Course Overview

Drawing of a sunrise over mountains. Text: "Another world is possible." — Note: The phrase "another world is possible" is the unofficial slogan for the World Social Forum Links to an external site., and is also used by the alter-globalization movement Links to an external site., Occupy Links to an external site., and a wide variety of movements that descend from them. It is in direct contradistinction to Margaret Thatcher's slogan: "there is no alternative." Links to an external site.

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What this class is about

In this class we will learn about people who have organized themselves and their economy in cooperative, humane, and equitable ways. We will look at cooperative enterprises, the solidarity economy, physical and digital commons, and the organizations that spring up during disasters. Lessons learned from these examples offer ways to create a more liberated world based in racial, climate, and economic justice.

In the dominant imagination, people can only be organized in two ways—by hierarchies or in competition. Either someone is in charge, or everyone fights it out. Organizationally, this narrows the choices to the chain-of-command style organization of corporations, governments, and military, or the dog-eat-dog rivalry of the market. Either choice can have negative consequences for those involved. Worse, these options do not make much room for solidarity and autonomy, let alone care and justice. There is little room to imagine how all individuals and communities can thrive.

Alternatives are available. Cooperation is a ubiquitous, if unrecognized, part of daily life. It is also a principle that has been the basis of successful, large- and small-scale organizations. The submerged history of cooperation can expand our collective imagination about the possibilities of social, political, and economic organization. This history also offers a toolbox of models, design patterns, and techniques for creating new forms of organization. This expanded imagination and toolbox can be the foundation for a militant optimism about creating a just and sustainable world.

Take this class if...

You are curious about alternative forms of organization and economy. There is a rich history and lively present of organizations that are built along lines that are distinct from hierarchy, competition, bureaucracy, and corporate capitalism. Although often assumed to be marginal, fringe, or unrealistic, people have used (and continue to use) these forms to make decisions, coordinate activities, produce and distribute goods, and form communities. Making these alternatives more visible is one step in re-inventing the world.

You want to explore an open area of knowledge. Although there are many people studying and working on these questions, it is far from a closed field. There is no definitive textbook with answers at the back. In fact, many people doing this work are interested in encouraging a proliferation of ideas, experiments, and possibilities, so remaining open and not knowing the answers is a highly valued trait. We will join these folks to explore an area where there is much to be discovered.

You want to see the possibility of a better world. In this class, we'll explore the terrain of "militant optimism Links to an external site.." This phrase comes from philosopher Ernst Bloch and refers to a conscious stance toward the world and politics that insists on seeing possibilities and believing in the importance of intervening to bring them about, even while recognizing and confronting injustice, suffering, and danger. It is a stance that can be a counterbalance to anxiety, fear, and resentment. It is also a useful complement to critique.

You want to practice collaboration and cooperation. We will try to follow the principles and lessons of the cooperative moments we are studying. As a learning community, we will seek to create a space where we can support each other's learning and grow in ways that none of us could alone. We will learn practical techniques to create healthy, cooperative groups. We will also work together on a collaborative wiki that will collect the lessons and observations of the class.

Course Activities

See the syllabus for the week-by-week readings and activities.

Reading. The starting point for the class will be a series of books and articles that explore a variety of perspectives, stories, and aspects of cooperation. We will have 60-90 pages of reading a week. These readings themselves will form the foundation from which we will discuss, explore, and build. We will also practice ways of reading and understanding material quickly and efficiently, mapping out ideas and stories, and putting material into larger conversations. All of these skills will make reading in any class easier and more effective.

At-home activities. We will regularly have at-home activities in which you will explore connections within and beyond the reading, informally interview people, go on virtual and (maybe) physical scavenger hunts, and think about your own experience and interests. These will be ungraded, but will form another basis for in-class work.

Class meetings. Our weekly meetings will be part seminar, part studio/workshop. We'll discuss and analyze readings, share insights from the past week's activity, and collect observations. We'll also have frequent hand-on activities in which we'll make things, try out techniques, and (hopefully) have fun.

Wiki. Throughout the semester, we will work together as a class to create a wiki (on-line knowledge base) of our learnings. The wiki will collect resources, design patterns, and observations that you will be able to come back to in the future. It will also be a resource for future classes and could be made available to other people interested cooperative organizations. We will follow an iterative project approach, inspired by Agile project management Links to an external site., and will work together to decide on the goals, approach, and process.

Assignments

See the assignments page for the definitive description of the graded assignments.

Analyze an example of cooperation.

Task: Write a short paper in which you describe and analyze a cooperative organization, practice, or tendency. You could take something that is self-consciously cooperative, or you could practice "reading for difference" to look for submerged cooperative elements in something that people don't usually see that way.

Goal: The assignment is a chance to practice finding your own examples of the things we are discussing in class. Learning about stories collected by others is a great start, but learning to see examples "in the wild" can make the material more real. It is also a chance to practice looking for elements of society and the economy that might otherwise be invisible.

Imagine a practical utopia.

Task: Working in small groups (2-3 people), imagine something you care about being organized more cooperatively than it is now. Create something that would exist in your imagined future. You could make a manifesto, political demand, webpage, Wikipedia-style entry, brochure, poster, TED-style talk, video, podcast, or almost anything else. You'll also write a brief description of the thinking and process behind your creation.

Goal: The main goal of this assignment is to practice thinking about the future with playful creativity and careful specificity. The second goal is to help inspire you to work toward change and, if you are so inspired, to start something new. The third goal is find new connections in the material from the semester by looking back through the kaleidoscopic lens of a creative design project.

Reflect on the Semester

Task: Write 2-4 pages reflecting on your experience this semester. This paper is an opportunity to reflect on your work during the class, discuss the successes and frustrations of your projects, and identify the most significant things you learned.

Assumptions

This class is designed around a few working assumptions and commitments. You don't have to agree with these ideas to do well, but the class will make more sense if you know where I'm coming from.

Scholarship is not neutral. Whether the commitments are explicit, unconscious, or hidden, scholarship always occupies a political position and advances some interests over others. Each author we will read in this class has an explicit political position and pursues research through that lens (rather than trying for a disinterested stance). As for me, my sympathies are with poor and working people (as much as this is possible from my subject position). This class has been designed from the perspective that the racial injustice (and other intersectional forms of oppression), economic inequality, and environmental destruction of the current world are unacceptable, that these problems are structural, and that addressing them will require major transformations.

The past is interesting in so far as it informs an understanding of the present and inspires a vision for the future. History can be an amazing tool for making sense of the weirdness of the present. This class is rooted in an "applied history" or "public history" approach, meaning that questions are motivated by the needs and interests of people outside of professional academic circles and answers are developed with an eye toward contributing to a wider conversation.

Learning should be essentially self-directed and self-motivated. Each person in this class (me included) is starting from a different position and has different goals and interests. My goal is to organize this class so that we can spend the semester helping each other move toward those goals, learn, and grow. This class is meant to be a collaborative project in which we work together, sharing with, challenging, and questioning each other. My role is as a facilitator and coach who creates the space and opportunity to learn. As learners, we are each responsible for engaging with the material and with each other with curiosity and generosity. I can't make you learn. Instead, the more you put in, the more you'll get out of the class. There will also be a lot of flexibility in the class and opportunities for you to shape your own learning and to collaborate with me and your classmates in shaping the class.

Where this class comes from

The questions that motivate this class come from my own journey trying to understand how to work and be in community, develop my political consciousness, and chart a course for my life. This topic is simultaneously personal, professional, and academic. It also grows out of the current state of my search.

One strand comes from thinking against a lot of the management advice I've been given over the years. Many mentors and other senior people have told me that "people need a strong leader" or "teams only work if someone is in charge." This always struck me as wrong, both practically and ethically. I have seen highly functioning teams without clear leaders (and dysfunctional ones with an overabundance of hierarchy). I have also never been able to square this kind of organizational structure with my belief in dealing with people in non-coercive, respectful, egalitarian ways. I found much of the material in this course during my search for alternative visions.

Another strand comes from reaching a saturation point with criticism. About mid-way through last spring, while teaching a class about the history of work, I realized that focusing too much on what was wrong in the world was not good for me. What had been an eye-opening process of dismantling assumptions and seeing the hidden mechanism of power and exploitation that make things worse for people, was starting to feel claustrophobic and disheartening. It was beginning to make it harder to imagine (let alone pursue) transformation. The theoretical approach of this class (reading for difference, weak theory, militant optimism, and the fostering of utopian dreams) comes from my search analytical stances that multiply possibilities and inspire engagement.

About me

I'm Dave and I'm a historian of technology by training, a public historian by trade, and a tinkerer by inclination.

My research orbits around questions about work, skill, the poetics of technology, regional economics, and what it takes to create a humane life and society. I've shared what I've found in a wide variety of formats, including museum exhibits, videos, podcasts, elementary school programs, walking tours, and more. You can see some of my projects at restlessdevice.com Links to an external site..

We'll be reading things that I've found useful and doing activities that think will reveal interesting things. For me, this class will be a chance to pull together a number of threads and I'm excited to collaborate with you on a leg of this journey.