“Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for
the human race as biodiversity is for life in general.
Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment?
Harvey Blume, The Atlantic
Designing an ethical post-disciplinary organizational model to transcend silos
(re)Think
To deepen our understanding of the paradigmatic crisis and the increased risk for a socio-political implosion, we turn to Rene Girard’s mimetic theory to (re)think our hidebound adherence to: (i) disciplinarity; (ii) rituals such as conferences, panel discussions, and reports; (iii) normalization of deviance (Diane Vaughan); and (iv) obsolete organizational architecture that made us incapable of preventing a predicted and avoidable pandemic and other future catastrophes.
Link
Our Lab is co-creating with a network of networks of (un)like-mined visionaries to collaborate and cross-pollinate. We are reaching out to sociologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, historians, lawyers, journalists, economists, engineers, visual artists, activists, chefs, dancers, designers, actors, filmmakers, architects, philosophers, political theorists, diplomats, financiers, accountants and business, civic and faith leaders to engage in a moonshot initiative.
Do
Our initiative (i) connects theory to practice, ideas to action, and biography to history (Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills); (ii) mobilizing financial and intellectual resources to for critical pedagogy by building the infrastructure for experiential, self-directed and lifelong learning; (iii) utilizes the power of neurodiversity, psychodiversity, and cognitive diversity to do what may be incommensurate with a neuronormative paradigm; and (iv) designs and implements projects in sustainable urbanism.
Experimentation
In responding to the creativity crisis and inspired by our ancestors such as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, our Social Innovation Lab – conceptualized at Howard University’s Department of Sociology and Criminology before the pandemic – turned into a launching pad for a intergeneration, interracial and transcultural moonshot initiative that bridges local to national to global.
Innovation
We support communities working on equitable, democratic assemblage and re-assemblage (actor network theory and rhizome network theory) by using tools of conviviality (Ivan Illich) and integrative thinking. With a focus on the social determinants of mental health, we seek to address discrimination, the housing crisis, food security, mass incarceration, exclusion and the debilitating impact of cognitive biases.
Invention
We are building a post-disciplinary, inter-sectoral collaboration to invent novel forms of organizational architecture capable of solving wicked problems, such as unsustainable levels of inequality, climate crisis, and global conflicts. The process will lead to inventing new social relations that can exponentially expand spaces for creativity and conviviality.
