Many LP contributors and readers will have come across the principles of Open Space Technology (OST) at social movement gatherings. These principles are:
1. Whoever turns up are the right people.
2. It starts when it’s meant to.
3. You are free to do what is of value to you.
4. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
5. When it’s over, it’s over.
Many will also believe that these principles are of great merit as aspirational goals for how social movement gatherings should proceed. However, those of us who work in the social sciences and humanities will be aware that worthy prescriptive models of social and political processes (e.g. pluralism) are not always accurate as descriptive models of those processes. I don’t believe I’m alone in having discovered that this is often the case in relation to social movement processes. To improve our understanding of the actual dynamics of the new mass social movements and alternative political parties, I offer…
Norton’s Five (Descriptive) Laws of Social Movement Gatherings:
First Law. Whoever turns up are the right people, except for a small but intransigent minority who will be just sufficiently numerous and experienced in meeting tactics to prevent agreement on anything for the duration of the gathering.
Second Law. It never starts when it’s meant to.
Third Law. You are not free to do what is of value to you because of the moral and emotional blackmail exercised by the small but intransigent minority mentioned in the First Law to ensure that the gathering spends hours debating their priority issues.
Fourth Law. Whatever happens is not the only thing that could have happened, and could have been avoided by the adoption of sensible processes on which it unfortunately proved impossible to reach agreement due to the operation of the First Law.
Fifth Law. When it’s over, the recriminatory on-line arguments will continue for years afterwards.
Commenters are welcome to propose alterations and additions to these laws.
Splitter !!!#$@%^&^%$#@!!!!
All laws are subservient to Murphy’s Law. This is particularly true for social gatherings since they have such immense capacity for failure with all those opinions, egos, personality types and lack of social graces. Whatever we attempt we will fail. Which is wonderfully liberating.
That’s certainly what happens if Trots are involved.
Attempts to define goals or protocols so as to ensure that intransigent minorities can’t use their knowledge of meeting rules to prevent anything meaningful happening will elicit claims of bureaucracy, exclusion and bullying.
Excessively process-driven OST gatherings will sooner or later encourage someone to do a Life of Brian parody followed shortly after by someone(s) acting in ways that make it seem as if the intransigent minority above have a point.
Excessively goal-driven gatherings will convince many that the intransigent minority has won.
There will be a lack of consensus on what “excessively” means in the laws above and a need to return to the starting point, with all that entails.
Shit happens!
If the meeting chair manages to control the intransigent minority, he will
a) be called a Stalinist by said minority. This will be intended as the gravest insult
b) be called a Stalinist by his/her supporters. This will be intended as a compliment.
Only the very angry young lady from Resistance will have bought a working loud hailer.
The organising collective member who is constantly banging on about the need for attention to security and the dangers posed by cops will subsequently be found to be an ASIO agent.
PN, your corollary @ 8 implies that it will be possible to access accurate minutes in about 25 years’ time …
Paul @8, in our mob, they were mostly kids of Coalition MPs and staffers.
Or the catspaw of the labourite bureaucracy, imperialism, zionism, etc depending who is complaining. Conversely anyone seen to be in a minority and who seems a bit of a nuisnace to anyone else is by definition called sectarian.
oops by definition
calledsectarianI presume that the rapists showing up at the OWS protests are not in keeping with Nortons first rule. Perhaps they did not read the rules.
Love this post! But OST is supposed to be unstructured, that’s why the rules aren’t rules at all. It’s a dialogue rather than decision-making format, and I’d not call the “rule of two-feet” (i.e. come and go as you please) deliberative. So the General Assembly is not an OST format in itself, although the breakouts may be.
I think rule number 3 should be “We will talk about what matters, even though we have have no idea how to talk about power.”
catspaw of the labourite bureaucracy, imperialism, zionism
True story. I’m at a meeting where there was an interminable debate over some trivial matter. Eventually, someone moves a procedural motion that the motion be put. The procedural motion is carried overwhelmingly.
A woman nonetheless wants to keep debating the substantive motion. The chair says, sorry, I’ve now got to put the motion. The woman, semi-hysterically, accuses him on not letting women speak, runs from the room and is never seen again.
It would be much easier if we weren’t dealing with humans.
Halo Action Figure Theatre Presents:
Robert’s Rules Of Order
Sixth Law: A whole bunch of people who weren’t there will later claim to have participated.
Do the OST principles 1 to 5 inevitably lead to “The Abilene Paradox”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
No Habby … a more likely scenario is, as Paul Norton suggested, unproductive and pointless argument, possibly paralysis by analysis and then no action at all as the energy of the gathering is dissipated.
Terje, Terje, Terje. Let me remind you that Ayn Rand modeled John Galt on a psychopathic child kidnapper.
Terje said:
I’m persistently astonished at the speed with which the latest trolling talking point from the Blotosphere is relayed to this place by you.
There has, AIUI, been one (1) allegation of a r@pe taking place. Smearing an entire movement because one person with possibly no connection to any politics might have acted criminally in the course of attending an unstructured gathering of people around equity issues is outrageous.
You might also, by the way, reflect on what, if any conclusions might be compelled for someone ostensibly committed to libertarian principle. Should there be firm rules about “who are the right people”? Should people be compelled to register, have ID checks, police clearance and should those who pass and are accepted be called upon to affirm new attendees? Would more regulation be the best defence against sslander from the Blotosphere and its fellow travellers?
Should people be compelled to register, have ID checks, police clearance and should those who pass and are accepted be called upon to affirm new attendees?
Only after the revolution comes Fran. You will, of course, be in charge of affirmations and background checks.
You are not free to do what is of value to you because of the moral and emotional blackmail exercised by the small but intransigent minority mentioned in the First Law to ensure that the gathering spends hours debating their priority issues.
Someone above said this of Trotskyites and a friend of mine who participated extensively in the OM shin-dig remarked that they did indeed try to hijack the whole shebang but were asked politely to piss off because ‘we don’t want bureaucrats we want artists’.
You could just as easily say that you may not be free to do what is of value to you because of the majority as well. There was an open mike at OM I most sincerely doubt that anyone who got up and gave a schpiel viz markets not being the actual problem would’ve got as warm a reception as others might have altho’ I doubt they would have been shouted down either. It depends I guess on the group’s ethos and size.
Adrien said:
Which is just as it should be.
Fran 22, to be precise, there’s been one allegation of a sexual
assault of an unspecified nature, which might or might not be rape.