Research Collective

I have been thinking for a long time now about starting a research collective as part of the free school, inspirted by the 3cs research collective and the colectivo situationces. (see earlier posts). The basic idea is that we’d be a group committed to generating knowledge about our space/situation. However, unlike academics, our research would be specifically about contributing to a greater conversation about how we go about practicing an emancipatory politic.

some possible topics we could cover:

the wars of occupation (iraq, afghanistan) that are being waged by the united states and how this effects our communities in Mount Pleasant (i am actually already working on this one by myself and want to bring this up face to face with folks when i get back)

how does the State manifest itself in our everyday lives?

police activity in the city

anishinabeeg-settler relations

radical history of the area

anthropological study of the elite families of mount pleasant (mcguirks, labells, JOSLINS!)

geographic survey of our space (physcic maps!)

“crime” in the city

the prisoner population in the county jail

sexuality in mount pleasant

etc

the idea is that we’d then publish the results and the discussions we had as a collective about the knowledge that we generated…multimedia even. please see the article i posted several weeks ago called “drifting through the knowledge machine” for more ideas on the kinds of stuff we might be able to do in mount p….

YES!!

This is a good idea. I can imagine some great discussions coming from our explorations of each of these issues. And on a more personal note, it would also give me a lot to do during free school “downtime,” when I sometimes feel unproductive :P

are there any other topics people think would be fun to do?

Maybe something about the relationship between CMU, The City of Mt. Pleasant, and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe……Something more specific probably, but I think looking into these relationships could bring up more specific questions…… Maybe some type of cartography (map) of the relationships.
Another possibility is: How having a University affects creating a community within Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant is a place where many (students) come for a while from other communities, then leave again…..could possible do some surveying of how often students actual leave campus, and how much they know about the town they live in 9 months of the year….

Down.

Environmental crap in the area: e.g. who is ruining the water table this week?! We could probably get some major assistance from the eco-kids on this one.