Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Emergent Strategy, 0) - Softcover

Brown, Adrienne Maree

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849352607 ISBN 13: 9781849352604

Publisher: AK Press, 2017

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.

About the Author:

adrienne maree brown, the Co-Editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, doula and pleasure activist living in Detroit. She is a student of emergence, somatics, transformation and science fiction. She is part of the training body of generative somatics, and coodinating the Just Films Narrative Shift Program for Allied Media Projects. She is the 2015-2016 Ursula le Guin Fellowship, the Knight Arts Challenge for 2013 and 2015, a Kresge Literary Arts Fellow for 2013, in the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop at Voices of Our Nation 2014, and a graduate of the Clarion Sci-Fi and Fantasy Workshop in 2015.

Review:

“It is the end of the world as we know it, thanks to a lot of reasons. Now is the time to gird ourselves for the fight for a new world. Right now I can't think of better girding than Emergent Strategy.” —Detroit Metro Times

“Emergent Strategy is an examination of where our movements have been and an offering of a framework for resistance that is rooted in the miracles of nature, decentralized, collective leadership, and personal, relational, organizational, and movement-wide transformation. Brown not only inspires me to resist, but to do in the most beautiful, joyful, creative, sustainable, collective and effective ways.” Andrea, J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color

“It was a revelation to discover Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy. She is matter of-fact about the coming destruction we face—of our environment, of our resources, of our governments. Her philosophy, based on Octavia Butler’s guiding philosophy of the Earthseed books, is that God Is Change. Rather than run from it or resist it, we should embrace it, look to what the plants, animals, and genomes can teach us about adapting to survive and to thrive.” —BuzzFeed

"If your survival kit has room for a book, you’d better reserve that space for Emergent Strategy. ... brown’s book is a revelation. It is a manual for facing the most urgent crises of our time—environmental collapse, late capitalism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy—without drowning in the enormity of the task." —Public Books

“Emergent Strategy is a lyrical, explorative, non-linear journey ... It’s a book for people interested in radical social change, who are willing to think expansively about what the future could look like, or are in need of help doing that kind of thinking ... This is what is so appealing about brown’s work—she is almost hopelessly optimistic. She refuses to give in to cynicism or despair, and this ability to dream wildly is part of why she can maintain such openness toward the idea of a better future.” —Colorlines

“Adrienne leads us on a passionate, purposeful, intimate ride into this Universe where relationships spawn new possibilities. Her years of dedication to facilitating change by partnering with life invite us to also join with life to create the changes so desperately needed now.” —Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science
“Necessary, vital, and timely.” —Ayana Jamieson, Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network

“Adrienne has challenged me, enlightened me and reminded me that transformation happens in our natural world every day and we can borrow from it strategies to transform ourselves, our organizations, and our society.” —Denise Perry, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD)

“A word/heart sojourn through the hard questions.” — Makani Themba, facilitator for the Movement for Black Lives

“Emergent Strategy...reminds us, directly and by example, that wonder (which at its heart is love), is the foundation of our ability to shape change and create the world we want.” —Alta Starr, leadership development trainer at Generative Somatics

“Drawing on sources as varied as poetry, science fiction, forests, ancestors, and a desired future, Emergent Strategy speaks with ease about what is hard and brings us into that ease without losing its way. Savor and enjoy!” —Elissa Perry, Management Assistance Group