“What can I do?
I must begin.
Begin what?
The only thing in the world that’s worth beginning:
The End of the World, no less.”
- Translation by John Berger and Anna Bostock (Césaire, 2014)
The irony that I have gone, several years later, from translating to actually producing obscure academic prose is not lost on me.
This refers to communities who have benefited the most from and still enjoy the protections of modern-colonial systems, in constrast to those involved in “high-intensity struggles,” whose lives have been and remain threatened in order to build and sustain these very systems (ibid).
"Non-formal education refers to all organized educational programs that take place outside the formal school system, and are usually short-term and voluntary" (Schugurensky, 2000, p. 2).
Studies have confirmed the importance of informal learning in people’s lives. Coffield (2000) stresses that informal learning is critical to the acquisition of knowledges, practices, values and norms that a person needs to live in society. Besides, in quantitative terms, the time one spends in formal learning settings is comparatively much lower: “in their school years children spend less than a fifth of their 16 waking hours engaged in formal learning, university students only spend 5–7% of their days in formal study, and throughout the years of adulthood around 90% of most people’s daily learning is informal, with short, intermittent periods of non‐normal or formal study for personal or job‐related purposes” (Latchem, 2016, p. 181).
This term is also hyphenated as modernity-coloniality, which I find more readable.
Inner arcs of attention refer to hyper-self-reflexivity in practice, such as noticing oneself perceiving, framing issues, interpreting, or making choices about action; glimpsing assumptions and purposes; being curious about potential patterns, repetitions and themes; noticing one’s feelings and energy and how these shift; etc. As for outer arcs, they are about ways of acting and sensing outside oneself: raising questions with others for mutual exploration, taking experimental action, and seeking to test out any emerging interpretations in order to hold these lightly (Marshall, 2016).
Activist burnout can been described as a state of exhaustion, which is more or less destabilising and debilitating. The term is generally used to cover an array of symptoms, including deteriorated emotional, psychological, and physical well-being, as well as a sense of disillusionment, hopelessness, and cynicism (Maslach and Gomes, 2006; Rettig, 2006; Cox, 2011; Gorski and Chen, 2015).
Between December 2021 and January 2022, a FairCoin Winter Camp hackathon took place (FairCoin, 2021). I joined one of the sessions, during which I learned that work was ongoing to strengthen FairCoin on both the technical and the governance levels.
“What words should we sow, for the gardens of the world to become fertile again?” My translation.
This can be viewed as enacting a conscious semantic shift in the meaning of the term “forum” in the project name, from one of its common definitions – i.e. “an area of a website where users can post comments and have discussions” – to another – “a place, situation, or group in which people exchange ideas and discuss issues, especially important public issues” (Collins English Dictionary, 2022).
Core Team members are self-employed contractors receiving a basic living stipend of GBP 100 per day of work, and can invoice DAF for up to six to eight days of work per month.
From an official event description on the DAF online calendar: https://www.deepadaptation.info/event/wider-embraces-eu-as-aus-su22/2022-04-03/
For example, participants in DAF calls are often reminded by facilitators that personal matters shared within a particular group context (for example, a Zoom breakout room) should be not be repeated elsewhere by another person elsewhere without the sharer’s consent.
Names followed by an asterisk have been changed to preserve interviewee anonymity.
Jem Bendell left the DAF Core Team at the end of September 2020, and stepped down from the DAF Holding Group in February 2021.
In speeches and writings, Bendell has explicitly linked issues of social justice and solidarity with the DA framework on several occasions (e.g. Bendell, 2019d, 2020a). However, these issues were not prominent in the initial framing of DAF.
This data does not account for the paid work that Core Team take on as part of their responsibilities, beyond their volunteering time. Depending on the person, this paid work ranges from 6 to 8 working days per month.
According to Facebook’s definition, “active members” include “people who viewed, posted, commented, or reacted to content” in the DA Facebook group.
“La crise politique actuelle, en Occident, est une crise de nos relations aux autres. Une anesthésie croissante des modes d'attention et de disponibilité que nous entretenons avec les autres, tous vivants confondus. … L'enjeu premier de ce qu'on pourrait baptiser une ‘polytique du vivant’ est donc de réactiver nos capacités à lier - sous toutes leurs formes et de toutes nos forces. Puisque, contrairement à la doxa libérale, ce n'est pas la quête d'une indépendance individuelle qui libère, ce sont les interdépendances et ce sont les liens : ce qu'ils nous permettent et ce qu'ils tissent entre nous en termes de possibilités fécondes.” My translation.
Katie Carr and Jem Bendell contrast ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ deep adaptation. The former refers to “the psycho-social, the emotional or the spiritual aspects of integrating collapse awareness” while the latter is about “the practical aspects, e.g. exploring and putting into practice realistic measures for addressing food security at community or country level” (Carr and Bendell, 2021, p. 183).
The DAF Charter (DAF, 2022a) was co-created by over a dozen DAF participants, mainly volunteers, to provide a commonly agreed set of principles governing the activities of all groups and projects in the network. It is revised at least once a year at the time of writing.
Participant demographics in DAF, at all levels of engagement, tend to be skewed toward female participants, which is another difference with my positionality.
The CAS survey disseminated within this research project provides an equally varied array of emotional responses to the anticipation or experience of societal collapse among DAF participants (Cavé, 2022b).
Pihkala is careful to point out that this model may not accurately speak to the experience of people facing multiple injustices.
As a result of this feedback, I have decided to create a website presenting the core insights from this research in a more accessible format, including through shorter blog posts.
Although self-reflection on my own journey of (un)learning is potentially fallible, it is a source of insight that warrants exploration and sharing.
In this journal entry, I reflect on experiences that happened two years prior, contrary to the other entries in this chapter, which were written “in the moment.” The reason for this is that I have lost access to my notes from early 2020.
“Othering is an active rhetorical practice in which dominant people (i.e., the “Self”) malign, demonize, and stigmatize communities of people as “Others” through cultural productions (language, media, publications, popular culture); political discourse and action; and the management and containment of knowledge (including the policing of expertise and regulation of education). Othering is a form of dehumanization, against which the Self arises as most wholly human, noble, and valued.” (Murray, 2020, p. 315)
Here, I use the term “communities” in a broad sense, in reference to “[groups] of people that have something in common among them” (Townshend, Benoit and Davies, 2020, p. 344). I am not referring only to online communities. And in terms of the Wenger-Trayner social learning theory, I suspect that the groups most able to form communities that foster belonging and critical discernment are those that are able to develop a regime of competence (characteristic of communities of practice), while simultaneously cultivating social learning spaces that keep challenging this regime of competence.
From the French “À quoi bon ?” meaning “What’s the point of it all?”
“...la falta de relación directa con luchas y con situaciones concretas, con contadas excepciones —y el lenguaje academicista que sigue caracterizando a la mayoría de sus textos— sigue siendo una de las críticas más acertadas a esta perspectiva.” My translation.
This is a reference to colonised peoples, whom Frantz Fanon (1961) calls the “wretched of the earth” (les damnés de la terre in French).
“Todos de alguna manera hemos sido afectados por la modernidad/colonialidad y algunos nos hemos planteado el reto que representa descolonizarnos pero ninguno, incluyéndome, podemos reclamar haberlo logrado.” My translation.
In offering these suggestions, I tried to make it clear to interviewees that these were only my own subjective constructions, which deserved to be critically assessed along with the rest of the report. In doing so, my intention was to follow the guidelines provided by Guba and Lincoln (1989: 154), according to whom “Finally, the inquirer’s own etic (outsider) construction may be introduced for critique… the inquirer’s own formulations have no particular privilege save that he or she is quite possibly the only person who has moved extensively between participants, stakeholders, and respondents and, therefore, has the benefit of having heard a more complete set of constructions than anyone else in the setting is likely to have heard. Thus that particular construction is likely to be one of the most informed and sophisticated, at least toward the end of the process. This does not procure for the evaluator more power, merely a greater ability to facilitate the negotiation process that must occur.” I am conscious that my status as a university researcher may have made it difficult for readers to consider these reflections as equally worthy of critique as the rest of the report, and indeed none of these suggested “learnings” were critiqued.
In all research conversations carried out for this project, the research team made a point to enquire as to participants’ aspirations within the social learning spaces they engaged with, in order to honour their perspective and agency in working with them to articulate their stories.
When a new story was published on the blog, DAF participants were invited to read them – e.g. in the monthly DAF volunteer newsletters – and to leave comments on them, which provided for a manner of “plausibility check,” as recommended by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2020, p.240).
The term “subplot” may not be most appropriate, as it could imply a hierarchy of importance between the “main plot” of a story and the “subplots” that compose it. This is not my intention.
An image I landed on that has been useful to me, in order to distinguish between narratives and cycles, is that I understand contextual narratives to be densely packed, like compressed electronic files, and once “unpacked,” may prompt a number of stories to unfold – whereas a cycle is a simpler step within an unfolding story.
https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/2022/03/15/how-to-transform-how-i-am-in-the-world/ NB: For reasons of length, several quotes present in the published story have been edited out from this table. Please refer to the blog post for the unabridged version.
This is in reference to a methodology put forth by the GTDF collective, which invites people to become more self-reflexive by frequently “checking one’s bus.” “Bus passengers” are a metaphor for the many “selves” (or parts of the self) that we carry within us at any given moment, and which may influence our way of being in the world, often unconsciously (Machado de Oliveira, 2021, p.80).
https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/2022/05/10/finding-a-community-of-love-in-action/
These questions were inspired by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.98-122
See the Conscious Learning Blog for several examples: https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info
NB: Only activities designed by the whole circle, and co-hosted by three or more D&D circle members, are displayed in this table. Other events and workshops on topics related to systemic oppression have been offered to DAF participants by circle members on a more individual basis, without extensive support from the circle, and therefore less data is available about their attendance.
Since the creation of the D&D circle in August 2020, two new Holding Group members identifying as BIPOC have stepped up, but the influence of our circle in this process is unknown and likely irrelevant.
I thank Wendy Freeman for bringing this matter to my attention.
I refer the reader to the video on conflict produced by our circle in April 2022, and which I edited, for further details ( Self-organisation: What works? The DAF D&D circle - Part 2: Conflict Transformation, 2022)
This is an important reason for the initiative that began in DAF in April 2022, to foster the creation of small, mutually supportive "crews."
NB: Each indicator is referred to by its reference code, as listed in Tables 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
I should stress here that these stories don’t pretend to provide a totalising summary of anyone’s experience in the D&D circle, which is impossible to do. Rather, they might be considered “snapshots” of some important moments of social learning that happened for each of us.
This format bears appears similar to the decolonial “Depth Conversations” invited by the GTDF Collective (GTDF, 2021)
The practice of paying attention to “hot spots” originates in Process Work methodology (Audergon, 2006)
This social structure is likely wider than D&D. Several non-D&D members who have been regularly taking part in the circle’s monthly “open meetings” should also be considered part of this CoP, to the extent that they have been co-defining the regime of competence with us, and that they identify with it. As for these monthly calls per se, they are undoubtedly social learning spaces.
Indeed, critical race theory scholars have long pointed out that excessive concern for effectiveness is a hallmark of white supremacy culture (e.g. Okun, no date).
An exception would be the 24-minute educational video A Silenced History: Climate, Race, and Colonies, co-directed by myself and Yuyuan Ma in late 2022. This video attempts to integrate multiple insights that have emerged for us thanks to the work of the D&D circle, in a creative and accessible form. It invites deeper reflection and proactive action on these topics on behalf of viewers identifying as White, Western, and involved in the environmental field. The video is available online: https://www.madocollective.org
At the time of writing, DAF remains unincorporated. The name “Deep Adaptation Forum” appears on the Memorandum of Understanding which was signed in October 2019 between Prof Bendell and a representative from the Schumacher Institute, a registered UK charity. This document established the Schumacher Institute as DAF’s main fiscal sponsor, managing the receipt and dispersal of funds received by DAF.
And therefore, in my experience, a lasting confusion for many participants in DAF’s Facebook group, who continued to think of “the Deep Adaptation Forum” as referring exclusively to DAF’s Ning space, long after the latter was renamed to specify its specific focus area.
In speeches and writings, DAF Founder Jem Bendell has explicitly linked issues of social justice and solidarity to the DA framework on several occasions (e.g. Bendell, 2019d, 2020a). However, these issues were not prominent in the initial framing of DAF.
This is a guidance document mainly compiled by Wendy, in order to support newcomers in DAF to find their way through the network (Freeman, 2021). It can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3L5MyVW
I include here the 16 research conversations that I initiated before Wendy joined me as co-researcher.
All of the Festival’s recorded calls can be watched in the video resources section of the Conscious Learning Blog: https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/category/resource/video/
Interested parties are also invited to share by email the content they wish to publish with the RT, if they prefer not to create an account.
https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/2021/10/01/call-recording-qa-with-chris-trondle/
Participants in the DAF “DA Facilitators” community of practice regularly host their own online events using common processes, practices and terminology, but these are not focused on social learning.
https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/2021/10/01/call-recording-qa-with-chris-trondle/
This participant subsequently created a new entry on this topic in the Conscious Learning Blog: https://consciouslearning.deepadaptation.info/2021/10/15/the-lenca-in-el-salvador-encourage-us-to-share-our-own-valued-stories/