Unlearning for Democratic Organizing
通过研究英国四家成立超20年、成员超50人的工人合作社，发现“忘却学习”是维持民主组织运作的关键，并识别出三种引发忘却需求的动态和三种实践方式。
This article advances empirical and conceptual understanding of how unlearning can help to sustain democratic organizing. While learning to confront persistent tensions is widely recognized as a central element of democratic organizing, there is surprisingly little research on its practice. In exploring this gap, unlearning emerged as a distinct yet integral aspect of individual and collective learning in democratic organizing – and to sustaining democratic organizing across time and scale. Our abductive analysis of qualitative research across four established (>20 years) and scaled (>50 members) UK-based worker cooperatives uncovered the centrality of relational processes of unlearning habitual beliefs, values and patterns of behaviour in interaction with others, the organization and the environment. Empirically, we discern three relational dynamics that create a need for unlearning and three relational practices for engaging in unlearning. We offer conceptual depth by formulating three analytical propositions for future research and practice.