What We Do
CESS-P — Contributory Economy Social Sculpting Productions — creates laboratories where diverse participants come together to explore, prototype, and experience alternative futures. These are not simulations at a distance. They are immersive, participatory environments designed to make the abstract tangible: what does a more democratic economy actually feel like when the concerns, authority, and contributions of all participants are appropriately recognised?
Our work draws on the Frankfurt School tradition of critical social theory, and specifically on recognition-theoretical approaches to social ontology. We take seriously the insight that experiences of injustice — not abstract moral principles — are the motivational basis for political action, and that social life is constituted by collaborative activities with recognitive expectations built into them.
Theoretical Foundations
CESS-P's approach is informed by a relational, rather than substantialist, conception of forms of life. Rather than treating social arrangements as monolithic problem-solving entities, we focus on the internal differentiations, constitutive processes, and relations between individuals and groups engaged in collaborative activity. Three dimensions of recognitive status are central to our laboratory design: whose concerns count in setting collective goals; who has authority or a say on the norms governing collaboration; and whose contributions are recognised and appreciated.
We also take seriously the critique that critical theory has lost the dimension of nature and materiality. Following the argument that the intersubjectivistic turn should not lead to the loss of the object, our laboratories restore attention to embodiment, intercorporeity, and the material mediations — including tools, environments, and technologies — through which recognition is enacted or denied.
AI as Material Mediation
Artificial intelligence enters our framework not as a replacement for human judgement but as a contemporary form of material mediation in collaborative social life. AI can surface hidden assumptions in how problems are framed, model complex systemic interactions across the three dimensions of recognition, and enable participants to explore a wider range of possibilities than dialogue alone permits.
This responds to a specific theoretical gap: the absence, in much critical social theory, of serious engagement with the instrumental and objective dimensions of praxis. Every AI component in our laboratories is designed to amplify human agency, not diminish it — to serve participatory and democratic goals rather than centralised control.
The Contributory Economy
The "contributory" in CESS-P signals a particular orientation within the third sphere of recognition: the sphere in which individuals are recognised for their specific contributions to social cooperation. We investigate economic arrangements in which the social value of diverse forms of contribution — care work, creative labour, community maintenance, ecological stewardship — is made visible and structurally supported, rather than subordinated to market metrics alone.
Who We Work With
CESS-P collaborates with universities, local authorities, community organisations, cultural institutions, and international research networks. We welcome partnerships with anyone committed to democratic, equitable, and sustainable futures — and who takes seriously the idea that to build a better future, people need to experience fragments of it.