The Sense in Consensus: Sensory Platforms for Horizontal Decision-making and Leadership in Radically Democratic Environments

• In Event: Science, Technology, and the Regulation of Food and Agriculture #1

Abstract

While horizontal decision-making and decentralized leadership have become entrepreneurship buzzwords, the concepts are deeply rooted within political movements advancing radically democratic futures and alternatives. In this presentation, I reflect on the role the senses play in horizontal decision-making and decentralized leadership in such environments. Particularly, I draw on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on decision-making and leadership within an illicit brewing cooperative in Catalonia. This cooperative exists within an emergent industry of illicit manufacturers promoting self-management, cooperation, and solidarity in a strongly left-libertarian and anarchist field.

Bodily experience is central to brewing: from building flavour profiles, aroma, and mouthfeel to passing grist through one’s fingers and tweaking procedures for ambient conditions. Although standardization and routine tests now stand in for many sensory assessments, the embodied experience remains fundamental. These experiences however are fraught with difference and tension when undergone collectively. At the junction between the embodied and the political, I examine how actors navigate such differences in the pursuit of democratic decisions – how they negotiate the senses within consensus.

Building from a focus on sense and affect, this presentation offers insights for advancing democratic decision-making and leadership. I argue that workers embrace a decentralized and affective approach towards leadership and decision-making, drawing on interpersonal ties and shared political visions to resolve differences. However, intersections between the sensory and the consensual can generate powerful tensions. I demonstrate that within this setting, responses to taste (in particular) have conflicted with democratic practices, often with intriguing results.

Author

• James Debowski, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University