Non-hierarchical Model of Project Governance

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: lukas.kotyk(@)cefres.cz

In my dissertation, I study non-hierarchical models of project governance within the context of social movement studies. I focus on projects that, with the help of engaging in prefigurative politics, re-evaluate the possibilities of the arrangement of interpersonal relationships, aiming to achieve a horizontal distribution of power. A notable example is squatting in the form of autonomous social centers. I interpret these projects as a radical social movement organization, whose inner structure is created as an experiment. Its aim is to overcome incorporated inequalities by giving individuals the possibility of experience in a community based on decentralized network structures.

I analyze this following research question:  how is horizontality constructed in everyday life, within concrete cases?  Following this question, I’m studying the tension between this declared goal of horizontality and the difficulty of its achievement. I’m focusing on the methods and mechanisms that are used to underlie non-formal hierarchies constructed in order to reach equality. Assuming that, as a repertoire of contention, these methods and mechanisms represent a shared knowledge of a wider movement, I presuppose them as basic to the experience of ordinary movement members. To describe this praxis and its actual forms, I use an ethnographic field of research. This paper’s focus, on projects that are non-hierarchical, systematically investigates alternative forms of coexistence and analyzes shared knowledge about how to govern complicated and complex projects without a hierarchical form of leadership.

CV

Education

2017 -: PhD candidate in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (FSV UK), Prague
2012 – 2016: Master of Sociology, FSV UK, Prague
MA thesis title: “Social construction of non-conventional home”
2008 – 2012: BA Social anthropology, Sociology, FSS MUNI, Brno