Pattern & rigour

The plurality of patterns - situated in the three landscapes, distributed across the four zones - implies a disciplined plurality of modes of rigour - in identifying them and in mobilising them. Here we discuss rigour(s), plural.

This is a branch of the foprop weave

Each pattern has an analytical or discursive framing deriving from various modes of investigation and engagement. All of these are, in some sense, fields of theory-of-practice, each of which has its own particular object of attention and mode of rigour. Rigour(s), plural

The fields include . . evolutionary neuroscience, cultural history, buddhist theory-and- practice of mind and intention (dhamma traditions), labour-process perspectives, participatory design, constructivist studies of science and technology, innovation economics, ecodesign, ethnomethodological investigations; etcetera.

>These fields too, as specifically skilled domains of practice, have patterns, and where these are of particular significance for the general movement and inflection of the activists’ language, these too might be embraced within the foprop frame.

>But foprop is basically a language of commoning and **weaving together** - animating, choreographing - not of specialising and, certainly, not of intellectual abstraction, or academic-disciplinary separation.

Modes of rigour also include those of . . the theatre director, the dramatist or poet, the storyteller, the project coordinator, the bricolleur, the facilitator, the craftworker, the gardener, the editor, the research scientist, the primary-school teacher, the palliative-care nurse, the supply-chain manager, the classroom auxiliary. Etcetera.

The most challenging - and most pivotal - rigour is the meta-rigour of knowing how these other **rigours (plural)** tick, and being capable of weaving them and recruiting them - the dance; choreographing the dance, teaching the choreographing of the dance.

One pivotal aspect of this is the simultaneous visioning and mobilising of numerous patterns, layered and interwoven, in . . - §1 material/operational space; and - §2 narrative/conceptual/organisational space; and - §3 aesthetic/affective/‘poetic’ space . . to organise a living constellation of practices that has significant force and focus, enabled by significant formacion, with significant reach Warp - Four zones of proximity and reach >**Formacion** is a name for the work that is done by the forces of cultural production of activist formations. See the note at the foot of this page.

**The cultural landscape** All this ‘rigour’ stuff is cultural landscape business: numerous §2 patterns are implicated. Weft §2 - Cultural landscape

This is because **knowing and organising** (and organising in order that particular kinds of things **can be known**; and effectively engaged with **in practice**) is at the heart of activism and making . . thus, the intentional (re)making of society . . thus, a Living Economy. The cultural landscape §2 is of central importance in a pattern language of commoning - commoning also is a practice of continual, convivial making: skilful contributing-curating, collective stewarding, constructive enjoying, under mindful awareness.

The cultural landscape has arisen to particular prominence during the baby-boomer generation - the generation of the emergence of post-Fordism as the dominant mode of capitalist organisation - as signified by the emergent historical prominence of frames such as . . - **theory-of-practice** - an industrial- capitalist frame from classic Marxism, but appearing, for example, as 'the turn to practice' in information systems design, sociology of science and other fields in the 90s - **‘organic intellectual’** practice - a Fordist frame from Gramsci’s Marxism, and - **‘the knowledge economy’** - a post-Fordist frame.

Modes of rigour emerge, historically (and are cemented historically) through the emergence (and emergent dominance) of cultural formations. At the present time there are whole series of emergent relations of production in the cultural landscape that are available - and called for - in the Making of a living economy. We can usefull;y engage with these under the rubric of Illich's term, Tools for conviviality. Altered relations of production, radical knowing