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social center
Social Centers are sometimes squatted, sometimes rented buildings, mostly in Europe, which have been made into organizing centers for community activities, support networks, and institutional initiatives such as free kitchens, free shops, public computer labs, graffiti murals, free housing for activists and travelers, recreation, public meetings, legal collectives, and spaces for dances, performances and art exhibitions.
Social Centers are distiguished from community centers in the particular relationship social centers have toward the state and governmental institutions. While "communty center" is a term used to describe any center of "public" acitvity, occasionally sanctioned by the state or private interests such as a corporation, social centers are characterized by their quasi-legal and sometimes illegal existence, their direct subsistence on the community that supports it, and their political vision vis-a-vis the state.
The social center concept has taken root most successfully in Italy, beginning in the 1970s, where large factories and even abandoned military barracks have been "appropriated" for use as social centers. There are today dozens of social centers in Italy, and their presence is often tolerated by local authorities. The historic relationship between the Italian social centers and the Autonomia movement (specifically Lotta Continua) has been described briefly in Storming Heaven, Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomous Marxism, by Steve Wright.
Social Centers in Italy continue to be centers of political / social dissent. Notably the Tute Bianche and Ya Basta Association developed directly out of the social center movement, and many social forums take place in social centers.
In the UK there is an active Social Centre Network, which aims to link up "up the growing number of autonomous spaces to share resources, ideas and information". This network draws a very clear distinction between the many autonomous social centres around the country and the state or large NGO sponsored community centres.
See also
External links
- Selfmanaged Social Centers
- Social Centers, Community Spaces, and Squats From "Italy's Cultural Underground" by Adam Bregman
- Social Centre Network (UK)
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