Empoword

Part Three: Research and Argumentation 298 Model Texts by Student Authors Pirates & Anarch y 104 (Research proposal – see the annotated bibliography here and final essay here) My inquiry has to do with piracy and its relationship with anarchist culture. There seem to be two tipping points to the life cycles of piratical and anarchist cultures. First, there is the societal inequality and/or economic stagnation that cause groups to lose faith in established power structures (Samatar 1377). This disenfranchisement leads to groups’ choosing to take self-guided action, to meet needs not satisfied. It is a bid for freedom. The other shift appears to be when the actions of the group become predatory upon vulnerable groups. What begins as notions of self-sufficiency become violent victimizations of other segments of society (Wilson ix). The current guiding questions that I am following are these: What societal breakdowns lead to groups subscribing to anarchist philosophies? Are pirates and anarchists synonymous? Do the successes and/or failures of pirate organizations create any lasting change in the societies from which they spring? Piracy has been around for a very long time and has taken on many forms. One of these incarnations was the seafaring sort terrorizing ships during the golden age of piracy in the seventeenth century. Another example was the Somali pirates preying on the African coast in the early 2000s. Information pirates in cyberspace and anarchist protestors in political activism are current forms. The relevance of why individuals turn to piracy is important to explore. Political polarization continues to freeze up the government, rendering them ineffectual. Worse, elected officials appear more concerned with ideology and campaign funding than the plight of the common man, leaving their own constituents’ needs abandoned. Citizens may turn to extreme political philosophies such as anarchy as a way to take piratical action to counteract economic disparity. A pervasive sense of powerlessness and underrepresentation may lead to the splintering of societal structure, even rebellion. Of import is understanding whether acts of piracy lead to societal erosion via this loss of faith and turn to violence, shrugging off accountability to the system as a countermeasure to what is seen as government’s inability to provide a free