Presenter: Celia Easton Koehler
Faculty Mentor: Shaul Cohen
Presentation Type: Poster 10
Primary Research Area: Social Science
Major: Geography
Funding Source: UROP Undergraduate Research Grant, $1000; Thesis Research Grant, Clark Honors College, $1000
A typical structure of an organization includes a President, a Vice-President, a Chief of Financial Affairs, and other employees organized in a hierarchy. Information tends to flow vertically in a hierarchy; it would be rare for a president and a janitor to exchange messages directly, first the janitor might approach the secretary or their manager, for example. Not all organizations, however, choose this structure. Rejecting verticality, some organizations choose a less defined chain of command and adopt a horizontal structure. Assemblies are a typical, major component of a horizontally run organization. They are like meetings except instead of majority vote or authority-decides, assemblies tend to be consensus-based; that is, every participant must agree or disagree for a decision to be passed. This project seeks to understand how knowledge is produced within assembly based (or other horizontally –inclined) collectives. Analysis of alternative collectives often focuses on their characterization as sites-of-contention. An example of this framing includes press covering local occupy movements. While this is certainly part of the narrative, collective assemblies can and should be seen as spaces of education. They exist to form practices, inform citizens and often aim towards social changes. In addition, social space created from places perceived as public or open are often sites of emergent culture—conversations and narratives form there and are later formalized and institutionalized. Through observation and analysis of collectives in Andalucia, Spain, this project will demonstrate how collectives function as learning spaces. In January of 2016 individuals in Granada, Spain began planning a feminist festival, Transfemifest, for May 8-9, Individuals mounted a WordPress and Facebook and invited anyone interested to attend weekly planning meetings run by consensus. Through looking at the processes through which individuals in Granada form collectively to plan and pull-off a festival around feminism, we can see how they work to inform community members and catalyze a broader conversation about intersectional-feminism in institutions around the city.