What I've been doing

The way that can be described is not the absolute way...

-- Lao Tse

It's been a while since I last posted and so I feel the need to explain my absence from the blogosphere to the world. The basic justification is that I have been immersing myself in my MA in Participation Power and Social Change and, more specifically, the preparation of my Analytical Paper. The Analytical Paper is, essentially, supposed to be a kind of concept paper that can be used to frame the work I will be doing when I return to Seva Mandir. It will combine a contextual analysis, a conceptual framework and an overview of how I plan to go about addressing the questions that I intend to ask.

I won't go into the context just here, but the conceptual framework seems worth sharing. Essentially, I will be locating my action research project at the theoretical intersection of three main domains: complexity, power and learning.
There are plenty of theories related to each of these domains and I have been seeking out the particular ones where they converge. This has led me to a number of texts that have quite significantly contributed to the way that I think about my participation in the universe - and particularly in social life.

So far my learning journey here at IDS seems to have given me a much more solid understanding of the more philosophical dimensions of the work that I am involved in. In particular, I have come to gain a more solid understanding of the idea of 'epistemology' - a word I had often heard, sometimes used but whose definition (and importance) I had never understood so completely. I have also manged to explore the linkages between knowledge and power and understand how participatory action research serves to transform power relations by engaging people in the creation of new knowledge.

I have also had the opportunity to explore Mezirow's work on Transformative Learning:

"the emancipatory process of becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the way we see ourselves and our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new understandings."

Combined with Hayward's (2000) reconceptualisation of power as 'the network of social boundaries to action' and the very important observation that the very idea of negative freedom is absurd (she argues instead for a positive and political form of freedom), all this has amounted to a rather powerful set of concepts that have been making me continuously rethink the nature of and my engagement in the world.

On top of all this, I have been trying to familiarise myself with Ralph Stacey and the idea of complex responsive processes. Stacey has perhaps provided me with the most radical worldview of all. Three papers, all available for free, can be downloaded from his university website:

• The Emergence of Knowledge in Organisations
• Learning as an Activity of Interdependent People
• Affects and Cognition in a Social Theory of Unconscious Processes
  

Together these provide a fairly powerful explanation of the relationship between the individual and the social, consciousness and unconscioussness, meaning, knowledge, learning, identity, power and communication all from within a complexity-based framework. I have been doing plenty of learning by explaining and this has really helped me to internalise some of these new ways of seeing the world. I really don't think I can think about anything the same way again!

In that fuzzy space where complexity theory, power theory and learning theory intersect, I will be conducting my action research; exploring the ways in which I can engage in conversations that bring about positive transformation in human organisations (both Seva Mandir and the communities). I think it's going to be a lot of fun! The essay, however, which will only be 5,000 words, is going to be a bit of a challenge. So much to say, and so little space!

On a somewhat different note, I have been having a lot of really great conversations. Feedback - and the need for it - has been one of the recurring themes, as has the need to explore power relations within our learning group, and my Analytical Paper (of course)... Tomorrow will be the second complexity world cafe in which we will recap the last session, go over the concepts that had not been covered previously and then have some further conversations to explore what some of this might mean for practice... It will be interesting to see what kind of energy is present in the room as it will probably be my last opportunity to participate in one of these sessions for sometime :) I can't help but hope that this process of exploring complexity gets the wind under its wings!

It is now way past my bedtime! Sweet dreams!

Back to school!

After 5 years of living in the 'wilderness', of gathering experience and of learning from the immediate reality, I am finally back to 'school'. School, in this case, is the Institute of Development Studies located at Sussex University. My course, for those who don't yet know, is the MA in Participation Power and Social Change. I have blogged earlier about the questions I had on whether to go back to school? so I won't give more of that here... Instead, my take on what I've experienced so far.

Firstly, I have no regrets about coming here. It is proving to be everything I could have hoped for and more.

Academically, we've had a very light first week. Most of the time has gone into dealing with all of the formalities and getting us introduced to our courses. More importantly, than this, though, it has focused on getting us to know each other. For example, Robert Chambers' (of PRA fame) introductory workshop enabled us to meet all the 130 or so students, break the ice and lay the foundations for a real state of community! The sheer diversity that is present is something to be happy about - and not just nationality but background, past employment, experience, knowledge, sector, interests... Wow!

So with the ice broken, the first week has involved lots and lots of conversing with as many people as possible on as many subjects as possible. Wonderful! Everyone is interesting. No one has been boring or arrogant or offensive in any way whatsoever! Quite amazing! And the conversations range from:

• Trenchant critiques of development - like the wonderful conversation with someone from Kenya about the loss of traditional cultural values that were more participatory and inclusive than any modern democratic state structures, which left us with the question of why there is so little mention of 'love' in the development discourse... My thoughts drifted toward Arturo Maturana... to
  

• Sharing of knowledge on development practice, within organisations, working at the field level - what's working, what isn't, where we're confused, where we're on the right track and where we aren't, drawing on our diverse experiences and backgrounds...

I must admit that I have been talking rather a lot.

Though I have only had one day actually focusing on my particular course, it seems like just what I wanted. We have started using participatory methods and reflecting on them, we have explored different modes or ways of learning (playing, gardening, reading, collaborating... and many more), we have divided into reflection groups, we have set up an inquiry to explore how gender may influence our learning processes, we have shared our life stories (visually and orally) and explained how this led us to IDS. We shared our hopes and fears and talked about them openly, offering each other support and expressing our common desire for solidarity within the group. The idea of forming an on-line learning group (e.g. through ning or perhaps through the ids intranet) that can be used while we are away to enable a continuous sharing of knowledge and experience has been floated and enthusiastically welcomed by the group. I am really quite excited by all of this!

As part of my course I will be maintaining a journal. This will involve actually writing with a pen so I am quite curious to see how this will compare and contrast with the writing that I do on this blog.

In the meanwhile, I am writing an essay today critiquing various definitions of development and will also be doing some further editing work for Seva Mandir's 6th Comprehensive Plan document. I also have plenty of reading to busy myself with. As the weeks roll on I will continue blogging my experiences here at IDS.

levers

While the old saying - there is no 'magic lever' - does seem to hold true at some level, I have come to look at things a little differently. My current sense is that:

Everything is a lever if you look at it the right way!

All this is really saying is that every situation contains a pathway out; a particular route that will lead to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The real challenge that lies before humanity today is to become masters at seeing that pathway through all the other clutter that gets in the way or obscures our vision of what really matters!

And while there may be no single lever, starting to see the potential lever in every situation and learning how to use it (or them) in the best possible way could be, in its own right a kind of magic lever. Just as with a regular lever, this means knowing what it rotates around, how that connects it to everything else, whether it should be pulled or not, and what, exactly, it will take to get that lever moving.

We need methods and anti-methods for our madness!

blind spots and collective evolution

A number of conversations and random readings over the last few days have really re-sensitised me to the need to understand the issues surrounding resistance to change... One idea that keeps on floating back is that change often seems to happen in spite of all the things that organisations do to prevent it. Change is about breaking patterns of behaviour or relationship that are by their very definition self-replicating, self-reinforcing. This is what creating novelty is all about. This is innovation. And a good reminder for an organisation working to bring about change in society is that it can only happen there if it is happening within us, within the organisation. We have to be in a state of creative, spontaneous change, always.

In order to do/be this we need to identify our blind spots – the systematic oversight that prevents us from seeing what it is that we are all doing that is obstructing us; the patterns of behaviour and thinking that prevent us from moving forward simply, creatively, harmoniously. These obstructive patterns emerge out of the simple interactions amongst us all every day. However, the process of their emergence is vastly complex – and that is one of the main reasons that they remain invisible to us. Understanding how the little, well-intentioned, self-righteous efforts we make every day add up to a vicious cycle that leads to stagnation at best and collapse at worst, seems critical. And that calls for a deep, collaborative inquiry into our very own selves; to know who and what we really are and to learn how to evolve, as both a collective and its individual members, in a more effective manner.

the right course!

Just came across the following in the Introduction chapter of the Handbook of Action Research (Reason and Bradbury, 2008) - one of my course texts.

...the primary purpose of action research is not to produce academic theories based on action; nor is it to produce theories about action; nor is it to produce theoretical or empirical knowledge that can be applied in action; it is to liberate the human body, mind and spirit in the search for a better, freer world.

If this is to be the spirit of the course, then I think I might have chosen the right one. But shouldn't this be the goal of all 'education'?

Peace yaars!

vehicles for social objects

The last few posts on social objects have been gradually bringing a bit of clarity on how these social objects fit into the work that Seva Mandir and, I suppose, other organisations like it are involved in. This post is concerned with what, presumably can also be thought of as a social object: the vehicle or container for the social objects and the change that they have the potential to unleash. Although in the past I have tended to talk about containers, they have something too static sounding about them - which is not at all a good symbol of the dynamic process or context within which dialogue and action around social objects takes place!

The container-vehicles appear to have many levels. I will focus on only a few at this stage, and of these few, mainly on one. The few include: the organisation, the programme, the implementation team. The one will be the programme. My questions is basically this: what are the implications for the development and deployment of social objects (our medium for catalysing change) of being situated within a programme.

This line of inquiry emerges from a naggling sense I have that 'programmes' tend to function or be understood and interfaced with within a machine-like framework. By this, I mean to say they are defined by a simple, listed set of linear - almost mechanical - processes - such as making a visit, filling in a monitoring format, making a payment, holding a meeting, giving a training, which have the potential to be disembodied from the deeper engagement that is required to catalyse real change. That is to say, that the engagements see the creation of the social object(s) as ends in their own right rather than as means to a higher end.

For example, a day-care centre for children must be run (as targets have to be fulfilled) and running it is itself a worthwhile achievement (after all, we will be able to achieve our targets, for which we have requested funds and are now accountable), regardless of whether it is being used to the fullest to catalyse social change. Why does this happen? And why do targets continue to rise, year after year even when the desired quality of work on the existing centres has not been achieved? The answers to these questions (which I will not go into right now) are numerous and reflect the complex context within which development work takes place. All the same, it happens, to the detriment, I believe, of the quality of the work. Indeed, there is a kind of shallow engagement that takes place and expansion merely makes it more difficult to go into the kind of depth that is required to really understand what is going on. This feeds into some kind of vicious cycle and so it goes on.

Now, it may be unfair to attribute this 'problem' as an inherrent feature of the nature of 'programmes'. Instead, it might be better to say that this is an observable characteristic of most programmes, their potential for being more evolutionary and dynamic may simply be getting systematically missed because of the way people think, regardless of the existence of programmes or not. This raises the important questions of what the potential of 'programmes' actually is; why programmes are presently functioning within a 'machine' model; how would a programme operating outside the 'machine' model function (what would be its essential characteristics); and what would it take in order to make this kind of a transition within an organisational context.

Somehow, the understanding that can emerge from an inquiry into these issues needs to become institutionalised within the organisation. I suppose that a collaborative action-research-based intervention into the programme itself could be a good way to achieve this.

the giant organic organisational learning cycle

A few posts back, I ended a status report on the 6thCP process with a question along the lines of:

is it normal to see or feel things happening as part of an organisational change process in a kind of staged manner?

Right now the answer looks like a glaring kind of a 'yes'. I got an insight into this today during what is probably the last big meeting of the preparatory phase of the 6thCP process. It was a good meeting, with a pro-active vibe and a good bit of laughter (despite an agenda that threatened to bore the living daylights out of people and to result in bruised buttocks).

In any case, i got my inkling while a discussion was going on about the newly created income generation cell, which I had sort of hoped would end up getting called a livelihood cell. The idea of calling it a 'livelihoods cell' appears to be more of my idea than anyone else's and, thus, it has not been given that name. Calling it a livelihood cell would carry certain implications for its functioning and its remit. Calling it an income generation cell seems more limited in scope. However, i held off from making a deal about this because I felt that there could be benefits derived from being more specific and focused here. This is what I foresaw:

Setting up a livelihood cell would bring together people from the different programmes. They would start talking about and trying to tackle large abstract issues and they would eventually have to narrow down their spectrum of issues to something achievable or manageable. Extensive discussions could take place around how NRD, GVK and WCD could perhaps work in a more effective manner together so as to encourage the emergence/support of more livelihood enhancing interventions/activities. However, the change would be distributed and may not have the potential to show solid results until deciding to shift onto the 'income generation' realm.

Setting up an income generation cell would also bring people together from the different programmes. It would start by trying to identify potential projects that could be taken up for achieving concrete results in terms of income generation activities for selected groups of individuals in different pockets. There would remain a disjoint between groups that were getting included and others that would get left behind. Questions would begin to emerge about how we broadbase what we have been learning. This would probably draw the cell to conduct a thorough inquiry into the efforts that it had made with different clusters/sectors and this would generate lessons learned that could be then taken up by the various programme units in a more systematic manner.

Both these stories are hypothetical, and the truth is that it could move in either direction. Clearly, this means I am in the 'complex' domain and probing will be the only way forward (for me, at this stage)... I feel that I am coming more to the conclusion that it won't make too big of a difference where the whole thing starts... If the team takes things seriously, has good quality conversations (and that isn't really just a little if!) and a fair dose of soul-searching it will gradually enable itself to do what it needs to do. In any case, I decided not to try and make noise about the livelihood issue - mainly because I couldn't decide whether it would really make a difference. It will be interesting to observe how the formation of the income-generation cell impacts on the rest of the organisation - especially the key programme units represented in it.

Anyway, the learning insight was this:

• Take several similar units of inquiry and engage in a thorough action research process into them over a period of time that seems reasonable in relation to the timescale of the change that is being sought (hard to predict in advance really).
• Then explore what worked, what didn't work and why, paying close attention to the way that particular factors (especially common factors) appear to have been influenced by context.
• Use this to distill achievements, lessons, challenges, questions and principles that can be upscaled or mainstreamed
• Repeat as required using new or existing units of inquiry as required

As I pondered this particular process later in the day, it struck me that this is a kind of archetypal action research process. Even a collaborative action inquiry would work the same way if the unit of inquiry is taken to be one of the collaborative individuals. It also seems like a kind of fractal pattern in the sense that it can be used on multiple scales, contexts and conditions. That makes it even more archetypal. Now if we could just see a little bit more evidence of this process being followed rigorously, with documentation that really goes in depth into how the change processes are taking place, I might just find myself starting to agree with Neelima about the idea that the whole organisation is one big action-research... Though I think I've said this before... that's not a little if :)

Peace!

Digging the Narrative Approach to Civic Driven Change

I couldn't help myself, to be honest. The opportunity to participate in the dialogue on civic driven change in Jaipur organised jointly by Context, International Cooperation (a Netherlands based social enterprise/consultancy) and CECOEDECON (a 25-year young Jaipur-based NGO), especially getting to spend some time bantering with Fons and his friends/fellow-travellers was just too good to miss... Especially as the subject seemed to be a wedding of two subjects that I am passionate about: social change (of the civic driven variety) and complexity theory.

Admittedly, I was a little confused about the purpose of the gathering (as in what we hoped to get out of our discussion on these two subjects), and I also felt that I would have appreciated more time and space for genuine dialogue on the subjects raised rather than what turned out to be a rather linear (admittedly it was a circle) exchange of views (funny, considering all the concern with social change itself being a non-linear process!)... But there were great time constraints and I had the good fortune of sitting in the debriefing group at the end, where there was more space for this kind of an interaction.

Overall, what was most meaningful for me? I think, it is the insights I got into the following questions (which is also, I realise now, a reflection of my what questions I was carrying with me):

• Why does a complexity perspective mean that should we look at ourselves as explorers rather than experts or traditional researchers? And how do we go about our exploration? Why is it important to do so in a collaborative manner?
  
• What would a large scale, multi-stakeholder collaborative action research - with the objective of understanding how civic driven change actually happens - look like and how would it operate?
• How I should deal with the ugly thing we know as the logical framework (LFA) in the coming 6th Comprehensive Plan and what kind of meaningful, participatory, qualitative-focused learning systems could be used to compensate for the horrible void that is the LFA?
  
• What is the potential for taking up the strengthening of the inter-organisational platform for civil society learning and self-governance at the Udaipur level? How should I get started and who can I to talk to for this (thanks to Pradeep and Marieke)?

I'm leaving them all as questions because what I have gained is a bit more insight than clear answers. But all rather encouraging.

An interesting opportunity has also emerged for Seva Mandir to work with Fons and Co on the narrative based collaborative action research on civic driven change, including - but not limited to - child-centred change. It also seems to reverberate with conversations we have been having within Seva Mandir on the topic of distilling our own understanding of the change process (including the one we had during the annual camp) and our oft repeated pride in being an organisation that learns from and builds its knowledge based on experience!

Some questions, however, that I'm still not totally comfortable with are the following:

To what extent and what kind of NGO intervention can still permit us to call what happens as Civic Driven? For example, if Seva Mandir initiates a dialogue, makes available certain resources and provides facilitation inputs as a result of which citizens begin to organise themselves around certain resources, issues, commons and values - does this count as civic driven change? Where is that fine line between civic driven and not civic driven change (or perhaps we'd be better off talking about a gradient from totally self-organised civic driven on the one side to coordinated with some civic participation on the other)? It seems to me that the nature of the change that we talk about has some pretty serious implications and this need to be unpacked.

In any case, the wonderful company and conversations at dinner provided a great end to a very interesting day! So thanks to all for making it possible!