Skip to main content

self-organisation

Towards an anarchist cybernetics: Stafford Beer, self-organisation and radical social movements

Introduction

In this paper, I attempt to rehabilitate cybernetics, in some form, as a tradition that has the potential to enrich our understandings of radical or alternative forms of organisation. In doing so, I argue for an anarchist cybernetics: a reading of Stafford Beer’s organisational cybernetics that lends itself to forms of organisation that aim to limit if not completely reject centralised, top-down command and control in favour of participatory and democratic practices.

The organisation and politics of social forums

This special issue of ephemera focuses particularly on the close relationship between the organisation and politics of Social Forum spaces. That is, since many people regard Social Forums as important political spaces, with the potential to radically transform politics – and therefore society itself – we feel it is important to consider the way these events are organised as a window into the politics, i.e. the power relations, they produce.

Subscribe to self-organisation

All Issues

| vol. 23, no. 2
| vol. 23, no. 1
| vol. 22, no. 3