Social Entrepreneur. Scholar. Activist.
I am also a dyslexic scholar and work on and advocate for different (dis)abilities.
Social Entrepreneur:
In 2010 I founded aibia in Sierra Leone and New York, in 2020 - with the help of my partner Sarah Sippel - I expanded that to Italy where we are building an intentional educational community, and eventually an alternative experiential learning focused school. For more up-to-date information on this project please visit aibia.org.
Activism:
I was an active member of Occupy Wall St, where I helped found the Occupy People's Think Tank. Which was a working group dedicated to spontaneous and open public discussion groups as political action. Topics ranged from racism, to banking, to security at Occupy, and direct democracy, and were open to anyone that wished to join. I was also wholly involved in several squatting projects in Sweden - Folkets Hus and Aula - and a long time participant at the autonomous social center Klinika in Prague. Following health issues, my 'activism' took a turn, and began focusing on setting up 'parallel structures' and systems - as opposed to being in direct confrontation with existing practices and regimes. Right now I am living and working in Molise, Italy, setting up an intentional educational community and (eventually) a school (see aibia.org). Intellectually:
I have a PhD and MA in Anthropology, another MA in Economic and Social History, a BA in Sociology (with a minor in Business Administration). My work focuses on both historical and present day alternatives, but most importantly, the search for viable ones!Five Core Intellectual Themes:
- Autonomy: specifically building the concept of 'integrated autonomy' out of Erica Fox Brindley's concept of the "integrated individual" from classic Chinese thought, and which counters Western notions of the atomized individual). Within this theme I work on autonomous decision-making; intersectional heterarchy and power relations; autonomous goods/usage regimes; the culture-like effects of autonomous spaces; “commoning” emotions; and autonomy as a 'felt' experience using a Daoist wu wei/ziran lens.
- Outputs: Being Autonomous (book manuscript under review), plus multiple peer reviewed journal articles (see above) in preparation.
- Democracy: My work here focuses on the inadequacies of modern capitalist, representative, and majority rules democracy, and searches for more inclusive democratic practices and systems where people actually rule their own lives. To this end, I am working on notions of an evolution of democratic action; the privatization of democracy; post-totalitarian neoliberal governance; “degrees of caring”, democratic voice, and democratic escalation; as well as prefigurative and educational democracy in practice.
- Outputs: Fighting (for) Democracy (book manuscript derived from five unused chapters of my dissertation), a book chapter entitled Critical Reimaginative Theory, the Escalation of Democracy (conference presentation, now drafted as article), Post-Totalitarian Neoliberalism (drafted), among others.
- Intentionality: Specifically, I apply Daoist logics of wu weu, ziran, and shi, to illuminate how significant political acts emerge without clear intent. Within this theme, I write about Quiet everyday resistance, Daoist Agency and Resistance, and am working on a project entitled “beyond intentionality,” which should begin with a workshop in late 2027, and end with a collaborative research agenda and edited volume.
- Outputs: Daoist Agency and Quiet Everyday Resistance articles (under review), proposed research in Molise, and subsequent work in Jamaica and Sierra Leone.
- Daoism: Daoist social theory (wu wei, shi, ziran), and applying it to agency, autonomy, and resistance. Includes Daoist Agency/Resistance; feeling autonomous (within wu wei logics), and human/more-than-human balances (including climate/resilience).
- Outputs: Daoist Agency (under review), with further articles in development and eventually an edited volume on Daoist social theory.
- Resistance: Having been a part of overt, everyday, and quiet forms of resistance, I work to to understand the nuances of dissent and resistance to hierarchical forms of power. This ranges from notions of intersectional heterarchy, to parallel structures/infrastructures; unintentional resistance; squatting and captured land; as well as quiet and unintentional preemptive insulation and deflection.
- Outputs: Quiet Everyday Resistance (under review), Daoist Resistance (conference paper), Parallel Structures (conference paper) and others.
Locations with a Research/Entrepreneurial/Life Presence:
- Czechia: I from my native New York to Czechia in 2000, and spent the better part of the next 20 years living, working, and researching there. Specifically focusing on Czechoslovakia's reconstruction after WWII within my MA program, and then autonomous communities, squatting, activism, and overt resistance, before moving to the mountains and turning my attention to quiet forms of resistance within everyday life. Unfortunately, due to health reasons which required warmer drier climates, I had to leave Czechia.
- Outputs: Being Autonomous, Fighting (for) Democracy, and subsequent articles.
- Italy (Molise): Since 2020 much of my time has been spent in rural Molise and Naples. In southern Italy we (my partner in life and research, Sarah Sippel), have been studying the nuances of life across the region, specifically in a depopulating hill top town in Molise. Our focus here has been on depopulation, factionalism, neoliberal transformation, non-capitalist ways of living, and everyday existence/endurance as resistance. Simultaneously, we are building an intnetional educational community and (eventually) school in the small hill top town of Roccavivara. This project is described elsewhere, but acts as both parallel activist project and research site.
- Outputs: Quiet Everyday Resistance; plus a co-authored book "The Myth of the One Euro Town" (in development).
- Sierra Leone: In 2008 I started working on Sierra Leone as part of my gradate studeis at Central European University. Following an illness which cut those studies short, I went to Sierra Leone on an awareness raising and research trip. While there I co-founded aibia, and have maintained a deep relationship since.
- Outputs: I have written a lot about my travels in Sierra Leone, and our aibia Sierra Leone project, but not much academically yet.
- Jamaica: as my health waned in 2016 and into 2017, I decided to shift my research to a country that, A) fit my health criteria, B) I had family ties to, C) where language would not be a barrier, and D) whose culture I was enamored by and which punches way above its weight globally. I started doing research on 'captured land' and land rights across the country, but specifically in the northern province of St. Mary's. That research was however cut short due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, then shelved for Molise and the birth of my two children. Though I am starting to work through my materials from there again, and planning research funding once my Molise work has run its course.
- Sweden: during the summers of 2015 and 2016 I spent time within the squatting collectives at Folkets Hus and Aula.
- Outputs: I published a co-authored paper on commoning knowledge in these spaces, and have another piece yet to be sent for review on commoning emotions in these centers.
- USA: I maintain an interest in Occupy Wall St. and my connections with activist there, and anticipate following up on my participation and research at Occupy Wall St.
- China: I have actively been engaging with classic Chinese philosophy, Daoist practices, and Traditional Chinese Medicine and energy routines for decades. I engage with a Daoist temple and wellness project in the Wudang mountains, including clarifications surrounding Daoist interpretations and insights.
The core thread...
...running through all these projects, causes, and themes is an overarching critique of capitalism, and a quest for resiliency and alternatives to it; especially small-scale economies, autonomous goods and usage-based rights, non-capitalist or non-commodified parallel structures, and relevant socio-cultural and political processes. This includes a mini-book project titled Interpreting Capitalism (Drafted within my PhD curriculum).
