Panga

Pluralism Prefigurative Politics Collectivism Current

Panga is a project to support multi-house collectives which want to try a plurality of different prefigurative ways of living.

Live
A picture of a futuristic sci-fi city centered around greenery and a large tree.

Panga Link to this heading

About Panga Link to this heading

If Radish House represents a single household which wishes to experiment with intentionally living values to create a better future, what does a network of such houses (and even collective groups of houses) look like? Can we experiment with many different better futures at once to build our skills at imagining life beyond capitalism?

Without dictating what those better worlds are, or how such collective experiments should work, Panga aims to provide resources, help and a loose framework to enable a wide range of such experimental collectives.

My involvement Link to this heading

Panga currently only has one pod (working group) which is the Invocation Pod. Our job is to figure out what is needed to call a more collaborative group into being. We aim to put together the container that will allow more people to collaborate on Panga in a way that doesn’t close down possibilities.

Theory of Change Link to this heading

1. Prefigurative Politics Link to this heading

Prefigurative politics is ‘the deliberate experimental implementation of desired future social relations and practices in the here-and-now’ (Boggs, 1977)

While the term may not be widely used outside of certain activist circles, prefigurative politics is a key value for me, fundamental to the goals of Panga. It’s well worth reading this excellent write-up of Prefigurative Politics at the Commons Library.

The above article outlines better than I can how prefigurative politics is an important theory of change. I don’t claim that it is sufficient on it’s own, it needs to sit alongside resistance to oppression as two key political pillars.

2. Think globally, act locally Link to this heading

Panga is designed to be concentrated in a particular local area. The idea is that supporting an increase in the number of experimental ways of living in a particular area will have a noticable impact on the Overton Window locally, and may have ripple effects.

3. Resilience through Collectivism Link to this heading

Local collectives managing resources together that relate to real life needs (shelter, food, transport, energy, etc) lead to greater local resilience. This isn’t just an experimental political act to generate social change. I expect that in the coming years and decades, local resilience will have real, on-the-ground benefits to people’s lives as we deal with the increasing effects of climate change.