DAF (2): The Diversity and Decolonising Circle

In this post, I will present a summary of the social learning evaluation process that was carried out within the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF) Diversity and Decolonising Circle. This process was led by the research team composed of Wendy Freeman and myself, and involved primarily the people who identified as part of this circle between April and December 2022. For reasons of space, this analysis is not discussed in detail within the body of my thesis. However, it is presented in full within Annex 5.3.

(See the previous post for an introduction to the DAF research project, and for more details about the social learning theory that was used.)

In what follows, I start off by introducing the social learning space that I’m considering here. I then mention the aspirations expressed by its participants, before presenting a summary of the seeds, the soil, and the sowers who have brought about the social learning. I conclude the summary with a critical discussion of these findings.

Different ways of being and relating: The Deep Adaptation Forum (1)

I will now begin to summarise key research findings from the second online community on which I focused – the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF). Doing so feels much more daunting than with FairCoop (FC). For one thing, the research process was much longer (it lasted mostly from April 2020 to April 2022). Besides, contrary to FC, I was much more deeply involved in DAF, as a member of the Core Team – which allowed me easy access to people and interesting data. This was also facilitated by the fact that people were more relaxed, considering that this community was not being torn apart by conflict. And last but not least, this research was more participatory, and I was lucky to form a team with my co-researcher Wendy Freeman, another very active participant in this network. For all these reasons, I have a mountain of things to say about DAF (which is why there are so many annexes appended to Chapter 5 of my thesis).

To keep this post (and the next few) concise and readable, I will focus on what feel like the most salient points.

Learning from our failures: Lessons from FairCoop

In this post, I will summarise findings from the research process that I initiated in the first online community I started studying: FairCoop. As I will show, this community was quite successful for a few years in federating local groups around the world – mainly in Europe – in the attempt to build an alternative, grassroots economic system and a “post-capitalist commons,” thanks in large part to an innovative and ecological cryptocurrency called Faircoin. However, it was then shaken by very destructive conflicts, which interrupted the social learning that was taking place, and led to the near-breakdown of this community.

What happened? And what can social change agents learn from this story?

My research approach

As I explain in the first post of this series, the research question I decided to explore was: “How may online networks enable radical collective change through social learning?”

In these thesis summaries, I attempt to provide an overview of the conclusions I landed on, over the course of this research. But first, I should tell you more about how I went about this exploration. Indeed, in any journey, what matters is less where you go, but more importantly how you go there, and the heart- and mind-set in which you interact with whoever and whatever the journey places into your path.

So let me say a few words about the approach and perspective that I brought with me on this journey. (see also here)

Tools of emancipation, or tools of alienation?

Given the focus of my research, which aims to investigate to what extent online networks may become forces for radical collective change, people were often surprised to learn that I was not at all active on any major social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. The fact is that I am extremely suspicious about these technologies! I certainly don’t think they are necessarily a force for generative change. In fact, there appears to be much more evidence to the contrary.

There is a lot to say on this topic, and it has all been discussed at length in many books and documentaries, so I will just summarise some of what I consider to be the most concerning aspects of information and communication technologies (ICT).

Summary 1 – Setting the scene

Journeys are not the tame servants that bear you from one point to another. Journeys are how things become different. How things, like wispy trails of fairy dust, touch themselves in ecstatic delight and explode into unsayable colors. Every mooring spot, every banal point, is a thought experiment, replete with monsters and tricksters and halos and sphinxes and riddles and puzzles and strange dalliances. Every truth is a dare. To travel is therefore not merely to move through space and time, it is to be reconfigured, it is to bend space-time, it is to revoke the past and remember the future. It is to be changed. No one arrives intact. – Bayo Akomolafe (2017)

Four years and a half ago, I decided to undertake a PhD research program. This led me to embark on a journey that has deeply shaped and reconfigured many parts of myself. Another outcome has been a voluminous thesis, which I doubt many people will read!

In this series of blog posts, I want to try and summarise what feel like some of the most important insights that arose for me in the course of this journey, and which social change activists and organisers may find useful. Indeed, the whole point of this investigation was to consider what I might do that may be relevant to addressing the social and ecological crisis (or predicament) that I believe is unfolding on a planetary scale. My starting point was at the intersection of the fields of informal education, online networks, and social change, but the path led me much further, deep into decolonial landscapes.

Action Research, you said?

Throughout my current research, I intend to follow principles of Action Research. What does that mean?

I’ll try to synthesise my understanding of AR by focusing on a few main characteristics.

A research project

I previously mentioned in passing that I have started working on a PhD research program.

My old self (or younger self, depending on how you look at the arrow of time), back when I received my previous degree about a decade ago, would have likely been quite incredulous and perhaps even appalled to learn that I would eventually decide to go back to that manipulative institution, that radical monopoly (as Ivan Illich would put it) called the schooling system. And it certainly wasn’t an easy choice.

So what made me decide to invest much of my time and savings into a non-funded PhD program?

The Areol Program – On Action Research, and becoming a better person

This summer, I took part in an online course on Action Research: Areol (short for Action Research and Evaluation On Line). I thought I’d write about it, especially considering I haven’t found that many other blog posts presenting this course.

#EL30 – On the Narrative Identity, and our Obsession with Stats

So, here I am at last, coming out of the digital woodwork (not to anyone’s annoyance, I hope!) as a follower of Stephen Downes’s “E-Learning 3.0” MOOC. I know, the course is already half-way through — but I’ve been rather too overwhelmed by other tasks to actively chip into the fascinating discussions going on around this platform, until today.

This post is my take on this week’s topic: “Identity.” With apologies for being late to the great conversation.