APT 2014: Power in a World of Becoming, Entanglement & Attachment
Ramphal Building, University of Warwick - June 2-3

Recordings of the plenaries now online:  
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/rsw/authorityandpoliticaltechnologies/apt2014/

Amaral, Aécio (2014) 'Governo da vida e potencialidade: crítica do biopoder em Agamben', in Nildo Avelino & Salvo Vaccaro (Orgs.) Governamentalidade e segurança. São Paulo: Intermeios, p. 209-242. (Coleção "Contrassensos - crítica política")

By Naomi Millner

I’m  writing from El Salvador, on the Soil, Seeds, and Social Change field research trip that is being  partly funded by the ARN. Here I have been working with a network of small-scale farmers here since January 2013, especially those linked with the Instituto  de Permacultura de El Salvador (IPES) and the associated permaculture movement. This is my second visit, and this time I’m not just an observant participant, I’m running a series of participative interventions of my own. In total I’ve put on eight four hour participative workshops in two different regions of El Salvador: Torola, in Morazan, and Suchitoto, in Cuscatlan. Those taking part are a mixture of young people new to permaculture and experienced volunteers, some of whom have been involved since the first stirrings of the movement in the late 1990s. With IPES as my hosts I’ve also visited twelve working permaculture sites and interviewed and around twenty people from local and national NGOs, and municipal and regional government.

In doing this work my goal has been to explore how the in situ - that is, place-based- expertise being developed and shared by the movement has been, and might be, translated to other sites and scales. Each workshop has focused on a different theme (eg. food cultures, soil and water, food sovereignty) which formed the basis for dialogue and exchange. We have produced maps, diagrams, and dramas which helped us to delve into the histories and cultures of the movement, and problems that its faced. We’ve also sought to delve into the contradictions and opportunities presented by economic globalisation, and the contrast between the traditional practices which are valued in permaculture, and the very new technologies of communication and connection which allow the traditions of other places to mingle in. From the beginning my particular focus has been the way that the “experimental” and “experiential” forms of authority being developed by IPES and related organisations might challenge and alter the way that food security is imagined and tackled in UN forums like the Food and Agriculture Organisation...

By Catherine D'Ignazio. Originally posted on May 2nd 2014 at: 
http://civic.mit.edu/blog/kanarinka/participatory-democracy-for-the-non-human-and-the-non-living

I'm at the Open Center in New York City participating in a workshop and conference about participatory democracy for non-human and non-living others. This is my live blog of the opening session of talks from this morning...

On May 2nd 2014 the Authority Research Network co-convened, with the Public Science Project CUNY, a workshop on "Participatory Democracy for the Non-Living and Non-Human" in New York. Plenary discussants were Jane Bennett (Johns Hopkins), Maria Torre & Rachel Liebert (CUNY Public Science), and Julian Brigstocke (Plymouth University). Papers included:

Naomi Millner (University of Bristol) & Patrick Bresnihan (The Provisional University, Dublin)

This blog-post takes the form of a dialogue, building on correspondences that Naomi and Paddy, both ARN members, have shared on the themes of commons since they met at a conference in April 2011. It was prepared as a “stirring paper” for the Degrowth Conference which will take place in Leipzig, Germany in 2014. In it they explore how commons became a key concept in their own work efforts to develop socio-ecological alternatives from a "Degrowth" perspective. They raise tensions surrounding its increasing popularity within new international forums of scholars and activists, together with key threads for discussion for the future.

1. Commons and the politics of knowledge

NM:  From the start of our exchanges two key themes have been important: first, historical and contemporary efforts to create or preserve common resources against a backdrop of proliferating forms of enclosure and private ownership. And second, the politics of knowledge - the issue of how equality can be enacted in the process of creating change. In domains as distinct as access to water, the privatisation of the universities, the enclosure of fields once used for common grazing, and the address of food security questions these two themes come together when we try to move beyond resistance, toward creating alternatives.