Hi All,
It's taken me a while to respond to the idea of a co-operative - I've posted
this here and on the co-operative's discussion page as I wanted all to be
able to participate in any debate.

I am all for some sort of collective and definately for CP in the UK to be
more active in some way - when I think about what I would ultimately like to
see, it involves more transformative action in communities and society as
well as tranformative action within psychology.

So I am sort of for a co-operative, but I think I was surprised to learn the
assumption was that this would involve a committee.  When I think about
typical 'committees' the majority of work that needs doing in a collective
tends to gravitate towards the group 'in charge' which means that a position
would require a fair bit of work.  For that and many other reasons I think
it's very likely that it won't just be any one of us who are likely to
become part of any organising committee.  Those with more resources, more
time, higher up the academic ladder, with greater voice on the list serve
and in UK CP are far more likely to take these roles.  One of the criticisms
of the list serve has already been that dominant voices tend to be male and
tend to be academic for example.  I feel we run serious risk, as we quite
often do, of reproducing all the negative hierarchies that we spend so much
time being critical of.  

I feel the technology we are delving into, such as Wiki tools and more
complex online networking gives us real opportunity to move away from
structures of hierarchy - some sites on the web, some of them pretty large,
are managing this and are organised more collectively.  I realise the BPS
section of community psychology will inevitably have to have a committee,
but feel less strongly about that as we have been clear as a group that the
BPS section will be a subsiduary part of what we do rather than being our
core.  I feel if we move towards organising the core of our group around a
number of people who are already more powerful we are losing possibilities
for doing something more radical.

That said, I realise it's not easy to get anything done when no-one is in
charge - one thing we struggle with currently!  And there are certainly
parts of the proposed co-operative that I do support, particularly that I
want us to do something more.  Perhaps there is a better way of structuring
something like a committee - having far more people in it for example so
that work and decision making is spread around and more can take part.  Or
perhaps there is some way (not necessarily online voting!!) we can design a
space that enables all to feel they can participate fully, if they choose to.

I've put this in a discussion/email rather than changing the co-operative
wiki as I feel it requires more debate and I don't, at least not yet, have
definitive answers about what could be put in place instead!  

Rachael

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