We articulate the following areas of research: “fracasopolicy”, “failing our children”, “taste of failure”, and “ghosts of failure“.

Taste of failure

Credit: The Bear

Taste of Failure: Moving Beyond Cognition and Emotions in the Exploration of Policymaking in Europe and Africa” (2024/5) is funded in the competition for research projects at the Centre of Excellence in Social Sciences, University of Warsaw.

Taste of Failure materializes the efforts and actions to develop critical failure studies that we undertake at University of Warsaw in the framework of Failure Lab UW in cross-fertilization with similar initiatives at global level. After a few years of theory developing, and working in the area of failure inequalities and policy privilege, we have recently embarked on linking the major theme of failure with the issue of taste. This project discusses how taste is a valuable tool to decipher the palatability of policymaking models in our society, especially in contexts marked by political domination, epistemic injustice, and sensorial hierarchies. It is based on the assumption that taste allows to get a glimpse of social expectations, mindsets and communication practices in relation to evaluation and legitimacy of policy failures in our society. We argue for moving beyond cognition and emotional dynamics, and to look for alternative transmitters of judgement regarding policymaking and governance. Our work informs about recent discussions on decoloniality, breaches in access to social justice and coping with invisible inequalities regarding policymaking. Highlighting the points of synergy within approaches to policy failure in global perspective.

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Fracasopolicy

We make an argument for exploring “fracasopolicy” – policy regimes for which the issue of failure is inherent, and which are highly consequential for the social body. Policymaking and society are profoundly changed by the failures they encounter. In this sense, we ought not only to better anticipate failure, but also to work on a deeper understanding of its power configurations and relationships with the past. The ecology of fracasopolicy entails affective engagement and debate around political failures. Yet not in terms of lack of effectiveness and potentiality of learning, but as social injustice, sensory inequalities, patterns of marginalization, and abuse of trust.

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F*** up tales in science

We not only research failure, but we also engage frontally with it. Our first experiment was the F*** Up Tales in Science in Hannover, 2022. Upon the model of F**** Up Nights, or more conventional events of sharing stories, or Fail Festivals, we invited participants to open up through stories of failure. To analyze organizational and institutional paths of reacting to scientific error and lack of conventional success. The F*** Up Tales in Science event was organized during the “Failure in Science: Context, Ignorance, and the Future of Failing” symposium, which was held as part of the broader Thematic Week “Failure Matters”, a funding initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation, December 12-14, 2022, at the conference center Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover. The F*** Up Tales event was moderated by prof. Xiaodong Lin, founding director of EPIC (http://epic.tc.columbia.edu/) at Teachers College, Columbia University in the City of New York.

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Street art hub at IPSiR UW, Warsaw

Starting with April 2022, at our home institute, IPSiR UW (ul. Podchorążych 20, Warsaw), we create a universal space for social and policy creativity. This engages with raising awareness, prevention, street art, and scientific communication.

We aim to reinvent the relationship between applied social sciences and society. To show how new forms of knowledge should benefit from art in its various manifestations. We organize various photo exhibitions within what informally emerged as a staircase gallery. Further transforming the university space with the help of Warsaw street artists. In the summer holiday of 2023, Andy Black, Warsaw-based street artist completed an original painted project covering the three levels of the institute building with mural artwork about education, imaginary, and future communication.

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Building failure studies

In order to understand the power of reimagining failure in contemporary society we have to go beyond the traditional meaning of failure, which equals it with lack of success in attaining certain policy goals, securing implementation or bridging science and policy gaps. Today, policy failure increasingly speaks about ignorance and social injustice as well. We aim in our research to show how the capacity for change comes from acknowledging and challenging failure in society and policymaking. We also draw attention to how steering with failure is one of the most important and unexpected capacities of change in policymaking today.