Constelación de los Comunes by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco (review)

Palmar Álvarez-Blanco’s multimedia website, titled Constelación de los Comunes, or Constellation of the Commons, is a remarkable and timely project. The content is highly significant for Spanish speakers and learners interested in understanding how collectives help to shape important conversations surrounding labor rights and activism, the environment, housing access and rights, media studies, education, care of others, political change and process, civil rights based on race, gender, class, and migration status, and activism through the arts. These themes are consistently interwoven through the 45 recorded video interviews with activist collectives from across Spain and are reinforced through the “co-dictionary” (brilliant idea!), the “open classroom” (classroom activities; opportunities to post and share class lessons; traveling exhibits), and the manual/guide, titled En ruta con el común. The content, along with suggestions for use, is communicated clearly in a variety of sections on the site, including the “About” (“Acerca de”) section and the beautifully crafted introduction, which appears on the website and in the downloadable book. The site is creative and forward-looking in its incorporation of video media, traveling exhibitions, an interactive dictionary, and sharable pedagogical materials. The “constellation” effect means that the site brings together content through various media in a dynamic way that requires interaction between self and site and between self and others. The project is unique in this respect.

Constelación gracefully combines the theoretical with the practical, thus reminding instructors of the multiple ways in which we can incorporate research into teaching, and vice versa. The site will prove an enormously useful resource for people researching: 1) the potential for social, political, and cultural change; 2) collective organizations and how they function; 3) the interconnectedness of social movements, and; 4) specific disciplinary fields, such as cultural studies, sociology, politics, and economics. Secondary and post-secondary instructors could choose to use Constelación as a supplement to intermediate-level courses or as the centerpiece of advanced courses, such as an upper-level seminar on Spain in the post-15M period. The site’s rich materials—the co-dictionary/glossary, the deep introduction to a variety of theoretical approaches (clearly mapped in the intro to the En ruta con el común text), the video archive, and the pedagogical materials and guides—encapsulate the needs of the twenty-first-century classroom. The entire project advocates for walking together (collaborating) in order to uncover a new platform to share ourselves, thoughts, research, and teaching. Constelación’s format and mode of distribution underscore these priorities.

The pages that compose the web project are surprisingly easy to navigate. The site contains logical and interreferential menus and drop-down menu items, is completely bilingual, and has an original and modern look. The videos load immediately and include useful timestamps to help move from interview question to interview question. The interviewees are knowledgeable, engaging, and sometimes funny. The actual printed book will be advantageous for any instructors who prefer using paper copies and/or for classes with less ready access to digital resources.

Constelación de los Comunes is directed at people who already are a part of collective and/or of activist communities, who are interested in the project from an intellectual/academic perspective, who teach in formal and informal settings and can envision using the broad variety of materials to engage students in the most important sociopolitical and cultural questions of our era, and/or who are interested in contributing to and using the “co-dictionary” (which seems to be a higher level version of Wikipedia for activists, members of collectives, and students). Constelación offers an engaging, dynamic, smart, and detailed set of materials that will allow instructors to get students talking about the issues most important to them in a sophisticated but accessible way. The project will appeal to students’ multiple modes of absorbing new concepts and analyzing progressive platforms in a Spanish context.

Visitors to the Constelación site will be awestruck by the...