Emergent Strategy

Emergent Strategy PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849352615
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

Holding Change

Holding Change PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354197
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Book Description
Facilitation and mediation are important skills in our highly organized world. Holding Change is a guide for attending to both in ways that align with nature, with pleasure, with our best imaginings of our future. It provides lessons for generating the ease necessary to move through life’s inevitable struggles and for practicing the art of holding others without losing ourselves. Black feminists have evolved this wisdom, but it can serve anyone working to create change, individually, interpersonally, and within our organizations. The majority of the book is sourced from brown’s twenty-plus years of facilitation and mediation work, with additional wisdom from a selection of living Black feminist facilitators and mediators.

Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy

Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy PDF Author: Ionut Popescu
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
"Ionut Popescu explores how successful American grand strategy comes about. For most experts in the academic world of political science and in the Washington policymaking community, the answer lies in the design and implementation of a farsighted strategic plan or framework. The role of such a Grand Design is to guide the president's foreign policy actions and resource allocation decisions in the pursuit of specific long-term objectives. The alternative to following a Grand Design is usually said to consist of ad-hoc, incoherent, and ultimately unsuccessful foreign policy decision-making. But what if successful grand strategies are sometimes formed through an emergent process of learning and adaptation, instead of being the product of strategic planning and farsighted designs? Popescu argues that the Emergent Strategy model, adapted from the business strategy literature, explains some of the traditional success stories and failures of American grand strategy better than the prevalent Grand Design model. These findings suggest the need to shift the focus of policymakers away from planning for long-term objectives and toward short- and medium-term incremental learning and adaptation. Based on this new theoretical understanding of successful grand strategy being formed by either Design or Emergent elements depending on the circumstances, the book also offers a framework to help policymakers and strategic planners choose the right model and tools based on the level of uncertainty they face in the external environment"--

Pleasure Activism

Pleasure Activism PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849353271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own. Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

The Emergent Approach to Strategy

The Emergent Approach to Strategy PDF Author: Peter Compo
Publisher: Business Expert Press
ISBN: 1637422164
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
A NEW CLARITY FOR STRATEGY THEORY AND PRACTICE Consultants and academics continue to report chronic failures of strategy practice.Two causes dominate: strategy is still not fully defined, and strategy practice is still largely based on a planned versus adaptive view of the world. The Emergent Approach to Strategy digs deep into complex adaptive systems to bring a new clarity to strategy function and incorporate this understanding into practice. The emergent approach practice includes: An agile method for strategy framework design Scenario and bottleneck diagnosis techniques A four-station dashboard emphasizing execution A new set of strategy tests called the five disqualifiers Go to emergentapproach.com to access the following resources: Chapter supplements with appendixes, commentary, and added examples Five Task Sets: a guidebook for implementation of the approach Templates for use in strategy materials Additional examples of the Five Disqualifiers in various fields of endeavor

Undrowned

Undrowned PDF Author: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849353980
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123

Book Description
Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning. From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of “vision” and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice.

We Will Not Cancel Us

We Will Not Cancel Us PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Book Description
Cancel culture addresses real harm...and sometimes causes more. It’s time to think this through. “Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous “Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to take down more powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, cancel culture is seen by some as having gone “too far.” Adrienne maree brown, a respected cultural voice and a professional mediator, reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible ways beyond the impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes from even from its targets. Brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in a way that reflects our values?

Begin the World Over

Begin the World Over PDF Author: Kung Li Sun
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354731
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Book Description
Begin the World Over is a counterfactual novel about the Founders’ greatest fear—that Black and Indigenous people might join forces to undo the newly formed United States of America—coming true. In 1793, as revolutionaries in the West Indies take up arms, James Hemings has little interest in joining the fight for liberté—talented and favored, he is careful to protect his relative comforts as Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef. But when he meets Denmark Vesey, James is immediately smitten. The formidable first mate persuades James to board his ship, on its way to the revolt in Saint-Domingue. There and on the mainland they join forces with a diverse cast of characters, including a gender nonconforming prophetess, a formerly enslaved jockey, and a Muskogee horse trader. The resulting adventure masterfully mixes real historical figures and events with a riotous retelling of a possible history in which James must decide whether to return to his constrained but composed former life, or join the coalition of Black revolutionaries and Muskogee resistance to fight the American slavers and settlers.

Food, Energy and Water Sustainability

Food, Energy and Water Sustainability PDF Author: Laura M. Pereira
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317446186
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Societies around the world face an increasingly uncertain future as social and ecological changes create pressure on resource governance, and this uncertainty calls for new models that illuminate the intersections of civil society, public sector, and private sector resource management. This volume presents a diversity of collaborations between various governance actors in the management of the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus. It analyses the ability of emergent governance structures to cope with the complexity of future challenges across FEW systems. Divided into two sections, chapters in the first half of the book present a collection of case studies from around the world exemplifying how FEW nexus challenges are addressed in a multitude of ways and by a variety of actors. Chapters in the second half offer broader perspectives on the management of FEW and underline the lessons that emerge from applying a FEW lens to the question of natural resource governance. The varied examples in this book highlight that the management of FEW is often a question of reinventing, adapting, and building upon existing practices. Such practices are deeply embedded in unique socio-cultural, environmental, and political contexts as well as ‘hard’ infrastructures. Most of all, this edited volume seeks to communicate the wealth of ideas from committed individuals who continue to work to improve natural resource governance and our sustainable futures.

Fables and Spells

Fables and Spells PDF Author: adrienne maree brown
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354510
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Fables and Spells is a vibrant selection of visionary works, both previously published and brand new. Included here is brown’s most beloved story, “The River,” as well as the two sequel tales of her Water Trio. The remaining sixty-seven pieces explore moments of beauty, conflict, and transformation that also weave deep, radical lessons. With narrative “fables” of speculative fiction and “spells” that play with the lines between poetry, instruction, song, and chant, Fables and Spells demonstrates how good writing can engage the present while providing expansive visions of the possible worlds humans can build. adrienne maree brown’s previous work includes Octavia’s Brood, Emergent Strategy, the New York Times best-selling Pleasure Activism, We Will Not Cancel Us, Holding Change, and Grievers. brown grows transformative ideas in public through her writing and art; she is a poet changing the world. She is the writer-in-residence at Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.