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!

rights or responsibilities

Well, miraculously the essay slipped out without too much anguish :) Actually, the writing process was a really good exercise for helping me to digest a whole load of reading materials that I have found rather insightful. Now with that behind me I have got my senses set on the upcoming 'Analytical Paper' that I will need to have ready by December 10th. This will be the place in which I present the conceptual and contextual framing of the work that I will be doing when I return to India. Fortunately, it has been taking shape quite nicely thanks to some good discussions with fellows, researchers, students and myself ;) I will, however, need a designated supervisor (and don't have one yet!)...

The emerging framework for my action inquiry is one that uses complexity, learning and power lenses to study processes of facilitating learning for change at multiple levels including (1) myself (as a reflective facilitator); (2) individuals in the organisation; (3) the organisation as a whole; (4) the communities with whom the organisation works.

Otherwise I experienced a rather wonderful sense of joy recently as our class had a kind of epiphany about its responsibility for actively shaping its own learning process. I've been fascinated with the way the course is unfolding. Simply observing and reflecting on this has made for a very profound learning process indeed! I also believe that it has reinforced some of my thinking about the rights-responsibilities debate that surfaces quite often back at Seva Mandir. Knowing that we had the right to shape the process and realising that it was our responsibility to shape our process; how do these two ideas complement each other? Does the one need the other? What is a right that is not realised?

I read something today that talked of the right of people to create "...authentic, caring, sustainable communities, to control their resources, to govern themselves, and guide their own evolution..." In what way is this not the people's responsibility? Claiming rights or taking responsibility? Is there any difference? Rights only become realised when people take responsibility. But does the process of claiming rights somehow short-circuit the deeper cultural change that occurs when people frame their process as one of taking individual and collective responsibility for co-creating a different reality? Is it merely some combination of the two? Why am I so much more concerned with responsibilities than rights? Is it because responsibility implies rights but rights don't imply responsibilities? If I have a right but don't make any effort to claim it, whose fault is that? Perhaps this seems decontextualised!?

Back to our class, if we had the right to shape our learning process but didn't take the responsibility, then what would it mean? And if we were not told that we had the right to shape our learning process but were only told that we had the responsibility for shaping it - then might that have triggered a more pro-active reaction from the outset? I recently posted the following on a new wordpress blog that I am experimenting with (exploring the added functionality that might prove useful for my documenting my learning journey!) as part of my wonderings:

Is the language of responsibilities more powerful than the language of rights? Does it invoke more action on behalf of the would-be ‘right-claimers’? Is the whole ‘rights’ framework a ‘Northern’ construction that is being pushed on the rest of the world (along with so much else, like the modern Nation State) because asking the poor and marginal to take ‘responsibility’ for solving their problems sounds embarrassing when it is known that so many of their problems are perpetuated by the ‘North’? Are these questions harsh or unfair or am I onto something here?

I think that this is something we all need to think about very seriously: what is our responsibility in the world and are we honoring it?

essay writing

Right now I am supposed to be writing my first assessed essay of the term. It's Sunday afternoon and the essay is due at 8.45 on Monday morning. Go figure!

Well, in any case, the title is: "Contribution of an inter-disciplinary approach to studying and/or practicing development."

It's quite an experience putting together my first assessed essay in years. I have written countless reports and documents over the last 5 + years since I arrived in India to do 'real' work but none of them really had any references. Exploring how to manage multiple data sources, to extract the key arguments that diverse authors are making, find suitable quotes, weave them all together and ensure that my own voice and thinking finds its space - and, that at the end of it all, the whole thing actually forms a coherent whole, is quite a fascinating process.

I have already made three mind-maps. The first one was supposed to be the overall structure of the essay. The second one I had to produce when I realised that I had underestimated the depth that would be required for the second half of my paper (which only became obvious after completion of the third half) but ended up just revealing the need for restructuring of the first half before being able to figure out how to proceed. The third was for the second half of the essay, laying out the key themes that would need to be addressed on the way to the conclusion. Wow! Last time I really used mind-maps in such a systematic manner was for revision guides back in my undergraduate days.

Anyway, here's something that doesn't fit anywhere in my essay. Some food for thought, I suppose:

I am calling for a confluence of worldviews... not a dismantling of diversity, but a kaleidascopic harmonisation of what we know and how we know to vastly expand the range of present and future worlds that we can perceive, experience and co-create!

Thank you and please mind your epistemology!

As the dust settles...

Well, it has been a while now since I posted here! The dust is finally settling a little here at IDS and I feel that I have reached a comfort level where I can return to my blog!

I have not been inactive at all during this time! I have been furiously conversing, reflecting and also writing - it's just that none of it has found its way onto this blog. And there doesn't seem to be much of a way that I can do justice to the experience I have been having. I have started maintaining a journal using Tomboy on Linux, which allows me to link up all my reflections, reading notes, class/lecture notes, daily to do lists and so on with each other.

I have also set up a ning platform for our class (presently limited to just the 9 of us) after everyone agreed on it and have made a couple of posts up there as part of my reflective practice and also as part of the effort to get it up and running properly. There is much to learn about how my co-learners and I can and will function in this virtual space... There is, of course, at least as much to be learned about how we function in the real spaces that we share together...

In any case, this posting is merely to explain the absence and to point out that some slightly more consistent blogging can be expected here. I was thinking that, amongst other things, I could use this space for my meta-reflections - reflections on how I have been reflecting, learning and changing as part of the course. In the meanwhile, however, I will follow up with a few posts from the ning platform.

Also for an update, I have initiated a long with some co-learners a process for establishing a 'complexity' group. The remit is appropriately fuzzy at the time being but it is essentially supposed to function as a kind of platform for all those interested in and/or working with 'complexity' in any of its various guises to engage in dialogue and learning together... hopefully in order to figure out new ways of translating whatever emerges into new and more effective ways of being and doing... This should be most interesting (even though I won't be around to see it directly)!

Aside from that there is a 'Questioning Development' group (funny how that's been one of the labels I've been using in this blog for some time now!) set up by some co-learners that has started meeting regularly and this is generating some hot stuff for everyone to sink their teeth, minds and souls into. We seem to have quickly entered difficult terrain here; with one of the key subjects for discussion being around the need for deeper acknowledgement of historicity in development interventions and also the need for a deeper acknowledgement of the pain and injustice that has been (and still is being) meted out in much of the non-Western world as part a process that supports Western lifestyle and consumption patterns. Great. We will continue to delve into this, with all the pain and difficulty that it entails. There is much space to be held as we question the very notion of 'development'...

Which reminds me of what triggered me to return to this blog... I read just now, the following quote in a review of World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent Times by Joanna Macy (2007) on Amazon (see here) and thought it was really rather worth sharing with the wider world. It also makes me think I should be reading this book!

"Development is not imitating the West. Development is not high-cost industrial complexes, chemical fertilizers and mammoth hydro-electric dams. It is not selling your soul for unnecessary consumer items or schemes to get rich quick. Development is waking up - waking up our true potential as persons and as a society." (p. 132)

On that note, following are two posts that I had shared on the ning platform... Not perfect pieces, very much raw and unedited, but I've decided to share them nonetheless! So here goes...

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.

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!

Am I in a bubble?

Every once in a while, confusion sets in... and when it does, it tends to be everything at once. This leads me to believe that confusion is more about a state of mind than it is in relation to specific things... Though I may be off the mark here... In any case, a little bit of introspection always goes down well in these situations!

So, perhaps, it is time to review a few things:

1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?
2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?
3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?

Now, none of these are small questions. But I will have a go all the same.

1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?

I came to India after finishing my BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics. I had also completed several years of cultivating an anarchist, anti-system philosophy with radical green fringes. The City of London was the Heart of Evil and the whole transnational, capitalist elite that it represented was a part of a global network out to dominate the world and take humans away from the true path of liberation and freedom by putting them in little boxes where they live futile lives to earn the $$s so they can pay the bills and muddle about in little meaningless circles without ever knowing the Truth. People, instead, were caught up in self-centred, individualistic lives based on material gratification - and in the meanwhile, swathes were living meaningless lives, like robots. Linked to that, the last 50 years or so during which 'Development' arose as a fabricated story of the West/North (post-colonial powers) to exploit people and take their wealth, had undermined the rich cultures and sustainable livelihoods of people from the world over.

Hmmm... So there were a lot of people in the Rest (as opposed to West) of the world who had been oppressed, marginalised, exploited, disenfranchised, broken. My idea of my work probably had two main components: (a) seeking ecological restoration of the world; (b) bringing about radical transformation of societies to achieve this - keeping in mind the issues of power relations and social justice. I remember at the time thinking that in order to achieve the former, work would have to be done on the latter. I had this idea that if the people of countries like India could be sensitised to the ecological problems and socio-economic injustice that was making their lives worse; if they could be organised to raise their voice and get their issues onto the agenda, then there may be some scope for pressuring the rest of the world to modify its own behaviour. But there was a lot that I also knew I didn't know...

At the same time, i was particularly inspired by the ideas of direct, participatory, deliberative - maybe even ecological - democracy; of sustainable communities linked to their natural resource base, engaging in dialogue in order to make decisions and working things out. People taking control of their lives and enabling the full potential of human flowering to take place in a simple, natural and joyful way.

Equipped with these ideas and also lack thereof, I decided that I needed to go to India. There were many reasons for this, encompassing: food, philosophy, culture, abundance of NGOs, relatively safe and democratic, having lots of oppressed people, my family having been there before I was born. The idea was: go to India, find an NGO, spend some time working there, get a sense of what the work is, what development is, how does change happen, learn a good deal, and then make a plan about what to do next.

2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?

Well, I came to India immediately after finishing my degree - perhaps a little prematurely. I came with a bunch of my good friends, my ex-girlfriend and a reasonably unclear agenda. Although I had planned to come later and on my own, the enthusiasm of all my friends about going together swept me up and I headed of a good deal earlier - without a clear plan and without enough money to last very long...

My initial travels took me to Kashmere, where I was completely absorbed in the beauty of nature and the complexity of my own self. Lazy days, soaking up sunshine on Dal and Niggin Lakes and experiencing the bizarre atmosphere of a place filled with soldiers, death, fear, hope, loss and such tragic beauty... Trekking up to Sonna Marg and Gangabal, jumping naked into a glacial lake, catching fish, seeing marmots, sitting on goat skins with bearded, turbaned men in a little tent (to shelter from the rain) and eating boiled eggs... it was a very powerful experience. The travelling continued down to Dharmshalla and then into Rajasthan until one by one my friends had all gone... leaving me to fend for myself. It wasn't long before I hit Udaipur.

I got stuck in Udapiur, in the late monsoon season. The lake and the sunsets over it blew my mind daily. The other travellers were great company - so many good conversations. I made several excursions to Eklingji and Ranakpur. I wrote letters that I never sent explaining how I felt. And then, one day, I asked my rickshaw driver friend, Jameel, if he knew of a place where I could volunteer - and he said Seva Mandir. So I said take me there... and he did.

After some formalities I was accepted and assigned the task of helping the organisation prepare impact indicators. ? ? ? No-one, including myself, seemed to really know what this ought to involve... Gradually things became clearer - the result of a lot of muddling through. The main part of my first three years can be summarised thus: finding out about all the different work the organisation does by talking to people, thinking about indicators, talking about indicators, developing indicators, revising indicators, developing tools to collect data, testing these tools, training people to collect the data, getting the data collected, developing data entry modules, getting the data entered, cleaning the data, analysing the data, preparing reports based on the data, presenting the data back to people.

On the side, I spent a lot of time reading about evaluation, organisational learning, participation and participatory approaches/methods (including PRA, PLA, Open Space, AoH, Appreciative Inquiry, etc.), community development and complexity theory - and I was continuously trying to implement what I was learning in my work. I also wrote various reports - annual, progress, donor, proposals, and so on... Then, three years later (wait a minute... did you say THREE?), I couldn't work with my new boss and asked to be transferred somewhere else... So I ended up in Delwara, a small town 30 kms outside of Udaipur where Seva Mandir was working on integrated community development, focusing on responsible citizenship and local self-governance....

I was there for a year and a half - and I still am in a number of ways. I learned a great deal here that I still haven't managed to put into words. After this I was asked to help the organisation put together its 6th Comprehensive Plan which has involved facilitating dialogue across the organisation on issues of strategy, culture and structure (though mainly the former two). This has been my icing on the cake and this is kind of where I am at today. Almost 5 years have elapsed since I came to India. I never had any idea that I would stay in one place for so long.

So how have I and my ideas changed? The hardest question! I suppose that I have learned a huge amount about all the things that I have worked on, read and written about: evaluation, learning, facilitation, community dynamics (and what holds people together), organisations, empowerment, how change happens in an organisational and community context, complexity. I think I have also learned a great deal about myself... though I am not completely sure what. I have definitely evolved as a person - become more balanced, capable, in control of myself - maybe even wise... In many ways, though, I know that I still have a long, long way to go!
i have also developed a whole host of interests that I knew nothing about before coming - like facilitation, like complexity theory, like story-telling, like organisational change... I have become able to articulate one of the things that I would like to see myself doing in the coming years: working on organisational change processes as a means to attaining larger scale positive social change. None of the above does justice to what I have learned...

But I am still a green, spiritual, anarchist at heart. And I am still concerned with radically transforming power structures in the world, attaining ecological balance, claiming social justice and creating a world where humans live in harmony with each other and nature and where the full potential of all people can flourish. So in that regard, I think I have just gone deeper, not really sideways.

3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?
Another tough question. My decision to go and study - which I continue to question intensely from time to time - seems to signal something about how I feel... and it seems that I have to try and decipher my actions in order to really understand what is going on. The application (after 5 years of just thinking about it) is a sign that something deep within me (something beyond my simple, conscious chattering) wanted to go from here - for at least a while - and probably, eventually, for a longer time. My choice of course, one that lets me spend another year here though, shows that I really am not quite ready to just leave this place.

I have unfinished business here in Seva Mandir, in Udaipur. And there is a need for continuity - not just in terms of the work that I do but also in terms of my own personal learning trajectory: there are ideas that I am struggling with, trying to make sense of and trying to put into practice... and the place where I am now seems as fertile ground to work on as anything else... A list of some of the things that I would like to work on here can be found at: learn2act4change.

The items in that list seem to be what is calling me... But am I really hearing the greater call or am I in a bubble... is this just the local call? Am I really doing justice to what I am and what I believe in? Am I really doing justice to my ecological and environmental concerns? Have I found a way of weaving these dimensions in to the work that I do or have I somehow lost touch with these things by getting all caught up in other dimensions of the work? Is the scale at which I am working significant enough to really address the concerns - is it too big? is it too small? How is what I'm doing tying in to what's going on in the world? Is this work in Delwara - soon to expand to other peri-urban settlements - actually meaningful in the face of the bigger changes that our world is under-going...

I suppose I don't have the answers. I suppose that my decision to enroll in the Participation Power and Social change course, somewhere deep inside me, is an attempt to try and connect to people and knowledge that will help me make sense of all these things. Maybe it will let me look at my bubble from the outside, get a sense of perspective on things, understand how what I am doing and have been doing up to now fits in to the bigger scheme of things, the multitude of efforts for change going on at all scales and in all places... and then, perhaps, I will be able to make a more informed decision about what really matters... to me... for the world... and, therefore what I should do in the coming years.

The Perplexing Conundrum of 'Uncontacted Tribes' and Development

I recently came across a post via the Neuroanthropology blog over at the Culture Matters blog. This post mainly focuses on criticising the nonsense and stupidity that surrounds the way that the 'outside world' (i.e. us) relates to what end up getting called 'Uncontacted Tribes' (even though this is a myth). And I really appreciate the efforts that these anthropologists appear to be making to put things in their right perspective...

But then, as I lay in bed last night after reading the post, I found myself wondering... How on earth does whatever I am doing and what I want to do relate to all this? And how does that make me feel and do I still feel ok about myself? Or better, what ought I do about it? Wondering what the issue is?

I work in a field that is basically called 'development'. It is a hugely contested field, replete with its hardcore proponents, its alternative champions and its dissidents. Its primary (official) concern is with trying to make the world a better place. Now we all know (don't we?) that a lot of what gets done in the name of development is horrible and damaging - to the environment, to culture and generally to life on this planet. But like I said, development is a huge field and contains lots of alternative conceptions of what positive change really is. I like to think that I am working on one of the more (though by no means the most) alternative and benign types of development.

The organisation where I work has the basic objective of strengthening rural, predominantly tribal communities so that they can become self-governing entities. In the modern age, this means that the communities have to have the power to negotiate with the State (I hate giving it a capital 'S' but it seems necessary in a world where there is no escape from it). These tribals are entangled in the modern world through roads, motorcycles, party-politics, trade, employment, education, mobile phones, radios and so on. So they're nothing like the 'uncontacted tribes' from the Amazon.

They also have a life of increasing hardship. Being a part of the State means being a part of the political, economic and social structure that it entails. Sustainable 'hunter-gathering' has pretty much died out (and the forests that once supported it have by and large been destroyed). Indigenous medicines have either vanished or are vanishing. Population has mushroomed as people have shifted increasingly to settled agriculture. There is a scarcity of food available and child malnutrition - in terms of calories and micro-nutrients - is just ridiculously high. A host of other health problems prevail. At one level, this sorry state of affairs can be linked directly to what would once have been called development. And before it was called development it was probably called something along the lines of 'civilising the savages'. It disgusts me to think about it like that.

What am I trying to get at? First a little bit more beating around the bush. I am about to enroll on a degree - its a Masters in Participation, Power and Social Change. Sound exciting? Well, I think it is. Why do I want to take it? Besides my earlier post which explains the superficial reasons for going to study, this degree will hopefully give the time and space to explore - even more systematically that I already have done - just how society is held together and how people can be brought together in a process that enables them to live the life that they 'really' want rather than one that is sort of imposed on them from outside. What's my point?

The basic conundrum is this: where do these 'uncontacted tribals' fit into my schema of inclusive social change? Now before I get labeled as some kind of destroyer of indigenous culture and human diversity, I would like to make it very clear that I am fascinated by these tribes, the way they live, their belief systems, their healing systems, their socio-political structures. I don't feel that they need to be 'civilised' and I am perfectly happy with them living just the way they do. So, if I feel that way about it, why am I happy to go off and study on a course that is all about interfering with people, getting people connected up and engaged and making them capable of incfluencing the world in a way that is meaningful for them.

These 'uncontacted tribals' are not animals. So why are we keeping them in some kind of giant nature reserve and tracking them (a bit like we do with endangered species). Perhaps this is our way of preventing the destructive force of Development from completely obliterating them. In that case, perhaps we should keep on protecting them until we (the 'outside world') become sufficiently benign so as not to present a threat to them (is this even possible anymore? will we eradicate the common cold?). Or else does this preservation thing go on indefinitely until the collapse of modern civilisation (which seems like an increasingly likely possibility, as Dave Pollard is keen to profess in his wonderful blog - How to Save the World).

And what does all this mean for me and what I do? On the one hand, my new job description ought to be something along the lines of: 'salvaging Development's cultural wreckage'. My work is to try and help people whose lives are falling apart as a result of Development to organise themselves and recreate meaningful and sustainable community as a way of life so that they can be free from hunger, exploitation and the misery and hardship that this entails.

But the next step after salvaging is to enable people to no longer be the passive victims of the Development-Monster-On-A-Rampage but be empowered agents of their own destiny, creators of their own culture, cultivators and communicators of their own values, evolving collectively in some kind of sustainable wonder-land where people live in a perpetual state of harmony, ecstatic joy, meaning and fulfillment.

Not realistic? OK. But really, I find myself wondering what I will be able to learn from my degree in participation, power and social change about how I should relate to these 'Uncontacted Tribals'. Perhaps, I should just stay well away and avoid even thinking about polluting them with my own confusion!

What do you think about all this?

Going to University

Going to university is one of those things that I have been contemplating for the last four years while working with Seva Mandir, here in India. Every year I have looked at courses, every year I have ended up finding only one course that satisfied me - and even then, I found myself uncertain. Why is this and why do I feel ready now?

Over the course of the last few years I have steeped myself - mind, body and spirit - in the work that I am doing. I have been obsessive. I have tried out all kinds of experiments, methods, approaches and ideas. I have dissolved, by and large, the lines (if there were any) between my life and my work. I developed the habit of writing my thoughts, of reflecting on my self and my 'professional' practice. I have read vastly on the subjects that interest me and are related to my work - on evaluation, on organisational learning, on change, on governance, on participation, on leadership, on complexity science and its multifarious applications... the list goes on.

As a result of all this, I have learned a huge amount. I have also gained the opportunity to work directly at the field level in a community development process - crossing cultures - transforming my own perception of myself. Who I am and where I am from - questions that the answers 'Andre' and 'England' really don't seem to do justice to anymore (if they ever did). I sometimes forget that I wasn't born in India. I have known that this has been happening to me over the last few years. Before coming - although I didn't know what it would feel like - I knew that this is what would happen to me... and that is why I chose to come here.

As I traveled this personal journey of learning and change, the idea of going to university lingered on the peripheries. The more I read, the more I immersed myself and the more I strived to apply what I had learned - the action research and inquiry frameworks (internal and external, personal and participatory) and a host of methods and tools - the more I wondered what a degree might give me that I wasn't getting anyway. When I went to visit IDS (the place I just got accepted to) a few summers ago, I spoke to Robert Chambers - a hero of sorts in the field of participatory development. I told him about my work here and my interest in doing a Masters at IDS. He asked me: "If you're already doing these things, what do you expect to get from here?"

To be honest, I don't remember what I answered. I don't even know if I had an answer... But the question only added fuel to my general confusion about why I wanted to go to university at all. So I returned to my little world here in Udaipur and continued to immerse myself in my life of learning and doing. And the learning hasn't ended - it has only deepened, expanded, engaged me more thoroughly - taking me precisely in the direction that I had wanted to go in. The reason for my coming has been getting fulfilled - much as I had imagined it would - and much quite differently indeed!

So why off to study now? If I've achieved all this, then what's the point? I recently sent an email to my friends back home in England in which I laid out the following reasons:

There may be several reasons. One - it will help me to figure out if I am living in a bubble - and if so, to what extent. Two - it will put me in contact with lots of people who are basically crazy about and experienced in the same things as me. Three - it gives me a good excuse to take a break, catch up with family and friends and be a student again. Four - I might really learn something new and exciting that I hadn't had the chance to learn before. Five - it will end with me getting a little piece of paper that opens many doors faster than years of persistent effort (which sounds rather like another way of saying 'cheating' - hehehe... especially when considering the whole thing costs 11,000 quid!). Six - it's the only degree, after much searching, that I'm actually prepared to subject myself to! Six good reasons. There are probably lots more but after years of questioning... these are the ones that I'm confident about.

Is that it though? Isn't there more to it than this? One thing that struck me is that this is all about things that I hope to 'get' or 'receive'. What about what I am going to give? What about all the experience that I will now be able to take with me from here - experiences and insights that I can share with the people studying with me? Why didn't I factor this into my reasons for going? As I think about it, there is a great deal that I am already thinking about doing once I get there - ideas I want to share, experiments I want to engage in, processes I would like to set up, interactions I would like to have... Perhaps I should view my student experience not just in terms of what I get to take away but also - and perhaps more importantly - what I get to share and contribute. Indeed, perhaps this will be what I truly get to take away the most: what I put in.

Now isn't that a nice thought for the day!