---
title: "Fabric is a web of relationships"
description: "The network's topology emerges from commitments its members actually enact"
url: "/fabric-is-a-web-of-relationships/"
tags: [core]
readingPathPosition: 1
---

# Fabric is a web of relationships

Fabric is, first and foremost, a web of relationships between agents for social change. Its purpose – building collective agency in service to life – is not achieved by designing a structure from above but by cultivating a pattern of *right relations* from below. The network has no fixed shape; its topology emerges from the commitments its members actually enact.

The unit of design is therefore not the organisation chart or the governance body but the *[relational protocol](/every-protocol-has-three-inseparable-layers.md)*: a freely adopted agreement about how to be in relationship – how to make decisions together, share resources, hold conflict, learn.

The concept of a [Protocol draws on three traditions](/protocol-draws-on-three-traditions.md): technology, ceremony, and decolonial inquiry.

Its concrete application is that [Participating means enacting protocols](/participating-means-enacting-protocols.md): membership in Fabric is defined by which protocols you adopt.

## Sources

- On the concept of *right relations*, see Gram-Hanssen, Schafenacker & Bentz (2022), “Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’”
- Concept and label of _relational protocols_ from the [Meta-Relationality Institute](https://metarelationality.institute/) (MRI)

## In this vault

- Next: [Agency in relationship builds collective power](/agency-in-relationship-builds-collective-power.md)