Here we develop the narrative frame of the foprop pattern language. We intend this to be a Pattern language of activist life. Families of patterns in this pattern language constitute the basis of the schools and faculties of a 'College of conviviality.
**Scope. Hierarchy? Time** The narrative frame is organised under four scopes, each of these grounded in one of four ‘zones of proximity and reach’ in the foprop conceptual weave. We outline the four zones here, from the finest-grained to the most coarse-grained. > Note: Here and elsewhere in the foprop frame: - ¿ is pronounced 'zone' - § is pronounced 'landscape'
This fine-to-coarse presentation is not a hierarchy of scale, as it might at first appear: neither physical scale nor the reach of an individual activist or formation, in either time or social space. It’s not a simple, single hierarchy at all - any more than the reality that the language engages with is a simple hierarchy.
It does have an aspect of being a hierarchy of time - or rather, ‘sedimentedness’ or intractability in time. The most labile, fastest-cycling and immediately up-close-&-personal dimensions of practice are engaged in the first 'zone of reach': **¿1**. More slowly cycling and seemingly less tractable and more 'out-there' dimensions are addressed in other zones **¿2** and **¿3**, with the slowest-developing and most seemingly out-of-reach and intractable being engaged in zone **¿4**.
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At the simplest level, we can say: - zone ¿1 = Making an activist life, **In-here** - zone ¿2 = Making the living economy, **Here** - zone ¿3 = Making the activist formations, that can make the living economy, **We** And then - zone ¿4 **Region** contains patterns of any of these kinds, that reach off, over the horizon . . of an individual lifetime, or a region of habitation, or a knowable community.
The narrative presentation opens with the most intimate: **¿1 In-here**. After two generations of prominent feminism and increasingly vociferous identity politics, popular and political culture still remain unwilling to accept that ‘the personal’ is political in a significant historical sense, or central to radical, large-scale economic transformation. A central need and intention in foprop is to emphasise making and re-making ‘in- here’, and to enable a framing of something significantly ‘political’ and ‘economic’, which starts ‘at the small end’ with what is typically but unhelpfully taken to be the field of psychology.
The foprop frame embodies a particular intention to cultivate the labour of transformation in this intimate landscape. It calls for as much developed and historically aware skill, and is as central to radical historical transformation and to activist practice, as fields of capability that are superficially 'larger' and more recognisably 'political' and 'economic'.
**Altered ontology. Producing an activist life** Because of this, foprop can be regarded as a pattern language of producing **an activist life**, as well as making a radically transformed living economy. The foprop pattern language frame, and the college of conviviality, embody a venture of an **altered ontology** of powers, provisioning, labour and production, which runs from the most intimate and fugitive to the most large-scale, intractable, planetary and evolutionary zones of reach.
# ¿1 Care work, 'in-here'
The core intention of the Faculty of care work is the production of skilfully altered **structures of feeling** which facilitate the making of a living economy: affiliations and intentions, perceptions and motivations, valuings and commitments, knee-jerks and dispositions.
The home pattern of the Faculty is - ¿100 Making intentions & affiliations
Humans’ lives are lived on the edge of the preconscious, and most of what we do passes from preconscious through intention into action without having been handled by the conscious mind. Activism - like every other mode of power - constantly makes use of this quality of human life. There is a region of experience, at the cusp of passing from the preconscious into intention and thence into action, where the rubber hits the road.
The landscape of this activist ‘place’ is the *§3 Aesthetic landscape*, organised by structures of feeling; and by literacy and skill in organising *altered forces of production* in this landscape.
This is where we produce . . affiliations and intentions, perceptions and motivations, valuings and commitments, knee-jerks and dispositions: the things that add up to being 'a person' and living 'a life'. Literacy and skill in this landscape is the core concern of the **¿3 Faculty of care work**.
# ¿2 Subsistence work, 'Here'
The core intention of the Faculty of subsistence work is producing altered relations of provisioning and access, for material means of subsistence and wellbeing. Aka making the living economy.
The faculty’s home pattern is ¿200 Making the living economy
Until recent decades, a materialist frame on the real economy would have seen it as comprising **labour processes**, transforming, transporting and mobilising material means on an increasingly wide and elaborated scale, through human labour and skill, and the mobilising of tools and machines. However, for present and future generations, two radically challenging extensions of this scope must also be now engaged.
On one hand is **‘wild’, ecosystemic nature** itself, on a planetary scale - the domain of ‘the anthropocene’.
On the other hand is **digital material** and machines for handling digital material. This domain does articulate with these other more familiar ones, constituting hybrid machines of enormous scale and material force.
Interweaving ecosystems of these three domains of real economy are at the heart of the **¿2 Faculty of subsistence work**.
# ¿3 Formaciòn work, 'We'
The core intention of the Faculty of formaciòn work is the skilful production of activist formations of labour power - that is, producing the landscape of knowing and capability in making the living economy.
The faculty’s home pattern is ¿300 Making labour power
As a thoroughgoing ‘labour process’ framing, the production and organising and mobilising of *labour power* is at the heart of the foprop frame.
This landscape of knowing and capability is central in the real economy - and in society per se - and pivotal in the producing and mobilising of the radically *altered* capabilities of *activist* formations, in producing the radically altered Living economy.
# ¿4 Stewarding work,- 'Region'
The core intention of the Faculty of stewarding work is stewarding commons of all scales and kinds, over the horizons of knowable community.
The faculty’s home pattern is ¿400 Making over the horizon
Scale and reach are basic, deep challenges in making a Living economy. As regards scale . . everyday life organises itself within localities and regions, and through membership of familiar communities and traditions. Yet it calls also for (cultural and economic) commerce across the boundaries of knowable and local community . . across regions and, in today’s world, across the planet.
Reach - specifically, activist reach - is manifestly not just a matter of geography but also of time: - **reach back** into more- and less-visible histories, with their stories, ‘lessons’ and models, precedents and conditions; and . . - **reach forward** into proximate and remote futures . . our grandchildren’s lives, our evolving species capability in material, cultural and aesthetic domains, the planet’s biomes and non-human species.
This is ‘deep’ time, running inescapably off over the horizon of any knowable present or knowable past, and thus beyond knowable community too.
Commons stewarding runs intrinsically over the horizon of the local-present: back (through the commons courts, for example) into tradition and historical precedent, forward (through commons assemblies) into succeeding generations and emergent needs. The faculty of the college where these concerns live is named the Faculty of stewarding work
--- # The faculties & their schools - ¿1 Care work, In-here - ¿2 Subsistence work , Here - ¿3 Formaciòn work , We - ¿4 Stewarding work , Region
# See also . .
Here we describe four zones of proximity and reach, helpful in framing the situation of an activist and the scope of an activist or formation of activists.
The pattern language itself can generate the organisational form of the large-scale, diverse, long-term practice required to curate and steward and mobilise it.