Barthes neutrality … Laozi 無爲 Wúwèi

To record an exchange from PSF

Muindi: In light of our talk about institutions that play the role of neutral facilitator in geopolitics and individuals who play the role of neutral facilitators in games and play scenarios, I wanted to share with you all some quotations from Roland Barthes' lectures on The Neutral, a book which I am very, very fond of and that I think would make great reading for the PSF group, alongside his lectures on How to Live Together. I send this because I think that Roland Barthes has a lovely way of talking about neutral party as a passionate figure rather than a dispassionate one. What's more, Barthes phrase "outplay the paradigm" (rather than "playing into the paradigm") could be a very useful phase to empower a facilitator within the context of types of games and play scenarios that we were discussing. (edited) 
Untitled document (3).jpg


In a related timbre, Stefano Franchi, Niklas Damiris, and Helga Wild wrote a deep book on Passivity, which exists only as an unpublished ms.  A source for these diverse Western turns away from modernity: Bathes,  passivity, Heidegger’s standing in reserve, and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of constitution is Laozi’s Daodejing.  Here’s an introduction by Steve Coutinho to the daoist concept of wúwèi:

Sander Van Der Leeuw: "Are Cities Resilient?" / "Les villes sont‐elles résilientes ?"

Dear Synthesis / Prototyping Social Forms folks + friends,

As background for the UNDP Navigating Uncertainty 
Attached is a complex systems and long-term evolutionary approach to the life of cities, with profound implications…

Are cities resilient?
Sander E. van der Leeuw < vanderle@asu.edu>
ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, Arizona State University and Santa Fe Institute


ABSTRACT. … [T]he driving force behind the aggregation of human settlement, throughout the centuries, has been the ever-increasing need for collective problem solving. Villages and cities have emerged in ‘dissipative flow structures’ in which organization (information processing capacity) spread out from cities into their hinterland, enabing energy and other resources to increasingly flow into cities to meet the needs of the population. Information processing is thus the driver of urbanization, and energy is the constraint. With the Industrial Revolution, the growth of such dissipative flow structures accelerated very rapidly due to the fact that fossil energy became available and lifted the constraint. Hence the urban explosion of the last couple of centuries.

…[S]ome of the potential consequences of this explosion are discussed. First, whether the ever accelerating increase of global urbanization will continue or not, and then what might be the consequences of that acceleration for urban planning and architecture, emphasizing that cities need to become pro-active rather than re-active. They need to start designing for change rather than responding to it. In a final section we discuss some of the risks to urbanization that are posed by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Revolution, and conclude with a suggestion how, in developed countries, information technology might reverse the trend to increasing concentration of the population in cities, whereas for the moment, this is not likely to be the case in developing countries.



Xin Wei

Geoff Mulgan, social and public imagination (Was : NESTA prototyping social forms)

Dear PSF Folks,

And to follow on the NESTA link, here’s a draft article relevant to prototyping social forms:
The Imaginary Crisis (and how we might quicken social and public imagination)
Geoff Mulgan, April 2020,
UCL, Demos Helsinki and Untitled

Geoff’s background:
I am writing this now as Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and So- cial Innovation at UCL’s STEaPP, and as a fellow at Demos Helsinki. Before that I was CEO of Nesta (2011-19), CEO of the Young Foundation (2004-11), and director of the UK Government Strategy Unit 2000-2004. I have had quite an active involvement in social imagination over the years, including the creation of many new organisations and policy approaches; running teams working on the practical side of social design and strategy; writings (eg on utopias in The Locust and the Bee, and on futures work in The Art of Public Strategy); commissions, including Nesta reports on participatory futures, and several surveys of futures practice globally over the last 20 years. I have also been involved in some large-scale futures exercises for whole nations, such as Australia 2020. I’ll leave to others to judge whether that makes me well qualified to comment, or too trapped by the assumptions of the recent past.

Xin Wei

Begin forwarded message:

Dear PSF folks, 

I met Geoff Mulgan @ NESTA (UK) at a  UNESCO event modestly titled “Learning Planet”.
Mulgan has done 20 years of prototyping social forms.  It’d be interesting to compare:

NESTA
:
We bring bold ideas to life to change the world for good.

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning.

https://www.nesta.org.uk/toolkit/prototyping-framework/

Prototyping is an approach to developing, testing and improving an idea at an early stage before you commit a lot of resources to it.

It is a way of working that allows you to experiment with an idea so you can learn and refine it into something even better.

The prototyping process outlined in this toolkit was developed by Nesta and thinkpublic. Depending on what you are prototyping you may find stages of this process are more relevant than others, but the diagram provides a framework which will allow you structure your approach.

XinWei

NESTA prototyping social forms

Dear PSF folks, 

I met Geoff Mulgan @ NESTA (UK) at a  UNESCO event modestly titled “Learning Planet”.
Mulgan has done 20 years of prototyping social forms.  It’d be interesting to compare:

NESTA
:
We bring bold ideas to life to change the world for good.

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality. It also means changing lives for the better. This is what keeps us awake at night and gets us out of bed in the morning.

https://www.nesta.org.uk/toolkit/prototyping-framework/

Prototyping is an approach to developing, testing and improving an idea at an early stage before you commit a lot of resources to it.

It is a way of working that allows you to experiment with an idea so you can learn and refine it into something even better.

The prototyping process outlined in this toolkit was developed by Nesta and thinkpublic. Depending on what you are prototyping you may find stages of this process are more relevant than others, but the diagram provides a framework which will allow you structure your approach.

XinWei

Re: From democracy at others’ expense to externalization at democracy’s expense: Property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism

Full article:
January 20, 2021


On Jan 25, 2021, at 10:55 AM, Xin Wei Sha <Xinwei.Sha@asu.edu> wrote:

Friends from PSF and anti-)Social (anti-)Bodies groups,

Here’s a nice updated critique of "democracy at others’ expense" by Dennis Eversberg in Anthropological Theory 2021, informed by recent work on "property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism."

Of course, the “what is to be done” is much less well developed, but.  Here’s how the author ends:

…what alternative principles a non-appropriative, non- externalizing democracy could be built on, or what alternative, emancipatory principles of societalization we can imagine. Societalization—the establishment of insti- tutions and sets of rules that are different from community in assigning rights and obligations on a universal basis, regardless of concrete personal attributes—need not necessarily imply expansionism and externalization. Why shouldn’t egalitarian forms of societalization be possible that build on relations of care rather than exchange, improving the welfare and participatory opportunities of most people without having to expanding the rate of metabolic throughput? A truly universal and ecologically sustainable form of democratic societalization would need a conception of citizenship not defined by property, exchange and the inequalities and exclusions associated with them. And this requires challenging the hierarchical separation of the public and private that has been a defining feature of European democracy, which enables the abstract economic personhood of the public citizen proffered by private appropria- tion of others’ labour as property. It is that separation, and the systematic denial by abstract personhood of the ineluctably concrete acts of care and the gifts of nature that all humans depend on, that any genuinely egalitarian type of social organization would have to learn to do without.

Rather than trying to model non-hierarchical social relations on the symbolic counterpoints of joking and the carnivalesque, as Graeber himself (2007a) seems to suggest, it seems to me that struggles for substantial and sustained emancipation ought to be based on what constitutes both the real inversion and negated foundation of hierarchy: namely, efforts to constitute relations—both among humans and with extra-human nature—based on the principle of care and the consciousness of mutual dependency. By highlighting the great variability of how human societies have orga- nized these relations, and exposing the doxic anthropologies of capitalist modernity in their historical specificity, anthropological research offers valuable contributions to thinking about what future transformations of, or beyond, capitalism may await us, and about the possibilities and problems these transformations may hold for such ‘caring democratization’. A key part in this is of course challenging grandiose, grossly simplifying structural accounts like the one given here. Anthropologists, like sociol- ogists, are particularly well equipped for exposing the inconsistencies and ruptures in how the doxic anthropologies sketched out here play out in people’s actual socially specific experience (Eversberg, 2014b; Ortner, 2005; Skeggs, 2011). Understanding people’s multifarious ways of dealing and struggling with the pressures of exploita- tion and internalization as manifestations of non-identity points to paths toward human conditions liberated from the growth imperative that are already present as subordinate elements in human practice.

For envisioning possibilities of such transformations, the heterogeneous move- ments and actors of the ‘degrowth spectrum’ (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2018) are obvious allies. Anthropologists’ insights resonate with their understanding that what is at stake is not further ‘liberation’ of the individual, but forms of autonomy built on different, relational and caring concepts of personhood (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2017). Conversely, degrowth movements’ calls to engage in a pluriver- sal dialogue about ‘a world where many worlds fit’ (Kothari et al., 2019) and for a ‘decolonization of the imaginary’ (Latouche, 2005), as well as the manifold pre- figurative practices movement actors experiment with to explore the practical implications (Treu et al., 2020), are promising points of departure for inquiry into what democratic anthropologies of degrowth might look like, and what societal changes will be required to bring about conditions under which their generalization may become possible.

Calling for insights from vegetal life,
Xin Wei

From democracy at others’ expense to externalization at democracy’s expense: Property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism

Friends from PSF and anti-)Social (anti-)Bodies groups,

Here’s a nice updated critique of "democracy at others’ expense" by Dennis Eversberg in Anthropological Theory 2021, informed by recent work on "property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism."


Of course, the “what is to be done” is much less well developed, but.  Here’s how the author ends:

…what alternative principles a non-appropriative, non- externalizing democracy could be built on, or what alternative, emancipatory principles of societalization we can imagine. Societalization—the establishment of insti- tutions and sets of rules that are different from community in assigning rights and obligations on a universal basis, regardless of concrete personal attributes—need not necessarily imply expansionism and externalization. Why shouldn’t egalitarian forms of societalization be possible that build on relations of care rather than exchange, improving the welfare and participatory opportunities of most people without having to expanding the rate of metabolic throughput? A truly universal and ecologically sustainable form of democratic societalization would need a conception of citizenship not defined by property, exchange and the inequalities and exclusions associated with them. And this requires challenging the hierarchical separation of the public and private that has been a defining feature of European democracy, which enables the abstract economic personhood of the public citizen proffered by private appropria- tion of others’ labour as property. It is that separation, and the systematic denial by abstract personhood of the ineluctably concrete acts of care and the gifts of nature that all humans depend on, that any genuinely egalitarian type of social organization would have to learn to do without.

Rather than trying to model non-hierarchical social relations on the symbolic counterpoints of joking and the carnivalesque, as Graeber himself (2007a) seems to suggest, it seems to me that struggles for substantial and sustained emancipation ought to be based on what constitutes both the real inversion and negated foundation of hierarchy: namely, efforts to constitute relations—both among humans and with extra-human nature—based on the principle of care and the consciousness of mutual dependency. By highlighting the great variability of how human societies have orga- nized these relations, and exposing the doxic anthropologies of capitalist modernity in their historical specificity, anthropological research offers valuable contributions to thinking about what future transformations of, or beyond, capitalism may await us, and about the possibilities and problems these transformations may hold for such ‘caring democratization’. A key part in this is of course challenging grandiose, grossly simplifying structural accounts like the one given here. Anthropologists, like sociol- ogists, are particularly well equipped for exposing the inconsistencies and ruptures in how the doxic anthropologies sketched out here play out in people’s actual socially specific experience (Eversberg, 2014b; Ortner, 2005; Skeggs, 2011). Understanding people’s multifarious ways of dealing and struggling with the pressures of exploita- tion and internalization as manifestations of non-identity points to paths toward human conditions liberated from the growth imperative that are already present as subordinate elements in human practice.

For envisioning possibilities of such transformations, the heterogeneous move- ments and actors of the ‘degrowth spectrum’ (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2018) are obvious allies. Anthropologists’ insights resonate with their understanding that what is at stake is not further ‘liberation’ of the individual, but forms of autonomy built on different, relational and caring concepts of personhood (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2017). Conversely, degrowth movements’ calls to engage in a pluriver- sal dialogue about ‘a world where many worlds fit’ (Kothari et al., 2019) and for a ‘decolonization of the imaginary’ (Latouche, 2005), as well as the manifold pre- figurative practices movement actors experiment with to explore the practical implications (Treu et al., 2020), are promising points of departure for inquiry into what democratic anthropologies of degrowth might look like, and what societal changes will be required to bring about conditions under which their generalization may become possible.

Calling for insights from vegetal life,
Xin Wei

UNESCO Learning Planet Festival, Art, Science and Tech in Education (24-25 January 2021)

UNESCO Roundtable: Art, Science and Tech in Education



Description:

We live in a time of unprecedented global challenges. Our education systems are divided into disciplinary silos that work against joined-up approaches and solutions. Much research suggests we need learning to focus on creative collaboration and empathy. Rapid tech advances, as well as innovative pedagogies informed by scientific research and/or artistic approaches, offer opportunities to make innovation in learning widely accessible with the potential to accelerate innovation and support a much needed, and in-depth, change of mindset . This panel will discuss how we can re-imagine learning to deliver the UN SDGs and to more fully realise individual and collective human potential.

  • When research reveals the limitations of STEM, why do we persist with this pedagogic model?

  • In a time of climate crisis, mass biodiversity loss and obscene levels of inequality and inequity, what might transdisciplinary forms of knowing and education look like that are more suited to engage with the complexities of our world and current challenges?

    Chair: Alan Boldon, Managing Director, Dartington Hall Trust, Founder and Director, Weave, UK

    Speakers: Ange Ansour (Co-founder & Director, Les Savanturiers, France), Meagan Fallone (Director, Barefoot College International, India), Csaba Manyai (Co-founder, Community Arts Network (CAN), Hungary), Geoff Mulgan (Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation, UCL, UK),  Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas (Co-founders, Swamp School, MIT, USA), Sha Xin Wei (Professor School of Arts, Media + Engineering; Director of Synthesis, Arizona State University, USA)


Politics of Affect, Brian Massumi, Zournazi, McKim, Aryal, Manning, Fritsch, …

Politics of Affect
Brian Massumi

'The capacity to affect and to be affected'. This simple definition opens a world of questions - by indicating an openness to the world. To affect and to be affected is to be in encounter, and to be in encounter is to have already ventured forth. Adventure: far from being enclosed in the interiority of a subject, affect concerns an immediate participation in the events of the world. It is about intensities of experience. What is politics made of, if not adventures of encounter? What are encounters, if not adventures of relation? The moment we begin to speak of affect, we are already venturing into the political dimension of relational encounter. This is the dimension of experience in-the-making. This is the level at which politics is emergent.

In these wide-ranging interviews, Brian Massumi explores this emergent politics of affect, weaving between philosophy, political theory and everyday life. The discussions wend their way 'transversally': passing between the tired oppositions which too often encumber thought, such as subject/object, body/mind and nature/culture. New concepts are gradually introduced to remap the complexity of relation and encounter for a politics of emergence: 'differential affective attunement', 'collective individuation', 'micropolitics', 'thinking-feeling', 'ontopower', 'immanent critique'. These concepts are not offered as definitive solutions. Rather, they are designed to move the inquiry still further, for an ongoing exploration of the political problems posed by affect.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

1. Navigating Movements
Mary Zournazi

2. Of Microperception and Micropolitics
Joel McKim

3. Ideology and Escape
Yubraj Aryal

4. Affective Attunement in the Field Of Catastrophe
Erin Manning, Jonas Fritsch and Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen

5. Immediation
Erin Manning, Christoph Brunner

6. What a Body Can Do
Arno Boehler

In Lieu of a Conclusion