Who are the change-agents for this progressive adaptation? They are embodied actors, a concept which contrasts with the idea of the ‘empty self ‘ that is generated by consumerism and filled up with the consumer products and the shallow, passing ephemera of externalised identities. This chapter gives attention to the nature of this embodiment. Conceptions of the person and holism are part of the paradigm shift that this book looks towards. Underpinning organic meta-governance is the nurturing and strengthening of democratic consciousness. This involves critical, analytical engagement as well as strengthening, on the basis of the reaction against centralisation, a renewed sense of agency, freedom and responsibility. It is also about democracy as a holistic way of being together.

Holistic capabilities

The power of agency and imagination is not to be underestimated. Recognition of this is integral to the growth of appreciative inquiry, for example: ‘the co-operative, co evolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them’, substituting for managerialist intervention ‘inquiry, imagination … innovation … discovery, dream, and design’ (Cooperrider and Whitney, 2005, p 18). If imagination and optimism soar too high or without any sense of reality – remembering the story of Icarus – they come to nothing, however. Hence, the call for what Bent Sorensen (2009, pp 207–8) calls immanent utopias. In a diverting account of entrepreneurial utopia – orientated around an art installation event involving a naked woman in a bathtub in a dimly lit bar – he calls for regained faith in the body as ‘a site of sensuous, affectional and political thinking’ and of ‘struggle for life’: the utopianism that radical entrepreneurialism potentially may unfold ‘must be sought for in immanence’ and located in the world (p 211). The question is what makes up the body in which imagination and optimism, and personal agency, are grounded.