This blog is written by me, Mike Collins. Semi-retired, I have a loving family and friends, enjoy the simple pleasures of life. I’m an archaeologist by life-long interest, education and training.
My research interest in Anthroposophy is mainly in mapping it as a social movement. More used as I am to making archaeological maps, mapping a social movement presented something of a challenge. The solution for me has been to make use of the tools and techniques of social network analysis (SNA). I chose to look at the links between Anthroposophical organisations by recording on four different kinds of linkage between them; financial, organisational, human resources and property.
The end result has been an assessment of the scale of the UK Anthroposophy movement in terms of the kinds of UK Anthroposophical organisations and their numbers, the wealth and geographical location of the organisations and a series of exploratory ‘maps’ or charts illustrating the linkages between organisations.
The results had been freely available on a website published by CHASE but with the demise of the CHASE group I decided to start this blog to publish new research results as and when they become available. The blog will also carry news and opinion about the UK Anthroposophy movement and about the beliefs of the man who invented Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner.
An archive of some of the materials published by CHASE can be found here and included somewhere in the archive is a summary version of the UK Anthroposophical research to date. In April 2009 I will be in a position to know which of the old CHASE articles/materials can be transferred over to this blog. During March 2009 I’ll be sorting out a static articles index page for this blog and adding to it from April onwards. The static page will simply list articles by title and visitors can click on a link to go to whatever interests them. That’ll save the blog’s sidebar from getting cluttered up and make the blog easier to navigate for you.
If you would like to get in touch feel free to contact me privately via ukanthroposophy@googlemail.com (confidentiality is assured) or post publicly to the blog by adding your own comments to published blog materials. I’d be pleased to hear from you.
Mike Collins, March 2009
