capitalism

This past weekend I was part of a facilitation team taking a group of individuals and organizations through a course on starting a social enterprise.  The workshop was hosted by Canada Bridges and there were about 25 individuals ranging in age, ethnicity, and most especially in the ideas that they felt they could get to market that would make meaningful social change. Read more »

Guest blogger:  As a born and raised Torontonian, former San Franciscan, and new Calgarian, Pamela Karch is a critical and cultural theory junkie with a Masters in Communications, Bachelors in Media Studies, and Diploma in Print and Broadcast Journalism. Spending countless hours questioning the social construction of homogeneity, she is constantly searching for undefined ways of living.

Over the past week Occupy Wall Street has inundated news mediums all over North America with questions of direction, demands, and a clear message in an attempt to define the movement. This urge to focus on who and what the occupation looks like with headlines such as “Occupy Wall Street does not have a clear message”, “Wall St. Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party says”, “Who Occupies? A Pollster Surveys the Protestors”, and “The Demographics Of Occupy Wall Street” not only fails to investigate the roots of the issues, it also silences the questions about government, politics, capitalism, capital control and power, and social life that we should have been asking for the last 20 years. I use the term silence because many major news outlets have not included in their reports anything about the multitude of academic theorists and publications since the Bush administration that have outlined all the concerns brought to light by the Occupy movements. However, these questions that are now painted on cardboard signs in cities across North America are questions that have been circling the academy for years.

At this past year’s SoCap, I led an Open Space conversation around the language that we are using in the social business/enterprise/venture space. I have observed over the past few years, as this sector evolves and pushes boundaries, there is much inconsistency in how we communicate what we are doing.  These organizations are generating revenue by tackling some of the world’s biggest problems, yet there seems to be much confusion in the marketplace from those who are building the businesses and those who are investing in them.