I. Why Principled Research Is Foundational to Catalysis

Without practical utility, research would be lifeless. In Catalysism, research is never an ivory-tower exercise extracted from communities; it is how a community studies its own material conditions, tests its methods in real work, and verifies whether its actions are genuinely dissolving domination and consolidating liberation.

II. Liberatory Social Accounting (LSA) vs. Capitalist Accounting

Capitalist accounting measures only financial profit and private accumulation while treating human exhaustion and ecological destruction as “externalities.” Liberatory Social Accounting (LSA) tracks the real social metabolism of a collective across the three Means of Liberation:

• Expertise Consolidated: New practical skills shared, facilitators trained, and methods refined.
• Resources Circulated as Commons: Material goods, hours of mutual aid, tools, and space shared outside market exchange.
• Conditions Transformed: Measurable improvements in neighborhood safety, accessibility, relational trust, and collective self-determination.

III. CARE Data Sovereignty & Subject Agency

All research and LSA data collection strictly upholds the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) and ongoing informed consent.