Organising Spirit

The article reports on a philosophical inquiry of the social organisation of spirit in the village Bywater. The main conceptual claim is that the case shows us spirit as a recursive common. Spirit is both an effect of and a condition for social organisation. We contribute to rethinking the relation between resource and practice in commons and in alternative organisation. Methodologically, the inquiry is grounded in a cultural mapping of the cultural in/tangibles producing the spirit of the community. We read these cultural in/tangibles through a philosophical lens and re-enter them as elements of spirit. We conclude that spirit/commoning acts as organising of, for, and with community needs while remaining undecidably explicit and implicit, formal and informal. By conceptualising spirit as resource and commons, this paper contributes to the study of alternative organisation.