way we rehydrate and integrate our cultural memories and stories, and how we regain a sense of who we are as a multitude of cultures through our foods and seeds.

Join Rowen and CIIS Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Change Michelle Glowa for an inspiring conversation exploring Indigenous seedkeeping and food sovereignty.

11/10/2025

Use linktr.ee in bio to sign up! Livestream or in-person at campus, San Francisco. A production of 🌽
Seedkeeper, author, mentor, and founder of Sierra Seeds, Rowen White is a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. With the increasing industrialization of our food and the erosion of biodiversity within cultural contexts, Rowen works to guide and mentor mindful eaters and food/seed sovereignty leaders in their capacity to lead, vision, and nourish a deep-rooted transformation.

For Rowen and many others, cultivating a culture of belonging needs to be at the heart of food systems change—inviting a diversity of perspectives and voices, cosmologies and values. Integral to a more just and beautiful food system is the way we rehydrate and integrate our cultural memories and stories, and how we regain a sense of who we are as a multitude of cultures through our foods and seeds.

Join Rowen and CIIS Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Change Michelle Glowa for an inspiring conversation exploring Indigenous seedkeeping and food sovereignty.

11/06/2025

Interested in our mostly online MA+PhD in activist Anthropology? Join the Info Session on Friday! Use our linktr.ee in bio to sign up!
Got a political project outside the boom and bust of election cycles? Join a department-wide commitment to scholarship in solidarity with populations in struggle. Produce work alongside human beings as co-researchers. Graduate with the training and credentials to contribute even more powerfully to the better world we all know is possible!

09/08/2025

Comment “smash the state” below and we’ll DM you the YouTube Live link! Tune in as we tackle statolatry in our upcoming Visiting Professor Series talks Mon-Weds, Sept 29 to Oct 1, 6-7:30pm pacific time!
Speaker bio: Geoffroy de Laforcade received his Ph.D. from Yale University after studying in the Boston area, Mexico City and Paris, working in journalism and alongside migrants and refugees. An interdisciplinary historian, he has published on an array of subjects ranging from traditions of insurgency and revolution to world music, art and comics, and co-edited books such as The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor (De Gruyter, 2022), Migration, Diaspora, Exile: Narratives of Affiliation and Escape (Lexington, 2020), and In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History (University of Florida, 2015). Dr. de Laforcade is preparing a book entitled Eluding States: Fugitivity, Sovereignty and Resistance with co-author Raymond Craib of Cornell University. He has taught at Norfolk State University, Virginia’s largest public HBCU, since 2008.

08/27/2025

Curious about our mostly online MA+PhD in activist Anthropology? Use our link in bio to sign up for the next Info Session, September 5 at 4pm Pacific Time!
📷🐻🏴
Learn about our distinctive department-wide commitment to training in Anthropology that blurs the lines between researcher and population, making co-researchers of both. Our emphasis is on solidarity with populations in struggle, incorporating methodologies from the decolonial and anticolonial, to Marxian world-systems theory, to indigenous epistemologies of resistance, to the rich history of anti-statist “anarchist” Anthropology, and everything in between.
Learn more about our department focus, specialization, and how you might fit with us from our founding department chair Andrej Grubačić, co-author with Staughton Lynd of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History on and the award-winning collaboration with Denis O’Hearn, Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid on

07/30/2025

Interested in our activist Anthropology mostly-online MA+PhD? Join the Info Session August 8th, 4pm Pacific Time! Use our link in bio to sign up!
Join a department bringing the Social Sciences and Humanities to California Institute of Integral Studies and doing it with a distinctive orientation. Activist Anthropology has become common in graduate departments as a response to Anthropology’s crisis of identity in the postcolonial era. Much more rare is to find an entire Anthropology department committed to an activist orientation!
Join a department committed to solidarity with populations in struggle, to populations in nonstate spaces, to those cracks and fissures in global capitalist domination, and to transgression of the positivist boundaries between “research” and “researcher.” Train in ethnography as accomplice and co-researcher with populations. Graduate with the tools to contribute to the better world we all know is possible!
Join us for the Info Session and get your burning questions answered! Hope to see you there!

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San Francisco, CA

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