Here we adopt some thoughts from an earlier piece of work, in conversation with the work of radical economist, Robin Murray. Robin was loved for the elegant way he handled particularity. But rather than just 'storytelling' (which most people appreciate) he had several approaches. Here we approach this range of strategies.
The earlier work is *From economics to organising - Formacion, scope and making the living economy* (2019).
This site holds a draft article 'in conversation with' Robin Murray, and a review of related constructs and projects, including a Trellis Foundation project for 'a college of conviviality'. It amounts to an exploration of **the practice of theory**.
> On Robin Murray, see the wonderful archive compiled by Frances Murray and Julie Simon website 
and these notes Robin Murray.
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**Particularity, and ‘containers’ for understanding - Forms of theory and of formaciòn** If formacion is education (and this is certainly part of it) then we must expect it to communicate - or provoke - understandings. What kinds of ‘containers’, then, can carry or promote the kinds of understandings that are called for, in the production of activist formations in making a living economy? We tend to think most immediately of verbal containers: published articles or, notably in Robin's case, instances of storytelling.
One primary characteristic of Robin's perception and communication - as identified for example in our study group - is *particularity* (as distinct from abstraction) and probably, for many associates, his telling of ‘paradigm stories’ seems to exemplify this. An example of some piece of practice would be taken, and detailed as a vignette that was in some way exemplary or illustrative; likewise, he was fond of the business-school pedagogical form, the case study.
This arising-in-practice and particularistic quality - constituting both ‘proof of possibility’ and some kind of cue or germ for imagination or for mimicking in performance - is something that people recognise and admire in Robin’s way of understanding and communicating. But it’s more textured and complex than we often mean when we invoke ‘particular’ as an opposite for ‘abstract’, or experience narrative in ‘ordinary language’ as a mode to be preferred to ‘dry’ systematised conceptualisation and hard mental work.
In this section I’ll refer to three ways in which Robin facilitated understandings, not to stand as an analysis of his modes but simply to demonstrate that neither narrative nor simplicity nor ordinary language - nor even use of words - brackets the necessary range of forms for containing or furnishing means of particularity.
Indeed, I will be arguing that some ‘container’ structure is called for - which in some sense is necessarily more abstract - *to put the particularised accounts in*: for reference and for pedagogy, and to facilitate fluent use and an appropriately diverse and intentional combination (perhaps, ecology) of elements. That kind of abstract structure is required, for example, to construct a curriculum for a college of formacion, or to assemble a mix of insights, capabilities and resources that is adequate to inform and underpin a practice of sufficient scope.
In Robin’s practice I’ll refer to - *paradigm narratives* (and toolkits) - *conceptualised accounts* (of relations of production and contradictory formations) and - *‘networking’* (practice rather than theory as a container for understanding).
And I'll come back to these later, in talking about ‘containers’ in the college. > The college? Have I said enough about this at this point? xxx
--- Topics in this section: - Paradigm narratives and toolkits - Conceptualised accounts - Practice rather than theory as a container - No such thing as knowledge