Organising spirit

ABSTRACT

The article reports on a philosophical inquiry of the social organisation of spirit in the village Bywater. The main conceptual claim is that the case shows us spirit as a recursive common. Spirit is both an effect of and a condition for social organisation. We contribute to rethinking the relation between resource and practice in commons and in alternative organisation. Methodologically, the inquiry is grounded in a cultural mapping of the cultural in/tangibles producing the spirit of the community. We read these cultural in/tangibles through a philosophical lens and re-enter them as elements of spirit. We conclude that spirit/commoning acts as organising of, for, and with community needs while remaining undecidably explicit and implicit, formal and informal. By conceptualising spirit as resource and commons, this paper contributes to the study of alternative organisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Alternative organisation
• commoning
• spirit

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for the constructive feedback and suggestions which helped strengthen the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We have anonymised all names, including the village name.

2 Translated from the Danish. Throughout the article we have kept Danish proper names but otherwise translated Danish into English.

3 The same priest is also concerned with how collective spirit can also be employed in the service of fascism.