Second Renaissance Mapping & Sensemaking: What we are working on at Life Itself Research

We want to map the emerging ecosystem of individuals and groups involved in paradigmatic social change (that is: transforming structural and institutional systems and the worldviews and narratives underpinning them). We’ve been working on this since 2020 and have produced a directory of organisations, plus some accompanying visualisations and analysis. 

However, what’s next? Mapping is a broad term which can refer to multiple activities serving multiple functions and audiences. In the next phase of our mapping work, what do we want to map exactly, and for whom?

Our proposal: we will work on three interlocking levels of ecosystem mapping. These levels will be: 

• Our pitch for the “Second Renaissance”

• A “Rosetta Stone” of existing names/definitions for the ecosystem and efforts to map it

• The broader ecosystem

In addition, we intend to share our work early and often in order to invite feedback and discussion and learn collectively through the process. 

A more detailed background and proposal follow below.

Background

Context

We sense an emerging ecosystem that is growing. More  and more people are talking about what we are calling the "Second Renaissance" ecosystem, although people are using different names, e.g. Metamodern, Integral, Regenerative, Liminal Web, Metacrisis, Game B. More and more people are also trying to map and make sense of this ecosystem, e.g. Catalist, Limicon, Gaianet. There is growing recognition between people who are aware of or part of the ecosystem around practices, thinkers, virtual or physical gathering places, analysis of “what’s wrong” and “what’s needed” – but the ecosystem’s identity is still quite vague and swirling, and may indeed never converge into a single clear identity.

We want to map. Our motivations and arguments for mapping are outlined in this essay and in this project proposal. In short, we believe that mapping can support self-awareness, coherence, and effectiveness within the ecosystem and visibility, accessibility, and credibility beyond the ecosystem.

However, mapping is a broad term. What exact mapping are we trying to do, why, and for whom? Are we trying to name, define, and delineate something? Are we trying to outline some vague commonalities? Etc. 

There is no existing map that helps people to orient to and within the Second Renaissance ecosystem. As far as we are aware, there is no substantial resource that to "make sense" of the diversity within the Second Renaissance ecosystem, e.g. showing a map of key names and their relationships. There are directories and visual representations of organisations or similar in the space, but less analysis and interpretation of patterns, differences, and similarities between actors, especially their principles, values, and aspirations.

Complication

Lack of a clear hypothesis on what we are producing and for whom makes our work more inefficient (we chop and change), and the resulting work more "muddy" and overall of less quality. A strong hypothesis is valuable even if "wrong" as we learn from it, whereas it can be difficult to learn from a fuzzy hypothesis since you don’t know what you were testing. 

We are also not sure how to “market” our efforts: we aren't clear how to attract visibility for existing and future mapping efforts. Producing mapping efforts that are little seen does little to benefit the ecosystem, given our hope is to contribute to self-awareness, coherence, and effectiveness within the ecosystem and visibility, accessibility, and credibility beyond.

Getting a clear hypothesis and sharing our work are harder than usual because of a tension around definition and framing, which may be inherent to mapping insofar as mapping includes the biases of the mappers. On the one hand, we want to articulate and frame the ecosystem in ways that support us and others to find it, learn more about it, get involved, talk about it with each other, refine our understanding of it together, and contribute to its emergence and evolution. And at the same time, we don’t want to unduly impose a reductive or limiting definition on something that is complex, sprawling, and emergent.

Proposal

Target audience

We propose to start by focusing more on the mapping being valuable to people in or near the ecosystem than to those who are unaware of it. Starting with a test group audience of people within or close to Life Itself’s network has the advantage that we know ourselves and our needs, rather than guessing at what more distant others would find useful. We also think that it is likely that the work we do by focusing on this target audience would be valuable outside the ecosystem in showing more coherently that "something is there".

Activities

We propose to produce mapping outputs at three levels:

• Own definition of the ecosystem with a specific name. Being explicit that this is our definition and one framing/perspective among many allows us liberty to make choices. It also offers something concrete for people to engage with and build on: easier to grapple with something concrete. Furthermore, being transparent about what we're aligning more closely with helps to avoid falsely proposing objective norms about the whole ecosystem.
• Rosetta stone of existing names and definitions for the ecosystem. Identifying synonyms and mapping sub-groups or communities within the ecosystem. Includes terminology and definitions of main strands.
• Broader map situating this ecosystem (or ecosystems) in context of other ecosystems/movements etc.

For each of the above levels, we intend to produce at least one "map" infographic, plus some accompanying text materials.

We intend to share our work early and often in order to invite feedback and discussion and learn collectively through the process. 

If you would like to get involved, please get in touch.