Shaun Bartone

This research examines the history of political narrative and strategy in the Transition Towns movement. Transition Towns is a movement that began in the UK in 2006 to promote localized ecological responses to globalized crises of ‘peak oil’, climate change and economic disruption. Its political narratives and strategies are examined through the history of the movement in the UK, Europe, US and Canada, and in three Transition groups in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada. Whereas at the outset, the leaders of Transition Network, the parent organization, stated that Transition Towns was “apolitical,” and whereas many social science critics of the movement argue that it is “post-political”, I argue that the Transition movement is indeed political; it is prefigurative of a type of governance—local, autonomous, social, networked and scaled to the municipal level. Using a survey of case studies and a review of its publications, this study shows that the Transition Towns movement has developed two broad strategies to influence local governance: collaborative and confrontational. Collaborative networking at local and regional levels involves cross-sectoral collaborations with local government and civil society. Transition groups have also employed confrontational strategies as they confront politicized issues in their localities. The analysis shows that local Transition groups are more politicized than the parent organization. Using Sustainability Niche Management Theory as it has been applied in studies of Transition Towns and similar grassroots ecology movements, this research identifies Transition Towns as an innovative niche attempting to influence the current regime, which is identified as the globalized fossil fuel dependent economy, toward reducing dependence on fossil fuels and relocalizing the economy. This research identifies the types of social power that the Transition Towns movement develops as it attempts to transform the regime. This research shows that over time the Transition Towns movement has taken greater political risks and engaged in more confrontational strategies, developed more complex collaborations, and experimented with decentralized local governance, as it attempts to transform the fossil fuel regime.
Sustainability Niche Management theory aptly describes the composition and relative positions of the niche, regime and landscape as a model, but it lacks a description of the power relations between the niche and the regime. Furthermore, it lacks an explanation of the mechanism of interaction, how the niche, regime and landscape interact with each other and shape each other’s behaviour. This paper presents a new theory of interaction called critical evolutionary systems theory (Bartone 2013), based on the Niklas Luhmann’s theory of ecological communication (1989). It is based on Luhmann’s maxim that “systems only change when provoked by their environments.”. The interaction between the niche, regime and landscape is a feedback loop that informs and provokes further communications and interactions between the niche and regime. The feedback loop is the mechanism of interaction that provokes the shifts in narrative and strategy of the niche and the corresponding reaction of the regime. Both the niche and regime respond to critical signals from the landscape, which in turn causes shifts in the interaction between the niche and regime. The political work of Transition Towns is to receive critical signals from the landscape (system’s environment), and translate those signals into communications that can be understood by the regime, which is ecological communication. The effect of this ecological communication is to provoke changes in the regime that transform the regime, thereby enabling the niche to achieve its sustainability goals. The feedback loop between the niche and regime is intensified when the niche uses confrontational narratives and strategies to provoke the regime, thereby “unsettling the regime.” Transition Towns’ history of shifts in narrative and political strategy is explained as responses to the feedback loop between the niche, regime and landscape.

I propose a Critical Evolutionary Systems Theory which explains that social systems generate social problems defined as the exclusion of issues from functional systems. Individuals develop a critical consciousness to critique functional systems and the exclusion of those issues. Individuals communicate with others to deploy deviant semantics in the form of protest to simulate as within systems that which has been excluded, including issues that lie entirely outside the system, i.e the natural environment. Protest movements are self-organizing movements which autopoietically generate alternatives for functional systems. Protest movements self-organize around a new cognitive attractor that can generate new patterns for a ground-up production of new social forms. Protest movements network on an as-needed basis to create emergent social movements. Finally, protest movements become social movements that select among those alternatives and generate new functional subsystems which increase the complexity of the system and continue the evolution of the social system.

ABSTRACT: A new definition of the queer as ‘the strange attractor’ is developed using chaos theory. Queer-as-chaos is situated within the broad field of systems theory as it has been developed in evolutionary biology, mathematics, ecology and social science. Queer-as-chaos is examined as a disruptive but evolutionary force that transforms cultures, social institutions, power structures and local/global systems. The concept is explored through embodiment, relationships, language, performance, aesthetics, politics, and other strains of queer theory. Finally, queer-as-chaos is mapped onto the realm of on-going political movements to discern a queer politics of chaos.

DANCE stands for Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement. It was coined by a group of Buddhists active in the climate justice movement in the UK, led by Thanissara. But I would like to use DANCE as a rubric or model for talking about what happens when people are involved in a mass protest event. I will be looking at physical movement dynamics such as 'dancing', 'orchestration' and 'flow'. I will be relating those kinds of physical movement dynamics to the recent invention in the Hong Kong protests to "be like water".

Toward A Unified Field Theory of Self and World

Buddhist dharma is an unique system of thought not just because of its unique dharmas or doctrines about self and world, and not just because it does not rely on gods or mythology, but because the dharmas work together as a comprehensive theoretical system that explains both self and world, based on a unified foundational theory about the nature of reality. 

Mandala of Sacred Activism© is held by Shaun Bartone under a Commons License; you are free to use and distribute with permission from and attribution to the creator, Shaun Bartone.
AWAKENING REGENERATION Activism as World-Making: Creating the world we want today; KNOWLEDGE Develop knowledge through social and ecological science, shared experience and cultural wisdom; PRACTICE Activism is grounded in the realities of everyday practices, how we live on the earth and with each other; OPPOSITION Holding actions prevent further harm, create space for regenerative projects to flourish; PANARCHY: GROWTH CONSERVATION DISINTEGRATION REORGANIZATION REMEMBER REVOLT; OUTER BOUNDARY: LIMITS TO GROWTH: We must live and allow all other species to live within ecological limits. INNER CIRCLE: TRANSFORMATION Spiritual and relational transformation that supports the thriving of all species