pencil

Most of the people that I’ve met describe writing as a solitary experience where you spend a lot of time with yourself and your thoughts. A process where you slowly outline your writing. However, when it comes to research, it already has an collaborative aspect in itself with the referencing of other researchers and written literature. In that way you build upon the shoulders of giants.

The way internet opens up for collaboration it also adds to the possibility to build upon the shoulders of others to reach farther than what was done before and thus effectively contributing to the collective knowledge of human mankind. Therefore I thought I would experiment in having a slightly more collaborative thesis than the usual case is. So rather than sit in my own chamber drafting and re-drafting the text I will open up the process and write about it and hopefully both readers will benefit as well as I will benefit from an influx of new thoughts.

We all have our viewpoint. More often than not I get curious on what other’s people viewpoint is. The outlook I will be having when I write this bachelor’s thesis is the one of a political scientist. However, I think interdisciplinarity is key in getting a richer understanding of the world. What will particularly interest me is the field of communication and what that might be able to contribute to the analysis. So if you are working with that or have studied it you are particularly welcome to chime in, but I have to emphasize that any comment or cheery call is more than welcome.

Thoughts that I’ve had so far.

  • Collaborative consumption – Recently there has been a growing movement sharing practices. From car sharing to clothes swapping. There are a quite a few interesting issues that could be explored here. The companies that create a space for sharing a product or practice is effectively creating a common, but a privatized one, since the common owns the structure of the common. But the common itself would be nought without it’s ”citizens” or customers.  How does that affect democracy? Is there a difference in governance between non-privatized commons and privatized commons? Has sustainability anything to do with the governance structure of the common and what would be the first step to reaching that?
  • Individualized action – the general narrative of today seems to be individualized action with questions such as, from did you change your lightbulbs to did you go by train instead of by flying? But climate change as well as other environmental problems are  collective action problem, thus the communicating that single individual should is somewhat dubious. Is it really effective? How do we communicate a collective action problem to individuals and make individuals take collective action in an effective way? Could collaborative consumption be one thing to transcend the individual to the collective? What role does commons have in collective vs individual action?
  • Narratives – what kind of narratives are there in climate change and how does that affect the public? Are certain narratives more effective than others? Why is certain narratives more prevalent than others? How do we make the best narrative to prevail?
  • Consumption – What kind of effect does consumption have on the environment narrative? Does consumption aid the environment, can it be a force for good? Connected to collaborative consumption. Can ad agencys be environmentally responsible while still promoting consumption? What kind of role should ad agencys play to lead the way to a sustainable world? Do they even have power to do that? Or are they in the hands of other big corporations?CSR, eco-labeling and certification processes are they effective in creating a sustainable future? Are there better ways of doing this? Is it greenwashing or a force for good?

These are some of the question that I’ve asked myself, obviously I can’t write about everything and some questions are more interesting than others. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, your point of view. What captures your interest? What kind of questions pop into your head when you read this? Conversations create a deeper understanding of the world and it’s when the ball has something to bounce against it will start to understand the limits and the direction it should be heading. So please do chime in :)