Dear Pedagog community,

We are finally able to introduce ourselves to this amazingly engaged community!

Apologies for not having done so before, but we have been struggling with the Covid-19 situation here in Italy (where we are based at the moment) and with some health issues.

We are Lara Monticelli and Torsten Geelan, respectively, Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen (from Sept. 2020 onwards). We are both early-career sociologists struggling to survive in neoliberal academia, and now that we have some teaching experience, we are keen to engage in exchanges on critical pedagogy aimed at raising critical consciousness amongst educators and students.

Albeit our different backgrounds, we are both interested in going beyond the classic critiques of capitalism and deepening our understanding of contemporary alternatives, why and when they succeed or fail, and how they can thrive.

We realized that after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2009, many researchers started to be interested (again) in alternatives to capitalism, but there was not an interdisciplinary community where these various researchers (coming from many different fields such as sociology, history, ecology, philosophy, economics, etc...) could meet and exchange their ideas, their views and their projects.

For this reason, in 2018 we decided to found a new research network (titled Alternatives to Capitalism) within SASE - Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.

The network arose from the renewed debate about the future of capitalism and the urgent need to prefigure and enact alternatives that can help tackle the multiple intertwined crises that societies currently face – high and rising inequality of income and power, eroding democracy and citizens´ rights, climate change and a shrinking welfare state.

In parallel with our annual gatherings which are usually held in June or July each year, we interact with our vibrant community through a mailing list (which counts almost 400 members at the moment).

We warmly invite you to join us by subscribing here:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?SUBED1=ALTERNATIVES-TO-CAPITALISM&A=1

During our annual gatherings, which are held every year in a different city, it is fundamental for us to engage with local activists and organizations. For instance, last year in New York City, our participants could tour Fountain House, observe a meeting, and explore how this communities’ mental health program uses decision-making by consensus with staff and members.  In addition, the founder of FIGMENT delved into how a free, annual participatory arts festival started in NYC and spread across North American cities.

On another day, the “Worker Cooperatives and the Labor Movement: A Co-op Development Initiative in the Nation’s Largest Union Local” roundtable featured speakers from 1199SEIU, the Open Society Foundation, and the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and Worker Institute at Cornell ILR. This session discussed an important alternative for organized labor, exploring why the largest union local in the US is considering worker cooperatives as a strategy. 

Last year, we have been also lucky enough to host two prominent guests such as the founder and editor of Jacobin Magazine, Bhaskar Sunkara, who discussed his new book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (Basic Books 2019) and Professor Nancy Fraser who presented her new book Capitalism. A Conversation in Critical Theory (Polity Press 2018). 

We are really glad to be part of this community and we look forward to creating strong bridges between the Alternatives to Capitalism network, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and the Pedagog community.

In solidarity,

Lara and Torsten