This post got started by this tweet.
The PA Theory Network was the professional group that I felt most at home with in the world of academic public administration. It was the only group that I knew of that rewarded folks who seriously challenged the accepted assumptions.
When I read this I wasn't quite sure what 'prefigurative public administration' was - I haven't kept up with the literature too well since I retired. But it sounded worth going to the link in the tweet. That got me to stuff like:
Call for Papers: Toward Prefigurative Public Administration
Special Issue Editors: Drs. Jeannine Love and Margaret Stout
"Contemporary public administration continues to struggle with how to address the deeply interdependent issues that comprise the “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 155) of sustainability—including social, political, economic, and environmental crises. Responses to this challenge have been shaped by ontological assumptions that drive strategies for knowledge production and understandings of “best” practices. As a result, ideas about effective governance have shifted over time; from government modeled on military style hierarchy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to business-oriented models and privatization in the late twentieth century, to collaborative network governance at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Within this latest turn, proponents of governance networks argue that coordinating responses to complex policy challenges across jurisdictional and sectoral borders can yield “collaborative advantage” over traditional governance approaches (Huxham, 2000). However, assessments of actual governance networks yield poor results. It has been argued that despite the rhetorical commitment to collaboration, these governance networks perpetuate the practices of hierarchy and competition (Stout & Love, 2019) and that new social movements more effectively function as collaborative networks (Love & Stout, 2018). This symposium therefore asks what public administration can learn from such sources."
Yes, jargon filled sentences like this are why I'm blogging rather than writing academic papers these days. But, in the writers' defense, most of the readers of announcements like this understand this shorthand for more complicated ideas. If a carpenter had to describe a 'hammer' every time he needed to mention one, it would take forever. In any case, I sensed that some of my own frustration with mainstream public administration was embedded in this call for paper proposals. I could possibly write about stuff like this that calls for an entirely new way of thinking about the structure and purpose of governments.
So I scrolled down to see the bibliography. The first on the list is:
Dixon, Chris. 2014. Another politics: Talking across today's transformative movements. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
OK, I thought, this is getting better. Chris was a high school classmate of my daughter's. He's one of the nicest, most thoughtful, respectful people I know. And he's seriously dedicated to making a better world.
So, two of my worlds are coming together here. In fact, Chris and J and I had dinner, serendipitously, together at the Thai Kitchen this summer. But I haven't actually read any of Chris' books or articles. So, I looked up the book reference. I can get it on Amazon. But my sense is that's not where Chris would want me to buy it. If you read on you'll understand. But I found a
link to a paper that was probably the precursor to the book.
So I've been reading it online, while watching the surf pound off the balcony. (I did my bike ride this morning at 8am on a new route I discovered - it goes along a main highway, but it's more than a painted line on the side - it's separated by grass as well. It allows me to ride my 30 minutes out without anything to slow me down, and it goes by the visitors center for the wildlife sanctuary I've been visiting. It's all connected. A good ride.)
So Chris' paper is an attempt to map out the various anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, non-sectarian movements that are working for a world without oppression. He's showing where they came from, where they overlap and where they have differences.
The terms - including anarchists, but not so much anti-authoritarian - all seem to identify what people are against (and he notes that) instead of what they are for. I guess when someone is beating you, you are against being beaten first and foremost and you'll worry about what comes next when the beating stops.
Some of the movements he mentions that overlap include:
1. Anarchism
2. Global Resistance to Neoliberalism
5. Women of Color Feminism
All of these need explanation for the average person, including me, to grasp. They aren't terms that our history books and dominant political system look kindly on. That should tip people off right away that maybe there's something here. So I should spell this out more.
He says, in part, about Anarchism (clearly talking about the modern version):
"The first strand begins in the anarchism of the 1990s. The mostly young people involved in this anarchist politics and activism were connected through a series of predominantly white and middle-class subcultural scenes, often rooted in punk rock, across the U.S. and Canada. They set up local Food Not Bombs groups,10 learned direct action skills through militant queer organizing and radical environmentalist campaigns, supported U.S. political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, worked to inject art and imagination into activism, organized anarchist convergences and conferences across North America, and developed a network of anarchist bookstores and political spaces known as infoshops."
A second strand has its origins in the international revolt against neoliberalism, especially growing from the global South. Building on legacies of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, this started in the 1980s with widespread popular mobilizations against austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund. By the early 1990s, meetings of neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) faced massive protests from Bangalore to Berlin.13 And then, on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation stepped onto the world stage by seizing seven cities in Chiapas. “Ya Basta!” (“Enough!”), they said in opposition to the Mexican government and neoliberalism.
Anarchism in the Global Justice Movement [The formatting of this paper seems to slip an extra strand in here, but clearly this is part of Global Resistance. If my severe abbreviation here is problematic for you, the
link to the whole paper is above, and here. And perhaps get a copy of the book, which I'm sure is an improved version of all this.]
"Through the global justice movement, thousands of people participated in anti-authoritarian approaches and politics. At the same time, this cycle of struggle provided opportunities for anarchist and anarchist-influenced activists to wrestle with their own limitations in the context of a growing movement. Longtime radical and writer Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez raised some of these with her widely circulated essay “Where was the color in Seattle?”19 This critical intervention and subsequent ones fostered widespread discussion. While the conversations were most visible around the racial composition of summit mobilizations, they opened up a range of crucial issues: the relation between global justice mobilizing and community-based organizing; the question of building strategic and effective broad-based radical movements in Canada and the U.S. linked to other movements across the globe; and how to confront hierarchies of race, gender, class, age, and experience as they were being reproduced in movement spaces."
Prison Abolitionism - finally a term that most people can, I think, understand. But I suspect many would exclaim, "but we need prisons."
"A third* crucial strand leading into the anti-authoritarian current has its origins in popular struggles against policing and prisons, especially in communities of color.
In 1998, the radical edge of this movement came together at an ambitious conference in Berkeley, California called Critical Resistance (CR), out of which developed an organization of the same name. Since then, individuals and groups affiliated with and inspired by CR have played a vital role in the movement against the PIC, whether through CR chapters in places such as Oakland or New Orleans or organizations such as the Prisoners Justice Action Committee in Toronto.27
Many abolitionists also have begun to explore alternatives to state-based strategies for dealing with violence in communities and interpersonal relationships. This approach has opened small but significant spaces for organizations and communities to experiment with ways of reducing harm and resolving conflict."
#BlackLivesMatter would fit as one of the groups he's talking about.
[See the book White Rage by Carol Anderson for much more detail on how the prison system has extended slavery for blacks in the US up to today.]
*[The way the paper was formatted, I got this as the fourth strand, but I suspect the extra one was either number 1 (Anarchism) or 3 Anarchism and the Global Justice Movement. I'm sure this was all worked out in the book.]
5. Women of Color Feminism
"Both the anti-capitalist current in the global justice movement and prison abolitionism draw upon and connect with a fourth strand, which is usually known as anti-racist feminism or women of color feminism. This sort of feminist politics has roots in earlier struggles, but it bloomed in the liberation movements of the 1960s and came into its own more fully in the 1970s and 1980s. And although this politics took many routes, they all started in a similar place: radical women of color, many of them lesbians, criticizing the limitations of existing movements to account for their experiences of oppression. Coming together in groups, conferences, publishing collectives, and
social scenes, these activists began creating shared politics grounded in their lives and struggles. Through these collaborations, they also constructed the category “women of color” as a new radical political identity."
Chris takes these strands and then goes on to write about what they all have in common:
1. refusing exploitation and oppression,
2. developing new social relations,
3. linking struggles and visions, and
4. grassroots nonhierarchical organizing
He says that what they are all striving for is "another politics" which he describes
"One useful way to understand another politics, it seems to me, is as an emerging political pole within anarchism and the left more broadly. A growing set of anti-authoritarians are staking out this pole through work significantly based in the four principles I laid out above. With these politics and related practices, this pole draws many activists and organizers who are fed up with the problems and limitations of much contemporary anarchism in North America and yet remain committed to the best of the anarchist tradition: a far-reaching critique of domination, a dedication
to prefigurative politics, a commitment to building popular power, and an unbending belief in people’s capacity to create a world where we can all live with dignity, joy, and justice."
And he raises a number of questions anarchists face. (Go read the paper for those.)
It occurred to me that if someone wants to understand what is happening in the US Senate today, I'd argue it is a clash between the capitalist, authoritarians - represented by McConnell, Trump, Kavanaugh, etc. versus the people who are left out of power - the poor, people of color, lgbtq, immigrants.
Chris talks about the various movements doing grass roots recruitment among ordinary citizens caught up in these struggles, but don't see how it is structured or what they can do about it. And I couldn't help thinking that these many organizations involved in these movements also need to be reaching out to the Trump supporters who are also victims of the capitalist and authoritarian systems. But the Right has captured them with false narratives about race, immigrants, foreign workers, and fear of losing 'their' power.
I'd say what Chris is doing in this paper is trying to look past the point when the beating stops and what we do then. And as I think about public administration and how all this works into an alternative way of achieving those common goods that we need to work collectively to achieve, there are still lots of questions.
But yes, the Founding Fathers were fighting injustice and authoritarian rule, but their vision of who deserved justice and equality before the law were restricted by the social values of their day.
Normally, I'd let this sit overnight, but I could rework this over an over again. So, please excuse any sloppiness you see. But you can point it out and I'll try to make repairs. Thanks.
And, anyone who got this far, if you have a better title fire away.
