Skip to content

Preorg!

Defragmenting our selves

Menu
  • Social movements
  • Self help for the apocalypse
  • Organising renters
  • Research notes
  • Scholar Activist Network
  • Archived posts
    • About
    • Co-operatives
    • Economic organising
    • Journalism
    • Non-profit organising
    • Taking power
    • People in orgs
    • Social media and orgs
Menu

Category: People in orgs

Social knowledge and the academy: a gulf with few bridges

Posted on 3 April, 202126 May, 2021 by preorg

Academia likes to see itself as a producer of knowledge, and that’s difficult to argue with. But most of the time its self-conception goes further than this. We are the knowledge experts, think the academics. We are better at developing knowledge than other people. It’s what we’re paid for. Years of post-modernism has, curiously, failed…

Continue reading

On Cuba, fear and institutions

Posted on 19 March, 201815 June, 2019 by preorg

Spending some time in Cuba recently was a good opportunity to consider the problems of trying to common institutions from the inside, that is to say, bring them under the control and effective ownership of those who they affect, and particularly those who work within them. Applying this to the institutions that structure our daily…

Continue reading

On being a commoner

Posted on 4 March, 201815 June, 2019 by preorg

The idea of commoning is on the rise, or rather, is having a resurgence. Talk of the commons appears in unexpected places, from the radical to the less so. From a marginal idea a few years ago it has drifted, with the help of digital technology, into a position where parties and campaigners refer to…

Continue reading

Organisations=people=relationships=politics

Posted on 3 November, 201629 June, 2019 by preorg

I’ve written about organisations on this blog, and I’ve written about people, and I’ve written about politics. What I haven’t talked about enough is relationships. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks but was finally prompted to do it today by this story about the role of Blair’s personal leadership…

Continue reading

Foodbanks aren’t coping – and why should they?

Posted on 22 September, 201316 October, 2013 by preorg

Recently I spoke with the manager of a foodbank in South London. She didn’t offer to go on the record but I afterwards made a few notes on what she was saying: They have recently seen a big increase in people coming to them, many due to delays in benefit, the abolition of crisis loans…

Continue reading

Notes on 19th September 2012

Posted on 19 September, 2012 by preorg

Today I spent the day researching and documenting the involvement of multinational mining corporations with horrendous paramilitary groups in Colombia. I noted that, while the facts are known, each incident in which a company is involved in death threats and murder is written off as a ‘mistake’. And yet it keeps happening. On the street…

Continue reading

The Good Banker

Posted on 10 September, 201210 September, 2012 by preorg

The other day I met a woman just starting a career in banking in Spain, a country even more screwed by its banks than we are. She made the following statements: The problem with banks is that they have bad people at the top. We change the people at the top but it doesn’t change…

Continue reading

Orgs as social entities and structure

Posted on 3 September, 2012 by preorg

One of the most important points to make about orgs is that they tend to develop internal cultures. In the case of many big organisations, including many corporations and governmental orgs, they develop a particular culture deliberately. Whether they do it deliberately or not a culture develops and within that particular attitudes and particular ethical…

Continue reading

Recent Posts

  • What social movements don’t always know they need to learn – and a farewell to LRU
  • Machinery or community? What is a tenants union?
  • London Renters Union reserves? Building a union for those who can’t (or won’t) come to meetings
  • Is there a danger of a radical/reformist tension in LRU?
  • Class partnership: how successful organising works
Interested in Besson Street? Try here
© 2025 Preorg! | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme