The Plot is more than interesting. It touches something deep within us – the yearning for connection, for conviviality, for joining up with people in a shared place that together we can co-create, a place where community can be meaningfully experienced and strengthened.

I discovered ‘The Plot’ in the early spring. I was alone. Even in it early stages I was a bit astonished by the level of creativity and care so evident in its design. Symbols meaningful to me were embedded, from the gate to the sacred circle to the radiating garden beds that bore such nourishment in the months that followed.

While the artistic invitation of ‘the plot’ created the possibility for a new urban commons, the people who were drawn to it shaped it into a vibrant intergenerational, inter-racial, inter-faith common space where all were welcomed; quite extraordinary, to say the least!

One Sunday, at the gathering for what became the weekly pot-luck feast, I met people from all the major faiths, including people practicing traditional indigenous spiritual traditions. Fifteen languages were in play, maybe more. The youngest was less than four; the eldest I am guessing somewhere in his 9th decade.

The unfolding this space over the months is cause for celebration. But it is more, and not just in a context of one neighborhood.

In the unprecedented period of human history we are living, it is increasingly difficult for more and more people to cope. Climate change, rising inequality, the growing precariousness of work and environmental degradation feed fear, powerlessness, grief and alienation. Loneliness and a growing mental health crisis are symptomatic of the impacts.

Originally a creative art installation that aimed to engage citizens in its creation as well as culinary benefits of a collective food growing experiment, the Plot has been an amazing unfolding of community building and the creating of a new commons. By providing the access to the property, the local government enabled the blossoming of a connective conviviality and new relationships, not to mention the nutritious fresh vegetables I and others were able to regularly harvest.

Citizen led initiatives such as this are a growing trend globally, one often referred to as the commons movement. In cities like Bologna (Italy), Barcelona and Madrid, to name but three, local governments are creating a collaborating environment and policy to actively encourage and respond to citizen led propositions focused on creating commons for citizen and environmental benefit.

It is an idea whose time has come. The plot is clear. The Newton ‘Plot’ not only needs to be have its access to the land extended, the city has an opportunity to use it as a lens through which to explore its local government becoming an active agent in encouraging the multiplication of such initiatives. I hope it does.

Republished from theplot.ca

About the video: The P.L.O.T (Peas. Lettuce. Onions. Tomatoes) is a free food-sharing garden in Surrey (BC, Canada) which connects generations, diverse cultures and socio-economic groups through fresh food, art, culture and a shared sense of wonder of the natural world. Made by Jasmeen Virk, Anna Choi, Yasmeen Hakimi as part of Moving Images course.

The post The Plot: A short documentary on a community garden appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The post Every One Every Day: London neighbourhood resilience and commons at work appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Della Duncan: Welcome Lisi.

Lisi Krall: Thank you Della.

Della Duncan: Let’s start with just a brief introduction about yourself for our listeners.

Lisi Krall: Ok. I am a right now a professor of economics at the . And I concentrate on, I guess you would call ecological economics. But I actually have a lot of disagreement with much of what goes on in ecological economics.

Della Duncan: Yes I’ve seen you associated both with ecological economics and evolutionary economics. So what do those two areas of economics mean to you? And what are the disagreements that you have?

Lisi Krall: The main disagreement that I’ve had with ecological economics is that I actually don’t think ecological economics in a lot of ways has a real good handle on the economic system. There are a lot of ecologists in ecological economics, and it’s always said that economists don’t understand ecology. But I also think that the problem is somewhat the opposite as well, and that is that the ecologists don’t understand enough about the economy to have a real solid understanding of the problematic economic structure we have on our hands.

Della Duncan: And if you were to just briefly describe ecological economics, how you see it? What is ecological economics?

Lisi Krall: Ecological economics basically derives from the basic idea that the Earth is a subsystem of the biosphere and therefore some attention has to be paid to how big this economic system can be. So that’s kind of the starting point. Ecological Economics has gone in two different directions — there are two branches. One is this eco sphere studies branch of ecological economics, and that branch is sort of associated with putting prices on things that aren’t priced in the economy. That’s entirely what it’s about. And it is hardly discernible from standard orthodox economics. It’s the study of externality, public goods, and that sort of thing. There’s really no difference. The other branch of ecological economics, which is the more revolutionary branch, is the branch that talks about the issue of scale. That branch has been very good in talking about the need to limit or end economic growth. But in the conversations about how we might do that — and in particular dealing directly with the problem of whether or not you can have a capitalist system that doesn’t grow — I think that’s where that branch of ecological economics has not been as clear as it needs to be.

So this kind of helps us transition into something that you talk about: ultrasociality. Can you first explain ultrasociality as a concept within the more-than-human world, within animals or insects. What is it in the more ecological sense?

First of all let me just say this that I don’t think that there is an agreement about the definition of ultrasociality, either on the part of evolutionary biologists, or on the part of anthropologists and economists like myself. So I think that it is word that’s used by different people to describe different things in the broader sense. I think it refers to complex societies that have highly articulated divisions of labor and develop into large scale — essentially city states, and practice agriculture. That’s the definition that’s used in our work, the work that I’ve done with John Gowdy. We have adopted that definition. And so ultrasociality I would say is a term that has meaning other than in human societies. To talk about those kinds of societies that occur mostly in other than humans: in ants and termites that practice agriculture.

Della Duncan: Can you describe that? Describe, to an ant, what that is? What the concept is.

Lisi Krall: I’ll take the example of the leaf cutter ant, the Atta ant. They develop into vast, vast colonies that have highly developed, profound divisions of labor. And the divisions of labor in Atta ants are so incredible that they actually change morphologically based on the job that they do.

Della Duncan: Within their lifetime?

Lisi Krall: Yes. Well, I think you get one ant that develops in a certain way it will stay that way, although there is flexibility in terms of tasks that they do as well. But they have this very highly articulated and cohesive division of labor, and what they do is cultivate fungi. They cut and harvest leaves and then they feed the leaves to their fungal gardens, and they themselves then feed on the fungal gardens. And so I call these kinds of things self-referential, they are very expansive. E.O. Wilson refers to the advance of social insects like that as the “the social conquest of the earth.” They are extraordinarily successful and they are what I would consider ultrasocial.

Della Duncan: What do you mean by self-referential?

Lisi Krall: By self-referential I mean that it sort of refers to itself. So you have a very highly differentiated ant colony that will cut leaves and process those leaves and continue to expand as long as they’re not invaded by some kind of bacteria or toxin that ruins the fungal gardens and creates problems for them. And as long as they have the leaves to cut they are extraordinarily expansive. They’re sort of a system unto themselves, that in a sense their dynamic is cordoned off in a way from the exterior world. They kind of refer to themselves. The only reason that I started looking at ants is because a number of years ago John Gowdy came to me and he had become aware of these superorganism ant colonies that practiced agriculture. And so he came to me it was about, I don’t know, four or five years ago? And said to me, “Do you think that it’s possible that the evolutionary dynamic of these species of insect has any similarity to humans when humans made the transition to agriculture” Because one thing we know is that the population dynamic for humans changed dramatically. There are many other things that changed dramatically too but the population dynamic changed dramatically when humans made that transition to agriculture. So I guess I was crazy enough to say, “Well yeah that’s possible. Why don’t we look at it?” And so that led us down this the path of this present project.

Della Duncan: So let’s go into that then. So eight thousand years ago, about the time of the agricultural revolution, what is it that happened from your perspective? For humans — what’s the story that you see now with your research?

Lisi Krall: Well eight to ten thousand years ago humans began the practice of agriculture. And over the ensuing five thousand years after that, what happened to their societies was profound. They went from relatively small bands that lived in mostly equal societies, basically geared toward fitting in with the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human or other-than -human world that surrounds them. That’s not to say that there was no manipulation of the non-human world, but it was modest. Human beings lived as hunters and gatherers — and I think this is something that people don’t think about — not for 5000 years or 10,000 years, or 15,000 years, but literally as anatomically modern humans for something like 150,000 years a long, long, long time. So we became human in that kind of environment. With agriculture you have a human ability to engage agriculture because humans have a capacity for dividing up tasks, communication, and that sort of thing that lends itself to engaging an agricultural economy. And so John and I talked about the division of labor as one of the economic drivers of ultrasociality. And I would say without the capacity to do that, and not every species has that capacity — ants and termites do — But not every species does, without that capacity I think agriculture could not have been engaged and it certainly could not have been engaged to the point where you get, within 5000 years, the development of these vast, highly complex — anthropologists call them state societies. And then we get into this growing of annual grains and mining all of that Pleistocene carbon in the soil. There was a stock of carbon in the soil that we were able to mine and that boosts things, and the division of labor starts, the production of surplus, and the expansion of the division of labor. Hierarchies begin to develop and we’re engaged in a vast, self-referential expansionary system. And then you get the development of markets — and markets have their own institutional, evolutionary dynamic where you go from markets as a place of exchange of surplus to a market economy where the whole purpose of the economy is the production of surplus value, profit, reinvestment, and expansion.

Della Duncan: So let’s unpick the term ultrasociality because it has to do with what you’re talking about. So it doesn’t mean extroversion — that we’re hyper social — or that we’re really outgoing or anything I think people could think that hearing the phrase ultrasociality. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be lonely or isolated within an ultrasocial environment. So can you unpick what ultrasociality means?.

Lisi Krall: Ultrasociality is different than sociality. It has to do with these rather mechanistically articulated kinds of economic systems that take hold, where the individual becomes more of a cog in the machine of producing those annual grains and keeping the society going in that respect. So people are more alienated. They have less personal autonomy. In humans, these societies became extraordinarily hierarchical. I like to think about the fact that within five thousand years, after the onset of agriculture you get the development of these large-scale state societies. Where probably the majority of people lived in some realm of servitude. That’s not a liberating thing. And they are extraordinarily expansive and they are disengaged from the rhythm and dynamic, in some sense, of the other-than-human world. So they’re ecologically destructive. If you look at the global market economy right now, it’s a very expansionary, highly articulated economic system. We would call it a superorganism. And systems like that are extremely difficult to disengage. And one of the reasons that we started looking at agriculture and started looking at this ultrasocial transition, is because we recognized that the altered dynamic that had taken hold with agriculture is still with us. I think about it in this way: when we engaged agriculture the trajectory of our social and economic evolution was altered profoundly. We think it was a major evolutionary transition for humans. So what does that do to the human being? First of all, individual humans become less important and it sets humans up in this vast, self-referential economic system that’s no longer engaged in the rhythm and dynamic of the non-human world. It sets humans up to have this kind of oppositional relationship with the non-human world.

Della Duncan: Not just oppositional but dominant over.

Lisi Krall: Right. We manipulate and control it and dominate it. And it is other than us. Not part of what we are, but other than us. And capitalism is really this kind of self-referential system with this imperative of growth and this internal kind of connectivity that is hell bent on domesticating every last smidgen of the wild earth before it’s done. So we’re involved in a system like that, that is going to leave us alone with ourselves. If you look at our evolutionary history you find that we evolved as human beings in a world where we were basically embedded in this vital, other-than-human world. And we came to know ourselves — what we were individually and how we fit in — through interaction with that varied, robust, non-human world. We as humans have a very long period of maturation. It takes us 20 years to reach maturity. That long stretch of maturation was timed and punctuated with deference to the non-human world. So that we became healthy human beings psychologically through this constant play between us and the non-human world. We came to know ourselves individually, to be able to see ourselves in the complexity of the world. Not to have to dominate, but to be one of many. And so the tragedy for us is that we have this very complicated evolutionary history where on the one hand we do best embedded in a robust other-than-human world. We do best, we’re healthiest in that kind of world. And yet we have this strange part of our social evolution now that has taken us on tract which is going to destroy every bit of the non-human world before we’re done. And so when I look at our present ecological crisis that’s how I see it. It’s a crisis of our own evolution.

Della Duncan: And one aspect of that which you talked about is that our current ecological and economic crisis is not human nature. It’s actually more of this kind of natural selection kind of accident or this kind of evolutionary — I guess what I’m saying is people will say, “Well, you know, we’re inherently selfish.” Or, “Capitalism is just the natural way that we are set to be.” But you’re saying, “No, actually natural selection was a part of it and we haven’t always been this way.”

Lisi Krall: I think human nature is really complicated matter. What is human nature and what isn’t human nature? Let me see if I can touch on kind of a number of things. I think our crisis is not a problem of human nature in the way that that you alluded to in that people often talk about how we’re inherently greedy, exploitative kinds of beings. And that this is the problem. I don’t think that’s true. I think the more serious problem is that we engaged a kind of social evolution, that started with agriculture, that put us on a path of expansion and interconnectedness and ultimately, in humans, hierarchy, and all that kind of stuff. That is a really difficult path to disengage now. Agriculture couldn’t have been engaged if humans didn’t have some kind of inherent capacity for task allocation, sociality. So there is an element of social evolution. What traits we have that allow for that kind of system to get going. But engaging that kind of system itself is a different evolutionary proposition. It has to do with the evolution of groups and cooperation. And so when we engaged agriculture we took off on this altered kind of trajectory. It’s not human nature in the sense that it’s about the evolution of a group and the force of group selection in human evolution, in a sense. But, I mean, that is a natural process that takes place. And so I suppose I sort of shy away from talking about human nature. It’s part of an evolutionary process, but we have a complicated evolutionary history, and evolution doesn’t just play out at the at the level of the individual. It also plays out at the level of the group. And so I would say that. Okay, so now on to Adam Smith and “capitalism as natural”. That too is a complicated proposition. Adam Smith thought that the market economy was the natural order of society because it takes our innate human tendencies and puts them together in an organized way, where people can be selfish because we have an innate tendency for selfishness, and that that selfishness is channeled into a socially optimal outcome. Adam Smith thought human beings have a natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. He thought there was a natural human tendency to markets. So what do you get with capitalism? You get the development of markets. You get that development of exchange. People can pursue their self-interest and at the end of the day what do you get? Everybody gets what they want in the amounts that they want for the lowest possible price — if you have competition. Right. He thought it was natural order. Is it a natural order? I do think there’s something in our evolutionary history that puts us on a path of having these kinds of finely articulated, expansionary systems that started with agriculture. And they can take a variety of forms depending on the institutional clothing that humans give them. There is kind of a natural tendency in that respect. Now having said that, people need to understand that evolution is not necessarily about perfection. It can’t see ahead. And it is quite possible that we’ve been placed on an evolutionary dead end. So I don’t look at the process of evolution as something that is constantly creating ever more perfect outcomes. Evolution responds to the immediate circumstances. Things get selected or not based on whether they’re good at that moment. There’s no question that agricultural societies had a selective advantage. Ten thousand years later, can we honestly say that global capitalism and expansionary, highly interconnected systems are a good thing? No. But that’s where we’ve ended up.

Della Duncan: It really brings up for me the Native American concept of the Seventh Generation thinking. You know, what if all decisions and ideas that we made had this kind of real, futuristic thinking of how this would affect seven generations for now. So I wonder about that. And I also think about our being able to have a conversation about our own evolution. I’m imagining, is the difference between us and termites, or ants, the way that we have an ability to change it? I’m wondering if our awareness of this and the fact that we were organized in a different way, than maybe we have the potential to organize yet again in a different way? Can our awareness be that opportunity for change?

Lisi Krall: Well, you asked the ten thousand dollar question, and that is whether we have the capacity to reflect, and through that reflection to alter the path that we’re on. I don’t know the answer to that question. We also have things that ants and termites don’t have. We have institutional fabric, private property laws, the development of markets, methods of redistribution of income, and I could go on and on about the institutional fabric that humans have. We also have the capacity for technological change, and the creation of institutions and technological change makes us very different than ants and termites. It actually creates a situation where things might be even more problematic for us because of these institutions. We have this infinite variety of cultures that we can adopt. But once you adopt one it has a lot of staying power. So it’s actually hard to change institutions. And technological change, and the structure of technology at a given moment in time, is very difficult to alter. Look at the challenge of trying to change our energy economy. We have this entrenched kind of fossil fuel structure — very difficult to change. Not impossible, but it is difficult. So do we have the capacity? Well, we have all kinds of localized movements — movements of localization. And an extensive conversation about sustainability. We certainly have an ability to reflect and understand that this is not sustainable, that this path we’re on is not sustainable. But I think it is extremely difficult to dismantle a complex system like we have, because when you start pulling the threads you don’t know where you’re going to end up. And each and every one of us is articulated in some way with this system. So I think, yes, through reflection we can try to create different institutions, try to create change, and try to create different incentives and a different kind of system. Whether that will be sufficient to assuage the sixth great mass extinction, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question. And I don’t think anybody does. I always feel bad because I think, well, that doesn’t sound very hopeful. But I think that it’s important for us to understand the problematic economic structure that we have on our hands, and how difficult it is to undo that. And I don’t think people think about that enough.

Della Duncan: So what has been the response that you’ve gotten as you’ve uncovered this and as you’ve shared some of this thinking?

Lisi Krall: I think generally people want a message of hope, and I don’t necessarily think that the work that I’ve done offers a message of hope. What it offers is some serious thinking about the nature of economic structure and the complexity of it. When people ask me what my research is, I say, “well, I’ve come to the conclusion that humans evolved like ants and we’re screwed.” [Laughs] I get deer in the headlights eyes. Like, “What!?” Or even just the proposition that we have a lot to learn about our social evolution by looking at social insects. People don’t believe that’s true. If you want to talk about our sociality and talk about primates, people are open to talking about that. They see that connection. And yet I think that there’s as much to learn by looking at the evolution of social insects for human beings as there is by looking at primates, in terms of our sociality. I think that’s hard for people to embrace. Because you look at an ant and they’re so different than we are, for one thing. And then you look at those superorganism colonies, and for most people they find them kind of creepy. And so we look at those and we say to ourselves, “We’re nothing like that.” And yet I think it’s actually a case of convergent evolution that’s going on.

Della Duncan: So as we get into this more involved conversation of evolution, I know that you’ve described yourself as a closet evolutionary biologist, and I know this is partially because this idea of evolutionary biology, often referred to as sociobiology, can have some problems or challenges. It can connect with issues of biological determinism. Can you discuss this a bit and maybe just define the field of sociobiology?

Lisi Krall: Well, I think it means in a simple way that there’s a biological basis for social behavior. But sociobiology developed into things like social Darwinism — sort of survival of the fittest where you could justify the power of the robber barons because they were somehow better adapted and they won that competitive battle. I mean, I have problem with that kind of sociobiology. Also as a social scientist you don’t want to say behavior is genetically encoded. You can have all kinds of problematic plays on that right. Because then you can start to say, “Well, women are going to behave in certain ways because this is how they’re built. Men are going to behave in other ways.” We don’t like social scientists to do that — to think in those terms. But I guess for me I started to confront questions which didn’t have any easy answers. And I found I think the kinds of questions we are confronting right now, like the question of how we reckon this vast global economic system with a limited planet. How did we come to this? I don’t think those kinds of questions can be answered well unless you’re willing to go into interdisciplinary work. So interdisciplinary work provides the most fertile ground for trying to think about what happened to us, what the possibilities are for change, and how we might change. You know, for example, we have conversations about the energy transition and making the transition to renewable energy. I’m all for transitioning to renewable energy. Don’t get me wrong. But conversations about transitioning to renewable energy without conversations about employment, without conversations about what kind of world we want, what should the relationship with humans be with the non-human world, how much of this planet do we want to domesticate, what are the advantages to downsizing. Those are conversations that we never have when we talk about this transition to renewable energy. And in some sense the transition to renewable energy in that way is no more enlightened than talking about clean coal, because it’s a technological solution to what is actually a profound social and evolutionary problem.

Della Duncan: Particularly if we maintain the same level of consumption and try to have the same level of growth.

Lisi Krall: Yeah.

Della Duncan: So you’re questioning the goals of the system and what it means to live a meaningful life.

Lisi Krall: What it means to live a meaningful life and how do human beings — and I’ll use Wes Jackson’s words here — once again become a “species in context.” Because Wes says that with agriculture we became a species out of context. And he’s right. Our job here is not simply to map out a road to some kind of vague sustainability with renewable energy. That’s not what we want to do. It’s not going to be enough either. It’s not going to be enough and it’s not where we want to end up.

Della Duncan: It’s not fulfilling.

Lisi Krall: It’s not fulfilling. And, you know, at some level — and I know this sounds simplistic — but I look at the non-human world and I see such magic. I think about the sources of human imagination. That’s where they mostly come from. And that’s not a deep ecology perspective. I mean that’s a human centered perspective. Why in the world would we want to end up without that? I don’t think it’ll be the end of the world. Whatever happens to us. But it could be really tragic.

Della Duncan: It will bring about a lot of human and more-than human suffering.

Della Duncan: Yes. And a much less interesting world. And why would we want to do that? And yet how do we dismantle the structure and dynamic of this system? And so I want to see the conversations about ending growth ferreted out more carefully. Everybody knows we need it. That’s nothing new. The question is how we do that. And that goes back to your question: do we have that capacity? Do we have the capacity to change? And I think that’s the ten thousand dollar question. I don’t know the answer to that question. I think we should take seriously the power and evolutionary significance of a vast system like we have. It’s no small matter to change that dynamic at this point.

Della Duncan: And maybe it’s already changing as well? Maybe if we start to look for it and we start to bring out the stories or the examples where it is changing, it will kind of grow? And you mentioned localization — and so there’s localization. There’s also de-growth or steady state economy movements. And then also the change from GDP to Gross National Happiness — those types of movements. It’s almost like we haven’t found a new system, like the next system, or a new economic system, but that at some there’s multiple places of intervention that are being tried around the world. Different points, different attempts. It’s almost like a holistic approach.

Lisi Krall: I think that’s true. And I also think that the system itself has many contradictions and those contradictions lead to significant problems from time to time. So I think right now about kind of the movement of technology, the financialization of the economic system. The increased inequality. That creates some significant contradictions in the system because that’s not sustainable for the way this system has to work. You have to have people spending money on the things that are produced. If you’re producing things without people — and people are making a lot of profits on them — and you don’t have people with enough money to buy what’s produced you…I mean it’s a simple kind of circular flow problem. You’ll have a crisis. You’re going to have a crisis. And so I think that the system itself is unstable. It expands and it contracts. And now we’re in this period of what seems to be secular stagnation. Employment is a greater challenge in a period of secular stagnation. So we have that kind of ongoing problem and contradiction. And I do not believe that lowering taxes on corporations and the rich is going to resolve that problem.

Della Duncan: One thing that I like to do is try to connect the conversations with ways that individuals who are listening can really think about in their own lives, or change their own behavior potentially — just invitations for people. Based on what you’re saying, I’m really seeing an appreciation for foraging and relearning skills from the wild, like bushcraft and foraging. That kind of connection to nature that’s not just a garden or that’s not agriculture. That learning about place, and learning about natural seasons and things like that, and medicine, and all that kind of stuff. So Foraging and connection to nature. Another thing is I really do think that there is something with this idea of changing from growth to well-being, and looking at how can we change the goals of our economic systems from growth to well-being. Or to really explore steady state economics or degrowth, and understand that growth without regard to our planetary boundaries is a problem. People you’ve talked to have a hard time seeing themselves — seeing the relation between themselves and an ant. And being that cog in the machine, which I can imagine doesn’t feel good to me — to acknowledge the similarity. So what about an invitation to see one’s work as more of right livelihood, or to see one’s work as more purpose-driven, or to challenge ourselves to think about how can we live more in line with our integrity or our greater purpose. To just start to break out of that mentality of, “I’m just a cog in the machine,” and actually to look at our agency, our capabilities, what we see as our passion or purpose? And then the final invitation to people is around this idea that it’s not that we have cooperation as an innate capability or not. It’s what we use our cooperation for. What are we cooperating to create. And so to really invite people to cooperate to build on those qualities, to leave our children or future generations with the qualities of altruism, of giving, of cooperation — for these kinds of goals of well-being, of connection to nature, of harmony, of connection to the more-than-human, other-than-human world. Really seeing what it is that we leave beyond. And also what are we cooperating for, what are the goals that we’re working towards, the vision that we see. For me, hearing what you’re saying, maybe these can be invitations for people to explore in their own lives. What do you think? Is there anything that you would?

Lisi Krall: Well I think you articulated it in a very wonderful way. It’s a challenge for a more reflective existence, a more critical existence, in a world that doesn’t encourage it. What I would add to that is that I think people also need to pay attention to system-wide change, because it isn’t clear to me that those kinds of changes will change the system. It may change your participation in it. But it’s not clear to me that it’ll change the system. A starting point for system change, for example, is a much, much more expansive social welfare system. So when you engage in the push for expanding things like Social Security, opportunities for students to educate themselves without ending up two hundred thousand dollars in debt, having good quality, affordable child care, healthcare, maternity leave — all those kinds of things that an advanced economy ought to be able to offer. Once you put in place those kinds of things. Then people are able to think more critically about what they do. Because right now people are so harried and worried and stressed that it’s hard for them to stop and hear a bird song, you know? So, I think the broader kind of structural changes, I would say, in distribution, in the social safety net — let’s stop having the conversation of renewable energy in isolation. Let’s connect that conversation directly to the problem of employment for people. What’s connected to growth. Let’s take it out of this unimaginative, technological solution realm so that we can start to think about structural changes, in addition to the kinds of things that you’re talking about. Those are just a couple of things. I mean I could go on and on. I’d say in every revolutionary action that you take, reflect on how it interfaces with this vast system. Does it confront it? Or is it merely a way to keep it going? Because unless we can change the dynamic of this vast system, all of our individual actions — and I’m not saying they’re not virtuous or valuable — but I don’t know that at the end of the day they’re going to change the course of history. But I’m not the most optimistic person that’s ever walked the planet, you understand that right? I’ve been studying ants for too long. [Laughs]

Photo by patrickkavanagh

The post New Ecological Economics: Superorganism and Ultrasociality appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Bec Sanderson: Today PIRC, the New Economics Foundation, NEON and the FrameWorks Institute are launching two story strategies that progressives can use to shift thinking on the economy. They’re built on values and metaphors that encourage the hope that change is possible and increase people’s support for progressive policies.

Download the report

Why we need new stories

Dominant economic narratives have gripped the public imagination and paved the way for regressive economic, social and environmental policies. Without the framing resources and co-ordination to challenge these narratives, campaigners often score own-goals when they talk about the economy.

The austerity story, based on the belief that Labour’s overspending ‘maxed out’ the nation’s credit card and left Britain in a mess, has been used to justify a regime of cuts to public spending that persisted in spite of the horrific social consequences and sluggish economic performance. More recently, the Brexit story has harnessed an unholy alliance between anti-immigrant sentiment and an aspiration for national self-reliance in order to ‘take back control’ from distant Brussels elites.

In the face of these stories, campaigners have often been on the back foot, using language that they haven’t shaped (like ‘Labour’s mess’), relying on oppositional politics (e.g. anti-cuts) and experimenting with frames(e.g. the ‘game is rigged’) without knowing how to use them most strategically –  rather than asserting their own vision of the economy.

How research can help us frame more effectively

Framing research projects can help campaigners be on the front foot, figuring out exactly what they want to say and how. In Framing the Economy, movement-building was an explicit aim alongside the empirical research: seeking to build up much needed coordination, resilience and support between movement spokespeople.

Working with the FrameWorks Institute, NEF, NEON and a large network of campaigners, journalists and press officers, we went through the key stages of framing research (more detail here).

First, we figured out our ‘untranslated story’: what we wanted to say, positively, about the values, principles and policies that a new economy should be based on. Next, we carried out extensive research into how people across the UK were thinking about the economy. We found that people thought of the economy a bit like a bucket—some people fill it up and others drain it out—a metaphor that lends itself to an simplistic understanding that the ‘economically unproductive’ (i.e. anyone not working right now) are the problem. However, people also had a strong belief that the economy is rigged to serve the interests of a nefarious and coordinated elite, and that this is dangerous and wrong. Coming away from this research, the biggest barrier to change didn’t seem to us to be people’s analysis of the problem. Fatalism— the attitude of ‘yes, we know that there are problems, but there’s nothing we can do’—seemed to pose a bigger barrier.

We looked for areas of alignment and divergence between these themes and our ‘untranslated story’ in order to identify the key framing challenge: to communicate that the economy is a product of design, and can therefore be redesigned.  We used this to develop a series of values, metaphors and policies, testing them with interviews and national surveys to see whether or not they worked.

The two stories we recommend

The following two approaches differ in tone and emphasis, but both work towards the same goals, complementing each other in a wider framing strategy.

 1: Resisting Corporate Power

“Over the last forty years, our government has become a tool of corporations and banks, prioritising the interests of the wealthy rather than giving equal weight to the needs of everyone. We need to reprogramme our economy so that it works in the interests of society rather than just in the interest of corporate elites.”

This story centres on how the economy is both unfair and broken and lays blame squarely on corporate power and wealthy elites. It argues that the economic system has been unfairly influenced by a powerful few for their own benefit, and that this manipulation is the source of the economy’s problems. This story draws either on the value of Economic Strength or the value of Equality as the rationale for supporting progressive policies and uses a reprogramming metaphor to show how the economy has been intentionally designed—and can be redesigned— through policy decisions.

 2: Meeting our Needs

A good society makes it possible for everyone to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life. Yet, our society is currently focused solely on profit, and people are forced to chase money rather than happiness. The laws and policies that we make lay down tracks that determine where the economy takes people. Right now, our economy is built around profit rather than being built to get people to their true needs.”

This story brings into focus the priorities of individuals and society. By drawing on the value of Fulfillment, this story identifies deeper needs—beyond the need to make money—and makes the case for an economy that prioritises happiness and fulfillment over profit. It utilises a metaphor of Economic Tracks to illustrate the significant role the economy plays in structuring opportunities, making it clear that society’s current priorities result from the way the economy has been designed.

Next steps

We hope, in using these stories, that campaigners and progressive spokespeople can build greater support for an economy based on equality, community, and stewardship of the environment.

Download our report to read our findings and recommendations in full!

Contact Bec to talk about PIRC’s ongoing research on framing strategies for a new economy.

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Sean Keller: In Rojava, a region in Syria also known as North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological vitality is taking place. Devastated by civil war, Syria is a place where a cessation of hostilities often seems like the most that can be hoped for. But Rojava has set its sights much higher. What started as a movement for political autonomy in the city of Kobane has blossomed into an attempt to build a radical pluralist democracy on the principles of communal solidarity — with food security, equality for women, and a localized, anti-capitalist economy at its core.

The Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) has been at the heart of Rojava’s democratic revolution since its inception. The Movement grew out of single-issue campaigns against dam construction, climate change, and deforestation, and in 2015 went from being a small collection of local ecological groups to a full-fledged network of “ecology councils” that are active in every canton of Rojava, and in neighboring Turkey as well. Its mission, as one of its most prominent founding members, Ercan Ayboğa, says, is to “strengthen the ecological character of the Kurdish freedom movement [and] the Kurdish women’s movement”.

It’s not an easy process. Neoliberal policies, war, and climate change have made for an impressive roster of challenges. Crop diversity has been undermined due to longstanding subsidies for monocultures. Stocks of native seeds are declining. The region has been hit by trade embargoes from Turkey, Iraq, and the central Syrian government, and villages have been subject to forced displacement and depopulation. Groundwater reserves are diminishing, and climate change is reducing rainfall. Many wells and farms were destroyed by the self-described Islamic State (ISIS), and many farmers have been killed by mines. Much of the region is without electricity. And there has been an influx of refugees from the rest of Syria, fleeing civil war.

As MEM sees it, the solutions to these overlapping problems must be holistic and systemic. Ercan gives an impressive rundown of MEM’s priorities: Decreasing Rojava’s dependence on imports, returning to traditional water-conserving cultivation techniques, advocating for ecological policy-making at the municipal level, promoting local crops and livestock and traditional construction methods, organizing educational activities, working against destructive and exploitative “investment” and infrastructure projects such as dams and mines — in short, “the mobilization of an ecological resistance” towards anything guilty of “commercializing the waters, commodifying the land, controlling nature and people, and promoting the consumption of fossil fuels”.

In 2016, MEM published a declaration of its social and ecological aims, and it is a thing of beauty. “We must defend,” it says, “the democratic nation against the nation-state; the communal economy against capitalism, with its quick-profit-seeking logic and monopolism and large industries; organic agriculture, ecological villages and cities, ecological industry, and alternative energy and technology against the agricultural and energy policies imposed by capitalist modernity.”

Getting children involved in all of this is critical. Schools in Rojava teach ecology as a fundamental principle. In 2016, with the support of Slow Food International and the Rojava Ministry of Water and Agriculture, MEM helped build a series of school gardens in villages around the city of Kobane, in order to provide a ‘laboratory’ for children to learn about the region’s biodiversity and how to care for it. These gardens are growing fruit trees, figs, and pomegranates, instead of corn and wheat monocultures. Some have been planted on land that was once virtually destroyed by ISIS. In Rojava, even cultivation comes inherently infused with a spirit of resistance. “We grew up on this land and we haven’t abandoned it,” says Mustafa, a teacher whose school was one of those to receive a new garden in 2016. “As a people of farmers and livestock breeders, we have always tended the crops using our own techniques, which are thousands of years old.” As the MEM declaration says, “Bringing ecological consciousness and sensibility to the organized social sphere and to educational institutions is as vital as organizing our own assemblies.”

The spirit of resistance is as alive in the realm of society and economics as it is on the land. The cooperative economy in Rojava is booming. Michel Knapp, a longtime activist in the Kurdish freedom movement and co-author of the book Revolution in Rojava, observes that most cooperatives in Rojava are “small, with some five to ten members producing textiles, agricultural products and groceries, but there are some bigger cooperatives too, like a cooperative near Amûde that guarantees most of the subsistence for over 2,000 households and is even able to sell on the market.”

The government of Rojava is democratic and decentralized, with residential communes and local councils giving people autonomy and control over decisions that affect their lives. Municipal-level government bodies are systematically integrated into the operations of MEM, in a one-of-a-kind partnership between the public and nonprofit spheres. And the prison system is being radically reformed, with local ‘peace committees’ paying attention to the social and political dimensions of crime in passing judgment. Most cities contain no more than one or two dozen prisoners, according to Ercan.

And to top it all, women have taken a leading role in every facet of the revolution. Women’s cooperatives are a common sight in Rojava, as are women’s councils, women’s committees, and women’s security forces. Women’s ecovillages have been built both in Rojava and across the border in Turkish Kurdistan, aimed at helping victims of domestic violence and trauma. Patriarchy is just one more aspect of the neoliberal program being cast aside in Rojava, on the road towards building what MEM describes as “a radical democratic, communal, ecological, women-liberated society.”

This piece was originally published on Medium as part of Local Futures’ Planet Local webseries.

Read about other holistic ecological initiatives from around the world on our Planet Local: Ecology page.

Dig deeper into Rojava and the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement on the following pages (the source material for much of this piece):

• ‘The revolution in Rojava: an eyewitness account’. Article published by ROAR Magazine; October 2016. https://roarmag.org/essays/revolution-rojava-pluto-book/
• Final Declaration of the First Conference of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement; April 2016. http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/mesop-ecology-mvmt/
• ‘Kobane: An eco-challenge for humanity’. Article published by Slow Food International; December 2016. https://www.slowfood.com/kobane-an-eco-challenge-for-humanity/
• The official website of MEM (in Turkish): http://www.mezopotamyaekoloji.org/

Lead image: Hasankeyf, a predominantly Kurdish historic town in Turkey, and the proposed site of a large hydroelectric dam which would threaten the local ecosystem and water supply. MEM has been active in opposing the project

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From the video description:

Jointly produced by 8 Latin American organisations and edited by Radio Mundo Real, the documentary “Seeds: commons or corporate property?” draws on the experiences and struggles of social movements for the defence of indigenous and native seeds in Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, Colombia, and Guatemala.

The main characters are the seeds – indigenous, native, ours- in the hands of rural communities and indigenous peoples. The documentary illustrates that the defence of native seeds is integral to the defence of territory, life, and peoples’ autonomy. It also addresses the relationship between indigenous women and native seeds, as well as the importance of seed exchanges within communities. Exploring the historical origins of corn, and the appreciation and blessing of seeds by Mayan communities, this short film shows the importance of seeds in ceremonies, markets and exchanges.

Local experiences of recovery and management of indigenous seeds demonstrate the significant and ongoing struggles against seed laws, against UPOV and the imposition of transgenic seeds. Whilst condemning the devastation that such laws bring, this film captures the peoples’ resistance to the advancement of agribusiness.

The documentary is available in Spanish; with English, Portuguese and French subtitles. We invite you to watch it and to share it widely in order to continue defending the seeds which have become both peoples’ heritage, and which serve humankind on the path towards food sovereignty.

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Common Weal: Submission to Planning Bill stage 1 consultation

THE Scottish Government should change Planning laws so that the public-sector captures the uplift in land value that is derived from public investment in the land to finance a new generation of public housebuilding in Scotland, Common Weal has argued.

‘Public Land Value Capture: A new model for housing development in Scotland’ can be accessed in full here.

In a submission to the Scottish Government’s consultation on stage 1 of its Planning Bill, which closes today, Common Weal proposes that: “Public authorities should have the legal means to purchase land at existing use value, so that the uplift in land value from planning permission for development of the land is captured for the public good. The effect of this will be to reduce the cost of land for development considerably, as planning permission can increase the value of land by one-hundred fold or more.”

A similar idea was cited in The Guardian on Thursday (1 February) as being under consideration by the Labour party UK-wide, but it would be possible for the Scottish Parliament to amend the Planning Bill to introduce this now in Scotland.

The proposal would mean public authorities would identify simplified development zones which would be priority areas for public-led development, especially for housing. The land in these zones would be purchased at existing use value, rather than the current policy of purchasing the land at the anticipated future value once planning permission is granted (known as ‘hope value’).

Public authorities would borrow against the future uplift in land value from the granting of planning permission to develop the site. This borrowed sum could then be used to fund the master-planning, infrastructure and construction of public-rental housing, while some plots could be sold-off to the private sector at a profit. Either way, the reductions in land costs would eliminate land speculation in the development process and increase the affordability and quality of housing development. According to the ONS, the cost of land has risen enormously in the UK over the past 20 years, from £1.5 trillion in 1995 to £6.8 trillion in 2016.

A similar approach, cited in the paper, is currently utilised in the Netherlands and Germany, where the cost of housing is significantly cheaper than in Scotland. It was also used in the UK after the second world war, including to build Scotland’s New Towns, but was repealed in 1959.

Robin McAlpine, Common Weal Director, said of the submission:

“The benefit that would come to Scotland from being able to build high-quality, affordable public rental housing by letting the public sector buy land at a fair price and not the crazily inflated prices of the out-of-control housing market would be enormous. Developers making huge profits from doing nothing more than buying land and then pocketing the value that public planning permission adds to that land has loaded extra cost on the mortgage of every homeowner in Scotland. It is time for the public to take back control.”

Common Weal head of policy, stated:

“Unlocking land to make it work for the public good rather than to be speculated upon is the key to transforming the housing system in Scotland. To do this we only need to re-learn the lessons of the past, lessons that countries like Germany and the Netherlands have never forgotten – that the financial value contained in the granting of planning permission is a public good, one that the public should benefit from when it invests in the land.

“This simple idea was written into UK Government legislation after the second world war and made a major contribution to building a new generation of public housing in that era, including Scotland’s New Towns like Cumbernauld and East Kilbride. Now, with land values more than tripling over the past 20 years, it is essential to introduce this public land value capture policy again, and it is within the Scottish Parliament’s power to amend the Planning Bill to make this happen.”

Photo by ralky

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