Activist in residency (in motherhood)
What is it?
This is a self-directed residency taking place during my parental leave. Over the next few months, between nap times and playing with my infant son, I’d like to investigate:
Small utopias. What does “a better world” mean to me? What intellectual and historical predecessors does my understanding of utopia build upon? What contributions should I make towards this utopia? Which actions will most positively impact my family, my neighborhood and the communities I’m a part of?
I will conduct this inquiry through reading, reflective writing, conversing with mentors and peers, as well as open sourcing relevant assets and outputs. The residency doesn’t cost anything and isn’t hosted by anybody. It is simply intended to give my wandering mind a structure and a space to refresh my activism and renew my sense of personal and professional purpose while caring for a tiny human being.
Inspiration for this residency comes from @lenkaclayton’s amazingly open-sourced artist in residency in motherhood that was thoughtfully shared to me by Chris Lawrence.
Motivation
For the last ten years, I have been driven by the ideals of open culture and the open internet. I worked for organizations who fought for those ideals and built projects that tried to embody them. I contributed to open design and maker communities. I wrote about how open practices benefit learning, making and community organizing. I researched how openness could lead to better connected devices and how open event formats make communities more inclusive and impactful. I championed making all of human knowledge as free and open as possible, in all of the world’s languages, because this seemed to me one of the most peaceful ways to cultivate understanding and cooperation among people everywhere.
Openness used to be my utopia. Now I’m not sure.
There have been horrific political developments in the last few years. In combination with the perils of climate change, economic inequality, and the erosion of privacy, we seem to be in an general global hangover. Openness is not enough.
Becoming a mother has given me the gift of perspective. It is a chance to pause and question anew what world do I want to live in and what am I doing to get there.
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace was published in 1999. Wikipedia and Creative Commons both began in 2001. Firefox was released in 2004. They use open practices and the internet as a foundation for creating a better world. I see them with deep respect and as great achievements proving that new forms of creation and organization are possible. But they are also incomplete.
In the years since the Free Culture movement began, many other social movements have bloomed: the Arab Spring, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo to name a few. They bring other political dimensions and social issues to the fore. In parallel, there’s a growing need for more sustainable ways of producing goods under fairer conditions. The modern craft movement and new social enterprises are modeling these alternatives.
In my residency, I’d like to find who’s out there making the world “better”, engage critically to understand what that means and how they got there, and come out the other side with a sharper sense of purpose. All in the company of a little boy who will probably teach me even more than I can fathom.
Syllabus
Capitalism and the next economy.
What are the economic philosophies that underpin our society? How have these economic systems been rationalized in the past, and how has that changed or been challenged over time? What role does property play? Debt? Digital/virtual vs. physical goods? What assumptions are required to make these systems run? How do they disadvantage some people while favoring others? What are promising alternatives?
- David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
- Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States
- Murray Bookchin: Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- Noam Chomsky: Occupy
- The Big Short.
- Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
- A Contest of Ideas: Capital, Politics and Labor
- Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property
- Yochai Benkler: The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
- The Third Industrial Revolution
- John Thackara: How to thrive in the next economy
- Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything
- Ed Mayo: A short history of co-operation and mutuality
Empire and digital colonialism.
How has imperialism shaped our understanding of utopia? Who profits and who suffers when pursuing territory or expanding a civilization? Does utopia require “new land”? What mechanisms are used to claim and control resources? What are the historical precedents from colonialism that are being applied today digitally? What are successful forms of resistance to empire?
- Adam Hochschild: King Leopold’s Ghost
- Michela Wrong: I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
- Thomas Pakenham: The Scramble for Africa
- Pankaj Mishra: From the Ruins of Empire
- Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, Alastair Smith: The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me
- Renata Avila, Alan Mills, Nanjira Sambuli, Joana Varon: Digital colonialism: a global overview
- Andrés Guadamuz: Digital colonialism and Decentralisation
- Can Facebook Connect the Next Billion?
- Zeynep Tufekci: Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
Philosophy of technology: utopianism, determinism and progressivism
What role does technology play in defining “a better world”? What are the prevailing themes and critiques today of technology’s role and its makers? How can social values be prioritized when evaluating technology? How can these values be embedded, rather than retrofitted?
- Andrew Feenberg: Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited
- Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron: The Californian Ideology
- Annalee Newitz: Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
- James Hughes: Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future
- Mark Dery: Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture
- Donna Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto
- Frederic Laloux: Reinventing Organizations
- Angela Nagle: Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right
Urbanism, neighborhood activism and the “smart city”.
How does our built environment affect our imagination of utopias and our ability to organize towards them? What are the prevailing visions for an ideal city? What role should digital technologies play? How should they be governed? Who is doing compelling organizing in my neighborhood and what does that look like?
- Jane Jacobs: Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life
- Richard Sennett: Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation
- Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
- Adam Greenfield: Radical Technologies
- A Blueprint for Survival
- Bizem Kiez
- Stadt von Unten
- Changing Cities e.V.
- Kleine Kreuzberg-Geschichte
- Amber A’Lee Frost:All Worked Up and Nowhere to Go
Human development and critical pedagogy.
How do humans develop psychologically and socially? How are these stages reflected in society? How are they thwarted or fostered? How do we cultivate “human potential” throughout a lifetime? How do utopias speak to human development? What role does institutional education play in shaping our understanding of what’s possible and what is desirable?
- Remo H. Largo: Die Baby Jahre
- Paulo Freire: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- The Forbidden Education
- Friedrich Fröbel: Die Menschenerziehung
- Maria Montessori: The Montessori Method
- Rafael A. Calvo and Dorian Peters: Positive Computing: Technology for Wellbeing and Human Potential
Craft, degrowth and socially responsible making.
How does our vision of utopia get reflected in the design and production of goods? How do we create in a way that emphasizes degrowth? What are the practices and predecessors for responsible making? How can design contribute to social change?
- Douglas Rushkoff: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
- David Pye: The Nature and Art of Workmanship
- Peter Korn: Why We Make Things and Why it Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
- Enzo Mari: Autoprogettazione
- Victor Papanek: Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change
- Dan Hon: No one’s coming. It’s up to us.
Utopias and social critique in literature
How are utopias portrayed in literature? How are narratives used to bring utopian ideas to life? What are contemporary utopian approaches in literature? What other forms does social critique in literature take?
- Pamela Bedore: Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature
- Thomas More: Utopia
- Joan Didion: White Album
- Tom Wolfe: The New Journalism Anthology
- Sunvault: Solarpunk Anthology
- Ursula Le Guin: The Dispossessed
Syllabus updated Feb 23. Thank you to Bekka, Alper, Ame, Brett, Jen, Jon, Chris, Mark, Mushon, Hannes, John, David, and Peter for their reading recs! Check out my Github repository as well.
Think there’s something I should add? Ping me @thornet.
