<div dir="ltr"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">Dea</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">r All,</span></font><div><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">I am happy to sha</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">re my latest </span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">academic article –<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8DF9EFQSSQRMIEAX5YNM/full?target=10.1080/07393148.2024.2376425#abstract" target="_blank"><i>Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot</i><span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>– coauthored with<span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> Lesley B</span></span></font><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ranagan</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> in New Political Science.</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;box-sizing:inherit;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:inherit"> </span></div><div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9)">It will be of pa</span></font><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rticula</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">r inte</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rest to anyone inte</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rested in p</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">refigu</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rative politics, di</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rect and delibe</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">rative democ</span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">racy, </span><span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">Citizens' Assemblies, and intentional<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>communities – specifically Au<span style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9);font-family:arial,sans-serif">roville (India).</span></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><h2 id="m_-4154066442825174163gmail-abstract" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:29.12px"><font face="arial, sans-serif" size="2">Abstract</font></h2><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:1em 0px;word-break:break-word;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font face="arial, sans-serif">In this paper we explore how a Citizens’ Assembly project in Auroville – the largest intentional community in the world – sought to prefigure new practices in collective decision-making. A Citizens’ Assembly model is a democratic innovation that enacts a deliberative mode of political decision-making by everyday citizens. It has been used by diverse bodies, from social movements to nation-state governments around the world. Auroville’s 2021 Citizens’ Assembly pilot – concerning a water vision for Auroville – is a unique case study that enables us to make a distinctive contribution to the existing academic scholarship concerning Citizens’ Assemblies and prefigurative politics on two grounds. Firstly, Auroville is an intentional community shaped by specific spiritual and self-governance values – an uncommon setting for a Citizens’ Assembly that supports us to make specific empirical offerings not seen in the literature on Citizens’ Assemblies to date. Secondly, given that Auroville’s pilot Citizens’ Assembly sought to prefigure the community’s foundational ideals of “human unity” and “unending education” in its collective decision-making practice, we connect our analysis to the academic scholarship concerning prefigurative politics. In doing so, we uniquely draw together the scholarship concerning Citizens’ Assemblies and the literature concerning prefigurative politics to explore whether such democratic innovations have a transformative effect on the political contexts they are embedded in, which we freshly consider with a focus on local scale, and the role that institutionalisation might have in terms of ensuring the reproduction, and thereby lasting impact of such experiments, or conversely their nullification.</font></p></div></div><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><i style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Dr. Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith </i><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">(She/Her)</span><div><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Researcher, Educator, Activist<br><div><a href="mailto:suri@berkeley.edu" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">suri@berkeley.edu</a></div><div>Skype: Suryamayi</div><div><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suryamayi/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> | <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Suryamayi-Clarence-Smith" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">ResearchGate</a></div><div><div></div></div><div><br></div><div>My book, <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/prefiguring-utopia-in-auroville" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Prefiguring Utopia: The Auroville Experiment</a>, is published by Bristol University Press:<i><br></i></div><div><br></div><div><img src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/mail-sig/AIorK4zI10H7YVIDLl1DQzAsSZjxDR2GSxjWjcC3FtxnxrxIfw0hlkL7GyFG3nUk2DNXNpd7-F48SNE"><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u><br></u></font></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u>Other Publications:</u></font></div><div><ul><li><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height:16.866667px">2024 (Forthcoming) “Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height:16.866667px">Auroville</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height:16.866667px"> Citizens’ Assembly Pilot” <i>New Political Science</i>.</span><span style="color:black"> </span><br></font></li><li><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height:16.866667px">2024 (Forthcoming) “Prompting Spiritually Prefigurative Practice: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height:16.866667px">Collective Decision-Making in Auroville, India.” </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height:16.866667px;color:black">Eco‐communities: Surviving Well Together.</span></i><span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height:16.866667px;color:black"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height:16.866667px;color:black">Ed. <span>Jenny</span><span> </span><span>Pickerill.</span></span></font></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font color="#000000"><span>Clarence-Smith, S. (</span></font>2022) “Prefiguration and Utopia.”</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">The Future is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics.<span> </span></i><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Ed. Lara Monticelli. Bristol University Press.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Clarence-Smith, S. and L. Monticelli (2022) “Flexible Institutionalisation in Auroville: A Prefigurative Alternative to Development.” </span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Sustainability Science</i><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> 17</span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">.</i></li><li><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16.866667px">Le Hunte, B., K. Ross, S. Clarence-Smith and A. Rosegger (2022) “Lessons from Utopia: Reflections on Peak Transformative Experiences in a University Studio in Auroville, India.”<span> </span><i>Palgrave Handbook on Learning for Transformation</i>. Eds.<span> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16.866667px">A. Nicolaides, S. Eschenbacher, P. Buergelt, Y. Gilpin-Jackson, M. Welch,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16.866667px"><span> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;line-height:16.866667px">M. Misawa, A. Lim.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Clarence-Smith, S. (2021) “Auroville: An Experiment in Spiritually Prefigurative Utopian Practice.”</span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Transgressive Utopianism: Essays in Honour of Lucy Sargisson</i><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">. Eds. Lyman Tower Sargent and Raffaella Baccolini. Peter Lang (Ralahine Utopian Studies).</span></li></ul></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>