What I'm Reading Now: Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown

I learned about this book through my work on a collaborative CSU/UC network project through the University of California Carbon Neutrality Initiative, called the Transformative Sustainability and Climate Education Knowledge Action Network (KAN).  Our workshops were facilitated by Abigail Reyes, whose approach to facilitation is inspired by emergent strategy principles.   Emergent Strategy just blew my mind.  I have so many ideas about how to use it in my life, research, teaching, collaborations-- all my work.

My "pie in the sky" dream would be to use the facilitation principles and processes outlined in the book as pedagogy.  The entire point of that process is to identify vision and translate it into actions we can do to achieve the vision we want.  Students are always seeking a salve for the doom-and-gloom of the content of climate change, environmental injustice, critical science studies, and the challenges to their positionality that happens in environmental studies classes.  They always want do-able "actions" to address those problems.  Below, I take issue with those impulses, and write about this at much greater length elsewhere, but one way to give students what they seek is to facilitate a vision/change/action workshop for them during class time, or build in transformative student leadership workshops somewhere into the curriculum, or make them a co-curricular opportunity.

Otherwise, for me, the book emphasized the value of:

·      cultivating community and relations (committing ourselves to span an inch wide and a mile deep rather than the other way around).

I am so strapped for time, that relationships with colleagues and anybody in my various communities seems superfluous, not on my to-do list, and so I rush away from social interactions so I can keep working on my task list. I always work from the principle of spreading myself an inch deep and a mile wide, covering a ton of ground, but superficially.  I'm notoriously late everywhere, because I'm always squeezing things in before other things. I'm happy doing half-assed work because I live by the motto "just get that shit done."  So cultivating relationships in ways that don't feel like I'm achieving immediate items on my to-do list has definitely not been a priority to me.  However, Emergent Strategy makes such a convincing argument for the value of relationships, that I am committing myself to letting myself actually enjoy my colleagues, appreciate the languid feeling of just talking to people, and seeing the immeasurable but crucial work of conversation as part of my work.

·      valuing conversation over deliverables

Similar to how important I see the humanities as resisting the corporatization of the university, because it teaches stuff that cannot and shouldn't be monetized in our lives, conversation and relationship-building aren't seen as valuable aspects of "action".  Emergent Strategy argues otherwise, suggesting that the relationships are precisely what keeps a community or group resilient and sustainable for the longer haul.  The language of "action" and "deliverable" and "impact" misses so much important work.  In describing the work of a group called Ruckus, Brown discusses the "action" culture of their direct-action activism as "masculine action culture" and "penetrative"; "Rather than forming long-term partnerships with communities, Ruckus was in and out with mind-blowing, creative actions.  This was in line with a model of action grounded in spectacle" (61).  I spend a lot of time teaching my students that there are so many ways to define "action" that aren't just about marching in the streets, and even that could be argued to be not effective at bringing about "action."  In other words, the idea of "action" needs to be deconstructed, and the value we put on "action" over thought/theory challenged.  This insight from Emergent Strategy really resonated with me because I value the intellectual work of thinking so much, and try to convince my very action-oriented students to spend the time in the world of critique, thought, the mind, conversation, research.  Timothy Morton says something like "don't just do something, sit there!", and he encourages students not to get dirty in soil, but to "rub their noses in their own minds."

·      expanding our notion of  what counts as “action,” based on Brown’s nonlinear and iterative view of social change

Extending this broader argument about what counts as "action," Brown suggests that the messiness of nonlinear movement and iterative, incremental shifts is OK; that's 'emergent strategy.'  I love this.  This relieves us from feeling we have to save the world in one day.

·      shifting toward resilience as a priority over “problem-solving,” in both pedagogy and curriculum development

As an environmental studies person, I'm always hearing that environmental studies is all about problem-solving.  Students in this major think they're getting trained to problem-solve.  We have classes on problem-solving.  Michael Maniates' "Teaching for Turbulence," which I read with my students every semester, tells us that environmental studies is the 'problem-solving' field.  Problem-Solving is one of the Environmental Studies Program Student Learning Outcomes.  It's everywhere.  Yet, I have so many issues with this.  As my dear friend and colleague, Janet Fiskio, says, "I want my students to create problems, not solve them."  And Ted Toadvine's fabulous "Six Myths of Interdisciplinarity" examines the assumptions behind "problem-solving" (whose problem is it? Who benefits and who pays to solve it?  What about competing notions of solutions, definitions of the problem, etc?).  Also, sometimes environmental studies should be about other stuff.   Emergent Strategy is a beautiful antidote to the myopic "problem-solving" definition of environmental studies.

·      increasing appreciation for the theory of the fractal for understanding how change happens and for grasping the power we each all hold

This gives value to all our little steps and small work.  Brown's argument is that "small is all," which suggests that the MOST we can do is the small stuff we can do.  This is hugely relieving and empowering to me.

·      emphasizing the importance of self-care for ourselves and our students

·      shifting curriculum toward affective resilience and emergent strategy as opposed to just content or “marketable skills”

·      paying attention to what we want to grow, rather than all the things that are wrong (in life, pedagogy, how we spend our time and attention, in committees and other collaborations, etc)

This one is really mind-blowing for me, since I'm so keep to criticize and whine about everything.  I will make this a mantra of mine, so I can be buoyed and uplifted, not anchored, dragged down, by the things I spend my time thinking about.  Or at least I'll try to resist whining more than I do now.  For example, rather than sitting around biting our nails about climate change, we should be asking "what is compelling about surviving climate change? What do we need to imagine as we prepare for it? How do we prepare the children in our lives to be visionary, and to love nature even when the changes are frightening and incomprehensible? How do we cultivate the muscle of radical imagination needed to dream together beyond fear?" (58-9).

And also, she says "sometimes we put up the critiques to excuse ourselves from getting involved, to protect our hearts from getting broken if it doesn't work out" (112).  Ouch. I think that's why I intellectualize my grief.  Ouch.

·      doing work that fuels us.

I'm so driven by all the "shoulds" in my life.  I always say things like "I need to pick my kid up".  Should is shit, though, and I WANT to pick my kid up.  I want to do things in life that I desire.  There's no time to waste. Mary Oliver beautifully put it, "what will you do with your one wild and precious life?"; so Brown writes, "As an individual, get really good at being intentional with where you put your energy, letting go as quickly as you can of things that aren't part of your visionary life's work. They you can give your all, from a well-resourced place, when the storm comes, or for those last crucial miles" (72).  Brown says that saying "no" to things that don't fuel us allows us to open up to more "yes's" that do. I love thinking of no as a kind of yes.

I could go on and on, but I'll wrap up here by thanking a group of colleagues for reading this book with me-- Janelle Adsit, Christina Accomando, Janet Winston, and Renee Byrd.