nathan on governance
nathan schneider on governance
via tweet [https://x.com/gquaggiotto/status/1814283992578809992]:
Governance archaeology – developing a database of global, historical governance designs to produce a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/152/1/245/115000/Governance-Archaeology-Research-as-Ancestry
notes/quotes from abstract feb 2023:
Governance Archaeology: Research as Ancestry – by Federica Carugati, Nathan Schneider
Abstract
This essay presents the idea of governance archaeology, an approach to *learning from the past to inform the politics of the future..t By reporting on a prototype historical database, we outline a strategy for co-producing a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation, particularly in the face of rapid technological change and vexing global crises. Embedded in our approach is an orientation of ancestry whereby practitioners cultivate relationships of **accountability and responsibility to the legacies they learn from, recognizing the harm from past patterns of exploitation. By taking seriously a wide range of historical governance practices, particularly those outside the Western canon, governance archaeology ***seeks to expand the options available for the design of more moral political economies..t
*what we need to grok/see/learn is that 1\ all of the past has been in sea world (so if keep intellecting on history ness will keep perpetuating same song) and 2\ we need a way out .. hari rat park law et al
**again.. just need to realize we need a way out.. sans any form of m\a\p.. all else a cancerous distraction
***w/o global detox leap (aka: re\set).. always/only finite set of choices/options.. need a diff data set ie: self-talk as data via a diff tech ie: nonjudgmental expo labeling
During the period in Europe that continues to be called the Enlightenment-as if there could be no other-a certain class of thinkers and politicians had *the opportunity to significantly remake fundamental arrangements of the social order. How they did it may seem shockingly conservative to today’s political innovators: **they looked to the past..t
*none of us yet trying something legit diff because all we keep doing is **this
Aspirations toward a new moral political economy-resilient enough to survive against the alternatives-will succeed or fail depending on whether we can find suitable means of governing it.
depends on what we mean by governing.. and everything to date hasn’t been about left to own devices ness.. so.. same song
It is enticing to think of the future as a truly undiscovered country, radically transformed by the inevitable technological wonders to come, but the past retains its grasp on what we allow ourselves to imagine..t Silicon Valley luminaries revel in the vernacular “big history” books of Yuval Noah Harari, while David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything offers a counterhistory of human institutions based less on reigning technologies than on devious, diverse ingenuity. These works’ popularity reflect a struggle over which versions of the past will situate the options available to the future.
exactly.. we need to let go of history ness
*Where will people today turn for inspiration and justification as they concoct political arrangements for the centuries to come? ..t
*need most/1st: a means for 8b to turn to what’s inside of them (itch-in-the-soul) 1st thing everyday.. let’s use that data to connect us (ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
To expand our historical imagination and our repertoires for the future, we propose what we call governance archaeology : a strategy for co-producing a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation, particularly in the face of rapid technological change and vexing global crises..t
governance practice we need: left to own devices ness
It is necessary to take seriously the governance practices of older and past societies – especially non-Western ones – for empirical and moral reasons. As we learn more about the diversity of political arrangements around the world and through history, the usual West-centered view seems increasingly myopic. To create a more equitable and inclusive world, we need to design for a “pluriverse,” a world in which many social worlds can fit..t **This task, however, is fraught with difficulties..t
*ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
**only difficulty is letting go enough to see.. the unconditionality of the left to own devices ness dance
ie: the whatever ness of a sabbatical ish transition
pearson unconditional law et al
We believe that making a more moral political economy will depend in part on people across many contexts and networks, *finding better ways to ensure just distributions of economic and political power. Our method seeks to serve that multiplicity.
*cancerous distraction.. rather.. need to get at root.. so we have ie: graeber stop at enough law et al
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
In what follows, we share our preliminary experience with governance archaeology, which centers around developing a *database of global, historical governance designs. We offer observations about how the data set can be used to move beyond conventional political categories. ..we have attempted to cultivate the ethic of relationship and codesign that we apply to the historical evidence. We offer what we have learned so far as a contribution to the task of discovering designs for the equitable, accountable institutions that are so urgently needed.
*database we need: itch-in-8b-souls first thing everyday.. hosting life bits ness et al
**what we need is something legit diff.. sans any form of accountable ness..
Our database catalogs examples, throughout human history and geography, of what we refer to as collective governance. *Collective governance includes practices of power-sharing, participatory decision-making, and community-based rule enforcement among stakeholders. These are the rudiments for the kinds of accountable, democratic societies that can support moral political economies. We opt for this capacious framing to **expand the scope of options far beyond the now-dominant model of representation by professional politicians or technocrats, legitimated by the sporadic participation of a broader subset of the governed.
*oi.. cancerous distractions.. any form of democratic admin et al..
**legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
The database is very much a work in progress. We began collecting data in the summer of 2021, and we have so far coded over one hundred discrete communities, about four hundred and fifty institutions, one hundred institutional mechanisms, and thirty cultural values. Table 1 provides some definitions and a snapshot of the database’s main structure. We intend the temporal and spatial range of the database to cover, potentially, the whole world from prehistory to today, although we have so far focused on a sample.
Table 1
Glossary of Terms for the Collective Governance Database
Communities Units of governance and shared culture Institutions Specific institutional structures within a given community Mechanisms Within institutions, patterns of governance practice (for example, jury, council, voting) Culture Within communities, patterns of shared values and norms (for example, solidarity, ritual, supernatural belief) Time Situates the community in history Place Situates the community geographically Size Approximate number of members in the community at the specified time and place
Finally, our data so far reveal enormous diversity-not just in the structure of communities or in the types of institutions, but also in institutional mechanisms. Similar mechanisms do recur, most notably the basic structures of assemblies, councils, and voting.
if still in sea world.. same song
The orientation of ancestry encapsulates three related aspirations: to better acknowledge marginalized cultures for their expertise with collective governance, to establish forms of relationality with the communities we study, and to *decenter the dominant assumptions of the present (or the very recent past) as the only horizons for the design of future political systems. Relatedly, ancestry aids governance archaeologists in looking beyond abstract mechanisms and structures to the norms and culture that bring political systems to life. When we understand our research as a relationship with real people, past and present, it becomes **harder to ignore how culture and norms are essential for the functioning of institutions.
*will never happen if doing all the other things
**perhaps for institutions (ie: any whales in sea world) but not for live people.. myth of normal et al is killing us
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
*Integrating a sense of ancestry equips governance archaeology to unsettle and dismantle the colonial narratives that present a linear, ascending sequence from the primitive to the modern. A
*rather.. it perpetuates them
As sociologist Ronaldo Vázquez writes in a summary of decolonial practice, “The role of the ancestors is not a passive or a conservative one, but rather an active source of meaning.”
we need to let go of meaning ness.. intellectness as cancerous distraction
The posture of ancestry recognizes this as a way of consciously guiding the choices designers make.
need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
In another time, the patient labor of assembling a database of historical governance practices might seem merely interesting or amusing. Today it strikes us as urgent. *The future of democratic politics, economics, and civic life depends on expanding the repertoire of options, learning, wherever possible, from foregoing human experience and sharing it as a common inheritance. Yet the learning cannot be carried out as some previous generations have, through selective appropriation, colonization, and erasure visited on the very cultures providing inspiration. Governance archaeology is a craft and a call: to expand the wealth of political repertoires, but also, at the same time, to repair and tend to our relationships with the political ancestors whose lessons we need more than ever.
*if legit want to expand.. let go of history ness.. of knowing ness
notes/quotes from paper – 13 pg pdf – [https://watermark.silverchair.com/daed_a_01985.pdf]:
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Governance Archaeology:
Research as Ancestry – Federica Carugati & Nathan Schneider2 (246)
[a lot of this in abstract above]
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[oh.. it’s actually the same thing]
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be you. 