Participatory Action Research: Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry [2 ed.] 113848623X, 9781138486232

Table of contents :
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Module 1: Advancing theory
1 Ins and outs of participatory action research
2 Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR
Module 2: Design and facilitation
3 Planning systems that learn
4 Participatory action monitoring and evaluation
5 Measuring with measure
6 Skills, process design and ethics
Module 3: Exploring problems
7 Getting to the roots
8 Participatory mapping and Citizen Science
9 Factors at play
10 Paradox
Module 4: Knowing the actors
11 Stakeholder basics
12 Critical stakeholder thinking
13 Social Analysis CLIP
14 Positions and values
Module 5: Assessing options
15 Thinking outside the box
16 Reconciling differences
17 Anticipating the future
Module 6: Understanding systems
18 System Dynamics
19 Domain Analysis
20 Breaking the dependency on tobacco production
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

“This groundbreaking book is a rich resource of concepts and tools for all who are engaged with the practice and theory of Participatory Action Research. Drawing on their lifetimes of experience and innovation, the authors take an open and inclusive approach to strengthening the foundations and diversifying the methods of engaged research. The extraordinary scope of this book and the new perspectives it offers, together with an accessible style, will inform, provoke and inspire field practitioners and academics alike to creatively design research for the many challenges of the 21st century.” Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK “Chevalier and Buckles have improved on an already exceptionally helpful book that I used in my teaching at Cornell University, with great success. They now combine thoughtful explorations of mid-range theories on problem-solving, stakeholder analysis, risk assessment and other foundational concepts with a wide variety of practical methods and tips for designing meaningful research. Their overview of PAR theory and guidelines on how to bridge distinct traditions now offer a well-rounded and complete teaching text.” Davydd J. Greenwood, Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Cornell University, USA “This is a wonderful book. Its overview of participatory action research, including the insights of French psychosociology, is unparalleled. It bridges traditions that have operated in silos for far too long. Chevalier and Buckles also provide a wide range of ‘skilful means’ to effectively meet and reconcile the requirements of democratic participation, transformative action in concrete settings and the advancement of general knowledge.” Christian Michelot, École Centrale-Supélec, France Praise for the first edition “This book is a must for anyone seriously committed to research that ensures the authentic participation and empowerment of people from all walks of life, be they from oral or textual traditions, women or men, old or young, articulate or hesitant, outspoken or reserved.” Farida Akhter, UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative), Bangladesh “. . . a wonderful compendium, replete with practical tools and techniques that bring rigour and vigour to the international dialogue among action researchers . . . This is a serious volume worth the time of any action researcher who is curious about how western (including francophone) perspectives on PAR come alive. This volume makes a significant contribution to the collective craft of scholarly practice among action researchers.” Hilary Bradbury-Huang, Oregon Health & Science University, USA

Participatory Action Research

Fully revised and updated, this second edition of Participatory Action Research (PAR) provides new theoretical insights and many robust tools that will guide researchers, professionals and students from all disciplines through the process of conducting action research ‘with’ people rather than ‘for’ them or ‘about’ them. PAR is collective reasoning and evidence-based learning focussed on social action. It has immediate relevance in fields ranging from community development to education, health, public engagement, environmental issues and problem solving in the workplace. This new edition has been extensively revised to create a user-friendly textbook on PAR theory and practice, including: • updated references and a comprehensive overview of different approaches to PAR (pragmatic, psychosocial, critical); • more emphasis on the art of process design, especially in complex social settings characterized by uncertainty and the unknown; • developments in the use of Web2 collaborative tools and digital strategies to support real-time data gathering and processing; • updated examples and stories from around the world, in a wide range of fields; • critical commentaries on major issues in the social sciences, including stakeholder theory, systems thinking, causal analysis, monitoring and evaluation, research ethics, risk assessment and social innovation. This modular textbook provides novel perspectives and ideas in a longstanding tradition that strives to reconnect science and the inquiry process with life in society. It provides coherent and critical treatment of core issues in the ongoing evolution of PAR, making it suitable for a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It is intended for use by researchers, students and working professionals seeking to improve or rethink their approach to co-creating knowledge and supporting action for the well-being of all. Jacques M. Chevalier is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and an independent consultant. Daniel J. Buckles, formerly with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and an independent consultant.

Participatory Action Research Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry Second Edition

Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles

Second edition published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles The right of Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2013 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chevalier, Jacques M., 1949– author. | Buckles, Daniel, 1955- author. Title: Participatory action research : theory and methods for engaged inquiry / Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel J. Buckles. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018047276 (print) | LCCN 2018059060 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351033268 (eBook) | ISBN 9781138486232 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138491328 (pbk) Subjects: LCSH: Action research. | Participant observation. | Social sciences—Research—Methodology. Classification: LCC H62 (ebook) | LCC H62 .C3757 2019 (print) | DDC 001.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047276 ISBN: 978-1-138-48623-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-49132-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-03326-8 (ebk) Typeset in Stone Sans by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements

xii xvi

Introduction1

Module 1: Advancing theory 1 Ins and outs of participatory action research

9 11

Exploring the big tent  11 United against positivism  15 Lewin’s action research  19 The three pillars of PAR  21

2 Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR

37

Instrumental, expressive and communicative reason  37 Rational-pragmatic PAR  40 Psychosocial-transformative PAR  44 Critical-emancipatory PAR  47 Perspectivism and engaged research  51 Technê and the art of inquiry  55 Globalization and the digital shift  60

vii

Contents

Module 2: Design and facilitation 3 Planning systems that learn

69 71

Meaningful research and pragmatism  71 Action, Research, Training (ART) in Honduras  73 Order and Chaos 76 Fighting Katkari eviction  78 Activity Mapping 83 Planning in the middle  85

4 Participatory action monitoring and evaluation

88

The eight rules of PAME  88 Planning, Inquiry, Evaluation: rethinking the evaluation culture in international development organizations  107

5 Measuring with measure

115

Free List and Pile Sort and the millennials in Quebec  115 Ranking and Rating 120 The Socratic Wheel 125 Educating for ‘gross national happiness’ in Bhutan  130 Strategic planning by a Katkari association  133

6 Skills, process design and ethics

139

Process design  139 Developing and applying the skills  143 PAR ethics and codes of conduct  151 Anonymity and transparency  154 To share or not to share  159

Module 3: Exploring problems 7 Getting to the roots Problem Tree and the Tree of Means and Ends 167 The Ishikawa diagram and quality control  173 Timeline and Rupa Lake, Nepal  176 Causation and fighting for a cause  180

viii

165 167

Contents

8 Participatory mapping and Citizen Science

186

Citizens and science  186 Ottawa’s ancient oaks  191 Scaling up animal health surveillance in Indonesia  194

9 Factors at play

200

Force Field: back to Lewin  200 Prevention of Atrocities Act, India  204 Gaps and Conflicts and malnutrition in Mali  208

10 Paradox

213

Reasons for ignoring reason  213 Accident causation and prevention theory  216 Health and safety among construction workers in France  226

Module 4: Knowing the actors 11 Stakeholder basics

241 243

The stakeholder shift  244 Stakeholder Rainbow: adult education in the Canadian north  246

12 Critical stakeholder thinking

254

Making social analysis simple, but not any simpler  254 Whose voices count?  256 Somewhere between pragmatics and utopia  260

13 Social Analysis CLIP

264

Assessing the conditions for Katkari success  265 Social Analysis CLIP: the tool and its conceptual foundations  272 Towards a more civil society  277

14 Positions and values

282

The weight of moral values  282 Values, Interests, Positions: conflict over the control of timber in Bolivia  285

ix

Contents Lessons and Values: Immanuel Kant in Costa Rica  289 Getting to no versus the Harvard model  293

Module 5: Assessing options 15 Thinking outside the box

297 299

Public engagement and social innovation  299 Creativity and methodological bricolage  303 The Carrousel, Cree tourism and animal health  308

16 Reconciling differences

318

Playing with ordinary language  318 Disagreements and Misunderstandings in Northern Ontario and West Bengal  322 Negotiation Fair: nutrition policy in Burkina Faso  327

17 Anticipating the future

330

The science of risk and society at risk  330 Disaster relief and risk reduction: working with the Camillian Order  333

Module 6: Understanding systems 18 System Dynamics

343 345

Systems thinking: linear, classificatory, rule-based, part-whole, dynamic  346 System Dynamics: the generic method and mixed cropping in India  348 Activity Dynamics and Network Dynamics: breaking down silos in Mozambique and Canada  356 Whole systems are systems with holes  363

19 Domain Analysis

369

Framing the proverbial box: classifying for a purpose  369 Social Domain: tobacco farmer profiles in Bangladesh  372 Associative logic, mixity and the invention of tradition  380

20 Breaking the dependency on tobacco production Why grow tobacco  385 Food for local thought  391

x

384

Contents Experimenting outside the box  397 From field to policy debates  399

Conclusion405 Index

408

xi

Illustrations

FIGURES 1.1

Participation, action and research

21

3.1

Current and ideal profiles of UNAH programmes, Honduras

75

3.2

Order and Chaos78

3.3

Assessment ‘A’ and ‘B’, fighting Katkari eviction, India

4.1

The balance and integration of PIE, SUCO, Canada

109

4.2

Ratings on the features of P, I and E, SUCO, Canada

110

4.3

The uses of selected evaluations, CESO, Canada

111

4.4

The value for money of programme components

112

5.1

Setting priorities for local development, Burkina Faso

124

5.2

Socratic learning by a teacher of teachers, France

130

5.3

A GNH school improvement plan, Bhutan

132

5.4

Setting the priorities of a Katkari association, Pali, India

135

6.1

Skills in means

144

6.2

Methodology for transparency research with ActionAid

158

82

7.1 Causes and effects of not having title to a village site, Siddeshwarwadi, India

171

7.2

Dreams and a path to village title, Siddeshwarwadi, India

172

8.1

Lost trees of Ottawa app, Canada

193

9.1 Forces driving and counteracting the threat of eviction, Chinchavli Gohe, India

207

10.1 How to sabotage hunting and fishing tourism in Mistissini, Quebec, Canada

215

10.2

Frequency and severity of construction worksite hazards, Paris, France

229

10.3

Paradox – construction worksite accidents, Paris, France

233

11.1

Stakeholders in adult education, Fort Severn, Canada

249

xii

Illustrations 13.1 First assessment of stakeholder positions on a proposed Katkari village site, Ambewadi, India

266

13.2 Second assessment of stakeholder positions on a proposed Katkari village site, Ambewadi, India

271

13.3

Stakeholder class typology

273

13.4

Power, interest and legitimacy profile

275

13.5

The three ‘Rs’ of legitimacy

276

14.1

Forest conflict management, Bolivia

287

14.2

Forest conflict management, Costa Rica

290

15.1

Playing with The Carrousel312

16.1

Negotiation Fair postcard

328

17.1

Methodology for disaster relief and risk reduction planning

335

17.2 Priority threats for the Camillian Order when responding to typhoons, the Philippines

338

17.3

Contribution and Feasibility of alternative actions, the Philippines

340

18.1

Ecological Dynamics of an Indian mixed cropping system

352

18.2 The interaction of Cuso International programme components, Mozambique (Activity Dynamics)358 18.3

Breaking the silos of swine health surveillance, Canada

19.1 Tobacco farmer profiles, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Social Domain, Principal Component Analysis)

362 379

20.1 The interaction of factors behind farmers’ decisions to continue to grow tobacco, Daulatpur, Bangladesh (Causal Dynamics)390 20.2 Crop options rated against eight contrasting characteristics, Daulatpur, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Cluster Analysis, Ecological Domain)395 20.3 Crop options rated against eight contrasting characteristics, Daulatpur, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Principal Component Analysis, Ecological Domain)396

PHOTOS 1.1 Researchers with Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development, Pokhara, Nepal

17

1.2 Community members and researchers discuss the threats to the Bonnechere River system, Renfrew, Canada

28

2.1 Specialists reflect on the practice of environmental education, Montreal, Canada

43

2.2 Farmers mapping the resources of dryland agriculture in Andhra Pradesh, India50

xiii

Illustrations 2.3 Wax figurines and written cards communicate livelihood options of the Katkari, Karjat, India

58

3.1 University faculty discuss ways to link the university teaching environment to local communities, Honduras 76 3.2 Shripat Waghmare rests after threshing rice for a landowner in Sudhagad, India

79

3.3 Land for sale advertisement near Nagothane, India

82

4.1

Young mothers discuss their learning goals, Fort Severn, Canada

92

4.2

Storytelling to generate evaluation criteria, Cameroon

97

4.3 Civil servants and civil society actors develop criteria and indicators for programmes with language minorities, Ottawa, Canada

102

5.1 Managers of a community seed wealth centre discuss priorities for conservation, Tangail, Bangladesh

118

5.2

127

Youth discuss what civic engagement means to them, Cuba

5.3 A student discusses indicators of Gross National Happiness, Thimphu, Bhutan

133

6.1

Educators discuss environmental values, Montreal, Canada

145

7.1

Katkari family enclosed by barbed wire, Karjat, India

169

7.2 Dwarkanath Lakhma Ghogharkar (middle) and other Katkari musicians, Karjat, India.

173

8.1

192

Densification pushing heritage trees into decline, Ottawa

9.1 Participants in the nutrition policy assessment, left to right: D. Houleymata, A. Akory, M. Diarra, Ségou, Mali

211

11.1 Impromptu assessment of stakeholders in a women’s education project, Fort Severn, Canada

250

12.1 Eliciting stakeholder perspectives on environmental sustainability, Renfrew, Canada

257

13.1 Katkari youth discuss legal options with Bansi Ghedve, a member of the research team

268

14.1

Sustainability education values and priorities, Canada

285

15.1

Using floor democracy to assess support for proposals, Montreal, Canada

314

16.1 Women rank priorities prior to discussion about men’s priorities, Mehi, India

323

17.1 Priests, nuns and lay members of the Camillian Order identify priority threats during earthquakes, Lima, Peru

337

18.1

Crop diversity valued by dryland farmers in Medak District, India

349

18.2 Cuso International assessment of interactions among programme components, Costa Rica

364

19.1 Staff look for breakthrough insights into organizational knowledge sharing practices, while the data is entered for further analysis, Montreal, Canada

371

xiv

Illustrations 19.2

Triadic elicitation by farmers in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh

376

20.1 Aminul Begum composes a song about freedom from tobacco before a group of farmers discussing the results of their research

391

20.2 Women farmers establish similarities and differences between crops, and rate each on a grey scale, Tangail, Bangladesh

394

20.3 Farmers assess crop combinations on five criteria, Banderban, Bangladesh (The Socratic Wheel)398

TABLES 5.1

Comparing and negotiating Free Lists and Pile Sorts118

5.2

Ranking or rating alternative local economic development projects

122

5.3

Averages of individual scores for knowledge and skills, CWY by country

126

5.4

Socratic learning by a teacher of teachers, France

129

7.1 The sequence of events and actions that have harmed or protected Rupa Lake, Nepal

177

9.1

Barriers to implementation of the multi-sectoral nutrition action plan, Mali

210

10.1

Hazards on a construction worksite, Paris

228

10.2

Existing factors contributing to construction worksite hazards, Paris

228

10.3

Existing factors attenuating construction worksite hazards, Paris

228

16.1

Competing priorities of men and women in Mehi, West Bengal

324

16.2

Disagreements and Misunderstandings – six scenarios

325

16.3

Competing goals of government consultation, Keewaywin, Canada

326

18.1

Ecological Dynamics of an Indian mixed cropping system

350

18.2 The interaction of Cuso International programme components, Mozambique (Activity Dynamics)357 18.3

Breaking the silos of swine health surveillance, Canada

361

19.1

Tobacco farmer profiles, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Social Domain)375

19.2

Actor’s card (farmer’s profile), Bangladesh

377

20.1 The interaction of factors behind farmers’ decisions to continue to grow tobacco, Daulatpur, Bangladesh (Causal Dynamics)388

xv

Acknowledgements

For several decades now we have been fortunate to work with hundreds of people and organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America who contributed in various ways and at various times to our growth as practitioners of participatory action research. To all of them we extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation.

xvi

Introduction

We started our separate careers as social scientists firmly committed to the critique of society, culture and power relations in everyday life. In the 1970s, Chevalier lived among farmers and indigenous hunters and gatherers in a remote region of eastern Peru and Buckles among native and non-native fishers in the Yukon. The studies we did were well received in academic circles. However, the fact that our publications had little impact on what concerned us the most – the people we actually worked with in the field – was something we could not ignore. Dissatisfied with the situation, we joined forces in 1984 and leaped into the world of participatory action research (PAR) with a major project on indigenous society and sustainable development in the Sierra de Santa Marta, Veracruz, Mexico. Expectations of producing scholarly publications in the field of anthropology and development studies were an integral part of our collaborative initiative (Chevalier and Buckles, 1995; Chevalier and Sanchez, 2003). But we were also determined to make a difference by engaging with the people who were then embroiled in internal and external conflict involving corn, cattle and the national petrochemical industry. The project evolved into a broader initiative with the Mexican anthropologist Luisa Paré and a team of biologists, geographers and community organizers. Our common goal was to better understand key challenges the indigenous people of the region (Nahua and Mixe-Zoque) faced in their daily lives and help address them using methods from the natural and social sciences in a participatory mode. When it came to questions of land-based livelihoods, economic poverty and environmental degradation, PAR seemed like the only way to conduct our research ethically and responsibly, with a real concern for people as opposed to extracting and analyzing data for the sole purpose of advancing knowledge and our own intellectual agendas and careers. Over time, the initiative contributed to the creation of Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in 1998. The reserve is now under UNESCO protection, and the non-government organization Proyecto Sierra de Santa Marta we helped start still thrives 25 years later thanks to the dedicated work of the other founding team members. While we have not been involved for many years, the values and programmes that guided the project from the start remain: empowerment of local producers, farmerto-farmer capacity building, the conservation of biodiversity through its sustainable use and local organizational development. PAR concepts, values and attitudes guided our approach to working with the Nahua and Mixe-Zoque. Buckles began experimenting in the early 1990s with farming systems

1

Introduction research methods and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), including farmer-led technology research and basic diagnostic tools such as resource mapping and group-based priority setting with farmer-experimenters in Mexico and Central America (Buckles, 1993; Buckles et al., 1998). Later, he also learned directly from PRA pioneers in South Asia such as P. V. Satheesh at the Deccan Development Society (Mazhar et al., 2007). As the years passed, however, we both realized that we lacked the know-how and the tools to assess and address complex social issues with the full engagement of the people involved. Reconciling what science has to offer to deeper social analysis and the dynamics of social engagement proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. With these lessons in mind, we looked back at our work and saw the need to expand the frontiers of action research beyond the limitations of existing approaches and our own practical knowledge in the field. We resolved to deepen our knowledge of PAR and what it means to do research ‘with’ people and not ‘on’ or ‘for’ people (which is a polite way of saying ‘without truly engaging them’). The challenge consisted in finding robust and critical ways to engage with non-academics in action-oriented research in a complex and uncertain world. This implied that we had to reinvent ourselves in several ways. We had to question certain things we were doing almost on automatic pilot, as it were. And we had to shift our focus from building a better world to changing our own world, by practising our profession differently. To that end, we took on the task of trying to reassemble the pieces of two daunting puzzles. The first puzzle concerns the relationship between science and society – between the inquiry process and everyday social life. The task echoes fundamental questions that college and university students ask throughout their studies, time and again, without ever getting a good answer. What is theory for and how does it relate to the truly important issues of our time? Also, why must ‘little-m’ methods for doing research with human subjects (such as observation, interviews, questionnaires and focus groups) be forever dry as dust, uncoupled from real conversations between people gathering evidence and reflecting critically on matters that count? The answers to these questions lie partly in features of higher learning dating back to the Middle Ages. Briefly, post-secondary institutions in the West carry the positive legacy of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the French Revolution and Modern Science. This is wisdom and knowledge never to be taken for granted let alone forgotten. To remain true to and enhance this legacy, however, education in the social sciences must go beyond ‘instructing’ students in a closed and orderly environment using a linear and piecemeal approach to learning adapted from the natural sciences, bureaucracy and industry. As students well know, university life functions within strict rules and standard routines. Parts are added incrementally, one step at a time in disciplines disconnected from each other and from practical experience. As a consequence, students prepare endlessly for a full and embodied learning experience that constantly recedes into the distant future. The living knowledge, useful and meaningful, that learners wish to encounter at school is like Godot: everybody claims to be a close acquaintance yet no one can recognize the character who is forever absent from the present scene. While new pedagogical strategies such as problembased learning and community service have created spaces and practices for rethinking the educational experience, these are still the exception rather than the rule. In our view, now is 2

Introduction the time for institutions of higher learning to commit to placing students in complex situations from the start, and help them progressively develop the capacity to deal with difficult obstacles, persistent confusion and the proverbial unknown. Until students learn to piece together the various parts of the inquiry process, they are bound to continue to miss the forest for the trees and, what is worse, lose interest in learning. The second puzzle is no less challenging. It concerns the evolution of PAR and the different perspectives on action inquiry that have developed over the last 80 years or so. The breadth and wealth of PAR experience is such that no one can be expected to have a full grasp of its contribution to addressing issues ranging from health to literacy, education, the workplace, community life, intermediate technologies, environmental degradation, gender relations and public engagement, not to mention the now-mushrooming experiments of Citizen Science and digital democracy. For our part, we have been fortunate enough to tap the vast potential of PAR in a wide range of fields, and learn from practitioners around the world. This, however, has led us to recognize the complexities of each discipline, initiative and field of intervention in different settings. We now see how risky it is to make generalizations about PAR and the importance of qualifying a description of an approach with details on a particular body of knowledge, set of issues and specific cultures. One conclusion we could draw is that PAR is not a well-defined theory but rather a general approach and a ‘big tent’ (Rowell et al., 2017, p. 844) that promotes pluralism and creativity in the art of discovering the world and making it better at the same time. As an approach to the inquiry process, PAR accommodates a broad spectrum of theoretical orientations and methods. We support that view, as most do. But, and this is a big ‘but’, the respectful practice of pluralism falls far short of its own targets. As we explain in Chapter 1, being open minded will not overcome the divides and gaps separating theories, methods and styles of PAR that coexist, tolerate each other and, in the best of cases, intermingle according to personal preferences. Like other PAR practitioners, we have a history of borrowing and adapting tools and concepts from a variety of sources and perspectives. The initial title for our work, Social Analysis Systems (SAS2), reflected this diversity in social research. But we also strive to find and develop a collective sense of direction and, importantly, a critical appreciation of what PAR variants have to offer and where they need to stretch themselves. We do this by promoting cross-fertilization among the main stances adopted in the field, as we understand them. To be more specific, we think it important to acknowledge different histories of PAR thinking and practice, namely the rational pragmatics of problem solving, the psychosocial focus on awareness building and transformative learning, and the critical-emancipatory struggle for greater social justice. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a panoramic view of these different approaches to PAR and their many variants. They explore and make links between the conceptual and practical insights of PAR as a field and what we consider to be its strengths and limitations. While our overall goal is to reconnect theory, methods and reallife issues, we also think it necessary to renegotiate the tensions between different understandings of PAR. This is not simply a matter of finding common ground, which is easy, but also breaking new ground with novel ways of assessing and addressing issues of social life in a wide range of settings. 3

Introduction Our efforts along these lines, launched by Chevalier in 2001 with a study of participatory approaches to stakeholder analysis, have been a journey into myriad worlds. Thanks to grants from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), people from many countries around the world, mostly from the global South, helped us push the frontiers of PAR. Community members, professionals in many fields, university students and faculty, working with the authors and on their own, engaged in hundreds of short- and longer-term action inquiries into a wide range of topics meaningful to the people involved. These were combined with countless capacity-building workshops involving more than 2000 people in 30 countries or so, facilitated by the authors and our many partners. At the heart of these interventions and training events was a process of constant dialogue and methodological creativity aimed at bringing about significant change in the world of research as well as in community life, education, the workplace and civil society. While some of these stories were recounted in the first edition of this book, many more experiences since then, especially in Canada and Africa, have been included in this edition. Looking back over the last two decades, we realize how varied the circumstances of our work have been, both geographically and thematically. While this came about as much by chance as by design, having to straddle so many worlds provided us with an opportunity to adapt action inquiry and research to each context, knowing that standard recipes and frameworks are not suited to the entanglements of social history. One important lesson we learned in the course of so many unique experiments concerns the distinction between action research and action inquiry. In this book, we understand participatory action inquiry to mean any methodical investigation where the parties engage in concrete action and investigation towards collaborative problem solving and goal attainment. An action inquiry, however, may not involve the advancement of general knowledge in a particular field, as in action research. People undertaking an action inquiry may employ the same tools and methods as researchers do – theory building, systems thinking or causal analysis in one form or another, for instance. But they can do so for the sole purpose of addressing a real-life issue, and leave it at that. In other words, they may achieve collective goals by using science, without the obligation of advancing science. Several chapters in this book describe interventions and tools used to support action inquiry of this sort, with no scientific research agenda on the part of those directly involved. We return to this question and the difference between PAR and PAR-like frameworks and tools in Chapters 1 and 2. With this distinction in place, we can now ask ourselves in what way this book is a contribution to research proper, one that goes beyond reporting on unique interventions in different fields as consultants and activists might do. Our answer to this question is threefold. First of all, the book includes a systematic exercise in general theory building and methodological innovation affecting both ‘action inquiry’ and ‘action research’ (as defined previously), extensively tested on the ground in a wide range of settings. Our aim is to advance knowledge of transferable concepts and tools to support people’s reflection-onaction and reflection-in-action. We also make every effort to connect the dots between action inquiry and action research, knowing that PAR must engage scientists and nonscientists alike in making sense of real-life situations and acting on them. When it does, the creation of ‘living knowledge’ benefits from ongoing research and simultaneously contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field. 4

Introduction Secondly, we make a point of researching and connecting the specific methods we advance with their origins in theory and conceptual underpinnings. To improve the actual practice of action-based inquiry or research, we believe it is imperative to critically examine standard models of causation, social analysis, civil society, value systems, conflict mediation, group dynamics and systems thinking, among other topics. The implication here is that the inquiry tools we use and methodologies we develop are far more than ‘mere tools’. Methods to investigate real issues are objects of research and theory building in their own right. However simple or technical they may seem, inquiry methods are forged in the fire of ideas regarding the world and ways to deal with its complexity. As the world evolves, so too must the methods and practice of science. Thirdly, some chapters provide examples of how action inquiry initiatives can inform and be informed by theoretical debates on substantive topics – disaster relief or accident causation and prevention, for instance. These show how the practice of PAR can support social change but also the advancement of knowledge in a given field. For reasons related to book purpose and length, literature reviews on topical issues other than PAR concepts and tools are used sparingly. The broad challenges we set ourselves in the first edition of this book have not changed. However, with distance and hindsight, we saw the need for more emphasis on mid-range theory underlying the concepts built into methods, as opposed to the general philosophical implications of PAR emphasized in the earlier edition. Tighter connections are made between different tools (e.g. Force Field or the Problem Tree) and the ideas behind them. This makes the book more suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on theory and methods, as well as for working professionals. While we still provide guidelines on how to use specific tools, we have left out detailed step-by-step instructions in most cases. These can be found in our online companion Handbook for Participatory Action Research, Planning and Evaluation (see www.sas2.net). The space saved allows us to discuss and illustrate some important topics at greater length, including monitoring and evaluation, stakeholder analysis, action research ethics, psychodynamic theory, systems thinking, social innovation, Citizen Science and the use of collaborative Internet tools. Last but not least, the edition gives more room to explaining the logic of process design and the practical outcomes achieved in a wide range of contexts, almost all of which involved us directly. All in all, this edition has more mid-range theory and illustrates through stories the complementary and competing threads from different PAR methodologies and traditions. The ideas, methods and stories presented in this book are organized into six modules that cover a broad spectrum of ways to engage people and mobilize evidence in real-life situations, including complex multistakeholder settings. While Module 1 explores different approaches to PAR, Module 2 tries to cover design and research facilitation basics. It raises questions about the relationship between planning, inquiry, action and evaluation and also between order and chaos in social life. Answers to these questions and practical concerns that follow inform decisions on how to mix, sequence and integrate tools that support genuine dialogue and rational thinking towards effective problem solving. Other questions addressed in the module highlight the skills needed to conduct an action inquiry or research process. We call them ‘skills in means’ after the Sanskrit expression upaya-kaushalya denoting ‘skill or cleverness in means’. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, practical 5

Introduction wisdom involves the careful and caring use of techniques and questions that fit the situation and potentialities in life, a concept akin to Fals-Borda’s ‘thinking-feeling persons’ (Rappaport, 2017, pp. 147). Here we offer guidelines and tips on ways to put these ‘skills in means’ into practice by designing effective PAR initiatives in real settings. We go on to show how these skills play out through the use of basic participatory tools for eliciting, classifying and rating elements and priorities in any domain. The module ends with a discussion of research ethics, transparency and the rules of free expression and ‘discretion’ developed in the longstanding tradition of psychosociology and ‘talk therapy’. Modules 3, 4 and 5 focus on three questions that inevitably arise in any PAR situation. What are the problems people face and must explore (Module 3)? Who are the actors or stakeholders affected by a situation or with the capacity to intervene, and how do they interact with each other (Module 4)? What future scenarios and options for action should be assessed against existing stakeholder interests and values (Module 5)? The modules describe new approaches to familiar tools and some important additions to the panoply of complementary methods needed to answer each set of questions. Module 6 takes PAR to another level, with tools for understanding systems in a complex world marked by uncertainty and the unknown. Chapter 18 introduces System Dynamics, our participatory framing of input-output reasoning used in economics. In Chapter 19, we present and illustrate Domain Analysis, our social adaptation of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology. Chapter 20 brings System Dynamics and Domain Analysis together through a detailed illustration of a particular action research design from work by D. Buckles with colleagues and farmers in Bangladesh. The story we tell acknowledges complexity from the start, using a soft-systems approach to holistic thinking and the mobilization of local knowledge for social change. From the previous comments, readers will have understood that there is more to this book and our companion handbook than an elaborate toolbox and set of stories for PAR practitioners. We also emphasize the importance of exploring and developing the theoretical foundations and the art of action inquiry and research, committed as we are to leaving the ivory tower of academia and grounding the inquiry process in the messy journey of collective action, critical thinking and learning by doing. This is what we have done in the past and continue to do in our current work. Having said that, what we advance would be of questionable value had the ideas and tools not been extensively tested on the ground and improved along the way, in close collaboration with many colleagues and partners around the globe determined to make a difference, knowing that success is never guaranteed. The stories, and references to more detailed sources, reflect real experiences, but also the difficult circumstances that people must continue to live with and struggle to overcome. In our conclusion, we outline an online interactive tool called Moral Conflict Assessment (www.participatoryactionresearch.net/mca) we recently developed with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to test among Canadian healthcare workers. We share this work-in-progress in the hope of illustrating how the practice of PAR can integrate the insights of different traditions of PAR and be scaled up beyond small group dynamics to virtually connected communities.

6

Introduction

REFERENCES Buckles, D. (ed.) (1993) Gorras y sombreros: Caminos hacia la colaboración entre técnicos y campesinos, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico City. Buckles, D., Triomphe, B. and Sain, G. (1998) Cover Crops in Hillside Agriculture: Farmer Innovation with Mucuna, International Development Research Centre and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Ottawa, ON and Mexico City. Chevalier, J. M. and Buckles, D. J. (1995) A Land Without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas, Zed and Fernwood, London and Halifax. Chevalier, J. M. and Sanchez, A. (2003) The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Mazhar, F., Buckles, D. J., Satheesh, P. V. and Akhter, F. (2007) Food Sovereignty and Uncultivated Biodiversity in South Asia: Essays on the poverty of food policy and the wealth of the social landscape, Academic Foundation and International Development Research Centre, New Delhi and Ottawa. Rappaport, J. (2017) ‘Participation and the Work of the Imagination: A Colombian Retrospective’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 147–160. Rowell, L. L., Balogh, R., Edwards-Groves, C., Zuber-Skerritt, O., Santos, D. and Shosh, J. M. (2017) ‘Toward a Strategic Agenda for Global Action Research: Reflections on Alternative Globalization’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 843–862.

7

MODULE 1

Advancing theory

9

CHAPTER 1

Ins and outs of participatory action research

EXPLORING THE BIG TENT Tricksters are mythic characters prone to disobey rules and conventional behaviour. They cross boundaries created by the natural and social order (Radin, 1956). They come in all shapes and forms, male and female, human and animal. They can mix attributes from different species and transform themselves to further subvert life as we now it. This makes it hard to recognize them. To complicate the matter, they present themselves under different names, such as Hermes in Greek religion, Brer Rabbit in Africa, Nanabozo in Ojibwe mythology and Coyote in many western Native American cultures, to name just a few. As Pelton remarks, ‘no one ever saw, or even heard tell of, a Trickster with a capital “T”, but the process of abstraction that tends to capitalize the “T” is not a perverse function of the academic brain. Everywhere one looks among premodern peoples, there are tricky mythical beings alike enough to entice any human mind to create a category for them once it had met two or three’ (Pelton, 1980, p. 15). PAR, the subject of this book, is a similar phenomenon. Many have heard about the creature, they know it exists, but no one is entirely sure what it looks like or how much trickery is needed to create and sustain it as a single entity. Establishing some consensus about the essence of PAR is a difficult task, beyond drawing up a list of attributes applicable in some respects. Jung once said of the trickster that his ‘most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness. . . . He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two hands fight each other’ (Jung, 1959, p. 263). We are tempted to say the same thing of PAR. In our view, it remains barely conscious of its many and varied expressions, and the body of literature that speaks to PAR theory is far from being united. Many hands keep on fighting or simply ignoring each other. In the first edition of this book, we ventured to offer a general tour. We now consider the task of reviewing the field to be both daunting and of uncertain value. One major difficulty lies in using the language of ‘PAR’ to bring together frameworks and approaches that prefer to use labels of their own to express what it is they have to offer. For instance, while we are of the view that the history of psychosociology is essential for understanding the evolution and the current state of participatory action research, the fact remains that

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Advancing theory adepts of la psychosociologie d’intervention in France do not self-identify as practitioners of PAR. The emphasis they place on connections between group dynamics, the unconscious and social life is a foundational principle they will not sacrifice to a utilitarian-sounding expression like ‘action research’. The same can be said of many affiliated frameworks of PAR. Key terms used in the social sciences to describe what may be viewed as variants of PAR – community orientation, sociotechnical systems, praxis, reflexivity, transformative learning and empowerment, to name just a few – are particularly sensitive as they are loaded with history and rife with tensions of all kinds. Consider the panoply evident in Tripp’s review of PAR (Tripp, 2005), The Sage Handbook of Action Research (Bradbury, 2015), The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research (Rowell et al., 2017a) and our own previous scan of the literature (Chevalier and Buckles, 2013). The field includes workplace and Organizational Development methodologies and frameworks such as the Quality Movement (Deming, 1986; Thorsrud and Emery, 1964; Emery and Thorsrud, 1969, 1977; Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015), Sociotechnical Systems Theory (Trist and Bamforth, 1951; Pasmore, 2001), Soft-Systems methodologies (Checkland and Poulter, 2006; Midgley, 2015), Participatory Systemic Inquiry (Burns, 2015), Design Thinking (Silverman, 2015), Action Learning (Revans, 1980), Experiential Learning (Kolb, 1984), Praxis Research (Whyte, 1991; Eikeland, 2015), Cooperative Inquiry (Heron and Reason, 2008) and Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987; Duncan, 2015). Other frameworks also focussed on organizations emphasize the importance of self-awareness and transformative learning. They include Reflective Practice (Schön, 1983), Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI) (Erfan and Torbert, 2015), Clinical Inquiry/Research (Schein, 2008) and Action Science (Argyris, 1982). The history and variegated landscape of la psychosociologie d’intervention in France should also be considered here as it upholds the psychodynamic focus in the workplace initially promoted by the pioneering Tavistock Institute. We say more on this tradition in Chapter 2. Efforts to ground academic interests in social justice have created another collection of action research experiments including Transformational Learning (Mezirow and Taylor, 2009), Equity-Oriented Collaborative Community-Based Research (Foster and Glass, 2017) and Community-Based Research (Hall, 2005; Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015; Stringer, 2015; Wallerstein and Duran, 2003; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2008). The Action Research Network of the Americas (arnawebsite.org) and Community-Based Research Canada (communityresearchcanada.ca) are notable endeavours in this direction. Since 2008, Community-Based Research Canada has played an important role in developing policy papers, leading and supporting research, convening community-campus gatherings and developing a national and globally connected community of engagement leaders (Tandon and Hall, 2012). The hallmark of the broader move towards closer community-campus partnerships is an inquiry and learning process that is action-oriented and firmly grounded in practical community needs, beyond scholarly interests alone (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003, p. 24). True to the spirit of PAR, it calls for the active involvement of community members in all phases of the action inquiry process, from defining relevant research questions and topics to designing and implementing the investigation, sharing the available resources, acknowledging community-based expertise and making the results accessible and understandable to community members and the broader public. Mentors in this approach show 12

Ins and outs of participatory action research how students and faculty can engage in action-oriented inquiry and meet academic standards at the same time (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988; Sherman and Torbert, 2000; Herr and Anderson, 2005; Burns, 2007; Coghlan and Brannick, 2007; Stringer, 2007; Israel et al., 2008; McNiff and Whitehead, 2009; Smith et al., 2010; James et al., 2012; Kindon et al., 2007). Community-oriented formulations of PAR with a focus on rural livelihoods and wellbeing make up another extensive set of contributions to the field. They include several variants of Participatory Learning and Action (Chambers, 1993), but also Farming Systems Research and Extension (FSR-E), farmer-to-farmer learning (Bunch, 1982; Holt-Gimenez, 2006), the Appropriate Technology (AT) Movement and a Latin America inspired approach called Systematization of Experiences (Falkembach and Torres Carrillo, 2015; Streck and Jara Holliday, 2015). As Chambers (2015) explains, the list of livelihood frameworks can be further extended to include the contributions of Reality Checks, Stepping Stones (Wallace, 2006), Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS), Participatory Statistics, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and Participatory Epidemiology (Archer, 2007). Ethnographic Action Research and studies of indigenous, traditional or local knowledge systems (IKS, TKS, LKS) provide additional takes on PAR from an anthropological perspective (Gupta, 2006; Sherwood and Bentley, 2009; Brokensha et al., 1980; Warren et al., 1995). The many variants of participatory evaluation, including Action Evaluation (Friedman and Rothman, 2015) and Empowerment Evaluation (Fetterman and Wandersman, 2005), should also be mentioned along with youth-led approaches to research for social justice (recrearinternational.org). The list does not stop here. A commitment to deep societal change characterizes a set of contributions to PAR made by Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 1970), Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985), Reflect (Archer, 2007), feminist anti-racist post-colonial PAR (Lykes and Scheib, 2015), Critical PAR (CPAR) (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988; Fals-Borda and Rahman, 1991) and our own formulation of engaged research (Chevalier and Buckles, 2013). A focus on active citizenry underlies another world of experiments of science-in-society, including e-PAR (Embury, 2015), Citizen Science and methods for eKnowledge creation or deliberative democracy such as Search Conferences, Citizens’ Juries (Wakeford et al., 2015), deliberative polling (Babüroglu et al., 2015), crowdsourcing (Certomà and Pimbert, 2015) and Wikipedia (Jemielniak, 2015). Last but not least, many approaches included in the big tent revolve around effective group facilitation techniques and the creative arts, founded on principles of their own. Well-known examples are T-groups (Stefanac and Krot, 2015), The World Café (Steier et al., 2015), Open Space technology (Owen, 2008), Photovoice (Mejia, 2015), Participatory Video (Satheesh, 2012), storytelling (Koch, 2015) and Learning History (Bradbury et al., 2015). Judging by the increasing attention to research that tries to make a difference in the lives of people, readers can be sure the list will get even longer in years to come. Doing justice to the varied experiences and insights of the many practitioners of PAR, and creating a shared understanding of the lay of the land, is consequently a formidable task, and perhaps a foolish one at that. It assumes that we are dealing with fruit of a kind rather than apples and oranges and that there is a ‘field’ called PAR that can be investigated. This is precisely the problem that literature reviews are supposed to resolve. 13

Advancing theory At first sight, there are two options to choose from. One is to clearly separate kindred and orphan practices from the ‘true heirs of PAR’. Very few want to go down this narrow path, which is fraught with the risk of arbitrary exclusion. Another option is to simply recognize the jumble for what it is, a mixed bag of ideas and practices that continue to evolve in their own different ways, what Chambers and others have called a ‘flowering of eclectic pluralism’ (Chambers, 2015, p. 41; Midgley, 2015, p. 160). This has the advantage of creating a big tent that can attract an impressive number of supporters, visitors and passersby. The disadvantage is that membership in the big tent exists mostly in name and only when convenient. Maturing as a field gets set aside along with the internal tensions and profound disagreements among the invitees and presumed supporters of the cause. In this and the following chapter we try to chart a course forward, somewhere between the cut-and-dry and the soft-and-mushy options. We do so to get some perspective on our own work but also to rise to the important challenge of claiming space for the field at this moment in the history of science. To begin, we bring into focus the central vision of science and society that lies at the common edges of PAR. As we shall see in the next section, practically all occupants in the big tent converge around a humanistic critique of positive science and technocracy. Much like Lewin and Dewey, PAR practitioners and kindred members and frameworks oppose a positivist perspective bent on removing everything that is profoundly human from the advancement of knowledge and society, including people other than experts and subjective experience of any kind. PAR boldly steps away from the official line of technocratic science by crossing the boundaries between the objective world and our deep involvement with it. Of course, this is true of all humanistic stances on science. What makes PAR unique is its commitment to fully integrating the core elements built into the acronym, namely Participation (life in society), Action (experience) and Research (knowledge making). To maintain this focus, and walk the talk, all three elements must remain in full sight at all times (McIntyre, 2008). Our argument is that focus on the integration of P, A and R (in opposition to systems that dehumanize science) is essential, but that it does not preclude maintaining peripheral vision, as in human sight. In this chapter, the overall ‘perspective’ we offer on PAR acknowledges the need for lateral thinking and movement. This is what we do when we look into kindred ideas, tools and frameworks that manage to catch our attention even when they remain uncommitted to the full integration of all three PAR elements. Their unique focus on some aspect of PAR, novel ways to facilitate group thinking for instance, can challenge, inform and inspire. The marvel of human sight – the ability to sharply focus while also processing information from the periphery (global impressions, well-known forms, rapid movements in the dark) and shifting attention at will – offers a metaphor for our brand of ‘engaged perspectivism’ where the central vision (and commitment to integration) is effectively enhanced but not distorted by information and teachings from the periphery. In the next chapter, we extend the idea of perspectivism to include the interaction of background and foreground, applying it to the interplay of three histories of PAR thinking and practice: the rationalpragmatic, the psychosocial-transformative and the critical-emancipatory. These represent three traditions of anti-positivist sentiment. The latter focus on social justice comes closer to our own views on the merits of PAR. All the same, all three approaches offer practitioners of 14

Ins and outs of participatory action research today an opportunity to bring one dimension or another to the foreground, depending on the circumstances and as the situation evolves. But first we turn our attention to a common edge of PAR thinking and practice.

UNITED AGAINST POSITIVISM One way to capture the central vision of PAR and what brings its many expressions together consists in pitting them against some arch enemy, ideally a common adversary that explains how everything started. Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) is by far the best candidate for the role. The views he held and those of PAR could not be farther apart. The American engineer advocated a Newtonian approach to the ‘science of management’ where industrial efficiency depends on work being entirely predictable and therefore performed mechanically, subservient to precise time-and-motion studies. The secret to achieving this is to leave all human factors out of the equation, save of course the worker’s all-too-natural drive to make money. When job instructions are based on exact science, problems occur only if workers fail to follow plans and disobey the chain of command. Taylor advised the steel company worker wishing to earn the top salary to do exactly as his supervisor ‘tells you to-morrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. And what’s more, no back talk’ (Taylor, 1911, pp. 44–45). Taylor held that ‘under scientific management exact scientific knowledge and methods are everywhere, sooner or later, sure to replace rule of thumb’. While human beings may be complex organisms, exact scientific experiments can unravel elementary laws that will help managers extract maximum sweat from assembly workers. His own methodical experiments highlighted a basic law, he claims: workers will predictably work harder only if ‘they are assured a large and permanent increase in their pay’ (Taylor, 1911, pp. 104, 119–121). Economic self-gain explains all human behaviour. Traces of Taylor’s system can still be found in the use of empirical fact-finding and research to promote efficiency in bureaucracy and systems of mass production. Measures include the rationalization of workflow, the standardization of ‘best practices’ and a focus on effective knowledge transfer. However, Taylorism is no longer a stand-alone model of managerial wisdom. It became obsolete by the 1930s. As Michelot (2016) explains in his in-depth essay on the early history of action inquiry, the ‘Taylor system’ could not withstand many transformations affecting our understanding of the interface between science and human factors and relations. Some of these transformations date to the rise and growth of liberal and utilitarian philosophy. These hold the conviction that all human beings, managers and workers alike, are rational creatures capable of matching the ends pursued and the practical means to attain them, using logic, experience and empirical evidence in the process. As we shall see, the Lewinian perspective picks up on this more inclusive theme, with an emphasis not so much on what individuals can do on their own to achieve their ends but rather on cooperative human relations as a powerful lever for rational behaviour and organization. This is in line with the Hawthorne factory study conducted by Elton Mayo in the 1920s, an experiment that was particularly important in broadening our knowledge 15

Advancing theory of workplace psychology. It showed increased motivation and productivity in employees when placed in a team setting, thus propelling the Human Relations Movement into a cornerstone of action research thinking (Mayo, 1933). New thinking on how science actually works reconnected the creation of knowledge with the proverbial ‘human element’. This critique of positivism came from many sources, including the works of philosophers such as Wittgenstein who emphasized creativity in language. More importantly, relativism and acknowledgement of human meddling in ‘exact science’ started growing in the world of physics and mathematics, starting with Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, first introduced in 1927. The principle concerns limits to the precision with which physical properties of a particle can be known – limits that are part of all quantum objects and wave-like systems. Another damper on precision in science is the observer effect in physics, or the idea that observation and instruments used to measure an object can actually change the phenomenon under observation. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems should also be mentioned. They point to the inherent limitations of axiomatic statements built into mathematical systems. While axioms are essential, they are neither demonstrable nor refutable. To influential philosophers of science such as Karl R. Popper, theoretical propositions built into science can never be proven either. They must be imagined and can be tested only indirectly, by reference to their implications formulated as testable hypotheses. In his own way, Freud adopted the same position. ‘It is a mistake’, he once said, to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. . . . Science . . . consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind. (Freud, 1955, p. 47) The implications are many. Measurements have an impact on what we observe. The laws they seek to reveal are approximations and abstractions that cannot be directly demonstrated let alone directly observed. Theoretical propositions are products of the human mind defined as the centre of unobservable thoughts and emotions. Contrary to positivism, mental life becomes a vital element in the making of science. It is also worthy of philosophical and scientific interest. Our understanding of mental processes adds of course another layer of complexity to the quest for knowledge and its application to everyday life, well beyond Taylor’s views of industrial psychology. This is clearly evidenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. While debates regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis persist to this day, Freud’s investigations into laws of the psyche have left a deep imprint on our understanding of the complexity of human thinking and emotions. They show how probing into the deep recesses of the mind, past the gate of consciousness and reason, can help not only advance knowledge but also improve well-being and stimulate research at the same time. Thus, faculties other than logic and conscious reasoning can shed light on the workings of science itself. As Poincaré (1958) and Bergson (1911) argued, the process of scientific discovery actually depends on the power of imagination, intuition and creativity.

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Ins and outs of participatory action research

PHOTO 1.1  Researchers with Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development,

Pokhara, Nepal (Source: D. Buckles)

These insights were to become a major influence in the history of PAR, at least in its formative years. Science no longer exists in a vacuum. This general statement is a basic premise for the sociology and the history of science, fuelled by Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most cited academic books of all time. In Kuhnian theory, all scientific frameworks are shaped by the history of ideas and the changing circumstances of social, cultural and political history. As they reflect on their involvement with the world, scientists can apply rules of inquiry to cross-examine changing standards of reasoning, investigative procedures and views of the world. They can do so with a view to serving a critique of culture and society, as many have done. The idea of ‘one science’ so far up the ivory tower that it can exist independently of social life is no longer tenable. Science is no longer an enclosure of the mind ruled by fixed ways of knowing. Actually, it never has been. Science was and is more than ever an open and pluralistic approach to knowledge creation achieved methodically, with different mindsets and purposes that vary and evolve over time. Breakthroughs in mathematics also inflicted heavy blows on hard scientific views of the world and interventions designed to make things ‘work better’. Our understanding of workplace efficiency and psychology has evolved considerably since Taylor, in part due to the insights of W. A. Shewart, the father of statistical methods of quality control. A physicist, engineer and statistician working for Bell Labs in the 1920s, Shewart showed how production is always in some measure a roll of the dice. Variations in quality are bound to arise. In order to explain this, Shewart makes the distinction between two sources of variations.

17

Advancing theory A ‘chance cause’ of variation in production is the equivalent of unavoidable noise in a system. Like the wear and tear of any equipment, it is natural, statistically calculable and ultimately unavoidable. By contrast, a worker that falls asleep while on the job is an ‘assignable cause’ of variation in production; this is an ‘unnatural failure’ that can be corrected but cannot be predicted. A system is said to be in statistical control when it features only chance-cause variations and remains so, that is until another assignable source of variation (workers falling asleep because bored to death, for instance) starts giving trouble, subject to be found and removed. Quality production is a continuing, self-correcting process of making the most efficient use of raw materials and fabrication processes, approaching the idealized state of statistical control (Shewart, 1939, pp. 24, 111). In the Epilogue to his book entitled Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, Shewart concludes that the process of quality control in mass production, from specification to production and inspection, is of a statistical nature. Since the act of control ‘cannot be predicted with exactness, we must introduce into science statistical hypothesis, statistical experimentation, and statistical tests of hypotheses’ (Shewart, 1939, p. 149). From this perspective, management becomes a science of probability and an art of relative control, exercised within tolerance limits. It involves constant learning and an improvement process dubbed by Deming as the Shewart Cycle, also known as the PDSA cycle: that is, Plan, Do, Study and Act. A leading figure in Japan’s ‘post-war economic miracle’, Deming championed a scientific approach to business effectiveness, but also the full involvement of all company members in spirals of increasing knowledge of the system, creating constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service. This meant introducing training on the job, encouraging leadership instead of merit ratings and eliminating ‘all barriers that rob people of their right to pride of workmanship’ (Deming, 1986, p. 24). In the same spirit, Toyota and other ‘lean production’ companies (Liker, 2004) held and still hold that innovation and staying ahead of competition requires the opposite of what Taylor advocated: not docile assembly line workers but rather an engaged, problem-solving workforce immersed in a culture of critical thinking using PDSA combined with statistical thinking and measurements. The Quality Movement forged new paths by introducing participatory tools for causal analysis as well, such as Ishikawa’s fishbone diagram discussed in Chapter 7. Acknowledging the need for everyone’s input into the constant evaluation of production and management practices was a major shift in workplace thinking. It paved the way for the rapid and exponential growth of training services, research and innovation in the field of Organizational Development (OD) in the decades to follow (Coghlan, 2015). World War II created the perfect conditions for the U.S. Department of War to support this emerging trend, by offering job training in rational problem solving and quality control. The War Manpower Commission ran the Training Within Industry programme from 1940 to 1950, reaching 1.6 million workers in over 16,500 plants. Its aim was to compensate the loss of skilled personnel in war-related industries affected by conscription in the U.S. Army at a time when qualified supervisors were needed most. The programme continued after the war on a massive scale through reconstruction aid in Europe and Asia. Historically, Mayo’s work and the Human Relations ‘school’ developed in the interwar period were not committed to the ideals of social justice and struggles for genuine democracy. More to the point, the introduction of applied psychology in the world of business 18

Ins and outs of participatory action research presented conservative business leaders such as John D. Rockefeller Jr with an innovation designed to enable them to both monopolize authority in the workplace and the wider community and justify this monopoly on the grounds that the minds of workers and citizens lacked the rationality required to participate in a significant manner in management decision making. (Bruce and Nylan, 2011, p. 183) In Chapter 2, we discuss the limitations of what we call the rational-pragmatic tradition in the playing field of PAR. For the moment, we turn to the seminal contribution of the German-American psychologist and pragmatist Kurt Lewin in bringing together the three pillars of P, A and R.

LEWIN’S ACTION RESEARCH While he had his own views on what motivates workers to increase production, Taylor did not attempt to make a contribution to theoretical and applied psychology or sociology. The same can be said of Shewart, Deming and Mayo. They offered not a theory of human and social behaviour but rather a more dynamic framework for increasing business productivity and efficiency. It was left to Kurt Lewin to broaden this frame of reference based on rational problem solving and planned change beyond the world of business and management, to include psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology in the practice of what he called ‘action research’. Lewin first used the expression in his 1946 paper ‘Action Research and Minority Problems’, a year after John Collier’s more action-oriented formulation of the same idea (Neilson, 2006). What Lewin had in mind was no less than an integrated approach to social research that brings together ‘a symphony of various sciences’ in support of ‘experimental comparative studies of the effectiveness of various techniques of change’. A change experiment is a cyclical integration of A and R, i.e. a pragmatic and rational ‘spiral of steps each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action’. The first step is a problem awareness phase that seeks to ‘unfreeze’ a situation through fact-finding and diagnostic thinking. Shifts in understanding create the possibility of movement and support the formulation of an overall idea or plan of action to dismantle the existing mindset and overcome defence mechanisms and inertia. Decisions regarding immediate steps lead in turn to a phase of experimentation with transformative action. Progressive learning from these experiments feeds back into earlier plans and invites adjustments between objectives and actions. Iterative motions of ‘research in action’ and ‘action under research’ prepare the last phase, a closing of the spiral that ‘freezes’ new plans and forms of behaviour based on effective corrective action (Lewin, 1948, p. 206). Lewin immerses research in social life without abandoning the obligations of science. In the same breath, he transforms the world of research by embedding social interaction in the work of science. Reciprocity in the service of complementary ends, those of science and society, is the guiding principle here. The interfacing of action and research calls for group-based methods, using P to shape both A and R. On the lay side of the reciprocity pact, non-scientists learn to think and plan their experiments as researchers do, using the 19

Advancing theory appropriate methods and empirical evidence to design, implement and test their hypotheses and analyze results. Action research installs ‘fact-finding procedures, social eyes and ears, right into social action bodies’ (Lewin, 1946, p. 38). Group thinking and experimentation involves feedback mechanisms where learners gather evidence to help them bridge the gap between results that are aimed for and those that are observed. The views and voices of participants play an important role when it comes to taking a step back, interpreting group dynamics and monitoring or assessing project outcomes. The change agent and the client group thus carry out all phases of the action research process jointly. The analysis and interpretation of data and observed behaviour is no longer the prerogative of the expert alone. Scientific and analytic detachment from immediate experience and emotion is expected from group members and the client system that must work jointly with researchers to identify specific problems and their root causes and develop plans for coping with them realistically and practically. On the academic side of the equation, researchers pull their weight by contributing scientific ideas and analytical insights. They provide inquiry techniques such as ‘deeper interviews’ and self-evaluations to gain insight into people’s thinking and motivations as opposed to ‘superficial methods of poll taking’ (Lewin, 1946, p. 37). Researchers also develop general theories that feed into action, knowing that ‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’ (Lewin, 1951, p. 169). Lewinian researchers today support social change by providing research tools and insights into real-life situations and the forces that may help or hinder effective problem solving. But their role does not end there. When adopting a PAR approach, they can also offer group training, consulting and facilitation services. This approach to what researchers can contribute, adopted in the 1940s, was groundbreaking at the time. It demanded from social scientists that they leave their comfort zone and develop the skills necessary not only to assess conditions that exist locally, at a given place at a given time, but also to facilitate communication and feedback among participants (Lewin, 1946, p. 44; Kolb, 1984, p. 10). As Lewin remarks (Lewin, 1946, pp. 36–46), all of this calls for ‘an utmost amount of courage’, the kind that may still hold many researchers back from making the shift. Lewin’s work is a meshing of scientific theory with real-life experimentation and the ideals of democracy. More than a method, action research became a commitment on the part of both researchers and actors to jointly observe, problematize and transform behaviour in the interest of all. The goal of academic life is no longer to generate and share scholarly theory and findings for their own sake. The view coincides with key ideas and practices developed at the influential Tavistock Clinic and Institute (created in 1947), save perhaps for the clinical orientation of Tavistock. Initially Tavistock broke new ground by combining general medicine and psychiatry with Freudian and Jungian psychology and the social sciences to help the British army face various human resource problems, such as low morale, officer selection and resettlement for repatriated prisoners of war (Dicks, 1970). Led by multidisciplinary, democratically functioning work groups, the Tavistock approach began with preliminary studies of critical problems, followed by the co-design of innovative solutions with military staff, handing over the developed model to the army and disseminating it to other units and branches of the organization. The same process – actionoriented inquiry, group-based and democratic – was extended later to civilian society, 20

Ins and outs of participatory action research starting with a focus on the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and crisis management applications within the Tavistock Clinic and Institute. Difficulties in obtaining untied research funds eventually forced the Institute to develop projects with private industry and diversify its action research portfolio while maintaining the goals of scholarly thinking, publishing and capacity building.

THE THREE PILLARS OF PAR Lessons learned from Lewin and the Tavistock Institute seemed clear: action research is meant to reconnect science and society, thereby expanding the ‘experimental, scientific attitude to everyday life’ (Eikeland, 2015, p. 386). People come together using scientific inquiry and real-life experience to understand and shape the world in which they live, bearing in mind the ideals of modernity and democracy. The acronym containing the three defining letters reflects these goals. As Figure 1.1 shows, PAR works at reconciling and integrating research (R) and the advancement of knowledge with people’s active (A) engagement with social history and the ethics of participation (P) and democracy. In the words of Embury (2015, p. 530), (participatory) action research ‘is both the medium for change and the method of analysis of the change’. Given this description, there should be no problem in recognizing PAR for what it is, what it does and what it stands for. But this is far from being the case. In reality, convergence in thinking about PAR is more apparent than real. As it is, ‘the flow and cross-fertilization of ideas is very limited’ and further developments in the field are ‘held back by fragmentation and disconnection’ (Bammer, 2015, p. 547). In other words, the convenience of the big tent comes with a cost.

(life in society)

Learning and

PAR Research

Research

Research

(knowledge making)

FIGURE 1.1  Participation, action and research

21

Advancing theory A quick scan of the action research literature reveals a united front on a loose set of principles: • • •

• •

•

methodical inquiry is not the sole prerogative of professional scientists; all stand to gain from trained researchers and facilitators closely interacting with non-scientists; the inquiry process involves either hard mainstream data gathering techniques, qualitatively soft methods or novel tools and frameworks designed to be as user-friendly as possible; the process must factor in the workings of human emotions, imagination and relations; lessons learned can guide and build on human experience and experimentation in real-life situations, towards enhancing personal well-being and egalitarian relationships; no inquiry can eliminate all risks and problems from society and history, however useful it may be.

These principles are insightful and provide solid ground to create and maintain a recognizable ‘school of thought’, one might think. But they don’t. As puzzling as this may be, practitioners can apply all these principles without seriously engaging non-scientists in the process, dedicating time to ongoing action or actually doing research. At stake here is the substance attributed to the three pillars of PAR and the extent to which they are effectively combined, or not. Despite its common edges, the big tent approximation of PAR leaves much latitude for radically different interpretations of what research, participation and action actually mean, to the point that each term may lose much of its significance and contribute little to a shared vision of science-in-society. While most practitioners agree that PAR is not monolithic, a ‘school’ or an ‘ideology apart from others’ (Eikeland, 2015, p. 381), hazy definitions allow each component part of PAR to be stretched far beyond the original concept and intent.

Scientific research Let’s first look at how the idea of ‘doing research’ plays out in the catch-all approach to PAR. According to Elliott, action research is ‘the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it’ (Elliott, 1991, p. 69). Similarly, Coghlan and Shani (2015, p. 48) consider that inquiring into an organization in order to change something in it is by definition an exercise in action research. Given this understanding of the field, Tripp concludes that the term action research is often loosely applied to any kind of attempt to improve or investigate practice’ (Tripp, 2005, p. 444). He goes on to argue that action research should not be confused with action inquiry, ‘a generic term for any process that follows a cycle in which one improves practice by systematically oscillating between taking action in the field of practice, and inquiring into it’. We agree. Action research is set on a slippery slope when the term ‘research’ becomes a synonym for any process of methodical observation and thinking that guides action. The 22

Ins and outs of participatory action research core of action research is not just praxis, i.e. ‘the knower-practitioner self-reflection extracting and articulating practical patterns from accumulated practical experience’ (Eikeland, 2015, p. 382). A systematic inquiry or investigation undertaken to discover facts, make sense of them and inform ongoing practice – which is what physicians do on a daily basis, for instance – turns into research only on two conditions. Firstly, it must meet ‘standards of appropriate rigour’ (Argyris and Schön, 1991, p. 612; see also Coghlan, 2015, p. 419). Secondly, it must be designed to advance general knowledge. Nevertheless, there is no consensus among scientists as to how these two requirements should be met. Empiricists, logical positivists, rationalists, humanists, phenomenologists and sceptics have competing and conflicting views on the matter at hand. All the same, the forward march of science is a key focal point in PAR discussions and should not be skirted around even if it is the subject of much debate in the philosophy of knowledge. Our position on this matter is that action inquiry and action research are both equally valid but have different intents and sets of tasks to carry out. One intent is to assess and address real concerns. The other is to set up processes where the goals of problem solving and scientific advancement complement each other. Achieving complementarity has its own requirements. For science to find value in participatory problem solving, general lessons need to be learned and added to existing bodies of knowledge and related debates. Given its explicit commitment to ‘research’, PAR is also obliged to mediate between theory and practice, ensuring that ‘practical measures and theoretical reflections pull each other towards continuously new heights of knowledge’ (Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015, p. 414). This can be done in several ways. Testing and enhancing a particular method and intervention framework – say, for instance, participatory mapping or Citizens’ Juries – is doing research on existing or new methods. This is by far the most popular path that PAR practitioners follow when trying to advance general knowledge. Options that attract less interest in the world of PAR include uncovering patterns or principles that concern a substantive topic, say accident causation and prevention in the construction industry (see Chapter 10). Another neglected option consists in drawing lessons to improve on the general framing of PAR, comparing and transcending the Lewinian, Freirean, Habermasian or feminist contributions to the field, for instance. When it comes to topical issues and PAR as an overall approach to science in society, the ‘ideal interaction between theory and practice . . . does not often fully materialize’ (Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015, p. 414). This is partly because the task is not an easy one. Lewin’s ‘topological speculations’, heavily loaded with notions borrowed from mathematics and physics, illustrates the failure to deliver on this goal. We suggest as well that the pluralistic, action-oriented ethos firmly engrained in the history of PAR partly explains the weakness of theory in PAR. In a culture where pluralism and practical contributions are given primacy (Bradbury, 2015, p. 7), practitioners are naturally sceptical of any grand PAR theory that takes priority over differences in concepts and perspectives. As for substantive issues, most PAR practitioners are concerned first and foremost with supporting social change in complex settings where there is a need to break loose from mainstream science. They stand in opposition to research that serves mostly the interest of socially irresponsible business or academics working in silos, advancing scholarship and building their careers. Given that science keeps ‘running away’ from or against society, PAR practitioners thus find 23

Advancing theory it hard to design initiatives aimed at achieving specific social outcomes and supporting academic research at the same time. Lewin’s ‘original intention for scholarly contribution got lost’, says Coghlan (2015, p. 419), abandoning the pursuit of knowledge through research to the particular interests of ‘runaway science’. Acknowledging this is not to say that the goals of science should be on every practitioner’s agenda at all times. We stress that not all action inquiries must meet the requirements of scientific knowledge making. Accounts of action inquiries and the results obtained should be appreciated for everything they offer, including contributions to a better world. To paraphrase Revans (1980, p. 3), to do a little good is better than to write meaningless articles and books. On a personal note, we often find ourselves in situations where rigorous and thoughtful problem solving is the focus of all the parties involved, and we have no hesitation in committing to achieving these objectives even if they do not incorporate a ‘research’ component. Not unlike adepts of PLA, Action Learning, Appreciative Inquiry, Learning History, T-groups, The World Café or Design Thinking, we use a host of dialogical and analytic tools that support reflexive action rather than action research. We are conscious that the same tools can be integrated into action research initiatives, which is what we do in settings where the goals of scholarship actually matter. But the tools have to be adapted and framed to reflect a different set of goals, which include scientific pursuits, if and when the situation warrants it. In short, putting the ‘research’ label on every inquiry we facilitate does no one any favours and makes it difficult to establish clarity of purpose. Too many researchers committed to action research get trapped into using ‘research’ (scientific), ‘inquiry’ (formal investigation), ‘reflection’ (careful consideration) and ‘thinking’ (conscious mental activity) as interchangeable terms and processes. This creates the illusion that the relationship between scientific investigation and other forms of knowing is not a complex playing field in its own right. To avoid watering down the concept of research and changing it beyond recognition, PAR should support open discussions and debates on the role and the politics of science in the global age.

Genuine participation Caution and rigour should also apply when it comes to unpacking the idea of participation. This pillar of PAR is in many ways more complex than the call for ‘doing research’. Temptations to water it down beyond recognition take several forms. One apparently minor form, easily missed, consists in treating participation as that which ‘goes without saying’. The principal modality of action research is tacitly ‘participative and democratic, working with participants and towards knowledge in action’ (Bradbury, 2015, p. 7). In other words, action research is participatory by definition. While many assume as much, some don’t. According to Argyris and Schön, participatory action researchers involve ‘practitioners as both subjects and co-researchers’. Subjects participate in building and testing causal inferences about their behaviour. By contrast, action researchers who engage in non-participatory initiatives take the lead in designing and conducting intervention experiments based on questions, puzzles and problems perceived by practitioners in their ‘particular, local practical contexts’ (Argyris and Schön, 1991, p. 613). In Action Science, action researchers are 24

Ins and outs of participatory action research free to point out inconsistencies built into people’s discourse and behaviour. They can do so by being quite blunt in giving feedback, ‘simply telling the hard truths and letting the chips fall where they may’ (McGonagill and Carman, 2015, p. 655). This can easily generate ‘unproductive defensiveness’ on the part of those concerned but not directly involved in the assessment as co-researchers (McLain Smith, 2015, pp. 148, 152). Acting as though one has a monopoly on truth has its consequences. A similar caution concerning the distinction between AR and PAR was made by Chein, Cook and Harding as far back as 1948: action research revolves around diagnostic inquiries, change experiments and the formulation of ‘generally valid principles’ that do not require the direct involvement of practitioners (Chein et al., 1948). Parenthetically, the same distinction applies to different forms of ‘action inquiries’ where scholarly research is on no one’s agenda. While some are participatory, others are led by experts. This is the case when teachers or psychologists apply established educational or therapeutic approaches affecting people’s learning behaviour, without inviting ‘participants’ to debate the diagnostic methods used let alone their overall relevance to the situation at hand. Doubts as to whether an action research undertaking is truly participatory keep surfacing in the literature. This should not come as a surprise. A majority of action research initiatives rely on mainstream methods designed by experts to collect and analyze quantitative or qualitative data, namely questionnaires, participant or non-participant observation, focus groups and interviews (centred on key questions or themes, life histories, etc.). However well tested they may be, these mainstream methods impose serious limitations on meaningful group engagement in designing the research goals and process, collecting and analyzing data and interpreting the findings so as to plan and assess further collective action. If one stands back a little, the notion that participation can be obtained by merely submitting questions to subjects makes little sense. If so, practically all studies in the social sciences involving human subjects could be seen as ‘participatory’. The attribute would become so hazy as to have no consequence at all. Its meaning is also lost when the term is generously extended to action inquiry or research in first-person voice, such as self-studies and auto-ethnographies (Erfan and Torbert, 2015, p. 70). Let’s be clear: there is a wealth of knowledge to gain from non-scientists taking charge and analyzing and interpreting their own behaviour. Still, self-analysis in the first-person singular – a categorical (third-person like) imperative in many formulations of action inquiry – can hardly be considered ‘participatory’ in its dictionary sense, which denotes ‘sharing in the activities of the group’, hence thinking and action in the first-person plural, as Edwards (2010, p. 121) remarks. Action research differs from action inquiry, and both can be developed according to participatory principles or not. Assuming the parties commit to walking the talk of PAR, they must be prepared to deal with debates about the nature of research activities and the implications of genuine participation. At the risk of oversimplifying, there seem to be two ways of defining what the letter ‘P’ stands for in the PAR acronym. Either participants ‘partake’ equally in all project activities; they are co-researchers or ‘co-inquirers sharing power and collaboratively making decisions’ at all steps of the cooperative action inquiry process (Yorks, 2015, p. 257; Ledwith, 2017). Or they ‘partner’ in the sense of making distinct, complementary and closely coordinated contributions to achieving shared goals. Once again, consensus seems far from being reached on determining the right terms of engagement. 25

Advancing theory There are those for whom equality among participants means that every party must act as a co-researcher ‘taking full part’ in all aspects of the process. The only exception to this rule is the academic researcher who may want to underplay his or her presence as much as possible, with the objective of letting the real actors voice their concerns and views (especially those from the margins) and empower themselves to change things on their own. For those who adopt this stance, everyone is a passenger in the vehicle, but the professional researcher must ride in the rear seat and leave the car at the right moment, as soon as his or her presence is no longer required. In the Cooperative Inquiry approach, for instance, the facilitator’s role is to help the group self-organize and adopt or move towards an autonomous mode of facilitation. This means providing minimum structure and guidelines and getting out of the way of group discussions as much as possible (Yorks, 2015, pp. 259–260). While PLA practitioners are less timid about using a host of techniques to guide group assessments, they too insist on giving priority to group thinking and action rather than any research or academic interests that facilitators may have (Chambers, 2015, p. 38; see Pedler and Bourgoyne, 2015, p. 182). Anti-elitist sentiments built into many PAR experiments are understandable given how insensitive modern science can be to social issues and human needs. Investigative frameworks that insist on being actor-driven should nonetheless resist falling into the trap of populism and its unintended consequences, such as leaving in place existing power structures, including those of mainstream science, and serving the interests of the few through subtle forms of co-optation (McNiff, 2017, p. 254). Commenting on the rapid spread of PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) in the 1980s and 1990s, Chambers sadly observes that ‘bad practice became rampant. The methods were so attractive, often photogenic and so amenable to didactic teaching that methods gained priority over behaviour, attitude and relationships, especially in training institutes . . . PRA was routinized, people’s time was taken and their expectations raised without any outcome, methods were used to extract information, not to empower and consultants claimed to be trainers who had no experience. Communities were “PRA’d”. Some in Malawi were said to have been “carpet-bombed with PRA” ’ (Chambers, 2015, p. 33; see also Swantz, 2015, p. 491). The same ‘instrumentalization’ and ‘co-optation of AR for social science business-as-usual’ (Boden et al., 2015, p. 289) can undermine any participatory method, including Photovoice (Lykes and Scheib, 2015, p. 134, 138; Mejia, 2015, p. 671) and Citizens’ Juries (Wakeford et al., 2015, p. 232). Cases of a spontaneous, tacit theory-in-use undermining PAR’s ‘espoused theory’ are by no means rare. The working theory-in-use involves ‘strategies of unilateral control, unilateral self-protection, defensiveness, smoothing-over, and covering-up, of which their users tend to be largely unaware’ (Argyris and Schön, 1991, p. 613). Illustrations of inconsistencies between the ideas that guide the participatory walk and those reflected in its talk are discussed in critical reviews of the works of Kurt Lewin, Elton Mayo and the ‘school’ of Human Relations (Bruce and Nylan, 2011; van Elteren, 1993). They are addressed at some length in the polemic around Participation: The New Tyranny (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Hickey and Mohan, 2004). They also explain Coghlan’s call for Organizational Development to ‘rediscover and restore its earlier passion and its identity as a progressive social movement to address itself to the big issues of our day, such as sustainability, climate change and creating ethical organizations’ (Coghlan, 2015, p. 421). 26

Ins and outs of participatory action research The gap between walk and talk is so frequently observed in the literature that ‘single-loop learning’ will not be of much help here. That is, correcting deviations from the rule of ‘laypeople’s needs and goals above all’ will not address the reasons why the rules aren’t followed in the first place. Double-loop learning would be more appropriate. This involves uncovering existing patterns, thinking outside the box and changing the rules of engagement (Burns, 2015, p. 437). A step can be taken in this direction by defining participation as people not ‘partaking’ but rather ‘partnering’ with each other in action research. In Community-Based Participatory Research, for instance, the focus is on equal partnerships where ‘equal’ does not mean ‘the same’. In writing about her research, van der Meulen (2015, p. 747) points out that ‘the sex workers and allies that participated in the study in the research process did not have the time, resource and/or interest in data analysis or interview coding’. We can assume that doing critical literature reviews was not their cup of tea either. The lesson here is clear: ‘Equal weight and consideration may be given to the contributions of both the community and academic partners, but the nature of those contributions covers different areas’ (Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015, p. 170). Balancing scientific rigour and community control is fundamental to this vision of PAR (Coghlan, 2015, p. 421). We share this view, but with one very important caveat. PAR must create the conditions allowing all partners to navigate the porous border between science and community thinking and action. This means ‘breaking the division of labour between the researcher and the researched’ (Eikeland, 2015, p. 387), thus ensuring that ‘community members are neither tokens nor advisors but co-creators in the research process’ (Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015, p. 171). For this to happen, it is not sufficient that non-professionals familiarize themselves with standard forms of scientific investigation and reasoning and the latest developments and debates surrounding the substantive issues at stake. Boundary crossing will make a difference only if new boundaries are drawn – by imagining, setting up and testing new interactive grounds that overcome the limits of routine methods of scientific investigation involving human subjects. New ways of doing research systematically and dialogically are needed to reorganize the terrain. Conventional tools must be questioned and replaced by interfacing methods that create genuine dialogue and break open the private turfs and bunkers of disciplinary data collection, analysis and theory (Greenwood, 2015, p. 431; Rowell et al., 2017b, p. 845). The skilful means of action inquiry and research presented in this book are designed to help achieve that goal. They show the way to some degree of ‘role reversal’, by turning researchers into facilitators and participants into leaders and learners of the action research process, among other measures (Chambers, 1993). This is essential because in the absence of new ways of conducting research, well-established theories-in-use and related habits are bound to create problems on roads otherwise paved with the best of intentions. We espouse the idea of partnering creatively, towards the interfacing of views, goals, skill sets and forms of knowledge and experience that can be brought to bear and evolve through action research. PAR offers a theory of social intervention negotiated and grounded in the ongoing experience, skill sets and multiple perspectives advanced by the concerned parties, including researchers (Dubost, 1987, pp. 55, 164–165, 233–234). Essentially, the PAR standpoint emphasizes the ways in which researchers and the parties immediately 27

Advancing theory

PHOTO 1.2  Community members and researchers discuss the threats to the Bonnechere

River system, Renfrew, Canada (Source: J. Wonnacott)

concerned can contribute to investigating and making sense of reality and ways to change it, each in their own manner and through conversations bound to overlap and interconnect. Our own theory-in-use seems to fit this ‘partnering’ model. At least, this is what we used to think. On further reflection, the idea of establishing cross-border partnership rules and abiding by them does not capture the way full engagement plays out in our work. An exercise in triple-loop awareness might be needed here, towards developing innovative and effective ways of dealing with the longstanding and complex issue of participation. Simply thinking about whether the rule of participation can be better applied or even changed is not enough. Instead, we need to question the way we go about exploring the rule, starting with something that is rarely looked at: the task that lies right under our noses, which consists in writing about our views on the matter at hand. As we write these lines, we might ask a simple and immediate question: are we ‘partnering’ with others in spelling out what we believe to be our guiding principles? Well, not really. Partnership signifies a direct relationship between known persons that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility in achieving shared goals. Writing this text, in the hope it will be of interest to our readers, does not meet this definition by any stretch of the imagination. This chapter and others to follow are informed by countless interventions in real-life situations and discussions with hundreds of people. Yet others are not full ‘partners’ or ‘participants’ directly involved in planning and producing this publication. We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude, of course, but we must assume full responsibility for the views we express and all the work it takes to articulate them as best we can. The same can be said of the many authors we cite, including Erfan and Torbert (2015) on the matter of loops and levels of learning. Their names show up in this chapter, and discussing their ideas is part of the work we do to advance action research. But we and the people we have partnered with in real life are not ‘partnering’ with Erfan and Torbert in writing this book, let alone all others active in the field as a whole. When we stop and think about it, our engagement with PAR is not always guided by the rule of participation, however it is defined. For one thing, our work includes communications of a scholarly nature, in a delayed mode, with readers and authors we have never met and that may never cross our path directly. Our approach to writing about the rule of participation strays far from the spirit of partaking or partnership that lies at the heart of PAR. Ironically, when we talk about walking the talk, we end up walking elsewhere. 28

Ins and outs of participatory action research While this cognitive dissonance is writ large in much of the PAR literature, it is largely unspoken. Now that we have become aware of it, we might decide to attempt to actually walk the talk of full and complete partnership in all aspects of our work, even if it means starting from square one in the process of sharing ‘our’ views. We could also change the extent to which we ourselves, as researchers, engage in all aspects of the action component of PAR for as long as it takes. As readers can imagine, choosing this path would be tantamount to opening up a Pandora’s Box full of unrealistic expectations. A much wiser alternative perhaps lies elsewhere, at a deeper level – in drawing lessons from the response built into what we actually do. This happens to be a case where Action Science may have to be turned upside down – by recognizing that ‘our espoused-theories aren’t as good as we assume and our theories-in-use aren’t as bad’ (McLain Smith, 2015, p. 151; see McGonagill and Carman, 2015). Whether it be our own or someone else’s, ‘ordinary behaviour’ and ‘common sense’ have a lot to teach, just like ‘ordinary language’ and ‘common people’ do. This brings us to the reflex we have of signing ‘our own’ work, starting with this first chapter. To be sure, the decision to claim authorial rights over what we write serves our professional interests. Thinking otherwise would be lying to ourselves and our readers. But the habit we have of affixing our signature to published work enables us to deal with issues that are much bigger than we are, and attempt to make a contribution to the goals of science in society, however modest the contribution may be. In doing so, we assume full responsibility for the ideas we advance, the words we use, the actions we take and the errors we make. The expression of authorial intent and related obligations contradict conventional thinking on the question of shared responsibility in the spirit of PAR. The latter suggests a box-like view of project-based participation: all activities must evolve within clearly-delineated boundaries, on the basis of shared rules that dictate how people interact and coordinate their efforts inside the box. The community of all partners or members is the unit of identity (Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015, p. 168). This view simplifies life for everyone, but at the expense of our ability to make sense of deviations that keep staring us in the face. Even when it creates a tight circle, it can never actually close the circle. The plain language of ‘partners in a project’ masks the more complex reality of ‘partnering projects’. Lewin’s field theory will help articulate the latter concept. In our view, PAR is an invitation sent to people whose life spaces may intersect around shared concerns. Those who accept the invitation meet at a crossroads and choose to interact according to shared rules. But they do so with many other considerations in mind. The gathering is like a nexus, a focal point where lines and paths intersect for a period of time. All those taking part spend time at this junction, but the way they interact, the things they do and the rules they follow are directly affected by their respective origins and destinations and the many other people they interact with. By way of example, researchers may join with non-scientists to address problems of safety at work in the construction industry. But they can engage in the process while having pursuits of their own. This means that their rules of engagement are not just about the immediate project at hand. Revisiting general models of accident causation and prevention may also be high on the radar screen. The same reasoning applies to nonresearchers such as construction workers, site inspectors and employers. They too come to the junction with working terms, conditions and relationships of their own – company productivity and State-enforced rules and regulations of accident prevention at work, for 29

Advancing theory instance. Their rules meet and merge with other rules and associated goals and disputes, those built into the world of research. In PAR, specific rules of association are the end product of a specific association of rules. Promoting the spirit of internal sharing and partnering is certainly a trademark of PAR. But so is acting intelligently in response to each and every situation, knowing that crossroads are buzzing with movements in many directions and that no single community pathway and catch-all provisions for partnership can bring order and closure within the group apparently in control, as good as the intentions may be. Like all others, engaged researchers cannot tread a single community’s path alone. They must take part in other conversations and communities as well, including those concerned with investigating theory. In the end, PAR practitioners are more like brokers than partners. They do not merely sit at and facilitate tables of thoughtful action. They also bring something from other tables (the insights of theoretical practice) and take something away, as input into other debates and cross-examinations of thoughts and actions in social history. A plea for conversations in the plural may seem so obvious as to be harmless. Yet the notion of ‘rules associating according to circumstances’ flies in the face of every PAR approach that defines participation as accountability within a single, well-delineated and self-directed community that carries out all phases of the action research cycle. In reality, genuine participation brings together partnering projects, not partners in a single project. It is not about inviting laypersons to join the research project or simply joining the projects of others. Rather, the map is one of many people moving along cross-cutting paths. Related plans involve everyone trying to do the right thing at the right time with the right people, knowing well that the things, the time frames and the people involved can never be always the same.

Tangible action Action is another pillar of PAR that risks losing its edge in the big tent. It is not rare for action researchers to read into the word ‘action’ a mere ‘potential for action and its expected or possible outcomes’, that is, what might be done and what might happen if participants were to act on their newly gained awareness of the problems they face and the future they want for themselves and others. The notion is so vague it creates fertile ground for a ‘carnival of participatory methods that . . . leaves everything essentially the same’ (Wakeford et al., 2015, p. 232). A wealth of learning ends up residing ‘on the shelf, forlorn and recriminating as it gathers dust’ (Bradbury et al., 2015, p. 27). To avoid a ‘dearth of follow-up mechanisms’ and positive actions that will benefit participants other than ‘greedy’ researchers (Guhathakurta, 2015, p. 107; see Lykes and Scheib, 2015, pp. 134, 140; Martin, 2015, p. 505), we stress the importance of distinguishing PAR from ‘participatory inquiry’ or ‘participatory research without action’ (Swantz, 2015, p. 495). As in Lewin’s work, PAR must set up a ‘change experiment’ to advance knowledge and push action in the right direction. This is not the case with participatory inquiry or even collaborative research, which denotes any investigative process where collaborative learning is achieved by reflecting on practice and behaviour, past or present, often with a view to supporting future action, in due time, if at all possible. The primary aim of ‘research-toward-action’ (Fetterman, 2015, 30

Ins and outs of participatory action research p. 87) is not to change practice in the course of research. Rather, the aim is to produce insights and knowledge, especially tacit or formal theories ‘about’ action, in collaboration between scientists and practitioners (Bergold and Thomas, 2012). No testing of new problemsolving behaviour is required. Many awareness-building approaches to group training on topics such as group dynamics, gender relations or leadership styles are of this type, that is to say self-inquiries or skill-building that may lead to collective action (Guhathakurta, 2015, p. 100; Nicolaidis and Raymaker, 2015, p. 175). The same comment applies to expert-driven experiments in Citizen Science, studies of local knowledge systems and programmes in service learning and education (Moely et al., 2009; Stanton et al., 1999; Koliba, 2004). These contributions to knowledge and education may be invaluable, but their relationship to social action is entirely different. In most cases, learning ‘through’ action gives way to learning ‘on’, ‘for’ or ‘toward’ action. Lumping these initiatives into the same category as PAR causes more confusion than clarity of purpose. It also lends credence to the critique often directed at action research: that it is all talk and no action. ‘What acts research should actually perform’ is left hanging in the air (Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015, p. 414). As with P and R, A must be taken seriously if the word it stands for is to carry any weight and foster a new relationship between science and society. PAR means little as a descriptor if it does not meet and integrate the minimum threshold of genuine participation, tangible action and scientific research. The observation should be a wake-up call, with a view to fully appreciating all forms of knowing without turning PAR into a glory hole of virtually any odds and ends in the world of well-intended inquiry. A good way to start is by asking the following question: how do we handle those contributions and frameworks that, as rich as they may be, do not involve research efforts immersed in action and authentically participatory? Our response to this question, already announced in the introduction to this chapter, is that we should keep a sense of perspective and purpose at all times. We mean this literally, as when a painter focusses on a subject knowing that elements on the periphery may be considered but get less attention and therefore less light. Our Venn diagram (Figure 1.1) depicting the tripartite character of PAR captures the medial and lateral view of a perspectivist approach to the field. In the centre are processes that integrate all three components, without loss of meaning. Since all three circles intersect when taking this perspective, practitioners may feel free to borrow and integrate companion concepts, tools and practices located elsewhere in the diagram – say, for instance, T-groups or wiki tools (otherwise applicable without engaging in action or research), Citizens’ Juries or Search Conferences from experiments in deliberative democracy (immersed in neither action nor scientific research) or the loops-of-learning and awareness-building framework from Action Science (often used with no immediate commitment to participatory action). PAR practitioners may also feel free to head in a lateral direction, by moving away from the centre and doing things that resemble but do not include the full intent or meaning of PAR. This is what we ourselves do when we choose to engage in participatory action inquiries that leave out research goals proper, when they are not essential to achieving success. While we have great faith in what full-fledged PAR can do to reconnect science and society, we do not wish to convert it into the panacea for all the world’s ills. Time out for research may be essential to transforming social lives, 31

Advancing theory but there are times when collective action must take priority over everything else, for the greater good of all concerned.

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Advancing theory Stefanac, L. and Krot, M. (2015) ‘Using T-Groups to Develop Action Research Skills in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Environments’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 109–117. Steier, F., Brown, J. and Mesquita da Silva, F. (2015) ‘The World Café in Action Research Settings’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 211–219. Streck, D. R. and Jara Holliday, O. (2015) ‘Research, Participation and Social Transformation: Grounding Systematization of Experiences in Latin American Perspectives’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 472–480. Stringer, E. (2007) Action Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Stringer, E. (2015) ‘Achieving Equity in Education’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 362–373. Swantz, M. L. (2015) ‘Participatory Action Research: Its Origins and Future and Women’s Ways’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 489–496. Tandon, R. and Hall, B. L. (2012) ‘A Framework for Action, 2012–2016’, UNESCO Chair on Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, PRIA and University of Victoria, New Delhi and Victoria. Taylor, F. W. (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management, Harper & Row, New York. Thorsrud, E. and Emery, F. (1964) Industrielt Demokrati, Oslo University Press, Oslo. Tripp, D. (2005) ‘Action Research: A Methodological Introduction’, Educação e Pesquisa, University of São Paulo, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 444–467. Trist, E. L. and Bamforth, K. W. (1951) ‘Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting’, Human Relations, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 3–38. van der Meulen, E. (2015) ‘From Research “on” to Research “with”: Developing Skills for Research with Sex Workers’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 742–749. Van Elteren, M. (1993) ‘Discontinuities in Kurt Lewin’s Psychology of Work: Conceptual and Cultural Shifts Between His German and American Research’, Sociétés Contemporaines, no. 13, pp. 71–93. Wakeford, T., Pimbert, M. and Walcon, E. (2015) ‘Re-Fashioning Citizens’ Juries: Participatory Democracy in Action’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 230–246. Wallace, T. (2006) Evaluating Stepping Stones, a Review of Existing Evaluations and Ideas for Future M and E Work, Action Aid International, Johannesburg. Wallerstein, N. and Duran, B. (2003) ‘The Conceptual, Historical and Practical Roots of Community Based Participatory Research and Related Participatory Traditions’, in M. Minkler and N. Wallerstein (eds) Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: From Process to Outcomes, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 27–52. Warren, D. M., Slikkerveer, L. J. and Brokensha, D. (eds) (1995) The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Intermediate Technology, London. Whyte, W. F. (1991) Participatory Action Research, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Yorks, L. (2015) ‘The Practice of Teaching Co-Operative Inquiry’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 256–264.

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CHAPTER 2

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR

INSTRUMENTAL, EXPRESSIVE AND COMMUNICATIVE REASON The preceding chapter ended on a high note. It gave hope that ‘the good of all concerned’ may be achieved by applying a collective, hands-on approach to creating knowledge and history. But this begs the question: what do we mean by ‘action for the common good’? To paraphrase Forrest Gump, the cliché-ish ‘common good’ ‘is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get’. No matter how attractive it may be as a humanist perspective on science, an argument for PAR lacks substance if broader goals are left unspecified. This chapter focusses on the broader goals of PAR by examining the ‘common good’ it actively supports. Lewin got the ball rolling by acknowledging that ‘there is nothing in social laws and social research which will force the practitioner toward the good. Science gives more freedom and power to both the doctor and the murderer, to democracy and Fascism’ (Lewin, 1946, p. 44). Given this, worthwhile ends need to be spelled out so that scientists may commit to attaining them. Otherwise, planned change and ‘social engineering’ on its own can easily produce dystopia. All later formulations of action research embrace this spirit: practitioners gauge the relevance and merit of interventions based on the extent to which the goals pursued actually coincide with their own value system and vision of society. The founder of social psychology was not committed to the goals of science and change experiments for their own sake. Rather, he sought to put science in the service of humanizing the workplace and promoting self-knowledge and well-being in all aspects of people’s everyday life. While not opposed to enhancing productivity and business through rational means, Lewin believed that workers’ wellness and job satisfaction mattered as much (Lewin, 1920). His aim was also to promote social cohesion based on democratic values, leadership and management. As in Dewey’s work, he argued that organized social life does not thrive on patterns of aggression, hostility, scapegoating and discontent commonly observed in laissez-faire and autocratic climates. Rather it hinges on the ‘interdependence of fate and tasks’ and a ‘climate’ of democratic leadership and responsible participation that promotes originality, group-mindedness, objective praise, constructive criticism and collaborative work (Lewin, 1948, p. 82). Another property of democratic society is that it protects the freedom of movement that people need to exercise when crossing boundaries

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Advancing theory between different ‘life spaces’ (Lewin, 1951) they occupy and the groups they belong to, such as ethnic membership and national citizenship. This is a recurring question throughout his work: how can genuine democracy overcome rigid boundaries that wreak havoc on people’s lives? Lewin’s writings are a constant invitation to question social behaviour that disconnects people from people – men from women, children from adults, leaders from followers, employers from workers, minorities from majorities, Jews from non-Jews, the white from the black and the poor from the rich. At stake here is removing barriers to fluid interaction between goal-seeking individuals engaged in different dimensions of social life – movement otherwise impaired through marginalization, prejudice, discrimination and oppression. PAR may convince potential practitioners because the approach serves ends that are socially meaningful and historically compelling. Lewin proposes his own vision of action research and life in democratic society. The history of PAR since Lewin, however, offers other ways of thinking about ‘the good of all’, some more psychologically oriented and others more socially engaging. In what follows, we elaborate on this point by outlining three broad ‘traditions’ that have shaped the history of PAR. When brought together and unpacked into their many variants, they reflect the multi-paradigmatic and pluralistic tendencies inherent in the field as a whole. Interestingly, they also represent a microcosm of three strands of anti-positivist sentiments that have developed throughout the twentieth century: the rational-pragmatic, the psychosocial-transformative and the critical-emancipatory. While not mutually exclusive, each tradition proposes a particular perspective on the reasons why meaningful research should be conducted ‘with’ people – engaging all that is human to better understand the world and try to make it better at the same time. In this book, we intentionally draw on all three traditions knowing that each provides a potential entry point into PAR thinking and practice for the common good. Because we believe that each tradition has something to offer, we choose not to pit them against each other. We also refuse to iron out their differences through a metatheory or some shared repository of disciplinary-like concepts and methods, as Bammer (2015) tries to do. Instead we expand on the virtues of ‘perspectivism’, introduced in the preceding chapter, with a view to letting one dimension come to the fore or recede into the background, depending on the circumstances and as the situation evolves. To practice PAR, one has to ‘put things in perspective’, which is what artists do when they place objects in the foreground and scale things that are further away. One dimension we have in mind revolves around the notion of instrumental reason, as Habermas describes it, or the capacity to allocate scarce means among alternative ends, using fact-based cause-and-effect reasoning. Pragmatic perspectives on the use of PAR are particularly strong in this respect. They rely heavily on the efficiency and trustworthiness of science and well-organized methods to enable effective problem solving in the interest of all concerned, in settings ranging from the workplace to community life, learning institutions and the public sphere. Our tools, stories and discussions involving group exercises in logical sorting, priority setting, resource mapping, problem assessment, factor and causal analysis, risk assessment and system dynamics lend themselves particularly well to this pragmatic outlook. The method we call Values, Interests, Positions, illustrated in Chapter 14, is also relevant here. 38

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR The psychosocial-transformative tradition highlights a different entry dimension that is no less important. It tilts the balance away from both instrumental thinking and action and shifts it to the rule of what we call ‘expressive reason’. By this we mean measures of open exchange and free expression enabling people to ‘work through’ the process of integrating reason and emotion, consciousness and the unconscious, fixed mindsets and the potential for change, personal well-being and interpersonal relations working for the common good. Diagnostic inquiry gives way to dialogic communication where data collection and learning are ‘less about applying objective problem solving methods and more about raising collective awareness and new possibilities which lead to change’ and healthier systems (Coghlan, 2015, p. 420). The premise is that the inquiry process is an integral part of our subjective and intersubjective lifeworld, taking us ‘into the realm of tacit, shared knowing, or of knowing in embodied ways through the experience of doing something’ (Coleman, 2015, p. 397). Central to this perspective on PAR are insights expressed with emotional energy and visionary passion (Burns, 2015, p. 442; Lichtenstein, 2015, p. 451), using discourse but also physical space, movement, visuals, symbolism, spirituality and aesthetic forms of knowing such as ‘graphic, plastic, moving, musical and verbal art-forms’ (Heron, 1999, p. 122; see also Chambers, 2015, p. 39; Greenwood, 2015, p. 430; Hall, 2013; Reason and Canney, 2015, p. 561; Aragón and Giles Macedo, 2015, p. 687; Palus and McGuire, 2015, p. 693). Our discussions of the sharing ethos in group dynamics and the ‘skills in means’ needed to reconnect science and society (Chapter 6) reflect the value and strength of ‘expressive reason’ in supporting group thinking and action. The same can be said of several of our stories and methods that draw insights from positive, paradoxical and Personal Construct Psychology (Lessons and Values, Paradox, Sabotage, Domain Analysis). Our frequent use of storytelling (see Timeline) and recent exploration of issues involving moral suffering at work (Moral Conflict Assessment, described in our Conclusion) are also well suited to the task of bringing out the psychosocial aspects of action inquiry. Another dimension, what Habermas calls communicative reason, is more attuned to issues of social justice and the settlement of disputes through moral claims and dialogue in democratic society. This is what critical-emancipatory PAR is mostly concerned with, basing itself on one of several ethical understandings of the most pressing struggles and movements of our times (Rowell et al., 2017, p. 87). The emphasis is on achieving what Spannos, Chomsky and others aptly describe as the ‘real utopia’ of participatory society (Spannos, 2008), achieved by building critical consciousness and capacities for counterhegemonic action (Gaventa and Cornwall, 2015, p. 467). Our extensive foray into value systems, stakeholder thinking, conflict mediation and the politics of PAR speaks directly to the implications of this critical perspective for action research. Methods well suited to bring these issues to the forefront include Social Analysis CLIP, Gaps and Conflicts, Social Domain, Disagreements and Misunderstandings and Lessons and Values. Our stories of the Katkari land struggle in India, the farmer movement to opt out of tobacco production in Bangladesh and green neighbourhood politics in the capital region of Canada underscore our commitment to deep societal change as the ‘vital reason’ we explore theory and methods for engaged inquiry as alternatives to mainstream science. We say more about each ‘tradition’ later. Before we proceed, however, we should state that our intention here is not to pigeonhole methods, concepts and stories into distinct 39

Advancing theory approaches, variants or dimensions of PAR. All skilful means of action inquiry, from storytelling and participatory mapping to force field and causal analyses, may help establish means-end relationships, ‘work through’ people’s representations and emotions, and engage in social critique and the pursuit of a ‘real utopian’ cause. Recognizing traditions and associated methods does not preclude the exercise of creativity and their unfettered use to design processes across boundaries. This is what we understand to be the spirit of methodological pluralism advocated by Chambers (2015) and others. Furthermore, efforts to connect psychosocial concerns with rational management issues and in turn with larger societal challenges are a defining feature of action research since the 1940s. That said, recognizing the sensitivities and potential ramifications of different traditions and related methods is essential to crafting processes that actually work in context. So is recovering the collective memory of meanderings in the world of PAR. Without this memory, practitioners may fail to make optimal use of different approaches and lack the knowledge and distance needed to understand how they can be mixed and balanced in real life. Our outline of different PAR orientations will allow us to achieve two other goals. The first is to be open and transparent about our affinity with critical-emancipatory PAR and its commitment to radical social change. While we acknowledge and tap into the contributions of pragmatism and psychosociology, we believe their full potential is best unlocked through calls for deep transformations in society, beyond the limits of personal awareness building and site-specific problem solving. The second goal is to identify and suggest ways to overcome what we consider to be a weakness shared by all traditions: namely a significant degree of timidity in scaling up the ‘art of inquiry’ beyond small group dynamics and the binary choice between mainstream methods and soft and user-friendly tools widely used in PLA.

RATIONAL-PRAGMATIC PAR When addressing the question ‘Why PAR?’, the rational-pragmatic tradition typically aims to correct the many negative effects of globalization, including workplace alienation, poverty, environmental degradation and the loss of social cohesion and solidarity, especially in advanced industrial societies. The tradition derives much of its inspiration from Lewin’s foundational idea at the root of social psychology and psychosociology – the notion that human behaviour and performance at work (B) is a function of person-centred psychology (P) interacting with its environment (E), hence B = f (P, E) (Lewin, 1936, p. 12). This is also a recurrent theme in the prolific body of literature and practice known as Organizational Development (OD). OD is a response to calls for planned change and ‘rational social management’ involving a normative ‘human relations’ approach to capital-dominated economies (Dubost, 1987, pp. 84–88, 294–297). Its principal goal is to enhance an organization’s performance and viability, with the assistance of a consultant, a change agent or catalyst that helps the sponsoring organization define and solve its own problems. Unlike laboratory experiments involving ‘stranger groups’, OD is usually undertaken with ‘family groups’ located within real organizations. The process includes some form of inquiry or self-analysis combined with active learning or training sessions (typically focussed on 40

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR effective communication skills, leadership, teamwork or conflict management). Diagnostic and capacity-building activities are informed, to varying degrees, by psychology, the behavioural sciences, organizational studies, or theories of leadership and social innovation. Rigorous fact-finding methods are used to support group thinking and planning. Similar principles informed Lewin’s skills training with T-groups where participants use feedback, problem solving, role-play and cognitive aids (lectures, handouts, film) to gain insights into themselves with a view to ‘unfreezing’ and changing their mindsets, attitudes and behaviours. These encounter groups were initially used as a research technique, not as means to support collective action. Over the years, they have evolved to serve educational and intervention ends, with or without a research component. Lewin developed a functionally integrative approach to addressing tensions in social life. Not surprisingly, he applied the same principles to reconciling theory building with efforts to address specific situations that people must cope with in the here and now. To accomplish this, action researchers must bridge the divide between psychology and sociology and explore how perceptions and emotions can interface with fact-finding and the exercise of reason. Merging these different considerations into a united discipline, social psychology, allows socially-minded psychologists to better understand and resolve tensions between people and their social surroundings, towards greater cohesion, harmony and equality in democratic society. In keeping with gestalt theory in psychology and functionalism in the social sciences, Lewin understood group dynamics to be ruled by relations of interdependence. People are united not so much by similarities in beliefs, dispositions or behaviour. Rather, the fate of each depends on the fate of the group as a whole and the achievement of common goals. Lewin extended the same reasoning to the relationship between researchers and non-scientists, where all contribute to achieving common goals but from different angles, some with general theory building in view and others with a primary concern for problem solving. Action research brings the two together, but there is no intention to abolish the distinction between researchers and non-scientists. People join forces, which is not to say they all wear the same hats. Life spaces remain different even when converging towards the same objectives. Sociotechnical analysis, a well-known offshoot of the Tavistock Institute’s contribution to action research, emphasizes the relationship between personal and interpersonal behaviour and the material and technical aspects of a work environment. As noted previously, the approach was first developed during the post-war period in response to an industrial sector facing scarce capital and low productivity, with a focus on self-regulating work groups in a coal mine (Trist and Bamforth, 1951). The methodology emerging from problem-solving experiments of this kind seeks to enhance performance in complex organizations. It assumes that improved technology alone and tighter managerial control are not sufficient to achieve greater productivity or efficiency. What is needed is the interaction and ‘joint optimization’ of the social and technical components of productive activity. In a sociotechnical perspective, the best match between the social and technical factors of organized work lies in principles of ‘responsible group autonomy’, as opposed to deskilling and topdown bureaucracy inspired by Taylor’s linear chain of command. The theory advocates a shift of emphasis, towards democratic leadership, labour-management cooperation, variation in work, internal supervision and self-regulation at the level of small work teams, the 41

Advancing theory primary unit of production. Semi-autonomous groups present many advantages, including greater trust and more efficient communication and risk management behaviour. Multi-skilled work groups are better suited for accomplishing ‘whole tasks’, provided of course they have a clear notion of the objectives to be achieved and some latitude in determining how to achieve them. Unlike hierarchical structures, semi-autonomous groups encourage creative problem solving and adaptation to situations characterized by uncertainty and complexity (Ackoff, 1999; Liu, 1997; Gustavsen and Pålshaugen, 2015). Practitioners have applied sociotechnical theory in numerous contexts, including the Indian weaving industry (Rice, 1965) and the marketing of ‘pleasure foods’ such as ice cream, smoking and drinking (Emery et al., 1968). The research process typically involves a project officer and two other team members working closely together. This reduces the dangers of personal bias and related effects of ‘transference’ and ‘countertransference’, in keeping with psychoanalytical principles. Socio-ecological thinking transposes the same reasoning to larger organizations in a post-industrial era. In order to adapt to increasing levels of interdependence, complexity and uncertainty, organizations cannot simply compete and govern themselves through chains of hierarchical command between centre and periphery. Self-regulation and collaborative networking between organizations operating flexibly and democratically become the main drivers of post-industrial societies faced with endemic problems of individual stress and socio-economic turbulence (Trist et al., 1997). While initially concerned with urban workplace issues, PAR serving pragmatic ends moved rapidly into virtually all aspects of rural and community life and the world of education. The literature on the subject extends over more than 80 years and continues to expand. In the field of international development, rational-pragmatic PAR has and continues to be used for problem solving, innovation and adaptation at the household or community level. It uses friendly methods of scientific thinking and experimentation to support local economic development, agricultural innovation and sustainable livelihoods (Pound et al., 2003; Gonsalves et al., 2005; Means et al., 2002). The many applications of PAR to rural livelihoods testify to the richness of action-inquiry methods and practical tools used in this mode. By and large, action research undertaken in the pragmatic spirit revolves around the humanistic struggle against raw capitalism and the many expressions of top-down management, bureaucracy and authoritarianism. The approach blends scientific rigour with collaborative group dynamics to address concrete problems at the site level. The aim is to find workable solutions inspired by progressive agendas – addressing the gap between rich and poor, supporting local development and innovation, promoting self-reliance, renewing life-sustaining resources, bringing back the dignity of work, improving democratic governance and leadership, and so on. Useful and insightful as it may be, PAR understood as ‘performative knowledge’ (Pedler and Bourgoyne, 2015, p. 185) does not necessarily help advance general knowledge. Diagnostic assessments and interventions in workplace, school or community settings are informed by theory, but they do not necessarily return the favour by helping with the advancement of general knowledge. In this approach to PAR, science is a means serving inquiry and action, not an end served by it. Substantive theories on the issues at hand – effective learning, gender equity, poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods or democratic 42

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR

PHOTO 2.1  Specialists reflect on the practice of environmental education, Montreal,

Canada (Source: J. Wonnacott)

governance, for instance – are typically located upstream of the action research process and do not evolve heuristically, through trial and error or a journey of collective discovery. A lack of rigour in the methods used can also lead to complaints from scientists and policymakers that results are anecdotal and of questionable substance. These persistent gaps explain, at least in part, why pragmatically-oriented action research has made few inroads into academic research and training. It is often marginalized in academia as the realm of the consultant, the private sector, government and non-governmental organizations committed to making positive contributions to social change. From a political perspective, rational-pragmatic experiments based on collaborative principles present certain dangers. Despite the good intentions, methods can override local ways of thinking and learning and existing legitimate decision-making processes (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). The consensual focus adopted throughout the intervention may have perverse effects as well. It assumes groups and organizations have clear boundaries and that common interests can prevail over the forces of competition and conflict, to the benefit of all the parties concerned. This may obscure diverging interests and the actual exercise of power during the process (Cornwall, 2004). Where power differentials exist, efforts can be made to ‘level the playing field’, if only in the time and space created by the action research process put in place. In the absence of more radical action, however, co-optation by organizations and bureaucracies may lead to highly manipulated outcomes (Brown, 2004). A common lament is that pragmatic action inquiry simply legitimizes pre-established agendas, making too much of participation and too little of who decides and what actions are ultimately taken, if any. It can also fall short of challenging and posing a real threat to 43

Advancing theory ‘the system’ (Bebbington, 2004; Hickey and Mohan, 2004; Pedler and Bourgoyne, 2015, p. 185). As Dubost points out, pragmatic action researchers are typically distrustful of macrosociological perspectives on history (Dubost, 1987, pp. 104–109, 146, 162). A direct consequence of this is a tendency to isolate group life and organizational behaviour from the supralocal forces at play. Humanistic concepts of individual freedom and self-determination are extended to group life through methods that encourage small-scale expressions of collective autonomy, adaptation and self-management. Scandinavian experiments in Industrial Democracy and the Quality of Life Movement that marked the 1960s and the 1970s are good examples of this. As Gustavsen and Pålshaugen (2015, p. 412) point out, ‘even very successful cases did not trigger broader processes of changes’, mostly because of the unique character of each experiment and a failure to link them into a general framework that could generate new projects and connect them within higher-scale initiatives. Pragmatic PAR has many variants that are very different from one another. Most are nonetheless inspired and somewhat constrained by the assumptions of liberal democracy, a micro-functional perspective on social phenomena and the merits of group autonomy and self-reliance (see Dubost, 1987, pp. 49–53, 56–57). The exercise of rational and strategic behaviour does not necessarily challenge existing systems of power. It remains committed to modern life in the global age as we know it.

PSYCHOSOCIAL-TRANSFORMATIVE PAR Pragmatic formulations of PAR find inspiration in the contributions of systematic action inquiry, using either existing standards of scientific fact-finding and experimentation, softer methods of qualitative investigation, or collaborative analytics designed to be as userfriendly as possible. Thinking and acting rationally is their strength, but also their weakness, one might say. Why? One reason is that the ‘instrumental’ approach to assessing and addressing real-life concerns overlooks the role of the unconscious and irrational forces in personal and group behaviour. At stake here are forms of understanding and social change that cannot be captured through instrumental cause-effect analysis and means-ends calculations applied to effective problem solving. Not everything can be boiled down to a matter of problem-solving method. Guy Palmade, one of the founders of French psychosociology, explains that if a ‘problem’ is worth investigating, it is essentially because the method needed to answer the question it raises remains to some extent unknown. The task is all the more challenging if the problem is unfamiliar and rather strange to those experiencing it, and if the goals thwarted by the situation lack clarity and coherence as well. Situations of this type are not uncommon, they are profoundly human, and they need to be ‘sorted out’ and ‘worked through’ using group methods other than straightforward means-ends reasoning. They require a good dose of creativity, intuition and ongoing experimentation (Palmade, 2008, p. 18; Michelot, 2016, pp. 143–149). This brings us back to the Tavistock Institute’s initial approach to action research, with its emphasis on the meshing of psyche, society and group processes to ‘work through’ complex issues, in support of both personal growth and institutional change in family life, 44

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR the workplace and the educational system. Efforts by Tavistock to develop an engaged research paradigm at the intersection of psychology and the social sciences gave rise to a field of scholarly research and professional intervention loosely known as psychosociology, formally recognized in France as la psychosociologie d’intervention. The profession is represented by several schools of thought and ‘social clinical’ practice that have evolved at some distance from the experimental and expert mindset of social psychology (Dubost, 1987, pp. 287–291). Most formulations of psychosociology share with pragmatic PAR a commitment to the goals of humanized work and democracy, best expressed through the relative autonomy and active participation of individuals and groups coping with problems of motivation, goal effectiveness and power differentials within organizations and institutions. In addition to this humanistic and democratic agenda, however, psychosociology emphasizes the relationship between personality and culture or society, using concepts of psychoanalytic inspiration to address interpersonal relations and the interplay between self and group. The role of the unconscious in social behaviour and collective representations is acknowledged, including the inevitable expression of transference and countertransference – language and behaviour that redirect unspoken feelings and anxieties to other people, especially the facilitating team and the group as a whole. Studies in group psychology and therapy dating back to the 1930s have played a pivotal role in adapting psychoanalytic theory to group learning and transformative action in organizational settings and the workplace. Apart from Lewin’s T-groups, pioneering work includes Mayo’s study of the impact of group dynamics on employee motivation and factory productivity (Mayo, 1933). Of equal importance is Moreno's (1931) use of improvisational theatre (combined with interactive sociometrics and sociograms) as cathartic therapy for conflict resolution. Psychodrama is now a widely-used method of group psychotherapy, creative learning and communication where role-play, symbolic language and theatrical props help people express and analyze their own experience, memories, interactions, mindsets and feelings about particular themes or issues, towards new ways of thinking and fresh responses to real-life situations. Mention should also be made of the influential person-centred approach to therapy developed by Carl Rogers (1970) and his method of non-directive, active listening applied to ‘encounter groups’. The contributions of Balint (1954), Jaques (1951) and Bion (1961) are turning points in the development of psychosociology. They introduced key concepts and techniques framed in a psychoanalytic perspective, including the use of free association, experiments in leaderless groups and the analysis of group defence mechanisms. Their work is guided by the idea that interpretation unfolds not through a stepwise process of logical inference and evidence-based analysis of ongoing action but rather through a progressive ‘working through’ of meaning in context, subject to the layering of multiple issues and signs of resistance. While limited in its sociological implications, the work of Anzieu (1984) and Martin (Anzieu and Martin, 1966) on group dynamics represents another seminal contribution to psychosociology, perhaps the most faithful to the psychoanalytic tradition. It is guided by the two fundamental rules of psychodynamic intervention: free self-expression coupled with confidentiality and ‘abstinence’ from hasty action and the immediate satisfaction of desire. Freud defines ‘abstinence’ as ‘the fundamental principle that the patient’s need and longing should be allowed to persist in her, in order that they may serve as forces 45

Advancing theory impelling her to do work and to make changes, and that we must beware of appeasing those forces by means of surrogates’ (Freud, 1958, pp. 162–163). In Chapter 6, we say more about these rules and their relevance to PAR ethics. Inspired by these rules, later developments in psychosociology explore themes such as self-awareness and transformational learning, with particular attention to the subjective experience of suffering and anxiety, the role of defence mechanisms and the unspoken assumptions and contradictions of real-life behaviour. Commonly cited authors working in the French tradition are Amado (1993), Barus-Michel (1987; Barus-Michel et al., 2002), Dubost (1987), Enriquez (1992), Lévy (1997, 2001, 2010), Gaujelac (1997), Giust-Desprairies (1989), Mendel and Prades (Mendel, 1980; Mendel and Prades, 2002) and Dejours (1988). By and large, these practitioners have in common the attention they pay to small group dynamics over long periods and the interaction of the psychological and social dimensions of human behaviour. They emphasize the role that power relations, submission to authority and conformity through identification play in creating dysfunctions within society and the psyche and undermining the potential for cooperation. Dejours focusses on the psychodynamics of work and related issues of work-induced suffering and defence mechanisms. The goal is to identify, understand and address existing mechanisms of collective defence, pathogenic responses and seemingly absurd behaviour. Findings and insights are eventually shared with other groups. The research team facilitates discussions between groups, prepares a report, modifies it in light of the feedback received from participants and disseminates the final version within the organization, in the hope that change will occur and that workers take responsibility for effective strategies to overcome suffering and distress. Psychosocial interventions diverge in many respects. Surface-level differences stem from the thematic or sectorial issues they address, scope, the time dedicated to each intervention and the contractual arrangements put in place. Other differences concern the use and combination of individual and group interviews and discussions, as well as verbal and non-verbal (theatre, music, etc.) modes of expression. The use of psychodynamic concepts and the relative weight of effort dedicated to the research, training and action components of the intervention vary as well. Other tensions have deeper effects on the potential for cross-fertilization within the tradition. They revolve around the status people assign to the analyst’s external understanding of group behaviour and views; the relative weight attributed to the social and psychological aspects of human behaviour; the extent to which critical insights are applied to understanding broader institutional and social systems; and, last but not least, the particular school of thought and philosophical leanings defended by competing experts and theorists in the field. Another divergence, especially between the French and English stances on sciencein-society, concerns the idea and ideals of sharing, which are central to PAR. Many current applications of psychosocial PAR, if not action research in general, have lost sight of two basic rules dating back to the Freudian beginnings of action research and the revolution of ‘talk therapy’ in clinical psychology, those of ‘free expression’ and ‘abstinence’. On the one hand, people must take ‘time out’ from action so they can have ‘time in’ to reflect and express their feelings and understanding of the problems they face. On the other hand, therapists must develop self-awareness not with a view to communicating their inner feelings and thoughts at all times (let alone publishing them) but rather to recognize the influence 46

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR of their own ‘shadow material’ and make sure it does not get in the way of helping others work through their own problems (McGonagill and Carman, 2015, p. 660). This is ‘abstinence’ on the part of those intervening. The concept raises fundamental questions about the ethos of sharing in the world of PAR. In France, the ‘clinical attitude’ encourages practitioners to cultivate self-awareness when ‘entering the fray of shaping change’. But it does not mean that sharing all personal and interpersonal insights will help move things forward from a social perspective let alone contribute to advancing knowledge. This cautionary remark has significant implications for PAR, one of which is to put a damper on the principle of ‘sharing without boundaries’. It also places a caveat on the fashionable demand for a type of sharing in the first-person singular, that is, to combine self-analysis with research and publication as often as possible, hence absolute transparency irrespective of context and purpose. We return to these ground rules of clinical and psychosocial inspiration later, in our discussion of PAR ethics (Chapter 6) and stakeholder theory (Chapter 12). For the moment, we draw an important lesson from psychosocial PAR: while instrumental action and reflexivity may be combined, their integration can never be absolutely ‘seamless’. Rather, time-in for reflection and dialogue – personal, experiential and theoretical – requires time-out from action. The same rule is put forward by Habermas in his discussion of intersubjective communications and theoretical ‘time-out’ that make understanding possible in the social sciences (through interpretive methods). In his view, breakthroughs in knowledge and self-awareness call for constraints on action, ‘as the example of the ground rules for the psychoanalytic dialogue shows’. Habermas goes on to say that ‘the fashionable demand for a type of “action research”, that is to combine political enlightenment with research, overlooks that the uncontrolled modification of the field is incompatible with the simultaneous gathering of data in that field’. This is true of the behavioural sciences. But it is also valid for the social sciences in general, because they must take time out to develop a theory of ordinary language communication and explain communicative competence before it ever tries to perfect it through action research (Habermas, 1988, pp. 10–11). Unfortunately, how much time out is needed before action is taken and insights are obtained from ongoing experience is a question that Habermas leaves unanswered. The danger here is that unmoving objects will eventually accumulate dust.

CRITICAL-EMANCIPATORY PAR As the name suggests, critical PAR differs from other traditions in that it calls for radical thinking and action, in support of class struggle, feminism, civil rights, anti-colonialism, gay and LGBTQ liberation, green politics, radical pedagogy or knowledge democracy (see Boog, 2003; Roberts and Dick, 2003; Openjuru et al., 2015; Hall, 2013). Freire’s contribution to pedagogy (Freire, 1970) is of course a widely-cited source of PAR inspiration in this tradition (see GUNi, 2014). It is among the most critical perspectives on the twin issue of knowledge and grassroots, community-based development. In Freirean practice, research is an inquiry adjusted to the task of promoting radical democracy and ‘transformational 47

Advancing theory liberation’ (Lykes and Mallona, 2008) in all spheres of life, starting with education. The focus is on dialogical reflection and action as means to overcome relations of domination and subordination between oppressors and the oppressed, colonizers and the colonized. Class struggle and self-liberation of the ‘wretched of the earth’ (Fanon, 1963) calls for a revamping of traditional education, which tends to control and limit people’s creative power and ability to transform their own lives. This means that the banking approach to schooling must be abandoned, and students no longer treated as empty pots that passively receive knowledge from authoritative teachers. After Rousseau and Dewey, Freire views the transmission of mere facts and existing bodies of knowledge to be futile as a learning strategy and as a way to promote well-being in a just and equal society. He challenges the teacher – student dichotomy itself, advocating a relationship of deep reciprocity inspired by the dialectics of Socratic teaching. Education is both key to the struggle for democracy and a battlefield on its own, a site where teachers must fight alongside the people for the recovery of their stolen humanity. Critical Pedagogy challenges the conventions of science, philosophy and theology. It subverts oppressive regimes of knowledge and power through the exercise of critical consciousness, inviting people on the margins of society to question dominant thinking and systems of power, and take action against them. The end result is a dialectical movement that goes from action to reflection upon action followed by new action. The approach is well illustrated in Freire’s adult education method that brings oppressed people to both literacy and political consciousness by focussing on visual representations of everyday life situations and the ‘generative words’ that people use, with emotional content, to describe and confront the social, cultural and political reality in which they live. Reading the world takes primacy over the reading of the word. Freire’s endorsement of Liberation Theology (Gutierrez, 1974) is another expression of his support for critical thinking and the interpretation of text and reality as a bottom-up movement led by lay practitioners rather than the Church hierarchy. By and large, Freirean projects are more concerned with rethinking and testing novel forms of adult education than supporting collective action or full-fledged research to support social change. The approach does not offer means to bridge the gap between the development of critical consciousness and the exercise of scientific reason, as in the pragmatic tradition. Fals-Borda attempts to close this gap, by extending the spirit of Freirean methodology to a critical formulation of ‘participatory action research’, an expression first used by Swantz when working in Tanzania in the early 1970s (Fals-Borda, 1991; Swantz, 2015, p. 488). His approach incorporates community-based needs, knowledge and action learning into the inquiry plans and theoretical concerns of conventional science. The task is carried out not with extractive and scholarly intent but rather to transform society and subvert existing systems of oppression through grassroots socialism. Fals-Borda’s views on knowledge making are far-reaching and worth quoting at length: Do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. Do not trust elitist versions of history and science that respond to dominant interests, but be receptive to 48

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR counter-narratives and try to recapture them. Do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs and arts for action by and with the research organisations. Do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals. (Fals-Borda, 1995) Like Freire, Fals-Borda has a profound distrust of conventional academia matched only by his confidence in popular knowledge, sentiments that have had a lasting impact on the history of PAR, particularly in the fields of development and counter-hegemonic education (see Carr and Kemmis, 1986; Fine and Torre, 2008; Noffke and Somekh, 2009; Hall, 1992; Tandon, 2005; Selener, 1997). Feminist research – liberal, radical, socialist, psychoanalytic, lesbian, black, postmodern, ecological – has also made important contributions to rethinking the role of scholarship in challenging existing regimes of power and breaking the walls of silence. The qualitative and interpretive methods commonly used by feminists emphasize subjectivity and create safe spaces for people to be ‘heard and seen as full humans’ – a far cry from the quantitative approach of science working with ‘informants’ and ‘objects of study’ stripped of self-worth and human dignity (Tolman and Brydon-Miller, 2000; see Martin, 2015, p. 506; Maguire, 1987; Williams and Lykes, 2003; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2008; Lykes and Scheib, 2015; Swantz, 2015; Stephen, 2015; Bradbury, 2015). Practitioners inspired by the works of Habermas, such as Kemmis et al. (2015), have also stressed the socially-critical mission of PAR. They make a compelling case for the infusion of critical theory into PAR, motivated by ‘a deep concern to overcome social injustice’, with an emphasis on collective thinking and action as opposed to lone subjects and selfreflexive practitioners working on their own. In a Habermasian perspective, far from being a solitary experience, PAR opens up intersubjective spaces and lifeworld settings in which people collectively transform their behaviour and subvert the ‘practice architectures’ put in place at three levels: the (cultural-discursive) medium of language, the (material-economic) domain of material activity and work, and the (socio-political) arrangements of solidarity and power. PAR practitioners do this by establishing the rule of ‘inter-subjective criticism’, as Popper calls it; this is the ‘idea of mutual rational control by critical discussion’ (Whitehead, 2017, p. 392). This involves setting up ideal ‘speech situations’ that help people understand each other, speak the truth, do it with sincerity and pursue what is morally right and appropriate at the same time. In this formulation of PAR, truth is found through the world of ‘communicative action’, in ongoing and fallible conversations where people argue and strive for ‘intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding, and consensus about what to do’ (Kemmis et al., 2015, p. 457). As they engage in conversations ‘equally, openly and fearlessly’, participants extricate themselves from the iron grip of money and administrative power and all the ensuing crises of advanced modernity – ‘crises like the incomprehensibility of rules, the illegitimacy of social orders, and feelings of alienation and inauthenticity’. In doing so, they resist giving in to the functional imperatives of strategic action and the hegemony of instrumental means-ends reasoning taking over all aspects of their lives (Kemmis et al., 2015, p. 453–464). 49

Advancing theory

PHOTO 2.2  Farmers mapping the resources of dryland agriculture in Andhra Pradesh,

India (Source: D. Buckles)

Critical PAR practitioners are generally wary of joining big tents that serve too many masters, for fear of making major concessions to big business and to those seeking self-awareness above all. However, this does not necessarily stop them from adopting a psychosocial perspective on transformative learning, as needed. The history of institutional psychotherapy is a case in point. Psychiatry is an area where some researchers and practitioners have challenged the ethics of positive science as applied to human subjects and used action research to explore the pathogenic effects of institutions, beyond small group dynamics. Tosquelles (1984, 1992), for example, argues that asylums need as much attention and treatment as patients. The observation is a call for systemic thinking and creativity in the world of medicine, using psychodynamic and outpatient practices to help patients 50

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR interact and communicate, express their experience of uniqueness and difference, develop a sense of autonomy and take responsibility for their own therapy. Institutional psychotherapy supports heterogeneity in ‘the art of living’, by creating group encounters and sites of sharing. These are open spaces where people are encouraged to move freely, speak out, engage in creative work and develop bonds of affection (Oury, 1982, 1993; Schotte, 2006). The approach requires of caregivers and institutions that they reflect on their own emotional reactions and behaviour. They must reflect on the social and material conditions they set in place when caring for patients. These include the many ‘objects’ of transference and countertransference that caregivers generate or institute, be they human or physical, individual or collective, positive or negative. Critical and creative thinking helps address institutional conditions that reproduce or create feelings of alienation, depriving patients of the powers of language, symbolic imagination and desire. Prison-like ‘chains of signification’ are tied to powerful machines of institutional alienation such as patient incarceration, dependence on medical technocracy and the bureaucratic compartmentalization of caregiving services and disciplines. Other obstacles to humanism in psychiatry include claims to hard scientific objectivity and universal frames of diagnostic interpretation. In this approach, researchers are careful not to act as external consultants transmitting expert advice and objective knowledge. They merely facilitate conversations and debates around ‘hot moments of history’, social events that drive the analysis and discovery process. The relationship between the analytic staff and the client group is an integral part of the analysis and is subject to the principles of social ‘implication’ and ‘transversality’ (Guattari, 1972) – i.e. the maximum communication of all views expressed at all levels, towards an understanding of the interests shared by ‘all concerned’. Institutional psychotherapy’s insights into the politics of mental suffering and medical care are closely associated with the socioanalytic interventions of Lapassade and Lourau (1971) and Lourau (1970, 1996) and the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s (Cooper, 1967). They also played a key role in the medical-philosophical inquiries of Guattari (1972) and the ‘linguistricks’ of Lacan (1978). While deeply informed by psychosocial and transformative concepts, these practitioners share with Freire and Fals-Borda emancipatory goals grounded in a critical perspective on the powers that be.

PERSPECTIVISM AND ENGAGED RESEARCH Following our review of the three ‘traditions’ of PAR and some of their variants, internal disputes and hybrid formulations, we face a daunting question: what general lessons do we draw from them? What is the appropriate perspective and related methods to assess and ‘deal with the world, aim at it, act in it, be occupied with it’, as Ortega y Gasset puts it (Ortega y Gasset, 1998, p. 228)? This is a thorny question. One response is to join a camp, intuitively or by design, develop a variant of it, select appropriate tools, deliver the model with a personal touch and use it to its full potential. As in Leibnizian philosophy, each practitioner will then act like a monad that adopts a unique way of perceiving or reflecting the world, unaffected by others whom they perceive with varying degrees of clarity, save perhaps for those that inspire their actions (e.g. Lewin, Freud or Freire). The result of this 51

Advancing theory is a pluralistic and relativistic view of PAR. Another response, quite the opposite, consists in developing an approach that ‘engages the whole system at all levels’ (Scharmer and Kaeufer, 2015, p. 206). This means taking into account all possible perspectives, somewhat like the God-eye view in Leibniz’s thinking – an all-knowing spirit that considers all monads and their myriad perspectives on the world and creates harmony between them. When applied to PAR, ‘perspectivism’ of this kind is pluralism that demonstrates breathless inclusiveness, without eradicating difference. A third option is metatheoretical. It involves developing an abstract framework that breaks down the essential component parts of PAR thinking and knowing. A case in point is Wilber’s integral framework where perspectives are categorized as either individual or group-based, with a focus on either individual and psychological behaviour or organizational structures and political-economy systems (Wilber, 2000). Another framework consists in assessing all approaches on the basis of their focus on first-person, second-person or third-person voices (Erfan and Torbert, 2015). Heuristic devices such as these are useful in designing and delivering courses or programs aimed at understanding core issues in PAR and developing experience-based skills in the field. Wallis’s use of The Power Lab for teaching purposes is most innovative in this regard (Wallis, 2015). However, there are costs to using abstract theory and concepts that appear out of the blue to catalogue all experiments and orientations in PAR. One immediate problem is that competing frameworks end up being lumped into categories made up of very strange bedfellows. Treating all third-person, objective system-wide perspectives as essentially the same, whether they be of conservative, neo-liberal or socialist inspiration, illustrates our point: the idea that similarities outweigh their differences is not obvious at all and can be easily challenged on both historical and philosophical grounds. Our own preference has been to approach conversations in theory the same way we co-design and facilitate real conversations concerned with topical issues. That is, with a modicum of ‘epistemic humility’ (McCallum and Nicolaides, 2015, p. 643), recognizing that each theory or framework has its limits and is ‘right but only partially so’, as Wilber (2000) puts it. Instead of espousing an overarching perspective or framework that eradicates differences, we explore the diversity of theories in use over time. Our choice in this chapter and the previous one was to regroup frameworks and approaches using terms, concepts and debates that have some currency in the history of PAR. This way we can build on concepts and important differences as seen through the eyes and words of others engaged in discussions and investigations of theory. As in our practice of PAR, the task consists in respectfully meeting other theorists and practitioners ‘in their world and building a bridge to collaborative solutions’ (McGonagill and Carman, 2015, p. 659). To achieve this, we must delve into past and present conversations and debates about PAR theory. The journey points to Fals-Borda’s idea of ‘critical recovery of history and culture . . . for making possible some progress in people’s struggles’ (Fals-Borda, 1991, p. 156; see Rappaport, 2017, p. 150; Sánchez, 2017) – a concept that should be extended to the world of PAR itself. On the issue of collective memory, we confess that it took us many years to fully grasp the actual difference between the three PAR ‘traditions’ and appreciate their relative merit and the many skills needed to navigate between them. Given our professional backgrounds 52

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR and personal trajectories, the critical-emancipatory stance came and still comes more naturally to us. But we learned, sometimes the hard way, that struggles for greater justice are fragile when rational stepwise measures are neglected for the sake of political fervour and grassroot activism. Moving forward in small steps, pragmatically and positively, is at times the best way to proceed forward. Sometimes psychological states and emotions need to take centre stage and be addressed as priorities, because they act as powerful levers for action or represent systematic barriers to positive change. We also came to realize that a systemic integration of all three perspectives in each and every intervention – the pragmatic, the psychosocial and the critical – is a recipe for confusion and failure. The notion that all factors at play should receive equal treatment and be considered in every setting, for the sake of a holistic approach to engaged research, is a view of ‘perspectivism’ we do not share. As Midgley (2015, p. 157) argues, a comprehensive analysis and aggregate of different perspectives is neither possible nor useful. Nietzsche once wrote that ‘There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “idea” of that thing, our “objectivity” ’ (Nietzsche, 1913, p. 153). This doesn’t work for us either. What we advocate, instead, is training the eye and the mind to see how an overall process design can be developed and provide a best effort to fit the situation at hand. To achieve this, we may make use of one or several lenses coming from different traditions while also attempting to apply the following rules: • Never lose sight of the complementary and mutually interrelated goals of three things: rational analysis and planning, working through psychological states in the here and now, and supporting profound transformations in social life. • Exercise judgement in considering which aspect of the process should come to the forefront in a given context and moment in time (e.g. personal and interpersonal relations in the ‘here and now’ of ‘this’ hospital ward). This means possibly leaving other concerns in the background of the main discussion (e.g. strategic work plan issues, broader healthcare politics). • Remain open to the possibility that issues on the fringes might create blind spots and oblique angles of a hazardous nature, i.e. threats that are very real and that may have to be addressed through a quick change of perspective (e.g. by moving from a psychosocial focus on hospital staff dynamics to a critical action inquiry into institutional politics and broader policies in the field of public health). (See the Chapter 14 story of control over timber in Bolivia for an illustration of a necessary shift in perspective by the facilitator Jorge Téllez Carrasco, called for by an unexpected turn of events.) What we propose is not pure relativism, the kind where every practitioner is entitled to adopt a singular view that is as good and as valid as any other. Nor is it an all-embracing pluralism where each PAR situation needs to be looked at from all possible angles, using a pre-established grid applicable to all imaginable situations. The sum of all perspectives of all concerned may represent the whole of reality for a given place in time and space, as Nietzsche, Guattari and Ortega y Gasset suggest. But this wide-angle grasp of all views on 53

Advancing theory reality can only create one possible meta-interpretation among others. Assuming that it is a good way of achieving deep change is also debatable. In most cases, pluralism is an invitation to reach a reasonable compromise that may solve a problem and satisfy no one at the same time. While breaking many silos, the proposal advanced by Erfan and Torbert (2015) regarding first-, second- and third-person action inquiry illustrates the dangers of going down this all-seeing road. Their science of action requires that the parties involved consider views at all levels and in all tenses, a stunning feat of panoramic learning and reportage. First-person self-studies (subjective) have to be combined with interpersonal second-person discussions (group-based, intersubjective) and third-person institutional assessments (objective). Each study in turn needs to be conducted in the past, present and the future and address first-, second- and third-person practice. All of these combinations add up to 27 angles to be reflected in an inquiry (Erfan and Torbert, 2015, p. 68; Bradbury, 2015; Ramos, 2017, p. 829). Logically, this should be multiplied by the number of individuals and groups involved, a task bound to be fraught with ‘analysis-paralysis’. From our standpoint, the goals of PAR are better served by creating focal points of interaction that are circumstantial, that is, junctions or crossroads where multiple actors, factors, dimensions, views, mindsets and theories intersect, clash and mingle until they branch out in new directions. The focal points we have in mind call for the right meshing between evidence-based thinking and planning, gains in self-awareness and struggles for greater justice, with a constant concern for striking the right balance between addressing all problems and views and focussing on those that matter the most ‘right now’. In line with this approach, practitioners acknowledge and value the ways in which different traditions and models interface and continue to evolve. As with any practice, theoretical activity becomes sterile if it refuses to move and explore new ground, mutate, diversify and intermesh. Engaged research is no exception to this rule. As it stands, PAR constitutes a richly diversified stance on the issue of knowledge and social history. It does not constitute a full paradigm. Nor should it aspire to create an all-encompassing discipline or framework, rallying all practitioners around a contender to the throne of metatheory. In a globalized world, nodes, lines and flows of knowledge and communication overlap and criss-cross in so many places and directions that they defy any representation in a single map or holistic theory. As Chambers suggests, PAR must eschew the temptation to totality, in theory building as well as in practice (Chambers, 2008). In keeping with Levinasian philosophy (Burggraeve, 2002), more attention should be given to multiplying conversations about PAR theory. These conversations require a good dose of Derridean decentring and dissemination (Derrida, 1992), reflecting on immediate and deferred communications that head in different directions and criss-cross at the same time. A flexible weaving of multiple conversations and epistemologies (Openjuru et al., 2015), however, does not preclude efforts to develop tentative outlines of the founding principles of engaged research, such as those advanced in this book. Distrust towards any theory that purports to explain everything is not an excuse to simply move on, get things done and avoid philosophy at all cost. No theory is not the alternative to only one theory. Unlike positivists, engaged researchers support the practical wisdom and reflexive action of human subjects coping with real problems in meaningful context. But they must also pursue an activity of their own, which is the practice of theoretical reflexivity. This is epistêmê, 54

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR which is what researchers seek when they attempt to rise above each particular situation, in search of novel perspectives to guide insights and interventions in other settings. As PAR practitioners, we must put our work in perspective and engage in debates about theory, as Lewin did (Dubost, 1987, pp. 90–101). This way we can advance a field otherwise consisting of ‘insular initiatives that seldom speak to each other’ and that fail to ‘acknowledge the ways in which they have drawn from preceding practices’ (Gergen and Gergen, 2015, p. 407). Theoretical reflexivity presents another important advantage. It enables us to take a step back and unearth things we take for granted (Gonnerman et al., 2015, p. 678; Aragón and Giles Macedo, 2015, p. 685). As we surface worldviews that shape our work, we may be surprised to see how practice can easily be at odds with concepts that have not been given much thought, even though they reflect the best intentions in the world (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). Explorations in theory may also uncover blind spots shared at the common edges of PAR. In the remainder of this chapter, we take a step back from the three traditions we have just reviewed and question common assumptions that concern the ‘instrumental’ role of tools and the implications of engagement on a ‘human scale’.

TECHNÊ AND THE ART OF INQUIRY Navigating between rational-pragmatic, psychosocial-transformative and critical-emancipatory approaches to PAR requires exposure to various theoretical orientations. Some understanding of the practical ways in which each tradition and variant operates on the ground is also essential. This brings us to the issue of methods and tools used by practitioners, which vary considerably and reflect a wide range of disciplines involving human subjects. Notwithstanding this diversity, general attitudes towards the use of methods, techniques or technology point to some unresolved issues. One attitude is to take ‘as a starting point the conventional social science toolkit’ made up of opinion surveys, thematic interviews, focus groups and participant and non-participant observation (Stefanac and Krot, 2015, p. 110; see also McLain Smith, 2015, p. 143). Another is to apply softer methods of qualitative research (such as life histories) or user-friendly analytics (such as SWOT Analysis or the Problem Tree) to support group thinking, under the assumption that PAR must avoid getting too technical and overly concerned with measurements in contexts where human relations prevail. Otherwise people turn into ‘objects’ of inquiry, scientific experimentation and production-oriented control. Some practitioners go even further and use no tools at all. Their preference is to let the process be guided by simple rules and ‘minimal critical specifications’ (Steier et al., 2015, p. 214), such as creating safe space for the free expression of ideas and feelings about a problem situation, on the one hand, and resisting the urge to resolve it immediately, on the other hand. Techniques that bring more order into group thinking, overly structuring the ‘co-constructive data gathering and interpretive processes’ (Lykes and Scheib, 2015, p. 139), would work against these principles. Views on the matter of PAR tooling seem polarized. In reality, all paint the same picture, and a familiar one at that: methods and technicalities that surround them are no more than means towards ends, provisions for framing the action inquiry process. Tools are just 55

Advancing theory tools to collect data, most useful for some, but obstacles to enhancing human relations for others. In this book, we adopt a different take on the issue, more in line with the artisan perspective on tools, one where technê is an integral part of the ‘art of doing and being in the world’. We assume that methods and technology, be they simple or advanced, are skilful means to interact with others and the world we live in. They are explanatory, practical and dialogical all at once. Sound ones embed ends in means, adjust to the particular circumstances of each case and evolve over time. Those that do not fit this description will not work; ‘tools that are just tools’ are broken and should be fixed. In the Western tradition, a ‘handworker’ (Gr. cheirotechnês) has no wisdom to teach. Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) and his followers thus advise against reducing the inquiry process to mere ‘experience’ (Gr. empeiria) (Aristotle, 1999). In their view, there is more to knowledge than familiarity with toolboxes and ‘little-m’ methods, ‘instrumental’ techniques that barely get off the ground. For greater wisdom, we should look up to the artisan or craftsperson (Gr. technitês) who masters technê and the knowledge that comes with it. Aristotle defines technê as the knowledgeable practice or practical thinking (Gr. praktikê dianoia) of a calculating soul attending to contingencies of everyday life. While powerful, technê has limitations nonetheless. It is a craft or art guided by ends that vary and may be attained only ‘for the most part’. Results depend on how skilled the technitês is when striving to produce things according to expectations (health in medical practice, for instance). They also depend on the means used and whether accidents happen or regularities hold true. All of this is also true of a manual worker’s empirical work and know-how. Unlike the latter, however, a capable technitês can communicate his or her reasoning to others, through clear accounting and teaching. Plato makes the same point: the master craftsperson can communicate the theoretical knowledge that guides his or her technê by conveying the rational understanding (Gr. gnôsis) of what is fine, just and good in his or her practice (Plato, 1997). When applied to inquiry as an activity, craftwork involves explicit thinking about the investigative process, a logic teachers can pass on through the teaching of ‘little-m methods’ (such as interviews, questionnaires, statistics, etc.) that vary according to discipline. The latter involve procedural know-how, technology and a practical mind. By contrast, ‘big-M methods’ involve reasoned choices concerning the logic of inquiry – whether it should be qualitative, quantitative or mixed, depending on the circumstances. They involve higher-ground reasons for carrying out the investigation in such and such a way (doing a controlled experiment or a survey, for instance). Such reasons should hold true ‘for the most part’ and be as accurate as possible. Since inquiry is an art, some exceptions and errors will occur. Absolute certainty and accuracy (Gr. takribes) cannot be expected and must allow adjustments to what is aimed for and the means or methods used. The same can be said of reflexive action in any profession. It is what people do (e.g. accident prevention counsellors) whenever they ‘do their best’ to understand and act on real problems, doing it methodically and with skill, by going through the motions of diagnostic thinking, planning the immediate or long-term future, implementing decisions, evaluating the observed results and adjusting practice in light of the lessons learned. In Greek philosophy, technê (‘knowing how’) evolves on a higher plane in comparison to empeiria, but it moves closer to the earth when compared to theory and philosophy. The latter is pure epistêmê (‘knowing what’), the kind that does not aim for a down-to-earth end 56

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR product, function or goal that exists beyond the inquiry process. Instead of being driven by instrumental ends, theoretical and philosophical knowledge investigates things that are part of the world, exist of necessity and admit of no change. The endeavour represents the highest expression of the inquisitive soul, inspired by the spirit of sheer curiosity and wonder. Aristotelian and Platonic thinking speaks of science as fundamental knowledge and contemplation for its own sake. Its main product is the rational soul detached from worldly action and desire – from practical calculation or experimentation in regards to nature and the material world. The Western tradition is steeped in this instrumental view of technê dating back to Greek Antiquity. From it arise three problems: top-down thinking, means without meaning, and a narrow view of science. The first problem concerns the logic of hierarchy – the rank-ordering of doing and thinking, the concrete and the abstract, the specific and the general. This is the Aristotelian ploy to split up the nexus of experience, know-how, language and reasoning, with the aim of imposing hierarchy, distance or detachment and the rule of order. Mastery turns into a chain of command. A very different path consists in levelling the playing field of knowledge, reinstating empeiria and technê in the process of knowing. On this course of knowing, the one that runs through this book, all relevant practices, from number-crunching to storytelling, creative brainstorming and conceptual wordsmithing, are recognized for their contribution to the practical wisdom of inquiry – i.e. phronesis understood as ‘praxis with purpose’ (Fals-Borda, 2007, p. 19). To tread this path, the chain of command that subordinates experience and knowledgeable practice to grand theory needs to be questioned and overthrown. The apparent hierarchy of ‘little-m’ and ‘big-M’ methods, considered value-free and under the rule of grand theory, calls for the same treatment. Top-down reasoning must be toppled. It is not conducive to acknowledging and developing the many skilful means of engaged inquiry. While consistent with PAR principles, the position we take on the relationship between theory and practice raises a difficult question: how can researchers take ‘time out’ to carry out the speculations of theory, at some distance from their lifeworld, but not above it. To stay on the ground, PAR theorists must refrain from turning their art into an exact or highhanded science of transformative learning and action. Instead of developing propositions that transcend history, they must find ways to integrate theoretical guideposts into social history. This means acknowledging theory building for what it is: a social investment in language and discourse, carried out at some distance from day-to-day speech. Like poetry, abstract propositions are strange because they come from distant places. They speak to other possible worlds, affecting ‘the boundaries and indeed the conceptualization of the possible’ (Gaventa and Cornwall, 2015, p. 468). All the same, they represent just another set of skills – the ability to choose, shape and combine words, symbols and sentences to create and communicate meaning. Like carpentry or medicine, conceptual wordsmithing is an art, to be mastered and continuously perfected. It can be deployed in ways that complement and strengthen other skills. For instance, the ability to communicate in words can support the ability to communicate in deeds. ‘Walking the talk’ is one skill enhancing another. This means that inquiry is always an art, even when it turns upon itself and tries to ‘make sense’ of itself, through discourse that probes into the nature of inquiry. Whether the query concerns health or the art of inquiry, investigation is always a disposition (Gr. hexis) 57

Advancing theory

PHOTO 2.3  Wax figurines and written cards communicate livelihood options of the Katkari,

Karjat, India (Source: D. Buckles)

to produce methodical action and its expected results or findings. Theoretical investigation is no exception to the rule. What it brings to the practice of inquiry is ‘surplus meaning’ and value added through investment in language, another art onto itself. Hierarchies of classes of knowledge have no room in the art of inquiry. The second problem stems from the idea that inquiry essentially divides into substance and process. Substance is the subject matter of thought, that which is to be known and has real content. It is truth understood as cognitive output that feeds into existing bodies of knowledge, empirical or theoretical. The research outcome is what matters, is actively pursued and has value in the end. By contrast, process speaks to the journey, not the destination. It is the path to knowledge – the technical ways, stepwise procedures and technology used to gain a solid grasp over phenomena that are real. When split from substance, tools to investigate reality cannot be ends in themselves. Rather, they are the instruments and means of advancing knowledge of the world. In and of themselves, they are value-free and meaningless. On its own, technê seems almost worthless. Positive science is the modern formulation of this ‘instrumental’ view on means to produce knowledge, using process tools to discover things that are true in substance. The association between technical tooling and ‘aseptic truth’ viewed as the output of ‘hard science’ (free of contamination by subjects) is so close that many socially-minded critics of positivism and its technocratic derivations, including ‘academic Taylorism’, have opted to keep their distance from techniques and technology, especially those in search of problems to solve (Greenwood, 2015, pp. 431– 432). In this book, we choose instead to reclaim the use and development of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of knowing to support the art of engaged inquiry. The attention we choose to bring to the pathways of knowledge, treating them as objects of innovative thinking and practice, reflects a fundamental proposition: inquiries are part of the many ways in which we interact with each other and shape the world ‘about us’. The view we have of science-in-society starts with a radical notion: investigative technê is inseparable from everything we value in fact or in principle, including the well-being of others and the many objects of sensemaking and meaningful activity in everyday life. This

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Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR implies that PAR practitioners must pay attention to the embeddedness of means in ends, by seeing themselves and their own practice in the bigger picture, the one they are trying to transform (Aragón and Castillo-Burguette, 2015, p. 16). They must build into the inquiry process the goals of a genuine encounter between self and other, those of truthfulness, responsibility and achieving the full potential of being-in-the-world through an integration of thinking, feeling and acting (Rappaport, 2017, p. 147). Thus ‘the end is carried within the activity’ (Eikeland, 2015, p. 384). Seen from this perspective, PAR is the art of creating a careful action-learning process based on abilities to think and act carefully, with rigour, combined with genuine caring for expressions of both difference and solidarity in the unfolding of social and natural history. Our understanding of PAR echoes Zeno of Citium’s Stoic emphasis on training in the art of reasoning and thinking. The latter art is a technê of its own kind driven by the pursuit of truth but also what is naturally good and morally right at the same time (Gr. arête). In Zeno’s work, the highest good does not lie in obtaining the primary objects of nature, which we do not control (e.g. life, health). Rather, it is to be found in the constant effort to satisfy all impulses (Gr. hormê) that are true to nature and suited to the circumstances. This must be achieved through means that are socially sound and just, knowing that human solidarity is not any different from health. It too is both a need and a virtue, and the fruit of exemplary virtuosity. Moral life thus integrates the means and the ends of life. We strive for a life of plentiful satisfactions, knowing that the fullest satisfaction comes from the myriad ways we strive. In mainstream science, investigation (of any object, including the art of knowing) is a means towards an end, which is knowledge. Inquiry is a question in search of an answer, theoretical or practical. Stoicism invites us to go beyond this conventional view and value the questions we ask as much as the answers we seek. Experience, practice, tooling, reasoning and moral ends, all mesh in the art of life (Sellars, 2009). The last problem associated with instrumentalism concerns our ability to move away from the narrow views of ‘hard science’ and show an open mind when addressing the question at hand: what is inquiry? When we think of it, this is not an easy question to investigate. For the investigation to reach its goal, we need to know how to go about inquiring into the matter. That is, we need to possess the answer before we raise the question. The endeavour seems like time wasted; it focusses on a story that ends before it starts. One solution to this riddle involves a risky path. It consists in letting the inquiry add something to what we already know about inquiry, creating the story at the same time as it unfolds. Although this may sound illogical, we cannot ‘inquire about inquiry’ without adding something new to what we’re looking for. This means that probing into probing is an endless experiment, a process of eternal return. Here again, accomplished artisans will appreciate the paradox. They are used to rediscovering and shaping their own skills and trade through trial and error, with endless apprenticeship and practice, cognizant that the mastery they achieve and possess is admirable only because it is always perfectible. The pioneer of abstract expressionism, Paul Klee, was at one point in his life so competent as a draftsman he opted to start drawing with his other hand as a way to break through to another level of skill. For skilled artisans in all fields the invitation to improve on what they do is constant. PAR practitioners using the same methods repeatedly, whether they be hard or soft, should take note.

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Advancing theory Craftwork sets the example in the pursuit of all forms of knowledge, including science. Research that keeps reflecting on itself, including the means at hand, is an essential task that engaged researchers must tie in with their commitments to changing social history.

GLOBALIZATION AND THE DIGITAL SHIFT PAR strategies to democratize knowledge making and ground it in social needs represent genuine efforts to overcome the ineffectiveness and elitism of mainstream schooling and science, and the negative effects of market forces, technocracy and industry on the workplace, community life and sustainable livelihoods. The results have left lasting imprints on the history of science-in-society. The field is nonetheless weakened by timidity in debating competing views on the theoretical foundations of PAR and exploring novel methods of evidence-based inquiry that challenge expressions of instrumentalism in the world of science. Another equally important challenge for the future of PAR consists in addressing issues of power and social change embedded in larger systems, in support of social movements and myriad forms of sociability and conflict that now criss-cross in complex ways (see Mead, 2008; Touraine et al., 1980). These topics and related issues, those of ‘embedded systems’ and ‘methodologies for scale’ (Waddell et al., 2015, p. 537), are poorly addressed by models of collaborative inquiry that rely on using small group and site-specific dynamics to engage in ‘fixed identity’ politics inspired by the ideals of group autonomy and selfgovernance. In the world of PAR, the tendency is for practitioners to keep things small and close to natural communities and environments, even when conceived in a criticalemancipatory mode. This micro-perspective on social action and analysis remains naively optimistic in its opposition to the exclusionary character of science and an academic life largely deaf to pressing individual and community needs around the world. More than ever, ‘large-scale, whole system insurgent inquiry’ (Glenzer et al., 2015, p. 312) is a requisite of reflecting and acting on the complex factors that currently shape the course of human interaction on a global scale. The revolution in interactive information and communication technologies (ICTs) presents an opportunity to stimulate this global shift in the inquiry process. Web 2.0 applications can now support large-scale virtual community interactivity and facilitate the development of user-driven content, without restricted access or controlled implementation. The list of digital tools and Internet things that help harvest, share and analyze crowd-generated data, opinions, knowledge, experiences and ideas just keeps growing. It includes social bookmarking and networking, blogs, wikis, chatting and videoconferencing, webinars, screencasting, multiple content aggregators (YouTube, Flickr), hosted services, Web and mobile applications, smartphones, SMS, geographical information systems, email, online analytics, mashups (to aggregate and reuse data in new ways) and folksonomies (generated through the collaborative tagging and categorization of content). These technologies lend themselves to large-scale data collection and processing initiatives involving a plurality of knowledge forms (including digital storytelling), actively supported by wide and diversified audiences, all in real or asynchronous time and through a continuous and constantly evolving interaction between science and society. The methods are 60

Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR highly flexible and can make provisions for anonymity, geographic rootedness, rules of civility and good faith, the standing law and institutions of a jurisdiction and the rule of accountability to persons affected by the decisions of open politics. While the digital divide continues to separate populations both in the Global South and the North, ICTs are increasingly applied to consultations in the public sphere, local planning and policymaking, electoral and environmental monitoring as well as crisis, relief and recovery efforts in contexts of natural disasters and post-conflict situations. These and many other ongoing innovations in the Internet world make a strong case for applying the open source and open content movement to democratic institutions (Rushkoff, 2004; Simon et al., 2017). They allow citizens to influence governance and political agendas, by actively engaging in virtual journalism, public debate, policy development and decision making. According to Certomà and Pimbert, the networking and bottom-up features of ICTs and crowdsourcing ‘clearly support and enact the truly participatory, systemic, holistic, relational and experimental worldview of PAR’. By involving non-professionals in all phases of research and enhancing their technological agency towards important social goals, they transcend ‘the divide between experiential knowledge, the production of formal science and sociopolitical decision-making’ (Certomà and Pimbert, 2015, pp. 512–515). In the same vein, discursive or deliberative democracy is a call for greater participation, transparency and greater quality in political decision making, lawmaking and institutional life (Simon et al., 2017; Cohen, 1989; Bessette, 1994). True to the Habermasian tradition of discourse ethics, it involves a theory of civics that recognizes multiple interests and grounds for dissent and offers ways to address them, through the exercise of communicative reason and the incorporation of scientific information and evidence-based reasoning in the deliberative process. Fact-finding and the outputs of science are made accessible to participants and may be subject to extensive media coverage, scientific peer review, deliberative opinion polling (Fishkin, 2009) and adversarial presentations of competing arguments and predictive claims. The methodology of ‘citizens’ jury’ is pioneering in this respect. It is made up of people selected at random from a local or national population who are provided opportunities to question witnesses and collectively form a judgement (Wakeford et al., 2007). In principle, deliberations based on the exercise of reason and dialogue contribute meaningfully to decisions that are binding. Citizen Science, a contribution examined in Chapter 8, also provides useful strategies to scale up the action-inquiry process and the struggles of science-in-society. It broadens the concept of social engagement in scientific work to include broader ‘communities of interest’ and citizens committed to enhancing knowledge in particular fields. In this approach, research is assisted by volunteers who form an active public or network of contributing individuals. Participants may or may not have scientific expertise or share the same geographic, occupational, cultural or educational background. This emergent path to collaborative science is particularly effective in scaling up scientific programmes in the natural and environmental sciences, by employing volunteers to monitor natural phenomena, resources and species through observation and measurement (Cooper et al., 2007). Interactive ICTs show great potential in refreshing and scaling up the social and technical components of PAR, in support of open politics, deliberative democracy and the many expressions of science-in-society. They also herald a fundamentally different perspective on 61

Advancing theory social life, one which challenges the organismic view of ‘Society’ and replaces it with the sliding rule of ‘Sociability’. The organismic model portrays social interaction as analogous to relations between the parts of a living organism. In this perspective, of functionalist inspiration, each society has well-defined boundaries and patterns of behaviour that constitute a distinct entity or cultural identity. By contrast, globalization and the digital shift draw attention to simple and complex networks and movements that mesh and intersect in many ways and on many levels. Multitudes of nodes, flows and connecting lines give rise to rhizomatic growth rather than clearly-delineated systems. No overarching structure, language or perspective can merge all pathways into a single road map, system or culture. Clear delineations of human identity, individual and collective, give way to myriad webs of human relations and social life. This is the complex world of interaction and sociability that PAR has yet to address, by establishing the right point of entry into ‘metadeliberations’ and the corresponding path and scale of social engagement. Open source and open politics in knowledge production also introduce a different understanding of technê, a shift from previous views of technology based on modern industry. We know that ICTs and advanced capitalism can lie in the same bed. Large businesses derive massive benefits from using computer technology and a flexible specialization of labour to manufacture customized products at mass-production prices. ICT companies are currently the largest corporations in the world. In point of fact, ICTs are not necessarily inclusive, participatory, a-hierarchical and empowering. They can be used to further ‘narrow private interests that yield no wider social benefits’ (Certomà and Pimbert, 2015, p. 517) or delegitimize effective leadership (Jemelniak, 2015). Also tweetstorms of ‘alternative facts’ can now help right-wing demagogues hold and abuse the highest offices in the land. All the same, the applications and effects of ICTs are wide-ranging and profound to the point that the simple dualism between Technology and Humanism, a PAR leitmotiv for the last 80 years or so, is no longer justified. More than ever, engaged researchers must adapt to new ways of understanding and constructing social life, beyond small groups and organic communities (Embury, 2015, p. 531). They must also show greater flexibility and creativity in their use of technê to support the kind of collaborative inquiry and social engagement that can be brought to bear on the pressing issues of our age.

REFERENCES Ackoff, R. (1999) Ackoff’s Best: His Classic Writings on Management, Wiley, New York. Amado, G. (1993) ‘La résonance psychosociale’, Ph.D. Thesis, Université Paris-VII, Paris. Anzieu, D. W. (1984) The Group and the Unconscious, trans. B. Kilborne, Routledge, London. Anzieu, D. W. and Martin, J.-Y. (1966) La dynamique des groupes restreints, PUF, Paris. Aragón, A. O. and Castillo-Burguette, M. T. (2015) ‘Introduction to Practices’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 13–16. Aragón, A. O. and Giles Macedo, J. C. (2015) ‘Radical Epistemology as Caffeine for Social Change’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 681–690. Aristotle (1999) Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd edn., trans. T. Irwin, Hackett, Indianapolis, IN. Balint, M. (1954) ‘Training General Practitioners in Psychotherapy’, British Medical Journal, vol. 1, pp. 115–120.

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Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR Bammer, G. (2015) ‘Companions to Action Research: Reaching Beyond our Networks to Build Alignments and a Common Repository of Resources’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 547–552. Barus-Michel, J. (1987) Le sujet social: étude de psychologie sociale clinique, Dunod, Paris. Barus-Michel, J., Enriquez, E. and Lévy, A. (2002) Vocabulaire de psychosociologie: Positions et références, Erès, Paris. Bebbington, A. (2004) ‘Theorizing Participation and Institutional Change: Ethnography and Political Economy’, in S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds) Participation – From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, Zed, London, pp. 278–283. Bessette, J. (1994) The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy and American National Government, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Bion, W. R. (1961) Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, Tavistock, London. Boog, B. W. M. (2003) ‘The Emancipatory Character of Action Research, Its History and Present State of the Art’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 426–438. Bradbury, H. (2015) ‘The Integrating (Feminine) Reach of Action Research: A Nonet for Epistemological Voice’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 573–582. Brown, D. (2004) ‘Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategies: Democracy Strengthened or Democracy Undermined?’ in S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds) Participation – From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, Zed, London, pp. 278–283. Burggraeve, R. (2002) The Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love: Emmanuel Levinas on Justice, Peace, and Human Right, trans. J. Bloechl, Marquette University Press, Milwaukee. Burns, D. (2015) ‘How Change Happens: The Implications of Complexity and Systems Thinking for Action Research, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 434–445. Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, Routledge, London. Certomà, C. and Pimbert, M. (2015) ‘Crowdsourcing and Action Research. Fostering People’s Participation in Research through Digital Media’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 512–521. Chambers, R. (2008) ‘PRA, PLA and Pluralism: Practice and Theory’, in P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 297–318. Chambers, R. (2015) ‘PRA, PLA and Pluralism: Practice and Theory’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 31–46. Coghlan, D. (2015) ‘Organizational Development: Action Research for Organizational Change’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 417–424. Cohen, J. (1989) ‘Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Legitimacy’, in A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (eds) The Good Polity, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 17–34. Coleman, G. (2015) ‘Core Issues in Modern Epistemology for Action Researchers: Dancing Between Knower and Known’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 392–480. Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (eds) (2001) Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed, London. Cooper, D. (1967) Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry, Paladin, London. Cooper, C. B., Dickinson, J., Phillips, T. and Bonney, R. (2007) ‘Citizen Science as a Tool for Conservation in Residential Ecosystems’, Ecology and Society, vol. 12, no. 2, p. 11. Cornwall, A. (2004) ‘Spaces for Transformation? Reflections on Issues of Power and Difference in Participation in Development’, in S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds) Participation – From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, Zed, London, pp. 75–91. Dejours, C. (1988) Plaisir et souffrance dans le travail, AOCIP, Paris. Derrida, J. (1992) Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kami, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Dubost, J. (1987) L’intervention psychosociologique, PUF, Paris. Eikeland, O. (2015) ‘Praxis – Retrieving the Roots of Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 381–391. Embury, D. C. (2015) ‘Action Research in an Online World’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 529–535.

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Advancing theory Emery, F., Hilgendorf, E. L. and Irving, B. L. (1968) The Psychological Dynamics of Smoking, Tobacco Research Council, London. Enriquez, E. (1992) L’organisation en analyse, PUF, Paris. Erfan, A. and Torbert, B. (2015) ‘Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 64–75. Fals-Borda, O. (1991) ‘Remaking Knowledge’, in O. Fals-Borda and M. A. Rahman (eds) Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action-Research, Apex, New York, pp. 146–166. Fals-Borda, O. (1995) ‘Research for Social Justice: Some North-South Convergences’, Plenary Address at the Southern Sociological Society Meeting, Atlanta, April 8. Fals-Borda, O. (2007) ‘La Investigación Acción en Convergencias Disiciplinarias’, Lasa Forum, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 17–22. Fanon, F. (1963) The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, Grove, New York. Fine, M. and Torre, M. E. (2008) ‘Theorizing Audience, Products and Provocation’, in P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 407–419. Fishkin, J. S. (2009) When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum, New York. Freud, S. (1958) ‘Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis III)’, in trans. and J. Strachey (ed) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17, Hogarth Press, London. Gaujelac (de), V. (1997) ‘Introduction’, in N. Aubert, V. de Gaujelac and K. Navridis (eds) L’aventure psychosociologique, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris. Gaventa, J. and Cornwall, A. (2015) ‘Power and Knowledge’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 465–471. Gergen, K. J. and Gergen, M. M. (2015) ‘Social Construction and Research as Action’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 401–408. Giust-Desprairies, F. (1989) L’enfant rêvé, Armand Colin, Paris. Glenzer, K., Martínez, E. and Drinkwater, M. (2015) ‘Insurgent Inquiry: Connecting Action Research, Impact Evaluation, and Global Strategy in a Rights-Based International Development NGO’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 301–314. Gonnerman, C., O’Rourke, M., Crowley, S. J. and Hall, T. E. (2015) ‘Discovering Philosophical Assumptions that Guide Action Research: The Reflexive Toolbox Approach’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 673–680. Gonsalves, J., Becker, T., Braun, A., Campilan, D., Chavez, H. de, Fajber, E., Kapiriri, M., Rivaca-Caminade, J. and Vernooy, R. (2005) Participatory Research and Development for Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management: A Sourcebook, 3 vols, IDRC, Ottawa, ON. Greenwood, D. J. (2015) ‘Evolutionary Systems Thinking: What Gregory Bateson, Kurt Lewin, and Jacob Moreno Offered to Action Research that Still Remains to be Learned’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 425–433. Guattari, F. (1972) Psychanalyse et transversalité: Essais d’analyse institutionnelle, Maspero, Paris. GUNi (2014) Hall, B. L. and Tandon, R. (guest eds) World Report on Higher Education 5: Knowledge, Engagement and Higher Education Contributing to Social Change, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Gustavsen, B. and Pålshaugen, Ø. (2015) ‘How to Succeed in Action Research without Really Acting: Tracing the Development of Action Research to Constructivist Practice in Organizational Worklife’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 409–416. Gutierrez, G. (1974) A Theology of Liberation, SCM, London. Habermas, J. (1988) Theory and Practice, trans. J. Viertel, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA. Hall, B. L. (1992) ‘Breaking the Monopoly of Action Knowledge: Research Methods, Participation and Development’, in R. Tandon (ed) Participatory Research: Revisiting the Roots, Mosaic, New Delhi, pp. 9–21. Hall, B. L. (2013) ‘Knowledge Democracy and Social Justice: Implications for Higher Education’, 100th Anniversary of the Association of Commonwealth, Association of Commonwealth Universities Perspective Series, London. Heron, J. (1999) The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook, Kogan Page, London. Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. (eds) (2004) Participation – From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development, Zed, London.

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Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR Jaques, E. (1951) The Changing Culture of a Factory, Tavistock, London. Jemelniak, D. (2015) ‘Naturally Emerging Regulation and the Danger of Delegitimizing Conventional Leadership: Drawing on the Example of Wikipedia’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 522–528. Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. and Nixon, R. (2015) ‘Critical Theory and Critical Participatory Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 453–464. Lacan, J. (1978) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. J. A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, Norton, New York. Lapassade, G. and Lourau, R. (1971) Clés pour la sociologie, Segher, Paris. Lévy, A. (1997) Sciences cliniques et organisations sociales, PUF, Paris. Lévy, A. (2010) Penser l’événement, Pour une psychosociologie critique, Parangon/Vs, Lyon. Lévy, A. and Amado, G. (2001) La recherche-action, Eska, Paris. Lewin, K. (1920) Die Sozialisierung des Taylorsystems: Eine grundsätzliche Untersuchung zur Arbeitsund Berufspsychologie, Praktischer Sozialismus 4, Weltkreisverlag, Berlin. Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of Topological Psychology, McGraw-Hill, New York. Lewin, K. (1946) ‘Action Research and Minority Problems’, The Journal of Social Issues, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 34–46. Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving Social Conflicts; Selected Papers on Group Dynamics, ed. G. W. Lewin, Harper & Row, New York. Lewin, K. (1951) Field Theory in Social Science; Selected Theoretical Papers, ed. D. Cartwright, Harper & Row, New York. Lichtenstein, B. (2015) ‘Complex Systems and Emergence in Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 446–452. Liu, M. (1997) Fondements et pratiques de la recherche-action, Harmattan, Paris. Lourau, R. (1970) L’analyse institutionnelle, Minuit, Paris. Lourau, R. (1996) Interventions socianalytiques, Anthropos, Paris. Lykes, M. B. and Mallona, A. (2008) ‘Towards Transformational Liberation: Participatory and Action Research and Praxis’, in P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 106–120. Lykes, M. B. and Scheib, H. (2015) ‘The Artistry of Emancipatory Practice: Photovoice, Creative Techniques, and Feminist Anti-Racist Participatory Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 131–142. Maguire, P. (1987) Doing Participatory Research: A Feminist Approach, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Martin, L. (2015) ‘Sex and Sensibilities: Doing Action Research While Respecting and Even Inspiring Dignity’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 505–511. Mayo, E. [1933] (2001) The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization: Early Sociology of Management and Organizations, Routledge, London. McCallum, D. and Nicolaides, A. (2015) ‘Cultivating Intention (As we Enter the Fray): The Skillful Practice of Embodying Presence, Awareness, and Purpose as Action Researchers’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 643–652. McGonagill, G. and Carman, D. (2015) ‘Holding Theory Skillfully in Consulting Interventions’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 653–664. McLain Smith, D. (2015) ‘Action Science Revisited: Building Knowledge Out of Practice to Transform Practice’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 143–156. Mead, G. (2008) ‘Muddling Through: Facing the Challenges of Managing a Large-Scale Action Research Project’, in P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 629–642. Means, K., Josayma, C., Nielsen, E. and Virayasakultorn, V. (2002) Community-Based Forest Resource Conflict Management: A Training Package, FAO, Rome. Mendel, G. (1980) ‘La sociopsychanalyse institutionnelle’, in J. Ardoino, J. Dubost, A. Lévy, E. Guattari, G. Lapassade, R. Lourau and G. Mendel (eds) L’intervention institutionnelle, Payot, Paris, pp. 237–301.

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Advancing theory Mendel, G. and Prades, J.-L. (2002) Les méthodes de l’intervention psychosociologique, La DécouverteSyros, Paris. Michelot, C. (2016) L’action rationnelle: essai sur l’étude et la résolution de problèmes, Éditions Universitaires Européennes, Saabrücken, Germany. Midgley, G. (2015) ‘Systemic Intervention’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 157–166. Minkler, M. and Wallerstein, N. (eds) (2008) Community Based Participatory Research for Health: From Process to Outcomes, 2nd edn., Wiley, San Francisco, CA. Moreno, J. L. (1931) Group Method and Group Psychotherapy, Beacon, New York. Nietzsche, F. (1913) On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, trans. H. B. Samuel and J M. Kennedy, T. N. Foulis, London. Noffke, S. and Somekh, B. (2009) (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Educational Action Research, Sage, London. Openjuru, G. L., Jaitli, N., Tandon, R. and Hall, B. L. (2015) ‘Knowledge Democracy, Community-Based Research, the Global South and the Excluded North’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 481–488. Ortega y Gasset, O. (1998) El espectador, Prólogo de J. L. Molinuevo, Edaf, Madrid. Oury, J. (1982) L’aliénation, Galilée, Paris. Oury, J. (1993) ‘Psychiatrie et psychothérapie institutionnelles’, in P. Kaufmann (ed) L’apport freudien: éléments pour une encyclopédie de la psychanalyse, Bordas, Paris. Palmade, G. (2008) Préparation des décisions: l’étude de problèmes, L’Harmattan, Paris. Palus, C. J. and McGuire, J. B. (2015) ‘Mediated Dialogue in Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 691–699. Pedler, M. and Bourgoyne, J. (2015) ‘Action Learning’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 179–187. Plato (1997) Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper, Hackett, Indianapolis, IN. Pound, B., Snapp, S., McDougall, C. and Braun, A. (eds) (2003) Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods: Uniting Science and Participation, Earthscan/IDRC, Ottawa, ON. Ramos, J. (2017) ‘Linking Foresight and Action: Toward a Futures Action Research’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 823–842. Rappaport, J. (2017) ‘Participation and the Work of the Imagination: A Colombian Retrospective’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 147–159. Reason, P. and Canney, S. (2015) ‘Action Research and Ecological Practice’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 553–563. Rice, A. K. (1965) Learning for Leadership, Tavistock, London. Roberts, G. and Dick, B. (2003) ‘Emancipatory Design Choices for Action Research Practitioners’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 486–495. Rogers, C. (1970) On Encounter Groups, Harrow, New York. Rowell, L. L., Riel, M. M. and Polush, E. Y. (2017) ‘Defining Action Research: On Dialogic Spaces for Constructing Shared Meanings’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 85–101. Rushkoff, D. (2004) Open Source Democracy, Project Gutenberg, Text. eBook-No. 10753. Sánchez, C. O. (2017) ‘Participatory Action Research for Recovery of the Senses and Sources of Historic Memory’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 807–822. Scharmer, O. and Kaeufer, K. (2015) ‘Awareness-Based Action Research: Catching Social Reality Creation in Flight’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 199–210. Schotte, J. (2006) Un Parcours: Rencontrer, Relier, Dialoguer, Partager, Le Pli, Paris. Selener, D. (1997) Participatory Action Research and Social Change, The Cornell Participatory Action Research network, Cornell University, New York. Sellars, J. (2009) The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, Bristol, London. Simon, J., Bass, T., Boelman, V. and Mulgan, G. (2017) Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement, Nesta, London.

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Pragmatic, psychosocial and critical PAR Spannos, C. (ed.) (2008) Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century, AK Press, Oakland, CA. Stefanac, L. and Krot, M. (2015) ‘Using T-Groups to Develop Action Research Skills in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Environments’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 109–117. Steier, F., Brown, J. and Mesquita da Silva, F. (2015) ‘The World Café in Action Research Settings’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 211–219. Stephen, A. (2015) ‘Ecofeminism and Systems Thinking: Shared Ethics of Care for Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 564–572. Swantz, M. L. (2015) ‘Participatory Action Research: Its Origins and Future in Women’s Ways’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 489–496. Tandon, R. (2005) ‘A Critique of Monopolistic Research’, in Tandon, R. (ed) Participatory Research: Revisiting the Roots, Mosaic, New Delhi, pp. 3–8. Tolman, D. L. and Brydon-Miller, M. (eds) (2000) From Subjects to Subjectivities: A Handbook of Interpretive and Participatory Methods, New York University Press, New York. Tosquelles, F. (1984) Éducation et psychothérapie institutionnelle, Hiatus, Nantes, France. Tosquelles, F. (1992) L’enseignement de la folie, Privat, Toulouse, France. Touraine, A., Hegedus, Z., Dubet, F. and Wievorka, M. (1980) La prophétie antinucléaire, Seuil, Paris. Trist, E. L. and Bamforth, K. W. (1951) ‘Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting’, Human Relations, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 3–38. Trist, E. L., Emery, F. and Murray, H. (eds) (1997) The Social Engagement of Social Science: The SocioEcological Perspective, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA. Waddell, S., McLachlan, M., Meszoely, G. and Waddock, S. (2015) ‘Large Scale Change Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 536–546. Wakeford, T., Singh, J., Murtuja, B., Bryant, P. and Pimbert, M. (2007) ‘The Jury Is Out: How Far Can Participatory Projects Go Towards Reclaiming Democracy?’, in P. Reason and H. Bradbury (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, Sage, London, pp. 333–349. Wallis, N. C. (2015) ‘Unlocking the Secrets of Personal and Systemic Power: The Power Lab and Action Inquiry in the Classroom’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 760–769. Whitehead, J. (2017) ‘Practice and Theory in Action Research: Living-Theories as Frameworks for Action’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 387–401. Wilber, K. (2000) A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, Shambhala, Boston, MA. Williams, J. and Lykes, M. B. (2003) ‘Bridging Theory and Practice: Using Reflexive Cycles in Feminist Participatory Action Research’, Feminism and Psychology, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 287–294.

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MODULE 2

Design and facilitation

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CHAPTER 3

Planning systems that learn

This module is about research design and facilitating an inquiry process, the kind that is grounded in settings that are meaningful to the people involved but never exempt from uncertainty and the unknown. Chapter 3 leads the way with three sets of concepts and tools. •

•

•

ART, informed by pragmatic philosophy, helps assess the relationship between Action, Research and Training (or capacity building) in ongoing or planned activities (the integration between these three components of effective learning systems is at the heart of a great number of PAR initiatives). Order and Chaos, inspired by chaos and complexity theory, invites people to craft the planning process as one of two things: a blueprint for systematic action, suitable when key factors are easy to predict, or as a working hypothesis developed in complex settings, to be tested against experience and further developed in light of emerging circumstances and needs. Activity Mapping helps to plan an action inquiry process in orderly cycles or through multiple iterations in the middle of complex situations.

The ideas behind each tool are foundational because they capture the spirit of people-based and action-oriented inquiry in general. They also question the science of exact planning – methods that expect our future to neatly follow a predictable path. As we’re about to see, these considerations are not merely conceptual. Each issue we raise is also part of a ‘skilful means’ people can use to support group work and planning. While relatively easy to use, the tools also help people acknowledge an inescapable fact of life: things may turn out differently than planned. Planned change often calls for changes in plans.

MEANINGFUL RESEARCH AND PRAGMATISM If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research. All the same, questions about the relevance of academic learning and research need to be asked. Part of the answer lies in the exercise of sheer curiosity. As humans, we enjoy discovering the world ‘about us’.

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Design and facilitation Our experience of knowing, rooted in pleasure, is a shared instinct that builds on things felt and known through the interactions of heartbeat, blood flow, breath, neurons and dopamine. William James’s famous insight was right: the knowing body comes before bodies of knowledge. Knowing this, our licence to study the world freely should never expire. But our commitment to advancing knowledge does not end there. For there is another side to what research is about. It consists in raising questions that engage people in thinking that has meaning and serves a larger purpose. PAR embraces this vision, by making sure the discovery process is grounded in all the good things we strive to achieve. Engaged research does not assume that all topics are worth researching. Some people believe that the earth is flat, that Elvis Presley still lives and that Machu Picchu is the work of extraterrestrials. For reasons that are undoubtedly human, worthy of understanding, these beliefs work for them. To use James’s pragmatic metaphor, they have ‘cash value’, banking on a social currency accepted in the circle of believers. Is the truth value of these claims worth investigating by those convinced of their untruth, if only out of respect for the diversity of belief systems and pluralism in the pursuit of knowledge? Peirce, the first to formulate one of many pragmatic maxims, answers the question in the negative. Why? Because further inquiry into such claims would be an exercise in futility. Less bluntly, he argues that an inquiry is only as good as its results or practical consequences (Peirce, 1902, p. 323). In this perspective, usefulness that can be demonstrated is the arbiter of meaningful research. The true value of inquiry lies in its conceivable effects, realistic ‘would-bes’ that can be determined through experience and scientific reasoning. An inquiry is meaningful if it makes a tangible difference to our lives, helping us to make up our minds, achieve clarity and act on what we say to be true. If we firmly believe that a diamond is hard, Peirce says, we can use a diamond ring accordingly, confident that it will not be scratched and ruined by other solid objects. Action research is pragmatism at work. It is the process of wedding our thoughts and words to their practical consequences and the experience of our senses. For the marriage to be effective, it must take into account prior relationships between hypotheses and experience. In Peirce’s version of pragmatism, this matching process is essentially social. This is so for a reason: the effects of truth can be publicly debated, between people and between communities. For instance, the connection between roundness and the Earth has been widely publicized and celebrated, and firm arrangements made to navigate accordingly. Too many air travellers and past accounts of world history count on it. Likewise, the legal heirs to Presley’s wealth do not entertain doubts concerning the death of Elvis and have chosen to move on with their lives. Nor do the Peruvian people indulge in talk about the extraterrestrial origins of Machu Picchu but rather continue to take pride in their history. The cultural and legal consequences of knowing for sure that the Incas built Machu Picchu and that ‘the king’ is truly dead are real, and they leave little room for research into nonsense. Not all founders of pragmatism share these views on the close relationship between science, truth and society. The nineteenth-century contemporary William James advances his own version of pragmatism (James, 1978). On the one hand, James is more open to non-scientific reasoning. He reminds us in his writings that hard science faces serious limitations when it comes to making sense of the myriad ways in which humans go through life. On the other hand, as in traditional philosophy since Descartes, James focusses on the 72

Planning systems that learn thinking process and experience of the individual subject. His pragmatism gives little attention to the social construction of knowledge and conversations about reality – questions and answers raised and negotiated across boundaries between subjects and communities. While pragmatic in its orientation, our understanding of PAR is at odds with James’s methodological individualism. It also departs from utilitarian notions of the greatest good – i.e. the greatest number of people actively pursuing their own interests using all available resources, material and social. With utilitarianism (and consequentialism), otherness is merely a means to achieving individual ends. Behaviour is driven by the pursuit of maximum benefit, reducing the web of life to quantity. The inquiry process ‘pays off’ only if it tailors means to achieve individual ends and enhance productivity ‘for the greatest good’. In contrast, PAR assumes that probing into the world we live in is a social experience, with ripple effects that are inseparable from what Dewey and Bentley call the many ‘transactions’ of social and natural history (Dewey and Bentley, 1949, pp. 121–139). This means that a useful inquiry is not just about what works for the inquisitive subject or the researcher. It is also about what works or doesn’t work for communities and webs of life. Never has this social stance on ‘knowing and the known’ rung more true than today. The human species is so involved with reality that it is now shaping the course of natural history as well as its own, accelerating the rate of species extinction and other global changes. Humans and the world of science must assume responsibility for this involvement. More than ever, we are called upon to sustain and intensify the many transactions of mind, community and world (Dewey, 1927) – local and global ‘communities of inquiry’ involving teachers, students, scientists, decision makers, journalists, NGOs and all concerned citizens committed to addressing the social and environmental challenges of our age. Engaged research responds to the call by taking a clear stance on what it means to know, i.e. on the world of inquiry and its involvement with history. The stance acknowledges the drive to both satisfy our innate sense of curiosity and increase our practical wisdom at the same time, as we must. This view echoes E. B. White’s often-quoted understanding of the pragmatic maxim – a healthy tension between a will to save the world and a desire to savour each and every moment of our lives.

ACTION, RESEARCH, TRAINING (ART) IN HONDURAS Many PAR initiatives combine teaching and capacity building with a commitment to research and social change. This brings us to a tool called ART, which integrates Action, Research and Training within a learning system. The tool captures the spirit of PAR as well as experiential learning and problem-solving inquiry in general. It serves a twofold purpose: introducing concepts that are central to the art of meaningful inquiry and assessing the current situation against these concepts. While relatively simple, ART raises the question of the current and ideal balance and integration of the three components of a learning system. Group work with the tool helps stakeholders reflect on what they are doing presently and decide what adjustments they need to make. As with all other tools presented in this book, ART is a skilful means that is explanatory, practical and dialogical all at once. Below, we illustrate its use, and practical consequences in Honduras. 73

Design and facilitation To begin, participants list major activities within a project or programme, whether they be action, research or training. ‘Action’ (as distinct from research or classroom-type training) includes deciding and doing things to achieve concrete goals in the world. For the sake of simplicity, ‘research’ is broadly defined here to mean any systematic inquiry involving data gathering, analysis and dissemination (i.e. both problem-solving inquiry and scientific research; see Chapter 1 on the three pillars of PAR). ‘Training’ is any capacity-building event or series of events aimed at developing skills and knowledge. The next step is to assess and compare the overall and relative importance given to action, research and training in the activities listed. This is done with the help of a Venn diagram representing the three ART components. Participants discuss and place one mark in the intersecting circle that best reflects the overall ART profile within a project or programme, based on the relative attention given to actions, research and training activities in their work. Other options include directly placing each activity where it belongs (as in Figure 3.1), or surveying and comparing the views that different participants have of the same project or programme. The exercise can be applied at the project, programme or organizational levels or used by individuals to assess their personal ART profile. Once the diagram is completed, participants review the ART profile and discuss how satisfactory it is. They decide where more effort is needed and why. They then place a mark in the Venn diagram to show what the profile should be, with an arrow from the current location to the ideal location. Finally, the group explores what can be done to achieve this profile and defines the first steps in the right direction. We should note here that combining A, R and T is not necessarily preferable to combining two things well or doing one thing only. The best profile is the one that reflects what can actually be achieved by a project, organization or person through a realistic and timely use of available resources. This middle of the figure is not necessarily the best place to be if mandates and resources do not permit. ART is helpful when discussing the value of inquiries in relation to capacity building or action-oriented investments of time, resources and energy. The tool is particularly well suited to the university environment where faculty and students struggle to combine and integrate research, course work and community engagement. Questions about the effectiveness of classroom teaching underlie numerous experiments with experiential approaches to university pedagogy such as field placements (coop, practicum, internships) and community-based education (service learning, student research for communities). Dissatisfaction with the broader impacts of research also prompts faculty members to seek out real-life settings where university work can contribute to social change. In 2008 the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) did a group-based assessment of ways to link the university teaching environment to local communities. Laura Suazo facilitated the process, prompted by the decision of the university to establish a new regional branch that would serve both the interests of the surrounding rural economy and student learning (Suazo, 2008). Some 20 professors and the Director of the recently established regional branch of UNAH convened to review ten established programmes in relation to three components in university life: (1) actions, such as community outreach and extension; (2) disciplinary research; and (3) classroom teaching and other capacitybuilding events. Participants in this daylong workshop discussed each programme in 74

Planning systems that learn

RESEARCH

ACTION

‘A & R’ mostly

‘A’ mostly

‘R’ mostly

‘A & R & T’ ‘A & T’ mostly 4

5

6

3

1 2 ‘R & T’ mostly

7 8 10 9 ‘T’ mostly

TRAINING FIGURE 3.1  Current and ideal profiles of UNAH programmes, Honduras

terms of the relative level of effort it put into each ART component. They based their assessments on course descriptions and mission statements for each programme and on actual investment of time and resources during the previous year, information mobilized using a variety of other methods (Free List and Pile Sort, described in Chapter 5, and document review). Figure 3.1 shows that most of the programmes (4 through 10) focus mainly on transmitting disciplinary knowledge and assessing students on their ability to show what they have learned. Minor elements of action and research in the mandate and operations of each programme are shown by their relative proximity to the boundary with other components. For example, programme 5 is mostly concerned with training, but occasionally applies the skills learned to real-life settings. Participants placed three other programmes (1, 2 and 3) in the part of the Venn diagram representing balance in weight between the research and teaching components. They also noted that the research results were actively used in the teaching activities of all three of these programmes, and that both students and professors contributed directly to new research. This reflected a high level of interaction between research and teaching due to elements such as field experiments and lab work not present in the other programmes. None of the programmes incorporate a significant investment in action or real-life problem solving. This observation highlighted the current imbalance between action and academic pursuits within the university and immediately led to a discussion of what was right for UNAH given its new regional mandate. Participants concluded that much more attention needed to be given to combining all three components in at least some 75

Design and facilitation

PHOTO 3.1  University faculty discuss ways to link the university teaching environment to

local communities, Honduras (Source: L. Suazo)

programmes and building stronger interactions between research, teaching activities and action. They decided to move the overall university profile firmly towards the middle part of the figure over the coming years. The commitment reached at the end triggered an immediate question: what programmes and topics to focus on first? The facilitator suggested a strength-based approach to answering the question. Participants used Free List and Pile Sort (Chapter 5) and Option Domain (Chapter 19) to list and analyze their research interests and relate these to problems faced by specific local communities. This helped ground the priority setting exercise in what the people involved had to offer and were committed to personally, while at the same time taking on board the collective commitment to making a difference (see Photo 3.1). Reconciling the two suddenly seemed possible.

ORDER AND CHAOS ART raises critical questions about grounding the discovery process in meaningful action. The answers it triggers among participants raise another key challenge: how to plan actions in a world operating at the edge of chaos – ‘a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity’ (Stefanac and Krot, 2015, p. 109; see Burns, 2015, p. 439)? In response to this dilemma, we use Order and Chaos to support thinking and dialogue around ways to acknowledge uncertainty and plan at the same time. This can be particularly helpful at the beginning of an ambitious undertaking where realism and flexibility might be needed.

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Planning systems that learn Order and Chaos helps people decide on the planning approach they need by answering two basic questions: what are the chances of achieving project or programme goals, and how certain or confident they are in what they know? To start, participants review their goals and the resources they are putting in place to achieve them. It helps to define these at the right level, ambitious enough to be worthwhile but not pie in the sky. Then they use a Cartesian graph (on the wall or the floor) to visualize the kind of undertaking it represents (Figure 3.2). To do so, participants discuss and plot on the vertical line the chances of achieving the project or programme goals, using a scale of zero to ten. A value of ten would indicate that the current conditions are highly favourable and the chances of achieving the goals very high. A value of zero would show the opposite. Once this is done, group members discuss and plot on the horizontal line the level of confidence they have in the information and knowledge they currently possess about the conditions and factors of success. How certain are they that what they know is complete and reliable? A value of ten would indicate that knowledge about conditions and factors of success is detailed or informed by extensive experience. A value of zero would show that knowledge is sketchy and not informed by first-hand experience. Participants mark where the values from the two lines meet and label or place a drawing representing the project at this intersection. The four quadrants created by the figure reflect different planning situations: • A  dream or vision (in the bottom left) points to an ideal that may seem unclear and unpractical. challenge (in the bottom right) is an effort at change pursued with knowledge of • A  the difficulties involved. wager (in the top left) is an effort at change that looks promising but is risky, be• A  cause of limited knowledge. blueprint (in the top right) is an effort at change likely to succeed for reasons that • A  are well known. (The real comfort zone in this quadrant lies above ratings of seven out of ten for both questions asked.) Interestingly, most groups assessing their plans assume that the upper-right quadrant is the best place to be. In fact, not all projects are of this type. Many things are worth pursuing even if the goals are difficult to achieve and information is lacking. That is why the four quadrants are labelled with positive terms. Life is full of situations where dreams and good bets are worth pursuing, as are challenges, despite obstacles or uncertainty. Projects in the blueprint quadrant allow for rigorous planning methods and work executed according to the plans, with a view to delivering the expected results (as in the engineering profession, for instance). Projects in the other quadrants call for an approach to planning more akin to the medical profession, where working hypotheses are tested against initial treatment, further inquiry and iterative actions. The point of Order and Chaos is simple yet far-reaching: every endeavour has a certain level of order and chaos built into it. Planning and implementation must adjust accordingly.

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Design and facilitation Chances of success high

10

Wager

Blueprint Project

Order Level of certainty low

Level of certainty

Chaos

0

10

Dream

high

Challenge 0

Chances of success low

FIGURE 3.2  Order and Chaos

FIGHTING KATKARI EVICTION We turn now to work with the Katkari of India to show how Order and Chaos helped planning in difficult circumstances. This is the first of a number of illustrations in the book drawn from a five-year action inquiry by Daniel J. Buckles, Rajeev Khedkar, Bansi Ghevde and Dnyaneshwar Patil (Buckles and Khedkar, 2013; Buckles et al., 2015). The broader story, which focusses on fighting the eviction of Katkari from their hamlets, involved hundreds of interactions with individuals and communities using a wide range of tools and related process design considerations. The Katkari struggle was an inspiration to us and key to grounding our early experiences in meaningful research. Readers are encouraged to use the index to connect various parts of this story and to consult the 2013 book for a full reading of the implications and impacts of this extended action research process. The Katkari were at one time a forest people living in the Western Ghats, with a special relationship to forest creatures such as the Wagmare (tiger), a common Katkari surname. Today they are a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) under Indian law, and one of the indigenous or adivasi peoples making up about eight per cent of the population of India. Beginning in the 1950s, Katkari families were displaced from the high hills to the coastal plain near Mumbai. Many settled on tiny parcels of marginal land along roadsides and on the outskirts of caste (Hindu) villages, often at the request of landholders and other employers in need of labourers that could be easily bonded. Well known for their physical strength and endurance, many Katkari were also bonded to brick making operations sustaining the growth of cities in western India. 78

Planning systems that learn

PHOTO 3.2  Shripat Waghmare rests after threshing rice for a landowner in Sudhagad,

India (Source: D. Buckles)

In 2005, Rajeev Khedkar and Bansi Ghevde were working with the Katkari on labour and land rights and livelihood issues, building on 15 years of experience. In March of that year, several Katkari women told Bansi that a barbed wire fence had been erected around their hamlet. A religious trust had recently purchased several properties to establish an ashram. The sale included title to land settled some 80 years earlier by about 20 Katkari families. The Katkari were told that the farmer they were bonded to no longer owned the land and that they had to leave. A small gate was left in the barbed wire enclosure. The women said they were terrified, but could not leave the place where their parents and grandparents were buried. 79

Design and facilitation This incident launched the action inquiry, starting with the use of Order and Chaos to reflect on what we were getting into. The solution seemed clear. We were familiar with the strong body of land legislation and special constitutional rights in place to protect the housing rights of Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) such as the Katkari. The state government had a process and source of funding for meeting housing needs in rural areas dating back several decades. A direct approach to fighting eviction looked possible, relying on the existing legislation, self-evident housing rights and established housing programmes financed by the state. The political climate for addressing the most extreme cases of human rights violations also seemed to be favourable given the economic boom in Maharashtra at that time and the state government’s apparent interest in projecting an image of prosperity for all. The financial cost appeared low as well. Katkari hamlets are very small, often less than an acre, and typically located on extremely poor lands of no agricultural value. Given these considerations, the research team estimated that the chances of achieving the goal of secure title were relatively high (about 75 per cent probability). We also discussed our level of certainty regarding our knowledge of the conditions and success factors affecting the goal. Members of the research team had been working with the Katkari and with local government officials for many years and had good knowledge of who to speak to and how they might react. We also had good information on the location of Katkari communities scattered throughout three districts, based on years of criss-crossing the area on motorbike. Relationships with the Katkari were personal and trusting in many hamlets. We also had on hand detailed information on the relevant land rights legislation and provisions regarding marginalized populations. Members of the research team had collected the information over the years when lobbying in support of tribal rights to forest land and agricultural land. We understood what was involved in making land claims in the state of Maharashtra. The strength of these various sources of information gave us confidence that we had a fairly complete and reliable picture of the conditions and factors affecting the situation. We concluded that our information and knowledge base merited a relatively high score (80 per cent certainty that it was complete and reliable). The assessment conducted by the research team showed that the chances of success were good and that we knew the situation well enough to justify our optimism. This conclusion, summarized by point A in Figure 3.3, suggested to us that the project was situated in the quadrant of relative ‘order’, where precise plans could be made and implemented with confidence, much like a blueprint for building a house. While it would involve a lot of work on everyone’s part and would take time, one thing would lead to another until the fences were removed and the land under the villagers’ houses secured. As readers might suspect, our lived experience was quite different from the plan. Almost from the beginning what seemed like a straightforward path led into a tangled briar patch. To begin, record rainfall and widespread flooding delayed a planned survey and jeopardized our immediate engagement with Katkari in their villages. When the survey was finally completed three months later it showed that the scope of tenure insecurity among the Katkari was much greater than anticipated. We determined that 212 Katkari hamlets, representing 68 per cent of the 313 hamlets located in three districts, did not have title to a village site. We realized that addressing the problem in all communities would represent 80

Planning systems that learn a significant challenge well beyond the capability of a small organization. Collectively, it would also be a very substantial cost to government land reform programmes. After the first community meetings it also became evident that working with the Katkari on this issue required a lot more time and skill on our part than we originally thought. Unlike cases of individual land rights addressed by team members in the past, mobilization around the right to a village site is a collective action. This means that high levels of community organization, participation and agreement are needed. Given the deep poverty and long history of social exclusion faced by the Katkari, many communities were fragmented. Social cohesion and self-confidence were low. Full and immediate participation in a collective action by all or even a majority of residents in a hamlet was simply not realistic. Other imponderables and unknowns played havoc with our original assessment of the chances of success. A few months after the research began, the government announced plans to greatly expand the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. This sent land prices through the roof, especially in areas near major highways where many Katkari had settled. Landholders in these areas were ecstatic and went on high alert for any threats to their ownership. Some government officials, Gram Panchayats (village authorities) and employers in brick kilns also opposed Katkari claims to village sites, for a variety of reasons. Given these many obstacles, some predictable and others emerging as the project unfolded, the team was forced to rethink its approach. We realized that many things would need to change on many fronts simultaneously in order to achieve the apparently straightforward goal of securing village sites. There would be no easy solution, despite careful analysis with the Katkari about the conditions needed for success, and many months of diligent and promising work to create these conditions. We redid our initial assessment of the research plan and revised downward our estimate of the chances of successfully securing village sites. When we reflected on what we had learned so far, we also concluded that we now had more complete and reliable information and knowledge regarding the various conditions and factors affecting the project goals. By trying to solve the problem, we had increased our understanding of the main hurdles and the strongest barriers. All in all, we knew that the chances of success were low. We also had confidence that this time we knew what we were up against. The action research endeavour, summarized by point ‘B’ in Figure 3.3, was now more correctly seen as a significant challenge, rather than a blueprint that could be simply planned and implemented. The shift in thinking about the nature of the inquiry and the kind of planning it required, consolidated in the new assessment, was unsettling and a test of the team’s own expectations and resolve. Suddenly, the action inquiry was a very uncertain endeavour with no clear end in sight. While this was cause for worry, it was also a useful conclusion as it pointed to a new kind of planning in a world of relative chaos. Recognizing the challenges did not mean we abandoned all efforts to plan. Instead, we began to ground every step of the inquiry in working hypotheses regarding what needed to shift in the situation in order to increase the chances of success. The project called for movement mainly on the vertical axis of Order and Chaos. Three working hypotheses emerged to bridge the gap between the current situation and the success aimed for: addressing government neglect, breaking the bonds of migratory labour, and filling gaps in both hamlet-level and collective organization. Together with the Katkari, the team tested 81

Chances of success high

10

Wager

Blueprint

A

Order Level of certainty low

Level of certainty

Chaos

0

10

Goal: secure tenure Dream

0

high

B Challenge

Chances of success low

FIGURE 3.3  Assessment ‘A’ and ‘B’, fighting Katkari eviction, India

PHOTO 3.3  Land for sale advertisement near Nagothane, India (Source: D. Buckles)

Planning systems that learn these hypotheses over several years and adjusted plans in response to small successes, setbacks and stakeholder interventions that could not be predicted in advance. Instead of a plan-and-implement framework, we adopted a continuous action–reaction approach to planning ‘in the middle’ of a complex world. Plans became more flexible, uneven and iterative. We did not abandon planning altogether, however, or simply proceed in an ad hoc manner. Rather, we planned in light of working hypotheses and a clear sense of purpose. As with any real-life voyage, the route was progressively adjusted in response to lessons learned, the reality of dead ends and the possibility of new directions emerging along the way. Ultimately, the story became a positive one with significant gains for the Katkari achieved by them over a number of years (see Buckles and Khedkar, 2013).

ACTIVITY MAPPING Planning efforts for change under favourable conditions and with good understanding of all related conditions and factors is very different from plans made in the middle of complex and messy situations. Activity Mapping is a tool designed to accommodate both. The technique is relatively easy and straightforward. It involves creating a diagram to organize visual information on current or proposed activities and related details, using cards, post-its, kraft paper or any mind mapping software available on the Internet. The detailed steps to follow are described in our companion handbook and essentially involve listing current and proposed activities, organizing them based on principles of similarity among activities (see Free List and Pile Sort, Chapter 5) and focussing on immediate activities for detailed planning of goals, resources, etc. When working on complex initiatives, you can divide participants into groups, ask each group to use Activity Mapping to map out their own set of activities, and then adjust group maps through discussions and negotiations between all groups. Activity Mapping is pretty simple, one might think. And yet the exercise often proves to be difficult for those who are already well versed in the use of advanced planning methodologies. There are several reasons for this. One has to do with the prominence given in conventional planning to abstract thinking. By contrast, the focus of Activity Mapping is not so much on ideas or issues but rather on activities happening at the ground level. The technique uses ‘goal-oriented activities’ as the point of entry and organizing principle, unlike the ‘action-oriented goals’ (general and specific objectives) emphasized in many project management tools such as Results-Based Management. The difference is significant: starting a planning discussion with goals such as ‘promoting democratic governance in the management of park resources’ can be somewhat abstract and overly ambitious as well. Talking about ‘setting up a multistakeholder committee to co-manage the park more fairly’ is easier to discuss. The focus is on what people actually do or plan to do, with a tacit understanding of the broader aims pursued and appreciation of why the plan exists. Goal-oriented actions are more grounded and closer to the day-to-day language that people use to make plans and evaluate their progress. They encourage bottom-up thinking, from the concrete to the abstract (what should we do . . . and why?) as opposed to top-down reasoning (why should we change things . . . and how should we go about it?). In addition to being more grounded, the approach has the advantage of accommodating 83

Design and facilitation a plurality of stakeholder interests and potential outcomes around a common set of actions. People can agree on what they can do together for reasons that vary and have yet to be clarified or further negotiated. This pluralistic approach is practically ruled out in conventional goal-oriented planning, which insists on getting everyone on the same page with regards to common end goals, well before exploring the means to achieve them. The visual quality of Activity Mapping also helps people discuss plans and, while doing so, see the forest for the trees. This feature keeps group members engaged with the big picture while remaining grounded in goal-oriented actions. Another important advantage of visualizing plans broadly is that sets and subsets of activities appearing in the map can be added, deleted or modified at any time. They do not have to fall neatly into predefined table headings, all of which must be properly filled in for the plan to be complete. The implications here are not merely technical. In essence, the tool is an invitation to let planning remain incomplete and evolve over time. In complex situations, accepting gaps in plans is the only rational course of action. People can decide to decide later and plan to plan later, as they see fit. Some activities invite formal, immediate and detailed planning while others don’t. Iterative planning is nothing new. But there is some ambiguity and confusion in the way the buzzword is used. One meaning, often found in organizations associated with Results-Based Management, is that plans must be made but can be changed. As the Treasury Board of Canada puts it, ‘It is important to remember that the logic model is not static; it is an iterative tool. As the program changes, the logic model should be revised to reflect the changes, and these revisions should be documented’ (Government of Canada, 2018). By contrast, iteration can also mean planning where progress is made through successive cycles of testing and planning, towards a well-defined goal. This is the approach to iterative planning used in the world of software development and manufacturing characterized by scrum meetings, ‘agile’ team plans and continuous prototyping. Iteration means planning to make important planning decisions throughout the process, as opposed to sticking to the master plan or revisiting it only if necessary. In the world of clinical reasoning, an iterative diagnosis has an even more radical meaning, more in line with hypothetical-deductive reasoning and empirical trial-and-error. When meeting a patient, more often than not the clinician will quickly gather enough information to generate one or more possible hypotheses, to be followed up with further questions and tested with treatment based on educated guesses. If the assumptions do not hold, new hypotheses are formulated, goals redefined and actions adjusted accordingly. Proceeding otherwise, through exhaustive data collection, ‘usually does not improve diagnostic accuracy and may make it worse’ (Norman et al., 2009, p. 747). Clinical interventions that never deviate from initial plans make even less sense. Applications of Activity Mapping can accommodate any planning approach, whether it be based on the plan-and-execute model or a process of iteration of one type or another. The main requirement is that the approach used suit the situation. When the situation calls for ‘agile’ iteration, gaps and holes in planning are normal. Some activities will not require formal planning or should be planned at a later date, when more information is available about the results of prior activities, the actions of stakeholders, or key conditions that need to be met. New tasks and activities, including fact-finding and inquiry, can be added, in 84

Planning systems that learn due time and as needed. In cases where efforts at change must cope with uncertainties and serious difficulties, planning calls for even more advanced forms of iteration, as commonly practiced by the medical profession. Activity Mapping can then adjust by leaving gaps in programming and allowing major shifts in goals or means to achieve them, if necessary and supported by the parties involved. Since inquiry is one activity among others, it too may have to be revisited and change direction when circumstances demand. There is another important feature of Activity Mapping that may require old planning habits to be broken: the tool leaves a lot of latitude in the level of detail needed to complete the map at any point in time. In some cases, participants may be in a position to add precise information on the activity cards, especially those that require immediate planning, such as the start and finish dates, the current stage of completion, people involved and their roles, material resources (equipment, budget), the information required, methods to be used and the expected outputs or outcomes. Having said that, we stress that as a tool Activity Mapping does not replace advanced project management methodologies and software, but rather can be used in combination with them to arrive at plans that are grounded and make sense. Transforming mind-maps based on activities into tables structured around reporting on outcomes, and vice versa, are compatible strategies. In summary, the point of Activity Mapping is to plan action and inquiry at the right time and at the appropriate level of detail, and to adjust the two in light of unforeseen events and new knowledge. When key factors and conditions are easy to predict, Activity Mapping allows inquiry to be planned in some detail, well in advance. Logic models may result. In more difficult situations, the same tool allows questions and ways to answer them to evolve over time and adjust to ongoing learning and planning circumstances and needs. Goals and activities are defined through continuous testing and learning from success and failure – through an ongoing feedback, action–reaction loop.

PLANNING IN THE MIDDLE When combined with Order and Chaos, Activity Mapping is an invitation to carry out the planning and inquiry process ‘in the middle’ of real-life events and circumstances, including complex situations that have a prior history and no clear ending. However simple and user-friendly it may seem, the tool actually questions mechanical and linear conceptions of efforts at change, approaches which may be completely out of touch with reality. While thinking on this question is key to advancing the art and science of PAR, it also has foundations in the history of philosophy. Eisenhower once said that ‘plans are worthless, but planning is everything’ (Eisenhower, 1957, p. 818). On the one hand, grounding things in sound planning is part of everything we do, including war, commerce, work and marriage: in order to make the necessary ‘arrangements’, proper ‘terms and rules of engagement’ must be clearly defined. Failing to plan the process equals planning to fail in the process. Anticipating the future is all the more important when clear links between actions and their effects can be established and trusted; no one wants a bridge or a flight to London to be a working hypothesis, a best bet or lesser evil compared to swimming. To navigate in both normal and perilous 85

Design and facilitation times, we must learn rules of navigation, plan our journey, prepare ourselves to cope with uncertainty and tame the unknown. On the other hand, many planning horizons are ‘iffy’ from the start, which means that fixed frames of reference are always suspect. When in troubled waters, only fools let plans navigate the ship. Planning that maps out all aspects of a journey is irresponsible if it denies the unknowable. This means that the mainstream approach to project management and the inquiry process – plan before, execute after – offers a linear pathway not suited to complex endeavours, such as defusing a conflict, eradicating injustice or illness, or coping with climate change. When problems are messy and hard to define, the process of ‘doing’ cannot be a simple derivation of efficient thinking and planning. In difficult circumstances a good plan should not be a small picture outline of everything that needs to be done to achieve results. It should be more like a big picture riddled with working hypotheses and loose ends, subject to falsification, second thoughts and new ideas on where things are heading and where to go next. Real-life events call for logic and rigour, to be sure. But they also call for creativity and flexibility, the kind that allows people to move in and out of risky plans in response to new circumstances and information acquired step by step, along the way, through trial and error. Good planning in complex settings includes decisions not to decide, to plan later or to make new plans, when the exercise is useful and possible, if at all. As with medicine, knowledge to address messy problems is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. This is Aristotle’s phronesis, Freire’s praxis or Checkland’s soft-systems thinking. It is Lyotard’s work of art emerging in the doing of it. Practical wisdom dictates that a sound inquiry should proceed rationally, with a sense of planning and orientation in time. Still, real-life inquiry is the unfolding of a mystery, not the fulfilment of chronology (Barthes, 1970, pp. 26, 91–92, 215). Investigative journeys that follow the ideal-typical canons of positive science move from alpha to omega, from opening questions to final answers, under the guidance of strict methods and predictive theory, in search of straightforward explanations that can be generalized across time and space. Actions ‘engineered’ to achieve precise outcomes abide by the same linear narrative. They bring about predictable results and social change according to plans, through clear roadmaps and efficient interventions. These linear pathways to questions asked and responses given are designed to tell simple stories. The full narrative of action inquiry is quite different and is better understood through Roland Barthes’s action code. This is the code involving the ordering of scenes, sequences and stages of actions, events and conversations situated in narrative time. To this ‘action catalogue’ Barthes adds the hermeneutic code governing the narrative enigma. Problems raised and solved by an investigative story revolve around the formulation of a question, the promise of a response, admissions of defeat and replies that may be ambiguous or partial, delayed or misleading. In most cases, action research is an explorative journey that proceeds and evolves in the middle of complex events and messy situations. This is the path of mesos, Greek for ‘in the middle’, as opposed to anything that comes ‘first’ or ‘last’. Given its unavoidable wanderings, engaged inquiry points to ‘what a conversation is – simply the outline of a becoming’, an ever-evolving world ruled by chance and multiplicity, a ‘chaosmos’ that has no absolute beginning or ending, no definitive source or final 86

Planning systems that learn destination (Deleuze and Parnet, 1987, p. 2; Deleuze, 1994, p. 76; Guattari, 1995, p. 59). Even when ends are met, they become means at best, to be kept in motion, with a sense of purpose, and a readiness to be found unready for more hazardous findings and unexpected events. It is the middle ground of PAR.

REFERENCES Barthes, R. (1970) S/Z, Seuil, Paris. Buckles, D. J., Khedkar, R. and Ghevde, B. (2015) ‘Fighting Eviction: Local Learning and the Experience of Inequality Among India’s Adivāsi’, Action Research, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 262–280. Buckles, D. J., Khedkar, R., Ghevde, B. and Patil, D. (2013) Fighting Eviction: Tribal Land Rights and Research-in-Action, Cambridge University Press India, New Delhi. Burns, D. (2015) ‘How Change Happens: The Implications of Complexity and Systems Thinking for Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 434–445. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. (1987) Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, Columbia University Press, New York. Dewey, J. (1927) The Public and its Problems, Henry Holt, New York. Dewey, J. and Bentley, A. (1949) Knowing and the Known, Beacon, Boston, MA. Eisenhower, D. D. (1957) Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, National Archives and Records Service, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Government of Canada (2018) Supporting Effective Evaluations: A Guide to Developing Performance Measurement Strategies, retrieved from www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/ audit-evaluation/centre-excellence-evaluation/guide-developing-performance-measurementstrategies.html, accessed 15 February 2018. Guattari, F. (1995) Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm, trans. P. Bains and J. Pefanis, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN. James, W. (1978) The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Norman, G., Barraclough, K., Dolovich, L. and Price, D. (2009), ’Diagnosis in General Practice: Iterative Diagnosis’, British Medical Journal, vol. 339, b3490. Peirce, C. S. (1902) ‘Pragmatic and Pragmatism’, in J. M. Baldwin (ed) Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 2, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 322–323. Stefanac, L. and Krot, M. (2015) ‘Using T-Groups to Develop Action Research Skills in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Environments’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 109–117. Suazo, L. (2008) ‘Setting Priorities for an Applied Research Agenda in a New University’, in D. J. Buckles (ed) Proceedings of Celebrating Dialogue: An international forum, retrieved from www.participa toryactionresearch.net/case-studies, accessed 20 January 2009.

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CHAPTER 4

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation

THE EIGHT RULES OF PAME The Pame are an indigenous people living mostly in the Mexican State of San Luis Potosí. They work as migrant labourers and peasants on marginal lands. Those still speaking the language number less than 10,000. They have an unusual counting system. As in many cultures they rely on body imagery to express numbers, hands in their case. However, they keep count by using the four spaces between their fingers in each hand, not the fingers themselves. Eight is therefore the base accounting system. This means that ten is eight plus two, 18 is two times eight plus two, and so on. When it comes to taking stock of ‘things that count for something’, they imagine them to be like sticks they can lay their hands on – sticks they can hold between the fingers, so to speak (Avelino, 2005). This chapter, on monitoring and evaluation (M&E), is dedicated to promoting the myriad ways in which people can literally measure and assess both progress and failures in their everyday lives. In tribute to the accounting system of Pamean culture, we present a PAR approach to M&E in eight steps playfully called Participatory Action Monitoring and Evaluation, or PAME for short. As we proceed from one step to the next, we offer a critical review of key issues, including the meaning of measurements, qualitative versus quantitative indicators, impact attribution and contribution, and dealing with complexity. To be clear, the PAME label is not meant to be a segue into the promotion of yet another M&E framework. The M&E literature is already vast, sophisticated and replete with packaged methodologies and commercial acronyms. It does not need another. Furthermore, as readers will see we are highly sceptical of generic and standardized M&E methodologies that apply off-the-shelf tools to virtually all settings. Bureaucratically designed M&E that relies mostly on empirical indicators – qualitative, quantitative or mixed – to measure progress in achieving expected outcomes tends to be extractive and limited in its ability to meet concrete action learning needs. On the whole, our approach to M&E consists in flexibly generating context-specific methodologies, using and creating a wide range of analytical methods and tools suited to the defined task. This is in fact the way all scientists are expected to develop methodologies, an approach M&E practitioners and evaluation funders seem to have forgotten in the rush to standardize and package. The approach is also different from schematic M&E guidelines that keep their distance from instrumental

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Participatory action monitoring and evaluation methods and techniques, under the assumption that ‘mere tools’ are inherently neutral and secondary. The way we see it, M&E goes astray when it adopts a generic package, but also when it limits itself to advancing conceptual guidelines that shirk away from addressing the sticky issues of engaging with people and with methods proper. At the end of the chapter, we return to this issue and illustrate an analytical tool people can use to critically examine their evaluation culture as part of an organizational learning system. PIE, a tool for better integrating Planning, Inquiry and Evaluation, reflects the PAME principles of grounding M&E in effective planning and action-oriented learning, with a concern for engaging diverse perspectives and using a variety of methods at the proper time and scaled to the right level of detail. As the tool title suggests, approaching evaluation as part of a learning system that includes planning and inquiry offers the opportunity to strike the right balance between being methodical and being flexible, ‘in the middle’ of learning journeys that never end.

1  Takes stock of results The M&E literature can be quite technical. When exploring it, however, a basic question comes to mind: what is evaluation, and what is not evaluation? Defining what the word means is essential, including clarifying how it relates to other notions such as ‘inquiry’, ‘research’ and ‘planning’. Fingers cannot be part of a whole hand if there’s no way to tell them apart. When the issue is one of project or programme management, which is one of the places where M&E is most at home, evaluation is simply an inquiry into results or outcomes assessed against goals. It takes stock of things that count, by determining the consequences and worth of planned interventions. But the term ‘inquiry’ has other meanings as well. It may refer to efforts to better understand a situation, as in a diagnostic inquiry for problem solving. Alternatively, an inquiry may take on a scientific character and seek to explain and predict a wide variety of connected phenomena in general terms. A scientific inquiry is the equivalent of the term ‘research’ in that it sets out to contribute to general knowledge, including theoretical debates. All three forms of inquiry involve the close examination of facts, but for different reasons (see Chapter 1 for further discussion of the definition of research, one of the three pillars of PAR). ‘Planning’ is another term closely associated with the practice of M&E. Broadly, planning involves the organization and resourcing of steps to achieve goals. On its own, it is more concerned about doing things, and less about learning. Action-oriented initiatives may of course combine all of these in a single endeavour. This is what PAR aims for, by inviting participants to analyze a given problem situation (a diagnostic inquiry), plan and implement an intervention, evaluate results (evaluative inquiry) and contribute to scientific research at the same time (scientific inquiry). Evaluation frameworks such as Outcome Mapping, Results-Based Management, Participatory Learning and Action, Realist Evaluation and Theory of Change all go well beyond evaluation strictly speaking, to include other tasks such as planning (outcomes, inputs, roles, etc.) and diagnostic inquiry into behaviours, assumptions and risks. They are planning methodologies as well as methodologies for diagnostic inquiry and for evaluation (see Earl et al., 2001; Global Affairs Canada, 2016; UNDP, 2011; Pretty et al., 1995; Guijt, 2014; Zukoski and Luluquisen, 2002; Rogers, 2007; Coryn et al., 2011; Westhorp, 2014).

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Design and facilitation Broad and integrative perspectives on the scope and role of evaluation are widespread. In our work we prefer to use the word evaluation in its strict sense, that is, taking stock of results against goals. As such it is distinct from planning and forms of fact-finding and research aimed at understanding reality for problem solving or the advancement of science. Some well-developed M&E frameworks are concerned first and foremost with facilitating evaluation in this strict sense. Most Significant Change, Randomized Controlled Trials, Developmental Evaluation and Utilization-Focused Evaluation have this in common (see Davies and Dart, 2005; Duflo et al., 2007; Patton, 2008, 2013). Their focus is on collecting and analyzing qualitative and/or quantitative data about project or programme results, intended or not. Planning is not built into the methodologies, and they are not structured primarily around generating contributions to science. Distinguishing evaluation from other forms of inquiry and from other activities in project and programme management and delivery brings clarity and modesty to a concept that overreaches too often. In our view, the more M&E tries to encompass the less it actually does well. This is not to say that M&E should stand on its own. Evaluation has no content apart from the planned goals to be assessed. It must be part of something bigger than itself, including planning, diagnostic inquiry and theory building. In practice, however, the ways in which evaluative, diagnostic and scientific inquiries are actually blended and fed into real project or programme planning vary considerably. Key to a PAME approach is to clarify the overall intent that should guide the choice of tools and method and the overall design process.

2  Gets people to talk and listen Given our commitment to PAR, we naturally feel at home with M&E approaches that insist on engaging users in meeting their own action learning needs, such as Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Developmental Evaluation, Participatory Learning and Action and Outcome Mapping. In our view, evaluative thinking requires that we never lose track of the ‘human subjects’ involved or, better said, real people and what they have to say about things that ‘count for them’ and can be known only by asking. When it comes to investigating people’s goals, actions and results, the value of questioning people comes naturally to mind. Why? Because surveying a social situation is not like doing a geological survey. The investigation requires that people be asked or ask themselves what it is they know, think, feel, want, have or do in relation to the subject or situation at hand. The role that people play in shaping social and natural history is such that no method can actually take them out of the equation. Practically all M&E methods gather evidence by putting questions to the people involved. But there is nothing new about this. After all, people have been surveyed for thousands of years. In ancient Rome, official state censors periodically summoned each ‘paterfamilias’ to appear before them and provide a detailed account of himself, his family and his property. This included his full name and that of his father and wife together with the number, names and ages of his children, followed by the estimated value of everything he owned, from slaves to cattle and property in land. The information played a central role in determining social rank, assessing taxes to be levied and enrolling Roman citizens in the army (Suolahti, 1963). The Domesday Book or ‘Great Survey’ in England and parts 90

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation of Wales, completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror, served a similar purpose. Over the centuries, systematic methods for asking people questions and recording their answers have been put to other uses, beyond those of imposing taxes and military service. One well-known function is to investigate the facts of an alleged crime, using rules and procedures of interrogation based on civil or common law systems or the rituals of confession and tribunals of medieval inquisition. Another function is electoral forecasting, going back to the 1820s when American newspapers carried out simple street surveys to see who would likely win the presidency. Journalism itself has now made a profession of querying people on a daily basis. Another reason for surveying people is to challenge existing barriers to well-being, by documenting the health, living conditions and suffering of vulnerable populations, for instance. Inquiries conducted by English liberal social reformers have a long history, starting with John Howard’s 1775 meticulous investigation into prison conditions in England and Wales, based on first-hand observations and interviews with prisoners and prison staff (Howard, 2013). As we know, the twentieth century has seen the exponential growth of investigative methods designed to provide census, judicial, electoral and social scientific data serving many ends. In recent decades, the magnitude of information solicited and stored for one purpose or another owes a lot to the growth of the quantitative social sciences and, more importantly, the recent and continuing revolution in information and communication technologies (Groves, 2011, p. 862). The latter part of the last century has also witnessed a new trend that has become an integral part of today’s world: a massive effort on the part of business to query people on all aspects of their lives. Insurance companies routinely collect self-reported medical history and lifestyle information to refine underwriting and actuarial analysis; banks systematically inquire into the financial circumstances of their clients; and businesses conduct market research and consumer behaviour studies on practically every scale. Modern bureaucracies have joined in the trend. Governments use questionnaires to investigate human health and environment interactions, after Bullstrode’s pioneering inquiry, conducted in 1902, confirming the role of oysters as an agent of transmission of typhoid fever. Scientific management has also become a key player in the business of asking questions to provide data. First developed in the 1920s (Jacoby, 1988), the art of designing and distributing questionnaires and conducting methodical interviews is now standard practice in all forms of profit or not-for-profit organizations concerned with the effective management of resources at their disposal. Management inquiring into prior work experience and skill sets, individual performance, progress in achieving project or programme results, needs assessment, job satisfaction, employees’ attitudes and problems or accidents at work is a routine task in practically all workplace settings. In short, to say that M&E must tap into the information and views that people hold should not be a surprise. Those who object on the grounds that the information gathered from people is subjective, unreliable and of limited use ignore thousands of years of evidence to the contrary. At the risk of stating the obvious, people living in society cannot organize themselves without exchanging reliable information about themselves and their world. This observation, however, raises a basic issue at the heart of M&E: when 91

Design and facilitation

PHOTO 4.1  Young mothers discuss their learning goals, Fort Severn, Canada (Source:

D. Buckles)

information is collected, who is it for and who controls the process? In the end, the real question does not lie in whether people should be asked to provide information, which has long gone without saying. Rather the question is, who does the asking and why? Despite the many functions that surveying, polling and interviewing have served throughout the ages, historical responses to the question point to the perennial problem of power – the power differential between those who are called to answer and those who are in positions to do the asking, be they government officials, business people, organizational managers, insurance companies, government agencies or scientists. All variants of participatory M&E run counter to this tradition: their goal is to get people to talk and listen to each other and mobilize the information and action learning they collectively need to assess results or outcomes against their own goals (Guijt, 2014). The approach challenges the age-old practice of people in positions of power extracting and controlling the information they need from others, in pursuit of their own interests or ends. Inquiry methods enforced by those who rule, with benevolent intent or not, downplay two-way communications between investigators and respondents. The interaction is ignored even when it’s there. Investigators do as if respondents transmit raw information and nothing else. Questions asked are deemed perfectly clear and the answers given purely factual – i.e. never tailored to what investigators expect to hear, are ready to hear or must be told even if they don’t hear it. The Hawthorne effect is either ignored or wishfully ‘disentangled’ and isolated from other parts of the inquiry, in the hope that behaviour (or expression of views) will not be altered due to the surrounding circumstances or to people’s awareness of being observed and questioned (Duflo et al., 2007, p. 69). 92

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation Participatory inquiries are based on an entirely different premise. They uphold the art of designing and conducting ‘structured conversations’ built on negotiated rules. When applied to evaluative thinking, the notion of a ‘structured conversation’ presents many advantages. Essentially, the concept brings together the best of two worlds, namely fluidity and structure. Fluidity evokes something that lacks stable and clearly-defined boundaries. Conversations have this feature. Like running waters, they receive inputs from multiple sources, including sudden flows of facts, thoughts and feelings that may change the direction and normal flow of information between those involved. Bursts of creativity and insights are an integral part of dialogue as well. On their own, however, conversations can be pointless and lead nowhere. Rules and boundaries are needed to mitigate the wanderings of unfocussed talk. This is where structure intervenes, acting like riverbanks that control the source, flow, level and direction of conversations. In a PAR process, people talk and listen to each other while also framing the discussion at hand. They do so by defining the questions to be asked and means to answer them and using the appropriate data and evidence to support findings and decisions to follow. Rules of mutual learning and methods of interactive engagement guide the process. As Chapter 15 explains, creativity meshes with structure to generate meaningful encounters and processes. The principle of interactive engagement and mutual learning that informs much of PAR thinking poses many challenges, thereby creating resistance. It requires that parties contribute at all levels of the M&E enterprise, including evaluation design and planning, fact-finding, analysis and interpretation. Many mainstream M&E frameworks keep these processes separate and reduce frontline staff, partners or actors to providers of raw data in the fact-finding phase of the evaluation. They also have difficulty acknowledging and tapping into day-to-day tracking (e.g. informal exchanges) and non-literate forms of planning and learning that reflect differences in language, thinking and modes of communication. ‘Emic’ contributions to inquiry are key to making M&E immediately useful as feedback for meaningful course correction. These and other benefits of interactive engagement are forgone in evaluations carried out by third-party experts using predefined survey, interview and narrative questions. They are also compromised in all forms of ‘evaluation by proxy’ – i.e. assessing one’s work by reporting on the results of partners supported, a common practice in many large development programmes. Similar limitations are found in ‘systematized self-assessment’ methods such as Outcome Mapping (Earl et al., 2001, p. 3), where findings are isolated from external conversations and factual challenges by others. Most M&E methodologies recognize the value of interactive engagement and mutual learning, at least in principle. The UNDP handbook on Results-Based Management (RBM) is clear in this regard, with its emphasis on using the approach to foster organizational learning and promote mutual accountability, understood as ‘the respective accountability of parties working toward shared outcomes’ (UNDP, 2011, pp. 4–5). The actual practice of RBM, however, is another story. While ‘the concept of mutual accountability has become established as criteria for development and aid effectiveness . . . questions remain around actual implications’ (UNDP, 2011, p. 3). Excerpts from Bester’s summary of sentiments expressed by RBM users are familiar to most people closely acquainted with RBM practice. ‘People comply with the letter of RBM, but not in the spirit’. Or ‘the purpose of RBM was to make our work more strategic – a strategic approach, strategic partnerships, 93

Design and facilitation etc., but it has been reduced to a set of boxes, filling out these boxes and reporting on these boxes’ (Bester, 2016, p. 12). Bester politely concludes that RBM ‘evaluations tend to be associated with accountability and sometimes their value as tools for learning and developing a results culture are overlooked’ (Bester, 2016, p. 18). While funded projects and programmes may have no choice but to account for resources, one-way reporting and accounting often ends up counting most. Alternative methodologies such as Participatory Learning and Action and Outcome Mapping make a stronger argument for interactive engagement and mutual learning. But limitations are still built in. Despite its commitment to participation, Participatory Learning and Action tools can be used to overly structure and override local ways of thinking, learning and decision making. This can conceal diverging interests and mask the exercise of power in designing and implementing the action inquiry (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). In its own way, Outcome Mapping maintains a hierarchical flow of M&E information as well. The focus is on the progress achieved by funded organizations in improving the way they support ‘the changes in the behaviours, actions, activities, and relationships of the people, groups, and organizations with whom a program works’ (Earl et al., 2001, p. 17). The chain of influence remains unidirectional; the funding agency helps the ‘intervenor’ or ‘change agent’ improve and report on the ways it helps its boundary partners transform their behaviour. Again, the discourse of partnership is somewhat at odds with the direction of influence and effective power built into the assessment process. Translating good M&E intentions into structured conversations proves to be a major challenge. Why? Much of the answer lies in the over-bureaucratization and standardization of M&E. Actually, this is the elephant in the room. Promoting a culture of partnership, dialogue and pragmatic learning in varied multistakeholder settings is hardly compatible with burdensome procedures to generate and gather standardized data that must be ‘rolled up’ from one level to the next, mostly for upward reporting and accounting purposes. In fairness to RBM, important refinements introduced over the years have resulted in a better appreciation of what mutual accountability entails, the difference between attribution and contribution and the role of theory and hypothetical thinking in making and assessing plans for change. However, conceptual upgrades have had the unfortunate effect of increasing the number of boxes incorporated into RBM templates and matrices, making the entire process even more complicated and demanding than before. As we shall see below, too much bureaucratic control over the M&E process, for the sake of science-like rigour and reliability, is at odds with the way normal science actually works.

3  Shows flexibility in method Taking stock of results by getting people to talk and listen seems like a straightforward task. However, selecting the right tool and using it in the right way is not so simple. Success depends on people having access to a wide range of tools and showing flexibility when combining them to assess progress against goals. Approaches that advocate for one set of ‘best methods’ – whether it be participant or non-participant observation, surveys, interviews, storytelling or focus groups – are highly limited in this regard. The disadvantages of drawing habitually on a narrow range of tools are now so clear that multi-methodology is 94

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation the new fashion. While qualitatively oriented, Outcome Mapping recognizes that ‘credible evaluations interlace quantitative and qualitative data from several sources’ (Earl et al., 2001, p. 28). And while quantitatively oriented, RBM opts not to take sides in the ‘debate regarding the value of quantitative data and that of qualitative information and whether quantitative measures (or indicators) are better than qualitative ones. This debate is now almost settled in the evaluation field with the growing usage of mixed methods. Practitioners have abandoned the idea that these sources of information are irreconcilable: both types of information are necessary’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 52). Multi-methodology challenges the debate between the qualitative and quantitative stances in the human sciences. On the quantitative side of the divide, methods include polls, surveys, questionnaires and experiments (as in Randomized Controlled Trials) designed to generate numerical data for mathematical analysis. On the qualitative side, methods range from archival and content analysis to individual or group interviews that may be openended or structured, with a focus on life histories, key themes or critical incidents. Other qualitative methods include participant or non-participant observation or self-assessment journals (as in Outcome Mapping). Calls to bridge this divide are many. At stake is the development of skills needed to mesh different methods, with a view to extending the breadth and range of inquiry tools to address increasingly complex, interdisciplinary issues (Creswell and Garrett, 2008; Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007). This ‘third movement’ is long overdue (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003). Fixed methods are giving way to mixed methods. The shift introduces a breath of fresh air into a world of binary and monolithic thinking by upholding a pluralistic and flexible attitude to the advancement of knowledge. The benefits are many. They include triangulation, which corroborates results obtained from the use of different methods (Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 58). Methods can complement each other, by shedding different colours of light on the subject at hand. At times, the results of one method (e.g. a focus group) may help develop another inquiry involving another method (e.g. survey questions) (Spratt et al., 2004). Also, multi-methodology can serve to prompt new thinking, by discovering the paradoxes, contradictions and multiple perspectives that emerge from different methods (Greene et al., 1989). A pluralistic framing of evaluative methods and the action inquiry process is a step in the right direction. And yet the story of a divorce in the world of methods is far from over. When examined closely, part of the current reconciliation rests on a semantic sleight of hand where ‘qualitative methods’ are reduced to ‘qualitative indicators’. In RBM, measurements are always a must, whether they involve quantitative indicators of observable phenomena, such as wage rates, or qualitative indicators based on perceptions and opinions, such as job satisfaction levels, obtained through surveys or interviews, for instance. In the end, all indicators, qualitative and quantitative, are units of measurements. ‘Quantitative indicators are represented by a number, percentage or ratio. In contrast, qualitative indicators seek to measure quality and often are based on perception, opinion or levels of satisfaction’ (UNDP, 2011, p. 19; see Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 12). The implication here is that qualitative methods proper, using reflexive tools based on examples and stories of results, as in Outcome Mapping, count less than qualitative indicators, if at all. 95

Design and facilitation RBM’s overreliance on the measurables of life, investigated through formal procedures, assumes that qualitative methods proper are not quantitative in some important way. Yet the notion that human language and thinking can be stripped of all forms of measurement is hard to imagine. Methodologists that use formal measurements should bear in mind that numbers originate from ordinary life and stories that count, including the PAME’s eightfold base count. Measurements speak volumes in our existence, as when we cook meals, keep time, inquire about speed and distance, ponder about weight and weather, or number the blessings of youth and old age. Routine calculations include the constant estimation of risks of accident, illness and death. People use numbers and amounts to add value to conversations about everyday life. Measurements are also an integral part of music, songs and poetry. The notion that ‘perception indicators’ are fundamentally different from ‘quantitative indicators’ based on directly observable quantities (of wages given to workers, for instance) is equally questionable. When they respond to a survey on their level of job satisfaction, people can reflect reliably on the issue only because of their own direct observations of the many ways in which work affects their behaviour and feelings (complaining, smiling, arriving late, taking sick leave, looking for another job, etc.). Perception indicators are not just ‘qualitative’. More to the point, they are quantitative observations left unacknowledged. More is said on this point below in our discussion of what ‘thoughtful indicators’ are about. The reverse assumption that ‘quantitative indicators’ are not inherently ‘qualitative’ can also be challenged on several grounds. In order to calculate observable phenomena, say literacy rates in a given population (to use an UNDP example), observers must address the fact that ‘notions of what it means to be literate or illiterate are influenced by academic research, institutional agendas, national context, cultural values and personal experiences’ (UNESCO, 2005, p. 147). Measurements reflect choices made in regards to the perceived qualities of each possible definition of being literate and illiterate. Judgement is also exercised in regards to the quality of different possible instruments and sources that can be used to gather the data, in light of what the inquiry is aiming for. Furthermore, most of the phenomena we measure are subject to the fractal paradox (like coastlines that can be observed but have no absolute length, because the curve they form changes with the measurement scale used). On this point, we know from physics that the instrument and scale we use to measure something may actually change the phenomenon under observation. Simply put, purpose, language, concepts and instruments shape the things we measure and observe. This should not come as a surprise, given that quantity is just another quality: that is, it is the ‘countable property’ of a thing, among other properties or qualities that count, as we perceive them. When we measure distance, volume, duration or monetary value, we make assessments of ‘qualities in certain quantities’. Most measurements created for project or programme M&E are of this type; they are about particular ‘qualities in quantities’. In response to this, one might argue that multi-methodology is simply an invitation to mix methods that tend to be of opposite kinds, with a formal emphasis on either qualitative or quantitative thinking. Many evaluation approaches do this. When compared with qualitative studies, quantitative inquiries use measurements of a different order. While

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PHOTO 4.2  Storytelling to generate evaluation criteria, Cameroon (Source: D. Buckles)

reasonable, this argument raises another problem: it ignores methods that belong to neither camp because they are inherently mixed. A researcher can use a single ‘mixed method’ without having to mix multiple methods. Most Significant Change is a case in point (Davies and Dart, 2005). The technique involves the collection of change stories that can include quantitative information (e.g. how many people reported something) and that may be used to measure patterns emerging from different locations and settings. The method is mixed from the start. Kelly’s Personal Construct method, while not common in M&E, is another good example of a mixed or unified method that blends qualitative and quantitative reasoning. Our social version of the method, called Domain Analysis, is all the more powerful as it integrates analytical reasoning and narration in a participatory mode (see Chapter 19). That is, participants contribute storytelling, logical attributions and measurements to the same exercise. The method goes to show that integration of qualitative and quantitative thinking into a single unified method is different from simply mixing multiple methods. If multi-methodology is to truly be a third movement, it must offer robust ways of uniting both forms of human reasoning into a new blend of inquiry. Adding up and linking methods that remain distinctly quantitative and qualitative is a relatively weak strategy. A stronger strategy consists in choosing and developing methods that are inherently ‘mixed’ in the first place, as in Most Significant Change, the works of Kelly and many of the tools discussed in this book.

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4  Is fit-to-purpose The continuing rift between quantitative and qualitative methods perpetuates an odd assumption: the notion that measurements are strictly technical and instrumental, positively viewed by some and mistrusted by others. The debate ignores the fact that it is never quality or quantity that really ‘counts’, but rather the measures of life and meaning, subject to discussion and debate between the people involved. PAME emerges from this thinking. It promotes ‘structured conversations’ that help people take stock of progress made in relation to goals, using multiple methods flexibly and integrating these into methodologies that suit their purpose. That is fine, one might say, but what motivates the choice of method in the first place, and how do we go about forming the right mix? Knowing many tools and being able to mix them certainly helps. This assumes that multi-methods are inherently superior. But are they? Not really. Whether M&E can assess progress in specific settings through a single or many methods is a question that cannot be settled in advance. What drives the inquiry process lies somewhere else, in the development of M&E methodologies that are fit-topurpose. In the end, fit determines the choice between mixed and fixed methods. The rule is simple: work with tools that work. To apply the rule, one must probe into the lessons of eclecticism and pragmatic philosophy (discussed in Chapter 3). At first sight, the balance seems to be in favour of a multimethodological stance on M&E – selecting and pulling together all tools and concepts that may help collect, analyze and interpret relevant data in a given context (Brewer and Hunter, 1989; Creswell, 2003; Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007; Greene, 2007; Morgan, 2007; Spratt et al., 2004; Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003). Pragmatists insist on having access to a plurality of means and methods of data gathering and discovery that lead to a better understanding of reality. In our view, however, a true pragmatist should not assume that mixed methods are always better. Using a single method is also a legitimate option, provided it works. As Greene and Caracelli point out, using multiple and diverse methods is a good idea, but is not automatically good science (Greene and Caracelli, 1997). Medical practice, the most pragmatic of all, illustrates the point. When inquiring into a possible brain tumour, medical practitioners do not automatically combine a tissue sample (biopsy), a white blood cell count, an MRI test (magnetic resonance imaging) and a CT scan (computerized tomography), on the assumption that using more diagnostic tools is better than using fewer. If the inquiry can succeed in achieving its purpose with a single tool, say the white blood cell count, why bombard the patient with a wide array of tests? The fit between tool(s), purpose and circumstances (available time and resources and burden experienced by the patient) is what matters above all. Stronger foundations for multi-methods in M&E might lie elsewhere, in constructivism (Williamson, 2006), postmodern thinking (Hesse-Biber, 2010) and critical social theory (Mertens, 2003). Seen from these perspectives, multi-method designs are more effective in bringing out multiple voices and theoretical perspectives to shed light on social reality, including the views of under-represented groups. Again, this reasoning is poor in several ways. First of all, there is no reason to assume that multi-methodology and multi-theory necessarily go hand in hand. Just as one method can effectively bring out different views

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Participatory action monitoring and evaluation on the same subject, so multiple methods can converge on the same understanding of reality. Second, constructivism and postmodernism suggest that no conceptual discourse or philosophical framework – qualitative thinking as opposed to quantitative thinking, for instance – exists in a pure state, without multiple influences that meet and intertwine in the process of thinking and theory building. Conversations across modes of thinking are pervasive and unavoidable, irrespective of the methods chosen to make sense of reality. Lastly, social purpose matters more than mixity in methods, or plurality for its own sake. While an inquiry can be designed to capture a plurality of perspectives that shed light on the phenomenon of violence, for instance, it can also aim for a shared understanding of violence, with a view to eliminating it, using the appropriate method(s), mixed or not. In some cases, acknowledging lines of sight that do not converge is the aim. At other times, working to construct new lines of sight across existing horizons is a priority. Purpose guides the choice.

5  Is design-oriented When it comes to selecting or mixing specific methods and techniques to assess project or programme goals, well-known M&E approaches listed at the beginning of this chapter fall into three camps: the generic, the schematic and the eclectic. Four of them – RBM and Randomized Controlled Trials on the quantitative side, and Outcome Mapping and Most Significant Change on the qualitative side – belong to the first camp. They offer generic formulations of stepwise procedures and techniques to apply in all settings, with some features to choose from. Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Developmental Evaluation, Realist Evaluation and Theory of Change, the second camp, are more schematic: general guidelines and steps are provided to conduct the evaluation based on clearly laid-out principles. They are more conceptual in nature and method-neutral. Adepts are free to look for precise techniques to collect and analyze the data they need. Participatory Learning and Action approaches fall into the third camp, the eclectic. They emphasize the need for practitioners to develop skills in creating, selecting, adapting and using a wide range of user-friendly methods to support participatory action learning. While more in line with Participatory Learning and Action principles, our approach to M&E proposes a path that is generative rather than generic, schematic or eclectic. It is design-oriented, using principles, rules and a wide range of tools to flexibly generate context-specific methodologies that will facilitate structured conversations on goal attainment in real settings. Consequently, the methodological strategies we develop and illustrate throughout this book are specific to each situation. They can be reworked in part or in full for applications in similar situations, but they are neither generic nor schematic, and they go well beyond eclectic collections of techniques borrowed from different sources. This brings us back to remarks made at the beginning of this chapter: in our view, generic, schematic and eclectic M&E methodologies need to be treated with caution. The alternative, a ‘generative’ approach to evaluative thinking, may seem relativistic and impractical. But when we think of it, the approach reflects the conventional dictionary definition of ‘methodology’, namely ‘a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity’. The definition is a reminder that methods and methodologies are not the same thing, and they should not be confused with specific techniques, theoretical frameworks

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Design and facilitation or general approaches to the inquiry process. To achieve its purpose, every inquiry must develop a precise methodology, which means selecting and combining the right methods and techniques, following a particular approach to knowledge building and, ideally, testing a given hypothesis or theoretical perspective on the subject at hand. For instance, our discussion of accident prevention in Chapter 10 outlines the methodology we developed and tested with workers in the construction industry in France, using step-by-step methods such as Paradox, Force Field, Sabotage and Hazards. The methods were adapted from paradoxical psychology, force field analysis and risk assessment theory. Precise tools or techniques were employed when applying each method, such as Free List and Pile Sort to create a list of factors or hazards to be considered in the assessment. Our general approach to knowledge building was PAR, and the stance we took on theoretical debates in the field revolved around the notion of workers’ critical engagement in explaining and preventing accidents. These distinctions are key to understanding the difference between techniques, methods, theories and approaches that can be discussed irrespective of context, on the one hand, and coherent methodologies that make sense only in context, on the other hand. No allpurpose methodology can address all evaluation needs. The goals and activities people want to monitor and evaluate are as varied as the projects and programmes they are involved in. So too are the baseline conditions against which the activities and their results are assessed. The implication here is that there can be no fixed M&E framework or methodology, only M&E questions. Any method or technique, whether it’s a soil test or stories about struggles to prevent violence, can be used to effectively inquire into relationships between planned actions and observed results, provided it is the right tool to answer the right question, at the right time, at the right level of detail and with the right people. It follows that practically all of the inquiry methods described in this book may serve to address M&E questions, through pre- and post-assessments (baselines and measures of results). For instance, parties to a conflict may monitor social progress towards results by applying Social Analysis CLIP at one point in time, before new plans are made and implemented, and then later, to see how social conditions and relations have changed and why (see the Katkari example of this strategy in Chapter 13). The PAR approach to evaluative thinking is unassuming but not indifferent to methods. Each situation that calls for an assessment requires a finely-crafted methodology that can support people-based and evidence-based inquiry, with a view to meeting real action learning needs. To practise this art, it is imperative that each methodology be adjusted to fit the depth of evidence, planning and participation needed to achieve meaningful results, taking into account existing constraints in time and resources.

6  Uses thoughtful indicators One question that we have addressed in passing is empiricism – M&E methods that focus on data gathering and descriptive measurements, hoping that empirical findings will speak for themselves. In principle, all mainstream M&E frameworks support the idea that raw data must be processed (analyzed and interpreted) in order to be transformed into useful information (UNDP, 2011, p. 30; Duflo et al., 2007, p. 73). Nonetheless, data-centred thinking continues to influence the way M&E indicators are understood and used in the evaluative process. 100

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation This brings us to the meaning assigned to performance indicators in M&E. In the RBM approach, a performance indicator is ‘a quantitative or qualitative factor or variable that provides a simple and reliable means to measure achievement, to reflect the changes connected to an intervention, or to help assess the performance of a development actor or intervention’ (Bester, 2016, p. iii). Measuring A gives an indication of B, which cannot be measured on its own. For instance, the maintenance of a forest area (A) is a concrete indication of sustainable development (B), which is more abstract and cannot be directly measured. While apparently straightforward, the reasoning is the source of considerable confusion, essentially because of its binary character. Moving from the abstract to the concrete is like climbing down a ladder with many rungs. Checking for missing rungs is key to making sure the tool is in good working order. A ladder that has two rungs – e.g. outcomes and indicators, as in many M&E frameworks – is bound to create difficulties. For one thing, the bottom rung may not be close enough to the ground level. Although apparently concrete, the ‘maintenance of a forest area’ remains abstract; it acts like a ‘criterion’ in need of a measurable indicator, such as the ‘total volume of living wood in the area’. The latter measurement works better as the last rung on the ladder. The same fine tuning is needed when upper rungs remain too far apart. ‘Maintenance of a forest area’ may be a good criterion to use when discussing sustainable development outcomes, but a rung to bridge the distance between these two ideas is still missing: environmental sustainability might work as a rung between as it represents one aspect of sustainable development. In this example, we started out with two rungs in our ladder and now have four: namely, total volume of living wood – > maintenance of forest area – > environmental sustainability – > sustainable development. Our point is this: designing a good M&E methodology requires laddering up and down between the abstract and the concrete, making sure that three conditions are met: (1) the rungs should be neither too few nor too many; (2) adjacent rungs should not be too far apart; and (3) the last rung must be as close to the ground as possible (knowing that the definitions and the instruments we use always create some distance between observations and the earth beneath our feet). When social phenomena are involved, reaching the bottom rung is easier said than done. Measuring job satisfaction is a good example of this problem. The phenomenon is relatively complex and is based on many considerations that could be broken down into several indicators, such as the extent to which employees like the work they do, the people they work with, the wages they make, and so on. Each question is ‘fractal’ as it were: it could be further disaggregated into more precise questions, such as people’s satisfaction with different aspects of their work, who it is they like or don’t like, and so on. The list of possible questions is virtually limitless. In light of this, most evaluations opt for the only possible solution, which consists in formulating catch-all questions and submitting them to a number of properly-selected respondents. As already explained, respondents can reliably answer the questions posed to them provided they think of concrete expressions of their own satisfaction at work, adding them up quickly or intuitively in their own heads and coming up with a synthetic response to the survey question. To the organization collecting the data, the results obtained represent ‘qualitative perception indicators’ that work indirectly, a bit like proxy variables used 101

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PHOTO 4.3  Civil servants and civil society actors develop criteria and indicators for pro-

grammes with language minorities, Ottawa, Canada (Source: D. Buckles)

in research – absenteeism to measure job satisfaction, for instance. But they differ from proxy variables in that findings come from people who serve as ‘proxies’ asked to conduct the assessment on themselves. How do respondents perform the task assigned to them? Logically, they must ladder down and think of the sub-criteria, indicators and observations they can use to assess the extent to which they are satisfied with their jobs. Proceeding in this manner is all the more appropriate as the sub-criteria and indicators used and their relative weight will vary from respondent to respondent and from one group or cultural setting to another. While it informs the answers they provide, the quick information processing conducted by respondents is never actually shared, at least not in any detail. In surveys, ‘qualitative indicators’ used by professional evaluators may be the lowest rung on their ladder, yet the variables in question act as composite variables or ‘thoughtful indices’ emerging from data providers’ personal and concrete observations and mental processing. Whether they recognize it or not, all M&E methodologies that use surveys produce information that is highly processed by the respondents themselves as they try to make sense of real-life issues. Until these thought processes are acknowledged and understood, M&E methodologies wedded to positive science will inevitably force conversations between people into hiding instead of tapping into them. They will employ the means and measures of the social sciences to support inquiries that isolate people and are the least social of all. In doing so, they forego the possibility of enhancing everyone’s learning about project or programme achievements and use of resources and also the concepts, instruments and observations employed to assess them.

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7  Encourages critical thinking Indicators point to a world of infinite choice. In the field of international development, discussion of indicators is legion (UNDP, 2012, p. 4). As one would expect, most funding agencies put considerable effort into laying out their views on the matter when launching calls for proposals, monitoring progress and evaluating project or programme results at the end. The UNDP version of RBM keeps things relatively simple. It asks for qualitative and quantitative indicators to plan and track outputs and outcomes (UNDP, 2011, pp. 51–54). Outcomes may include impact outcomes (e.g. forests restored) or process outcomes (e.g. better organizational practices and relationships), each with their own indicators. Other agencies such as Global Affairs Canada (2016) prefer to leave no stone unturned and incorporate finer distinctions between immediate, intermediate and ultimate outcomes (e.g. to start, the tree cover area stabilizes, it increases within two years and biological diversity is restored by 50 per cent in ten years). DFID goes even further by making room for two other descriptors: ‘input indicators’ to monitor the availability of essential resources, human and financial, and ‘activity indicators’ to track the extent to which project activities are delivered as promised (Parsons et al., 2013, p. 14). Inputs, activities, outputs, immediate outcomes, intermediate outcomes, ultimate outcomes and the distinction between impact and process outcomes all lend themselves to being considered and addressed when monitoring and evaluating change. As if that was not enough, some agencies suggest indicators for assessing indicators – a checklist of yes/no validation questions on whether the indicator is ‘clear and easy to understand even to a layperson’, for instance (UNDP, 2011, p. 20). From our perspective, there is no right answer when it comes to the merit of one set of terms and definitions for different kinds of results. The pitfall to avoid is a methodology that does not serve its purpose because it is too simple, a limitation that may be part of the UNDP binary output-outcome model (Bester, 2016, p. 8); or developing a framework so advanced and bureaucratic that its cost in time and resources and the constraints it imposes (especially on the potential for flexible learning and honest reporting) far outweigh the actual benefits. One argument for finer distinctions is that they are needed to keep organizations honest and make sure they only take credit where credit is due. Lead organizations have considerable control over project inputs, activities, outputs and immediate outcomes, but this gradually gives way to ‘contribution and influence’ as the organization moves up the results chain, towards ultimate outcomes. The full impact on beneficiaries is expected to be observed in the longer term (Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 16; Bester, 2016, p. 13). Having different levels of outcomes and different indicators at each level means that organizations can acknowledge that ‘contribution and influence works in tandem with other efforts, especially those of project intermediaries and beneficiaries, and the contributions of other donors or actors’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 21). The reasoning is convincing. But measuring the respective contributions of multiple actors and factors over time is no simple task. The issue is so complicated that some agencies simply abandon the idea of measuring project or programme impact. Outcome Mapping is particularly adamant about the futility of tracing the connection between particular interventions and their ultimate impact on beneficiaries. Measuring impacts is ‘at best

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Design and facilitation unreliable and at worst impossible’ (Earl et al., 2001, p. 6). Efforts to establish these connections are often based on ‘clueless feedback’, claiming credit where it is not due. They also limit people’s potential for developing an understanding of how and why impacts actually occur. The effort to attribute impacts also discourages local ownership of programme components and achievements, which contradicts the most oft-cited goal of initiatives in the world of international development. Given these various pitfalls, Outcome Mapping chooses to move away from the linear cause-effect framework and focus on ‘improving rather than on proving, on understanding rather than on reporting, and on creating knowledge rather than on taking credit’ (Earl et al., 2001, p. 10). Despite these cautions, most funding agencies persist in defining ultimate outcomes and impact indicators and gathering the data needed to assess the corresponding achievements. Global Affairs Canada gives instructions to that effect, with a mere footnote reminding everyone ‘that intermediate and ultimate outcomes are not within the sole control of a single organization or project, but that an organization or a project contributes to and influences the achievement of these outcomes’ (Global Affairs Canada, 2016, p. 92; see also Government of Canada, 2012, p. 4). The UNDP simply recommends that evaluations ‘recognize the involvement of others (partners, stakeholders, rights holders) and assign a degree of attribution, if possible’ (UNDP, 2011, p. 41). Despite the recommendation, RBM continues to create ‘pressure from funding partners and governing bodies to attribute outcomes to UNDP entities, when in reality they can only contribute to outcomes’ (Bester, 2016, p. vii). DFID’s way of addressing the problem is to encourage organizations working on similar projects to develop common sets of impact indicators and a coordinated approach to programming (Parsons et al., 2013, p. 18). Proponents of the Randomized Controlled Trials approach prefer instead to tackle the attribution issue head on, by developing random sampling methods to get at ‘the average impact of a program, policy, or variable . . . on a group of individuals by comparing them to a similar group of individuals who were not exposed to the program’. An educational project might thus plan to randomly choose 50 out of 100 schools to receive textbooks, for instance, on the assumption that otherwise the two groups are the same (Duflo et al., 2007, pp. 5, 7). The 50 left out suffer the consequences, or not, depending on the measured outcomes of the intervention. As it is, practitioners of M&E are torn between two ‘results cultures’. Some choose to keep things simple by dropping the idea of impact assessment altogether or showing awareness of the problem, and no more. Others opt to push the technical envelope to account for all results, as in the case of Randomized Controlled Trials. Whichever strategy is adopted, however, most M&E frameworks now acknowledge the need to shift from a data-centred mindset to a rational planning process, using conceptual models backed up by the empirical. They question empiricism’s obsession with making direct connections between planned activities and their observable outputs and outcomes. Ground-level results chains monitored through data that speaks for itself no longer hold water. Intervening actors and factors are too many and plans made are almost always iffy. Many assumptions about theory and context must be made, and they can be completely mistaken. All of this leads to only one conclusion: on its own, fact-finding is never sufficient. Sound thinking is never about facts alone. Evidence-based assessment and learning relies not only 104

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation on factual input from the senses and experience. It also requires a good dose of reasoning, much of which is counterfactual in nature. As explained in Chapter 7, counterfactual statements express what has not happened but could, would or might under different conditions. In the M&E context, they explain how the observed change ‘would not have occurred had it not been for’ the intervention conducted as planned, in conjunction with other actors and ‘but for’ a series of favourable conditions. Counterfactual reasoning, with or without measurements, is also needed to account for the failure to achieve expected results and to draw lessons from errors in the assumptions made, the estimations of risks and major events that no one saw coming. If lessons can be learned, it is because of our ability to explain how an intervention ‘would have worked’ in some or all respects had it not been for this or that documented reason. But again a choice must be made between two opposite methodological strategies. One limits itself to providing general guidelines on making the linear chain and underlying theory explicit, using thoughtful narration to create an overall ‘contribution story’ and listing the main assumptions, contextual factors and risks involved (Parsons et al., 2013, p. 29; Global Affairs Canada, 2016, pp. 45, 77; UNDP, 2011, p. 251; Government of Canada, 2012, p. 13; Patton, 2013, p. 10). The other strategy opts instead for elaborate methods of quantitative inquiry, using hypothetical-deductive reasoning to generate and test a working hypothesis developed as a real-life experiment. Randomized Controlled Trials thus involves spelling out theories of behaviour, formulating testable hypotheses, clarifying assumptions, identifying indicators, developing sampling methods and collecting reliable data, all in the hope that facts will yield worthwhile insights because properly framed. Our approach to M&E lies somewhere in between. We recognize that there are situations where keeping things simple, providing guidelines and encouraging people to share their ideas and stories of change is the right way to go about assessing results against goals. Likewise, technically-advanced methods informed by theory have something to offer, if project or programme circumstances and available resources warrant. What is largely missing, however, is the ability to achieve rigour and facilitate greater dialogue at the same time. As it is, evaluators have to choose between simple conversations and advanced science. Our approach attempts to reconcile these. It consists in using accessible methods to support ‘structured conversations’ on causal relations and issues of attribution that create opportunities for learning, particularly in complex settings. While we stay clear of the intricacies of Randomized Controlled Trials, several methods presented and illustrated in this book are designed to analyze and act on what might be called murky cause-effect relationships, beyond the linear models still commonly used in the project and programme management literature. They include Order and Chaos, in Chapter 3; Force Field and Problem Tree, in Chapter 7; Hazards, in Chapter 10; Contribution and Feasibility, in Chapter 17; and Causal Dynamics, in Chapter 20. These methods help generate ‘theories of change’ where people investigate and discuss the potential for change and develop the concepts and language they need to chart a possible future. Our ‘methods for generating theory’, as Glaser and Strauss would label them (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p. 8), build on the observations, concepts and words people need to interpret their world and act on it. However, and this is important, our goal is not to ‘discover theory from data’, as proponents of grounded theory prescribe (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p. 1). If the methods we 105

Design and facilitation propose can assist in generating context-specific methodologies, it is because they have theoretical foundations of their own. These are discussed at some length in the modules where they appear. The approach we advocate is therefore one of interaction and dialogue between theoretically-informed methods and plans they help develop, grounded in people’s knowledge of their reality. The dialogue may take surprising directions. In some situations, prevailing views of the world and stale ideas on how to bring about change may be the biggest challenge that people face. Paradox (Chapter 10) and Domain Analysis (Chapters 19 and 20) can make a difference in these settings as they help people understand hidden theories and rationalities that guide behaviour and contribute to maintaining existing problems. Some theories of change require that implicit theories of change and related assumptions be made explicit so as to be challenged, as they must. This is critical thinking in M&E.

8  Takes heat All methods presented in this book reconcile fact-finding with a good mix of dialectics and analytics. They are ‘skilful means’ to help people talk and listen to each other, generate and make sense of the information they need, imagine possible pasts and futures and act on the lessons learned. PAME abides by the same principles, those of PAR. As in any action inquiry, the art of designing M&E methodologies requires that practitioners select and scale fact-finding and analytical tools to help people engage in thoughtful conversations about the worth of observed change and their contribution to it. Another important feature of M&E aligned with the features of PAR, and the last in our list of eight, is that it acknowledges uncertainty and the unknown. Sound evaluative methods are crucibles designed to take the heat of social history. They adjust to unexpected circumstances and allow for short feedback loops and improvised inquiries as well. More often than not, efforts to plan everything in advance are a denial of reality and an invitation to maladaptive coping. Most evaluative frameworks make allowances for revisions to be made along the way. Reminders to that effect are particularly important in descriptions of Utilization-Focused Evaluation and Developmental Evaluation (Patton, 2010; 2013, p. 18). But the issue goes deeper than that, and general warnings are not enough. At stake is not the question of flexibility but rather our ability to remain creative and exercise ongoing judgement, by deciding to decide later and planning to plan later, if and when circumstances so require. This argument echoes our discussion of Order and Chaos and Activity Mapping in the preceding chapter, tools that revolve around the question of uncertainty in real-life settings, and the importance of planning and assessing ‘in the middle’ of complex and messy situations. In the same spirit, Chapters 13 and 14 describe an iterative use of Social Analysis CLIP and an improvised application of Values, Interests, Positions (VIP), one in India and the other in Bolivia. We also address the impact of uncertainty in our commentary on iterative design in Chapter 3. Since the issue of dynamic inquiry has already been introduced, there is no need to say more about it here, other than that iteration and improvisation in M&E requires judgement and considerable skill. This is true of PAR in general. The many ‘skills in means’ that need 106

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation to be developed and applied when designing and conducting a full action inquiry, including its evaluative component, are not to be underestimated. This is the subject of the last chapter in this module. Discussions of M&E will continue to evolve on many levels. Our intent here is to argue for a context-specific, generative approach to M&E methodologies, as in research proper. In a PAME perspective, evaluation is the art of generating a system of collaborative methods fit to purpose, rather than a methodology that fits all situations. Paradoxically, when evaluated against the eight principles of PAME, we cannot help but note there is still much room for improvement in the world of evaluation. Below, we conclude this discussion with illustrations of two PAME-inspired tools to engage people in reflecting on their own M&E culture and practice.

PLANNING, INQUIRY, EVALUATION: RETHINKING THE EVALUATION CULTURE IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS From 2010 to 2014 the authors facilitated an informal Community of Practice (CoP) on evaluation involving 11 Canadian non-governmental organizations working in international development. Funded by IDRC, the focus of the CoP was on finding ways to strike a meaningful balance between two legitimate expectations: honest learning from ongoing work, on the one hand, and accounting for both resources and results to donors and the beneficiaries of development interventions, on the other hand. This reflected widespread dissatisfaction with the upward reporting requirements of Results-Based Management (RBM) and the need to innovate methodologically to make evaluation more useful and meaningful to all the parties involved. Critically examining the evaluation culture in organizations was also of concern to CoP members, leading to the development of a tool we call PIE, for Planning, Inquiry and Evaluation. As with other tools in our approach to PAR, PIE helps translate basic principles into a reflexive, practical and dialogical process, in this case balancing and integrating planning, inquiry (involving any diagnostic or scientific inquiry; see PAME rule 1, above) and evaluation. The three components can be seen as constituting a learning system. This is a broader concept than the more common idea of a knowledge system focussed on conserving and sharing knowledge, or an M&E system concerned primarily with managing the organization and collection of evaluation data. The broader framework provides organizations with an opportunity to assess the extent to which they are satisfied with the organizational learning system they currently have in place and customize solutions to meet their needs. The first step is to decide on a focus for the assessment. Some members of the CoP opted to assess a specific programme or project, while others applied the tool at the organizational level. For example, all Head Office staff of the volunteer-sending organization Solidarité, Union, Coopération (SUCO) did a collective review of all organizational investments in planning, inquiry and evaluation over a one-year period and determined that the level of effort by the organization was highly skewed towards planning (Lemieux, 2011). Efforts to develop plans consumed much time at annual programme meetings and staff gatherings 107

Design and facilitation in the field. Evaluation focussed on collecting routine monitoring data and writing project reports for donors. Inquiry was carried out mostly through web searches on particular topics and the gathering of information and critical analysis at conferences. The relatively high level of planning effort compared to inquiry and evaluation for the period assessed is represented in Figure 4.1 by a thick, solid circle used for this component. SUCO also assessed the level and direction of interaction between planning, inquiry and evaluation in their organizational work. The staff involved concluded that they were generally satisfied with the contribution of planning to their evaluation activities. Planning established the goals and the activities they wanted to monitor and evaluate and allowed them to allocate the evaluation resources needed to accomplish the task. However, the reciprocal relationship – evaluation contributions to planning – was much weaker in their view. Informal observations and conversations regarding how well things were going in projects and programmes informed some day-to-day problem solving, but this evaluative thinking was not documented and systematically fed into planned changes. Contributions to and from SUCO’s already limited diagnostic inquiry activities were also weak. Critically, inquiry was not supported intentionally through the allocation of human and financial resources during the planning process. As for the interaction of inquiry and evaluation, SUCO staff recognized that they gave little attention to fact-finding inquiry that could help explain the specific patterns and related observations documented in evaluations. Evaluations tended to be descriptive, without investigating and explaining why things turn out as they do. As a result, the analysis of causal links between planned interventions and observed changes remained sketchy. The solid and dotted arrows between the components shown in Figure 4.1 were drawn during the assessment to reflect these uneven relationships and highlight areas for possible improvement. While some organizations in the CoP decided to stop their analysis at this level of detail, SUCO and others opted to go deeper into the diagnostic of their organizational learning culture. They did so by rating each component in the learning system on five criteria (already reflected in our discussion of PAME): • • • • •

Engaging stakeholders and addressing their differences through dialogue; Grounding planning, inquiry and evaluation in meaningful action; Using a range of tools or methods to plan, inquire and evaluate; Scaling the level of detail built into plans, inquiries and evaluation to the right level; Timing planning, inquiry and evaluation appropriately.

The planning process at SUCO scored relatively well on four of the five criteria, where three represents the highest rating (Figure 4.2). The Head Office staff noted that they routinely convened staff, regional partners and broader stakeholders in both annual and periodic meetings designed to set goals and develop proposals, thereby creating opportunities for dialogue and consensus building. They also made direct use of the plans they generated through these processes by producing successful funding and operational proposals and practical guidance for action by staff and partners. These qualities were reflected in a score for planning (P) of two out of three on engaging, and three out of three on grounding in meaningful action. Planning at SUCO during the review period also made use of a number

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Participatory action monitoring and evaluation

INQUIRY

SUCO learning system

NING PLAN

EVAL UATI ON

FIGURE 4.1  The balance and integration of PIE, SUCO, Canada

of different planning methods in the field and in the office, adding up to a relatively satisfying range of tools (two out of three). The people doing the assessment argued, however, that their organizational planning processes were not scaled to the right level of detail. Their plans, and in particular their proposals for funding agencies, tended to be overloaded with details far out into the future, even when they were not ready to commit to everything they had planned. They also acknowledged that the timing of their planning processes was not optimal. Plans during the review period were driven by external deadlines largely out of sync with their internal organizational planning cycles. The rating of the inquiry (I) and evaluation (E) components on the same five criteria prompted critical self-reflection on the SUCO learning system and customized solutions as well (Figure 4.2). For example, SUCO decided to work harder on engaging a wider range of stakeholders in evaluation of the successes and failures of their programmes and to make more systematic and frequent use of participatory methods. They also made it a priority to collect just the right amount of evaluation data needed to feed into ongoing planning in a more timely manner. As for the inquiry component, a key observation was that the timing of research into conditions and factors affecting their goals needed to be more closely matched to the planning cycle. Overall, these adjustments to the current learning culture would be good enough to improve the organizational learning system without overstretching their resources and organizational mandate as a volunteer-sending organization. Other organizations in the CoP also identified specific gaps in their approach to planning, inquiry and evaluation and fine-tuned their learning systems. One of the common themes was that investments in evaluation are often disconnected from other components

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Design and facilitation

Features

0

1

Grounding Engaging

E

2

3

I

E P

P

I

Tooling

E

I

P

Timing

E

I

P

Scaling

P E

I

FIGURE 4.2  Ratings on the features of P, I and E, SUCO, Canada

of the learning system. This observation prompted the authors to develop another tool to help organizations reflect on three possible evaluation uses (Figure 4.3). It uses a Venn diagram to map three distinct goals in evaluation, the relative importance of which may vary considerably from one evaluation context to another. •

•

•

The first goal is to account for resources and results using well-developed methods for gathering measurable data, qualitative or quantitative. RBM (Global Affairs Canada, 2016), Randomized Controlled Trials (Duflo et al., 2007) and Most Significant Change (Davies and Dart, 2005) have this in common. Despite conscious effort to serve stakeholders, they also tend to strongly emphasize upward accounting to funders. Learning for planning, with an emphasis on the stakeholders directly involved in project and programme implementation, is another possible goal. UtilizationFocused Evaluation (Patton, 2008), Developmental Evaluation (Patton, 2010) and Participatory Learning and Action (Pretty et al., 1995) clearly fall into this camp. They emphasize evaluation defined and driven by the primary intended users, namely the stakeholders directly involved in project and programme implementation. A third goal revolves around describing and communicating relationships between interventions and results, to inspire others with the story. Evaluative thinking of this kind involves sensemaking, using either a fully-developed method such as Outcome Mapping (Earl et al., 2001, p. 4) or building stories from theories of contribution to planned change, as in Theory of Change (Coryn et al., 2011; Weiss, 2004; Rogers, 2007; Government of Canada, 2012).

Locating a planned evaluation in relation to these three possible goals helps groups focus and acknowledge tensions between them. It also provides a diagnostic framework for exploring with stakeholders the fit between evaluation use, evaluation questions and data collection methods. For example, CESO, another CoP member, reviewed a number of different planned evaluations and placed each in the figure to reflect their primary function. They then explored the implications of each function for evaluation design and methodology. Evaluations concerned mainly with meeting action learning needs may call for rapid 110

Accoun ng for r eso urc es

Learn ing for pla nn

s ult res d n

ing

a

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation

A

D

E

C

B

F

Te lli

ng

th e

story to inspire

FIGURE 4.3  The uses of selected evaluations, CESO, Canada

action-reaction loops (as in medical practice) and ‘agile’ course correction. Assessments concerned more with making sense of outcomes may call for a more narrative approach, using reflexive practice, video, storytelling and theory-based analysis. M&E efforts tasked with accounting for resources and results also need to be designed according to purpose, by paying attention to observable indicators and the relationship between inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes. Questions related to project or programme fidelity (the extent to which delivery of an intervention adheres to the goals originally developed), economy and efficiency might then take centre stage, as in RBM. Evaluations may have more than one primary function, learning for planning and accounting for resources and results for instance. Also, each function raises many potential evaluation questions that need to be fleshed out in more detail; concepts such as ‘learning’ or ‘accounting for results’ are not self-evident. For any given evaluation, clarity regarding what it is for and who it is for must inform the ways these concepts are actually used. To illustrate this idea, we conclude with a brief description of an M&E methodology focussed on evaluating for accountability based on the concept of ‘value for money’ 111

Design and facilitation championed in recent years by the UK Department for International Development. The methodology, developed for ActionAid by D. Buckles and F. D’Emidio, begins with a combination of storytelling, Free List and Pile Sort and Rating to identify observed changes for different components in human rights programmes and the perceived value of these changes in achieving stated goals (Buckles, 2016; D’Emidio and Buckles, 2017). Discussion of ActionAid programme expenditures and rating of the level of investment follows, taking into account information on actual expenditures and the level of effort involved in programme delivery by staff and community members (time and human resources). These two considerations – changes of value and level of investment (financial and effort) – are then brought together in a single Cartesian graph to support discussion of the ‘value for money’ of different programme components (Figure 4.4). The final step revolves around two analytical questions using counterfactual reasoning. Could the programme have achieved better value with the same level of investment? Could it have achieved the same level of value with less investment of time and people? The location of the components in the four quadrants of the Cartesian graph helps frame and guide the discussion, without oversimplifying matters. Participants may recognize that even components that contribute little may be worthwhile if they also require little investment (like low hanging fruit). Similarly, components with only moderate value that come at a high cost may be worth improving either by being more ambitious or by reducing costs. The outputs of the exercise – general recommendations for changes in component goals or Value high

10

A lot for

Expensive but worth it

Programme X

Programme Y

Investment low

Investment 10

0

Programme Z Programme W

0

Value low

FIGURE 4.4  The value for money of programme components

112

What a waste

high

Participatory action monitoring and evaluation resource management strategies, for example – may be further detailed using other methods such as The Carrousel (Chapter 15). In the case of ActionAid, the methodology was used to bring community perspectives on the merits of different programme and future investment priorities into the centre of planning discussions with staff, board members and lead partners (D’Emidio, 2017).

REFERENCES Avelino, H. (2005) ‘The Typology of Pame Number Systems and the Limits of Mesoamerica as a Linguistic Area’, Linguistic Typology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 41–60. Bester, A. (2016) ‘Results-Based Management in the United Nations Development System’, A report prepared for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs for the 2016 Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review. Brewer, J. and Hunter, A. (1989) Multimethod Research: A Synthesis of Styles, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Buckles, D. J. (2016) ‘Value for Money Framework and Participatory Measurement Methodologies’, unpublished report for ActionAid, UK. Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (eds) (2001) Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed, London. Coryn, C. L. S., Noakes, L. A., Westine, C. D. and Schröter, D. C. (2011) ‘A Systematic Review of Theory-Driven Evaluation Practice from 1990 to 2009’, American Journal of Evaluation, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 199–226. Creswell, J. W. (2003) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Creswell, J. W. and Garrett, A. L. (2008) ‘The “Movement” of Mixed Methods Research and the Role of Educators’, South African Journal of Education, vol. 28, pp. 321–323. Creswell, J. W. and Plano Clark, V. L. (2007) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Davies, R. and Dart, J. (2005) The Most Significant Change (MSC) Technique: A Guide to Its Use, retrieved from www.researchgate.net/publication/275409002 D’Emidio, F. and Buckles, D. J. (2017) ‘Value for Money Toolkit: How to Facilitate Participatory Value for Money Assessment’, ActionAid and SAS2 Dialogue, London and Ottawa. D’Emidio, F. (with T. Wallace, S. Henon and D. Buckles) (2017) ‘Value for Money in ActionAid: Creating an Alternative’, ActionAid, London. Duflo, E., Glennerster, R. and Kremer, M. (2007) ‘Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit’, Discussion Paper No. 6059, Center For Economic Policy Research, London. Earl, S., Carden, F. and Smutylo, T. (2001) Outcome Mapping: Building Learning and Reflection into Development Programs, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Glaser, B. G. and Strauss, A. L. (1967) Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research, Sociology Press, Aldine, New York. Global Affairs Canada (2016) Results-Based Management for International Assistance Programming at Global Affairs Canada: A How-to Guide, Global Affairs Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Government of Canada (2012) Theory-Based Approaches to Evaluation: Concepts and Practices, Treasure Board of Canada Secretariat, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Greene, J. C. (2007) Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Greene, J. C. and Caracelli, V. (1997) Advances in Mixed-Method Evaluation: The Challenges and Benefits of Integrating Diverse Paradigms, New Directions for Evaluation, no. 74, Jossey-Foss, San Francisco, CA. Greene, J. C., Caracelli, V. J. and Graham, W. F. (1989) ‘Toward a Conceptual Framework for Mixed-Method Evaluation Design’, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 255–274. Groves, R. M. (2011) ‘Three Eras of Survey Research’, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 5, pp. 861–871. Guijt, I. (2014) Participatory Approaches, Methodological Briefs: Impact Evaluation 5, UNICEF Office of Research, Florence, retrieved from http://devinfolive.info/impact_evaluation/img/downloads/ Participatory_Approaches_ENG.pdf

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Design and facilitation Hesse-Biber, S. N. (2010) Mixed Methods Research: Merging Theory with Practice, The Guilford Press, New York. Howard, J. (2013) The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Jacoby, S. M. (1988) ‘Employee Attitude Surveys in Historical Perspective’, Industrial Relations, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 74–93. Lemieux, E. (2011) ‘Compte rendu de la session de planification, évaluation, recherche (PER) pour évaluer le système apprenant de SUCO’, unpublished report, Montreal, QC. Mertens, D. M. (2003) ‘Mixed Methods and the Politics of Human Research: The TransformativeEmancipatory Perspective’, in A. Tashakkori and C. Teddlie (eds) Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 135–164. Morgan, D. L. (2007) ‘Paradigms Lost and Pragmatism Regained: Methodological Implications of Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods’, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 48–76. Parsons, J., Gokey, C. and Thornton, M. (2013) Indicators of Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes and Impacts in Security and Justice Programming, Vera Institute of Justice, New York. Patton, M. Q. (2008) Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Patton, M. Q. (2010) Developmental Evaluation. Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use, The Guilford Press, New York. Patton, M. Q. (2013) ‘Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) Checklist’, The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University, retrieved from https://wmich.edu/evaluation/checklists. Pretty, J., Guijt, I., Thompson, J. and Scones, I. (1995) Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainer’s Guide, International Institute for Education and Environment, London. Rogers, P. J. (2007) ‘Theory-Based Evaluations: Reflections Ten Years on’, New Directions for Evaluation, vol. 114, pp. 63–67. Spratt, C., Walker, R. and Robinson, B. (2004) Practitioner Research and Evaluation Skills Training in Open and Distance Learning: User Guide, Module A5: Mixed Research Methods, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, BC. Suolahti, J. (1963) The Roman Censors: A Study on Social Structure, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Helsinki. Tashakkori, A. and Teddlie, C. (eds) (2003) Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. UNDP (2011) Results-Based Management Handbook: Harmonizing RBM Concepts and Approaches for Improved Development Results at Country Level, United Nations Development Programme, New York. UNDP (2012) Governance Indicators: A Users’ Guide Governance, United Nations Development Programme, Bureau for Development Policy Democratic Governance Group, 2012, New York. UNESCO (2005) Education for All Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO, Paris. Weiss, C. H. (2004) ‘On Theory-Based Evaluation Winning Friends and Influencing People’, The Evaluation Exchange, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 1–5. Westhorp, G. (2014) Realist Impact Evaluation: An Introduction, Methods Lab, Overseas Development Institute, London. Williamson, K. (2006) ‘Research in Constructivist Frameworks Using Ethnographic Techniques’, Library Trends, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 83–101. Zukoski, A. and Luluquisen, M. (2002) ‘Participatory Evaluation: What is it? Why do it? What Are the Challenges?’ Policy & Practice, no. 5, retrieved from http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/ Evaluation.pdf

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CHAPTER 5

Measuring with measure

Previous chapters focus on two fundamental challenges in the world of PAR: grounding and navigating in real-world complexity and designing ‘structured conversations’ fit to purpose. The following chapter will consider the ethics and skills needed to address these challenges and realize the full potential of PAR. Later modules build on these foundations with ‘skilful means’ to facilitate problem assessment (Module 3), stakeholder analysis (Module 4), option and risk appraisal (Module 5) and systems thinking (Module 6). In this chapter we break from the broader ideas of PAR to go deeper into basic tools for describing and measuring the properties of things. Making a list and rating the importance of actors, factors, problems, activities, options for action or any other elements may seem simple enough. The task, however, raises all sorts of process design and facilitation questions that can only be answered in context. Here we provide step-by-step instructions to free list and pile sort, rank, rate and assign weight to different elements in a list in ways that make sense to the people involved. The steps are illustrated with short stories of priority setting in Burkina Faso and India; youth engagement in Canada, Cuba, Ukraine, Benin and Thailand; skill development among nurses and teachers in Canada, the United States, Belgium, France and Switzerland; and monitoring and evaluating progress on gross national happiness in the elementary schools of Bhutan.

FREE LIST AND PILE SORT AND THE MILLENNIALS IN QUEBEC Free List and Pile Sort is a tool we often use to launch more advanced assessments. As the expression suggests, ‘free listing’ invites people to generate a list of elements in the domain of interest (actors, activities, goals, problems, factors, options, skills, assets, biological varieties, etc.). Brainstorming does the same. To be manageable, however, list making needs to be combined with pile sorting to organize ideas into fewer categories that can become the focus for group discussion. This is key to grounding a discussion in things that are concrete yet distinct one from the other. Prior work may already have accomplished this, or people may know exactly what elements need to be discussed (existing project activities, for example). If not, listing and grouping ideas will help.

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Design and facilitation There are many ways to create a list. In its basic form, Free List and Pile Sort involves five steps. 1 2

3

4

5

The group defines the domain or topic of interest they wish to discuss. Each participant identifies one element that falls within the domain, and then writes it down on a card using one or two key words in large print. Details can be added on the reverse of the card. The elements must be concrete and relevant to the topic. Participants then group cards that mean the same thing into distinct piles or columns (to keep track of the different shades of meaning) and give a label to each pile or column. The group identifies anything that may be important but missing  from the list of labelled elements. This is important as the exercise of pile sorting often reveals gaps in the first round of free listing. The group may also want to reduce the number of piles by combining them into broader categories, or setting some aside for later discussion because less urgent or less important to the topic at hand. The task ends with a brief discussion on the number of cards in different piles, and why that may be so. People may also compare lists that come from different groups (such as men and women), if useful.

The exercise seems straightforward, but context may require specific adaptations. The devil is always in the detail. Options to be aware of concern the initial listing of elements, how the elements are sorted and things to look for when discussing the results. When listing the elements (Step 2), participants can plan to use drawing, photographs, objects, description or storytelling to explore the topic. For instance, if the goal is to list a number of gender equity challenges, each participant may be invited to recall a real incident that illustrates the problem, and then use this information to identify a key issue it expresses – say the underrepresentation of women in decision-making positions. The two-step question grounds the exercise in people’s experience and concerns, making the discussion of broader issues real from the start. If using cards, the two sides can be used to capture each part of the question. On this point, the importance of a question and responses that have a clear meaning for participants cannot be overstated. If responses are vague (as tends to be the case with abstract thinkers), use the laddering down method (Chapter 6) to help people make their ideas more concrete and easier to understand. When sorting the elements (Step 3), participants can present their cards one at a time and organize them into piles of similar elements along the way, with or without the help of a facilitator. Grouping post-its on the wall will do as well. This sorting process, however, can take time. There are several efficiency options to consider. One is to ask people to help each other sort out their cards as quickly as they can, without having to wait for their turn to speak. The discussion that follows is usually noisy, but more often than not the end result is a startling example of fast gains emerging from chaos. Another option is to use several table tops or hula hoops on the floor where people can cluster similar element cards. Cloud-based canvases, virtual sticky notes and audio conferencing are another emerging opportunity for efficient free-listing and pile-sorting, even among dispersed participants. The Nureva Span Workspace is an example. It projects virtual sticky notes, drawings, text and

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Measuring with measure other visuals contributed by people directly on a wall or from personal devices anywhere in the world. People in the same room or connected through the software can drag and drop ideas into categories, at their own initiative and discussing along the way. Title text boxes, colours and text size help to visualize the sets of categories. The kinaesthetic option is by far our favourite. It consists in asking people to circulate with their example card and form ‘families’ around cards that show similar or identical elements. People cluster themselves, from twins or triplets to larger configurations. Those who remain uncertain as to which group they should join can read their cards out loud and be ‘adopted’ by whichever family feels the element belongs to their group. Some ideas may still remain ‘orphaned’, but regrouping elements into fewer than six families helps focus the discussion. All of this can usually be done in less than 20 minutes, even with larger groups. Each ‘like-minded family’ can then prepare a short presentation on what their cards have in common and give themselves a name (a plant, animal or symbol) that reflects what their element or idea is about. If appropriate, they can improvise a skit or body sculpture to act out what they have to say. The whole exercise is a lively, fun and efficient pile-sorting of things that matter and need to be measured. When discussing the results (Step 5), participants can ask why there are many cards in some piles and few in others. They can also compare different lists, provided different groups have done Free List and Pile Sort separately in response to the same initial question. Again, there are different ways of comparing lists. •

•

Each group can rank their piles based on the number of cards in a category and then place the piles in three concentric circles. The piles that have the most cards go in the inner circle; the average-size piles go in the middle circle; and the piles that have the fewest cards are placed in the outer circle. To facilitate comparisons, each group should have cards of a different colour. Participants can evaluate the level of agreement between two lists that contain the same elements by counting the number of times the elements are placed in the same circles (and divide this number by the total number of elements). They can also evaluate the level of compatibility between two lists by counting the number of times the same elements are mentioned in both lists (and divide this number by the total number of elements). The comparison table is another option, particularly useful when it comes to negotiating a common list. Participants create a table where the rows represent one party’s elements or categories of elements, and the columns represent the other party’s elements (see Table 5.1). The next step is to identify the row and the column elements or piles that have the same meaning. The rows and the columns can be rearranged so that the elements or piles that have the same meaning appear at the beginning of each party’s list and in the same order. Cells where the meanings coincide are marked with an ‘x’. Other cells can be opened up for discussion and negotiation, until parties reach a common understanding of most elements or piles. Participants may redefine the elements along the way, create new ones or change the way elements are grouped into piles, as needed. In our companion handbook, we explain Tree mapping, a more advanced (but more tedious) technique to explore how different groups describe and categorize elements in a domain.

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Design and facilitation

PHOTO 5.1  Managers of a community seed wealth centre discuss priorities for

conservation, Tangail, Bangladesh (Source: D. Buckles)

TABLE 5.1  Comparing and negotiating Free Lists and Pile Sorts

Party 1  

Party 2  

 

Equity

Fairness

Conservation

Peace

Development

x

Sustainability Peace Progress Education

x x x

Identity

Spirituality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stand-alone applications Free List and Pile Sort is often the first formal step in a group exercise. It can be skipped only if the list of elements is already known – who the key actors are, for instance. If not, the tool enables participants to determine the elements that are part of the domain or topic of interest, based on their own views and words to express them. This is a good starting point for any deeper or broader inquiry process that is intended to be participatory. There are situations, however, where Free List and Pile Sort can be used on its own, in support of discussions that may be rich in practical lessons. Consider this example from the

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Measuring with measure field of education. In the fall of 2017 Zélie Larose-Chevalier, a French-speaking community college teacher in the City of Gatineau, invited her father (J. Chevalier) to co-facilitate one of her regular two-hour sessions on research methods in the human sciences. The topic to be discussed was action research, with a focus on the overall approach and ways to put it into practice. Planning an interesting classroom exercise was key to illustrating the PAR concept of ‘learning by doing’, grounded in real-life issues. The two facilitators met with four different groups over the course of a few weeks, each with 20 to 30 students aged between 17 and 19. When planning the meetings, we explored different possible topics and chose one that resonated well with students: what are the most important challenges that you and your generation have to face, more intensely than your parents did? Each meeting started with a brief explanation of the topic and a noisy rearrangement of tables and chairs to free up space so that students could move around and sit in a circle. Then came the question that launched the discussion (step 1 following) and six other steps to develop a progressive response. In light of the question asked, students were invited to think of an event or situation that illustrated a meaningful challenge they have to face, more so than their parents. Each student received a card and used it to write two or three key words that captured this key challenge on one side, with details on the other side (if they so wished). 2 Students formed groups around similar challenge cards. Those who didn’t know which group to join explained what their cards were about and were ‘adopted’ by groups that considered their challenge to be of the same kind. 3 Each group prepared and improvised a skit to represent the key challenge that mattered most to them. 4 As they listened to each presentation, students had to ask themselves which challenge was the most important after all – the one they have first thought of or one they heard? Once all presentations were over, the facilitator invited people to join another group if that group had expressed a challenge they considered more important than their initial choice. 5 Newly-formed groups were then given the task of preparing and giving a pitch on why their challenge should matter greatly to everyone, and how they could respond to it as well. 6 Once this second round of presentations was completed, the facilitator described recent findings from a refereed journal on the challenges faced by their generation, and then invited participants to compare these findings with results from their own discussion. 7 The session ended with a brief discussion on how the methods of action inquiry differed from the conventional approach they had learned and the tools they were using in their own research projects, which consisted mostly of surveys and interviews. 1

The results from each session provided rich insights into perceived generational differences. Without going into the details, the discussions confirmed much of what the journal article had to say about the most recent generational divide. Reconciling work and student life, facing the environmental issues of our age, choosing among so many possible life choices

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Design and facilitation and career paths, dealing with job insecurity, coping with social media pressure and reconnecting with their bodies, nature and people, from their perspective all affected them more intensely than their parents when they were young. One finding not reflected in the article, however, revolved around the issue of gender equity. Two classroom groups felt that equality between men and women was a greater challenge for them in comparison to their parents. ‘Why is that?’ the facilitators asked. The response was that the bar had been raised higher than ever before. Students were more conscious than their parents of the obstacles to overcome and the importance of overcoming them. From a methodological standpoint, the fact that many participants joined other groups when deciding which challenge mattered the most provoked lively discussions. Some commented on the difference between first opinions that people express when interviewed or completing a questionnaire on a given topic and the views they adopt when given a chance to debate the matter and listen to what others have to say, a standard practice in PAR. We say more on the implications of methods for iterative thinking below.

RANKING AND RATING In his introduction to sociological thinking, Cameron observed that ‘not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’ (Cameron, 1963, p. 13). The previous illustration, which used no measurement scales, illustrates the point. Having said that, there are countless instances in research and in everyday life where things can be measured and do count. While Free List and Pile Sort may elicit lessons about the key elements of a domain, people may want to delve further into the subject and find ways to measure the properties of elements and relationships between them. This brings us to participatory techniques for ranking and rating. Ranking involves developing order within a list of elements to form a hierarchy, from first to last, using one or several characteristics or criteria. Rating also involves grading elements using one or several criteria; unlike ranking, however, scores may be the same for several elements in the list. There is no linear hierarchy. Both exercises can be done with simple math and find many applications in the field of participatory action inquiry, planning and evaluation. Many tools presented and illustrated in this book include a rating exercise where scores are organized into figures, diagrams or charts to facilitate analysis and provide visual support for group discussion. Detailed instructions on ranking and rating are provided in our companion handbook. The process has in common with Free List and Pile Sort that it can go in different directions, as we explain below.

When defining the criteria Participants in a ranking or rating exercise should first consider the possibility of defining some criteria before launching the discussion, based on previous decisions and the objectives pursued. Others can then be added. Failing this, a group discussion may help identify the criteria needed to rate or rank elements. By far the best method for doing this is Free

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Measuring with measure List and Pile Sort – in this case where each participant writes a criterion or characteristic and then moves around and joins the group whose cards show the same or similar ideas. We have used this technique in many settings, with great results. Another well-appreciated method consists in telling stories of success and failure, observed or imagined, and then using the stories to identify the criteria relevant to the topic at hand. Attentive Listening, laddering up or down (see Chapter 6 and Chapter 14) can help elicit the criteria from the stories; this ensures that the discussion is neither too abstract nor too concrete. An alternative method, more abstract but still helpful in some settings, is the full context procedure: people review all elements in their list and find two that have a positive characteristic in common, and then the element that is the most different from these, and why. The method is a variation on triadic elicitation, discussed in detail in Chapter 19. Common criteria for scoring alternative actions are cost and time efficiency, net impact, feasibility, gender equity, environmental sustainability, fit with local culture, local skills available and expected buy-in. While the list can be extended and an attempt made to be exhaustive, the best criteria are simply those that are good enough for the purpose at hand. As in most cases, good enough is perfect. Before assessing elements against criteria participants should make sure all are defined clearly, using positive terms at all times (as in Table 5.2); this positive angle usually makes more sense intuitively and is key to interpreting the sum of scores in ranking or rating tables. Also, they should decide whether the measurements will be based on empirical observation (e.g. ratio of women in decision-making positions) or reported views and perceptions (e.g. levels of agreement with a statement). A worthwhile exercise here is to create SMART indicators (specific, measurable, applicable, realistic and timely) or progress markers (Earl et al., 2001) that define the meaning of each number on the chosen scale. But this is a subtle exercise, easier said than done. On this matter, readers are invited to revisit our discussion of monitoring and evaluation in the preceding chapter.

When giving scores Once participants have a clear understanding of the elements and the criteria to assess them, they can proceed to discussing or reviewing the scoring process, starting with means to keep track of the scores and the reason(s) given for each score. There are several options here. • • • •

Use real-time polling technology with cell phones or clickers to generate and save scoring results. When several elements are scored against multiple criteria, create a table on a flip chart. Draw a large table on the floor using masking tape. Scores are then recorded on separate cards and placed in the corresponding cells. Multiple flip charts are an alternative to creating a single table. On separate flip charts, participants post all the information for each element: the description, the ranking or rating criteria, the actual scores and the reasons for each score. Compile results, as needed.

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Design and facilitation TABLE 5.2  Ranking or rating alternative local economic development projects

Criteria

Local fair

Micro-credit

Seed bank

Historical route

High impact

 

 

 

 

Cost efficient

 

 

 

 

Skills available

 

 

 

 

Benefits the community

 

 

 

 

Environmentally friendly

 

 

 

 

Total rating

 

 

 

 

Whichever data collection method is used, make plans to document each scoring discussion and produce reports, in the form of minutes, photographs and spreadsheets for tables and graphs. Before proceeding with scoring, participants must also be clear on several points: •

• • • •

whether the ranking or rating scale will be the same for all criteria (e.g. 0 to 5, where 5 is better than 0) or vary according to the importance of each criterion (see Weighting below); whether the rating will be done individually, by subgroups or by the group as a whole; whether the scoring will be done openly or anonymously; whether people will discuss scores until they reach consensus, establish the majority view or calculate the average score; whether scoring will be done using numbers, measurable objects (from one to five stones, for example) or a visual prop such as grey scale cards – e.g. from white (value 1) to light grey (value 2), medium grey (value 3), dark grey (value 4) and black (value 5).

Having clarified these points, participants can rank or rate the elements as planned. Again, there are several options. •

•

•

Participants start by dividing all the elements into three piles: those with high scores, those with middle scores and those with low scores. They repeat the process with each pile until a distinct ranking or rating is identified for each element. Place cards showing the two polar values (0 and 5, for instance) at a distance from each other. Participants then debate the location of each other element somewhere along the continuum. Paired comparisons is a well-known participatory scoring procedure described in the companion handbook.

When managing time and working with large groups When facilitating group discussions, managing time is almost always an issue. Polling technology, online or offline, can do wonders, especially with large groups. Alternatively,

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Measuring with measure participants can place numbers on the floor for each point on the scale used for the exercise; everyone can stand next to the number they think is correct for a particular criterion. Agreement and differences on ratings will be easy to see. The group can then focus on major differences only, discuss them and adjust positions until a rating or ranking decision is reached, whether by consensus or by majority. As with polling technology, ‘opening up the floor for debate’ works provided the scoring process involves a limited number of questions. If several elements need to be scored using multiple criteria, a better technique is to divide participants into subgroups that are representative of the larger group. Following this, each subgroup takes one or two criteria and uses them to rate all elements. For any action inquiry to succeed, making time is as important as saving it. This includes setting aside enough time for participants to go over the results of their exercise and discuss the implications for their understanding of the topic and decisions. Time may also be needed to compare the scores obtained from different individuals or groups, identify the main differences, and try to reach a common understanding (see Disagreements and Misunderstandings, Chapter 16). Two other considerations are important when allocating time: the need for iterative thinking and discussion and the actual number of people involved. In our story above of how Canadian community college students perceive their generation and the challenges they face, facilitators used Free List and Pile Sort to support iterative and deliberative thinking: views evolved quickly based on the ideas formulated and shared throughout the process. The same adjustments can be made to Ranking and Rating, allowing participants to revisit and modify any aspect of the exercise, whether it be the criteria used or the actual scores given when assessing the elements. Taking the time to get it right will actually save time as people sharpen and agree on what matters most. Going through several rounds of discussions on the same topic is easy enough when the group is small, but what about larger groups? One possible answer to this question lies in the Delphi method where a panel of stakeholders or experts answer a series of questions in two or more rounds, online or offline. For example, participants may provide initial forecasts on the direction of development of a new technology, or views on policy priorities. As the discussion continues, they can revise their assessment in light of other people’s forecasts and comments, in the hope of achieving consensus. This principle can be extended to practically any action inquiry process that values iterative and deliberative thinking carried out in a collaborative mode, based on real-time communication, online or face-to-face.

When weighting One last consideration is the ranking or rating of the criteria themselves – i.e. taking into account the relative weight of different variables. This may seem complicated, but people do it naturally, as when they decide on different breakfast options: taste and nutritional value may come to mind but get less weight than the time required to have the meal before rushing off to work. As a rating tool, Weighting can come in handy when some criteria (in this example, expediency) might matter more than others. The technique is not all that different from Rating; the instructions and options to consider when determining the 123

Design and facilitation elements in a list, the criteria to assess them and the scoring process are essentially the same. The only difference is that participants must adjust the maximum possible score assigned to each criterion, to reflect its relative importance. When using a table to rate elements against criteria that have different weights, the maximum score for each criterion should be specified in a separate column, in descending order (5 for expediency, 3 for taste and 2 for nutrition, for instance). If participants prefer graphs over tables, a nautilus-shaped figure can facilitate the task of recording and analyzing the results. Figure 5.1 illustrates this. The graph shows spokes of different lengths, in ascending order, clockwise. Spokes represent different criteria, and their respective length reflects the maximum score allowed for each. Scored ratings are recorded on each spoke by placing marks somewhere between the starting point (0) and the other end of each spoke (representing the highest value). For each element, straight lines are drawn between all the corresponding marks to create a shape that defines the overall profile. In the example, participants considering three possible local development projects in Burkina Faso rated the options using six criteria of different weights. The most important criterion was the

10

Ag

ric

Sustainable

7

nk (31)

Equ ita

ble

(gen

der)

Seed ba

4 t al fi tur

Cul

m Touris

ult

ura

lm

icr o-c red it ( 23 )

(17)

4 Time

4

Know -how

Cost

3

2

FIGURE 5.1  Setting priorities for local development, Burkina Faso

124

M

um

im

ax

l ta to

)

(33

Measuring with measure possible impact on gender equity, followed by questions of sustainability. Figure 5.1 adds a long synthetic spoke that shows the sum of all ratings for each element and the total of all maximum scores. In sum, a seed bank project was by far the best overall, and tourism, the least attractive when considering all weighted criteria.

THE SOCRATIC WHEEL Weighting as an exercise in rating is essentially a bar chart in a spiral form. As with other graphs in this book, the appeal does not rest in its technical features but rather in the intent that sets the technique in motion: namely, group analysis and dialogue in a visual mode. The same quality applies to The Socratic Wheel, a rating graph where all spokes are of equal length. It is the equivalent of a radar graph in spreadsheet software. The Socratic Wheel follows the same logic as a Rating table, but with one important difference: participants can easily visualize and discuss the differences in scores without having to record, scan and compare each number in a table. Those inclined to see the forest for the trees will appreciate the difference. Likewise, participants who fear numbers and tables, and there are many, will find it easier to engage in the discussion. We have used The Socratic Wheel in many different settings around the globe, from Cree First Nation assessments of tourism businesses to health policy discussions in Mali and municipal priorities for local economic development in Cambodia. It can be a truly powerful dialogical and practical tool on its own or as a complement to broader or deeper inquiries. To show this potential, we start with the generic instructions followed by two Canadian-based stories about the use of The Socratic Wheel to assess skills, learning goals and educational outcomes. These examples are interesting because one shows how to scale up the inquiry process to evaluate programme-level impacts and the other builds on the teachings of Socratic wisdom, the feature which inspired the tool’s name. Stories from Bhutan and India follow. As with Rating, The Socratic Wheel serves to assess elements against criteria. The initial steps involve deciding on the topics to explore, the assessment criteria and indicators or progress markers, and how the scoring will be done. This is familiar territory. All the instructions, tips and optional features of Free List and Pile Sort and Rating help participants decide. Before they start rating the elements, participants may opt to create a wheel on paper, a flip chart or on the floor and assign a criterion to each spoke. The scale can be marked, from the centre (0) to the outer edge (the highest value). Preparation also includes labelling each spoke with a title card, or using a drawing, an object or a person to represent the criterion. The group can identify a relevant metaphor for the wheel as a whole to represent the spirit of the exercise or its context (a sun, a steering wheel, a target, a dreamcatcher, etc.). Participants use the figure to discuss and mark each rating on the corresponding spoke. They then draw straight lines between the marks to create an overall evaluation profile. As already explained, each spoke can show several ratings. This was the case in our Burkina Faso story of Weighting where three local development options were compared against the same seven criteria (Figure 5.1). Multiple ratings on each spoke can also serve a different 125

Design and facilitation purpose: they can help compare ratings at different times. For instance, the questions asked for each spoke may involve rating a single activity or project based on three things: its current contribution to gender equity, the level of contribution that should be aimed for in a given time frame, and the actual results obtained at later points in the process. In other words, The Socratic Wheel can be used to plan, monitor and evaluate progress over time by determining three ratings on each spoke: (1) the initial rating or baseline, (2) the rating aimed for within a defined time frame and (3) the final rating obtained once the time is reached (see Table 5.3). The ratings for (1) and (2) are recorded at the beginning of a process, followed in due time by the rating for (3). To make full use of the tool, participants should determine the actions needed to move from one level to the other and incorporate these specific actions into work plans. The goals that form part of the discussion can be collective, which means that only one wheel figure is needed to represent group views on a current project and targets for improvement. But the goals could also be individual, as when students assess and plan to develop their skills in different domains. The wheel then becomes a personal tool. It can still feed into a group discussion, assuming people share the same goals and plan to support each other in achieving them. This is the approach we used in 2006 in an evaluation conducted with Canada World Youth (CWY). The evaluation team included CWY staff in five countries (Canada, Cuba, Ukraine, Benin and Thailand) and was led by J. Chevalier and two experienced consultants from South House Exchange (Kate McLaren and Paul Turcot). The team selected, tested, adapted and sequenced various evaluation tools for the purpose of assessing how and to what extent a youth exchange programme running from 1995 to 2002 contributed to the CWY mission of inspiring civic engagement (McLaren et al., 2006). The evaluation team convened one-day workshops in 17 different locations across the five countries involved, reaching a total of 289 past participants in the programme. The Socratic Wheel played a pivotal role in the overall evaluation process. Each participant scored the impact the programme had on their own learning in the five knowledge and skills areas listed in Table 5.3, using a scale of 0 to 5. Individuals charted their scores

TABLE 5.3  Averages of individual scores for knowledge and skills, CWY by country Country

Number of participants

Average of individual scores*

 

 

Communication skills

Organi­zational skills

Learning skills

Knowledge

Technical Average skills score

Cuba

61

4.5

4.5

4.2

4.3

4.0

4.3

Ukraine

28

4.5

4.3

3.9

4.0

3.3

4.0

Canada

64

4.3

3.9

3.5

4.0

2.4

3.6

Benin

74

4.0

4.0

3.7

3.1

3.4

3.6

Thailand

62

3.8

4.1

4.1

3.8

3.6

3.9

Weighted average for all 289

4.2

4.1

3.9

3.8

3.3

3.9

* The maximum possible score is 5. 126

Measuring with measure on a wheel and noted details explaining the scores. These explanations served as indicators. Participants then looked for others with similar scores marked on their wheels and formed groups with similar impact profiles. The members of each group discussed what they had in common and chose an image or symbol that represented the set of knowledge or skills the group had most developed or strengthened through the CWY experience. Similarities and differences between groups were discussed, along with concrete examples of personal impacts and the reasons why the programme had more impact in some skill or knowledge areas and less impact in others. Data compiled from all countries indicated that the top two skill areas were communication skills and organizational skills. These two received the highest impact rating in every country (except in Thailand where communication skill gains were rated lower than organizational and learning skills). By contrast, technical skill gains received the lowest impact rating in every country (except Benin). This application used visual analytics to support real-time group discussions. The significance for an action-oriented assessment is considerable, especially when time is managed to elicit participant reasoning and explore the implications for action. The overall methodology also reconciled two things: defining general criteria and rolling up impact statistics from all five countries, on the one hand, and showing the flexibility needed for each country to generate its own indicators for each criterion, on the other. For instance, communicational skill impacts referred more to ‘learning other languages’ in one country and more to ‘speaking in public’ in another. Likewise, expressions of civic engagement, the CWY mission, were culturally specific. In Canada, for example, individual acts of volunteering

PHOTO 5.2  Youth discuss what civic engagement means to them, Cuba (Source:

J. Chevalier) 127

Design and facilitation and environmentally responsible behaviour counted more whereas in Cuba career choices were the main ways in which youth affirmed their commitment to society (McLaren et al., 2006). The methodological lesson is that reconciling higher-level results and cultural sensitivity can be achieved through flexibly-defined indicators within general criteria. Given the cultural differences between participants spread over five countries, a flexible methodology was needed to generate global statistics and at the same time recognize differences in local meanings and indicators for what was being rolled up at the programme level. Instead of using standardized descriptions of each criterion, participants were encouraged to flesh out what each criterion meant to them and to document their reasoning. The final assessment recommended, among other things, that CWY ground individual learning objectives in the goals of specific community-defined projects. This subtle strategic shift implied adjustments to the work placement component of the exchange programme, to put both work and community development at the centre of the youth learning agenda. The goal became to enhance the longer-term impact on host communities while at the same time building among youth relevant technical or professional skills, in addition to communication, learning and organizational skills.

Socratic learning Our use of The Socratic Wheel in the CWY impact assessment could not count on upstream baseline data for tracking change over time, other than what each participant remembered about the knowledge and skills they had before joining the exchange programme. Applications of the same tool in Bhutan and India, described below, differ in that regard: they involve upstream efforts to assess the initial situation and establish goals and targets for improvement. Creating an informed baseline against which changes can be measured is better science, one might argue. But there is a problem: when people assess their own skills or goal achievements, perceptions can change with the benefit of hindsight. As Socrates teaches, people may realize that they know more or achieved more than they thought they did, or the opposite – they thought they knew or accomplished more than they actually did. The Socratic Wheel can capture the benefits of hindsight by adding a fourth set of ratings to the monitoring and evaluation wheel: the ‘initial ratings revised’. In this application, the starting point on each criterion is reassessed, but not until a final rating is obtained, at the end of a learning process. People can then evaluate the real progress over time, by comparing the ‘final rating’ with the ‘initial rating revised’ (see column D – C in Table 5.4). While resisting changes to baselines is good practice in project management, it is not always the rational thing to do. A baseline set in error offers little value for project control and performance measurement and may need to be revisited, in due time. Socratic learning explains why, at least where self-assessments are concerned. In our PAR training workshops, we sometimes invite participants to assess their skill profiles at the beginning and then re-examine their skill levels once the training is over. Socratic learning emerges when participants revisit their initial ratings and discover they had overor underestimated what they knew or were good at. In one training event designed for social service workers in Calgary, one person initially targeted flexibility and the suspension

128

Measuring with measure of judgement as the two skills she needed to further develop. However, when asked later to revise her initial ratings, she realized that she had overestimated herself with respect to a third skill, namely group leadership. She felt that the training had opened her eyes to many new leadership skills she had never thought about previously. Her exposure to PAR provided her with a new perspective on what leadership is all about and how she could use that understanding to help her adjust flexibly to situations and suspend judgement. Consider an illustration from an impact assessment of a PAR project designed to help experienced teachers develop their skills at supervising beginning high school teachers. The project took place in 2016 Canada, the United States, Belgium, France and Switzerland, with support from our colleague Michelle Bourassa. Table 5.4 and Figure 5.2 illustrate one teacher’s evaluation of the impact the training project had on his ability to support a beginning teacher’s efforts in developing five core skills. The teacher in France had 20 years of experience in the profession and was used to playing the role of an expert by intervening a lot when supervising beginning teachers. His overall expectations with respect to his own learning from the process were rather low. He felt he had little to learn about supervising teacher learning in most respects. As the table shows, his personal learning goals (expected progress) were in two areas, i.e. helping beginning teachers develop their analytical and ethical self-evaluation skills. Five months later, however, he lowered his initial ratings for two other supervising skills by a full three points on a scale of ten. In hindsight, he realized he could do a lot better when listening and helping beginning teachers set learning goals for themselves. He had also overestimated his ability to provide guidance on the question of classroom management. Actually, the two areas where he thought he was strongest were the areas he learned the most (Mattei-Mieusset et al., forthcoming, 2018). The two stories that follow also illustrate upstream applications of The Socratic Wheel, where the baseline situation and goals were firmly established. The application in Bhutan compares school profiles in a single country rather than individual profiles across different countries, as for CWY. The Indian example is a whole group discussion around a single graph. While the basic steps are the same, the variations on the wheel underline the importance of context, purpose and participant profile in designing an action inquiry process that is culturally sensitive and meaningful to the people involved.

TABLE 5.4  Socratic learning by a teacher of teachers, France

Rating criteria

Initial rating

Expected rating

Expected progress

Initial rating revised

Final rating

Real progress

 

A

B

B – A

C

D

D – C

Analyzing

5

8

3

5

8

3

Ethical self-evaluation

5

8

3

5

8

3

Formal writing

5

5

0

5

8

3

Goal setting

8

8

0

5

8

3

Classroom management

8

8

0

5

10

5

129

Design and facilitation

FIGURE 5.2  Socratic learning by a teacher of teachers, France

EDUCATING FOR ‘GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS’ IN BHUTAN The Fourth Druk Gyalpo or King of Bhutan challenged the world and Bhutan with his statement in 1971 that ‘Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product’. The concept of gross national happiness, or GNH, quickly became the focus for a number of efforts in various countries to develop indicators and a composite index that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than gross domestic product. It also set out a vision for building an economy and society in Bhutan based on Buddhist spiritual values. Embedding GNH in the structure of the country’s institutions and the consciousness of its people became an official goal, carried on by the current king and constitutional government (Cooper and Bedford, 2017). Recently, attention by the Royal Government of Bhutan began to focus on major school reforms that would bring the spirit and practice of GNH into the educational system. Several conferences were organized to describe what this might mean, including an international conference held in December 2009 and a follow-up event involving all 541 principals from across the country. In these two events education specialists and principals jointly defined the areas of change needed, including aspects of the school curriculum, the broader learning environment and linkages to community life. The goal of these changes was to bring holistic, ecological and human principles and values, including daily meditation and critical thinking skills, into everyday school activity and the education of students. 130

Measuring with measure Far-reaching reforms of this nature had never been attempted on a national scale, and plans were needed to guide, monitor and evaluate these changes. Against this background, the Evaluation, Monitoring and Support Services Department (EMSSD) of the Ministry of Education invited D. Buckles to facilitate a workshop in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, before the first day of the 2010 school year. Some 30 staff, teachers, principals and students came together to co-design a continuous planning and strategic evaluation tool for use by schools. The tool needed to pose three questions: • • •

Where is the school now, in relation to the principles and values of GNH applied to distinct areas of school life? What improvement targets can we set for the current year? How are we planning to achieve these targets?

The tool had to be simple enough for use by all schools across the country without any training.  The Socratic Wheel offered this potential and was later integrated into formal school-based monitoring and evaluation plans (EMSSD, 2011). Figure 5.3 shows the seven criteria against which schools would be assessed, drawing on detailed definitions of expectations developed during the prior conference and planning events. School principals and teachers all had access to these outputs and were well versed in the principles and values of GNH and how these could be expressed in the different areas of school life. During the co-design workshop participants tested out the use of Outcome Mapping’s graduated progress markers, that is, statements of what they expected to see, what they would like to see and what they would love to see in a school curriculum, leadership and management practices, green physical ambience, etc. For example, a principal in the co-design workshop said that he expected to see student assessments go beyond consideration of a single final exam to include attendance and level of achievement on multiple tests. Moreover, students would surpass minimum expectations if they improved their contribution to class activities beyond individual baseline. The school principal said he tried to remind his teaching staff of the meaning of continuous and holistic student assessment by using the metaphor of a colour wheel. When spun, the wheel mixes all colours to create white, symbolizing an overall assessment. Since it was not feasible to train the hundreds of schools involved, workshop participants decided not to integrate ‘expect-like-love’ progress markers into the evaluation design. Instead, the final tool relied on the more familiar notion of a self-evaluation scale of zero to four. The instruction that went out to the schools was to convene a meeting of various stakeholders in each school (principals, teachers, older students, active parents) to discuss the extent to which the school was currently applying the principles and values of GNH in the different areas of school life. When applying each criterion, they were to provide concrete examples on how the school demonstrated these principles and values. They were also to set targets for the coming school year, beyond the levels already achieved. This defined the level of improvement the school should be aiming for and provided the basis for making specific plans to achieve the targets. The wheel as a whole and the planned actions were to be posted in an appropriate location at the school, as an expression of school aspirations and planned commitments, and a reference for ongoing monitoring of progress. 131

Design and facilitation

1

chos

3

o ci a l a m b i e n c e

2

p

Psy

and holis c uous ssment n e Con dent ass stu 4

Gre en ph ys

ce ien mb la ica

Cu rric ulu m

anagement prac ce s hip/m s r e d Lea

s

hi

Co

-c u

rric

ula r

ac v i es

School-

co m

y nit mu

a rel

on

FIGURE 5.3  A GNH school improvement plan, Bhutan

When tested for one school during the co-design workshop, the school representatives (a teacher and a student) set two significant improvement targets for the coming year: the school-community relationship and the green physical ambience (Figure 5.3). They planned to improve the school-community relationship by organizing several cultural events on occasions important to the local villages. They said this would in turn make it more feasible for the school to engage parents in collective work parties to green the physical ambience. The teacher described the parent network as a cluster of dandelions, a flower with many seeds and yellow petals. The imagery expressed genuine efforts to spread the value of caring to every corner of the school community. Modest targets were also defined for curriculum improvements, inspired by ideas presented during the international conference and by teaching guides they had from other countries. Improvement targets for the psychosocial ambience were also modest, to be met by continuing to invite local monks to lead morning meditations at the school. They added that some work could also be done 132

Measuring with measure

PHOTO 5.3  A student discusses indicators of Gross National Happiness, Thimphu, Bhutan

(Source: D. Buckles)

to share leadership and management responsibilities fairly among the various teachers at the school. The evaluation design developed during the workshop was tested and revised again by the EMSSD and integrated into a country-wide guide for School Self-Assessment and Improvement Planning. This was the first systematic effort to introduce the concept of GNH into evaluation at the individual school level and to collect data on variable targets and progress across the country. The design itself reflected some of the values it tried to capture – a human-centred, flexible and group-based planning and evaluation tool grounded in the aspirations of specific schools and national GNH objectives. In an update on use of the tool, the EMSSD noted that the wheel supported ‘a culture of inquiry and reflection focussed on continuous improvement’ inspired and guided by the principles and values of GNH (EMSSD, 2011, p. 1).

STRATEGIC PLANNING BY A KATKARI ASSOCIATION One final illustration will round out the options for The Socratic Wheel we have found most compelling and useful in different contexts. While a simple tool compared to many in this book, the variations show the scope for innovation towards an inquiry process that is truly social in its methods for knowledge creation and social change. The example builds on the 133

Design and facilitation story of action-oriented research with the Katkari illustrated in various chapters of this book (for the full story, see Buckles and Khedkar, 2013). The tool variant is focussed, involving powerful storytelling and symbols to set priorities for collective action. The result was a user-friendly exercise in strategic planning, free from the constraints of formal education and literacy. As noted previously, the Katkari have been marginalized from the wider society by a long history of exploitation, land alienation and social exclusion. They are not passive victims of their situation, however, and in 1982 organized themselves into a regional association representing 82 hamlets and villages scattered throughout Raigad District in Maharashtra near Mumbai, India. The association is called the Katkari Forum for Justice (Katkari Nyaya Nivada Panchayat). It was initially a means to resolve conflicts between families within Katkari communities and to protect Katkari from unjust persecution by outside groups, including the police. According to the founders, ‘We started the forum to help people break from bad habits’. To remain relevant, however, the Forum needed to refocus its priorities and broaden its activities. A meeting of the Forum leadership in 2010 brought together 22 men from different hamlets to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing their communities and plan what they should do on a priority basis. Together with D. Buckles, three supporters of the association facilitated the strategic planning process. After lighting incense and breaking a coconut to launch the meeting, the group settled down in a large circle for several hours of discussion. The mood of the group was very positive because they had recently completed construction of a modest meeting hall in the commercial town of Pali. This hall provided the Katkari with a rare and highly appreciated common space for a variety of needs. It offered a place for people to rest or sleep while waiting for medical appointments or government paperwork, an overnight storage space for wood, dried fish or other products for the daily Pali market, and a space for Forum meetings and broader celebrations. In recognition of the confidence created by this significant accomplishment, and informed by prior discussion with the Forum executive, the facilitators launched the discussion with an appreciative question: what things were going well in their communities? After discussing the question, participants agreed that it was time to build on these strengths when setting the priorities of the Forum for the future. They also decided that a planning horizon of two years was needed because the challenges were many and the resources of the Forum very limited. Areas of improvement in the lives of the Katkari were elicited directly from the group and discussed one by one. As each area emerged in the discussion sticks were placed on the floor progressively, in the middle of the circle of people, like the spokes of a wheel. Participants identified objects to represent each topic and placed them at the outer end of each stick as visual labels. One person in the group said that various Katkari had established small enterprises in recent years and that this was an emerging livelihood option. He and others in the group provided various examples, including small brick operations servicing the housing boom, a tree nursery, vegetable cultivation, provision shops, purchase of a small herd of goats and charcoal contracting. A brick was selected by the group to represent the idea of new businesses. Everyone recognized, however, that only a handful of individuals had actually made this livelihood shift successfully. Most Katkari were still dependent on casual 134

Measuring with measure agricultural wage work and bonded employment on large brick operations in various parts of the state. They placed a marker on the stick very close to the middle starting point to show that the current situation was only a slight improvement on the past. When it came to setting a Forum goal in this area many remarked that there were limitations in what the Forum could do. Successful enterprises, they noted, are usually individual, not group endeavours, leading the group to set their two-year goal mark close to the current situation. The Forum would not treat this topic as a high priority for collective action. Government employment was another area where participants felt there had been some improvement in recent years. A paper bill was selected as a symbol for this change, placed a little further along the spoke to show relatively greater progress. People said that they have always had access to government jobs, due to quotas for adivasi and other marginalized groups, but that many didn’t stay in these government jobs. One of the participants provided an example from his experience as a government watchman. He and his cousin had been offered jobs as part of a reservation quota. He didn’t show up at the worksite at all, for fear of being separated from his family. The cousin lasted four days only. For a year they received notices from the government about the job. Looking ahead, however, participants recognized the potential value of these jobs to the youth and that

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M arriage custo m s FIGURE 5.4  Setting the priorities of a Katkari association, Pali, India

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Design and facilitation competition was now fierce. The Forum set a modest goal for this action area as it would affect a larger number of young people than enterprise development. Also they could see a role for themselves as champions that could accompany job candidates and make sure they received proper attention when interviewed. Harassment by police, symbolized by a club, was an area where participants felt significant improvements had been made over the years. They marked progress near its maximum. This improvement, they said, was mainly due to the work of the Forum to reduce family conflict and sort out problems between the community and outsiders. Now, police don’t pick up Katkari randomly when a crime has been committed somewhere else, as they would before. The group decided that the Forum needed to remain vigilant for police harassment, however, and continue its work on legal aid and conflict resolution. The group agreed that cleanliness, an expression of pride and a minimum standard of living, was another area where improvement from the past could be seen. They marked the level of improvement with a traditional white cap to symbolize taking a bath, wearing clean clothes and providing clean food in the house. The group agreed, however, that villages were still littered with garbage, leading them to set a goal for improvement. After discussing options, they decided to launch a campaign to collect and dispose of plastic bags as these were the most visible signs of litter in their community. By focussing on plastic bags they could convey the general message of village cleanliness. The Forum had overseen significant improvements in the practice of customs related to  marriage and other religious ceremonies, symbolized by a flower necklace brought for the inauguration of the meeting hall. Unlike Hindu families, the Katkari traditionally followed a bride price system rather than the dowry system, and organized their own marriages, sometimes for a number of couples at the same time. Feelings of inferiority caused by this difference created continuous pressure from the wider Indian society to scale up the marriage ceremony, by issuing invitations to large numbers of people, asking Brahmins to officiate and organizing a puja (Hindu ritual). In response, the Forum had established norms for expenditures to be incurred during marriages and specified the amount of bride price paid to different parties. These norms were written down and widely used in the hamlets. During the assessment, the members of the Forum resolved to continue to promote these norms and to monitor their implementation. The group also reaffirmed earlier decisions to authorize representatives to impose fines on families that did not respect the norms. As a group, they agreed that over the following two years this would remain a priority, although little scope for improvement remained. Great dissatisfaction and concern was expressed by participants regarding the lack of progress with alcoholism in their communities, symbolized by a plastic water bottle often used to contain alcohol. They acknowledged that it was a difficult problem to resolve. When husbands drink, women also drink, even when pregnant. Then there are fights, leading to the abuse of women. Various participants expressed concern about the future impact of this practice on the youth in the community, influenced as well by increasing levels of alcohol and drug abuse among non-tribal youth in the area. They also noted that past efforts to control the problem by banning the making of alcohol, including requests for help from the police in enforcement of the ban, had come to naught or simply shifted alcohol production from Katkari communities to other adivasi communities. Katkari families 136

Measuring with measure had lost livelihoods as a result of the ban but not stopped drinking. Reduced availability also simply drove people to the town of Pali to drink, where the addiction was even more expensive. While local spiritual leaders had inspired some Katkari to stop drinking, they had little influence in the broader region. For all these reasons, reflecting what participants consider to be a very persistent and difficult problem, they felt that as a Forum and a community they could only aspire to very small improvements over the following two years. Actions by the Forum would focus on discouraging families from taking advances on wages as this was often spent on drinking during festivals and created debt. They also decided to build on the success with marriage norms by tightening the rules around the purchase of alcohol for marriages and festivals and imposing fines on damages related to alcohol consumption. Education was added to the wheel using another stick. Participants noted that most children aged from 6 to 14 were in school and there were more schools being built in Katkari hamlets than previously. More Katkari children, while still few in number, were studying beyond the tenth standard. Using a pen to symbolize the topic, participants set the current level to reflect this assessment. They noted that many Katkari parents do not take education seriously because they themselves are not literate. Moreover, even educated children cannot get jobs without paying bribes, making parents wonder about the relevance of education for the Katkari. All the same, the Forum decided to persist in its effort to create awareness about the value of education, by meeting with groups of parents and further lobbying the government to build schools in Katkari communities. The gap between current and desired levels of improvement made this an important priority for the Forum. Finally, improvements in housing and household facilities such as televisions, fridges and bathrooms were also noted and a mark placed on the corresponding stick. While most Katkari families had in the past lived in wattle and daub houses, more were making houses with a stone foundation and brick walls and acquiring various household amenities. The Forum now expected rapid progress since many families had started collecting materials on their own rather than waiting for a government programme. One person reported that in their hamlet, 25 or so people collectively built a large number of new houses. The Forum felt that they could support this trend by sharing the story. They would also continue to lobby for greater security of land tenure in their villages, thereby reducing the threat of eviction from their homes. They set a relatively large gap between the current and desired level to indicate that this was a high priority for the Forum over the next two years. Overall, the picture of the current situation and targets for further improvement emerging from the exercise showed meaningful, albeit modest, accomplishments in several areas and clear priorities for the future. The closing discussion singled out four areas for new initiatives where the gap between current and target levels was greatest: cleanliness, government jobs, education and housing. People agreed that these were important to all communities making up the Forum, and consistent with the mandate and capabilities of the Association. They also reaffirmed a commitment to continue their investment in areas where they had been successful in the past. The President of the executive committee concluded the strategic planning exercise by calling on all members of the Forum to focus their efforts on the priorities discussed. He also expressed surprise and thanks to the facilitators at how the process had stimulated so much discussion, both in appreciation of their collective accomplishments and in setting priorities for challenges yet to be met. 137

Design and facilitation To conclude, The Socratic Wheel is user-friendly and highly flexible, which explains its popularity in many different settings. It lends itself to priority setting, starting with a baseline assessment of the initial situation, but also the monitoring and evaluation of progress toward goals and final outcomes. It can accommodate local variations in the meaning of general criteria and associated indicators and at the same time support rolling up findings into broad categories. The tool provides a support for both visual analytics and synthesis and a frame of reference for logical-analytical discussions in real time. When needed, it can incorporate either SMART indicators or progress markers. Last but not least, it can be used by itself or in combination with other PAR tools, in advanced designs or simple combinations as the need arises. The myriad variations of The Socratic Wheel show that there is nothing simple about simple measurement. The skills needed to integrate inquiry, learning and action with planning and evaluation that is both people-based and evidence-based cannot be acquired in a fragmented and linear manner as in conventional post-secondary settings – from introductory to advanced studies in disciplinary fields organized in silos. Rather, complexity must be embraced from the start, with a progressive application of methodological savvy, critical thinking and problem solving in context. These ‘skills in means’ are the subject of the next chapter.

REFERENCES Buckles, D. J., Khedkar, R., Ghevde, B. and Patil, D. (2013) Fighting Eviction: Tribal Land Rights and Research-in-Action, Cambridge University Press India, New Delhi. Cameron, W. B. (1963) Informal Sociology, a Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking, Random House, New York. Cooper, R. and Bedford, T. (2017) ‘Transformative Education for Gross National Happiness: A Teacher Action Research Project in Bhutan’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 265– 278. Earl, S., Carden, F. and Smutylo, T. (2001) Outcome Mapping: Building Learning and Reflection into Development Programs, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, ON. Evaluation, Monitoring and Support Services Department (EMSSD) (2011) ‘Towards Educating for GNH – A Guide to School Self Assessment Tool and School Improvement Plan’, unpublished document, Ministry of Education, Thimphu. Mattei-Mieusset, C., Emond, G. and Boudreau, P. (forthcoming 2018) ‘Quel développement professionnel pour des enseignants associés dans une formation de type recherche-action participative?’ McLaren, K., Turcot, P., Chevalier, J. M. and Patterson, H. (2006) Canada World Youth Impact Assessment Synthesis Report, Canada World Youth, Montreal, QC.

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CHAPTER 6

Skills, process design and ethics

Conducting an inquiry that involves human subjects requires know-how and the right tools. On this topic, most courses offered in higher learning institutions focus on steps to gather and analyze data using observation (participant or not), experimentation, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and life histories. These mainstream methods are taught separately from substantive issues and theory. The assumption built into most curricular frameworks is that research methods are essentially instrumental, i.e. neutral with respect to topical questions and ongoing debates in theory. Inquiry tools are ‘present-at-hand’, ‘just lying there’ as it were, pretending to be uninvolved in the way we imagine and experience the world, Heidegger critically observes. The approach presented in this book takes a different view. We emphasize research methods grounded in action and dialogue with the parties involved, towards the integration of inquiry and action with planning and evaluation. In this chapter, we provide an outline of process design, a method that applies these principles and plays a pivotal role in our approach to PAR. We also explore the skills that enable learners to develop the art of engaged inquiry. Given the emphasis we place on dialogue and collaborative engagement, the chapter moves on to compare the PAR ethos of sharing and transparency against two competing codes of ethics: mainstream notions of informed consent and confidentiality, and the Freudian rules of free communication and ‘abstinence’ built into ‘talk therapy’.

PROCESS DESIGN A key challenge in PAR, and a source of constant learning and professional satisfaction for us, lies in knowing how to select, combine and adapt tools for collaborative inquiry and action. This is process design. It involves making plans at the right time and at the appropriate level of detail, adjusting them in light of unforeseen events and new information obtained along the way. Below, we explain the different steps that we generally go through when planning a PAR initiative, always mindful that circumstances may play havoc with best laid plans. Guidelines such as the ones described below are never a good substitute for sound judgement sensitive to context.

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1  Define the general context and planning scenario Process design starts with questions about the general context and planning scenario of a proposed action inquiry. Over the years, we have learned to recognize three different scenarios depending on the level of uncertainty and complexity of the goals and surrounding circumstances. Adapting the design process to each scenario is key. Scenario 1 concerns situations that are predictable and favourable enough to plan most activities in advance with considerable detail. This is the plan-and-implement scenario where there is a coherent set of objectives shared by stakeholders (as in the upper right quadrant of Order and Chaos, Chapter 3). PAR practitioners working with this scenario should also be open to the possibility that some specific activities may not require a formal inquiry step and detailed plan at all, either because there is no pressing need, the situation to be addressed is relatively clear, or results can be monitored through day-to-day tracking (using informal exchanges, for instance). Scenario 2 is the complete opposite. It refers to complex, multistakeholder situations rife with difficulties and uncertainty (the lower and left-hand side quadrants of Order and Chaos, Chapter 3). Process design under this scenario recognizes that general and specific objectives held by different people may diverge, interact and evolve, subject to negotiations, compromise and change over time. Planning occurs in the middle of an ongoing process where the results of prior activities, the performance of key factors and stakeholder behaviour cannot be fully predicted. Information and knowledge are incomplete, links between causes and effects are not linear and straightforward, and chains of action, partners and results are complex. For this kind of situation, characterized by some degree of entropy or chanciness, process design must allow for variations in optimal levels of detail and time frames. The overall initiative is best served by formulating working hypotheses and actively integrating flexible inquiries into the plans, as needed to inform actions and continuous planning. Scenario 3 involves situations that are so pressing only immediate events can be planned. Process design becomes an ad hoc intervention focussed on a single or one-off event and the formulation of an immediate follow-up plan. Researchers accustomed to conducting full inquiries are not always keen let alone equipped to intervene in this mode, dismissed as the realm of consulting work. All the same, there are many situations where people do not have the luxury of time and must act quickly, based on the available evidence, not unlike professional healthcare providers in an emergency room. Given their commitment to bridging the divide between science and the circumstances of social history, PAR practitioners must find ways to accommodate inevitable constraints in time and partial inquiries that may or may not lead to longer-term study. Some of our most satisfying and impactful experiences with action-oriented research started this way.

2  Define the action inquiry purpose The next step is complex and yet, it would seem, so simple. The task is to define the inquiry goal, scope and expected results. These hinge on the main issue that prompts the investigation in the first place. An exercise in PAR requires a clear sense where things stand at a

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Skills, process design and ethics particular point in time and the directions that could be explored. Given the many problems people and societies face, difficult choices may have to be made, if only to avoid biting off more than they can chew. Since PAR is committed to grounding the inquiry process in collaborative action, formulating a question that has strategic value is a critical moment. Be aware that the question may not appear fully formed all at once but rather emerge from thoughtful exploration with the people involved. See the ‘skills in means’ section below, and particularly the skills of engaging and grounding, for tips on how to clarify the strategic question and its ramifications. Broadly, the exploration needs to drill down into what prompted the inquiry in the first place, who it is for, and what are the expected results. A strategic question may lead to a diagnostic inquiry, an action-oriented research process or a project or programme evaluation. The relative importance and right mix of questions for each type of inquiry vary from case to case. Also, defining the action inquiry purpose must consider how much information, analysis and participation are actually needed to perform the inquiry, who is the audience and what they are expected to do with the information and conclusions reached at the end of the journey. An important note here is that coming up with a compelling question that needs to be solved is not the same as raising an ‘interesting’ question, the kind addressed through curiositydriven research. Building inquiry questions from dialogue and meaningful interaction is a very different strategy from conventional literature reviews. This is not to say that the questions launching a PAR inquiry should be devoid of theory. Kurt Lewin’s maxim ‘there is nothing more practical than a good theory’ still holds (Lewin, 1951, p. 169).

3  Identify prior decisions No action inquiry is an absolute beginning, as much as we might like to think that the world starts with us. Every PAR initiative, and science project for that matter, occurs in the middle of an evolving story. The same can be said of participation: it never starts from scratch, and the interested parties would be ill-advised to ignore prior involvements and discussions. When designing the action inquiry, common sense dictates that previous conversations and conclusions be taken into account. Prior decisions may concern the people who should be involved in the planning phase and in the overall inquiry. The respective roles of participants and committee members (advisory, steering, organizing, attending), how much time will be dedicated to the action inquiry, the available inputs from previous events (knowledge, other decisions) and the single or multiple roles that the facilitator should play (as instructor, expert-consultant, researcher, note taker or stakeholder) should all be mapped out (see Activity Mapping, Chapter 3).

4  Identify and clarify the specific question(s) and their sequencing Step 4 follows logically from the lay of the land established by the prior steps. It aims to determine the precise questions that the action inquiry is expected to answer, using concepts and language that are meaningful to the participants. This involves identifying and unpacking different aspects of the general question that seem relevant, and then clarifying and prioritizing each of them. The exercise represents another critical moment in designing

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Design and facilitation the process, and there is no point in rushing through if the undertaking is to be time well spent. Too many inquiries fail to achieve concrete results precisely because they do not ask the right question at the right time, with the right people and for the right reasons. Next comes another crucial task, one that is relatively unimportant in conventional research involving human subjects: organizing the questions and their different aspects in sequence. In our work, we use output-input reasoning with the actors involved in planning the inquiry to determine a sequence where the answer to each question serves as the input to the discussion that follows. This is a defining feature of ‘structured conversations’ as we understand and practise them (illustrated throughout this book). The proper sequencing of topics for discussion, towards a shared view of the situation and a concerted plan of action, is at the heart of PAR. This contrasts with conventional interviews and surveys concerned primarily with immediately covering all issues in a comprehensive manner. It also contrasts with the expert-led PowerPoint presentation automatically used at the beginning of a whole-group consultation to ‘frame’ the topic. While they may be well intended, these approaches are not conducive to progressive, step-by-step consensus building guided by a common sense of purpose and a commitment to follow-up questions and action.

5  Select and sequence tools and design all steps Tools should come into the picture only when the previous steps have been completed. Methods follow purpose in context. As already pointed out, selecting, combining, adjusting and sequencing the proper analytical and facilitation tools is an art of its own. As important as participatory methods are, the art may not lead to a new tool but rather familiar and well-established ways of doing things that reflect local culture, known procedures and customs. PAR practitioners must judge when the established ways to gather and analyze information, create priorities, resolve problems, take action and interact with others are working well enough for the task at hand. When they do work, the best action inquiry strategy lies in ‘just doing it’, unencumbered by novel methods. Introducing new tools or methods is never an end in and of itself, unless capacity-building or methodological innovation is a key goal shared by participants. Overdoing the use of PAR methods, when local methods will do, can lead to an insidious form of ‘tyranny’ in the name of participation (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). To complete the exercise, all the steps and procedures needed to conduct the action inquiry must be defined. This involves choosing the right level of depth (simple or advanced) and the kind of technology needed in the situation. The design must consider how explicit and detailed the instructions should be. It also involves determining the right balance of quantitative data gathering, formal analysis, description and storytelling. This is a process of scaling to fit the purpose and time available.

6  Plan the documentation process The last task consists in deciding how extensively to report on the group discussions, and the use to be made of the documentation. This will help determine the activities needed to document the results during and after the action inquiry and assign the related responsibilities.

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Skills, process design and ethics On this matter, PAR practitioners should not assume that more documentation is always better than less. Nor should they let the experience of sharing ‘in the moment’ eclipse the need for records to inform follow-up actions. Consider documenting the following elements: • • • • • • •

the context or situation in need of attention; the purpose of the action inquiry; a summary of the process; a descriptive analysis of the results; an interpretation of the results; follow-up actions identified by the participants; observations regarding what went well or difficulties met during the process.

Some initiatives call for prior testing and capacity-building activities to support the action inquiry process. If so, plan these. As readers might expect, the design process for this and all previous steps often requires going back and forth between steps, until a satisfactory understanding is created. Far from being linear, good design is iterative and subject to change. As with good doctors, experience and judgement help create healthy bodies of knowledge.

DEVELOPING AND APPLYING THE SKILLS Process design is an art that cannot be learned overnight. Skills must be acquired and perfected over time. Figure 6.1 summarizes five core ‘skills in (the use of PAR) means’. Combining and applying these skills requires practice and the constant exercise of judgement. It involves learning to make many small and major decisions on how to mobilize knowledge and facilitate group thinking and dialogue – decisions that will make a difference for the people involved and success or failure in achieving goals. Since the devil is in the details, we offer pointers on what each skill actually entails. We also invite readers to use Figure 6.1, an adaptation of The Socratic Wheel, to reflect on their own abilities to engage, ground, navigate, scale and co-create meaning through collaborative inquiry. Use the tool for self-evaluation of current strengths and the development of personal learning objectives and priorities.

Engaging Playing the role of facilitator or third party. This means •

•

Intervening in situations where there may be tension or mistrust, where parties take rigid positions, participants do not express themselves freely, or clear rules of order are needed. Deciding when facilitators or third parties can allow themselves to state their own opinions on the issues being raised, assuming they have permission from the group to do so or if they are stakeholders or members of the group doing the exercise.

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Creating a safe environment. This means •

Offering an environment that inspires trust in the convening body, the facilitation team and the questions and rules used to guide the overall process.

Eliciting views and attentive listening. This means • •

•

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Formulating open questions such as What do you mean by this . . . or Tell me about your experience . . . Closed questions prompt ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Paraphrasing your own question, using other words to make it clearer, or restating what someone has said, using the speaker’s key words (What I’m hearing is that . . . I see that . . . If I understand you well . . . or In other words what you’re saying is that. . .). Summarizing and validating the main ideas expressed during a discussion, as needed. Use key words and begin the sentence with To sum up this point. . . End the discussion with a synthesis and validate the synthesis (Can we conclude that . . . Is it fair to say that. . .).

Skills, process design and ethics •

•

•

• •

• •

Facilitating note-taking by gathering ideas on flip charts. When possible, have one facilitator write on the flip charts while the other listens carefully to the participants and summarizes what should be written. Print clearly and alternate colours for each idea (Kaner, 1996). Acknowledging the implicit, body language and emotions by reflecting on and drawing unstated meanings, non-verbal messages and feelings that people are expressing. This may add meaning to what is being said (If I hear you well, it seems that . . . Perhaps we should talk about . . .). Adjusting the pace by allowing time for people to pause and reflect on the topic (possibly in writing) before the dialogue begins. Welcome silence as well, either when people call for it or when it arrives on its own. Avoid rapid speech and frequent interruptions; don’t try to fill silence. Listen while others are speaking and let go of planning what you will say when it is your turn. Welcoming humour, laughter and enjoyment of the process. Suspending judgement (Lucky you . . . I envy you . . . Poor you . . . How awful . . .). Don’t start a sentence with Yes but . . . I believe that . . . In my opinion . . . At the start of a new discussion, begin with a brainstorming or free listing exercise where all ideas can be expressed freely, without being judged or interrupted by others. Being aware and letting go of concerns, bias, feelings or immediate reactions that may affect your ability to listen attentively. Showing empathy and appreciation while listening (I understand . . . I see/hear what you’re saying . . . I appreciate the fact that . . .). Don’t describe similar experiences you or another person had in the past. Encourage attentive listening and empathy toward third parties that are being talked about (How would you state, in one sentence, what they are trying to tell you?). Be aware of moments that are intense. Do not try to rush through them.

Considering local language and forms of inquiry, learning, planning and interaction. This means • •

Exploring ways to accommodate differences in language, meaning and symbolism. Building on local forms of inquiry, learning, planning and interaction that are well established and work well in either literate or non-literate contexts.

PHOTO 6.1  Educators discuss environmental values, Montreal, Canada (Source:

J. Wonnacott) 145

Design and facilitation Building on group and individual differences. This means •

•

•

•

Determining whether participants should first address key questions individually, in groups or both (e.g. knowing when to start with an individual rating exercise and then forming subgroups that share similar views and prepare recommendations for plenary discussion). Deciding whether subgroups should include a mix of people with different characteristics (heterogeneous groups) or participants that share a particular set of characteristics (homogeneous groups). Mixed groups are preferable if the exercise is intended to draw out views representative of the entire group. Each subgroup can be assigned the same or a different task, depending on whether all participants need to be involved in all parts of the inquiry. Paying attention to differences in views and knowledge that may affect how people assess the same issues. Forming subgroups based on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, ethnic origin, religion, education, their place of residence, the amount of time they have lived in a certain place, their occupation, or their role in an organization or project may be important in some contexts. Facilitating and mediating differences regarding numbers and measurements. When discussing multiple scores, use real-time polling technology to establish their overall distribution, or place numbers on the floor for each point on the scale and invite participants to stand next to the number they think is correct for a particular criterion. The group can then focus on major differences, the reasoning of participants and adjustments needed to obtain a single rating (using a majority view rather than a simple average).

Facilitating multi-site and interactive engagement. This means •

Considering the chain of actions and partners that involve multiple sites and organizational layers (local, national and international, for instance). This helps determine key inquiry questions that are specific to each site or layer, those that concern the broader interaction of sites and layers and those that apply to all sites and layers and can be rolled up at the system level. • Establishing how mutual accounting and learning between partners can help answer key inquiry questions and address the concerns and contributions of each partner and what is attributable to their collaborative work. • Designing the right combination of individual or group self-evaluation with third-party assistance involving outside experts.

Self-evaluate your skill at engaging based on the above, using a scale of 0 to 5: ________

Grounding Clarifying the goals. This means •

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Discussing and clarifying what people expect from a process (What do you expect from this meeting? If I understand you well, you’d like to . . .). Use various forms of attentive listening to make sure people’s expectations are clearly understood.

Skills, process design and ethics Encouraging creative expression. This means •

Using humour, games, physical movement, floor democracy and other forms of creative expression (drawing, mime, sculpting, stories) to build awareness, energize the group and connect to emotions. This helps facilitate teamwork, release tension and ground learning in real-life settings.

Creating an inviting environment. This means •

Offering a physical space that is both comfortable and enabling. Whenever possible, use an open space large enough to accommodate about three times the number of participants, with moveable chairs and tables for small group work. Natural light will improve people’s comfort as will periodic breaks and an absence of clutter.

Reflecting on process. This means •

Welcoming questions or comments about the process being used in a discussion. State what needs to change in a positive way and adjust when possible. When unsure on how to proceed, share doubts and ask for help (Are there suggestions on how we should proceed?).

Self-evaluate your skill at grounding based on the above, using a scale of 0 to 5: ________

Navigating Framing. This means •

• •

Unpacking a discussion by keeping track of and noting different lines of thinking (I’m hearing three topics being raised. They seem to be. . .). When several issues are raised in a discussion, unpack them so that people can address each of them separately and establish priorities. Parking topics that may have to wait until later to be discussed in detail. Identifying prior inputs, making sure the documents, facts or evidence needed to have a well-informed discussion are on hand.

Sequencing questions and identifying the point of entry. This means • •

Choosing an entry point in light of the main question(s) to be answered as well as the context, the purpose and the decisions made prior to the inquiry. Identifying remaining questions that should be addressed first and those to follow. Choose the right moment to end one topic and move on to the next.

Choosing the right technology and facilitation techniques. This means •

Determining what facilitation techniques and technology should be used and how to gather and analyze information with the support of visual or kinaesthetic tools (people moving in space) that help see and discuss patterns emerging from the findings. 147

Design and facilitation • •

Deciding whether to use software, drawings, objects, flip charts, note-taking or ‘floor democracy’ to facilitate data collection and analysis. Making a list of the supplies and equipment needed for each discussion (such as cards, post-its, masking tape, scissors, low-odour markers of different colours, drawing paper, flip charts and stands for all groups, a laptop computer and video projector, etc.).

Being flexible. This means •

•

Being able to change plans and adjust or replace a tool with a different one along the way. A clear understanding of where the group wants to go with an inquiry helps manage the change. Varying the methods and the kinds of tables or diagrams or facilitation techniques used, if only to avoid fatigue.

Self-evaluate your skill at navigating based on the above, using a scale of 0 to 5: ________

Scaling Laddering up or down. This means •

Using laddering down questions to make statements more concrete if they are too general or vague (see Lessons and Values, Chapter 14). (Can you give an example? What makes you say that? What do you mean by this? Can you tell us about a situation that describes what you’re saying?). If statements seem too specific or concrete, use laddering up questions to make the significance clearer. (Why is it so? What have you learned from this? Why does this matter? What do these things have in common?)

Applying the good enough principle. This means •

Making sure that the information and analysis that are part of a discussion are ‘good enough’ to satisfy needs and expectations, without being either superficial or exhaustive and exhausting.

Managing time. This means •

•

Planning enough time to go through all the steps of a PAR tool, with breaks during the process as needed. The group may decide at any time to stop the exercise, find more information about the questions being raised and complete the exercise later. Saving time by dividing the group into smaller groups, and then asking each one to complete one part of the assessment (e.g. each group can assess a different option or use a different criterion to rate the same set of options).

Adjusting the level of participation. This means •

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Planning realistic ways to help people participate in an inquiry process. This includes determining whether all the key actors should be present or not. In some

Skills, process design and ethics cases, it may be better to work only with stakeholders that are keen or in a position to cooperate. In other cases, stakeholders may prefer to adopt a ‘shuttle’ approach: that is, a third party facilitates a multistakeholder inquiry by engaging with individuals or small groups separately and then presenting the results at a general meeting where all the parties are together. Aiming for the right level of application. This means Reducing or expanding the steps involved in each inquiry and the number of tools used and questions asked. Decide how simple or advanced the process needs to be, considering the following factors: • •

•

•

How much time and resources are available to dedicate to a particular inquiry. How complex the issues are. In some situations, summary indications of what participants think (e.g. their overall level of job satisfaction) may provide sufficient understanding and allow for fewer steps in an inquiry. In other situations, expanding the analysis by dividing a key variable into its component parts may be required (e.g. looking at the various expressions of the power variable in Social Analysis CLIP). How reliable do the results need to be. If important decisions are expected to follow immediately from the inquiry, or they are irreversible if proven wrong, high levels of evidence and consensus may be needed. Tentative decisions and actions to be verified later or monitored closely can be made on less detailed information and a narrower base of stakeholder agreement. How familiar the facilitators are with the tools. It is usually safer to learn with simpler applications of a tool and progress to more advanced combinations of tools as experience is acquired. Facilitators should become familiar with a tool by testing their knowledge and design in a safe context.

There are two extremes to avoid when scaling tools. The first consists in mobilizing the greatest number of actors to generate exhaustive data, analysis and text-heavy reports that make authentic stakeholder participation difficult and push actions out into a distant future, once all factors are fully analyzed by everyone. The other involves a closed circle of people using tools hurriedly and superficially, without providing the details, nuances and analyses needed to make the inquiry meaningful, useful and reliable. The middle way is to aim for a level of detail and engagement that reflects existing constraints and goals, and is ‘good enough’ in the context. The tool Validation, described in the companion handbook, is handy in this regard as it raises the question of how much evidence and/or how much participation are needed before action can be taken based on the results. Not every inquiry requires maximum participation and maximum evidence, but rather should be scaled with strategic goals, time available and urgency in mind. As with most things that matter, good enough is perfect.

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Design and facilitation Self-evaluate your skill at scaling based on the above, using a scale of 0 to 5: ________

Sensemaking Positive reframing. This means •

Restating negative statements as positive statements, when appropriate (If I understand you well, you’d like meetings to be short and to the point . . .).

Seeking congruency. This means •

Trying to clarify statements that seem to contradict each other, without expressing judgement (On the one hand . . ., On the other . . .). When needed, note areas of both disagreement and likely agreement (Some people seem to be saying that . . ., Others think that . . . Most are of the view that. . .).

Combining formal analysis, narration and emotion. This means •

•

Using diagrams and tables to organize information and findings in ways that are clear, logical and succinct and combining them with narration (oral or written) to provide the context, the sequence of events, a sense of purpose and details that add richness and texture to understanding the situation and how they feel about it (Heen, 2015, p. 623). Blend the two kinds of thinking and adjust the relative weight of each to suit the context. When relevant, convert the findings of one kind of thinking into the starting point for another kind of thinking (for example, stories of successes and failures may help determine the criteria needed to rate options using The Socratic Wheel). Ensuring that the collection of data is fully integrated with analysis and interpretation of the results through group discussion. Avoid separating the people providing data from the people doing the analysis and interpretation.

Choosing between eliciting concepts or starting with predefined terms. This means •

Knowing when to use tools that start with concepts adapted from the social sciences (e.g. Paradox, Gaps and Conflicts, Social Analysis CLIP) and when to use tools that allow participants to elicit their own terms and concepts (e.g. The Socratic Wheel, Domain Analysis, System Dynamics).

Using numbers and measurements wisely. This means •

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Recognizing that numbers based on simple counts, ratings or ranking are not ends in themselves. Measurements and numbers are means to provide information, clarify people’s views or knowledge about a topic, define priorities, focus attention during a group discussion, structure the conversation and find patterns. They may also reduce tensions by providing an external point of reference or bring out differences among stakeholders that were unspoken. How much attention is given to numbers and measurements depends in part on the weight given to different knowledge systems, such as science and local experience and know-how, and the importance of dialogue between them.

Skills, process design and ethics Explaining tool instructions or not. This means • •

•

Clearly stating the main question that the tool will address and inviting participants to reformulate the question if necessary. Knowing when to explain all the steps of a tool and when not to. In some cases, explaining the technique in advance or step by step can help a group focus on a task and reduce tension. In other cases, too much explanation may confuse and detract participants from the substance of a discussion. Participants may want to get right into it, trusting in the expert judgement of the facilitator regarding what technique to use. The facilitator can outline and seek agreement on the inquiry’s expected results and then proceed step-by-step. Participants can decide later whether they want to learn more about the technique and begin to use it themselves independently. Deciding when to use a technique discreetly, making sure to keep the conversation flowing while the facilitator organizes results of the conversation in her or his own mind, notebook or in a table (during or after the event).

Self-evaluate your skill at sensemaking based on the above, using a scale of 0 to 5: ________ Compile the results of your self-evaluation into a wheel graph, and make specific plans for improvements in priority skills.

PAR ETHICS AND CODES OF CONDUCT Research involving humans is not just a matter of developing and applying the right sets of skills to support collaborative thinking and action. Considerations of ethical conduct to guide the relationship between participants, facilitators and researchers must also be taken into account to protect people from suffering harm, disrespect or unfair treatment. The implication here is that full engagement does not mean speaking up and being transparent at all times, regardless of risks. PAR ethics must balance sharing and not sharing. A clear and detailed expression of ethical norms developed from a conventional research perspective can be found in Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, published in 2014. Informed by leading international ethics norms, the policy recognizes that the search for knowledge aimed at understanding and improving our world is a fundamental human endeavour. This implies that research has its own requirements, those of academic freedom, to be balanced against three competing sets of ethical considerations: respect for persons, concern for welfare and justice. The way the Tri-Council interprets these principles, particularly in reference to research practices that are critical, action oriented and community based, is most helpful. The first principle recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings. Researchers are under the obligation to respect the autonomy and freedom of individuals and groups to deliberate about a decision and act on it. Respect for people implies that 151

Design and facilitation researchers must seek the free, informed and ongoing consent of all those participating in research, with authorized third-party involvement in the case of persons lacking the capacity to decide. This is particularly important in situations of power imbalance and potential coercion affecting the relationship between researchers and participants. Consent must be informed, which means that measures must be taken to make sure that participants have a reasonably complete understanding of the purpose of the research, what it entails and all risks and potential benefits that may result from participation, at least those that can be foreseen. Normally, evidence of this voluntary and informed consent is obtained through a signed consent form. The second principle involves the obligation to protect the welfare of living individuals or groups, by not exposing them to any unfavourable balance of benefits and risks associated with participation in the research, especially those that are serious and probable. Since privacy is a factor that contributes to people’s welfare, confidentiality tends to be the norm. Respect for privacy regulates the control of personal information about participants and those who are important to them – information that is identifiable and not in the public domain. Confidentiality is usually obtained through the collection and use of data that are anonymous (e.g. survey data) or anonymized (irrevocably stripped of direct identifiers). The last principle, justice, requires that all people be treated with equal respect and concern for fairness and equity. Criteria of appropriate inclusion are needed to ensure that no particular people or groups (defined by age, gender, language, religion, ethnicity or disability) bear an unfair share of the direct burdens of participating in research. Nor should any population or group be overprotected or discriminated such as to be excluded from research without appropriate justification, arbitrarily depriving them of the potential benefits of participation obtained through information sharing, capacity building, community action-learning and problem solving. Concern for justice also calls for mechanisms to identify the dual or multiple roles of researchers and those assisting them, with a view to disclosing, minimizing or eliminating related conflicts of interest, whether real, potential or perceived. At first sight, Canada’s Tri-Council policy seems to limit the application of norms of ethical conduct for research to activities that are within the scope of Research Ethics Boards and related review processes. That is, research is restricted to its mainstream definition – a disciplined inquiry or systematic investigation aimed at the advancement of knowledge for the benefit of future generations and society as a whole, usually with little or no direct benefit to participants. While the definition is restrictive, topics that may be researched are limitless. They include ‘attempts to understand the broad sweep of history, the workings of the human body and the body politic, the nature of human interactions and the impact of nature on humans’ (Tri-Council, 2014, p. 5). Excluded from this list, however, are nonresearch inquiries that may also employ methods and techniques similar to those employed by researchers. Non-research comprises practical fact-finding activities such as programme evaluation, quality-improvement studies, performance reviews, educational testing and works of artistic interpretation. While fulfilling an important role in society, these inquiries lie outside the scope of the Tri-Council policy and may be subject to legal, professional or institutional norms of their own. 152

Skills, process design and ethics This brief outline of rules of ethical conduct for research involving humans will be familiar to most researchers. The reasoning and related measures provide important guidance against attacks on the dignity and welfare of fellow humans, examples of which can be found in a long history of scientific endeavours that reduce people to mere objects of research. When generalized and rigidly codified, mainstream ethics are nonetheless problematical. They interpret the principles of autonomy, welfare and justice in ways that leave little room for alternative perspectives on what research is, who owns it and what ‘participation’ means in the first place. Well aware of the limitations of conventional thinking in these matters, the Tri-Council offers guidelines to support ethical conduct in what is an accepted yet less conventional research paradigm, namely engaged research. It acknowledges the relevance of approaches other than the ‘disinterested advancement of knowledge’, alternative practices and codes grounded in action, experience and dialogue. They include PAR understood as ‘research that includes the active involvement of those who are the subject of the research. Participatory research is usually action-oriented, where those involved in the research process collaborate to define the research project, collect and analyze the data, produce a final product and act on the results. See “Community-based research” and “Collaborative research” ’ (Tri-Council, 2014, p. 5). The following summary is largely inspired by Tri-Council thinking on research endeavours that are critical, qualitative or promote the engagement of aboriginal populations, organizations or communities of interest. The guidelines are not waivers of the normal rules of signed consent and anonymity and the policies of appropriate inclusion and non-conflicting interests. Rather, they reflect a different understanding of what consent, welfare and justice entail when researchers take inspiration from the ethics of collaborative engagement. •

• •

•

When carrying out a PAR project, participation calls for research that is conducted by, for and with particular communities (i.e. collectivities defined territorially, organizationally or as a communities of interests). The people involved are not ‘subjects’ or ‘participants’ but rather partners engaged in all phases of the process (Foster and Glass, 2017). Accordingly, the terms and conditions of the collaborative process must be set out in a research agreement based on mutual understanding of the project goals and objectives between the parties, subject to preliminary discussions, negotiations and adjustments over time. Agreements are guided by ethics that acknowledge collective rights, interests and obligations and view community welfare as a complement to individual well-being. Expressions of agreement can take many forms, depending on the context. They include informal agreements that are binding and appropriate manifestations of mutual trust and respect. In some contexts, verbal consent or a simple handshake is less threatening and a better indication of agreement than signing a consent form. Some collaborative research projects may lead to deep relationships where questions of ethics are interwoven with personal commitments extending over a lifetime. Agreements sensitive to indigenous knowledge and value systems may require the extension of ethical obligations to respectful relations and partnership with the deceased, future generations and life forms other than human. 153

Design and facilitation Ethical considerations regarding the potential harm and benefits associated with engagement in collaborative research also take a different path. •

•

•

•

In a PAR perspective, risks to all parties are best addressed in the language of respect for self, others and the diversity of views and interests at stake, rather than the protection of ‘others’ who ‘participate’ but exercise little control over the research. To mitigate the risks associated with a collaborative project, mutual expectations and obligations should be set out in the research agreement, subject to review as the project unfolds. Recognition and ‘being heard’ may matter more than privacy and confidentiality. Respect for individuals and groups who wish to be heard and identified for their contribution to research must be shown through proper quoting, acknowledgements, co-authorship, or the granting of intellectual property rights. Given its commitment to social justice and transformative action, PAR may be critical of existing social structures and the policies and practices of governments, institutions, interest groups and corporations accountable for their actions. As a result, research may legitimately entail negative consequences for some individuals or groups criticized. Research is always a step into the unknown. As a result, it may evolve and create new risks over time. This inherent feature is particularly salient in the case of PAR methods, which tend to be consciously dynamic and flexible, inductive and reflexive. Given its emergent quality and responsiveness to social context and needs, PAR cannot limit the question of ethics to the design and proposal phase. The ongoing assessment of expectations that are met or not met is key to success and must take place at the appropriate time, as the project unfolds.

It should be emphasized that levels of engagement vary considerably from one PAR project to another, depending on the nature of the research, the contribution of the parties or community involved and the corresponding assignment of multiple roles. This means that the choice of appropriate rules of ethical conduct is rarely an either/or question. For instance, collaborative work between academics, formal leaders and customary authorities within an indigenous community does not preclude seeking consent from individual participants and the involvement of groups otherwise excluded and disempowered. This is to say that judgement must be exercised when balancing the ethics of engagement with measures of informed consent and privacy (to protect the dignity and welfare of individuals). Rules of ethical conduct depend largely on what ‘participation’ actually involves in each context.

ANONYMITY AND TRANSPARENCY At the risk of stating the obvious, we recognize ourselves in the ethics of interactive engagement and sharing that define the history of PAR. They are at the core of our commitment to rethinking the relationship between science and society. This sharing ethos leads us naturally to place a caveat on mainstream science’s requirements of confidentiality and 154

Skills, process design and ethics anonymity. With PAR, making sure that voices are heard and clearly acknowledged comes first. Speaking out matters, guided by rules of engagement arrived at through dialogue and mutual agreement. This book delves deeply into tools and processes that help people openly communicate their thoughts and views, supported by clear boundaries. The boundaries include a defined and agreed upon purpose, flexibly structured tools and a commitment to meaningful social action. This approach contrasts with mainstream science and the strict limits it imposes on the involvement of participating subjects in the inquiry process. To ground the discussion on sharing further, what follows is a brief account of a study on transparency practices at ActionAid, undertaken by D. Buckles in collaboration with a team of researchers in Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh. It was commissioned by the Transparency and Accountability unit of ActionAid International to assess, from the point of view of stakeholders, the extent to which ActionAid practises transparency. The organization had already invested heavily in the development of an Accountability Charter, global annual reporting on an Open Information Policy and other policy and procedural guidelines related to transparency. Yet little was known about community, partner and country staff perspectives on transparency or how to generate detailed feedback on transparency practice across the federation as a whole. The methodology developed for the study, in close collaboration with J. Chevalier, was participatory and action-oriented but also bounded by principles of ethical sharing, as we understand them. It centred on separate meetings with defined stakeholder groups including communities (23 in all), local partner organizations (six) and each of the three ActionAid country offices involved. Government officials and local media representatives were interviewed using a similar set of questions. The separation of stakeholders reflects the ‘closed door’ version of stakeholder analysis discussed in Chapter 12, a decision designed to create greater safety for participants potentially critical of the transparency practices of other stakeholders. D. Buckles remotely trained the research team to use the methodology and helped the national research teams make local adjustments, as needed. The researchers combined meeting results with information and analysis from observations and the review of policy documents to create country studies and contributed to the overall synthesis report (Buckles et al., 2016). Broadly, the study framework proposed that being transparent in the context of development aid involves creating the conditions and the means for all parties concerned to access and exchange information on project matters of importance to them. But it did not assume that all parties have the same information needs, or that all information could be shared ethically. Rather, it focussed attention on information potentially useful or directly relevant to those involved and that could be shared publicly without causing people or groups undue harm. Discussion of information that needed to be shared was balanced by a separate decision about whether or not to divulge the information source and specific details. The methodology thus sought to juggle the need to be transparent and not transparent at the same time, even when talking about transparency. The assessment began by grounding the purpose of meetings in the context of the activities bringing people together in projects in the first place: land rights, education and emergency response work sponsored by ActionAid. Participants created a visual representation of the project and then listed and pile sorted examples of project information they 155

Design and facilitation felt was or would be useful to them (see Free List and Pile Sort). Responses in communities and among ActionAid partners converged around the usefulness of information on project purpose, objectives, location and duration, who is involved (including selection criteria), local budgets and expenditures and the roles and responsibilities of different actors. These can be seen as upstream (goals) and midstream (process) considerations affecting decisions about how to engage with the project and interact with each other. By contrast, ActionAid staff were mainly interested in downstream types of project information, i.e. findings on impacts, lessons learned and the structure of projects (policies, governance, management). The usefulness of this information lay primarily in its contribution to staff reporting and accounting for projects and planning new initiatives. Government officials and members of the media identified some but not all of the same information needs. Sources and allocations of funding, findings on impacts and broader organizational goals were important to them, along with details on what, where and with whom ActionAid works. The research team also asked participants if they could think of a situation or type of information that should not be shared. This question reflected the ethical obligation to protect people’s welfare by minimizing the risk that information sharing might harm their persons, livelihood or standing in their social context. In Bangladesh, members of one community were very adamant that ActionAid not share personal stories of humiliation and deprivation at the hands of local elites (information that was related to project purpose). They felt that if the stories reached the local elites they could face direct and personal reprisal. Community members in Pakistan said that the names and images of women and girl children should not be shared, to ensure respect for the cultural values of the people involved. ActionAid partners in several countries argued that information on project budgets and staff salaries should be handled carefully, to avoid misunderstandings that might lead to a loss of social standing for the organization or conflict among staff. Even expenditure targets might be potentially problematic when a failure to meet them happens for legitimate reasons. Partners and community people both said that the sharing of information on corruption, incompetence and the threat of violence was the right or ethical thing to do, but that the identity of whistle blowers needed to be carefully protected. As noted below, poor access to information on how to provide feedback and register complaints safely and without putting relationships at risk emerged as a key gap in ActionAid’s transparency practice. Groups also discussed the means in place to share information that is useful and can be shared ethically. They identified formal channels such as annual review meetings, ad hoc social audits and public assemblies and ‘reflect circles’ established at the community level for all projects. Information boards in prominent locations, informal meetings with stakeholders and events organized as part of the routine delivery of project content also serve as channels for engaging rights holders in open discussions about what they are going for, over what time frame, with what resources and with what impacts so far. Groups used a variation on The Socratic Wheel to assess the extent to which transparency is actually achieved in practice, using three provided criteria: accessibility, truthfulness and timeliness. Participants developed local understandings of the criteria by providing their own examples and creating symbols for each. For example, community members in Kenya understood accessibility as information that is heard and easily understood by 156

Skills, process design and ethics the wider community, beyond gatekeepers such as village heads. The loudspeaker used in communities to communicate and convene was identified by Sauti ya wanawake, a women’s network, as a symbol for accessibility. In another case, accessibility was represented by a ladder, where each rung indicated a different type of information. Together, the rungs of the ladder allow people to mobilize themselves and reach higher places (community, county, country). A common feature of the representations was that accessible information reaches people beyond private circles and gives priority to a verbal form of communication. The concept of truthfulness took on various shades of meaning around notions of reliability but also the sincerity with which information is shared. One group (the Bidii Farmers Field School in Isiolo, Kenya) selected a leaf to represent truthfulness because of its true colour when freshly plucked from a tree. Even as it wilts, they said, it continues to depict a true colour reflecting its actual state or status. This sophisticated explanation corresponds well to notions of reliability but also to the lack of exaggeration or deception even as facts and circumstances change over time. It reveals people’s intention to speak the truth. Another group selected different sized stones to represent truthfulness, not only because of their solidity (reliability) but also because the varying weights conveyed the idea of more and less important or consequential information. This aspect reflects relative usefulness built into the concept of truthfulness from a local perspective: information that is truthful but not useful carries little weight. The concept of timeliness, the most straightforward, was frequently symbolized by a clock. One group, however, selected the freshly bloomed flower of the Lantana Camara shrub to reflect the idea. This flower, they noted, only blooms at certain times of the year, thus evoking a nuanced meaning for information that arrives at a favourable and helpful time. Once the three criteria were clearly defined and understood, participants used a threepoint scale (low, medium and high) to rate the extent to which each type of information they considered useful (and ethically sharable) was actually shared by ActionAid in ways that were accessible, truthful and timely. They placed a card with each criterion on one of three concentric circles to show the score for each information type. The findings indicate that most types of useful information scored well on all three criteria, with some notable exceptions (Buckles et al., 2016). Budget information did not always reach all community stakeholders in ways that were understandable and sometimes came after most project activities had already been planned in detail. Some groups also felt strongly that changes in budgets due to external factors had not been communicated at the local level when it was known at higher levels, pointing to a gap in truthfulness and timeliness. These limits on transparency created confusion and made people feel that they had wasted time planning without full knowledge of the budget constraints. Information on complaint and feedback mechanisms (from communities to partners and ActionAid) also scored poorly with respect to accessibility and timeliness. Participants noted that if they had known how to provide feedback in the very early stages of project development, they would have been in a better position to make stronger contributions to project design. The discussion illustrated the role of transparency as an upstream condition for later aid accountability; rights holders must know and have some influence over what projects set out to do and how, if they are also to have a say in holding aid accountable for results. 157

Design and facilitation The distinction between the practice of transparency and the actual impact of projects was not always easy to maintain during the assessments. As could be expected, participants wanted to talk about failures to achieve project outcomes as much as or even more than failures to be transparent about project processes (including outcome failures). The specific techniques (Free List and Pile Sort and The Socratic Wheel) helped to keep the discussion on target while also allowing for free speech on information needs that mattered the most to people. Focus was also achieved by identifying specific improvements to transparency practice that would bring about greater accessibility, truthfulness and timeliness. Sometimes this was done as a final step in the methodology and sometimes along the way, as specific weaknesses were identified. Figure 6.2 shows the question(s) addressed in each session and references the specific tools used to support the discussion. As we will

STEP 1 (Free List and Pile Sort) not be shared? In what

STEP 2 Ethical sharing

is useful to you?

(Free List)

What means are in place

STEP 3 Means of sharing

Preparatory stage A

(Free List)

Who should be involved, when, and in what capacity/role?

To what extent is the STEP 4 Assessing transparency

stakeholders that can influence or are affected by funded

STEP 5 Improvements to

What changes would improve the accessibility, truthfulness

(Free List)

FIGURE 6.2  Methodology for transparency research with ActionAid

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shared in ways that are accessible,

Skills, process design and ethics see next, managing the tension between sharing and not sharing, or between promoting free speech and creating rational and safe action-oriented conversations, are critical to the practice of PAR.

TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE Diagnostic group dynamics and sharing sessions dating back to the 1930s are inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud and the development of ‘talk therapy’. Didier Anzieu, an influential French psychoanalyst, reminds us that Freud ‘invented the psycho-analytic rules by breaking medical habits (letting the patient speak rather than asking him questions . . .). But Freud did not invent these alone. Conversations first with Breuer then with Fliess, in addition to his self-analysis, made it possible for him to separate phantasy from knowledge and to define the rules of a new symbolic system whose area of operation is the unconscious’ (Anzieu, 1984, p. 16). The move was radical. It involved nothing short of relocating the tension and struggle between the sharing of thoughts and efforts to conceal them in the psyche of all human beings striving to reconcile basic drives with the real world as they find it. By nature humans seek to unravel mysteries that surround them and mysteries about themselves. Freud was one of the first to throw a wrench into the understanding of scientists as the only people trying to lift the veil of ignorance, particularly in the field of human health and medicine. To facilitate this shift, he introduced two sets of complementary rules. The first set is on the side of conscious sharing. In Freudian logic, those undergoing therapy are free and actually expected to express whatever comes to mind, using word association for instance, among other techniques. They openly share their thoughts with analysts, well beyond what they would normally say in everyday interactions or in response to questions asked by people in positions of power (including doctors). Diagnostic groups inspired by this tradition added another layer to these rules, which consists in reporting discussions held in private to the group as a whole (Anzieu, 1984, p. 13). Analysts in turn are free and expected to offer their interpretation of what they hear, at the appropriate time. They are also at liberty to share their insights into the human psyche with a broader public, through academic conferences and scientific publications. The second set of rules is on the side of discretion, i.e. self-control and restraint. Analysts must respect the confidentiality of all things said during sessions. When applied to group settings, this rule applies to all participants. Also, those providing and undergoing individual or group therapy must all abstain from engaging in practical tasks and developing personal and intimate relationships among themselves during sessions. This means no sex and no problem-solving action or experimentation during therapy. Given this exercise in self-restraint, participants have no choice but to communicate interpersonal feelings and anxieties through symbolic channels, ‘projecting’ or transferring them onto the analyst acting as an ‘imaginary screen’, as it were. In one-to-one sessions, phantasies of libidinal, aggressive or self-destructive wishes expressed in the here and now become the object of analysis, worked through by the ‘analysands’ undergoing therapy, with hints and glimpses of what to look for suggested by the analyst. In group settings, the group itself becomes 159

Design and facilitation an object of redirected anxieties and emotions. This creates a ‘group illusion’, with positive transference ‘directed generally to the small group and negative transference directed to the group as a whole’ (Anzieu, 1984, pp. 11, 26, 78). Anxieties stirred up in group discussions usually revolve around two opposite fears: the non-recognition and loss of personal identity, on the one hand, and group fragmentation leading to feelings of abandonment and isolation, on the other hand. Learning to navigate between these two primitive anxieties is a constant challenge not only for group members but also for analysts who must deal with and control their own inclination to develop and transfer positive or negative feelings towards those undergoing therapy. The literature and debates surrounding these rules is conceptually rich and, unfortunately, peppered with professional jargon. We shall say no more here, save that variations on these rules have combined with numerous models of step-by-step scientific reasoning to create a long history of experimentation in group dynamics, adult learning and participatory action inquiry, already reviewed in Chapter 2. In what way, we ask ourselves, can this rich tradition continue to move forward? Should PAR play along with the two sets of rules dating back to Freud, or are we better off stretching them? Certainly, our approach to PAR owes a lot to a revolution that opened scientific thinking to laypeople playing an active role in making sense of the world, generating knowledge jointly and addressing complex situations that cannot be grasped through empirical observation alone. PAR nonetheless departs from the principles of ‘talk therapy’ built into diagnostic groups in that it lifts the clinical restriction on experiential learning achieved through action experiments in real settings. The sharing ethos also goes beyond the limitations of diagnostic, self-help groups in that it carries the expectation that people will not only speak freely and openly but also engage together in social action towards the common good. The spirit of openness and sharing is fundamental to PAR. However, experience has taught us that fundamentals, in particular our own, should always be taken with at least one grain of salt. As in diagnostic groups, caution must be applied to principles of sharing and interactive engagement. That is, some precautionary ‘screening and restraint’ is called for in the practice of PAR. We have already seen how research ethics and situations where transparency requires that information be shared raise legitimate concerns about confidentiality and anonymity. Making sure that personal information is ‘screened off’ from public view may be required to protect participants from suffering harm, disrespect or unfair treatment, even in settings where the inquiry is conducted in a PAR spirit. This is the case when delicate and strategic issues such as social attributes, positions and relationships are investigated and discussed; we return to this question and the relevance of ‘closed-door stakeholder analysis’ in Module 4. Rules of ‘discretion or respect for anonymity’ (Anzieu, 1984, p. 26) apply to group dynamics inspired by the insights of psychotherapy and PAR as well. Situations where discretion and constraints on the sharing ethos contribute to better dialogue are not uncommon. This is the case when participants in a group discussion are invited to express their personal views through anonymous polling, for instance. Also there are practical reasons for not sharing ideas at all times. Not being able to talk about just anything is key to getting somewhere; ‘otherwise the result would be chaotic’ (Anzieu, 1984, p. 13). A clear group decision to focus on what matters in the here and now is an exercise in self-control. Some 160

Skills, process design and ethics topics must be excluded from discussion lest participants bite more than they can chew or digress from the topic at hand. Efforts to uncover all aspects of a situation, towards a systemic and comprehensive analysis of all actors and factors at play, may be unrealistic. Likewise, explaining all details of a tool or facilitation method is not always helpful and may hinder people from immersing themselves in the experience. Lastly, the rational side of PAR may call for restrictions on free expression and outbursts of emotions that surface in difficult moments. When it comes to showing restraint in the ‘sharing experience’, PAR is not entirely at odds with the strictures of mainstream science involving human subjects. Despite its relevance, a general reminder that sharing is not the be-all and end-all of PAR does not break new ground. The challenge for PAR lies elsewhere – in creating more radical rules regarding what is actually disclosed and what is better left unheard. Our view is that more freedom and more structure are both needed. In order to unblock a problem situation, PAR must push the envelope of free expression at the same time as it promotes self-restraint well beyond what diagnostic groups normally do. On the freedom side of the equation, the practice of PAR should open up as many forms of meaningful expression and communication as possible, without routinely excluding those that seem either too simple or too advanced, too story-like or too mathematical, too artistic or too rational, too playful or too serious, too quick-and-easy or too timeconsuming. Most of all, it must consider expressions of meaning and intent invested in objects, actions and behaviours, beyond the words we use. In our approach to PAR, words and language are not the sole vehicle for people to communicate what they feel, know and think. We assume instead that all humans are hardwired to invest meaning and being in what they actually do and all the objects and life forms they interact with. When small or large groups gather in a room to examine a situation and discuss possible solutions, room size and location, the source of lighting, seating arrangements, physical movement and body language, the engagement of eyes and hands, the place of food and drink all contribute to techniques for ‘holding’ a meaningful event. The same can be said of the rhythm of things and ways of managing time, the use of the floor and supporting technology and the design of thinking tools and facilitation procedures. Decisions on such matters represent living statements about how people view themselves and respond to the world of people and things they relate to in everyday life. Choices made in this regard either contradict or reinforce whatever goals people decide to pursue through those verbal exchanges and discussions that hold most of their attention. This reflects Winnicott’s concept of the ‘holding environment’. Admittedly, Winnicott had a different situation in mind, one where a ‘mother’s technique of holding, of bathing, of feeding, everything she did for the baby, added up to the child’s first idea of the mother’ (Winnicott, 1964, p. 194). In his work, ‘holding techniques’ and later caregiving environments set the stage for the way children experience and learn how to interact with others and actually use objects to function in life, discover their true selves, adapt to the world and achieve well-being. The environment includes transitional objects that are both existentially real and products of the imagination. They constitute an outside world that welcomes human creativity – surroundings that lend themselves to the projection of phantasies in the playground of psychological analysis. While PAR is a different kettle of fish, our emphasis on the use of inventive means to help people exercise careful thinking and express care for 161

Design and facilitation each other and the world they live in aligns perfectly well with Winnicott’s understanding of object relations, the construction of meaning and human creativity. But inventiveness and free expression on all planes is not enough. When pushed to the extreme, freedom and creativity is the perfect recipe for losing touch with people and what brings them together in the first place. This brings us to the other part of the equation, equally critical to the way we ‘hold’ PAR events. While we make it a point of pushing the envelope of creative expression as far as we can, we also insist on establishing tighter controls, using the tools and ‘skilful means’ of PAR advanced in this book. Why tighter controls? Because leopards are not in the habit of changing their spots. Resistance to doing things differently, based on alternative rules of engagement, must be anticipated. Routine ways of doing things (such as slide presentations!) easily withstand criticism even when they create frustration and boredom. Most of these ways revolve around received ideas and techniques for the expression of personal and expert views taken as ends in themselves. Where self-assertion and sharing for the sake of sharing are the rules (as is the case in conventional meetings, workshops and conferences), activities and events held for communicating personal ideas, views, feelings and experience are staged with little consideration of people’s engagement in their own learning process and the implications for the group as a whole. Organizers, presenters and the audience simply assume that some views matter more than others. Expositions from analysts, specialists and experts designed to guide group thinking end up monopolising the conversation. What Winnicott once said of his relationship to patients applies to our own experience with conventional expert-led discussions. ‘It appals me to think how much deep change I have prevented or delayed in patients in a certain classification category by my personal need to interpret. If only we can wait, the patient arrives at understanding creatively and with immense joy, and I now enjoy this joy more than I used to enjoy the sense of having been clever. I think I interpret mainly to let the patient know the limits of my understanding’ (Winnicott, 1969, p. 711). Of course, people taking part in an action inquiry are not patients, and PAR practitioners are not therapists. The point we wish to make here is that unlike expert-driven approaches, PAR supports collective efforts to think through problem situations and address challenges and opportunities emerging in peoples’ lives. Patience, and creating space, is part of that. Mastering the art of shutting up to let others speak is no easy task. Nor is it sufficient on its own. Positive results can be obtained on one other important condition: that practitioners redirect their efforts elsewhere, towards co-designing alternative rules of engagement. This assumes some degree of experience and expertise on the part of facilitators, but also readiness on the part of both facilitators and participants to go some way out of their comfort zone. The objective pursued by all is effective learning through experiential unlearning and relearning. This means that process plans to think outside the box must incorporate unfamiliar techniques to support group thinking and action; the end, which is to break new ground, must be embedded in the means. Success thus hinges on using methods that propose a different ‘holding environment’, a middle ground that serves as a ‘transitional space’ between the past and the future – between conventional modes of interaction and new forms of engagement. 162

Skills, process design and ethics Although made up, this ‘middle space’ is very real and has physical and material properties of its own. When put in place, techniques and related arrangements in time and space limit the field of vision to what people are searching for and ways of finding it. Winnicott once said of psychoanalysis that it ‘always likes to be able to eliminate all factors that are environmental, except in so far as the environment can be thought of in terms of projective mechanisms. But in examining [object] usage there is no escape; the analyst must take into account the nature of the object, not as a projection, but as a thing in itself’ (Winnicott, 1969, p. 712). As with all objects and people we encounter in our lives, props and techniques for group thinking are real and binding. They exist on their own and may be applied for one of two reasons. People may use them either to rule out the possibility of new experimentation (by using expert presentations as the default setting, for instance) or to challenge routine processes and solutions that do not work and become part of the problem. The choice is between exploring new ground or compulsively repeating past errors, giving in to prevailing anxieties and what Anzieu calls the ‘unconscious time of repetition’ (Anzieu, 1984, p. 19). PAR initiatives conceived in the middle ground of safe learning best evolve in the ‘zone of proximal development’. Paraphrasing Vygotsky, we define this zone as the distance between a group’s actual capacity for independent problem solving, using means at their disposal, and the potential capacity that can be developed in a new ‘holding environment’, co-designed with action inquiry facilitators, to fit the situation at hand (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). When exploring this zone, practitioners will inevitably encounter two traps. One is to underestimate the actual potential for process change. This may happen for reasons relating to the facilitator’s limited skill sets, biases and anxieties in helping others find their own path. Frustration and disappointment with the facilitator and the group as a whole will likely ensue. The other trap is to overestimate the actual development that can occur, as is usually the case when facilitators want to impress the gallery, meet expectations and demonstrate success at any cost. This leads to hostilities on the part of participants or, what is in some ways even worse, continued dependence on external support. Readers should keep in mind that never falling on either side of this tight rope is impossible. Some PAR practitioners may think they always get it right. If so, they deprive themselves of opportunities for genuine learning and growth.

REFERENCES Anzieu, D. W. (1984) The Group and the Unconcious, trans. B. Kilborne, Routledge, London. Buckles, D. J., Akhvlediani, A., Fatima, A., Yasmin, F., Shaheen, N., Ogalleh, S., Munyao, P., Hassan, F., Ahsan, R. and Islam, T. (2016) Perspectives on Transparency Practices at ActionAid: A Participatory Inquiry, ActionAid International, London. Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (eds) (2001) Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed, London. Foster, S. S. and Glass, R. D. (2017) ‘Ethical, Epistemic, and Political Issues in Equity-Oriented Collaborative Community-Based Research’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 511–525. Heen, H. (2015) ‘Feelings in First Person Action Research’, in H. Bradbury (ed) The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd edn., Sage, London, pp. 619–625.

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Design and facilitation Kaner, S. (1996) Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, New Society Publisher, Gabriola Island, Canada. Lewin, K. (1951) Field Theory in Social Science; Selected Theoretical Papers, ed. D. Cartwright, Harper & Row, New York. Tri-Council – Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (2014) Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, Interagency Secretariat on Research Ethics, Ottawa, ON. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) ‘Interaction Between Learning and Development’, in Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S. and Souberman, E. (eds) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 79–91. Winnicott, D. W. (1964) The Child, the Family, and the Outside World, Perseus, New York. Winnicott, D. W. (1969) ‘The Use of an Object’, The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, no. 50, pp. 711–716.

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MODULE 3

Exploring problems

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CHAPTER 7

Getting to the roots

The techniques presented thus far are simple, and their successful application is technical but not rocket science, one might think. Yet tools are never just tools. Nor are they purely instrumental in answering the questions we ask. On the contrary, tools for inquiry are laden with meaning and history. Our version of Free List and Pile Sort is no exception. The logic that drives this exercise in classifying moves away from taxonomic thinking, giving way to what Wittgenstein call ‘families of resemblance’. Whenever people form clusters of elements they deem to be similar in some respects and for a particular reason, they are being sensitive to history, language and life in society. We say more on non-Aristotelian approaches to classification in our discussion of stakeholder configurations (versus ‘class analysis’) in the next Module and then systems thinking and Domain Analysis, in Module 6. For the moment, we turn to methods to explore factors that account for existing problems in space and time, and ways to overcome them. The chapter starts with tools to •

•

analyze the causes and the effects of a problem and convert them into the means and ends of a forward-looking plan (Ishikawa’s fishbone diagram, Problem Tree, Tree of Means and Ends); tell a story of changes over time, or identify stages in a theory of change or steps in current or planned activity (Timeline).

The tools we are about to illustrate raise fundamental questions regarding cause-effect and means-ends relationships. They also start from the premise that causal analysis cannot ignore the role of people using their own ideas and language to imagine other possible worlds and making their own contribution to the advancement of a worthy cause. In this approach, causal reasoning and struggling for a cause are two sides of the same coin.

PROBLEM TREE AND THE TREE OF MEANS AND ENDS Most PAR practitioners are familiar with the Problem Tree, a tool for exploring the root causes of situations in need of attention and collective action. It uses the metaphor of a tree to

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Exploring problems visually represent a core problem (the tree trunk), the various causes (roots) and the effects (branches). Each part of the tree is described in turn, starting with a clear definition of the core problem represented by the trunk. Participants then identify several first-level causes (surface roots) directly responsible for the core problem, and place these in a row below the trunk. Each of the direct causes of the core problem are discussed one at a time, to identify second-level causes directly responsible for each first-level cause. These are placed below each parent cause, and duplicated if relevant to more than one first-level cause. The same process is used to identify third- and fourth-level causes, if useful. Once completed, participants turn to the effects, results or implications (branches and fruit) of the core problem, using the same linear logic to create a hierarchy of effects. Effects of the core problem or effects of lower-level effects may include actions people are already taking in response to the situation, whether successful or not. When noting a cause or an effect, participants are encouraged to describe it in terms of what characterizes the situation, not the lack of a particular solution to the problem. For reasons explained later, this instruction is sometimes hard to follow. The exercise ends with efforts to identify the most important, the most pressing or even the easiest causes to handle. These may be priorities for action. The discussion can also focus on the effects that are most troubling to the people involved in the exercise, or that point to new opportunities. These may help to motivate and focus attention on the core problem and its priority causes. To provide a bridge from problem analysis to corrective actions, the Problem Tree may be followed by a Tree of Means and Ends exercise. This is an integral part of Goal Oriented Project Planning (known by the German Acronym ZOPP) developed in the 1980s and used intensively by the German and Japanese international development agencies. It involves restating the core problem as though it had already been resolved, thereby converting it into a positive scenario. The effects are rephrased into ends that are realized when the positive scenario is in place. Similarly, the causes are turned into the means to resolve the problem at hand. Cause-effect analysis leading into means-ends thinking thus provides a basis for project and programme definition and strategic planning. Our engagement with the Katkari of India will help illustrate how cause-effect and means-ends reasoning can contribute to assessing a problem and planning a meaningful response to it. The exercises, repeated in many Katkari hamlets in 2005 and 2006, proved to be a pivotal moment in their struggle to resist eviction by landowners keen to sell the land out from under them. Barbed wire fences started the intimidation and prompted the broader inquiry told elsewhere by Buckles and Khedkar (2013) and illustrated with several tools and process design considerations throughout this book. Katkari living in hamlets enclosed by barbed wire felt the bite of insecurity. They knew that they did not own the land, and suddenly saw eviction right in front of them. However, when the research team talked with people in hamlets not facing immediate eviction, many were puzzled by our focus on land ownership and our sense of urgency. They recognized that they did not have title but did not think this was a key problem in their community. For them the problem of ownership seemed remote, compared to more pressing matters such as hunger, water scarcity, sickness and the constant struggle to find employment. The research team was uncertain how to respond to this apparent indifference. Our research in 168

Getting to the roots

PHOTO 7.1  Katkari family enclosed by barbed wire, Karjat, India (Source: D. Buckles)

313 Katkari hamlets throughout the area had shown that 212 of them did not have legal title to a village site. Given that land prices were skyrocketing everywhere, it was only a matter of time before all were threatened with eviction. The dilemma we faced was how to raise this issue in villages not facing imminent removal, without imposing the topic or ignoring other matters of immediate concern. While in some communities people were panicked by the threat of eviction, in others they were oblivious to the sword hanging over their heads. After much discussion by the research team and informal consultation with people in the Katkari community, we asked Katkari from hamlets affected by enclosures to come with us to other hamlets and relate directly what was happening in their hamlet. News of enclosures and evictions had spread naturally among Katkari hamlets, giving Katkari in other hamlets reason to gather to hear the stories and discuss the relevance of these to their own situation. Informal discussions with leaders in the hamlet or any people gathering to discuss the issue eventually led to decisions by those involved to sit together and explore more carefully why the hamlet did not have a land title and what this meant in their lives. The peer-to-peer storytelling had created the conditions for something more, and the Problem Tree offered an opportunity for the Katkari to go deeper into the topic and consider whether they needed to take action to address the legal status of their village sites. Figure 7.1 illustrates the reasoning that emerged in Siddeshwarwadi, a large hamlet in Sudhagad taluka. The participants, a group of eight men and four women, pointed out

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Exploring problems that the hamlet sits on parts of three larger properties owned by landholders from the nontribal village of Siddheshwar, people with whom they had a longstanding patron-client relationship. According to the group, these landholders resisted Katkari claims because government compensation for expropriated land was woefully inadequate. Landholders were also fearful that if the Katkari got title to the hamlet they would lose neighbouring land as well. Government inaction was another immediate reason why the hamlet did not have legal title, a situation sustained by landholders’ close personal ties and the payment of bribes to government officials. Discussion also acknowledged the indifference among people in the hamlet and the fact that they had not actually demanded title. The roots of their inaction included a lack of awareness regarding legal rights, poor organization in the hamlet and fear of the landholders. In this discussion and other meetings with the Katkari, participants decided to replace the problem tree metaphor with the notion of ancestors (the roots) and children and grandchildren (the branches and fruit) of the situation (the trunk), a language they felt better reflected their relationship to the hamlet; their ancestors were literally buried under their homes, as was their custom. While the first and subsequent levels of parents of the problem emerged quickly from the group and generated no surprise, the shift to the fruit or children of the problem brought a lot of energy into the discussion. A recent decision by one of the landholders to block the construction of a government school in the hamlet was very telling for participants, and immediately linked to the core problem of not owning a village site. Because the landholder objected, the school was built in a much smaller non-tribal village some distance away. The distance and active prejudice against the Katkari from the non-tribal community meant that Katkari children did not attend regularly, or dropped out at an early age. Children not in school are usually taken to work on the brick kilns, where at least they can be cared for on a daily basis. Participants lamented this situation, which they felt ultimately brought their children into bonded labour at an early age. Other chains of effects from not owning a village site were also identified, including the absence of basic amenities in the hamlet, a ban by the landholders on new house construction, and insufficient space to grow vegetables and keep animals. Discussion linked each ‘child’ to a later generation until no more consequences could be identified and participants felt that the story was complete (Figure 7.1). The Problem Tree assessments in Siddheshwardi and other Katkari hamlets not facing immediate eviction made the specific problem of land ownership visible to the Katkari, and to us, in a way it had not been before. It brought memories of settlement and related ideas into a single conversation and produced broader knowledge held by the entire group, a shift in thinking similar to what Freire called a process of ‘problem posing’. In some hamlets effects on their children’s education became motivating ideas, while in others livelihood struggles were key. Local colour infused into the exercise through stories and pictures drawn in chalk on the floor meant that the analysis was never formulaic. It was depressing, however. While people could imagine taking steps to inform themselves about their rights, they also felt helpless in the face of the powerful links they saw between landholders and government officials. Some participants concluded that they simply could not dream of or hope for any improvement in their situation. Others, while desperate to act, were overwhelmed by the challenge of organizing the entire community around the issue. 170

Getting to the roots Branches/fruit Migration and bonded labour

Utter lack of privacy

Children start working at an early age for contractors

3-4 families in one house

Children do not attend school or drop out at an early age

Landholders do not allow building of new homes

Landholders did not allow construction of a school

Lack of sustainable livelihoods

High health expenditures

Ill health

Core problem

People are not concerned

Lack of awareness

Lack of legal knowledge

People have to depend on wage labour for livelihood

Lack of dispensary

Lack of space to grow vegetables and keep livestock

Lack of approach road

Siddeshwarwadi does not have legal title to a village site

Land owned by three individuals

Government does not act on its own

Landholders afraid that they will have to give more land if hamlet sanctioned

Government officials favour landholders

Government does not provide adequate compensation for land expropriated

People have not demanded legal title

People do not attend village Gram Sabha

Lack of organization and mobilization

People are afraid of the landholders

Landholders give bribes to government officials

Roots

FIGURE 7.1  Causes and effects of not having title to a village site, Siddeshwarwadi, India

Given these reactions, the research team later engaged the same groups in converting the Problem Tree into a Tree of Means and Ends (Figure 7.2). People in Siddeshwarwadi reviewed and then reworded the original problem and its causes and effects as though they had been resolved positively. This built a gradual pathway to a future where, for instance, children would have an opportunity to complete school, and various improvements to the village site and individual households would be realized. The end that generated the most excitement in the group, however, was an idea not mirrored in the original Problem 171

Exploring problems Tree. One of the participants, inspired by the positive image of the village emerging from the discussion, said that with a secure village site they could build a community stage for cultural events. The Katkari are very fond of celebrations of all kinds and have a unique style of music and dance they enjoy greatly. Other participants enthusiastically agreed that having a stage on which to perform their music would bring enjoyment to community life and could inspire any number of other collective actions. This vision galvanized the discussion and launched people into thinking about means to overcome indifference and achieve dreams, including artistic expression and social cohesion. As a symbol of their resolve, community elders and other residents of Siddeshwarwadi later raised and ceremoniously anointed a stone pillar (ves) marking the entrance to their hamlet. Rituals of this

Ends/dreams

Stable livelihoods

Stable livelihoods

Sense of belonging

Youth get good jobs

Privacy and security for all

Children complete school

Each family has its own house

School for children in hamlet

Various job options

Ideal scenario

People are serious about the problem

Enhanced awareness

People know legal rights

Adequate space to grow vegetables and keep livestock

Low health costs

Unity in hamlet

Improved health

A better life

Health facilities

Celebrations and cultural events

A road and better communication

A stage for cultural events

Siddeshwarwadi has a legal village site

Landholders agree to give/sell the land to the hamlet

Government is forced to act in favour of hamlet

Landholders are assured there will be no more demands

People attend village Gram Sabha

People demand legal title

People are organized and mobilized

Means/path

FIGURE 7.2  Dreams and a path to village title, Siddeshwarwadi, India

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People are not afraid of the landholders

Getting to the roots

PHOTO 7.2  Dwarkanath Lakhma Ghogharkar (middle) and other Katkari musicians,

Karjat, India. They are playing the pitali to create a droning sound as an accompaniment to storytelling. The sound is made by running hands down a stick fastened with a blob of beeswaw in the middle of a brass plate (Source: D. Buckles)

kind had been used in the past to mark the boundaries of Katkari communities. They were hopeful that the gesture would not raise alarm among the landholders but rather would be seen positively as a symbol of the limits of their land demands and an expression of their resolve to stay. In later chapters, we say more on what followed from this exercise and other applications of PAR among the Katkari.

THE ISHIKAWA DIAGRAM AND QUALITY CONTROL The origins of the Problem Tree, and a tool called Timeline we will consider shortly, lie in the quality control movement of the 1920s and its focus on formal methods for documenting process workflows. In the summer of 1943, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa converted the linear logic of workflows into the fishbone diagram, first used in a conversation with engineers at Kawasaki Steel Works. Following his lead, the diagram eventually spread to other countries and is now used in many different fields concerned with quality control, safety issues and problem solving in general. In the author’s own words, the tool is a rational guide to any problemsolving situation, showing us ‘most clearly the causes so we can take action quickly’ (Ishikawa, 1976, pp. 26–28). 173

Exploring problems Today the fishbone diagram seems basic. The message it conveys regarding the relationship between science and society was nonetheless groundbreaking at the time. The inquiry process built around it invites workers to systematically collect the data needed to describe how items produced in exactly the same way can still turn out differently, if only slightly. Workers are asked to act like scientists observing and measuring quality dispersion. Equally important, however, is their role in ‘helping to sort out the causes of dispersion and organize the mutual relationships’ (Ishikawa, 1976, p. 19). In this regard, it is important to note that the Ishikawa diagram differs from all other tools appearing in his classic Guide to Quality Control. Unlike tools based on statistics – sampling techniques, histograms, scatter diagrams, check sheets, control charts and Pareto diagrams – the fishbone diagram requires workers to analyze the causal interactions of multiple inputs and contexts accounting for production defects that are statistically inevitable (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). In their own modest way, the guiding principles of fishbone analysis fly in the face of Taylor’s Newtonian understanding of reality – i.e. linear, mechanical and fully predictable. In his teachings, Taylor aims at eliminating all workplace problems through the development of managerial science and its rigorous application to linear production workflows. If problems continue to arise, it is because of workers who fail to comply with directives from supervisors and experts. Ishikawa’s fishbone diagram and the Quality Movement created a mind shift in the world of organizational theory and industrial design: quality is no longer equated with perfection, and problems are bound to arise. What is more, workers are encouraged to think freely and speak frankly about observed problems and causeeffect relationships as they understand them, with a focus on causes they can rectify. When looking for these relationships, everyone’s experience, knowledge and ideas are valued. The list of potential causes comes from as many people as possible. The final list should be as complete as possible. Otherwise there may not be enough knowledge to assess and remedy the problem. It must stop somewhere, however, if infinite regression is to be avoided – aimlessly digging deeper into an endless chain of root causes (Ishikawa, 1976, p. 26). Experienced workers can be counted on to sort out relevant factors from those that are far removed from the immediate situation, and therefore implausible. Ishikawa adds that a cause-and-effect diagram is task-oriented and educational at the same time. The exercise helps people to visualize and focus on the topic at hand and generate new learning in the process. When more detail is needed, the tool can be combined with conventional process charts and other tools, in search of causes or factors that may affect quality at each step. Empirical observations, statistical descriptions, probabilistic thinking, workflow charts, collective brainstorming, multiple causation, factor weighing, context-specific experimentation, continuous problem-solving, evidence-based learning – all form an integral part of a participatory inquiry that is both rigorous and fit-for-purpose (Ishikawa, 1976, pp. 21–24). Quality control achieved through visual analytics makes a convincing pitch for everyday scientific thinking, the kind that is no longer the sole prerogative of a select band of scientists and managers. Current uses of the Problem Tree, illustrated through our story of land rights in India, follow the same basic principles. That being said, it steers us in new directions that are worth noting. 174

Getting to the roots •

•

•

The Ishikawa diagram uses predetermined categories of causal factors to be applied to production quality and workplace safety issues, including raw materials, equipment (machines or tools), work process and measuring method (Ishikawa, 1976, p. 20). By contrast, the Problem Tree has no set parameters, making it suitable for all-purpose use. Unlike the Ishikawa diagram, the Problem Tree requires participants to identify the effects or consequences of a core problem. When conducting the inquiry, effects are not taken as givens, to be avoided because of the obvious harm they bring, as is the case for workplace injuries and production defects. By way of example, the Katkari had to explore the consequences of not having titles over their lands in order to convince themselves and others that this was a problem worth addressing. Their discussion also shows how cause-effect discussions may raise concerns other than physical health and material wealth, such as improvements in quality of life, social cohesion and artistic expression through music. While the fishbone diagram maps out the observable roots of a problem, the Problem Tree can be paired up and enhanced with means-ends analysis. The proposition here is that human actions and their consequences represent a chain of causation of its own kind.

On the latter point, the central role of purposeful action in science cannot be emphasized enough. That is precisely the point that the Problem Tree makes when it pairs up with the Tree of Means and Ends. It opens up the field of causal reasoning to include human agency and the multiple goals of life in society, using the language and vocabulary that fits the situation. Causation is not cut off from personal or social ends – from causes that are worth pleading or fighting for. The Problem Tree is an expanded version of the fishbone diagram, more powerful in terms of its analytical function and its ability to adapt to all contexts, including those that weave natural and human agency. Limitations are nonetheless built into it, and being aware of them is key to understanding when and how the tool should be used. One obvious constraint concerns its linear properties. While a problem may have multiple causes and consequences, the chain that links all elements of the diagram remains essentially unidirectional and hierarchical. This is in keeping with a mechanical view of causality that has dominated modern science from the time of Newton to the early twentieth century. Facilitators familiar with the tool know that it can accommodate situations where some roots and branches of the problem tree are the same, making loops and vicious circles apparent in the analysis, when they exist. All the same, the tool is not designed to assess the precise ways in which anything may be linked to anything else. Lines joining everywhere would muddle thinking, not help it. Nor does it lend itself to systems thinking where the whole interacts with the parts, some factors clash with other factors, or the solution ends up being the core problem. As we shall see, tools such as System Dynamics (Chapter 18), Force Field (Chapter 9) and Paradox (Chapter 10) are better suited for these tasks. Another limitation, less easily detected, goes to the heart of conventional cause-effect reasoning, including more complex tools: its emphasis on the observable facts of reality, to the exclusion of everything that does not come within the experience of the senses. On this 175

Exploring problems issue, readers will recall that when drawing a Problem Tree, participants can describe gaps but not particular solutions to filling the gaps; remedies selected among possible solutions do not exist yet and therefore cannot be observed. In our Katkari story, there’s one root card that clearly breaks the rule: if villagers don’t have legal title to their village site, it is because of the government’s failure to provide adequate compensation to landholders. Were it to offer such compensation (as opposed to simply recognizing Katkari land rights, for instance), landholders might be willing to let go of village lands. Causal statements of this kind, which are conceivable but not factual, keep coming up in groups discussions using the Problem Tree, despite instructions to focus on what is currently observable. The suggestion that ideas about remedies be kept for later analysis, using the Tree of Means and Ends, often falls on deaf ears. Why? How is it that people have so much difficulty separating possible worlds from things that can be observed and accounted for, whether present or past? Another brief example helps illustrate the question. In Cameroon, D. Buckles and R. Thibeault facilitated a series of Problem Tree assessments with Bantu farming communities and indentured farm workers from the Bagyeli and Baka (former Pygmy) communities. The exercises were done separately due to the very unequal power relations between the two groups and the dependence of one on the other. The core problem was defined similarly as increasing difficulty in finding food, a problem related by the Bantu as primarily caused by technical gaps in production and large palm plantations capturing food to feed their own workers. They represented the core problem with an evocative symbol: the kind of cooking pot often received by a woman when married, turned upside down and with the lid leaning on the side to show difficulty feeding guests. By contrast, the Bagyeli emphasized displacement from the land as the root cause: finding food was more difficult since they had been forced out of the forests they used to occupy. Their land rights were now ignored by Bantu and plantation companies alike. Their response to questions raised in the Problem Tree exercise turned immediately to the need for a solution to land ownership. Other considerations, such as food being diverted to feed palm plantation workers, seemed irrelevant to them without first addressing the issue of land. The answer to why remedies cannot be put on hold while thinking about causes lies in how the mind works and also the world we live in. Both relate as much to the ‘real things’ we can imagine and rightly pursue as to those we can currently touch or see. This statement deserves a theoretical foray into what ‘causal chains’ are all about. But first, let’s explore Timeline, another sturdy and versatile PAR tool for getting to the roots of a problem.

TIMELINE AND RUPA LAKE, NEPAL Our Timeline illustration comes from the Pokhara Valley of Nepal where colleagues with the Nepali non-governmental organization LI-BIRD work with stakeholders to support sustainable agriculture and forestry. The tool was used by a colleague, D. Poudel, in 2006 to identify the events and actions that have harmed or protected Rupa Lake in the Pokhara Valley and its nearby wetlands, going back to the 1950s. Rupa Lake is one of eight lakes in the Pokhara valley of Western Nepal and is located about 15 kilometres east of the city of Pokhara. The lake is fed by streams and rivers that descend from the mountain regions of 176

Getting to the roots the Himalaya’s Annapurna Range. More than 150 species of birds visit the lake and nearby forests. Fishers living around the lake depend on its aquatic resources for their livelihood, while other residents benefit from water and other resources that form part of the lake’s wetlands. All are concerned about steady declines in the health of the lake and wetlands, and the threat of flooding and landslides near settlements. The discussion took place during a one-day meeting in a local hall, at the request of local authorities concerned about this problem. Some 21 people (12 men and 9 women) attended from communities on the shores of the lake. Participants included representatives of local fishing cooperatives, local self-help groups, schools and local authorities. They were asked to think of key events in the past that had a major impact on the health of the lake and its wetlands, whether positive or negative. These were noted on cards and ordered chronologically on a wall, with the positive events on the upper side of a dividing line and negative events on the lower side. Use of the Nepali calendar and reference to major political events made it easy for participants to organize local events chronologically. Discussion of the details and impact of each event was encouraged throughout the process. Over several hours, participants identified 23 major events and actions affecting the health of the Rupa Lake and its wetlands between 1952 and 2005 (Table 7.1; dates of positive events underlined). TABLE 7.1  The sequence of events and actions that have harmed or protected Rupa Lake,

Nepal Before

Forest clearing in the lower watershed

1952

A major flood and series of landslides flattened the lower Chaur and Talbesi rivers. Large amounts of sediment were deposited in and around the lake. This reduced the size and depth of the lake.

1957

Local ownership and control of forests was replaced by the Forest Nationalization Act. Forest clearing became more intense.

1962

Flooding and landslides filled parts of the lake and wetlands with sediment. A government land survey endorsed private claims to these new lands. Lake inlets were diverted by local people to promote sedimentation and create new lands on the lakeshore.

1972

Flooding and landslides in three areas (Rupakot, Betayani and Hangshapur wards) deposited sediment in the lake and its nearby wetlands.

1976

Flooding and landslides near Hangshapur ward added sediment to the lake and nearby wetlands. A government land survey upheld private claims by local elites to new lands.

1979

Various permanent settlements were set up in the nearby watershed, and forest clearing became more intense.

1981

Flooding and landslides added sediment to many parts of the wetlands and lakeshore. The Begnas High School claimed a large area near the lakeshore.

1983

Fish farms were set up. Waste from the farms, along with more sediment in the lake, displaced the lotus plant and promoted the growth of harmful water plants (Water Chestnut and Water Hyacinth). (continued ) 177

Exploring problems TABLE 7.1 (CONTINUED)

1984

Gravel and sand extracted from the outlet increased water flow and reduced the depth of the lake.

1986

Check dams and community forestry programmes were started by outside agencies and the government.

1988

New settlements were established or expanded.

1989

Forest clearing of 300 hectares and 54 hectares at Lekhnath-11 and Hangshapur-9 wards, respectively, provoked a major landslide. New lands were claimed by local elites.

1991

Construction of the Begnas-Bhorletar road eroded soils and caused sediment to enter the lake and wetlands.

1992

A potential landslide at Bandre was controlled with the help of an outside agency.

1994

Use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture increased, promoting the growth of harmful water plants in the lake.

1995

Check dams and reforestation programmes were established by outside agencies at the place where the Kalyangdi and Thulo Khola rivers meet.

1997

Fishing with electric currents began.

2001

Flooding and landslides from the Devisthan River affected settlements.

2003

Road building at Talbesi-Lipyani, Sourbas-Ramkot and Bhanjhyang-Begnas eroded soil that settled in the lake.

2004

Landslides in many areas (Khada gaindo, Banskot, Hangshapur, Archalthar, Satdobato, Majhthana, Tallo Kahere, Lekhnath-10) caused more sediment to enter the lake and wetlands.

2005

Harmful water plants were removed by the Rupa Fisheries Cooperative.

2005

Hailstorm damaged lake biodiversity.

Discussion of the results highlighted several general trends. Forest clearing in the lower and upper watershed caused many floods and landslides over the past 50 years. As a result, the topography and ecosystem of the lake and its wetlands changed a lot. Government policies that affect forest ownership and government endorsement of private claims to new lands reinforced forest clearing. Unplanned human settlements in the watershed also increased the rate at which forest cover was lost. Road building added more sediment. More recently, uncontrolled dredging of the outlet and pollution caused more direct harm to the lake. Participants said that these events happened because neither they nor government officials had used foresight, planning and regulation. Most efforts to protect the lake were launched by outside groups and offered few opportunities for community input. They also noted that local elites benefitted the most from policies that upheld private claims to new lands created by landslides and sedimentation. Only in recent years have local residents taken steps to conserve sources of livelihood such as the lake fishery. Based on the discussion, the participants decided to petition the government to order a halt to cutting of the forests that remained in the lower and upper watershed. They also 178

Getting to the roots resolved to oppose government land surveys that endorse private claims to new lands created by landslides. At the end of the meeting the local authorities announced they would develop a local action plan to regulate and manage activities that might further harm the health of the lake and its wetlands.

Steps and variations Timeline is a relatively simple tool to use (see the companion handbook for steps). Historians may object to using a participatory approach to reconstructing events of the past because people’s recollections are not always accurate and complete. The objection is valid but not insurmountable. When accuracy or conflicting accounts are a cause for concern, participants can decide to plan further fact-finding studies to make sure their understanding of history is well-informed, with the valuable assistance of historians, if required. Also, Timeline can be scaled up to incorporate many questions or themes that warrant close examination. The storytelling framework can also be modified in several ways: •

Multiple lines, parallel or intersecting Different themes can be mapped on timelines that are parallel to each other or that cross at particular points in time.

•

Past and future Events along the timeline can be divided into two parts: to the left, those that occurred in the past and, to the right, those that will result if events follow their current course or if things happen according to new plans.

•

Ups and downs Events along the timeline can go up or down depending on their positive or negative contribution to a situation evolving over time, as perceived by participants.

•

Venn diagram Elements of history (e.g. livelihood activities) can be distributed in a Venn diagram consisting of three intersecting circles representing what used to be, what is and what is likely to be. Some elements may fall where two or all three circles intersect (e.g. fishing with electric currents started only recently and is likely to continue in the future).

•

Before and after Instead of a timeline, participates can create a ‘before-and-after’ table with five columns that describe the areas of change (Column 1), what used to be, say 20 years ago (Column 2), the present situation (Column 3) for each change area, how important these changes are (Column 4), and the causes or reasons behind each change (Column 5). The last row may be used to describe the overall difference between the past situation and the present. 179

Exploring problems •

Resource mapping Another good way to enrich the analysis consists in combining Timeline with a visual mapping of sites where events took place.

While Timeline has all the features of straightforward linear thinking, its dialogical and historical-analytical power should not be underestimated. Unlike conventional interviews, a visual representation of events over time helps people keep focussed on the task at hand, move between events and context, compare different views, hunt for missing pieces, remember things that may have been almost forgotten, revise results to correct errors and add new information or layers of history. The process enables participants to see the forest for the trees, take a step back and reflect out loud so as to gain new insights into their own lives. All in all, ‘it may seem like a paradox, but by using a timeline the story often becomes less linear’ (Adriansen, 2012, p. 49). Our use of Timeline differs nonetheless from Adriensen’s contribution to qualitative research methodologies in one key respect. In a PAR approach, the tool and its outcomes belong essentially to those who decide to use it for their own purpose, with a focus on issues and themes that matter to them. This lends itself to what Vasco and Fals-Borda understood as ‘the search for alternative epistemological frameworks that permit people to tell their history from their own point of view’ (Rappaport, 2017, p. 154). It is very different from storytelling that is primarily driven by a qualitative research agenda, hoping that people will gradually take ownership of the process with no particular end other than gaining knowledge and the self-esteem that comes with contributing to research.

CAUSATION AND FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE Discussions of causal chains, including those that integrate means-ends relationships, need to be based on sound evidence. Stepwise methods such as the Problem Tree and Timeline are handy in this respect, especially for situations demanding collective action. These tools, however, require some clarification about what counts as a cause-effect relationship. One view of this matter, anchored in positivistic thinking, is that human life is conditioned by its natural surroundings where universal laws and regularities, knowable through sensory experience, prevail. Other views, however, acknowledge our inner experience governed by wilful and meaningful behaviour – the capacity to apply thinking to any object and to act freely and responsibly in our own lives. Given this inner experience, impersonal relations of cause and effect, those that hard sciences abstract from the nexus of life, go only so far in making sense of reality. What humans choose to do and the meaning they assign to life and the world they live in matter just as much. This is the hermeneutic standpoint, as developed by Wilhelm Dilthey (1989) and Max Weber (1947), among many others. It is a theory of interpretive understanding and meaningful action (Verstehen) that celebrates the diversity and impact of human perspectives on life and its existential surroundings. In this approach, human subjectivity, reasoning and agency account for the plurality of views, behaviours and interests that play themselves out in history, including those backed up by the rigour and discipline of evidence-based inquiry.

180

Getting to the roots When the inquiry process involves human subjects, many scientists are quick to support the hermeneutic stance, against positivism. Quite understandably, they reject the notion that causality dictates all human affairs. A more radical attack on positivism, however, consists in embracing causal logic fully, without restriction. To do this, causality should be recognized for what it is: not a simple and narrow path to tread, but rather an intricate playing field of meaningful actions and well-argued statements about the world, present or imagined. To be sure, knowing how one thing results in another is elementary, and allimportant. Smoking brings about cancer, and global warming happens because of greenhouse gases, for instance. These relationships hold true, even if other factors are involved. Those who deny them have arguably gone ‘out of their senses’. The notion that the findings of science consist of ‘plain and simple’ truths dictated by the senses, however, should not be overstated. For one thing, the link between cause and effect can never be simply observed. It is always subject to reasoning and argumentation. For science to demonstrate (or dismiss) connections between cause and effect, it must make a ‘plea’ (from Latin placere, to please) and engage in a debate using language and logic meant to persuade and ‘please’ the mind. It must offer a justification based both on evidence and on adequate reasoning. The exercise goes beyond Hume’s ‘impressions’ and felt associations between them – beyond knowledge based on sense experience alone. Cancer from smoking and global warming from greenhouse gases will be acknowledged only if there is serious review and discussion of the matter at hand. Being able to debate all allegations of positive knowledge is key to the business of science. Reasoned claims and counterclaims about causes and effects are crucial in this regard. The primary task of science is to show strong ‘regularities’ or patterns in cause-effect relationships without oversimplifying the world we live in – without erring on the side of reductionism. In a true Einsteinian spirit, explanations must be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Otherwise they become part of the problem. Scientists can address this challenge in different ways. The logical positivist approach, developed by James Ayer and the Vienna Circle, emphasizes the powers of prediction built into science, by creating a perfect ‘if-then’ model of the observed phenomenon; scientific propositions spell out the necessary and sufficient conditions for it to exist. In some cases, ‘if-then’ propositions point to universal laws that admit no exception. When it comes to social phenomena, however, propositions can be shown to hold true if and only if variables other than those under immediate consideration are held constant. Science can thus look for the ‘sole cause’ of an observable effect or result, the only one responsible for it, assuming all else remains unchanged. Control experiments applied to natural or social phenomena can be designed to test ‘if-then’ propositions, by changing one variable at a time in order to isolate the results. Analyzing ‘the majority of the facts that make up the factors of a complex whole’ (Dilthey, 1989, p. 433) is another familiar way for science to address the complexity of real-world phenomena, beyond the limits of observable and linear relationships. It involves looking at the effects of parts on the composite whole and the composite whole on its parts. To undertake this kind of analysis, a distinction must be made between the whole and the part; the assumption here is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Part-whole and whole-part causation is an invitation to ‘whole systems thinking’. It calls for the analysis of structures, laws, regularities or patterns to shed light on events of natural and social history. 181

Exploring problems Taking its cue from the biological sciences, functionalism offers a response to this call. It sets out to interpret society as a structure with interrelated parts, usually with an emphasis on the functions or unintended finality that normative behaviour and cultural beliefs play in maintaining existing social institutions, those of family, religion, economy and polity (Merton, 1957). The enjoyment of unique musical performances among the Katkari contributes to social cohesion, for instance; that is the function they play, even if it is not their aim. In spite of all their differences, logical positivism and functionalism have one thing in common with linear causal thinking: a hard-line commitment to removing all traces of purposeful behaviour from the business of science. Participatory action inquiry adopts a more flexible approach, closer to reality. It tones down the ‘hardness’ of science by investigating any cause that ‘contributes’ to an observable phenomenon, including deliberate interventions already in place or designed to test a solution. By definition, a contributing cause points to a ‘softer’ relationship in that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce its effect (see Attribution and Contribution in our companion handbook). Addressing it may nonetheless eliminate, reduce or alter the effect. The Australian philosopher Mackie (1974) thus points out that causal talk is often about contributing factors that accidentally combine to produce observable effects. For instance, a house burns down because of a short circuit that happens to occur near some flammable material, in a village that neglected to set up a fire brigade. Causal inquiry of this kind is part of everyday thinking in complex settings and plays an important role in explaining real events in history. It governs the logic of storytelling sensitive to historical fact and the evidence needed to back it up. Much of what is said about the non-linear aspects of Timeline discussions finds an echo in Mackie’s description of everyday ‘causal talk’. Moves to relax the rules of hard science, with a focus on things that can be shown to ‘contribute’ to other things, introduce a flexible understanding of causation. Factors that contribute to shaping reality as we know it include human intent and observable actions that follow. But they also include options that are discarded or ignored along the way. This brings up to another dimension of ‘soft causation’, one that makes room for true or false statements about ‘possible worlds’, using counterfactual thinking of the ‘but for’ kind. In the absence of measures to counter greenhouse gases, there is global warming. Had the village created its own fire brigade, the house might have been saved. In this approach, known as ‘modal realism’, the first clause is a subjunctive statement in the past, present or future tense expressing something that is real but cannot be observed. Turns of phrase that convey this notion are legion. They include familiar expressions such as ‘unless and until’, ‘otherwise’, ‘as long as’, ‘hoping that’, ‘counting on’ and ‘in the event of’, to name just a few. In the writings of Lewis (1986), modal realism conjures up possible events that are eminently real, on par with the abstract mathematical entities populating what we say about the world. Counterfactual arguments about cause and effect show how the human mind imagines all kinds of worlds that maintain an enduring presence in our day-to-day lives. ‘We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects – some of them, at least, and usually all – would have been absent as well’ (Lewis, 1973). In a similar vein, Leibniz (1985) and Molina (1988) spoke of an infinite set of logically possible worlds as a way of thinking about necessity and possibility. 182

Getting to the roots Modal realism allows causes to actually determine their effects in a world full of actual and possible events. As in Hume’s ‘regularity theory’, causes are invariably followed by their effects. Possibilism, another posture on causal chains, adds another dimension to scientific thinking. Causation doesn’t require a strict deterministic relation between smoking and cancer, for instance (Lewis, 1973). With ‘chancy causation’, causes simply change the probabilities of their effects. The occurrence of smoking increases the probability of cancer. Were the Indian government to offer compensation to landholders, Katkari claims to their village site would more likely be recognized. The same reasoning applies to events of natural history: had it not been for an asteroid or comet (or massive volcanic activity) hitting the earth about 65 million years ago, dinosaurs might have survived to this day. Arguments for possibilism in science make a lot of sense for one of two reasons. Either our knowledge of existing determinations is always imperfect; only ‘God’ knows absolutely everything for sure. Or, as quantum mechanics posits, the universe decides its fate by rolling the dice; that is, accidents happen, and humans can choose many different paths. The implications of the latter perspective for evidential reasoning are many, and real. While possibilism may seem abstract, it is key to the legal traditions of British inspiration and notions of causation and the ethics of human responsibility. Causation in English Common Law and the Code of Laws of the United States embrace the counterfactual logic of judicial cause-and-effect reasoning. Key principles in the practice of law include the use of factual evidence, logic and clear argumentation to establish or refute causation. These requirements echo those of scientific thinking and analytic philosophy. Judicial deliberations, however, also involve probabilistic ‘but for’ reasoning, using it as a common-sense test of necessity and a key step in establishing liability and proof beyond reasonable doubt. Were it not for tobacco companies producing and selling highly addictive cigarettes, smoker ‘x’ or ‘y’ would not likely suffer lung cancer, for instance. The reasoning flies in the face of pseudo-science that uses the canons of necessary and sufficient causation to deny the role that smoking tobacco plays in ‘causing’ cancer, not to mention the impact of greenhouse gas on global warming. The complexity of real-life events echoes other legal notions to handle situations of variable causal weight and mix. Establishing the ‘proximate cause’ of an injury, the closest to the harm done, is critical in law, with the proviso that its actual weight can be superseded by a new ‘intervening cause’ – an unforeseeable event that interrupts the chain of causation and becomes the proximate cause. These stop-rules are particularly useful in discriminating between the infinite number of ‘but for’ conditions that could be tied to an observed outcome. A test of ‘causal sufficiency’ may also help in assessing situations where several necessary conditions mix together to produce harm. Various conditions thus act as ‘concurrent actual causes’; ‘but for either of them’, no harm would have occurred. For instance, tobacco companies are guilty as charged because they produce and sell nicotine cigarettes at the same time as they deliberately hide conclusive evidence that shows their lethal effects. Whether the consequences of an action are ‘reasonably foreseeable’ also matter in law when trying to prove an allegation. Liability usually assumes that people are responsible for their actions if and only if they can foresee the consequences, as would any reasonable person who would find himself or herself in the same circumstances. Foresight does not 183

Exploring problems have to be perfect; a probabilistic, risk-based approach to liability applies in situations that warrant it. Thus, while some heavy smokers never get cancer, tobacco companies are liable for knowingly taking high risks with people’s lives. As with lawyers, scientists may effectively engage in discussions of causation on yet another condition: they must have some idea of things and stakes that are worth arguing, pleading and fighting for. That is, they must have a ‘worthy cause’ to support, some human finality or purposeful telos, as Aristotle calls it. This is causation understood as a moral field governed by a sense of purpose and direction. Principles worth fighting for include those of rigorous science, which require that a firm stand be taken against deniers of the tobacco – cancer link and human contributions to climate change, for instance. Paradoxically, this means that scientists must not shy away from adopting a critical, value-laden conception of science. They can pursue serious science and still keep company with Polanyi, Kuhn, Feyerabend and postmodernist critics of positivism – all those who have good reason to question the notion that science is value-free, uninfluenced by social history. By treading this fine balance, juggling between causal thinking and fighting for a just cause, scientists accept to remain constantly at war, if only against uncritical ways of advancing knowledge in our lives. In our view, no causal analysis escapes the discussion of some greater cause, subject to debate. Even studies of climate change can be scrutinized for the goal they serve. No one reasonably doubts that rigorous contributions to this science are urgently needed and must be supported. Still, there are reasons to question the impact of ‘objective’ studies of climate variability whose agenda it is to override parallel studies on the multiple political and economic causes of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, one might argue. Any ‘climate change and adaptation’ campaign that silences the devastating effects of agricultural markets, technology, policy and related political struggles over water and land should be questioned. What Barthes says of historical discourse and its ‘reality effect’ should never be forgotten: the objective world as depicted in science is never innocent (Barthes, 1970). It is never anything but an intended meaning, revocable when the politics of knowledge demand it. PAR is a social process to both understand a situation and act on it. Root cause analysis is often a key step, followed by planning actions and the chain of means and ends that lead to expected outcomes. The process is likely to be more effective if it takes into account key factors and actors that may intervene along the way. This can be complex, which means the process should not be oversimplified for reasons of expediency. Shortcuts to avoid murky causality – evading messiness in social and natural history – can be costly. As Bertrand Russell once said about the linear view of causation, ‘like much that passes muster among philosophers, [causation] is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm’ (Russell, 1913, p. 1). Wittgenstein is of the same view: ‘superstition is the belief in the causal nexus’ (Wittgenstein, 1922, #5.1361). But letting positive science occupy the whole field of causation and receive criticism for its commitment to the idea is unwise. Too many issues are at stake – the way we experience and discuss relationships between events, the causes we fight for, and the responsibility we assume (or not) in choosing efficient means to achieve moral ends. When carrying out their own business, scientists would do well to reflect on and work with the

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Getting to the roots many aspects of causal thinking. To be sure, they should look for the evidence they need to develop and present arguments that are clear and convincing. But they should also open up the inquiry process to public scrutiny and debate, reflect on the actual ends and people served, and be critical of the moral means used to achieve the intended results. Failing this, science may lose whatever leverage it can muster to counter the ‘trumped-up facts’ of our post-truth era.

REFERENCES Adriansen, H. K. (2012) ‘Timeline Interviews: A Tool for Conducting Life History Research’, Qualitative Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 40–55. Barthes, R. (1970) ‘The discourse of history’, in M. Lane (ed) Structuralism: A Reader, Cape, London. Buckles, D. J. and Khedkar, R. (2013) Fighting Eviction: Katkari Land Rights and Research-in-Action, Cambridge University Press India, New Delhi. Dilthey, W. (1989) Selected Works. Volume 1: Introduction to the Human Sciences, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Goetsch, D. L. and Davis, S. (2014) Quality Management for Organizational Excellence: Introduction to Total Quality, Pearson Education, Essex. Ishikawa, K. (1976) Guide to Quality Control, Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo. Leibniz, G. W. (1985) Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, trans. E. M. Huggard, Open Court, La Salle, IL. Lewis, D. (1973) ‘Causation’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 70, no. 17, pp. 556–567. Lewis, D. (1986) On the Plurality of Worlds, Blackwell, Oxford. Mackie, J. L. (1974) The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Merton, R. (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, Free Press, London. Molina, Luis de (1988) On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfred J. Freddosco, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Rappaport, J. (2017) ‘Participation and the Work of the Imagination: A Colombian Retrospective’, in L. L. Rowell, C. D. Bruce, J. M. Shosh and M. M. Riel (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 147–159. Russell, B. (1912–1913) ‘On the Notion of Cause’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–26. Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, Oxford University Press, New York. Wittgenstein, L. (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Kegan Paul, London.

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Participatory mapping and Citizen Science

Grouping elements into categories and measuring their properties is as essential and basic as establishing temporal relationships between causes and effects and rational linkages between the means and ends of human behaviour. The same can be said of locating events, things or people and understanding their distribution in space. While scientists make a profession of creating formal procedures to achieve this, human beings have been doing it since the dawn of time. From problem assessment tools, we thus turn our attention to methods for reconnecting society and the age-old science of mapping, with a commitment to engaging people in answering questions of human and natural geography and the effects of human activity on land and life. We take this opportunity to explore the contribution and lessons of Citizen Science, which now uses participatory mapping as a routine method for data collection in an impressive range of disciplines. We discuss the relationship between Citizen Science and PAR and illustrate applications of participatory mapping on both small and large scales, in Canada and in Indonesia. We also address resistance to using participatory mapping to its full extent, much of which is due to the tenets of empiricism and fundamentalism still lingering in many corners of the natural sciences. In our view, the notion that the business of ‘pure research’ lies mostly in observing nature and gathering hard data with a view to formulating empirical generalizations (on species distribution, for instance) remains a major obstacle to doing science socially and with social ends in view. In a PAR perspective, understanding how events and life are distributed in space calls for the engagement of citizens in the pursuit of all scientific activities, including designing research projects and analyzing results. It also calls on scientists to actively advance the interests of all life forms, of which humans and human societies are but one.

CITIZENS AND SCIENCE Participatory mapping (PM) is perhaps the most widespread participatory inquiry technique used by PAR practitioners. It is a good example of an inquiry process that can be kept simple or scaled up into a full methodology, depending on purpose and available time and resources. As a short exercise it may involve map-making using paper, objects, chalk and masking tape, with a view to grounding decisions in local or regional space and associated

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Participatory mapping and Citizen Science issues pertaining to livelihood activities, history and ecology. If scaling up is needed, participants may produce maps of the past, the present and the future, projected or desired. They might opt for 3-D modelling using papier mâché, sheets of cardboard, pushpins, coloured string and paint to reproduce and interpret information obtained from transect walks, aerial and satellite images or printed maps. Other methods combine community or public engagement with GPS (Global Positioning Systems), GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and other computer or Internet-based technologies, including the ubiquitous smartphone and the many user-friendly apps it can run (Wood, 2010). While methods vary, the immediate purpose remains generally the same – enabling people to map their own territories, landscapes and associated events, resources and assets. The mapping process may support land-based development and community planning, educational goals or inter-generational dialogue. Mapping projects based on local knowledge held by resource users or elders can support customary land rights and build up capacities in resource management and ‘counter-mapping’ politics (Cooke, 2003). The promise of PM brings us to the contributions of Citizen Science (CS), which also makes use of spatial references to engage people in collecting and organizing observations in nature and society. While the current growth of CS is propelled by the unprecedented revolution in the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs), engagement of the lay public in mapping natural phenomena dates back to the development of the science of cartography itself, in the Age of Discovery. The proliferation in the seventeenth century of printed maps by Dutch cartographers provided references for mapping by adventurers and other non-scientists interested in trade ventures and commercial networks spanning the globe. Together, they laid the foundations for modern terrestrial, nautical and stellar cartography. The study of nature during the Renaissance gave rise to a third branch of science, after physics and mathematics, known as natural philosophy and also descriptive natural history, the precursor of modern biological and geological sciences. The development of natural history went far beyond academic circles, however, to launch a long tradition of ‘amateur collectors’ who over time contributed greatly to academic knowledge. They did so initially through papers read at professional science society meetings such as the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences, both founded during the seventeenth century. Many of their contributions were inspired by practical pursuits, as with the map-makers. This is true of the conservation movement as well, which has origins in the publication of Sylva, an influential paper presented to the Royal Society in 1662. The author, John Evelyn, was an English writer, gardener and diarist concerned primarily with replenishing the forests needed to sustain the production of commercial timber. Unlike Evelyn, amateur scientists that followed in the centuries after were often simply lovers of nature and learning, fascinated with the study of wildlife. John James Audubon (1785–1851), the famous ornithologist of the Romantic era, was among their ranks. He is best remembered for his Birds of America and the inspiration he provided to the founders of the National Audubon Society, which combines science with education and grassroots advocacy to achieve its conservation mission. The creation of the Society in 1905 is a founding moment in the history of CS and all later efforts to organize public engagement around the observation of nature. Its first major undertaking with citizens was in response 187

Exploring problems to outrage at the Christmas ‘Side Hunt’ tradition of the time where teams competed to shoot the most birds in a day. Frank Chapman, an early member of the Society, launched a counter event, a ‘Christmas Bird Census’ where participants count birds during the holiday instead of killing them. Scientific endeavours that seek to engage the broader public are now mushrooming in practically all fields, from astronomy to butterfly counts, bird watching, wildlife studies, botany, forestry, oceanography (plankton, coral reefs, marine debris), fisheries, hydrology (rain and water testing, flood risk), ecological monitoring (glacier retreat, measuring noise and pollution), biodiversity, meteorology, seismology, animal epidemiology, microbiology, medical research (AIDS, Parkinson’s disease), brain studies and genetics. All have in common the participation of trained volunteers in gathering data, for a limited period or over many years, usually under the supervision of professional scientists, research centres and academic institutions. Spatial dimensions are always key, with the Internet bringing place and observations together in a single portal and on a massive scale. Each in their own way, PM and CS engage non-scientists in surveying a region for the purpose of making maps. But the ways in which the engagement process actually unfolds vary greatly. Differences in PM and CS initiatives revolve essentially around two questions: •

•

the extent to which laypeople are in a position to carry out scientific work beyond empirical data gathering, including other tasks such as problem definition, methodological design, experimentation and problem solving, computer resource sharing, data processing, analysis and interpretation, publication and policy impact (Haklay, 2013, 2015); the extent to which science is in a position to reciprocate, by responding in a timely manner to the concerns and needs of citizens (through measures other than classroom or public education).

The narrow view of CS adopts a minimalist position on both scores. The enterprise consists in soliciting large volumes of data from the public and ensuring their observations pass the tests of science (Bonney, 1996). The initiative serves agendas that are primarily external, with no commitment to local control or efforts to advance local concerns. By contrast, the broader view of CS strives to tear down as many barriers as possible between science and society. Citizens become legitimate partners in the whole venture, from designing the inquiry to collecting the data and making sense of it, in light of broader debates and social needs. As such, they can call on science and science policy to pass the test of responsible citizenship at multiple levels, from local to national and global (Bonney et al., 2016; Cooper and Lewenstein, 2016; Dunn and Menninger, 2016; Irwin, 1995). The aim here is to ‘empower ordinary people to contribute to science, and for their voices to be influential in ongoing science policy debates’ and other public matters as well (Cavalier, 2016, pp. 401–402). Citizens contribute to science at the same time as researchers act as responsible citizens, with concern for the common welfare (Oberg, 1979). While these two views represent a continuum, most CS projects today tend towards the narrow end, with a focus on volunteer data and some rudimentary processing (e.g.

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Participatory mapping and Citizen Science sorting through hundreds of telescopic images of galaxies). As Cavalier remarks, ‘this suits the needs of many researchers, and also builds on a growing interest among educators in teaching science in a more hands-on way’ (Cavalier, 2016, pp. 162–164; see pp. 220–221). Projects of this type represent a step in the right direction, away from the ‘unquestioned priesthood of science’, as Kennedy puts it; by this he means the formal concentration of knowledge and power in the hands of a scientific-technological elite serving military, industrial and corporate interests (Kennedy, 2016, p. 530). But CS seen through the narrow lens only offers, in our view, a weak link between science and society. Rethinking the relationship between professional researchers and citizens requires that we bring ‘normal science’ into question and develop genuine two-way engagement processes and debates, along the principles outlined in the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act passed by United States Congress in 2015. To evolve and grow, CS must move beyond ad hoc arrangements for participatory data collection established on a case-by-case basis. Instead citizens should be invited to the table of science, in support of an open, inclusive and transparent science, motivated by the quest for knowledge and a renewal of society for the good of all. With advances in ICT capacity (discussed in Chapter 2), CS is gaining popularity, to the point that the term is sometimes used as a catch-all for all forms of public contributions to science, including participatory action research. While we do not wish to quibble over the primacy of terms, our own preference is to maintain the concept of PAR as an umbrella term. Our reasons are carefully considered. To begin with, we question the idea that people participate in the work of science always on the basis of their citizenship, by virtue of the fact that they are registered or naturalized members of a state, nation, or other political community. This would assume that participants engage as educated ‘civilians’, members of the ‘lay public’ or the ‘people as a whole’, as distinct from professional researchers and scientists. The term ‘crowdsourcing’ conveys the same idea: whereas scientists occupy a precise role in society, with professional interests of their own, all others who contribute to enhancing knowledge in particular fields do so as members of a large, undifferentiated mass of individuals who simply share the same political geography and interest in science. In this regard, the language of ‘participatory action research’ has the advantage of being more flexible and politically adaptable. The interested and affected parties can identify themselves using the language that best captures what motivates them. For instance, they may regard themselves as a small constellation of key stakeholders representing different forms of knowledge and interests at play. They may also opt for a hands-on approach to participatory tools instead of the digital strategy adopted in most CS projects. Questions of data sovereignty and cultural property may dictate sharing practices, as it does increasingly when data on indigenous peoples is collected (Kutatai and Taylor, 2016). When making these choices, the parties involved may very well decline to dub their work as experiments in ‘Citizen Science’. PAR differs from CS in another important respect: it generally aspires to engage non-scientists in all aspects of the inquiry, including activities that occur both upstream and downstream of the data gathering process. People’s involvement in participatory mapping (or some other data-collection activity) is not a stand-alone process but rather part

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Exploring problems of a continuous exploration of meaning and action in the world. This requires the use of collaborative ‘problem-posing’ methods, with a view to determining what needs to be studied in the first place, for what purpose and how to scale up the results to higher levels of research and policy making. The concept of participation in knowledge making and use extends as well to researchers who are expected to contribute to the action carried out to achieve social ends. PAR invites scientists to contribute to democratic problem solving for the common good. This is not to deny the merit of knowledge pursuit for its own sake (as in astronomy). Actually, fundamental research is an ‘area of action’ on its own, a sphere of activity that responds to a real need, which consists in understanding the world we live in and satisfying our ‘impulse to know’. But this is certainly not and never has been the sole interest of science, to be elevated above the rest and disconnected from the many pressing needs of our age. Lastly, the word ‘science’ featured in CS is two-pronged. One the one hand, it denotes the systematic study of a body of facts and showing regularities and the operation of laws. This corresponds to the science we do, driven by the unknown, including uncertainties about the nature of science itself and ways to transform it; as Polanyi once said, ‘the professional standards of science must impose a framework of discipline and at the same time encourage rebellion against it’ (Polanyi, 1962, p. 59). On the other hand, science is the body of knowledge so obtained – all generalizations debated and acknowledged in science and communicated through academic publications and science education. This is the science we possess, i.e. knowledge we gain and put to practical use whenever we can, including well-tested rules of scientific problem solving and investigation (Dunn and Menninger, 2016). CS emphasizes the contribution of citizens to the business of ‘doing’ science and conducting research, if only out of pure curiosity and the advancement of general knowledge. PAR conveys the same idea of people doing science but also makes a point of applying scientific reasoning and research findings to collective problem solving and goal attainment in real contexts. In keeping with this pluralistic and inclusive approach to knowledge production and use, PAR proposes a flexible outlook on the social attributes of participating members, be they citizens, stakeholders, whole communities or traditional knowledge holders. Unlike CS, PAR also has a long track record of letting multiple forms of knowledge and representations of reality coexist and feed into each other. This includes other ways of knowing, experiencing and seeing the world that may not tally perfectly with conventional science and its expert-driven power dynamic. Initiatives in participatory mapping and community-based GIS that drive this point home are many (Barndt, 1998; Chambers et al., 2004; Craig et al., 2002; Schlossberg and Shuford, 2005; Vajjhala, 2006). Those that tap into indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews are also worth noting here. They bring into question some of the fundamental principles of Western culture and the world of science, an issue we explore through methods for unpacking local knowledge presented in Chapter 19. Exercises in PM vary considerably in focus and may evolve on either side of the CS-PAR divide. Below, we present two case studies that embrace PAR principles, including ‘the inherently spatial dimensions of participatory approaches’ (Kesby, 2007, p. 2827).

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OTTAWA’S ANCIENT OAKS Trees in cities and the discipline of urban forestry have taken on greater significance in recent decades due to new research on sustainable living in a healthy urban environment. Trees, it turns out, are not simply an aesthetic addition to urban spaces but also critical tools to making cities more resilient, liveable and healthy. Trees on streets and in backyards manage storm water, shade buildings to reduce energy use, improve air quality, and remove and store carbon dioxide safely. These and other ecological services make for effective and low-cost green infrastructure for cities in desperate need of both climate mitigation and adaptation. A growing body of evidence also shows that trees add directly to human lifespans, provided they grow not only across the way in parks and public wooded areas but also in backyards and on the streets where people can feel their positive effect day after day (Crouse et al., 2017). For all these reasons, municipal governments across the world have developed urban forest strategies and targets, and passed local legislation to protect mature trees on both public and private land. Few, however, have been able to maintain or increase tree numbers and tree canopy over time (Nowak et al., 2012). Densification, a key strategy for providing urban services efficiently, is the primary reason for this failure. In Ottawa, where D. Buckles lives, many residents in the city’s older neighbourhoods are alarmed by the rapid loss of mature, healthy trees due to infill housing, a process supported by provincially-mandated planning priorities favouring urban densification. Single homes in residential neighbourhoods are torn down to make way for two or three single units on the same property, covering the lot from edge to edge and from front to back with tall, narrow houses, driveways and hard landscaping. Mature trees, which add to the appeal of these neighbourhoods, are a nuisance to builders, so they come down as well. The dynamic, common to large cities across the world, pits private land developers, the construction industry and municipal planning departments against current residents and the municipal forestry departments responsible for promoting urban greens spaces and tree canopy (Konijnendijk, 2015). Heather Pearl, an Ottawa tree activist, calls the situation a local extinction event for big trees. Community responses to tree loss in Ottawa is taking various forms, including calls from many neighbourhoods for better enforcement of existing tree protection by-laws and changes to the rules guiding the redevelopment of residential lots and streetscapes. Attention during the 2018 municipal election also challenged the failure of local politicians and planners to consider how treeless urban spaces reinforce the accumulation of disadvantage in lower income neighbourhoods. Residents in Champlain Park, a small, middle-class neighbourhood in an Ottawa ward intensely affected by infill, contributed to these debates by combining participatory mapping with advocacy. They started in 2011 by protesting against specific development proposals and related tree removal applications. D. Buckles was one of the main tree advocates involved. As part of this protest, they also created an inventory of all trees in the neighbourhood greater than 50 centimetres in diameter at breast height, the minimum size needed to be covered by the Urban Tree Conservation By-law governing the removal of trees from private property. The inventory included the location of 25 old-growth bur oaks that had survived successive waves of residential

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PHOTO 8.1  Densification pushing heritage trees into decline, Ottawa (Source: D. Buckles)

development to the present day. These trees, each older than Canada itself and remnants of an ancient oak forest ecosystem, were later recognized as ‘Heritage Trees’ by Forests Ontario. The goal of the inventory was to draw attention to trees protected in theory but vulnerable in practice. It also stood as a warning to any that would listen that these trees would not go down undefended. A blogging site where a map of the inventory was posted, called the Champlain Oaks Project, combined with periodic meetings among residents and numerous local newspaper articles, acted as a voice for the unique local trees, attracting significant attention to tree loss generally across the city. These actions had an impact on municipal officials, the local councillor, various environmental groups, associations of community residents and infill developers throughout the ward where the mapping occurred, 192

Participatory mapping and Citizen Science adding to the push for infill reform, tree protection and acknowledgement of local values and knowledge (Copp, 2016). As public concern over the loss of trees to infill mounted, private land developers adapted with new tactics to meet their objectives, as did the protests and the strategic purpose of tree mapping. The community group formalized the inventory by partnering with university-based foresters to engage residents in tree mapping using a standardized protocol called ‘Neighbourwoods’ and combining it with a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed tree benefits calculator from the USDA Forestry Service (i-Tree). The data collected was used to demonstrate the annual flow of financial benefits from the mapped trees in the form of storm water managed, energy saved through shading, air quality improved and carbon dioxide removed and stored. These numbers, and the professional standards behind the inventory, have in turn allowed the residents involved to directly challenge densification policies that fail to protect and promote trees as valuable green infrastructure. Residents have also pursued tree stewardship goals with the data by identifying lots where new trees can be planted and guiding the selection of tree species needed to maintain a healthy diversity. By adjusting the participatory mapping process to take into account financial arguments important at the household level and to municipal governance, the action inquiry is attempting to shift power relations and create scope for public engagement on alternative pathways to cities that ‘put nature at the core of its design and planning, not as an afterthought or an ornament’ (Beatley, 2010). The initiative has also engaged in countermapping politics during the 2018 municipal election in Ontario by creating an app for people across the city to map the ‘Lost Trees of Ottawa’. It invites people to place an icon

FIGURE 8.1  Lost trees of Ottawa app, Canada (Source: D. Buckles)

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Exploring problems linked to a photograph and personal memory of a tree lost to human or natural causes, thereby creating a platform for expressing emotions and for engaging with candidates at ward levels in discussions on what to do about the declining urban forest (Figure 8.1). Through the app, hard numbers, personal meaning and local politics coexist and feed into each other, acting on events in real time and space.

SCALING UP ANIMAL HEALTH SURVEILLANCE IN INDONESIA Amiudin Effendi is a young farmer in the Sinjai District, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. One of his cows started suffering from diarrhoea three days ago. He’s afraid the cow may die or infect other animals. He decides to call Ibrahim Jabir, the village animal health reporter (pelsa) working at the village level to support local farmers and district government health and production services. Ibrahim arrives on his scooter a few hours later, discusses the case with Amirrudin, inspects the animal, and then writes a short-coded SMS on his mobile phone. The codes he uses serve to identify the farmer and describe the signs of disease, their seriousness and the number of animals affected. He sends the message to iSIKHNAS, Indonesia’s national animal health and production information system through a dedicated phone number. A few minutes later Ibrahim receives an automated SMS from iSIKHNAS acknowledging receipt of the message and decoding the original message. The reply creates a unique Case ID number and contains automatically-captured details concerning the pre-registered phone number and user name, the village location and the reporting time. Simultaneously, local veterinary staff get a message on their mobile phones alerting them of the problem. Reports of a more serious nature, involving suspected cases of highly contagious disease or high mortalities, become priorities for follow-up calls by staff within 24 hours of the first report and the possibility of a site visit. For a case which is of low concern, such as Amirudin’s, someone from the veterinary service phones the farmer within a day or so to ask further questions, assess the level of urgency, provide some advice and plan a farm visit if treatments or a laboratory test is needed. Any follow-up visits to the animal, diagnoses, treatments, test results and the outcome of the case are all recorded in a similar manner by staff either by simple coded SMS or Instant Messaging. All the data is automatically validated and linked to the case ID, thus allowing everyone in the field to contribute to the case file. Data from around the entire country is collected and managed in this way using the one, integrated national system which allows real-time data access to all users at any level of the veterinary health services. The whole system rests on a solid pillar of service provision to those who work in the field: robust data in exchange for much needed services. The end result on a national level is remarkably comprehensive. The central repository receives data inputs from all stakeholders involved in the animal health and production chain – from livestock owners and herd boys to village chiefs, community animal health workers, animal health technicians, extension officers, dip tank inspectors and stock agents. Transporters, butchers, slaughtermen, abattoir inspectors and commercial farms also contribute useful data. Pharmacies,

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Participatory mapping and Citizen Science drug suppliers, agricultural supply stations, vaccinators, semen collectors and inseminators do their part as well. Everyone is kept in the loop. Messages received from the national iSIKHNAS database and queries submitted through the secure website is now routine work for local veterinarians and district staff. They can see all incidents recently reported within their geographic area, including vaccination activities, animal movements, case history data, laboratory findings, slaughter house reports as well as individually registered animals and livestock owners. Staff can decide who to visit next and those that need to be followed up. They can monitor all current diseases and the overall health status of the livestock at the local or district level. Production events such as inseminations, pregnancy tests, births, abortions and individual animal reproductive performance can be monitored and individualized reports made available to farmers at any time. They can also detect outbreaks of emerging or exotic diseases, track livestock movements from one area to another, deliver certificates and advocate for more resources in their area if needed. Automated email reports, alerts (a suspected rabies case, for instance), charts, Excel spreadsheets and maps make it easier for them to process or relay the appropriate information to the right people and offer the assistance needed, in a timely manner. The database and associated maps have become a core planning tool for senior district provincial and central managers as well. Hundreds of commonly used, tailored data reports and analyses exist for data users of every level to choose from. Subsets of raw data can be downloaded for additional analysis, without having to rely on specialist data handling. The database becomes a powerful tool to examine antibiotic usage data for possible misuse, plan restrictions on the provision of movement certificates, or create containment zones in the event of an outbreak. It can be used to determine surveillance, vaccination or treatment program priorities. Managers can also assess staff performance records and plan further training by creating videos, self-learning kits, training-of-trainers guides and Q&A help systems, all freely available in a one-stop wiki shop. Last but not least, iSIKHNAS enables national government staff and officials to assess system performance and develop well-informed animal health policies for the country as a whole. The system, owned and managed by the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, began in 2013 as a small pilot project in four rural districts, under the sponsorship of the Australian development assistance program. The system was conceived, designed and implemented by AusVet, a leading Australian epidemiological consulting company using strong participatory principles. iSIKHNAS is now one the most comprehensive and responsive animal health information systems in the world. It is available in practically all districts in Indonesia, a country where the farming population represented an estimated 41 per cent of the labour force, according to statistics for 2012. In early 2018, participants included 12,500 registered field staff, 2.7 million cattle owners and 4.3 million individually identified and registered animals. Data items are coming into the system at an average of 2,700 per hour, every hour of every day. It took barely four years for Indonesia to achieve this. The success of iSIKHNAS is all the more remarkable considering the complexity of Indonesian geography and politics, a Republic that counts 261 million people, with 75,244 villages organized into 6,453 districts or sub-districts and 34 provinces, spread over more than 13,000 islands.

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Exploring problems From a PAR perspective, several important lessons can to be drawn from this singular story. The first concerns the scale of it all, and the actual feasibility of conducting actionoriented inquiry beyond small group dynamics and face-to-face multistakeholder meetings. The daily operation of iSIKHNAS shows how big data that meets rigorous standards, carefully designed from the outset, can be captured to handle all disease and management events on a continuous basis. This happens with full participation of field data providers, on a large geographic scale, using the full array of accessible mobile phone and Internetbased tools. More importantly, the story demonstrates the potential of scaling up in a bottom-up mode – a mega-sized data gathering process that keeps its feet on solid ground. The undertaking never loses touch with everyday life. It is premised on the idea that data must be reported, collected and managed as a natural input and outcome of routine animal health work by livestock owners and others delivering services at the field level. Reliable information is exchanged and circulates freely and quickly to enhance animal health and production on a day-to-day basis. As Marx used to say of Hegel, this is an approach that turns traditional researchers from their heads back to their feet, so they can start walking again. By contrast, top-down surveillance systems encourage participants to walk on their heads. They solicit people’s contribution so that scientists may obtain all the data needed to satisfy their narrow research interests, in the hope that findings will eventually enlighten others and be of some use, somewhere, sooner or later. Immediate returns to ground-level data providers are negligible. Mackenzie at AusVet adds that ‘this all-take-and-no-give approach leads to participant disenchantment, misuse of local resources and fatigue’ (C. Mackenzie, personal communication with J. Chevalier, January 10, 2018). The whole enterprise centres on producing and exploiting ‘mines of information’, extracting everything there is to know before action is taken. iSIKHNAS places everything the right way up. It puts reciprocity and practical communications, based on reliable evidence and using the right tools, at the heart of its agenda. When people discuss practical matters, they may do so for different reasons, depending on who they are and what they seek. The logic of Citizen Science is much simpler. Participants come together mostly around their shared interest and in studies of nature. Also, while scientists play a special role, all others form a large crowd of lay citizens interested in advancing knowledge, with or without implications for immediate action (other than educational). Crowdsourcing adds to this the possibility for an open and rapidly-evolving group of Internet users to contribute to a task other than scientific research. iSIKHNAS takes a path that differs from both CS and crowdsourcing. It opts for a stable multistakeholder approach to collecting data for use, grounded in the multiple needs of agricultural producers and the whole chain of people involved in animal production. While inputs come from a huge variety of sources, all data reporters must be registered and provide information on how experienced they are and their level of formal education and training as well. Knowing the actual source and geographic location of every bit of data received is key to understanding it and assessing its reliability. The approach thus revolves around a wide range of clearly-identified stakeholders and their respective needs, starting with livestock owners, the veterinary and ancillary services and the local community; their needs for detailed information and efficient services are of paramount importance. Government staff, experts 196

Participatory mapping and Citizen Science and researchers working at higher levels also use the system to meet their own information needs, in support of animal health management, policy and science. In the end, the overall system works as long as different stakeholders actively network at multiple levels to achieve their respective goals. The goals may vary, but all agree to participate in a common activity and under common rules. iSIKHNAS illustrates a multistakeholder approach to PAR developed on a large scale. Its success is attributable to several factors, notably its inherent flexibility. This is true of the tools used, ranging from a central website to older mobile phones, smartphones, mobile applications with dropdown lists, SMS, Internet Messaging, emails, Excel spreadsheets, linkages with other databases, wikis, iCloud, SQL and so on. Likewise, the many modules developed over time are customized so that programme coordinators and system administrators can modify or update them as they see fit, without having to rely on technical IT expertise. They can easily add new parameters (improve on data standards, for instance) and accommodate other evolving needs and the changing animal health and political environment of the country as a whole. This brings us to a fundamental feature of PAR embedded in iSIKHNAS: the system is efficient and flexible because the process used to develop it and adapt it over time is anything but a well-defined system. Like any worthwhile experiment in PAR, the story of animal health surveillance in Indonesia features not a model system that can be easily exported, but rather an exemplary approach to the development of a context-specific methodology, with modules and functionalities that are selected, tailored, tested, tweaked and transformed over time. The overall process is guided by a big picture view of animal health surveillance: the end goal is to generate and share sound data and information for use, to the benefit of all the parties involved, rather than simply creating a big database and hoping that everything will follow. However big and comprehensive it may be, a database is just a cog in a larger wheel. On its own it does not ensure steady flows and synergies between animal health information and management at multiple levels, which is what iSIKHNAS seeks to accomplish. In the end, people choose to invest time and energy in the Indonesian system because ‘the system’ serves them and values their work and livelihoods above everything else. ‘The system works to serve people by making their working lives better, easier, more meaningful, less stressful, less dependent on others, more empowering, more efficient, more pleasurable. . . . Whatever it takes to achieve this wide variety of positives, that is the goal of the system. It happens to use data as the common commodity with which to achieve it’ (Mackenzie, personal communication with J. Chevalier, January 10, 2018). Incidentally, the ‘big picture’ concept advanced here is holistic in one sense only: all parts interact – including people, knowledge and action. This is not the same as saying that the current system is all-encompassing, and nothing lies outside its borders. Animal health surveillance and management is undoubtedly a complex system and world of its own, in Indonesia or elsewhere. iSIKHNAS can take pride in offering a fully-integrated system to support animal health, surveillance and production. This achievement notwithstanding, the system currently in place cannot claim to address the whole range of ‘one-health’ issues affecting the well-being of human beings and their environment at all levels. On this point, Mackenzie reports recent moves to test ‘a completely One Health approach in Indonesia, 197

Exploring problems by incorporating human health, public health and food safety, aquaculture, environmental health (forests, land use, weather, water and air quality, etc.) and wildlife in a few pilot districts. The aim is to test the true sense of One Health – integrated and holistic’ (Mackenzie, personal communication with J. Chevalier, January 10, 2018). This is a reminder that efforts to implement a holistic perspective never stop. To sum up, participatory mapping conducted on a small or a large scale raises a basic question: how to design a methodology that gets the right information from and to the right people, at the right time, in the right form, for the right reasons, and at the right cost (given the available time and resources)? Answers to this multifaceted question are bound to differ from context to context, depending on the circumstances. In some contexts, paper and markers were just right. In Champlain Park the PM process was adjusted over time to build in the financial arguments needed to shift power relations in municipal governance and decision making and highlight the uneven distribution of trees as public and private goods. The iSIKHNAS model and strategies adopted along the way are also context specific, but on a different scale and with strong leadership and commitment of resources at the national level. Visionary decisions at top levels translated into strong support networks and local coordination to provide daily assistance to system users at every level, starting with field staff. Admittedly, not all neighbourhoods and countries find themselves in a position where they can share and integrate data on a large scale and mobilize resources accordingly. The overall approach to PM we have just described and the underlying principles are nonetheless groundbreaking and highly replicable. They consist in letting the actual design of knowledge production vary according to local, regional or national circumstances, with a steady focus on tangible benefits that will outweigh any costs incurred by the stakeholders involved. Personal and immediate returns (to farmers, veterinarians, government staff and scientists alike, in the case of iSIKHNAS) are particularly important in this regard. They must not be neglected on the pretext that long-term advances in science and public welfare is what matters above all. As readers will know by now, research cannot live for itself alone. It must also sustain action-oriented inquiries that truly make a difference in people’s lives.

REFERENCES Barndt, M. (1998) ‘Public Participation GIS – Barriers to Implementation’, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 105–112. Beatley, T. (2010) Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning, Island Press, Washington, DC. Bonney, R. (1996) ‘Citizen Science: A Lab Tradition’, Living Bird, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 7–15. Bonney, R., Phillips, T. B., Ballard, H. L. and Enck, J. W. (2016) ‘Can Citizen Science Enhance Public Understanding of Science?’, Public Understanding of Science, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 2–16. Cavalier, D. (2016) ‘An Unlikely Journey into Citizen Science’, in D. Cavalier and E. B. Kennedy (eds) The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Tempe, pp. 1–20. Chambers, K., Corbett, J., Keller, C. P. and Wood, C. J. B. (2004) ‘Indigenous Knowledge, Mapping, and GIS: A Diffusion of Innovation Perspective’, Cartographica, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 19–31. Cooke, M. F. (2003) ‘Maps and Counter-Maps: Globalised Imaginings and Local Realities of Sarawak’s Plantation Agriculture’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 265–284.

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Participatory mapping and Citizen Science Cooper, C. B. and Lewenstein, B. V. (2016) ‘Two Meanings of Citizen Science’, in D. Cavalier and E. B. Kennedy (eds) The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Tempe, pp. 51–62. Copp, A. (2016) ‘From Urban Forests to Neighbourhood Treescapes: An Examination of Power, Actors and Processes in Champlain Park, Ottawa’, M.A. Thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa. Craig, W. J., Harris, T. M. and Weiner, D. (eds) (2002) Community Participation and Geographic Systems, Taylor & Francis, New York. Crouse, D., Pinault, L., Balram, A., Hystad, P., Peters, P., Chen, H., van Donkelaar, A., Martin, R., Ménard, R., Robichaud, A. and Villeneuve, P. (2017) ‘Urban Greenness and Mortality in Canada’s Largest Cities: A National Cohort Study’, vol. 1, October, e289–e297, retrieved from www.thelan cet.com/planetary-health Dunn, R. R. and Menninger H. L. (2016) ‘Teaching Students How to Discover the Unknown’, in D. Cavalier and E. B. Kennedy (eds) The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Tempe, pp. 63–74. Haklay, M. (2013) ‘Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information: Overview and Typology of Participation’, in D. Sui, S. Elwood and M. Goodchild (eds) Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 105–122. Haklay, M. (2015) ‘Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective’, Case Study Series, vol. 4, Wilson Center. Irwin, A. (1995) Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise, and Sustainable Development, Routledge, New York. Kennedy, E. B. (2016) ‘When Citizen Science Meets Science Policy’, in D. Cavalier and E. B. Kennedy (eds) The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, AZ: Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Tempe, pp. 21–50. Kesby, M. (2007) ‘Spatialising Participatory Approaches: The Contribution of Geography to a Mature Debate’, Environmental Planning, vol. 39, pp. 2813–2831. Konijnendijk, C. C. (2015) ‘From Government to Governance: Contribution to the Political Ecology of Urban Forestry’, in A. Sandberg, A. Bardekjian and S. Butt (eds) Urban Forests, Trees and Greenspace: A Political Ecology Perspective, Taylor & Francis, London. Kutatai, T. and Taylor, J. (eds) (2016) Indigenous Data Sovereignty, ANU Press, Canberra. Nowak, D. J., Crane, D. E. and Stevens, J. C. (2012) ‘Tree and Impervious Cover Change in U.S. Cities’, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, vol. 11, pp. 21–30. Oberg, J. (1979) ‘The Failure of the “Science” of Ufology’, New Scientist, vol. 84, no. 1176, pp. 102–105. Polanyi, M. (1962) ‘The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory’, Minerva, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 54–73. Schlossberg, M. and Shuford, E. (2005) ‘Delineating “Public” and “Participation” in PPGIS’, URISA Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 15–16. Vajjhala, S. P. (2006) ‘Ground Truthing Policy: Using Participatory Map-Making to Connect Citizens and Decision Makers’, Resources for the Future, no. 162, pp. 14–18. Wood, D. (2010) Rethinking the Power of Maps, The Guilford Press, New York.

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CHAPTER 9

Factors at play

FORCE FIELD: BACK TO LEWIN A psychologist works in a five-floor sewing factory employing about 170 female operators. One day, the boss summons him into his office, in the presence of Paulson, the factory mechanic, and Sulinda, the supervisor. On the verge of tears, both are about to quit their jobs. Several machines are broken and they are quarrelling over which machines Paulson should repair first. The psychologist suggests to meet with each party separately, starting with Sulinda. Based on a complaint received from a vocal operator, she criticizes Paulson for not being a good mechanic after all and taking too long to fix machines. But what really upsets her is that the operator who lodged the complaint denies everything and claims that Sulinda is lying. As the conversation continues, Sulinda admits that the mechanic’s job is not easy, having to rush all the time in order to keep 170 machines continuously running. The psychologist then goes to interview Paulson who first blames everyone for being too impatient and trying to boss him around. That being said, he recognizes that things would be different were it not for his overcrowded time schedule. The two interviews help the parties vent but also establish the facts as they see them and make sense of the situation along the way. As a result, both come closer to a shared understanding of the problem at hand. With the expressed authorization of the supervisor and the mechanic, the psychologist proceeds to call in each operator for a short interview. He soon learns that most operators consider the mechanic to be too busy to do a proper job. Also they welcome the idea of inviting concerned operators to meet so they can work something out. The meeting is held, and the discussion leads to a solution: since the factory cannot possibly hire another mechanic (even if it wanted to), Paulson’s services should be used more efficiently, in the fairest possible way. Looking at it objectively, the group proposes a simple rule: the machine to be served first is the one that stands to waste more operating hours. Otherwise ‘first come, first served’. Interviewed separately, Paulson and Sulinda express support for this solution. They also agree that it is Sulinda’s job to determine the order in which the machines should be repaired, not Paulson’s. Operators meet again and concur. The solution is implemented to everyone’s satisfaction. Three months later, relations have improved greatly and daily complaints and calls for repairs have gone down by one third. 200

Factors at play This story is real. It took place in 1944. The narrator is Kurt Lewin and the psychologist is Alex Bavelas, his student, working at the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation (Lewin, 1948, pp. 125–141). Even though anecdotal, it reflects all key principles of Lewinian action research. • •

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The approach addresses goal-oriented behaviour and related factors interacting in a specific context, always in ‘the here and now’ (as in Gestalt psychology). Discussions focus on how things are organized, hence facts about production procedure, not on who’s at fault (because lying, lacking in competence or making trouble, for instance). Alternating between individual interviews and group involvement makes it easier to manage emotions, establish the facts from the actors’ perspective, change perceptions along the way and build consensus progressively. Importantly, a rational solution suited to the situation is first proposed by the lowestranking group – those who are nearest the production problem and most immediately affected by it. The final agreement involves the collaboration of all parties who express their views freely and without pressure. The adopted plan is a working hypothesis, a ‘change experiment’ to be tested against reality. The action inquiry process succeeds in satisfying individual needs and aspirations and meeting relational and organizational goals (greater efficiency, clearer rules and chain of command) at the same time. The psychologist never takes sides or tries to impose his ‘objective’ view of the situation. Nor does he try to explain everything he does, let alone offer training on problem solving and conflict mediation.

Given his commitment to research, Lewin ends his story with comments of a theoretical nature regarding group behaviour. In his view, the main concern and goal shared by all the parties consists in achieving optimum levels of work and production. Accordingly, the organization as a whole is faced with two possible strategies. Either it strengthens the driving forces of speed already put in place, by offering higher incentives and letting the supervisor and the operators put even more pressure on the mechanic. Or it weakens the ‘counteracting forces’ – namely, group conflicts that deter the mechanic’s efforts to make the best use of his time. As we have seen, the parties agree to choose the latter path, by formulating rules to address conflicts and improve group dynamics in the process. To put it theoretically, effective change occurs by upsetting the balance between the forces that maintain the system at a given level, in a state of constant tension and dynamic equilibrium open to change. This theory of change can be applied to the study of culture and social life at any level. In the words of Lewin, A culture is not a painted picture; it is a living process, composed of countless social interactions. Like a river whose form and velocity are determined by the balance of those forces that tend to make the water flow faster, and the friction that tends to make the 201

Exploring problems water flow more slowly – the cultural pattern of a people at a given time is maintained by a balance of counteracting forces. The study of cultures on a smaller scale indicates that, for instance, the speed of production or other aspects of the atmosphere of a factory has to be understood as an equilibrium, or more precisely, as an ‘equilibrium in movement’. (Lewin, 1948, p. 46) Sustainable change affects people’s work habits, established customs, and the ‘accepted way of doing things’. For this to happen, Lewin adds, certain deep-seated powers may have to be uprooted, as in Germany under fascism from where he fled. Special events that bring about momentary changes work differently than these deeper levels. They act like shots in the arm; the effect ‘will fade out and the basic constellation of forces will re-establish the old forms of everyday living’ (Lewin, 1948, p. 46). Bavelas’s psychosocial intervention, as told and theorized by Lewin, is merely one example of how ‘field theory’ and the principles of action inquiry can be brought together and contribute to organizational problem solving and research. The approach is all the more insightful as it helps address tensions between the forces at play in everyday life settings. As pointed out in Chapter 2, Lewin is essentially concerned with issues of democracy and ways to overcome boundaries between things that society separates and keeps apart. His focus is on the lack of fluidity we experience when moving between the different regions or spaces we occupy, such as work and family life. The constant imposition of barriers also affects interactions between individuals and their social surroundings (through marginalization and discrimination, for instance), issues that are poorly served by the split between psychology and sociology. In the same spirit, Lewin’s writings are a constant invitation to question our tendency to disconnect theory (general laws) from reality (specific situations) and emotions from facts and reason. Seventy-five years have passed since the incident and Lewin’s account of it using field theory. As we know, the legacy of Lewin is key to understanding the history and the foundations of action research, change management and social psychology. Field theory, however, has received little support in the social sciences, at least up until the 1980s. In recent decades, Lewin’s theoretical thinking has gained greater visibility, but not without some compromise. On the whole, his contribution to theory has been repackaged and schematised to fit the needs of the fast-growing field of change management, practical business education and consultancy in the field of Organizational Development (OD). The watered-down version of field theory now consists of a three-step model to guide agents of rational change (unfreeze the old behaviour – > change it – > refreeze new behaviour) combined with a visual intervention tool showing the tension between driving and counteracting forces at play in a given situation. Both tools make for good graphics. However, they invite criticism for misrepresenting the complexity of social life and Lewin’s contribution to change theory as well (Cummings et al., 2015). As Burnes and Cooke point out, ‘the main reason for the decline of field theory was Lewin’s pursuit of mathematical rigour over practical relevance . . . achieving rigour and relevance is a difficult balancing act – too far down the rigour route, and research can lose its relevance – usability – for practitioners; too far down the relevance route, and practice 202

Factors at play ceases to be based on methodological soundness’ (Burnes and Cooke, 2013, p. 409). In the end, Lewin’s use of overly complex mathematics and concepts borrowed from physics to represent human relations has led many of his followers to prefer practical relevance over abstract theory. Paradoxically, the tension between force field theory and its application in real settings is a force field in its own right, with driving and counteracting factors that can be used to strengthen or weaken the balance between the two sides of action research. The current equilibrium regarding field theory has clearly tipped in favour of its heuristic interpretation and value. In this chapter, we illustrate the use of force field analysis with a small group of Katkari men and women exploring the factors contributing to and counteracting the threat of eviction from their land. Our use of the tool departs nonetheless from Lewin’s framework in two ways. Firstly, we use it as one of many tools, not as an overarching framework to guide each and every action inquiry. Secondly, we make the force field framework available to participants so they can better analyze the situation themselves and plan ways to act on it. Why? Is it because the more is shared, the better? Are we aiming for the full participation of all parties in all aspects of the action inquiry process? Yes, but not exactly. While this view may sound like a core tenet of PAR, it is not ours. Like Bavelas, we do not believe PAR practitioners must explain everything that goes on in their minds when intervening. If they were to do so, they would waste people’s precious time and place the researcher’s work at the centre of everyone’s attention. If we put force field concepts at everyone’s disposal, in their visual format, it is for a different reason that is best explained by using Lewin’s concept of life space, the cornerstone of his original field theory. Consider again the Harwood factory story: it is a situation where the psychologist, the boss, the mechanic, the supervisor and the operators all occupy different positions or ‘life spaces’ in relation to the incident. The point of the intervention and efforts made by everyone is to increase communicational fluidity and movement between these spaces, not to dissolve them. This call for ‘fluidity without dissolution’ applies to everyone, including the psychologist who takes an active part in the discussions, directly or indirectly, and continues to play a distinct role at the same time. As PAR practitioners, this is the task we face. Our goal is to support multistakeholder communication and dialogue. But this is not to say that we must step aside, take a back seat and let the main protagonists drive all aspects of the process. While our relationship to the problem situation may be different, we play a leading role in selecting, adapting, combining and proposing PAR tools that match the situation, if and when needed. Paulson, Sulinda and the operators play key roles in addressing the problem, of course, but so does Bavelas who handles the situation and performs his work with great skill. If he is to help trigger change, he must show know-how in the art of becoming part of the force field that is causing trouble for the other parties involved. All protagonists occupy different life spaces, and problem solving is about bridging the distance that separates them. Conversations needed to achieve this are not only internal; they also require fluidity and movement between the inside and the outside world. Sulinda, Paulson and the operators bring to the incident all kinds of ‘external’ considerations affecting the way they experience the conflict, such as the possibility of quitting and working elsewhere, concern for goals of productivity and competitiveness in the market, the necessity for a mechanic to be exempted from military service and the difficulty of 203

Exploring problems finding replacements during war time, etc. In other words, their life space at work is conditioned by other life spaces they occupy elsewhere, as citizens of a country at war, skilled or unskilled workers, men or women active in the labour force, and so on. The same reasoning applies to the psychologist. He interacts with a researcher, in this case Lewin himself, and other members of his profession and the community of researchers in the field of OD. The way he moves between these life spaces and entertains communications between them affects his intervention at the factory level, and vice-versa. PAR practitioners do the same. In order to propose methodologies that help, they must have some appreciation of the history behind each tool, its strengths and limitations and debates surrounding its conceptual underpinnings. To be skilful at what they do, facilitators must engage in methodological conversations taking place outside the site that brings them in for a period of time. In Lewinian theory, everyone experiences tensions in moving and bridging gaps between different sites of social life and interaction, those that characterize a particular social setting and period of history. PAR practitioners (and all researchers for that matter) are no exception to the rule. They too must find ways of handling differences and transforming them over time. The participatory approach they use to accomplish this is not meant to help any ‘whole group’ navigate a calm lake in a single boat. The goal is rather to help many canoes travel safely together on a free-flowing river, if only for a while.

PREVENTION OF ATROCITIES ACT, INDIA In 1980, a farmer in Chinchavli Gohe, a caste farming community in Khalapur Taluka in Western India, invites several Katkari families to settle on his land in exchange for the use of their labour. Over time, the Katkari hamlet grows to include 32 families, and many turn to brick-making to supplement their livelihoods. In 2002 the Mumbai-Pune Express Highway opens nearby and land prices soar. Six years later, the landholder sells property, including the land where the Katkari hamlet is located, thereby severing his relationship with the Katkari. The new landholder’s first act is to insist that three Katkari families with houses separate from the hamlet move their homes closer to the other houses. He then encloses the entire hamlet with a barbed wire fence and tells the Katkari to leave because he is about to sell the land to a nearby plastics manufacturing company. The people in the hamlet panic and request a meeting with a land rights activist they know to discuss the problem and what can be done about it. The meeting was one of many on the land struggles of the Katkari, a difficult but rewarding journey that spanned many years (Buckles and Khedkar, 2013). It started simply, like so many others in different communities throughout the area, with 11 men and 3 women gathering for an afternoon outside the home of one of the residents. As the threat of eviction was imminent, the research team opted to use the Force Field tool rather than the Problem Tree used in other villages not yet facing eviction. The reasoning was that Force Field offered an opportunity to move directly from the identification of factors counteracting or contributing to the problem to an assessment of ways to act on those factors. Participants first listed the factors that were contributing to the escalating threat of eviction, and rated them on a scale of 1 (weaker) to 5 (stronger) to show their relative 204

Factors at play weight in the situation. This application was an inversion of the Lewinian approach to force field analysis, which focusses on factors that contribute not to the problem but rather to the search for a solution. The angle is different; while the ‘contributing factors’ are negative in the case of a problem focus, they are positive when related to goal attainment, as in Lewin’s work. We prefer the problem focus, but the inversion has little effect on the discussion of issues covered by the analysis. As the threat of eviction was foremost in the minds of the Katkari participants, and could be directly represented by a drawing of barbed wire in the centre of the diagram, it was a powerful place to start. From both angles, the key is to assess the relative weight of driving and counteracting factors as they are currently, not as participants would like to see them interacting with the situation. The Katkari participating in the assessment said that the new landholder had title to the land and therefore could count on the support of authorities, and possibly goons, to dispose of his land when and as he wished. They also noted that a large company located close to the village had already said they wanted to buy the land. They gave these two contributing factors a lot of weight in driving the threat of eviction (5 and 4, respectively). Another strong factor (level 4) contributing to the threat of eviction was their own lack of detailed knowledge about their rights. While they had some sense that they were entitled to live there, most people in the hamlet were quite unsure of themselves. Years had passed since the first families were invited by the previous landowner to settle, and many no longer worked for him. This, they said, made it easier for the new landowner to confuse them and pressure them into leaving. Furthermore, they recognized that they had not registered their houses with the Gram Panchayat of the neighbouring Revenue Village even though they had lived there for decades. This made it difficult to provide authorities with proof of residence, a factor they gave a rating of 3. They also lamented that there was no gauki or other traditional authority in their hamlet that could organize collective resistance to eviction. Nor did they have contact with government officials, and therefore could not expect any help from them. They gave these factors both a score of 2, noting that the lack of support from traditional and official sources would leave them on their own, and therefore make them more vulnerable to eviction. Relatively speaking, however, these two factors were considered of less weight compared to the others. Discussion of counteracting forces focussed initially on the Katkari’s ongoing physical possession of the land. At first they gave this factor a rating of 4, but then reduced it to 3 when someone pointed out that the landholder had already managed to move three houses from their original locations. Possession was clearly not sufficient to stop a motivated landholder with legal title. They recognized that people in the village were now fully aware of the dangers of an insecure village site and highly motivated to do something about it. They were not convinced, however, that this resolve would carry much weight if they were to face an aggressive campaign to dislodge them. They gave this factor the relatively low rating of 2 as a counteracting force in the current situation. The recent emergence of youth leadership in the village was identified as a hopeful sign because it partly counteracted the lack of organization in the village and limited knowledge of rights held by most older residents. Nevertheless, they gave this factor a score of only 2 as the youth are often engaged in industrial work and some saw the plastics company as a potential employer. Finally, the 205

Exploring problems research team pointed out that there were legal options available to them, including the possibility of filing a police case against the landholder under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Participants gave this factor a score of 2, noting that the police were often antagonistic to their situation and might choose to beat them instead of helping them. When looking at all the forces at play (Figure 9.1), the group concluded that counteracting forces were very weak compared to the forces driving the threat of eviction, and that it would be an uphill task to safeguard the rights of Katkari families. Nevertheless, the analysis gave the group confidence that they were right to oppose eviction, and that they would be better off if they were to work together as a village instead of facing the landholder as individual families. They decided to register their houses in the Gram Panchayat and work with the youth in the community to collect copies of legal documents such as ration cards and electricity bills to advance their claims of residence. They also asked the research team to continue to meet with them and provide information they could use to strengthen their position. The seed for positive action was sown, reflecting a clearer understanding of the forces creating the problem and the opportunities they could use to address the issue. The dots in Figure 9.1 indicate the level of control the Katkari felt they had over each column-factor, from low (solid dot) to high (white dot). Columns without dots indicate factors to be addressed later, in due time. During the weeks that followed the meeting, members of the research team met periodically with the newly-formed Land Action Committee, to discuss any changes in the situation and actions they had decided to take. After careful consideration, they decided to follow up on the option of filing a police case against the landholder for forcing them to shift three houses and for erecting a barbed wire fence around the remaining village. This idea, first presented to them by the research team as a counteracting legal option, had initially been rejected for fear of the landholder and the police. The change of mind was inspired by news about another Katkari hamlet that had torn down the fence erected around them. People in Chinchavli Gohe Katkarwadi felt that eviction was imminent and decided they needed to act on legal options to protect themselves and counteract the threat. What followed was a well-crafted ‘first information report’ (FiR) prepared by the research team, detailing the barbed wire fence and forced removal of three houses, and referencing the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (PoA). The Act defines as atrocities offences involving the use of force, intimidation, public humiliation, obstruction and other acts aimed at asserting caste-based dominance or dispossessing members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of their liberty or the material basis of their livelihood. Once the FiR was accepted at the police station, an investigation was started and eventually the landholder was summoned and warned that a case would be filed against him under the PoA if he continued to intimidate people in the hamlet. The incident received considerable attention in the local press and sent a chill through the local real-estate industry because of the severity of penalties called for under the Act. A significant respite had been achieved, at least for a while. From a Lewinian perspective, the conflict situation had been unfrozen and a deep-seated power uprooted through legal means, putting in place a new set of forces. (For more on the story, see Buckles and Khedkar, 2013 and elsewhere in this book.)

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Possession

Community resolve

Lack of legal knowledge

Legal opons

No contact with revenue officials

DRIVING FORCES

COUNTERACTING FORCES

No tradional leadership

Youth leadership

Houses not registered

Core problem: threat of evicon

Company wants their land

FIGURE 9.1  Forces driving and counteracting the threat of eviction, Chinchavli Gohe, India

5

4

3

2

1

0

0

1

2

3

4

5

Landholder has tle

Exploring problems

GAPS AND CONFLICTS AND MALNUTRITION IN MALI PAR practitioners have experience and expertise to contribute. Far from being above the fray, they are actors with personal backgrounds, professional histories, theoretical mindsets and life spaces of their own. The tools they use are also laden with history and shaped by past and ongoing conversations and breakthroughs in a variety of topics and disciplinary perspectives. When applied to real-world situations, the lessons they hold may orient the way dialogue and problem solving unfolds. Force Field is a good example of this. Despite its limitations, the framework inspired by Lewin’s work helps identify drivers of change and counteracting forces in a given situation and plan ways to upset their balance. In Lewinian theory, the exercise serves to enhance fluidity in social relations otherwise blocked by conflicting interests and values, systems of power and obstacles to communication. In current practice, however, Force Field does not always support this kind of group thinking. That is, on its own, the tool is not wedded to any particular social philosophy, and its use may carry no trace of Lewin’s battle against authoritarianism and social oppression. The advantage in leaving aside the tool’s theoretical origins and implications is that no explanation needs to be given about the ends pursued. The facilitator plays a low-key role, posing relatively direct and simple questions. Group members use the tool as they see fit, based on their own values, interests and priorities. In our view, this is a strength. But in it also lies a weakness. Unlike fully-developed Lewinian thinking, a Force Field diagram can serve any purpose and is not necessarily dedicated to the ideals of transformative change for the common good. When tossed into a toolbox, Lewin’s Force Field becomes an empty shell. Our next tool, Gaps and Conflicts, differs in this regard from Force Field, the Problem Tree, Timeline and participatory mapping. It provides clearer guidance from a critical perspective on issues worth investigating, those of power, values, interests, information and communication. The tool requires more instructions for participants but makes up for this by making sure the fundamentals of life in society are brought to the fore. As always, the choice between content-free tools such as Force Field and the conceptual framing of Gaps and Conflicts must be made according to the situation. Gaps and Conflicts seeks to identify the issues underlying a core problem and its related causes by determining if they are mostly about gaps or conflicts in power, interests (gains and losses), moral values, or information and communication. As with other problemoriented tools, it starts by defining the problem situation and creating a card, a drawing or an object to represent it. At a meeting in Mali, West Africa, used here to illustrate the tool, the core problem that brought people together was the failure to implement a national action plan to combat malnutrition. The stakes could not have been higher. In many parts of the country acute malnutrition rates exceed the WHO ‘crisis’ threshold, making nutrition factors the underlying cause of up to 45 per cent of childhood deaths in Mali. Political instability and a prolonged drought in 2011 had prompted the country to develop and adopt a national nutrition action plan in September 2013 that called for an inter-sectoral approach to nutrition planning and intervention (Ministère de la Santé, 2013). This reflected the realization that many sectors, including agriculture, water and sanitation, education, health, social protection and research institutes, have something to contribute but cannot on their

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Factors at play own address the interrelated causes of malnutrition (Pelletier et al., 2011). Coordinated interventions across sectors are needed, but disagreements over strategies, often professional and mandate driven, also create distance between sectors. In this context, D. Buckles was invited to design and facilitate a three-day meeting in Ségou, Mali in October 2014, focussed on this challenge, framed as barriers to implementation of an existing action plan. Dia Sanou, a nutrition specialist from Burkina Faso working with Cornell University, helped convene and co-facilitate the event, attended by 22 key stakeholders from the government ministries and local governments involved and a few prominent non-governmental organizations. A review of key steps in the development of the nutrition policy and action plan, using Timeline, set the stage for a Free List and Pile Sorting of barriers to implementation of the action plan. The broader political instability created by the activities of Tuareg rebels and a jihadist insurgency in Mali’s northern and central regions was acknowledged as an overarching concern but not singled out for discussion. Instead barriers were grounded in the mandates of the parties responsible for implementation of the action plan. They included: • • • • • •

weak ownership of the plan by the current political leadership; incompatibility of the inter-sectoral plan with existing sector plans; failure to define the detailed financial requirements of plan implementation; failure to mobilize resources for coordination; limited dissemination and communication of the contents and implications of the plan; negative perceptions of multi-sectorality among professionals invested in their own sector.

Participants organized themselves based on interest and expertise into three groups to discuss two closely-related barriers. The group task was to determine the kind of issue each barrier represented, using a common definition of power, interests (gains and losses), moral values, information and ways of communicating. The definitions, discussed first in plenary, started from a supplied text (following) and were adjusted in light of local examples, terms and cultural understanding. The main concepts were as follows: •

•

•

Power is your ability to achieve what you want by influencing others and using resources you control. These resources include economic wealth, political authority (an office, position or role recognized by an institution or by local customs), the ability to use force or the threat of force, and control over information (including knowledge and skills) and the means to communicate. Interests are the gains and losses that you will experience based on the results of ongoing or proposed actions. Gains and losses affect the resources you control such as economic wealth, political authority, prestige, the ability to use force, information, means to communicate, legitimacy and social ties. Values are beliefs, judgements, norms or principles about what is important, or the degree to which something is viewed as morally right or wrong.

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Exploring problems • •

Information is what you know ‘for a fact’ and believe to be true. Communication is how you exchange information and make your views known to others.

Barriers to implementation that raised more than one kind of issue (such as power and interests) were duplicated on separate cards for the next step. This involved deciding whether the barrier involved either a gap that needed to be filled or a conflict that needed to be resolved. To be more precise: • A gap involves a lack of power or control over resources; the absence of incentive or interest (gains or losses); a failure to appreciate the moral worth or value of something; a shortage of information and effective means of communication. • A conflict is a struggle over how decisions are made and who makes them; how gains and losses are distributed; the values that people hold; the information that is given out and the ways that people communicate. Participants discussed these concepts and went on to record their characterization of barriers on the back of each card, which they then compiled into a large table on the wall for discussion in plenary (Table 9.1).

TABLE 9.1  Barriers to implementation of the multi-sectoral nutrition action plan, Mali

Issue

Gaps

Power

Conflicts Weak ownership of the plan by the current political leadership Failure to mobilize resources for coordination Incompatibility of the inter-sectoral plan with existing sector plans

Interests (gains and losses)

Failure to define the detailed financial requirements of plan implementation

Moral values

Negative perceptions of multi-sectorality among professionals invested in their own sector

Information/ Poor definition of communication coordination roles and responsibilities

Incompatibility of the inter-sectoral plan with existing sector plans

Limited dissemination and communication of the contents and implications of the plan

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Factors at play The break before discussion of the table results was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the Secretary General for the Ministry of Health. Far from dampening debate, his presence and openness to the group and process inspired people to speak plainly about barriers to implementation of an important national plan and about the insights raised by the exercise. The failure to mobilize resources to support the coordination functions of the action plan, a barrier considered a power struggle over how budget decisions are made, was highlighted for the Secretary General by participants. Feedback on the barrier from the Secretary General pointed to the availability of resources for coordination in the national budget, prompting the group to rethink the barrier and redefine it with greater precision. They concluded that the relevant barrier was actually an information gap due to the poor definition of the roles and responsibilities of the coordinating body. These details were needed at higher political levels to justify the allocation of existing resources. Addressing this gap, buoyed by a promise from the Secretary General to act on their recommendations, became the focus for later detailed planning and clarifications of key distinctions between the coordination secretariat and the coordinating council for the action plan (see Appendix F in Pelletier et al., 2018). Two other barriers to implementation were prioritized for their impact on the lack of progress with the nutrition policy and action plan: weak ownership of the plan by the current political leadership, and the failure to define the detailed financial requirements of plan implementation. The prioritization process initially considered the number of cards in each row and column, and was finalized through a simple polling by participants of their top three barriers in need of immediate resolution. The Carrousel (Chapter 15) provided the follow-up method for detailed planning of responses to the priority barriers. This involved several rounds of discussion and sharing across groups focussed on concrete proposals to lift the barrier, who needed to be involved, and first steps. After agreeing on each proposal, participants then integrated the first steps into the original Timeline of the nutrition policy and action pan, thereby producing a forward-looking plan with next steps. The session closed by polling Levels of Support for the outcome (see the tool in Chapter 15). While still just a plan, participants indicated a high level of support, and considerable optimism that progress could be made. In September 2017, one of the leaders on nutrition in Mali,

PHOTO 9.1  Participants in the nutrition policy assessment, left to right: D. Houleymata,

A. Akory, M. Diarra, Ségou, Mali (Source: D. Buckles) 211

Exploring problems Bernard Coulibaly, received the United Nations Healthy Not Hungry Award in recognition for progress achieved between 2014 and 2016 in addressing chronic malnutrition in Mali. Given the current turmoil in Mali, however, it is not clear how progress will be sustained. To conclude, Gaps and Conflicts requires conceptual guidance from facilitators but makes up for this by usefully covering some of the essentials of sociological thinking. This statement, however, should be nuanced. The way we carve out the foundations of life in society is always a matter of perspective. Whatever framework we use, some bedrock element will be missing. In the next chapter we prove this point by introducing yet another dimension worthy of consideration: the beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that people may have about life and the world as they experience it. We also explore an interesting riddle not yet addressed in theory or in practice: the possibility that change solutions may also be root causes of existing problems.

REFERENCES Buckles, D. J., Khedkar, R., Ghevde, B. and Patil, D. (2013) Fighting Eviction: Katkari Land Rights and Research-in-Action, Cambridge University Press India, New Delhi. Burnes, B. and Cooke, B. (2013) ‘Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory: A Review and Re-Evaluation, International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 15, pp. 408–425. Cummings, S., Bridgman, T. and Brown, K. G. (2015) ‘Unfreezing Change as Three Steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s Legacy for Change Management’, Human Relations, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 33–60. Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving Social Conflicts: Selected Papers on Group Dynamics, ed. G. W. Lewin, Foreword by G. W. Allport, Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of Michigan, Harper & Row, New York. Ministère de la Santé (2013) Plan d’action multisectoriel de nutrition, Bamako, Mali. Pelletier, D., Gervais, S., Hafeez-Ur-Rehman, H., Sanou, D. and Tumwin, J. (2018) ‘Boundary-Spanning Actors in Complex Adaptive Governance Systems: The Case of Multisectoral Nutrition’, The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, vol. 33, no. 1, e203–e319. Pelletier, D., Menon, P., Ngo, T., Frongillo, A. and Frongillo, D. (2011) ‘The Nutrition Policy Process: The Role of Strategic Capacity in Advancing National Nutrition Agendas’, Food and Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. S59–S69.

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CHAPTER 10

Paradox

REASONS FOR IGNORING REASON No area of life is exempt from riddle-like situations where problems actually lie hidden in the solutions people adopt. Solutions already tried can become a hindrance to achieving further progress. Examples from clinical psychology are many, such as when insomniacs work very hard at relaxing and falling asleep. In the field of international development, people may be placed in a position where they must depend on the intervention of outsiders to become empowered and self-sufficient. Ironically, we assist those who wish to learn to help themselves but cannot do it on their own. When we think of it, the politics of elected representatives claiming to ‘speak on behalf’ of those whose voices must be heard is also paradoxical. If effective solutions like these exist, why are people still struggling with the problem, and does it make sense to do more of the same? Finding the right answer to these riddles may seem simple: people should think twice before adopting a course of action and measure all the consequences of whatever it is they do or plan on doing. The solution to this riddle lies in aligning actions with clearly-stated aims and principles. But this is easier said than done. In the real world, reasons for ignoring reason are many, and they can withstand any test and continue to hide from everyone’s scrutiny so as not to be challenged. Among best-kept secrets are basic assumptions people make about things they consider self-evident and that cannot be otherwise. This is not to suggest that we should re-examine everything that strikes us as obvious, a task that is neither desirable nor even possible. Those who undertake to disclose and justify all the assumptions they make are like dogs running after their tails; their chances of succeeding are pretty slim. All the same, some assumptions are worth questioning, especially if they keep blinding us to better ways of understanding things and acting on that understanding. This chapter explores the role of hidden rationalities in creating and maintaining problems that remain unresolved despite considerable efforts, and to some extent because of them. The aim is to gain a better understanding of reasons for ignoring reason, and effective ways to ‘unfreeze’ habits of mind and behaviour that create obstacles to meaningful change. To this end we present an original method that draws on the insights of paradoxical psychology dating back to the 1970s and the works of Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland,

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Exploring problems Richard Fisch and their colleagues at Palo Alto’s Brief Therapy Center (Watzlawick et al., 1974). The method, called Paradox, applies in situations where people know what they must do to address a key problem and recognize at the same time that they are not taking action for reasons that remain obscure and little discussed. These tacit reasons may be of three types: • the benefits gained from maintaining the problem; • the principles or values that motivate people to ‘act against reason’; • attitudes towards problems that seem to some degree inevitable. The Palo Alto model starts from a simple observation. In the words of Erickson, attempted solutions often make a problem worse or keep it in place (Foreword in Watzlawick et al., 1974). Self-defeating solutions typically involve efforts to change a situation without calling some key assumptions into question. For instance, when experts realize their PowerPoint presentations are long and frustrate an audience eager to engage in discussions, they will predictably try to be more concise, show fewer slides, and follow all available tips and tricks to make their presentations stand out. They assume that their role is to help others better understand the issue at hand, and they must make the best effort to achieve this goal. If the problem persists, they will put more effort into doing more of the same, or talk faster. This is first-order change, usually the one that comes first and appeals to common sense (Watzlawick et al., 1974, pp. 80–89). Second-order change is ‘something else’. It involves doing things quite differently – for instance, having a group discussion first, and then asking specialists to contribute to group thinking later, at the right time, as part of an ongoing conversation, using PowerPoint or not. This way, experts exercise leadership without speaking first let alone getting the final word. This type of change calls for consciously thinking outside the box – finding what is going on here and now, asking what is done about it that doesn’t work, and figuring out a different kind of solution. As in mathematics, the focus is on resolving the riddle rather than explaining its origins. In our example, second-order change occurs without critiquing or defending the prevailing rule of experts or trying to gain insights into its root causes. Examining what experts do and what they could do differently matters more than asking ‘why’ they do all the talking and how they got there in the first place (as in a Problem Tree or Force Field analysis). Instead, the model sets in place a counter-paradox directed at the attempted solution. Continuing with our example, presenting experts are asked to acquire and display a new expertise, which consists in waiting for the right moment to speak and mastering the art of being present through attentive listening. As Zen Buddhism teaches, experts who adopt this strategy refuse to choose between a (talking a lot before shutting up) and not-a (talking little before shutting up). Why? Because a and not-a add up to the same thing; they both rule out the possibility of genuine conversation. The only way out of this unnecessary dilemma consists in choosing not not-a (listening with care before speaking up). Ironically, experts learn to be more competent by developing an expertise in not being all-knowing experts. A good tool to create this ‘ironic problem-solution loop’ (Rohrbaugh and Shoham, 2001) is Sabotage. The exercise involves answering a simple question: what are the best

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Paradox ways we can think of to ensure that the problem we face is maintained or gets worse? Figure 10.1 describes the responses given in a First Nation community meeting held in Northern Quebec, with a focus on the promotion of hunting and fishing tourism. The question on what tourist guides can do to ‘make sure tourists never come back to our community’ took everyone by surprise. Participants had nonetheless no problem completing the task with hilarious results. Laughter was contagious and cathartic, and understandably so. The conversation lifted two rules that govern normal discussions about problems that need to be resolved. The first rule is that talking about problems is serious business. The second is that people have little control over persistent obstacles that make it difficult to achieve their goals. Sabotage makes a point of breaking both rules. Inviting people to talk lightly and take full control of hard problems, without looking for underlying explanations, seems like a weird and twisted logic. Its positive effects are nonetheless tangible, provided the method is applied in the right context and in the proper way. Of course, efforts not to worry may already be part of attempted solutions that don’t work; playing down and trivializing things that bother us is an easy and common thing to do. It’s called denial. However, in this case, participants are in a position to laugh at something quite different – the fact that they are actively adding self-defeating solutions to their broader problem statement. Used on its own, Sabotage leads nowhere. The question is where to go next. In response to this, advocates of the Palo Alto approach ask probing questions about behavioural symptoms of the problem at hand. So does Paradox. As we explain below, the method

Tourism services

No response to tourists

They can’t find you

Travel

Don’t show up

Lost luggage

Shortages of canoes

Guy turns up late

Flights not

Equipment breaks down (no spare)

Lack of Last minute

Gas price soaring

workers g

ainin

inconsistent hours

Food and equipment

No tr

No response between

No meals, no shelters

No rooms available

No safety measures (lifejacket)

No adjustment to weather

FIGURE 10.1  How to sabotage hunting and fishing tourism in Mistissini, Quebec, Canada

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Exploring problems incorporates the Sabotage technique at the beginning of the discussion, using it to describe the symptom and examine the values, the benefits and the attitudes associated with it. While it can be applied to a wide range of settings, Paradox was initially designed to address health and safety issues in the construction industry. A sample of our findings involving a small enterprise are presented in this chapter. But first we introduce key concepts and debates in theories of accident causation and prevention. We warn readers that our literature review is extensive, considering the PAR focus of this book. This is so for several reasons. For one thing, it is a reminder that PAR can and must contribute to the creation of knowledge in substantive fields other than PAR theory and methods. In this case, the full illustration of Paradox involves going beyond problem solving in the construction industry in a region of France. The point of the exercise is also to engage in conversations at various levels among and between researchers, workers and agencies involved in understanding and preventing hazards at work. Our goal here is to demonstrate the value of reconciling two sets of considerations key to developing the full potential of PAR: on the one hand, grounding research in site-specific problem assessments and actions and, on the other hand, contributing to generalizations and debates about paradigms and theories in a particular field. Contributing to knowledge is part and parcel of doing PAR, and part of what distinguishes it from other legitimate undertakings such as community development or group facilitation. Our stance on accident prevention theory also happens to reinforce a point made throughout this book, an idea at the heart of PAR: effective problem solving requires that all parties concerned work through key aspects of the situation they need to address, including those that are not strictly technical or technological, using the appropriate tools and the evidence and knowledge at their disposal. This perspective is largely missing from the literature on workplace health and safety. In our view, failure to engage people in the inquiry process on workplace safety has dire consequences, especially for those who are most vulnerable. This is the case for construction workers whose health and lives actually depend on the wisdom of prevention and promotion of collective thinking and action. Our literature review and case study thus show how consequential general causation and prevention frameworks can be, confirming Kurt Lewin’s notion that ‘there is nothing more practical than a good theory’ (Lewin, 1951, p. 169).

ACCIDENT CAUSATION AND PREVENTION THEORY A chronic problem documented throughout the industrial world is the frequency of accidents in the construction sector (Sousa et al., 2013). Despite a wide range of measures adopted to prevent or mitigate risks on construction sites, the number of accidents, injuries, illnesses and deaths remains disproportionately high compared to other workplaces. In Europe, for instance, around 1300 construction workers are killed each year. Most of them are employed in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) representing more than 99 per cent of construction firms in Europe. The death rate, 13 employees out of every 100,000, is more than twice the average of other sectors. The costs of accidents and ill health to individuals, employers and governments are immense. 216

Paradox To prevent accidents and injuries from occurring we need to understand what causes them. Methods to support of evidence-based inquiry in this field are described at some length in Kjellén (2000), Vincoli (2006) and DOE (1999). The visual, step-by-step nature of most methods helps synthesize a whole range of factors that may account for reported accidents. The most often used tools are the Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram, Fault Tree analysis (Chi et al., 2014), Event Tree analysis and Causal Root analysis. They focus attention on the causal or contributing factors associated with a sequence of logically and chronologically related events that deviate from established work plans and result in injury to personnel or damage to the environment or material assets. Causal factors are events or conditions in the accident sequence that are necessary and sufficient to produce the unwanted result. More advanced models distinguish between direct causes (immediate events or conditions), contributing causes (collectively increasing the likelihood of an accident) and root causes (systemic, under managerial control, to be corrected in order to prevent recurrence of the accident). Unlike causal factors, contributing factors are more lasting and relate to issues of design, organizational processes and social systems. In some frameworks, factors are subdivided into categories, such as Material, Milieu (environment), Methods, Materiel (equipment) and Manpower. Investigative frameworks based on Energy Release Theory (reviewed below) revolve around deficient barriers – controls that fail to impede harmful energy flows (e.g. equipment, administrative procedures and processes, supervision/management, warning devices, knowledge and skills). Investigations into the causal and contributing events and conditions leading to accidents are essential to planning for no risk or minimum risk on construction sites. That being said, the primary locus for the examination of accidents is at the company level, which is where accidents actually take place and must be controlled, so the argument goes. The current wisdom, dating back to the 1960s, is that industry and management are essentially responsible for health and safety issues at work. Although legislation varies from country to country, employers are now typically obliged to design and organize construction work safely, identify hazards, determine corrective actions, implement and monitor them, keep records of injuries and incidents, report them to the authorities, consult employees, provide training and inform workers of hazards and safe work practices. Section 5 of the Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1970 thus requires each employer to ‘furnish to each of his [sic] employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his [sic] employees’. The European Council Directive 92/57/EEC, made into law in all member states, reflects the same philosophy. Making the employer responsible for health and safety at works goes against the widespread and longstanding notion that construction accidents are essentially a labour problem – the result of careless behaviour, errors and unsafe acts on the part of workers. Behaviour-based safety thinking goes back to Heinrich’s study of 75,000 workplace accidents, published in 1931. Heinrich visualized workplace injuries as the result of a chain of sequential events, like a line of dominoes falling against each other, one by one. The first domino is the social environment or inherited behaviour that contributes to creating the second domino – some fault in the worker’s personality, such as recklessness or ignorance. The fault can in turn topple a third domino that plays a critical role in the chain: a 217

Exploring problems failure to behave safely (e.g. standing under suspended loads, removing safeguards, starting machinery without warning) or to create safe work conditions, mechanical or physical (e.g. unguarded gears, insufficient light). The fourth domino is the accident and the fifth is the injury itself, which occurred at that time in one of every 11 accidents, on average (Heinrich, 1959). Heinrich claimed that 88 per cent of accidents are due to unsafe acts, 10 per cent result from unsafe mechanical or physical conditions, and 2 per cent are ‘acts of God’. Given this 88–10–2 ratio, behaviour-based interventions are the most effective way to interrupt the sequence of events leading to accidents and injuries. Instead of holding workers responsible for their own accidents, most safety and health theories and frameworks now emphasize the importance of designing work for no risk or minimum risk, a task essentially under management control (Duclos, 2003; Manuele, 2002). The basic philosophy is summarized in the prosaic statement by the editor of Hazards: ‘It’s the hazards, stupid’ (O'Neill, 2002; Frederick and Lessin, 2000). Less polemically, the argument is that health and safety depends on work process and managerial decisions about what and how to produce, not on well-instructed and well-behaved frontline workers. To prevent illness and injury at work, root causes must be addressed. Measures must be taken to remedy or eliminate the hazards altogether (e.g. dangerous chemicals, heavy weights, possible falls), by investing in plants and working environments that are safe, mechanically and physically, and introducing appropriate engineering controls and process design. The locus of prevention and effective control is now firmly in the hands of non-workers. The underlying assumption is that science, technology and policy must step up to make sure workers are saved from themselves (Zhou et al., 2013). As we’re about to see, the shift is radical in many ways. Yet it also means doing ‘more of the same’, by never calling an old idea into question: accidents can be dealt with provided the human factor is either addressed through education or designed out of the equation. Energy Release Theory has contributed significantly to making the shift from safebehaviour thinking to what is called the science of Safety Engineering and Management (SEM). Borrowing concepts from Gordon (1949) and Gibson (1964), Haddon (1972, 1980), the founder of modern injury epidemiology, argues that bodily injuries and property damage never happen simply ‘by accident’ and can only be addressed by looking scientifically at the different factors and phases involved. Key factors include humans suffering the injury (the host), the vehicles (e.g. chemicals) and equipment (e.g. power saws) causing it, the physical environment (e.g. buildings) where the event takes place, and the social environment as well (i.e. regulations, laws, cultural norms or mores). These factors come together in situations where thermal, radiant, chemical, electrical or mechanical energy is out of control and transferred in excess of body injury thresholds, thus causing harm. Energy transfers go through different phases, and countermeasures to keep them in check must adjust accordingly. The first phase, the pre-event, raises questions about the source of harmful energy and safety measures to eliminate it (e.g. substitute nontoxic for toxic chemicals). Other first-phase prevention strategies consist in limiting the amount of harmful energy or modifying its characteristics, preventing it from building up or being released (e.g. design power saws with a start button that prevents accidental starts), or modifying its rate and distribution if released. The second phase, the harmful 218

Paradox event, calls for means to separate energy and humans in time or space (e.g. use remote control machines) or by means of physical barriers (e.g. use power saws with safeguards). The third phase, the post-event, involves the final release of energy and efforts to reduce the immediate and long-term consequences of an injury once the harm is done (e.g. apply first aid and minimize the time delay between injury and hospital care). Haddon’s synthetic matrix, refined over time, brings together column factors and row phases in a single table. The matrix invites users to identify strategies for risk management and prevention in each problematical cell. Haddon’s etiological model has been adopted in most theories of accident causation (Kjellén, 2000). The model has been key to creating safety standards for motor vehicle design and driving in many countries. It encourages safety theorists and practitioners to avoid being locked into one phase of the matrix and to consider the different factors that underlie or determine the injury or harm caused by uncontrolled energy release. As Runyan (2003) remarks, this is a flexible and pragmatic framework to examine risks and problems systematically and choose from a wide array of strategies the most effective in preventing injuries, including workplace behaviour, management decisions, technological innovation and policymaking. The SEM approach seems comprehensive and objective. But appearances can be deceptive. All the bases of accident causation and prevention might be considered, yet some are given more attention than others. As it happens, priority is given to investigative and preventive measures that are under direct scientific and managerial control. In this framework, long employed in the aerospace industry, hazard control methods are ranked according to effectiveness. The top-ranking measures are elimination (e.g. performing a task at ground level rather than at heights) followed by substitution as the next best method (e.g. substituting water-jet cutting for mechanical sawing). Engineering comes third (e.g. providing safeguarding technology such as interlocks, two-hand control systems, safety edges, noise-dampening technology, mechanical lifting devices). All three measures are ‘engineering controls’ under management responsibility, to be supported by workers, unions, industry and governments. They directly affect the work process and ensure that jobs are designed to be safe or redesigned to be safer when hazards are detected. Less effective measures are of the cognitive and behavioural kind. They lay much of the responsibility on the workers and frontline staff. They include distributing information for use (e.g. manuals, instruction sheets, labels, signs, signals) and creating administrative controls (e.g. training, standard operating and safe working procedures, authorization, supervision). Personal protective equipment (PPE) such as safety glasses and helmets comes last since it requires compliance and supervision and adds a new physical burden on the worker, creating discomfort and even hazards. Also it is not fully effective. As with other methods, PPE is to be used only if higher-ranking controls are unavailable. Similar causal-hierarchy frameworks inform other models of accident causation such as TRIPOD (Reason, 1991), the ILCI method (International Loss Control Institute, see Bird and Germain, 1985), MORT (Management Oversight and Risk Tree, see Cornelison, 1989) and SMORT (Safety Management and Organisation Review Technique, see Kjellén, 2000). A consistent theme in these models and related causal-factor checklists is the lack or loss of top-management control over potentially harmful energy as the root cause of unsafe acts 219

Exploring problems and injuries at work (Kjellén, 2000, pp. 37–39, 55). The basic idea is ‘that there exists an ideal SHE [safety, health and environment] management system as specified in industry standards or handbooks. In this sense, they are prescriptive. By comparing the actual conditions with the ideal model, the analyst is able to identify gaps that represent so-called root causes of accidents’ (Kjellén, 2000, p. 45). In a SEM perspective, accident investigation must focus on causes that are preventable and within the boundaries of company control. Guided by quality assurance management principles, the investigation goes beyond considerations of unsafe acts by workers alone. The inquiry (and planning) process avoids at the same time going too far in the opposite direction, back to Adam and Eve, by expanding the causal chain to include psychological, social, economic or political conditions and factors at play. As Kjellén (2000, p. 72) puts it, safety engineering is essentially about immediate causation and prevention, not about explanation and prediction. The science of SEM represents the best-effort approach to understanding and preventing accidents provided we accept a basic rule. As Rasmussen et al. (1987) and Reason (1997) put it, the problem-solving process should stop when the causes identified are no longer controllable through means/ends analysis and formal planning. Since most models emphasize the role of company and management in planning for minimum risk, this stoprule means that tracing causes back to failures at higher levels – looking at the role of industry or national regulatory and supervisory authorities for instance – is unrealistic because too complex and out of reach. The rule, inspired by the fear of infinite regress, also implies that a distinction must be made between ‘accounting’ and ‘understanding’. Techniques to investigate accidents are essentially designed to gather evidence, describe events and conditions and analyze logical relationships between them. The investigative process thus accounts for unplanned events and helps gain greater control over hazards. Given their practical nature, the methods used preclude efforts to discuss, understand and dig deeper into cultural, social or psychological factors that are complex and do not lend themselves to measurable observations and operational plans (Hale et al., 2012; Lenne et al., 2012). Since they neglect the less tangible aspects of health and safety at work, most methods invite a technical, largely top-down investigative approach – a sequence of fact-finding steps and procedures to follow at all times, mostly for administrative and legal purposes. Expert-driven investigations into accidents are ‘scientifically designed’ to stop short of examining two things: the systemic aspects of accident causation and prevention, on the one hand, and, on the other, ‘human’ factors that may play a role in causing accidents, despite all efforts to remove them from the managerial equation. Systemic elements include a whole range of scientific, technological, educational and political interventions that go well beyond the exercise of managerial control. As for human factors, they include all personal, interpersonal and cultural dimensions of work life that cannot be directly observed or ‘managed’. When brought together, the two sets of factors, societal and psychological, raise a fundamental question: what is the role of reflexivity and life in society when it comes to preventing or accounting for injuries at work? In their current form, investigations based on SEM thinking simply choose not to raise the question. Later, we explore the consequences of efforts to hide our heads in the sand, starting with models that duck the issue of broader systems at work in the field of health and safety. 220

Paradox Assessments of accidents that leave out systemic factors are riddled with problems, one of which has to do with the place of science in the whole system. All agree that investigations into accidents are necessary if we are to learn from experience and evolve accordingly. However, the assumption raises a number of thorny questions: are the inquiries truly effective in preventing accidents? The stop-rules built into SEM provide a quick response to this line of questioning: the question must be withdrawn rather than answered. Why? Because linkages between inquiries into accidents and the accidents themselves cannot be observed; the relationship is so remote as to be unobservable. The means-ends relationships are too complex, and the potential for direct control out of reach. Ironically, inquiries are under the obligation to provide scientific assistance and are expected to deliver. Yet they cannot be held liable for failing to take all reasonable steps and provide the best-effort delivery of science. Questioning what evidence-based inquiry does or fails to do to prevent accidents goes beyond what SEM considers the scope of science. Given its empirical orientation, science cannot reflect on its own role in creating safe construction sites. The argument is rather convenient. This way, science can continue to ‘do more of the same’ and carry out its business without ever asking a difficult question: could it do more but differently? The same ‘convenient problem’ affects other broader measures taken to keep accidents in check – distant measures not under immediate observation and managerial control. As with science, technological innovations, educational campaigns and government policies and regulations are key to preventing accidents. Yet the means employed escape scrutiny because far removed from their outcomes at the worksite. However central they may be to accident prevention theory, they remain peripheral to accident causation thinking at the system level. Broader interventions are part of the solution, beyond the management level. They are viewed as effective means to achieve desired ends. But no one can actually prove this to be true, by showing how means and ends act as causes and effects. Nor can the opposite be shown, by demonstrating deficiencies in the overall design and delivery of SEM. Science declines its own competence when it comes to assessing its impact in the field of accident causation and prevention. Yet it shares responsibility for the SEM framework that guides most health and safety practices in the industrial world. The contribution of science dates back to the pioneering work of Heinrich. He was the first to clearly recognize the relationship between human and environmental factors and the classical distinction between unsafe acts and unsafe conditions. The three E’s of his proposed Corrective Action Sequence and ten axioms of industrial safety were pivotal in this regard. The first ‘E’ stands for Education. It calls for action to train workers regarding all facets of safety and to persuade employers to prevent accidents for both humanitarian and financial reasons (axioms 6 and 10). Educational measures are all the more critical as most accidents are caused by unsafe acts and are preventable (axioms 1, 2 and 4). Engineering, the second ‘E’, is also needed for hazards to be effectively controlled. This requires making adjustments to product, mechanical, physical and process designs, applying the same methods as used to control the quality, the cost and the quantity of production (axioms 1, 3, 6 and 7). Enforcement, the last ‘E’, insures that workers and management alike follow internal and external rules, regulations and standard operating procedures. This implies the exercise 221

Exploring problems of managerial responsibility, adjustments to personnel, the enforcement of discipline and close supervision of worker performance (axioms 6, 8, 9) (Heinrich, 1959). Departing from his own safe-behaviour thesis, Heinrich’s ‘three Es’ and related axioms suggest that accidents may result from failures in education, engineering and enforcement. This implicit theory of accident and injury causation and prevention is systemic in its own way. It is all the more holistic as it includes another ‘E’ worth naming: methodical Enquiry (using the British spelling), the fourth pillar of hazard prevention. This is Heinrich’s call for action research in five methodical steps, those of accident and near-accident investigation, analysis, selection of remedy, implementation and evaluation of effects. Education, engineering, enforcement and enquiry represent the four cornerstones of current wisdom in the field of occupational hazards. When brought together they support a complex edifice that takes on different sizes and shapes from one occupational sector and country to another. Each cornerstone builds on important contributions from different disciplines and conceptual frameworks. The complex meshing of these ‘four Es’, however, tends to be poorly reflected in most theories of accident causation and prevention. Most models and theories concentrate on some parts of the edifice rather than grasping the system as a whole (Pillay et al., 2015; Underwood and Waterson, 2015). Trees receive far more attention than the forest. Last but not least, investigations stop short of asking how things on the whole could be done differently, instead of doing more of the same. This reluctance to raise questions about assumptions is all the more surprising as problems built into the SEM framework are not lacking. The notion that managerial and engineering controls at the company level can nip health hazards in the bud fails to make sense of many intervening actors and factors, including the necessary role of state agencies in matters of health and safety. If employers and employees have so much to gain from reducing losses in health, lives and property, why is there still a need for regulatory agencies and frameworks, and should we not assess their effectiveness in protecting human health and lives? Another puzzle consists in applying SEM principles to small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). More often than not, SEM theory is out of sync with SMEs that generally lack control over the design of the machinery or standard materials they use (forklifts, for instance). Nor do they control the quality of health services that play a vital role in reducing the immediate and long-term consequences of injuries at work. The notion that improved technology can resolve all SHE problems is no less convincing. Technological innovation is known to introduce new risks, a concept clearly understood in fields such as medicine, transportation and the nuclear industry. In the construction sector, safeguard technology and automation can create a sense of false security (Goguelin and Cuny, 1988, p. 102), produce boredom and reduce worker attention, for instance. More advanced technology may call for the development of specialized skills that may be acquired and applied unevenly, with the possibility of error. Regular maintenance requirements can also create hazards that cannot be countered through the engineering of ‘passive barriers’ alone. However reliable it may be from an engineering perspective, safety-designed hardware and equipment may fail to protect workers if it is not regularly tested and routinely maintained (e.g. gauge reading, leaky valves, metal fatigue). Another risk factor involves competing concerns, those of productivity and efficiency, considerations 222

Paradox that may impede full managerial and worker compliance with extensive SHE instructions and regulations. Hazards also emerge from temporary or mobile construction projects where workers and management are routinely faced with situations and problems that require deviations from the original plans (for reasons involving variations in construction projects, materials and external conditions, or pressures to complete the work on time and within budget). More generally, the construction industry undergoes frequent transformations that give rise to new worksite hazards. Fast-paced changes in industrial technology, information and communication technology (ICT) and global markets for products and labour profoundly affect everyday work life systems and processes. These changes may solve some problems but they also create new social, technical and communicational challenges – those of migrant labour and automation, for instance. Related stressors, such as workplace violence, cannot be fully anticipated or solved through company-based, ‘engineering controls’ (Hovden et al., 2008). In fairness to SEM theory, the argument that some risk is inevitable is not news to management science. As Stephenson observes, SEM is ‘a sub-discipline of systems engineering that applies scientific, engineering and management principles to ensure adequate safety, the timely identification of hazard risk, and initiation of actions to prevent or control those hazards throughout the life cycle and within the constraints of operational effectiveness, time, and cost’ (quoted in Vincoli, 2006, p. 6, authors’ emphasis). The primary goal is not to eliminate risk altogether but rather to create the highest possible level of freedom from risk in a given environment, or reducing the hazard risk to its lowest acceptable levels. Not all risk can be eliminated under all conditions and in all possible circumstances. If so, no forklift or drill press could be operated, automobile driven or aircraft authorized to fly (Kjellén, 2000; Reason, 1997). Nor would industry be able to maximize profits. Most governments act on this twofold concern for workers and the interests of capital when they pass SHE laws and regulations. In reality, enforcement measures create a set of minimum health and safety standards at best and rely mostly on industry to implement them. SEM is part of systems engineering, a broader discipline that is as much if not more about maximizing profits (or minimizing financial risk) than it is about safety and health. Its goal is to reduce hazard risk to its lowest acceptable level, usually well above zero. This raises a fundamental question: what level of risk will policymakers, corporate industry, managers and engineers find acceptable given other considerations such as operational effectiveness, time and cost? As should be expected, the answer varies according to the perceived benefits and disadvantages associated with a context. The acceptable risk level in the construction industry is not the same compared to other sectors such as road transportation or nuclear power. This discussion of risk-taking and risk thinking brings us back to what SEM constantly seeks to eliminate: the so-called human factor. Not unlike employers, workers are faced with the problem of defining tolerable safety risks in light of the various concerns they have, and adjusting their behaviour accordingly. As Hale and Glendon (1987) point out, the degree to which people expose themselves to safety and health hazards depends on the level of risk they are willing to accept or tolerate. Unless they change their target level towards greater safety, people may use innovations in system safety to pursue other goals, 223

Exploring problems such as improved performance. Behavioural responses and adaptations of this kind are well documented, especially in the field of road traffic and accidents (e.g. people tend to drive faster on roads that have wider lanes, paved shoulders, reflector posts or clearly painted edge markings, measures otherwise designed to reduce the frequency of accidents). This is Risk Homeostasis Theory – people will be less cautious if perceived hazards are reduced. Using the insights of Surry (1969), Hale and Glendon (1987) add that people’s risk tolerance depends on the phase at which the hazard is detected. Workers react differently to early warning during danger build-up compared to an immediate threat caused by danger release. The way workers determine tolerable risk also reflects differences in work situations and levels of learning (Rasmussen et al., 1987). The caution they exercise is lower in hazardous situations involving automatic skill-based behaviour informed by training and experience. By contrast, workers are more risk-conscious in situations where they must apply existing rules or when they face new hazards and have to use acquired knowledge to interpret, assess risk and cope with the hazard. In short, engineering for safety at the company level, with proper measures to educate workers and enforce safety procedures and regulations, in compliance with existing laws, has many loopholes. A possible response to this critique might be that the overall SEM approach should be treated for what it is, a working hypothesis, to be tested and refined through the fourth ‘E’ – a systematic Enquiry into the impact of management practices compared with broader factors and the effect of risk-taking mindsets and behaviour. The response would make sense were it not for Catch 22: the stop-rule built into empirical causation models precludes the enquiry process from assessing any factor that cannot or that does not connect directly with specific worksite events. The approach stops science from paying too much attention to broader systemic issues and human factors as well. SEM thinking and practice is hampered by several double-bind attitudes concerning risk-taking in real-life situations. Firstly, the framework acknowledges the key role that the Four E’s and related actors play in causing or preventing accidents. Narrow views of science and prevention nonetheless impose a command to refrain from assessing their actual impact on accident prevention and any failings that may follow. Secondly, mainstream theory acknowledges the complexity and hazards of technological change and SME construction activity. All the same, these considerations are left out of the final equation because they do not yield to a command-and-control logic. Ironically, scientists, engineers and managers take measures to exercise control over everything that matters, save their own fear of losing control. Thirdly, hazards are clearly understood to be manageable up to a certain point only. Yet considerations that determine acceptable risk thresholds (for workers and industry) are ignored – all the more so if they involve non-observables such as safety culture in organizational and everyday work life settings. As Obertelli (1995) points out, group norms in regards to these thresholds vary considerably and account for important differences in risk-taking behaviour. In reality, accidents are intricate events, with multiple layers that should not be ignored as soon as they become complex – i.e. less easily observed, described, measured and controlled (see Faverge, 1967, p. 9). Relying on strict causal reasoning to figure out why accidents happen and how to prevent them is not as rational as it may seem. The approach imposes narrow views of ‘methodical thinking and planning’, with limitations on the 224

Paradox potential for social reflexivity and collective action. The main limitation in this regard lies in the top-down technical approach to health and safety Education, Engineering, Enforcement and Enquiry, much of which ignores the value of building stronger bridges between science and society. Stop-rules regarding the effective involvement of all contributing actors and factors, other than managerial, reinforce the ‘What-You-Look-For-Is-What-You-Find’ principle and remain a key obstacle to a thriving safety culture at work (Gibb et al., 2014). Calls to develop a stronger safety culture through greater dialogue and reflexivity are many. Hale and Hovden (1998) describe ‘safety culture’ as a breakthrough concept in accident prevention thinking, an approach backed up by a long tradition of psychosocial and sociotechnical contributions to group dynamics dating back to the pioneering work of the Tavistock Institute (see also Hale and Borys, 2013; Filho et al., 2013). Reason (1990) makes the same argument when he emphasizes the need for top-management commitment to a safety culture permeating all levels of the organization (see also Kjellén, 2000, p. 14). Likewise, proponents of Risk Homeostasis Theory point out that people’s health and safety depend essentially upon their desire to be safe and related tolerance toward risk (Wilde, 1982). Petersen (2001) is another strong advocate of safety culture defined as ‘the way it is around here’. He holds that accidents are essentially caused by people, not by unsafe acts, conditions or things. The real question is why people engage in unsafe acts in the first place? To be more precise, why does an organization allow hazards at work and opportunities to behave unsafely? If safety committees, programmes and audits are set up, what is the real motivation behind them? According to Petersen, they are of little help if they represent administrative procedures and paperwork aimed mostly at regulatory compliance, as is often the case. They become effective only if they reflect a genuine culture of organizational commitment and employee involvement in accident prevention thinking and planning. What matters in the end is the value placed by all (industry, workers, governments) on safety and concrete actions that follow. Given these remarks, the models and muddles of ‘managerial control’ should be understood for what they are – neo-liberal euphemisms for the lack of close coordination between the many actors and factors of hazard prevention. Top-down command-andcontrol measures are no substitute for multistakeholder Engagement and dialogue to support reflexivity in the field of health and safety at work. Below, we argue that this fifth ‘E’ is the critical link missing in the theory and practice of accident prevention. Accordingly, we explore a method to help people engage in discussions about problems that resist efforts to address them, and ‘reasons for ignoring reason’ in matters of health and safety at work. The method was co-designed by Jacques M. Chevalier and Patrick Obertelli (École Centrale de Paris). It was tested with three SMEs located on the outskirts of Paris (with 20, 70 and 200 employees, respectively). The two authors met with five small teams of workers and their immediate supervisors, on two separate occasions, in January 2011 and late in March of the same year. The study was part of a broader action research project, under the coordination of P. Obertelli and jointly administered by the École Centrale de Paris, the Organisme professionnel de prévention du bâtiment et des travaux publics and the Groupement National Multidisciplinaire de Santé au Travail dans le Bâtiment et les Travaux Publics. Results of this study were presented to the pilot committee in April 2011, in a report entitled ‘L’accompagnement des conduites individuelles et collectives face aux risques dans le bâtiment’. 225

Exploring problems The full methodology developed for this study brings Paradox together with Timeline (Chapter 7), Force Field (Chapter 9) and Hazards (Chapter 17) to assess worksite hazards. We focus the attention here on the workings of Paradox, knowing that the other tools are illustrated elsewhere in this book.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AMONG CONSTRUCTION WORKERS IN FRANCE It stands to reason that the root causes for risk-taking behaviour within a team, a profession, an organization, an industry or a society are key to understanding why people do what they do and how things can change. But the statement is not as harmless as it may seem. Oddly enough, the question of root causality, which is central to scientific thinking, attracts little attention in much accident causation and prevention theory and practice. Accidents tend to be viewed not as the predictable effects of causes worthy of scientific inquiry, but rather as the consequence of plans not being made or followed – a lack or loss of managerial control and worker compliance. As in legal practice, inquiries into ‘faults’ and related evidence thus revolve mostly around questions of responsibility and counterfactual reasoning, i.e. final ends (intent) and means (actions) not taken to achieve safety. As a result, accidents can never be fully explained, and non-managerial actions taken to prevent them can never be part of the problem. This non-scientific mindset is reminiscent of scholastic philosophy where the ‘accidents’ of human existence matter little in comparison with the master plan of God, as expressed through his moral Creation. In the writings of Thomas Aquinas (inspired by Aristotle), an ‘accident’ thus denotes an attribute, known to exist through the senses, which may or may not belong to a subject, without affecting its essence – the whiteness of the teeth of a human being, for instance (a man remains a man even if his teeth turn green). Unlike essences, accidents are fortuitous, transient and changeable. Ultimately, they are of little interest to philosophy, as they have no logically necessary connection with their essences. ‘Accidents’ in the modern world generally suffer a similar fate. However much sadness and concern they may cause, they are mere incidents on the margins of the master plan of management and industry. Essentially, an accident is a business plan merely in need of further perfection. The methodology presented below assumes otherwise: if accidents continue to happen, it is because of problems that can be explored. Paradoxically, one of these problems lies in the solution adopted – the drive to eliminate the human factor and the social aspects of accident causation and prevention. The approach developed and tested in France tackles these issues over two sessions. The first session concerns workers’ perceptions of hazards as they relate to an ongoing construction project, factors that aggravate or attenuate these hazards, and the level of control that workers exercise over them. The second session delves into less observable phenomena: the effects of unspoken benefits, values and attitudes that lead workers to accept risks in particular settings. Both sessions show the way out of the logic of managerial command, by lifting the ban on risk talking and allowing conversations on the hard rule that workers should take no risk at all.

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Paradox

Session 1: Timeline, Force Field and Hazards The first session revolves around three integrated diagrams: Timeline combined with Force Field and Hazards (Chapter 10). Timeline (Chapter 7) allows each team to map on a horizontal line the sequence of steps or phases in an ongoing construction project and the specific hazards associated with each phase. Using Force Field analysis, participants discuss and determine the relative weight of each factor that either contributes to existing hazards or keeps them from getting worse. They also draw on each column-factor a dot to indicate the level of control they feel they can exercise over the factor, from low (solid dot) to moderate (half tone dot) and high (open dot). A separate Cartesian graph allows participants to assess and discuss the relative severity and probability (or past frequency) of each hazard. The session ends with a discussion of things that the team can do to prevent worksite hazards, especially those that show higher levels of severity and probability. They can do this by finding ways to alter the weight of contributing and counteracting factors, those over which they have some control. This is how the discussion unfolded in one worksite where the work team had been called upon to repair a 40-year-old asbestos sheet roof hanging 20 metres above the parking lot of a bus station. The roof measured about 2000 square metres. The team drew a Timeline sequence of steps to repair the bus station roof together with the main risks associated with each work phase. Force Field analysis, the next step, helped identify factors that either contributed or attenuated these risks, and also the workers’ level of control over each factor. The overall discussion is summarized in Tables 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3. Key comments revolved around the team’s fear that one key team member, Alberto, might fall from the lift or the roof. This falls into the category of ‘human factor’, called Manpower in the Ishikawa diagram (still widely used in France). Alberto is afraid of heights and experiences vertigo when standing or moving on elevated platforms, especially those that are narrow or unstable. His fear dates back to a traumatic accident he had about 18 years ago when he slipped and fell on waste gravel from the top of a three-storey building, plummeting through a 50-centimetre interstice between the scaffold and a brick wall. The event reminds Alberto of two fall-from-height accidents that his father suffered at a younger age. Following the accident, the father was unable to climb ladders and work at height. Alberto considers his fear of heights to be uncontrollable and irreversible. His fear of falling is real and creates a feeling of insecurity that takes its daily toll. The team believes that the problem could be remedied by placing a safety net below the roof. However, this raises another issue that further complicates things, a work method issue (the fifth ‘M’ in the Ishikawa diagram) that workers and companies are constantly confronted with: the all-too-familiar race against time. This is a constant source of stress and tension within the team and the enterprise. Installing a safety net takes time and is expensive. As it is, creating a safe worksite absorbs more time than repairing the roof. The team was not sure the employer would authorize another safety procedure, especially one that is costly in time and money. While the likelihood of Alberto falling is slim, the accident would be dramatic if it were to happen again. This is made clear in the team’s assessment of the relative severity and probability (based on past frequency) of each hazard, mapped on a Cartesian graph drawn

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TABLE 10.1  Hazards on a construction worksite, Paris

Timeline sequence

Hazards

1 Climb on roof and identify fragile sheets 2 Climb on roof

Alberto risks a fall whenever he climbs to the roof, unstraps himself from the man lift and walks on the slippery roof to identify and replace fragile asbestos sheets.

3 Install the hydraulic lift

Lift tips due to strong winds or improper installation.

4 Replace sheets

Objects fall from the roof on trespassers and bus drivers walking below.

All phases

Prolonged exposure to asbestos.

TABLE 10.2  Existing factors contributing to construction worksite hazards, Paris

Ishikawa categories

Contributing factors

Control level and measures

Environmental conditions

Exposure to wind, rain and freezing.

No control. Work must stop until weather improves.

Material

Roofing sheets are worn out, become slippery when covered with moss, and break easily under new weight.

No control

Equipment

Straps are fallible, wear out over time and may be poorly fastened to the worker, the man lift or the roof.

Partly controllable, by signalling the problem to the employer.

Manpower

Like his own father, Alberto suffers from vertigo due to a traumatic fall-from-height accident.

No control over fear. Possible safety measure (though time-consuming): placing a net below the roof.

Method

Race against time is a constant source of stress.

Some control

TABLE 10.3  Existing factors attenuating construction worksite hazards, Paris

Ishikawa categories

Attenuating factors

Control level and measures

Environmental conditions

Creating a safe and wellorganized workspace.

High control

Equipment

Wearing PPE, using and maintaining reliable equipment.

High control

Manpower

Team experience. Spirit of trust and ability to resolve problems and handle tensions.

High control

Material

Method

Paradox on a separate flip chart (Figure 10.2). The exercise quickly confirmed the fact that falling from the roof was the greatest hazard, even if less probable and not a threat to everyone. The assessment reflected a tacit and common-sense understanding of factors of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘preparedness’ to handle danger, two notions that are key to accident prevention and priority setting from an organizational perspective. Coming back to the Force Field exercise, team members then identified factors that attenuate existing hazards, those they can build on to further reduce risks. These factors include safety-critical practices such as wearing PPE, using and maintaining reliable equipment, and creating a safe and well-organized workspace – things they already do and are under their control. However, the discussion converged once again on manpower issues, such as experience. Unlike younger workers, the team felt it did not need training on scaffolding and work at height, for instance. But most of all, they counted on the spirit of trust prevailing within the team and the enterprise to keep accidents in check. In their view, team spirit and the ability to handle tensions and resolve problems are critical to accident prevention. Workers who trust each other and enjoy working together (as they do) are

Severity high

10 Alberto slipping or falling from roof

Alberto falling because of strap Objects falling on trespassers or bus drivers

Frequency low

Frequency 100 %

0%

high

Exposure to asbestos

0 Severity low

FIGURE 10.2  Frequency and severity of construction worksite hazards, Paris, France

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Exploring problems more likely to help each other and show concern for everyone’s safety and health in general (by ruling out alcohol consumption or cell phone interruptions, for instance). The team felt that trust was missing on many worksites. This is particularly true of larger team and multi-team construction projects where workers don’t know each other well and regularly step on each other’s toes. Conflicts over minor irritants (smoking in the worksite cabin, for instance) can turn into real fights. The first session provided a clear picture of the main hazards associated with an ongoing construction project and the factors, more or less controllable, that aggravate or counteract them. Findings gave the team a better handle on possible actions to counter the risk of falling from height, a priority for everyone. When invited to identify those actions, the team focussed on two critical factors moving in opposite directions: on the positive side, the fact that trust and good will already existed within the family enterprise; on the negative side, the cost in time and money associated with the safety net solution. Since the decision to purchase new equipment belongs to the employer, the team proposed to involve the employer in the discussion and explore what the enterprise could do about Alberto’s fear and risk of falling from the roof. The session ended with comments on the extent to which hazards were actually discussed within the team and the enterprise. Participants also evaluated the Timeline, Force Field and Hazards assessment process they had just experienced. In response to the first question, the team noticed the tendency they had of raising safety issues at the start of a project. They frequently warned each other and trespassers of potential dangers during the job, as needed. Words of caution were also important to guide every step in getting Alberto on the bus station roof, allowing him to identify and replace decrepit asbestos sheets. Participants mentioned again that on-the-spot communications regarding safety matters are more likely to happen in smaller teams, among workers who know and trust each other as they do. Closing remarks about Session 1 shifted the attention from risk taking to the question of risk talking. For one thing, the team felt that the process ‘authorized’ a safe space to address delicate issues of health and safety at work. It gave workers an opportunity to pause and discuss past events and possible accidents, something they rarely did because always pressed for time. Also workers found it hard to talk about past traumas and life-threatening incidents. (The discussion concerning Alberto’s fear of falling from height was emotionally charged to the point that Alberto spoke only briefly and in a low voice throughout the session. Many of the comments about falls from height actually came from Alberto’s older brother). Participants agreed that speaking about these issues, including among family members, is key to promoting safety at work. They also felt it useful to compare different perceptions of worksite hazards and levels of danger. In their view, this kind of discussion could help integrate young co-workers and check up on everyone’s appraisal of potential hazards at the start of a project. The exercise could also help manage tensions at work, with the assistance of an accident prevention officer, if needed. The team recommended that employers be part of the discussion and contribute to the assessment. They recognized that discussions about corrective measures such as the safety net will not be easy. In this regard, having someone from outside to facilitate the discussion can make a difference. 230

Paradox Participants likened Session 1 to a family enterprise tradition that once existed – a friendly gathering at Christmas time when employees freely exchanged with the employer on work-related incidents of the year, including issues of health and safety prevention. In those days, taking time to talk things through and enjoying the process was the normal thing to do.

Session 2: unspoken benefits, values and attitudes Widely-used accident investigation methods (e.g. causal tree analysis) ask questions regarding the sequence of worksite events and phases, associated hazards and their relative severity and probability. While covering the same ground, Session 1 addressed other key issues concerning (1) counteracting factors that keep risk factors in check, (2) levels of control over counteracting and contributing factors and (3) different perceptions that team members have in regards to the relative gravity and probability of health and safety hazards. These additions and amendments to normal inquiry practice run counter to the managerial control framework. Contrary to the SEM thinking, Session 1 invites workers to reflect on existing hazards, identify the workers who may be more vulnerable to them, and explore what they can do to minimize risk, especially in situations that can have serious consequences and are more likely to happen. The case study presented in this chapter also confirms the importance of three things that the SEM model has a tendency to ignore, all of which are key to accident prevention theory and causation (and lie at the heart of PAR): the consideration of human factors (e.g. fear, stress, experience), the social dimension of work life (e.g. team spirit, trust, communications), and the importance of reflexivity (i.e. risk talking to avoid risk taking). Workers are less likely to take risks if they talk about it, on a regular and ongoing basis. Accordingly, Session 2 held two months later started with a debriefing on things that had occurred since the first session. In response to this query, team members were glad to report that discussions continued well after the meeting, within and outside the team. Session 1 prompted one member to wear his safety helmet at all times. It also made the whole team more conscious of the many risks involved in the work they do, things ‘you don’t think about’. As the debriefing exercise continued, focus nonetheless shifted to risk factors that had been mentioned only in passing during the first session. Teams members brought back the safety net idea advanced in Session 1 and shared the conclusion reached with older employees and the enterprise owner. While the employer was usually accommodating when requests for equipment were made, the idea of a safety net was abandoned because not realistic. Installing a net below the roof would take too much time. This led to a discussion about the imperative of ‘speed’ together with the problem of having to work with other construction teams, ‘all those people around us, those wild teams that get carried away. It’s all about speed. They take no precaution. Sometimes just to save five minutes. . . . When teams are mixed, everyone tries to go first. There is no respect between workers’. Having to rush all the time on construction sites where you can’t trust other teams is a serious issue. So is interaction with younger workers on construction sites. Two young workers had joined their team – workers they knew little, had difficulty working with and whose behaviour they found impossible to anticipate (when working at heights, for instance). The 231

Exploring problems team did attempt to discuss matters of health and safety with new and young team members, but with poor results. Even when warned, younger workers don’t wear safety helmets or masks (because not ‘stylish’) and continue to wear running shoes instead of the heavier construction boots. The only way to get them to comply with safety rules is by ‘telling the boss’. Team members admitted they once behaved the same way, when they were young and ‘controls didn’t exist’. Over the years, however, they saw other workers get sick or die. ‘So-and-so would still be with us had he strapped himself to the roof. When you get older you realize your hands will bleed if you don’t wear gloves. Also you know better than to rush all the time and risk hurting yourself or falling from height’. The debriefing set the table for a discussion around problems of time, stress and trust between workers, both of which fall again into the Ishikawa category of Manpower. The method employed in Session 2 involved a shift of its own, from worksite hazards and factors associated with them to the ‘reasons for acting against reason’. The question here is simple: what drives workers to expose themselves to hazards in the first place? Next we describe and illustrate a step-by-step process and conversation to unpack three kinds of responses to this riddle, all of which converge on what might be called the tacit or hidden reasons for unsafe behaviour. They consist of the unspoken benefits, the underlying values, and the deep-seated attitudes associated with risk tolerance at work. In keeping with the Palo Alto model, the language needed to probe each dimension bars everyone from using the adverb ‘why’. Why? Because questions about ‘why’ we behave the way we do are often treated as calls to justify or pass judgement on our conduct here and now. Responses given end up ‘explaining things away’ in one of three ways: by going back to the origins (‘this is how it all started’), blaming everything on external factors (e.g. ‘there’s no time available’) and other actors involved (e.g. ‘it’s management’s fault’), or citing sweeping principles or rules that preclude any further discussion (e.g. ‘everyone is free to make their own choice’). The purpose of Paradox is to circumvent habitual responses of this kind and create space for individual, group or multistakeholder introspection and reflexivity.

Situation and safety practices (Step 1 and 2) Paradox starts with a definition of the specific situation to be examined, followed by an exercise in positive psychology, i.e. an appreciative conversation about good health and safety habits already in place. This includes all the things that team members do on a regular basis to prevent work-related accidents and injuries. More specifically, participants describe what they each do to promote everyone’s safety at work. In our case study, participants mentioned their habits of: • • • • • •

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installing protective barriers around holes; making sure that the worksite is safe; strapping oneself when working at height; refusing to do something if it doesn’t feel safe; wearing PPE and reminding young workers to do the same; watching over younger co-workers (‘they fool around with cement mixers and don’t realize how dangerous they can be’);

Paradox •

looking after the safety of others at all times (by warning them of hazards, such as lifting heavy loads without bending the knees), insisting to the point of nagging, getting stressed and forgetting about one’s own safety.

On this last point, Alberto’s older brother admits that while he is good at assessing worksite problems and hazards, he also tends to worry a lot. He exercises authority when things go wrong and does so even if it irritates younger guys and creates tension within the team. The research team used a flip chart to capture the main points of the discussion and facilitate their immediate analysis and interpretation by the group (Figure 10.3). The Paradox diagram consists of a column to the left (for Step 2 and Step 7), a top row to the right (for Step 3) and three columns below the row (for Steps 3, 4 and 5). Existing health and safety practices identified by the group were recorded in the upper half of the left-hand column, under Step 2. Participants were pleasantly surprised by this opening discussion. Querying existing practices that effectively prevent accidents is not part of conventional inquiry methods. Yet

1

Accidents at construction sites

2

3

Wear personal protection equipment 6

Accidents are inevitable

5

Take pride in completing on time

4

Save time

7

Look after each other’s safety

FIGURE 10.3  Paradox – construction worksite accidents, Paris, France

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Exploring problems it helps affirm past and present strengths. It also provides a baseline situation against which new strategies can be compared and determined, as proposed at the end of Paradox.

Unsafe behaviour (Step 3) From an exercise in positive group psychology and baseline analysis, the attention turned to paradoxical thinking framed around an unusual question, equally unexpected: what is it that each team member and the group as a whole can possibly do to make sure that accidents occur at work? Facilitators encouraged participants to respond without concern about whether these unsafe acts reflect actual behaviour and who should be blamed for it if and when it occurs. Responses to this Sabotage question (recorded in the top row of the diagram) covered the usual suspects in no time. The list included refusing to wear PPE, climbing without safety straps, showing no caution when using machinery, ignoring the equipment maintenance schedule (every six months), burning waste material in the middle of the site and, lastly, working at height or mechanically lifting heavy loads with people below. Another good way to cause accidents consists in not placing safety barriers around danger areas, or letting strangers trespass into the site at their own risk (a wartime unexploded shell killed two children playing on a worksite a few years before). The timing of the Sabotage exercise, following on earlier comments about existing hazards and the opening discussion in Session 2 around existing positive practices (e.g. wearing PPE), means the discussion is not likely to find something new. Its purpose lies elsewhere. Sabotage launches an ‘ironic problem-solution loop’ where people place themselves in a position to consciously opt for a path of dangerous behaviour instead of being forced into it. Of course, participants choose this path by words only, not by deeds. The exercise is conducted with a touch of humour, tongue in cheek, which helps gain perspective, release the tension, and engage in dialogue on what comes next: exploring reasons for acting against reason, motivations otherwise ‘better left unsaid’.

Benefits (Step 4) The next three steps invite workers to reflect on the benefits (Step 4), the values (Step 5) and the attitudes (Step 6) associated with unsafe behaviour, individual or organizational. The group conversation around these issues, summarized in the three columns below the top row, helps participants wrestle with a double-bind situation. Either they assume responsibility for the motives behind their behaviour and continue to put their health and lives at risk. Or they give up some risk-taking behaviour and revisit its underlying assumptions. In either case, the problem is no longer experienced as a lack or a loss of control. The main issue shifts instead to a reflexion about ends and alternative means to achieve them. A simple query launches the discussion: what does the team (or the organization) gain when engaging in the unsafe acts listed under Step 3? The immediate answer offered by Alberto’s team concerned the never-ending race against time. Saving time is by far the greatest benefit to be gotten from poor safety performance. Installing barriers, checking and maintaining the equipment, bagging and transporting waste material instead of

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Paradox burning it, waiting for the lift to back up instead of walking behind it, all of these safety measures take time away from getting the job done. Importantly, the language used here involves a subtle movement from ‘having no time’ to ‘ways of saving time’, which is not the same. One is about what time pressure does to us, whereas the other is about how we manage time. Two other minor benefits emerged: without safety straps and PPE, workers move more freely. Also, team members believe that younger workers ignore PPE instructions for reasons of personal appearance and style.

Values (Step 5) Step 5 takes the reflexive process to another level, by exploring the unspoken values that inform risk behaviour. The issue of saving time is particularly interesting in this regard. While defined as an immediate gain, time saved at the expense of safety begs the question: why is it so important to deliver the work on time? The first response offered by Alberto’s team is predictable. Time equals money. Deadlines not met add to the employer’s costs. If prevention procedures were dropped, construction work could be done in no time and cost less. However, when asked if there were other important reasons for finishing the job on time, the group quickly turned to deeply-felt values of the profession. To begin with, seeing tangible results of work done at the end of each day is its own reward. At times this means cutting down on safety measures that cause delays. Also there are situations when doing a good job requires taking risks, such as going out of the way to add another screw in a difficult place. Due consideration for the enterprise owner is another good reason for taking chances with safety. The team values their ability to meet the employer’s expectations, by estimating the number of days or weeks needed to complete each task and doing it on time. Pride plays a role too, especially when competing with other teams to get the work done. This is less true of small projects where good quality work matters more than rushing to meet deadlines. It is also less true of younger workers who go faster and take risks for other reasons. They rush not because they take pride in their work and the speed at which they do a job. Rather they don’t enjoy the work and want to accomplish each task as quickly as possible. ‘In the construction industry, you have to like your job and value good work’. Youth appear to value other things, not work. Step 4 highlighted the familiar tension of safety vs. time and money. Step 5 revealed a different tension: the difficulty in reconciling safety goals with the workers’ sense of responsibility towards the employer (meeting deadlines), the pride that workers take in quality work (going ‘out of the way’ to do it right), and their ability to perform and compete with others (especially on larger projects).

Attitudes (Step 6) Exploring the implicit benefits and unspoken values associated with unsafe acts is key to addressing unacceptable risks to human health. But this raises a burning question: how to define risks that are acceptable, if any? Step 6 triggers group dialogue around risk tolerance through a simple line of questioning: ‘Would hazards still exist and accidents still happen

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Exploring problems even if all measures were taken to prevent them? If so, why, and how do you cope with these inevitable hazards?’ Alberto’s team acknowledges that hazards will always exist, whatever people do to prevent them. Hazards are inherent to construction work. Handling cement blocks is bound to ‘break your back’ over time. There are days when incidents and accidents are fated to happen. Machines simply break. There are hazards you can’t anticipate or things you can’t see – an electrical wire in a wall that you’re nailing, or the wind that starts blowing when you’re on the roof. Whatever you do, working at height is hazardous. As for coping with these hazards, it is important to keep them out of your mind, to the extent possible. When there is danger, you adjust the work plan, take necessary precautions, get on with the job and remain vigilant. But there is a point where you have to stop worrying. Thinking about safety all the time creates anxiety, which makes things worse.

Closing the loop (Step 7) Health and safety at work is a juggling act. While workers want to prevent hazards, as everyone does, they feel responsible for meeting deadlines and take pride in the work they do and their ability to compete and perform. They also believe that risks are inevitable. Constant vigilance is needed. Obsessing about them, however, serves no purpose and may become a hazard of its own. The overall reasoning is complex but understandable. Accident causation and prevention theory would do well to reflect on juggling acts such as this, instead of fixating on technical solutions to observable faults and losses of control. The conversation continues. Step 7 (in the left-hand side column, below Step 1) attempts to integrate all previous concerns and observations into new thinking and safety plans. The final discussion wraps up insights into how the team juggles the requirements of safety, competitive pride, quality work and professional responsibility in situations where some risk is inevitable. With this goal in mind, researchers invite participants to revisit the question initially posed in Step 2, using positive psychology now in a projective mode: what can be done to further prevent worksite accidents? On a deeper level, the (unstated) choice facing the team is between: 1 2 3

assuming full responsibility for the risks they take; questioning the benefits, values and attitudes of unsafe behaviour, as they see them; finding ways of translating things that matter into safer work – the path chosen below.

The first response of the team was to refuse all three options and fall back on doing ‘more of the same’, including attributing responsibility to others, especially youth. In other words, they preferred the path of least resistance to inaction. Team members opened the discussion with simple things they can do to prevent accidents, such as placing safety posters on the worksite (requiring workers to wear safety helmets, for instance); showing films of accident injuries and the tragic consequences of poor safety performance; or confiscating cell phones from those who don’t wear helmets so they can take incoming calls. Not surprisingly, all measures proposed were essentially addressed to younger, less experienced workers. The discussion thus brought everyone back to a concern expressed in Session 1

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Paradox and at the beginning of Session 2, i.e. unsafe acts by younger, less trustworthy workers. The issue was all the more relevant as two new recruits had recently joined the team. The team found fault again with young co-workers who show less interest in their work and in meeting the employer’s expectations or protecting his reputation. Participants explained this lack of professionalism by the fact that younger workers do not project themselves into the future or think about long-term goals such as learning a trade, helping the enterprise prosper, securing a steady job and raising a family. Moreover, their schooling prepares them poorly for construction work (except for a few things they learn and can teach others, such as metal framework techniques). On the whole, younger workers feel less attached to the enterprise. They lack instead respect for older, more experienced workers. This can be seen by the familiar tone and the slang they use when speaking to older co-workers. Also some drink at work or smoke pot the night before. They refuse to carry out the tasks they are told to do. Instead of following orders, they get angry or violent. As the discussion evolved, comments veered to better ways of handling tensions. Despite all the comments made, the team felt that younger workers should not be put down and ‘treated like slaves’. They are ‘la relève’, our future, those who will succeed us. They deserve respect. This is a key value to the team and also the enterprise, one that has the potential to resolve many problems. If there is respect, the team remarked, there is room for healthy competition between workers and teams. There is less stress and people work calmly, as opposed to obsessing about speed (or safety for that matter). Co-workers get along, laugh together and help each other (when lifting heavy loads, for instance). As a result, there are fewer accidents. Much of this conversation reflected a subtle rethinking of how risk-related benefits, values and attitudes could be used to actually reinforce safety prevention. The shift underscored an overarching value announced from the beginning of Session 2: genuine respect, trust and solidarity between co-workers. Differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ gave way to a call for mutual respect and ‘concern for them’.

Concluding comments Comments about the importance of respect echoes the discussion of trust, mutual help and team spirit in Session 1, ingredients that are lacking in some mixed teams and multi-team projects. They are essential to preventing stress, tensions, conflict and the incidents or accidents that may result. These concluding insights lay the ground for further safety-related discussions with younger workers, to be carried out in a spirit of mutual trust and with the interest of workers, the employer and his clients in mind. When reflecting back on Session 2, participants felt that the discussion gave them the opportunity to slow down, reflect and consider alternative accident prevention strategies and gain more confidence in their ability to think and act. They also suggested that visiting other enterprises and multi-team worksites might give them a broader view on how to approach health and safety at work (knowing at the same time that larger enterprises can count on more staff to supervise safety at work). Again, the team felt that sessions like this one could foster dialogue between the employer and staff and between co-workers. Real conversations are less irritating and more effective in preventing accidents compared to formal memoranda addressed to staff. Participants also thought their enterprise was

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Exploring problems a good place to test new forms of dialogue. They were looking forward to sharing their Paradox diagram and thinking with colleagues who had shown interest and ‘constantly ask questions [about this research project]’. The decision to focus on the immediate problem of integrating youth into the team made sense, given recent hiring and the ongoing need to bring in new workers. From Session 1 to Session 2, pressing matters evolved, as they usually do, leading to a shift in focus and the main parties involved. This brings us to two final points we need to make concerning the use of Paradox (and all other PAR tools for that matter). The first is that the method can deliver meaningful results provided it fits into and contributes to an ongoing and enduring conversation. However effective a PAR tool may be, the overall action inquiry that makes use of it is never about trying to get everything done in one or two sessions, once and for all. Paradox is part of a continuous dialogue, not a technical fix or panacea for quick problem solving. Real solutions to problems are almost always provisional elements in the middle of an evolving world. Contributions to knowledge, which PAR can and must make, are also always provisional and consequential only if proven useful over time. The second point concerns the parties involved. For reasons already explained, we are critical of the mainstream SEM approach and its overall emphasis on the managerial and technological aspects of accident causation and prevention. Paradox is thus designed to create more space for workers to talk about and reflect on reasons for taking and preventing risks, including the psychological and social aspects of everyday work life. But this is not to say that workers bear all the responsibility of hazards at work and control all the important levers of accident prevention. Far from it. Paradox is not meant to substitute one locus of control for another. Rather, it opens the door to dialogue across boundaries and the possibility of connecting the different reasons that all parties and the system have for taking chances with peoples’ health and lives. This implies regular conversations between government agencies, industry, employers and workers, young and old, that lift the ban on risk thinking and risk talking. It also implies a broader engagement of science, one that goes beyond applying principles of scientific and managerial control to observable phenomena, to include factors that are inherently complex and hazardous – i.e. marked by risk and the unknown. Until all of this is done, construction workers in France and elsewhere will continue to face the prospect of preventable tragedy at work.

REFERENCES Bird, F. E. and Germain, G. L. (1985) Practical Loss Control Leadership, Institute Publishing, Division of International Loss Control Institute, Loganville, Georgia, GA. Chi, C.-F., Lin, S. Z. and Dewi, R. S. (2014) ‘Graphical fault tree analysis for fatal falls in the construction industry’, Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 72, pp. 359–369. Cornelison, J. D. (1989) ‘MORT Based Root Cause Analysis’, Systems Safety Development Center, EG&G Idaho, Working paper no. 27, Idaho Falls, ID. DOE, US Department of Energy (1999) DOE Workbook, Conducting Accident Investigations, DOE, Washington, DC. Duclos, D. (2003), ‘Attention, Risquologues! Analyse critique du champ socio-politique des risques techniques et sociaux’, retrieved from www.geo-anthropology.com/recherche-bibliographiqueet-thematique-sur-le-risque_a21.html, accessed 12 March 2012.

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Paradox Faverge, J. M. (1967) Psychosociologie des accidents du travail, PUF, Paris. Filho, J. M. J., Fonseca, E. D., Lima, F. P. A. and Duarte, F. J. C. M. (2012) ‘Organizational factors related to occupational accidents in construction’, Work, vol. 41, pp. 4130–4136. Frederick, J. and Lessin, N. (2000) ‘Blame the Worker: The rise of Behavioral-Based Safety Programs’, vol. 21, no. 11, retrieved from multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/, accessed 12 June 2012. Gibb, A. G. F, Behm, M. and Cooke, T. (2014) ‘Construction accident causality: Learning from different countries and differing consequences’, Construction Management and Economics, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 446–459. Gibson, J. J. (1964) ‘The Contribution of Experimental Psychology to the Formulation of the Problem of Safety – A Brief for Basic Research’, in W. Haddon, E. A. Suchman and D. Klein (eds) Accident Research: Methods and Approaches, Harper & Row, New York. Goguelin, P. and Cuny, X. (1988) La prise de risque dans le travail, Octares/Entreprises, Marseille. Gordon, J. E. (1949) ‘The Epidemiology of Accidents’, American Journal of Public Health, vol. 39, pp. 504–515. Haddon, W. (1972) ‘A Logical Framework for Categorizing Highway Safety Phenomena and Activity’, Journal of Trauma, vol. 12, pp. 193–207. Haddon, W. (1980) ‘Advances in the Epidemiology of Injuries as a Basis for Public Policy’, Public Health Reports, vol. 95, no. 5, pp. 411–421. Hale, A. R. and Glendon, A. I. (1987) Individual Behaviour in the Control of Danger, Elsevier, Amsterdam. Hale, A. R. and Hovden, J. (1998) ‘Management and Culture: The Third Age of Safety. A Review of Approaches to Organizational Aspects of Safety, Health and Environment’, in A. M. Feyer and A. Williamson (eds) Occupational Injury. Risk, Prevention and Intervention, Taylor & Francis, London. Hale, A., Walker, D., Walters, N. and Bolt, H. (2012) ‘Developing the understanding of underlying causes of construction fatal accidents’, Safety Science, vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 2020–2027. Hale, A. R. and Borys, D. (2013) ‘Working to rule, or working safely? Part 1: A state of the art review’, Safety Science, vol. 55, pp. 207–221. Heinrich, H. W. (1959) Industrial Accident Prevention – A Scientific Approach, 4th edn., McGraw-Hill, New York. Hovden, J., Albrechtsen, E. and Herrera, I. A. (2008) ‘A Need for New Theories, Models and Approaches to Occupational Accident’, Working on Safety Conference, Hellas, Crete. Kjellén, U. (2000) Prevention of Accidents Through Experience Feedback, Taylor & Francis, London and New York. Lenne, M. G., Salmon, P. A., Liu, C. C. and Trotter, M. (2012) ‘A systems approach to accident causation in mining: An application of the HFACS method’, Accident Analysis and Prevention, vol. 48, pp. 111–117. Lewin, K. (1951) Field Theory in Social Science; Selected Theoretical Papers, ed. D. Cartwright, Harper & Row, New York. Manuele, F. A. (2002) Heinrich Revisited: Truisms or Myths, National Safety Council, Itasca, IL. Obertelli, P. (1995) ‘Le groupe de travail face aux risques en milieux industriels’, in Groupe d’Études Interuniversitaires en Sciences du Travail (GEIST), L’évaluation des risques Professionnels – Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg. O'Neill, R. (2002) ‘It’s the Hazards, Stupid’, Hazards Magazine, no. 79, pp. 1–5, retrieved from www. hazards.org/bs, accessed 12 March 2012. Petersen, D. (2001) Safety Management, 3rd edn., American Society of Safety Engineers, Des Plaines, IL. Pillay, M. (2015) ‘Accident causation, prevention and safety management: a review of the sate-of-theart’, Procedia Manufacturing, no. 3, pp. 1838–1845. Rasmussen, J., Duncan, K. and Leplat, J. (eds) (1987) New Technology and Human Error, Wiley, Chichester. Reason, J. (1990) Human Error, Cambridge University Press, New York. Reason, J. (1991) ‘Too Little and Too Late: A Commentary on Accident and Incident Reporting Systems’, in T. W. Van der Schaaf, D. A. Lucas and A. R. Hale (eds) Near-Miss Reporting as a Safety Tool, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Reason, J. (1997) Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents, Ashgate, Hampshire. Rohrbaugh, M. J. and Shoham, V. (2001) ‘Brief Therapy Based on Interrupting Ironic Processes: The Palo Alto Model’, Clinical Psychology, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 66–81. Runyan, C. W. (2003) ‘Back to the Future – Revisiting Haddon’s Conceptualization of Injury Epidemiology and Prevention’, Epidemiological Reviews, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 60–64.

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Exploring problems Sousa, V., Almeida, N. M. and Dias, L. A. (2013) ‘Risk-based management of occupational safety and health in the construction industry - Part 1: Background knowledge’, Safety Science, vol. 66, pp. 75–86. Surry, J. (1969) Industrial Accident Research: A Human Engineering Appraisal, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. Underwood, P. and Waterson, P. (2013) ‘Systemic accident analysis: Examining the gap between research and practice’, Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 55, pp. 154–164. Vincoli, J. W. (2006) Basic Guide to System Safety, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. H. and Fisch, R. (1974) Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, Norton, New York. Wilde, G. J. S. (1982) ‘The Theory of Risk Homeostasis: Implications for Safety and Health’, Risk Analysis, vol. 2, pp. 209–225. Zhou, Z., Irizarry, J. and Li, Q. (2013) ‘Applying advanced technology to improve safety management in construction: a literature review’, Construction Management and Economics, vol. 31, pp. 606–622.

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MODULE 4

Knowing the actors

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CHAPTER 11

Stakeholder basics

Modules 3, 4 and 5 reflect basic questions that apply to any action inquiry process, i.e. what are the problems, who are the actors and what options or visions of the future do we have? Looking back, one might ask if there is any reason to justify this particular sequencing of questions. What is the ideal point of entry into a collaborative inquiry? The question may be worth putting to partners in a PAR initiative. Participants can form groups around their preferred entry points and then try to recruit others by convincing them of the validity of their reasoning. The discussion can then proceed to a quick survey of methods that represent different stances on this issue. For instance, initiatives that have a strong academic component are typically driven by a ‘research problem’ that needs to be solved. Likewise, many organizational and community development projects consider needs assessment and related problems as the proper starting point for efforts to promote meaningful change. The Japanese Project Cycle Management method and the ZOPP or GOPP (Goal Orien­ ted Project Planning) approach promoted by the German International Cooperation (GIZ) begin with a stakeholder analysis and then proceed to a problem analysis using the Problem Tree. Realistic options for action and expected outcomes are considered last. By contrast, Appreciative Inquiry and Future Search are critical of the focus on existing problems and unmet needs because of its deficit-minded approach to group thinking and action. They prefer to launch new initiatives with a positive vision of the future based on existing assets, strengths, achievements and dreams. While they play an important role in framing the inquiry process, assumptions about the ideal point of entry for action inquiry are rarely questioned. Taking a fixed position on this matter, without reference to time and place, may be reassuring, yet it limits people’s methodological options without good cause. It also creates what is essentially a chicken and egg riddle. How can we focus on actors if we don’t know what brings them together in the first place – i.e. the problems or goals they share? Likewise, how can we say that something is a problem without first discussing who decides what is a problem and what goals are being thwarted? Lastly, how can we develop goals for the future if we have no sense of whose vision and interests they reflect and what are the current failures in achieving them? In the end, problems, actors and options are inseparable. A better question to ask is, ‘What would be useful to investigate and learn more about at this point in time?’ Answers will vary according to the circumstances of a group process or project. Judgement must be exercised

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Knowing the actors as to what needs immediate attention, based on the setting, the inquiry purpose and prior decisions regarding the way forward. This means leaving other issues in the background until people are ready to investigate them, knowing they can go back and forth between a focus on problems, actors and options as circumstances evolve. Other process design considerations have been examined in detail in Chapter 6. In this module, we arbitrarily turn our attention to concepts and tools to help actors reflect on actors and the relationships between them. The chapter presents Stakeholder Rainbow, a tool that addresses two critical questions: the degree to which each actor can influence a situation or course of action, and the degree to which each actor may be affected by it. As we shall see, the tool is intuitive and easy to use. Social Analysis CLIP, which appears later in this module, is considerably more advanced and has social scientific thinking built into it. It proposes key concepts and related definitions that help investigate different aspects of stakeholder configurations and social structure. For reasons already noted, we are not averse to using methods such as this that draw from discipline-based thinking and require some guidance to participants. Readers will recall that Paradox and Gaps and Conflicts have theoretical foundations in the social sciences. The point we make throughout the book is not that PAR practitioners should always refrain from proposing concepts to guide collaborative inquiry and instead let all useful questions and ideas emerge organically, as it were. Rather, the art of action inquiry consists in coming up with configurations of tools that fit the purpose, knowing that some tools need some explicit pointers, while others are ready to use due to the familiarity of their underlying concepts. Whichever method works best, the success of stakeholder analysis is optimized by a good understanding of the very idea of a ‘stakeholder’ and ways to overcome its limitations as well. This chapter and others to follow address the pros and cons of stakeholder thinking compared with competing approaches and related debates pitting Marxian theories of class conflict against conservative and neo-liberal views of social stratification. Much will be said about the practical and theoretical advantages of stakeholder analysis, but with some important cautions associated with issues of public interest, power differentials in social life and naïve hopes of transparent stakeholder engagement. We explain these caveats later in the next chapter.

THE STAKEHOLDER SHIFT This is where the full-time journey into PAR theory and methods started for us: developing a critical, action-oriented methodology to conduct participatory stakeholder analysis. Initially the aim was to offer an alternative to approaches that ignore the political dimension of community-based natural resource management (Chevalier, 2002; Chevalier and Buckles, 1999). Social analysis based on concepts of stakeholders – ‘communities of interest’ rather than beneficiary groups, whole villages, neighbourhoods, cities or citizens – helps identify the people, groups and institutions that need to be involved in management of common natural resources. Using a participatory approach, stakeholders can examine the resources, influence, authority or power they can apply to a situation and how existing or proposed actions may affect their interests. The action inquiry process thus reflects particular contexts and is grounded in what specific social actors can do to achieve their goals. 244

Stakeholder basics Though not well developed conceptually and methodologically compared to stratification theory and class analysis, stakeholder analysis (SA) is now common parlance in fields ranging from public policy and service design to political science, resource management, law, international development and education (Leisyte and Westerheijden, 2014; Bjørkquist, 2011; Moritz, 2005). Much to its credit the term travels well across disciplinary and theoretical boundaries. It can stretch across the political spectrum and fit in with most of what it encounters. The origins of SA, however, belong to the history of business and managerial science. This is reflected in the term ‘stakeholder’ itself, first recorded in the early eighteenth century to mean a third party who temporarily holds money, property, a deposit or a bet while its owner or winner is being determined. The verb ‘stake’, ‘to mark (land) with stakes’, is even older, dating back to the early fourteenth century. Economic theory based on stakeholder relations emerged with industrialism and was embedded in ideals of mutuality and the nineteenth-century cooperative movement (Clarke and Clegg, 1998, p. 295). The concept reappeared in business and management discussions of the 1930s (Brugha and Varvasovsky, 2000, pp. 239–240). It was then sharpened and continues to be used today by firms and organizations to refer to anyone significantly affected by or with influence over someone else’s decision making. In business, stakeholder analysis (SA) seeks to enhance the enterprise’s relationship with society and secure better prospects of financial success (Freeman et al., 2010; Mitroff, 1983; Ackoff, 1974). This reflects the view that business decisions can profit from perspectives that go beyond the narrow interests of investors and shareholders. The concept advocates a pragmatic and socially-responsible approach to organizational management and business ethics (Weiss, 2014; Duckworth and Moore, 2010). The opposite view holds that corporate activity should not concern itself with social dilemmas and issues but rather remain focussed on corporate gains and losses in a market economy (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, p. xiii; Mansell, 2013; Donaldson and Preston, 1995). But there is more to SA than a corporate twist to social responsibility. While stakeholder theory and analyses may still be centred on rethinking the firm (BonnafousBoucher and Rendtorff, 2017, pp. 51, 76), they have been partly transformed by developments in political sociology, decision theory, international development and Participatory Learning and Action methods of project management. Dispute resolution practices, the social actor perspective in the social sciences and human-centred design are also kindred spirits of SA. What makes stakeholder thinking so fashionable? Essentially, the idea is appealing for its ability to overcome the shortcomings of technological, community-based and beneficiaryoriented approaches to problem solving. First of all, stakeholder thinking implies that obstacles to peace, equity, sustainability or growth cannot be dealt with through technological means alone. When tackling issues of exploitation and environmental degradation, for instance, power relations and conflicting interests at various levels must be addressed. Social relations involving all ‘interested parties’, local and global, must be examined and alternative practices explored if blueprints for change are to be grounded in reality and add up to more than just another temporary technical fix. Secondly, SA challenges the communitarian reflex so often found in projects addressing the wrong-doings of social and 245

Knowing the actors natural history. It questions the all-embracing spirit of community engagement whereby everyone is expected to contribute to everything all the time, irrespective of the differences that divide people in real life. In our view, the jamboree definition of participation obscures fundamental inequalities and diverging interests plaguing society at all levels, including closely-knit community life. Last but not least, SA represents a challenge to conventional social and international aid and economic analysis that focusses all the attention on meeting beneficiary needs, an approach that fails to ‘adequately consider the distribution of costs and benefits among different stakeholders: the winners and losers’ (ILEIA, 1999, p. 4). In its own pragmatic way, SA also questions much of the standard wisdom of stratification theory and political economy based on handy class definitions applied to all situations. Class-centred perspectives on capitalist forces and relations of production at the macrolevel rely on ready-made definitions of class membership and power dynamics to fashion the broad outline of social history. By contrast, SA proposes a flexible, context-specific paradigm that draws attention to specific problems, actors and opportunities for change. This is particularly helpful in complex situations where problems and solutions crosscut administrative, social, economic and political systems operating at micro and macro levels. A detailed and realistic understanding of these multistakeholder relationships is critical to developing equitable and sustainable practices in situations of actual or latent conflict and competing interests. Stakeholder considerations help address problems of underrepresentation, disputes generated by unclear rights, or problems of incompatible goals and agendas. They are most relevant in situations where trade-offs and opportunity costs must be addressed at the policy level – e.g. choosing between short-term and long-term horizons, or balancing conflicting objectives such as conservation, development, equity and peace (Chevalier and Buckles, 1999; Grimble et al., 1995, pp. 11–16). Similarly, SA in business is almost always a must where interventions generate negative externalities, i.e. production costs not borne entirely by the producer and not factored into management decisions. In short, SA brings something new to participatory methods, social and international aid and political economy as well. It highlights local actor perspectives on conflicting interests and alternative strategies aimed at mobilizing and meeting the interests of all parties concerned. SA thus plays a pivotal role in our own work and perspective on engaged inquiry. This is not to say that the stakeholder concept is flawless. Far from it. It should be used with caution and an awareness of its inherent limitations. We return to the shortcomings of SA later in this chapter and in the next two chapters. For the moment, we invite readers to explore simple methods for stakeholder identification, described in our companion Handbook, and the following technique for participatory stakeholder assessment, called Stakeholder Rainbow.

STAKEHOLDER RAINBOW: ADULT EDUCATION IN THE CANADIAN NORTH There are many definitions of a stakeholder (Miles, 2012). The more commonly used is the one we find the most sensible and inclusive: ‘Stakeholders are those who have an interest in a particular decision, either as individuals or representatives of a group. This includes

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Stakeholder basics people who influence a decision, or can influence it, as well as those affected by it’ (Hemmati, 2002, p. 2). Interests, in this context, refers to potential gains and losses, not personal likes and dislikes. Stakeholder Rainbow uses this definition to help analyze stakeholder profiles in a situation or proposed action. The assessment is most useful when determining who needs to be involved in deliberations, decision making or actions to achieve project goals. The exercise illustrated next revolves around a rainbow figure showing three things: (1) the extent to which individuals, roles or groups may be affected by a situation or proposed action (the three bands in the rainbow); (2) whether they are positively or negatively affected (using one or more + and – signs); and (3) the extent to which they can influence the situation or proposed action (sections on the left, in the middle and on the right). Once participants complete the figure, they can explore and debate ways to adjust: • • •

the gains or losses experienced or anticipated by each stakeholder; the level of influence that some stakeholders have on the situation or proposed action; project goals to better engage stakeholders that see little in it for them.

Consider this example from the Canadian north where First Nations continue to live with the legacy of Residential Schools. A Federal Government assimilation policy, in place from the nineteenth century up until the closure of the last school in the 1990s, forcibly removed children from their families and placed them in institutions that were cultural indoctrination centres (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). A system of cultural genocide defined the experience of education for generations of children and young adults. Today, school drop-out rates in First Nation communities are high. In 2016, only four out of ten young adults living on reserves across Canada finished high school, compared to nine out of ten non-indigenous young adults (Anderson and Richards, 2016). For young mothers, not completing school is a serious blow, potentially leaving them dependent and impoverished for the rest of their lives. To make things worse, children of these young mothers do not seem to succeed in school either, and ‘the cycle continues’ as a First Nation Chief observed (Burke, personal communication with D. Buckles, March 31, 2018). Fort Severn, a remote First Nation community in Canada’s north, has launched a project to break this cycle by helping young mothers complete high school and prepare for job opportunities. The project also tries to enrich children’s experience with early education and encourages young mothers to play a leading role in the process. D. Buckles happened to be in the community when the good news of funding approval prompted a learning circle to start thinking about next steps of the project. Eight people, four women and four men, gathered in the Band Council Office. The group included two high school teachers, a social worker, a health worker and two members of the Band Council, all indigenous people from the community intimately aware of young mothers struggling to complete high school and care for their babies. As one person put it, ‘young mothers can lose themselves if they aren’t able to do both’. Planning who needs to be involved in shaping and implementing the project seemed to be a logical place to start. The exercise began with a visioning exercise outlining the journey to graduation for young mothers, and the milestones they might encounter along the way. From coloured

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Knowing the actors beeswax, the group created figurines: a circle to represent the Cree way of being human, a house where all learning starts and families are nurtured, and a turtle to represent the perseverance and patience needed to learn. From these objects the group created a collective story of success, starting from the home, showing patience with themselves, their children and the children of others, becoming confident, completing school and contributing to their community. The group then used a rainbow figure as a space to gather and discuss the different groups involved, their influence over the shape of the project and the extent to which they might be affected by it (Figure 11.1). As no one in the community would likely be opposed to the overall project goal, negative ratings were not needed. The group opted to simply score each actor as little, moderately or highly affected by plans to help young mothers complete high school, with varying levels of influence over the course of further development and implementation. For an hour, discussion moved between locating the actors on the figure and discussing potential steps to better engage stakeholders in shaping the project and empower the less influential. The discussions covered nine different stakeholders. The group was of the view that young mothers could gain a lot from the project but currently had little influence over project plans and the planning process. Finding ways to engage them in defining and addressing specific needs would be critical to shaping a project that could make a positive difference. For example, while the project planned to identify what courses each student needed to graduate, it had not yet considered whether or not returning students had the study skills needed to do course work. After many years out of school, reading, writing, oral communication, problem solving and time management were rusty for many. Taking steps to build these skills would be critical. Similarly, a highly individualized approach would be needed to engage young mothers in their children’s education. While the project focus is on young mothers, the group questioned the exclusion of young fathers. Whether they were still with the mothers or not, the fathers might be part of the children’s lives and could help by encouraging the mothers and the children to continue their education. To remedy this gap, the group decided that measures should be taken to create opportunities for fathers to contribute to their children’s educational experience and access the educational supports of the project if they needed and wanted them. This would mean adjusting eligibility criteria for things like baby-sitting resources and counselling. Teachers in the community are well aware of the struggles of young mothers and the high drop-out rate. Their work as teachers would be highly affected by a project that helped young mothers graduate, and bringing more satisfaction to teaching. However, the group also felt that teachers must be properly resourced through the project so their support to young mothers registered for high school does not add too much to their normal responsibilities. Teacher motivation, they said, must come from a caring and strong heart but also not lead to work overload. Social workers would also benefit highly from project implementation that helped prepare young mothers for employment and build the capacity of young mothers to support their children’s educational experience. The influence of both teachers and social workers comes from their ability to spend time one-on-one with young mothers, learn what they need and tailor project assistance accordingly. 248

I

affected

Moderately affected

Highly affected

FIGURE 11.1  Stakeholders in adult education, Fort Severn, Canada

Young fathers

Friends

s parent Grand s t n Pare

Chief & Council

Elders

So wo cial rke rs

H

LOW

HIG

n of Childre others m young

Young s er moth

NCE

NFL UE

MODERATE INFLUENCE

EN Teachers

LU INF CE

Knowing the actors The location and role of the elected Chief and Council generated much discussion. The group ultimately agreed that they have high influence over the shape of any plans that would make a difference for young mothers. Their influence comes from the policies and structures they control. They are also in a position to create job opportunities for young mothers who complete high school. They would not, however, gain from the project as much as others because the number of people involved was small and Council priorities were focussed on housing and economic development. Elders are central figures in the Cree way of life. The group said that the high influence of the Elders on the shape of the project comes from their role as potential mentors for young mothers. However, many young people have lost fluency in Cree, the daily tongue of most Elders. Thus the project would have to find ways to bridge language barriers if the potential contribution of the Elders was to be fully realized. One suggestion was that some of the work carried out with young mothers take place on the land, which is where the Cree language and culture take on their full meaning. The group also recognized that many Elders are grandmothers and parents themselves. The positions they might take towards young mothers would depend on experiences they had with their own parents and children, some of which may have been difficult. They noted that Elders acting as mentors would need to be careful not to repeat mistakes they themselves had made. The group noted the same cautions with respect to the grandparents and parents of young mothers, many of whom feel obliged to care for grandchildren and great

PHOTO 11.1  Impromptu assessment of stakeholders in a women’s education project,

Fort Severn, Canada (Source: D. Buckles)

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Stakeholder basics grandchildren when the young mothers cannot. Also, their own Residential School experience may lead some to take a dim view of any new educational initiative in the community. Education might also lead to youth leaving the community in search of better employment, a worry for the viability of the community. Someone in the group suggested that project plans be made to help families that had a poor experience of education understand why young mothers might want to work so hard for it now. The group located friends in the little affected/moderately influential area of the rainbow figure. While friends would not experience the project directly, the positions they take – encouraging or discouraging the efforts of young mothers – could have an influence on the achievements of the young mothers and success of the project. The group suggested that friends be invited to join in some project activities so they could become part of the process of shaping the project in ways that would make a positive difference for young mothers. Once the exercise was completed, the group discussed once more the people that would carry the project, and the sensibilities they needed to do good work. Some said they would need to be like ‘aunties’ who have raised children in a loving way, completed their own education and entered the workforce themselves. This way they would understand the struggles young mothers face. Their first task, however, would be to connect with the young mothers in the process of shaping the project and planning ways to deliver it in a good way.

Important tips The idea of a social actor or stakeholder is relatively straightforward. Still, its application is not always simple. For one thing, the concept raises several tricky questions about group boundaries. On this subject, several tips are in order. • •

• •

• •

Remember that stakeholders are not necessarily individuals. Consider when to combine certain actors into a broader stakeholder category and when to separate broad categories into smaller groups. Broad categories of stakeholders such as a geographic community or large organization may mask significant differences within the group. Very specific categories (such as environmental group A and B) may fragment stakeholders unnecessarily and overlook the common ground in a specific context. Decide whether to recognize the community of all stakeholders as a group with its own profile. Consider assigning some actors to more than one stakeholder group (e.g. leaders and public officials may have their own stakeholder profile at the same time as they speak and act for broader groups). When identifying stakeholders, remember that some people may accept ancestors, future generations, spirits and non-human species as legitimate parties to the situation. Make sure to flag in the list of stakeholders those who are doing the analysis, including convening organizations and funders. This helps to avoid the artifice of ‘disinterested’ actors when in reality they have agendas of their own. 251

Knowing the actors The following options can also be explored when designing stakeholder analysis in a participatory mode. •

•

•

•

•

Adapt the rainbow diagram by using other characteristics that describe the main differences between stakeholders. For instance, use the three bands to identify stakeholders working at the local, the regional and the national levels. Use a single vertical line dividing the bands to separate private sector from public sector stakeholders. While the rainbow figure offers a simple visual support for the analysis, the same result can be accomplished with a Cartesian graph. Use the vertical line to represent different levels of influence (from 0 to 10), and the horizontal line to show the extent to which stakeholders are affected (from −10 to 10) by a problem situation or proposed action. The choice between the visual support options depends on what visuals are used before and after the exercise, and what participants might relate to most easily. (Cree participants in an exercise in northern Quebec related well to the rainbow figure, which they renamed ‘the igloo’.) Storytelling can help identify and gain a better understanding of stakeholders that are easily stereotyped or have no way to represent themselves in a situation. Make a list of stakeholders by describing the major events of the past or planned activities and identifying the key people or groups involved (see Timeline, Chapter 7). Use this list as the first step in a Stakeholder Rainbow diagram. Use improvisational theatre or personas to increase understanding and foster compassion for how stakeholders can influence or be affected by a situation or proposed action (while also being careful not to reinforce stereotypes). Use more advanced methods such as Social Analysis CLIP, Social Domain or Network Domain to dig deeper into stakeholder relations and strategic considerations when advocating for particular stakeholder groups (see Chapters 13, 19 and 20).

When used appropriately, the simple tool we have just presented can be helpful and good enough for planning stakeholder engagement. In the Cree education project just illustrated, the tool helped participants plan ways to empower young mothers and adjust project goals and activities to ensure other stakeholders use their influence wisely. Some situations, however, require participatory tools that are more advanced and more critical of existing power structures. In the next chapter, we take a step back from tools and argue that common SA methods are often purely descriptive and schematic. They seek to promote inclusiveness and dialogue without challenging important power imbalances operating at many levels. While useful, the site-specific character of stakeholder analysis and involvement also errs on the side of hyperlocality disconnected from broader webs of social life (Hemmati, 2002, pp. 4–6). As recurring global crises show, the fate of our planet depends on recognizing the ecology of being. The current turn of globalization calls upon humanity to fashion its own history and become, in the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘the wise power that governs the world’ (Rousseau, 1999).

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Stakeholder basics

REFERENCES Ackoff, R. (1974) Redesigning the future, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Anderson, B. and Richards, J. (2016) ‘Students in Jeopardy: An Agenda for Improving Results in Band-Operated Schools’, C.D. Howe Institute, Commentary no. 44, Toronto, ON. Bjørkquist, C. (2011) Stakeholder Regimes in Higher Education, Waxmann, Münster, Germany. Bonnafous-Boucher, M. and Rendtorff, J. D. (2017) Stakeholder Theory: A Model for Strategic Management, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. Brugha, R. and Varvasovsky, Z. (2000) ‘Stakeholder Analysis: A Review, Review Article’, Health Policy and Planning, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 239–246. Chevalier, J. M. (2002) ‘Natural Resource Project/Conflict Management’, in F. Yoshitaro et al. (eds) Evolving Concept of Peacebuilding: Natural Resource Management and Conflict Prevention, Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development, Tokyo. Chevalier, J. M. and Buckles, D. J. (1999) ‘Conflict Management: A Heterocultural Perspective’, in D. Buckles (ed) Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management, International Development Research Centre and World Bank Institute, Washington, DC, pp. 15–46. Clarke, T. and Clegg, S. (1998) Changing Paradigms: The Transformation of Management Knowledge for the 21st Century, HarperCollins, London. Donaldson, T. and Preston, L. E. (1995) ‘The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 70–71. Duckworth, H. A. and Moore, R. A. (2010) Social Responsibility: Failure Mode Effects and Analysis, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis, London. Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J. S., Wicks, A., Parmar, B. and De Colle, S. (2010) Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art Paperback, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Grimble, R., Chan, M. K., Aglioby, J. and Quan, J. (1995) ‘Trees and Trade-Offs: A Stakeholder Approach to Natural Resource Management’, International Institute for Environment and Development, Gatekeeper Series No. 52. Hemmati, M., Dodds, F., Enayati, F. and McHarry, J. (2002) Multistakeholder Processes for Governance and Sustainability: Beyond Deadlock and Conflict, Earthscan, London. ILEIA (Centre for Information on Low-External-Input and Sustainable Agriculture) (1999) ‘Forging partnerships’, ILEIA Newsletter, vol. 13, no 1. Leisyte, I. and Westerheijden, D. F. (2014) ‘Stakeholders and Quality Assurance in Education’, in H. Eggins (ed) Drivers and Barriers to Achieving Quality in Higher Education, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. 83–98. Mansell, S. (2013) Capitalism, Corporations and the Social Contract: A Critique of Stakeholder Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Miles, S. (2012) ‘Stakeholders: Essentially Contested or Just Confused’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 108, no. 3, pp. 285–298. Mitroff, I. (1983) Stakeholders of the organizational mind, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Moritz, S. (2005) Service Design: Practical Assess to an Evolving Field, Köln International School of Design, Cologne, Germany. Rousseau, J.-J. (1999) [1754] Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, trans. F. Philip, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Patrick Coleman, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 1: Summary. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, James Lorimer and Company, Toronto, ON. Weiss, J. W. (2014) Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

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CHAPTER 12

Critical stakeholder thinking

All forms of stakeholder analysis conducted in a participatory mode are a pragmatic invitation to examine the relationships among groups and individuals and their respective interests in a situation that requires collective action. They help identify key differences among groups, areas of common ground and potential interventions. Stakeholders can thus factor in the social dynamics of whatever goal or course of action they are pursuing. They do so knowing they cannot rely on a solution that is purely technological or that simply targets the right ‘beneficiaries’, the ‘community’ as a whole, or a particular ‘class’ considered to be the prime mover of history (the working classes in some models, large job-creating businesses in others). Tools to analyze stakeholder profiles and relations, however, are not without their limitations. As already pointed out, their local orientation may hide forces and factors operating on a broader scale. For participatory stakeholder analysis to reach its full potential, it must also pay more than lip service to participation and empowerment goals that cut across levels and boundaries. Last but not least, it must be flexible enough to provide analytical depth, if and when it is needed. Below, we explain why a flexible and critical application of stakeholder analysis matters and, in the next chapter, how it can be done.

MAKING SOCIAL ANALYSIS SIMPLE, BUT NOT ANY SIMPLER Participatory methods in the social sciences mobilize knowledgeable actors capable of critical thinking. This is a far cry from informants providing raw data, descriptive stories or mere opinions to be analyzed by others. The methods also teach us the virtues of the rough-andready. Stakeholder analysis (SA) conducted by the actors themselves can be productive without being overly complicated. The exercise, however, should not err on the side of making it too simple. To paraphrase Einstein, the challenge for action researchers committed to knowledge democracy is to make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler. There are situations where a cursory examination of stakeholder attributes and relationships may be misleading, and scaling up social analysis is a must. Over the last 20 years or so, critical action-research practitioners have created many training materials to enhance skills in doing stakeholder analysis (Laplume et al., 2008;

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Critical stakeholder thinking SEAGA, 2003; VeneKlasen and Miller, 2002; Schmeer, 1999; IIRR, 1998; DFID, 1995; Engel and Salomon, 1997; Grimble and Wellard, 1997; De Guzman and Landivar, 1997; MacArthur, 1997a, 1997b). Instructions on how firms can acknowledge the interests of non-shareholders and society as a whole also abound (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, p. 70; Freeman and Velamuri, 2006, pp. 7–9). By and large these conceptual and descriptive guidelines use predefined binarisms (influence/importance, direct/indirect impact, positive/ negative relations, strong/weak connections, etc.) and general distinctions such as between primary (targeted), secondary (intermediary) and external stakeholders (people and groups not formally involved but who may have an impact or be impacted by an activity). On the whole, the frameworks are relatively easy to use, and practical in many ways. Beyond these basics, SA methods stand to gain from including some of the variables that form an integral part of social scientific thinking and common sense as well. Otherwise, the complexity, dynamics and self-constructions of social reality may be glossed over. The insights include • • • • • • • •

stakeholders’ multiple interests and objectives in a given situation (knowing that people and organizations often wear a number of stakeholder hats); their values and views on existing problems and possible solutions; their recognized rights and responsibilities and their resolve to act on them; the actual resources, influence, authority and power at their disposal; the networks they belong to and histories of interaction between them, collaborative or conflictive; the distributional and social impacts of existing or proposed policies and projects (winners and losers, potential trade-offs and conflicts, estimated risk-benefit balance); the appropriate type or degree of participation of different stakeholders at successive stages of a project cycle; feasible coalitions of project sponsorship and ownership aimed at efficient, equitable and sustainable strategies (based on compromises between public goals and divergent stakeholder interests).

In the next chapter, we describe and illustrate a participatory inquiry tool Social Analysis CLIP (for Collaboration/Conflict, Legitimacy, Interests, Power) that incorporates most elements from this list. Skilful means to do social analysis with the parties involved, as opposed to doing it ‘about’ and ‘for them’, can vary from simple to complex. The timing of a participatory inquiry is also adjustable, at least in principle. In practice, however, SA tends to be used at the beginning of a cycle, as in a project Concept Note, an ex ante appraisal of a project or policy proposal, or the initial identification of stakeholders involved in a conflict or problem domain. The technique serves as a strategic entry point for a project or conflict management process. In our view, it could be used in other ways, i.e. as a critical methodology that supports evolution of a process over time (Ramírez, 1999). SA practised as an iterative, action-oriented exercise has more to offer than a one-shot, quick-and-easy exercise followed by immediate planning and action. In complex settings, problem domains, group interests and boundaries and related mechanisms of representation can easily change their

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Knowing the actors course. A SA matrix may become obsolete as stakeholders and their interests and views evolve, new actors appear on the scene, or central issues and stakes shift over time (Brugha and Varvasovsky, 2000, pp. 244–245). Chapter 13 provides an illustration of this iterative use by the Katkari of India. Other possible advances in participatory SA include better guidelines on what should be done in situations of cultural complexity. For instance, what happens when stakeholder concepts and related views go against local conflict-management values and practices? Participatory techniques flexible enough to unravel the cultural semantics of actor identification, power relations as well as rules of communication and engagement are particularly important in this regard (Seppälä and Vainio-Mattila, 2000). That means moving away from supplying participants with fixed definitions of key concepts and instead co-constructing the inquiry tool itself.

WHOSE VOICES COUNT? Many organizations acknowledge the importance of identifying project stakeholders and including them in their planning process. This, however, is the not the same as committing to active representation in the investigation of social issues proper (e.g. Brugha and Varvasovsky, 2000; Grimble and Wellard, 1997, pp. 185–187; Burgoyne, 1994). Office-based stakeholder snapshots aimed at a better management of the parties involved should not be confused with a stakeholder-driven analysis of social obstacles to change and strategies to overcome them. Reluctance to let participants identify stakeholders and map out their attributes and relationships is partly due to the longstanding division between subjective (‘emic’) views of the world obtained through participatory methods and objective (‘etic’) analyses conducted by project experts or scientists (Warner, 2000). Whatever the stand one takes on this issue, one striking tendency is for both camps to generally ignore one another. Scientists have a long tradition of seeking truth through disciplinary means alone. Advocates of participatory methods emphasize the insider look at reality and object to research ruled by experts. Below, we make a case for exploring synergies between these two contrasting standpoints. Eliciting local perspectives on existing social and power relations is key to understanding obstacles to change and promoting dialogue across boundaries. At the same time it is important to recognize that answers to some questions – e.g. how will stakeholder action impact the environment – may not be readily available to all the parties involved. It is not uncommon for people (including scientists) to recognize gaps in their own knowledge base and seek means to secure reliable information and evidence elsewhere. Practitioners of SA cannot therefore assume that knowledge is equally distributed and freely accessible to all parties involved. While fostering ‘role reversals’ (Chambers, 1993) remains important, it does not mean that differentiated knowledge and the use of specialist knowledge should be dismissed altogether. Scientists, and PAR practitioners too, may be stakeholders in their own right and hold knowledge that can make a difference. So long as they are not the first to speak or have the final say in all matters, they too should be heard.

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Critical stakeholder thinking Participatory action inquiry should not be pitted against scientific approaches to social reality. Otherwise, misinformation and superficiality may result. When carried out with the actors involved, social analysis may require critical information obtained through advanced methods developed in the social or natural sciences, from market studies to policy analyses, legal expertise, environmental assessments, medical research and so on. We hasten to add that advanced tools do not have to be the sole domain of professionals in the field. As argued throughout this book, participatory methods can be designed to inform and be informed by scientific perspectives on the problems at hand. Synergies between emic and etic views of the world are possible and necessary. While dialogue across knowledge systems remains a challenge, empowerment is still an even bigger issue. One frequently stated purpose of stakeholder analysis is to highlight the interests of marginalized groups, giving them voice in situations of severe power imbalance (Lukes, 2005). However, in the field of business management and in many governmentled consultations, the inquiry usually stops short of actual involvement in decisions regarding who needs to be involved. Since stakeholder identification is a consequential matter, analysis done without stakeholder participation is likely to reflect the interests and agenda of the people establishing ‘the lay of the land’. The question thus remains: ‘Who decides . . . who is a stakeholder?’ (Ramírez, 1999, p. 104). The use of participatory methodology to ‘level the playing field’ is not guaranteed. Some SA frameworks are strictly expert-based and focus only on ‘circles of influence’ (Bourne, 2006). Even when involving stakeholders, the inquiry may be used primarily as a tool to extract the information one party needs to make informed decisions. As Bounnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff put it, the ideal of democratic participation ‘is not always respected. Examples of this include forced participation in dialogue and the ideological use of management-based values. In such circumstances, stakeholder theory is turned inside out, transformed into a disciplinary technique applied as a tool of legitimization’ (Bounnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, pp. 65–66).

PHOTO 12.1  Eliciting stakeholder perspectives on environmental sustainability, Renfrew,

Canada (Source: J. Wonnacott)

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Knowing the actors Stakeholder thinking commonly acknowledges the fact that some people lack agency in the sense of being unorganized constituencies with limited awareness of their interest in a given system (see Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2000). By itself, however, SA does not foster stronger representation or empowerment of marginalized groups during the inquiry process or the problem-solving activities that follow. All depends on who actually controls the inquiry and to what end (Burgoyne, 1994, p. 192). This means that SA is not immune to the social problems it is attempting to address, including those of power differentials and conflicting interests. As with any inquiry process, it is subject to multiple agendas. The contribution of SA hinges on its ability to address the complexity of social forces at play. Ensuring adequate and safe representation of weaker stakeholders is key to addressing power gaps and inherent structural and institutional problems affecting many conflictridden situations (Hemmati, 2002, p. 106; Grimble and Chan, 1995). However, given its pragmatic orientation and its business management origins, stakeholder thinking does not necessarily challenge deep-seated structures affecting local and global economics and politics. Its use can easily succumb to the naïveté of ‘neocorporatism’ – trading off critical thinking for expedient studies and quick settlements between parties from all sectors, including government, business, labour and civil society. When that happens, forcing people to consensus obscures diverging interests that are bound to reappear and never get resolved. Given the inevitable tension between the requirements of pragmatism and those of critical thinking, one may ask: to what extent should compromises be sought between the interests of dominant and subordinate groups? In other words, under what circumstances will consensus building work against principles of justice and sustainability? On this issue, a quick reading of the SA literature gives the impression that the deeper and messier the problem and the larger its scale, the less useful the methodology. Adaptations of participatory SA to larger-scale problems and situations of intense conflict or extreme power imbalances are consequently few and far between. Most practitioners of PAR are of the view that it should not be contemplated when stakeholders are embroiled in highly reactive conflict situations. Nor is the exercise feasible when key actors have few assets (e.g. time, money, authority, knowledge) to invest in roundtable assessments and review of alternatives (Ramírez, 1999). For that matter, collaborative stakeholder thinking may not appeal at all to dominant groups currently experiencing few costs from a given problem situation or conflict. These stakeholders have little to gain from strategies based on principles of stakeholder empowerment and negotiation. The conditions needed to carry out a participatory inquiry are not always present. When that happens, some actors may even prefer concealment over transparency. They may understate or overstate a viewpoint that concerns their own interests and assets, for instance. This brings us back to the issue of transparency, already discussed in Chapter 6. When it comes to stakeholder analysis, expectations of frankness and disclosure are normal (Hemmati, 2002, p. 11). Obstacles to stakeholders laying all their cards down are nonetheless many. Moreover, the rule of ‘sharing without boundaries’ is not always advisable. In some cases, individual interviews collected and analyzed by third parties may be a better option, to be disclosed with diplomacy and circumspection. In cases of serious conflict of interests and drastic power differentials, shuttle diplomacy or bilateral negotiations may be 258

Critical stakeholder thinking more appropriate than roundtable analyses and negotiations. Practical guidelines regarding diplomatic adaptations of SA and related issues of information disclosure are critical here (cf. Sinclair-Desgagné and Gozlan, 2003). Without them, the inquiry process can lead to stakeholder information playing into the hands of the more powerful groups and even greater disadvantage for vulnerable groups (MacArthur, 1997a, p. 14; Calton and Kurland, 1996, p. 159). Realpolitik calls for a distinction between two forms of SA: an open-door version, inclusive of all the parties involved, and a closed-door version, more tactical and strategic in spirit. The open-door version mobilizes all relevant parties and excludes none. The approach does not imply a stakeholder concept so vague as to coincide with the set of all possible citizens, as Clarke and Clegg correctly point out (1998, p. 347). It does not call for perfect equality and representation between actors. Nor does the open approach require a massive infusion of ‘good will’ by parties that overrides all considerations based on crass stakeholder interests. Only two conditions are required for open-door inquiries: • •

a decision on the part of all interested parties to reduce the costs incurred in maintaining a problem situation; a general willingness to explore strategies involving multistakeholder negotiations to achieve individual ends.

Not all problems will lend themselves to this form of SA. But some will. They may be conducive to joint activities aimed at reconciling the four E’s of progressive problem solving: efficiency, environmental sustainability, equity and empowerment (Grimble and Wellard, 1997, p. 174). Closed-door SA is different. It challenges simple assumptions about the ideals of participation and the methods of stakeholder transparency and sharing. The approach is premised on a common-sense observation: all stakeholders are in the habit of assessing the social conditions under which they operate, and they will do so openly or not. Over and beyond the methodology it aspires to be, SA based on calculations regarding ‘who really counts’ is a permanent and inevitable feature of any social interaction. Realpolitik is often based on group thinking restricted to those stakeholders that one actually interacts with. Problem assessment performed under these conditions excludes the possibility of engagement of those who are too distant or whose interests are simply deemed irreconcilable with one’s own. Exclusion may also reflect situations where the exercise is part of a zero-sum game that cannot be avoided. SA is then performed with the aim of reducing the influence of other groups and countering their plans (MacArthur, 1997a, p. 12). The distinction between open-door and closed-door inquiries highlights strategic and tactical considerations in situations of radically divergent interests and power. Much of the literature concerned with business ethics and corporate responsibility makes a compelling case that stakeholder analysis is useful from a business perspective. The often stated assumption is that sensitivity shown to the needs of non-shareholders pays off in the long run (Ulrich, 2008; Jensen, 2001). But this thinking may also betray an entirely different mindset: i.e. understanding the broader environment is key to remaining competitive, make profits and grow, irrespective of the consequences for non-shareholders and society as a whole. 259

Knowing the actors What works for dominant stakeholders also works for those excluded from circles or power. When seeking means to achieve their own ends, weaker stakeholders have much to gain by privately assessing how they interact with others and how others interact among themselves. Under such conditions, methods to enhance closed-door SA are part and parcel of what SA has to offer and should not be ignored for the sake of a blind commitment to multistakeholder dialogue achieved at all costs. The story from tribal India told in the next chapter illustrates the point. The closed-door inquiry process was the only way to protect the vulnerable populations involved from putting themselves into an even more difficult situation than they were already in. The implication here is twofold. First, the stakeholder concept can play into the hands of different interests and agendas, some more collaborative in spirit and others more competitive or even adversarial. Second, expectations of universal inclusion and transparency are unrealistic or naïve if not built on a modicum of collective agreement and achievements created over time. In short, the function of stakeholder thinking needs to be fleshed out in context by asking the questions ‘who is the process for?’ and ‘what is it for?’. While appealing as a concept, SA is not a general theory of collaborative good will potentially available at all times and for all seasons.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN PRAGMATICS AND UTOPIA The preceding discussion suggests that stakeholder thinking is an integral part of social life and cannot be reduced to mere technique. It also highlights the fact that formal SA can be put to radically different uses, from dominant stakeholder management and manipulation to enabling and empowering the most vulnerable stakeholders in society. This cautions us against using the methodology as a response to all problems of inequity and unsustainability. Some observers of ‘stakeholder society’ and ‘stakeholder capitalism’ are too optimistic in this regard. Calton and Kurland, for example, claim that stakeholder enabling practices can resolve the dilemma between social morality and economic rationality, or the paradox that pits ethics without business against business without ethics. In their view the stakeholder approach to doing business is an alternative to management-centred organizations and related hierarchical decision-making structures. It introduces into profit-oriented activities a Habermasian lifeworld of communities of conversation and webs of cooperative, mutually beneficial, trust-based relationships. It brings pluralistic politics out into the open and promotes flexible, adaptive, network-like organizations aimed at solving problems rather than preserving bureaucratic structures for their own sake. Stakeholder society fosters an affirmative ‘ethic of care’, an ‘institutional capacity for intimacy’ that allows stakeholders to share their concerns through decentred and pluralistic discursive practices. Stakeholders thus become co-authors of their destiny, ends rather than means of development and growth (Calton and Kurland, 1996, pp. 156, 160–161, 164–170). Clarke and Clegg are equally optimistic. Stakeholder management practices developing in Germany and Japan represent a paradigm shift towards the inclusive company model. The trend is towards stable relationships based on stakeholder accountability rather than a series of fluctuating transactions aimed at reaping short-term profits (Clarke and Clegg, 1998, pp. 295–297, 348–349). In this model managers adopt an inclusive concern 260

Critical stakeholder thinking for the long-term interests of all stakeholders, towards a sense of corporate citizenship and an emphasis on intangible assets (values embodied in human and social capital, including trust, knowledge and skills). Stakeholder capitalism is thus a radical departure from neoliberal philosophy and the Anglo-Saxon approach that grants priority to shareholders and value in property and tangible assets (Laplume et al., 2008). The promise of stakeholder capitalism is echoed in a 1996 UN document called Engaging Stakeholders, a statement promoting systematic and active engagement with stakeholders on the full range of environmental, social and economic questions (Clarke and Clegg, 1998, p. 361). More recent contributions to this line of thought propose a full stakeholder theory applicable to all forms of governance designed to increase the welfare of society and protect the interests of people and groups excluded from circles of power. Adepts of this political and moral philosophy consistently promote non-hierarchical principles and a ‘relational’ view of life in society (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, pp. 32, 36–38, 65; Rouleau, 2007, p. 47; Hemmati, 2002; Sachs and Rühli, 2011, pp. 38–39). Can stakeholder theory deliver on this long list of promises? Perhaps, if we agree that all conflicting interests can be negotiated and that the well-being of companies and economies hinges on the active participation of all citizens, actors whose material interests ultimately coincide with those of capital. In this view, radical critiques of existing property regimes, managerial systems, market forces and business mechanisms ruling over the economy must be set aside. Critiques of class or managerial hegemony are rendered obsolete. Instead, the world of management should be granted a leading role in promoting peoplecentred dialogue across stakeholder boundaries. Multistakeholder conversations and consensus building become non-financial means to business ends, those of the company facilitating the operational dialogue. Given these assumptions, one might suspect stakeholder theory of being an exercise in tactical optimism instigated by business with a view to maintaining ‘public confidence in the legitimacy of its operations and business conduct; in other words, to maintain a licence to operate’ (Clarke and Clegg, 1998, p. 353). It may be in the interest of those powerful groups doing much of the counting to argue that those who ‘count the most’ should lead the way. Stakeholder theory would then be recognized for what it is, a thick cloak of ‘affirmative postmodernism’ covering strategies of organizational seduction and manufactured consent. From this perspective, the stakeholder concept is merely a commercial necessity, a public relations or social marketing exercise in a world featuring the ‘arrival of the professional investor, the sophisticated customer, the empowered employee, the information revolution, a knowledgeable public and government regulation’, as Clarke and Clegg suggest (1998, pp. 356, 367)? Speaking on behalf of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a shack-dwellers’ movement in South Africa well known for its campaign against evictions and for public housing, Butler and Ntseng have this to say about the stakeholder concept: ‘Stakeholders are those who are counted and who are qualified to speak – their counting, qualifications and speaking being constituted by and within the terms of the existant order. . . . A liberatory politics is the opposite – it is precisely the disruption of those terms by those who are not counted, not qualified, and therefore, should not be speaking’ (Butler and Ntseng, 2008). If stakeholder theory is to play a transformative role in social history, it cannot simply build on existing 261

Knowing the actors parts of the social order as we know it. Instead it must challenge existing boundaries and develop strategies that incorporate those who are excluded, have no voice and play no part in the ‘order of things’.

REFERENCES Bonnafous-Boucher, M. and Rendtorff, J. D. (2017) Stakeholder Theory: A Model for Strategic Management, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. Borrini-Feyerabend, G., Farvar, M. T., Nguinguiri, J. C. and Ndangang, V. A. (2000) Co-Management of Natural Resources: Organising, Negotiating and Learning-by-Doing, GTZ and IUCN, Kasparek Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany. Bourne, L. (2006) ‘Project Relationships and the Stakeholder Circle’, Project Management Institute, paper presented at PMI Research Conference, New Directions in Project Management, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Brugha, R. and Varvasovsky, Z. (2000) ‘Stakeholder Analysis: A Review’, Health Policy and Planning, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 239–246. Burgoyne, J. G. (1994) ‘Stakeholder Analysis’, in C. Cassel and G. Symon (eds) Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research: A Practical guide, Sage, New Delhi, pp. 187–207. Butler, M. and Ntseng, D. (2008) ‘Politics at Stake: A Note on Stakeholder Analysis’, Abahlali baseMjondolo, retrieved from http://abahlali.org/node/3805/ Calton, J. M. and Kurland, N. B. (1996) ‘A Theory of Stakeholder Enabling: Giving Voice to an Emerging Postmodern Praxis of Organizational Discourse’, in T. Boje et al. (eds) Postmodern Management and Organizational Theory, Sage, Thousand Oaks, pp. 155–177. Chambers, R. (1993) Challenging the Professions: Frontiers for Rural Development, Intermediate Technology Development Group, London. Clarke, T. and Clegg, S. (1998) Changing Paradigms: The Transformation of Management Knowledge for the 21st Century, HarperCollins, London. De Guzman, O. N. and Landivar, J. F. (1997) ‘Inter-American Development Bank Resource Book on Participation, Inter-American Development Bank, Strategic Planning and Operational Policy Department’, Social Programs and Sustainable Development Department, and the Staff Development Section, Washington, DC. DFID (Department for International Development) (1995) Guidance Note on How to Do Stakeholder Analysis of Aid Projects and Programmes, London. Engel, P. and Salomon, M. (1997) ‘Facilitating Innovation for Development: A RAAKS Resource Box/The Social Organization of Innovation – A Focus on Stakeholder Interaction, Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Freeman, R. E. and Velamuri, S. J. (2006) ‘A New Approach to CSR: Company Stakeholder Responsibility’, in M. Morsing and A. Kakabadse (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility: From Aspiration to Application, Palgrave Macmillan Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, pp. 9–23. Grimble, R. and Chan, M. K. (1995) ‘Stakeholder Analysis for Natural Resource Management in Developing Countries: Some Practical Guidelines for Making Management More Participatory and Effective’, Natural Resources Forum, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 113–124. Grimble, R. and Wellard, K. (1997) ‘Stakeholder Methodologies in Natural Resource Management. A Review of Principles, Contexts, Experiences and Opportunities’, Agricultural Systems Journal, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 173–193. Hemmati, M. Dodds, F., Enayati, F. and McHarry, J. (2002) Multistakeholder Processes for Governance and Sustainability: Beyond Deadlock and Conflict, Earthscan, London. IIRR (International Institute of Rural Reconstruction) (1998) Participatory Methods in Community-Based Coastal Resource Management, 3 vols, Silang, Cavite, Philippines. Jensen, M. (2001) ‘Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function’, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, vol. 14, no, 3, pp. 8–21. Laplume, A., Sonpar, K. and Litz, R. (2008) ‘Stakeholder Theory: Reviewing a Theory That Moves Us’, Journal of Management, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 1152–1189. Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View, Palgrave Mcmillan, Basingstoke.

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Critical stakeholder thinking MacArthur, J. (1997a) ‘Stakeholder Roles and Stakeholder Analysis in Project Planning: A Review of Approaches in Three Agencies – World Bank, ODA and NRI’, New Series Discussion Papers, Development and Project Planning Centre, University of Bradford, #73. MacArthur, J. (1997b) ‘Stakeholder Analysis in Project planning: Origins, Applications and Refinements of the Method’, Project Appraisal, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 251–265. Ramírez, R. (1999) ‘Stakeholder Analysis and Conflict Management’, in D. Buckles (ed) Cultivating Peace: Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management, IDRC and World Bank Institute, Washington, DC. Rouleau, L. (2007) Théories des Organisations, Approches classiques, contemporaines et de l’avant-garde, Presses de l’université du Québec, Quebec City. Sachs, S. and Rühli, E. (2011) Stakeholders Matter: A New Paradigm for Strategy in Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schmeer, G. (1999) Guidelines for Conducting a Stakeholder Analysis, Partnerships for Health Project, HR, ABT Associates, Bethesda, MD. SEAGA (2003) SEAGA Macro-Level Handbook, Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis Programme, Gender and Population Division and Policy Assistance Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome. Seppälä, P. and Vainio-Mattila, A. (2000) Navigating Culture: A Road Map to Culture and Development’, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department for International Development Cooperation, Helsinki, Finland. Sinclair-Desgagné, B. and Gozlan, E. (2003) ‘A Theory of Environmental Risk Disclosure’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 377–393. Ulrich, P. (2008) Integrative Economic Ethics: Foundations of a Civilized Market Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. VeneKlasen, L. and Miller, V. (2002) A New Weave of Power, People and Politics: The Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation, World Neighbors, Oklahoma City, OK. Warner, M. (2000) ‘Conflict Management in Community-Based Natural Resource Projects: Experiences from Fiji and Papua New Guinea’, ODI Working Paper 135.

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CHAPTER 13

Social Analysis CLIP

In this chapter, we present an advanced PAR method that draws on knowledge and methodologies developed in the social sciences and by the actors themselves – in this case, the Katkari of India. The tool Social Analysis CLIP invites rigorous thinking with respect to existing power structures and relationships affecting our social lives, beyond the simple listing of stakeholder categories and binary matrices introduced earlier. It explores the record of conflict and collaboration (C) among parties with different profiles based on three factors of social life, those of legitimacy (L), interests (I) and power (P). Given the complexity of each factor, we offer three ancillary tools to go deeper into the analysis, as needed. For the sake of brevity, details for these tools (Legitimacy, Interests and Power) are in our companion handbook. PAR practitioners can use them to scale up the investigation of each dimension to a finer level of detail. In the next chapter, we consider two other factors that also determine the stakeholder configuration in a given situation: the actual positions and the values that stakeholders express and hold in real situations (see Positions and Interests and Values, Interests, Positions). These may or may not coincide with their individual or group interests. The sociogram created through Social Analysis CLIP can bring together the entire set of variables, and support the development of strategic actions to empower, adjust goals, or put in place measures of cooperation and compromise to reduce conflict (Chevalier, 2002). The chapter closes with reflections on a fundamental question that tends to be ignored in the use of stakeholder analysis and theory: the role of the state and the rulings of democracy on stakeholder interests. Unlike all other ‘interested parties’, the declared raison d’être of the state consists in developing institutions, laws and procedures to support effective representation, public deliberation and rational thinking towards the welfare of society as a whole. Structures of governance such as modern states are the hardware and fruit of centuries of legal and political struggle all over the world. Stakeholder thinking that treats government bodies as one stakeholder among others beg the question: if public officials (appointed or elected) choose not to stand above the fray, whose interests will they serve?

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Social Analysis CLIP

ASSESSING THE CONDITIONS FOR KATKARI SUCCESS The strategic value of Social Analysis CLIP is well illustrated in its iterative use to plan a key decision by the Katkari of India. As noted earlier, D. Buckles and Indian colleagues worked with dozens of Katkari communities to fight eviction from hamlets on the outskirts of villages where they had settled many decades earlier. The property boom driven by Mumbai’s economic growth had broken the patron-client relationship that provided some security for the landless Katkari. Rising land prices left them exposed to forced eviction and deepened their experience of inequality. Most of the 235,000 Katkari in the state had become bonded workers in brick and charcoal operations, where they were subjected to beatings, gender-based violence and exploitation. Fear of reprisals from landowners and employers had silenced the Katkari and prevented them from exercising land and labour rights. Divide and conquer tactics by landowners had also undermined their unity and resolve to stay in their communities. This was made even easier by the history of exclusion and exploitation of the Katkari rooted in their designation under the British Raj as a ‘Criminal Tribe’ (Buckles and Khedkar, 2013). Earlier chapters described how the Problem Tree and Tree of Means and Ends helped the Katkari change their perspective on the importance of legal titles to village sites. The inquiry was a mobilizing and organizing force that focussed on a cause worth fighting for, leading to the creation of village rights committees to carry it forward. Before acting, however, Katkari leaders decided they needed to know more about what to expect from the other stakeholders involved. Given their extreme vulnerability, the wrong action could put them in an even more difficult situation than they were already in. The action that had emerged from dialogue between the Katkari and the research team was to take the claim to village title to the Gram Panchayat, the local governing body at the village and small-town level. Our review of laws that apply to the creation of villages suggested that the Gram Panchayat could initiate an application to broader authorities for sanction of a village site, including compensation for current landowners. However, presenting a petition for support from the Gram Panchayat was a significant challenge for the Katkari. Most had never attended a General Assembly, and few in the region had ever been elected to formal positions. People would need to stand up collectively and as individuals in a local situation fraught with sharp power imbalances and unknown risks. The tool Social Analysis CLIP offered a means to involve the Katkari in a discussion of the stakeholders involved and relationships among stakeholders that might determine success or failure of the petition. Figure 13.1 shows the assessment in Ambewadi, a hamlet that had recently been enclosed with a barbed wire fence by a landholder. Over the course of an evening, 12 Katkari (seven men and five women) gathered to discuss the situation and the prospect of presenting a petition in the General Assembly of the village Gram Panchayat. The picture that emerged from their analysis was a stark reminder for them and for the research team of how isolated and vulnerable the Katkari were on this issue, and what relationships would need to change to improve their chances of success.

265

Knowing the actors

High Stakeholder categories

Net losses

--

Moderate

Low/None

-

0

Net gains

Moderate

+

High

++

Dominant P I L

Revenue Department

Forceful P

I

Landholder

ADS

Gram Panchayat

Influenal P

ITDP project officer

L

Dormant P

Respected L

Vulnerable L

I

Katkari families

Marginalized I

FIGURE 13.1  First assessment of stakeholder positions on a proposed Katkari village site,

Ambewadi, India

Positions in the table reflect the vertical ordering of stakeholder power and legitimacy and the horizontal ordering of gains and losses (interests) from the proposed action (sanction of a village site). The stakeholder categories in the left-hand column of the figure summarize the presence or absence of moderate to high levels of power (P), legitimacy (L) and interests (I). These positions were determined by the Katkari for each stakeholder, one by one. The group gave the highest rating on power to oppose or promote sanction of a village site to the Revenue Department, the most visible representative of the Indian Government at the District level. They also rated the Revenue Department as having high legitimacy with respect to questions of land rights. Participants had several points of reference for this assessment. Katkari in the group had been involved for years in attempts to secure individual title to agricultural and forest land, efforts that brought them into contact with the Revenue Department. They knew that the Revenue Department had legal rights and responsibilities over land acquisition and land taxation. They also knew that the District Collector of the Revenue Department supervised police and jails, a function all Katkari were very familiar with given their rough treatment as members of a former ‘Criminal Tribe’. According to the Katkari doing the analysis, the Revenue Department would see the petition as a nuisance more than anything else. Recognition of Katkari rights to a village site would require them to order a survey of the hamlet and compensate the landholder financially. They concluded 266

Social Analysis CLIP that overall the Revenue Department was a powerful and legitimate actor that had nothing to gain and would feel moderate losses from supporting the petition. Participants rated the power of the Gram Panchayat as high in view of its formal authority in the village General Assembly, but lower than that of the Revenue Department. They argued that the Gram Panchayat would also see more losses than gains from the petition since sanction of the village site would place new demands on village services. The Gram Panchayat had a legitimate right to object to enlargement of a village site they would then be responsible for. Furthermore, support for the petition would undermine their position with the landholder involved and possibly other landholders who might feel threatened by the forced acquisition of land. This placed them on the left side of the figure, with moderate net losses. Another government stakeholder identified by the Katkari was the officer in charge of the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP). He was rated as having moderate power over the proposal, although his authority did not extend to other government agencies at the local or district levels. The ITDP officer was recognized as a legitimate stakeholder due to his responsibility to represent tribal people in the region. However, supporting the Katkari in the petition was not likely to be a priority for the officer because Ambewadi was outside the boundary of most interventions by the ITDP. It would be a distraction, and net loss, given other demands on his time. When it came to the landholder, participants in the exercise talked about his power to purchase support for his position and to hire goons to harass the Katkari. Consequently, they rated his level of power to oppose the petition as high. This assessment placed the landholder in the upper half of the figure, above the Gram Panchayat and ITDP but below the Revenue Department. Participants also acknowledged that the landholder would lose a lot if he were forced to sell the land to the government rather than to land agents. Land prices on the open market had skyrocketed in recent years and were well above rates in use by the Revenue Department. They placed the landowner on the far-left side of the figure, showing high net losses. Furthermore, the landholder had a legal land deed, a fact that gave him legitimacy in the eyes of other stakeholders. In fact, he had already shown his resolve to evict the Katkari by enclosing the hamlet with a barbed wire fence. Of the four most powerful stakeholders identified at the beginning of the exercise, the Katkari concluded that all would likely oppose the village petition. The discussion then turned to their own community. While they believed they had a lot to gain from having title to a village site, participants rated the resources, influence, authority and other forms of power they could use to achieve their goal as low. They had no money, lacked detailed knowledge regarding their rights and were not organized enough to influence others. Participants said that in the eyes of the landholder, the Gram Panchayat and the Revenue Department, the Katkari were homeless vagabonds moving about in search of employment. Furthermore, the stigma of having been a ‘Criminal Tribe’ was still present, contributing to the near-complete exclusion of the Katkari from village life. For these reasons, they saw themselves, and believed others saw them, as having neither the rights nor the resolve of a legitimate stakeholder in village land. Inclusion of the research team in the analysis opened up a different set of considerations, and led to a focussed discussion of the social relations between groups, over and 267

Knowing the actors

PHOTO 13.1  Katkari youth discuss legal options with Bansi Ghedve, a member of the

research team (Source: R. Khedkar)

above their respective stakeholder profiles. Much to our surprise, the participants considered the research team to be a highly powerful stakeholder in the situation. This came, they thought, from our proven ability to communicate with officials in the Revenue Department and the detailed knowledge we had of legal rights. We reminded them that we had not been very successful in our efforts, a discussion that bumped down the power level to moderate. They also asked us to explain again what we as a research team might gain from the petition, to which we responded that it would demonstrate the value of our work and enhance our ability to lobby on behalf of other Katkari communities. This assessment was accepted, but participants wondered out loud how long we would support them if things did not go well. It was an awkward question. We expressed our commitment to their cause but had to recognize that the bonds of trust and collaboration were still relatively weak. In Ambewadi, we had mostly worked on the land rights of individual families. We had the trust of the Katkari involved in the exercise, but were not well known by all households in the hamlet. We showed the relatively weak relationship of collaboration between the Katkari and the research team as a dotted arrow in Figure 13.1. Other arrows were added to show collaborative ties the Katkari noted among other powerful and opposing stakeholders. The landholder, for example, paid land taxes to the Revenue Department and was active in local politics, a set of social relationships indicated in the figure with a solid line. Katkari involved in the exercise knew that the ITDP officer collaborated occasionally with local contractors when providing services to tribal communities.

268

Social Analysis CLIP They thought the landholder might also have a direct or indirect relationship with him as a supplier. This relationship was expressed through a dotted line in Figure 13.1. The overall situation summarized in the figure left the Katkari with few real or potential allies and the prospects of an open conflict with the landholder, their former benefactor. Gaining support for their petition would be an uphill battle. While this conclusion reflected what the Katkari already knew about the parties involved, the exercise helped them reflect on the situation and strategies for effective action. Discussion by the group turned to steps they could take to empower themselves and persuade other stakeholders to support them. At the end of the exercise, participants agreed to compile proofs of residence. This would help them document and demonstrate to the government and to local officials how they contributed to community life and were not simply homeless vagabonds. They also decided to talk to members of the Gram Panchayat about their difficulties, and assure them that their intention was to press the Revenue Department for fair compensation for the landholder. This was important, participants felt, to avoid placing blame and responsibility on the landholder alone. They also committed to convening larger meetings with other families to learn more about their rights and responsibilities as members of a village, and to participate in the institutions of village life. These actions might demonstrate their resolve to stay in the village and begin to build a positive relationship with local officials. In the weeks and months that followed, the Katkari land rights committees in Ambewadi and other Katkari hamlets began the tedious work of collecting proofs of residence door to door. They made copies of house tax receipts, residence certificates from the Gram Panchayat, Caste Certificates, Ration Cards, voter identification cards, electrical bill payment receipts, school certificates and proof of age documents. It was difficult work. Most houses are in such disrepair that people lose their documents to the weather or neglect. Often the documents are not understood or valued. Many households never had basic identity papers in the first place. Nevertheless, documents were collected and copied for as many households as possible. The committees, guided by elders, also drew maps showing the boundaries of the hamlet and created a Timeline of when the community was first established and major events in the life of the hamlet. While travelling to workplaces or socializing in the evenings, members of the committee shared what they learned with others, raising in the hamlet the general level of knowledge and understanding of their rights to a village site. The research team contributed to this process by compiling all of the documentation into a portfolio on each hamlet, and making copies to go back to individual households. We also collected the land deed from the regional headquarters of the Revenue Department. This document showed the legal ownership and boundaries of land where the Katkari now lived. With the support of the Katkari committee, the research team offered information sessions on land rights, the operations of the Gram Panchayat and technical procedures for acquiring papers and services from the government. Many attended, often in the evening, including some non-tribal members of the Gram Panchayat who were not familiar with the topics. These sessions built on the long history of practical activism of the Indian members of the team, and addressed matters that were often of immediate and practical interest to people. Getting a ration card, or filing a death certificate, could bring some immediate relief.

269

Knowing the actors The research team facilitated similar assessments and follow-up activities in nine Katkari hamlets where committees had resolved to develop petitions in their respective Gram Panchayat. Visits by the research team opened relationships with some heads of the Gram Panchayat (sarpanch) and with all of the Secretaries and local village administrators (gram sevak). Informal, personal interactions with these officials focussed on the legal and ethical issues at stake, including the longstanding contributions of Katkari labour to agriculture and industry in the area, their many years of residence in the villages and the existence of government provisions for extending a village site and compensating landholders. Many local officials were not aware of these provisions and had not considered the practical and potential social costs of evicting large numbers of families from their homes. The goal of these discussions was not only to inform the stakeholders about the scope and impact of the problem but also to take stock of their position and possible response to Katkari petitions for support. Only a few attempts were made to discuss the matter directly with landholders as these had led to defensive reactions and a hardening of opposition to Katkari gestures of compromise and openness to negotiation. The involvement of a foreign researcher was particularly troubling to the landholders and a source of additional tension we tried to avoid by being discrete in our movements in the villages and avoiding direct contact with landholders. Only the Indian members of the research team visited the offices of the Revenue Department in different parts of the District, conducting business related to identity papers or applications for crop surveys, and taking any opportunity to explain and answer questions about the Katkari situation. The research team monitored and reported back to the Katkari on the broader effects of these strategies. For example, we learned that the head of the Revenue Department in Karjat had written to his officials asking them to provide all the help they could to securing a village site on behalf of Katkari families. Various elected representatives of the Gram Panchayat in some villages said they now understood the situation better and recognized the legitimacy of the Katkari claim. They assured the Katkari they would call on the government to provide compensation to the landholder. Even the Project Officer for the ITDP, while rarely in the hamlet, did not want to be seen to be supporting the landholder against a tribal clientele. The landholder in Ambewadi still harassed the Katkari and continued to threaten to evict them. He seemed nonetheless increasingly isolated in his opposition. New assessments of the stakeholder structure some four months afterwards showed positive shifts in some hamlets, and little progress in others. In Nadode Katkarwadi, for example, the Katkari committee identified a change in the position of only one stakeholder, the tehsildar tax officer in the Revenue Department. Important shifts in the positions of other stakeholders began to emerge only six months after the initial analysis. Some members of the Gram Panchayat, including the elected head (sarpanch), said that sanctioning the Katkari hamlet would bring new investments to the community through government programmes for tribal populations. Other things changed as well. A division had emerged between the three landholders affected, with one saying that he would not go against a majority verdict in the General Assembly provided there was no encroachment on his neighbouring lands. By then the work of collecting proofs of residence had convinced virtually all Katkari families that legal title to their hamlet was a right they could demand. They still feared eviction, but resolve to stay in Nadode Katkarwadi was high. 270

Social Analysis CLIP

High Stakeholder categories

--

Net losses

Moderate

Low/None

-

0

Net gains

Moderate

+

High

++

Dominant P

Revenue Department

I

L

Forceful P

Landholder

Gram Panchayat

ADS Katkari families

P L

ITDP project officer

Dormant P

Respected L

Vulnerable L

I

Marginalized I

FIGURE 13.2  Second assessment of stakeholder positions on a proposed Katkari village

site, Ambewadi, India

The new story they and Katkari in other communities began to tell reflected greater confidence in themselves, expressions of support received from other stakeholders, and a stronger and broader set of relationships to other stakeholders (Figure 13.2). While initially all Katkari assessments showed considerable pessimism, many months of hard work by the Katkari themselves and by the research team convinced everyone that conditions had become more favourable, reflected in the new assessments. The Katkari increasingly felt empowered and supported directly by the Gram Panchayat and, through the research team, by the Revenue Department. They also concluded that the ITDP officer was largely neutralized, and possibly on their side. Based on new analyses of the evolving stakeholder dynamics, the committee in Ambewadi and in many other hamlets decided they were ready to present a petition at the next General Assembly. The presentation of petitions, and follow-up actions by the Katkari land committees, are presented in detail elsewhere (Buckles and Khedkar, 2013). Some were approved without incident while in other communities strong reactions by landholders stopped the process cold. Initial gains with government agencies also stalled in the face of bureaucracy and deep-seated prejudices against the Katkari held at many levels of village and regional society. The analysis reported in Chapter 3 using Order and Chaos challenged everyone’s expectations and resolve. Eventually, however, unexpected discoveries and the ongoing 271

Knowing the actors saliency of the threat of eviction brought the initiative back into the hands of the Katkari. Stakeholder analysis became less relevant to advancing their cause as the research shifted to work on other vulnerabilities that undermined Katkari capacity to exercise their land rights. Overcoming government neglect, breaking the bonds of migratory labour and addressing gaps in both hamlet-level and collective organization became the focus and called for other questions and related inquiry tools. The work launched by the Problem Tree and Social Analysis CLIP continued for four more years, with further setbacks and new directions, some unplanned and unanticipated. Ultimately, the state government transferred title to hundreds of village sites and many hectares of forest land to the Katkari and other Adivasi communities with longstanding claims. While a remarkable result, realizing the potential of secure title, and the dreams articulated by the Katkari, remains an ongoing struggle (Buckles and Khedkar, 2013).

SOCIAL ANALYSIS CLIP: THE TOOL AND ITS CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS Our story of the Katkari struggle against eviction illustrates how Social Analysis CLIP can shed a critical light on the playing field of key stakeholders involved in a complex situation and ways to engage strategically towards meaningful solutions. Stakeholder analysis was practised with the Katkari as an iterative, action-oriented exercise using the closed-door version of the tool, and replaced by other methods as the situation evolved and new issues took centre stage. Before delving into other possible questions about social actors, further commentary on technical details and the conceptual underpinnings of Social Analysis CLIP is needed, starting with its earlier formulation proposed by Mitchell et al. (1997). Mitchell and his colleagues argue that much of the management literature on stakeholder theory fails to address the issue of salience, that is, the degree to which one stakeholder can succeed in getting its claims or interests ranked high in other stakeholders’ agendas. In their view stakeholder management theory developed by Freeman and others is unable to answer this question for a simple reason: too much emphasis is placed on the issue of legitimacy or normative appropriateness. Theorists grant disproportionate weight to the contractual or moral rightness or wrongness of a stakeholder’s claim and relationship to the firm. Mitchell, Agle and Wood believe that while legitimacy is an important variable, two other factors must be considered when mapping out stakeholder relationships. One factor is power defined as the ability to influence the actions of other stakeholders and to bring about the desired outcomes. Power may be expressed through the use of coercive-physical, material-financial and normative-symbolic resources at the disposal of particular stakeholders. The other factor is urgency or attention-getting capacity. This is the ability to show the pressing character of claims or interests, impressing on others goals that are time-sensitive and will be costly if delayed. Urgency, power and legitimacy, in their framework, are highly variable and may be combined in multiple ways. They are also socially constructed and may be possessed by stakeholders without consciousness or wilful exercise. Stakeholder salience is the cumulative effect of possessing these multiple attributes. All three factors must be considered simultaneously because ‘power gains authority through 272

Social Analysis CLIP

POWER

LEGITIMACY

dormant

dominant

dangerous

dependent

non-stakeholders

URGENCY demanding

FIGURE 13.3  Stakeholder class typology (Source: Adapted from Mitchell et al.,

1997, p. 874)

legitimacy, and it gains exercise through urgency’ (Mitchell et al., 1997, p. 869). The argument is useful as it lends itself to an eightfold stakeholder class typology reflecting variable degrees of overall salience. As shown in Figure 13.3, ‘definitive’ stakeholders are those who possess all three attributes and will therefore receive the greatest attention. Three other classes come next in rank: the ‘dominant’ who possess power and are perceived as having legitimate claims; the ‘dependent’ whose claims are deemed legitimate and urgent; and the ‘dangerous’ who possess power and have claims that are urgent though not legitimate. The least salient stakeholders comprise the ‘dormant’ (powerful but with claims that are deemed neither urgent nor legitimate), the ‘discretionary’ (legitimacy without power and urgency), and the ‘demanding’ (urgency without power or legitimacy). Lastly, the analysis lumps all those who possess none of these attributes into a residual ‘non-stakeholder’ category. Admittedly, this model has been developed from a purely managerial perspective. The firm occupies the centre of every stakeholder nexus, and firm managers are automatically granted a high degree of salience. They act as general moderators or mediators responsible for carrying out the analysis. Interestingly, firm managers are never preoccupied with the ‘attention’ they deserve or require; the only question they ask is who they should pay attention to. Legitimacy, power and urgency, from this perspective, are all ‘other-oriented’ variables. This is so because ‘managers must know about entities in their environment that 273

Knowing the actors hold power and have the intent to impose their will upon the firm. Power and urgency must be attended to if managers are to serve the legal and moral interests of legitimate stakeholders’ (Mitchell et al., 1997, p. 882). Another closely related bias lies in the notion of urgency, which tends to be driven by considerations of political and economic expediency rather than long-term equity and sustainability. Our Social Analysis CLIP (for Conflict/Collaboration, Legitimacy, Interests, Power), illustrated in Figures 13.1 and 13.2, differs from the model developed by Mitchell, Agle and Wood in a number of ways, producing a distinct framework (Figure 13.4). First of all, the concept of urgency is replaced by the underlying notion of stakeholder interests, the pressing character of which depends, for all intents and purposes, on who’s making the claim. Everyone sees urgency in their own interests. Secondly, each concept can be broken down into component parts (see Definitions below), the weight of which varies according to context. Our companion handbook shows how to rate the level of power, interests and legitimacy of different stakeholders and presents additional tools to go deeper into each, if and when warranted. Thirdly, histories of collaboration and conflict between the parties concerned, critical factors in stakeholder relationships, are built into our tool. Last but not least, the tool is designed to support dialogue within groups and across social boundaries as well, towards the empowerment of weaker parties normally excluded from the inquiry process and other circles of power. Convenors or facilitators of the analysis are not assumed to be at the centre of the stakeholder configuration as in the managerial perspective. Nor are they necessarily treated as non-stakeholders to be left out of the analysis. Every use calls for the critical assessment of all potential stakeholders.

Definitions Power is the ability to influence others and use resources to achieve goals. Resources may include economic wealth, political authority (an office, position or role recognized by an institution or by local customs), the ability to use force or threats of force, access to knowledge and skills, and the means to communicate (see Power in our companion handbook). Interests are the gains and losses experienced as a result of an existing situation or proposed action. These gains and losses affect the various forms of power and uses of resources. Participants should not confuse this idea of interests with ‘taking an interest in’ or ‘being interested in something’ (see Interests in our companion handbook). Legitimacy is when the rights and responsibilities of a stakeholder are recognized by other parties through law or local customs, and are exercised with resolve by the stakeholder involved (see Legitimacy in our companion handbook and Figure 13.5). Social relations involve existing ties of collaboration and conflict (including group memberships) that affect stakeholders in a certain situation and that they can use to influence the situation or a course of action.

274

Social Analysis CLIP Actors that may affect

Actors that may be affected (winning or losing)

P

PI

Dormant

I

Forceful

Marginalized

PIL

Dominant

IL

PL

Vulnerable

L

Respected

Actors that have recognized

FIGURE 13.4  Power, interest and legitimacy profile

Legitimacy Like power and interests, legitimacy can mean different things, depending on the situation. The definition used in Social Analysis CLIP is one possible way to approach the concept. It revolves around the recognition of stakeholder rights and obligations and the expressed will or resolve to act on them. The three ‘Rs’ uses this definition to map out the way rights, responsibilities and resolve are actually distributed, and how this affects the ability of key stakeholders to handle a situation or proposed action (Figure 13.5). Each stakeholder is located in a Venn diagram according to whether or not they have significant levels of rights, responsibilities and resolve. Stakeholders appearing in the middle exercise leadership since they are legitimate in all respects. Our companion handbook provides a more advanced version of Legitimacy, using a table that estimates the relative weight of each stakeholder’s rights and responsibilities and resolve to exercise them as fully as they can. All three ‘Rs’ were considered during the exercises with the Katkari, by hearing and paraphrasing the stories they told rather than going through a systematic checklist. Legitimacy was a particularly important concept for the Katkari because of their experience of extreme marginalization.

275

Knowing the actors

Rights and

RESOLVE

Officers

RESPONSIBILITIES

Abstainers

3 Rs Leaders

Rights and resolve

and resolve

Claimants

Advocates

RESOLVE Supporters

FIGURE 13.5  The three ‘Rs’ of legitimacy

Where the stakeholder structure is perilous for some, as it was for the Katkari, or the social relationships complex, participants can consider ways to modify existing relations of power, interests and legitimacy. Broadly, • If power differences are an issue, find ways to increase the resources available to vulnerable or marginalized stakeholders (or measures to empower them). Involve these stakeholders in decisions regarding proposed actions. Strengthen organizations and alliances between powerful and weaker organizations. Or create opportunities for shared leadership and broader participation. • If conflicting interests are an issue, find ways to modify the situation or proposed action to reduce losses or maximize potential gains. Develop a common vision of shared goals and explore underlying or longer-term interests. Share a detailed analysis of the costs and benefits of the situation or proposed action. Or create new incentives or mechanisms for the redistribution of gains. • If low legitimacy is an issue, find ways to use the legal system to demonstrate rights and responsibilities. Uphold the importance of local norms. Inform people about their rights and responsibilities. Increase public awareness. Or organize demonstrations of stakeholder resolve. • All stakeholders may benefit from a situation or proposed action (thereby appearing on the right side of the table) but have a history of poor or limited collaboration or open conflict. If this is the case, discuss actions and steps to develop or strengthen coalitions or reduce conflict by seeking third-party mediation or building trust. For a more detailed analysis of trust, use Network Dynamics (Chapter 18).

276

Social Analysis CLIP •

Some of the stakeholders identified initially will not end up in the table if they have no or very low interests at stake and little power or legitimacy in relation to the situation or proposed action. Find ways to engage these stakeholders, or set them aside as non-stakeholder groups or non-actors in the current situation.

To conclude, the primary aim of Social Analysis CLIP is to engage stakeholders in meaningful dialogue about existing social relations, with a view to better understanding the interests they share but also what divides them and ways to iron out their differences. At stake here is the possibility of striking a ‘social contract’ conceived and implemented within civil society, moving beyond the ‘command and control’ solution to difference usually imposed by governments and the business sector, each for reasons of their own. It follows from this that multiple stakeholders can reach agreements that benefit everyone, without the state playing a role other than as one player among others. On this point, critics of stakeholder theory rightly object to defining the state as just one of many possible stakeholders, pushing its own interests and agenda just like everybody else. If this were the case, society would be no more than the sum of all stakeholders and interest-based interactions between them. Governments protecting and promoting broader interests would always play second fiddle to a free and egalitarian civil society acting responsibly, and without coercion of any kind. Our work in multistakeholder settings involving governments has taught us that this tendency on the part of conservative and neo-liberal states alike to downplay their unique character creates problems of its own. Below, we warn PAR practitioners against the risks inherent in extending stakeholder thinking to the whole of society and the role of the state. Another caution, addressed in the chapter that follows, is the tendency to assume that interests determine everything we do, including actions based on values we hold dear and essential for the good of all.

TOWARDS A MORE CIVIL SOCIETY In the digital age, full democracy depends on flexible software – skilful means to facilitate authentic dialogue and well-informed reasoning at work, at school, in business, in community life and in the public domain. Multistakeholder interactivity through multiple channels is a major contribution in this regard. It enables all parties concerned to contribute to the welfare of society by actively fleshing out their part of the ‘social contract’ grounded in their immediate surroundings. They can do so in real time, without waiting for the state to dictate how parties should interact and run their affairs. It is fashionable to suggest that democracy lies squarely in the software and language of communitas and civil society. At stake here is a lifeworld that promotes transparent and nonstop communication and rational engagement in social life. Organizations in civil society play a key role in the development of a political culture based on relations of trust, negotiated interests and shared values, all transferable into the sphere of institutionalized politics (Putnam et al., 1993). The extension of stakeholder thinking to all spheres of society serves the same purpose. It advances ‘a political and moral philosophy providing democratic foundations and principles relevant to all forms of governance’ (Bonnafous-Boucher and

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Knowing the actors Rendtorff, 2017, p. 19). Stakeholder theory proposes a new form of social contract guided by principles of justice and equality (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, pp. 60–62). We have already expressed some reservations about stakeholder thinking presented as a rosy window on the world. Several are worth repeating here. First, ideals of stakeholder engagement and participation are a poor substitute for methods to critically examine stakeholder characteristics, behaviour and relationships. The second warning has to do with the world of realpolitik: despite its sensitivity to issues of empowerment, stakeholder theory doesn’t naturally question deep-seated power structures that give rise in the first place to existing stakeholder categories and configurations. In this regard, the inclination to reduce the state to just one instance of many stakeholders, locally or globally, is a major issue. Stakeholder theory generally assumes that the common good can be ensured through the sum of negotiated interests. In reality, when left to themselves, stakeholders form an ‘inoperative community’ that brings together independent individuals, groups, organizations or states with values and interests that are often antagonistic or at best diverse. However essential it may be, dialogue between parties bent on pursuing their particular interests can never add up to the good of the whole (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, pp. 74–75; Courty, 2006; Nancy, 1986). The same blind spot exists in business ethics that blur the distinction between civically-minded firms and the activities of civil society as a whole. When it comes to social life, the whole is more than the sum of the parts and needs its own voice. This brings us to the definition of civil society. What does it actually mean? In its current use, the concept is closely associated with the rise and proliferation of NGOs, new social movements and technologies of e-communication and collaboration on a global scale. It evokes myriad types of networks, associations, organizations and means of communication and knowledge sharing that are collaborative and independent of both business and government systems. In keeping with this, the UNDP defines civil society organizations as all non-market and non-state organizations (excluding the family) in which people organize themselves to pursue shared interests in the public domain. Examples range from community-based organizations and village associations to environmental groups, women’s rights groups, farmers’ associations, faith-based organizations, labour unions, cooperatives, professional associations, chambers of commerce, independent research institutes and the not-for-profit media. This positive definition replaces older views that are more critical. To some earlymodern philosophers, civil society colludes with state and business to sustain market-ruled nation-states and a world economy ruled by capital, i.e. private property in the hands of the corporate few. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s sharp thinking on this subject, as expressed in 1754 in his Discourse on Inequality, has not lost its relevance: ‘The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’ (Rousseau, 1999). The views of Marx and Engels on private property concepts built into civil law and bourgeois politics are no less biting, with 278

Social Analysis CLIP reason: the necessary condition for private property ‘is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society’ (Marx and Engels, 1969). Competing views on Cicero’s societas civilis have a long history (Edwards, 2004; Seligman, 1992). To philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, civility, social life and city-state politics meant basically the same thing. A good and virtuous society is composed of citizens who behave with civility and use rational arguments and dialectics to uncover truth and resolve disputes, in the best interest of all, including the ruling aristocracy. This assumes the practice of virtue in everyday life, such as justice, moderation and patriotic courage, all of which ensure peace and order among rational citizens and the pursuit of common well-being as the ultimate goal of civil society. Humanism, the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment challenged all previous views on civil society, including those of the late medieval and early Renaissance period when it meant the corporate estates of feudal landholders. The modern era radically transformed the old concept by distinguishing the state, formed under the tyranny of Church and monarchy, from expressions of ‘the will of the people’. Social contracts and selfdetermination by the people became the precondition for the state to exercise legitimate power and maintain peace and order. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) believed in the rational necessity of a strong Leviathan state and positive, human-made law to maintain civility and curb natural self-interested behaviour and the war of all against all. Convinced that human beings are social animals by nature, John Locke (1632–1704) advocated for a powerful society and a weak state, a two-treaty arrangement where people submit to common public authority in exchange for laws that protect basic human rights. Despite important differences on these issues, most social contract philosophers shared the view that state institutions had to be hardwired to the laws of Nature. These laws include the preservation of life, the practice of Reason, the exercise of free will and, never to be forgotten, the sanctity of private property. In the end, state and civil society are two sides of the same coin, opposed to the exercise of absolute rule by divine right. Private economic interests were further enshrined in the writings of Hegel (1770– 1831). Taking his distance from earlier a priori conceptions of humans in a state of nature, the Romantic philosopher redefined civil society as a modern liberal market governed by productive activity, the rational satisfaction of individual interests, and the rule of private property. The political state is a separate entity, with a mission to correct the faults of civil society and sustain moral order. Economic transactions thus constitute a civilian system of conscious needs distinct from government activity and family life. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) and Marx (1808–1883) adopted and adapted Hegel’s two-pronged understanding of life in society. The former, however, had confidence in the system of civilian and political associations and their capacity to keep both liberal individualism and state centralization in check. Marx chose instead to reject the positive role of both state and civil society; both are arms of the bourgeoisie reigning supreme through ownership of the means of production. While critical of capitalism, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and postmodernists widened the concept of civil society and restored faith in its capacity to challenge the hegemony of business and state bureaucracies overburdened by systems of power. In the writings 279

Knowing the actors of Gramsci, civil society is political in a particular way. It is the sphere where trade unions and political parties can gain or fail to obtain concessions from the bourgeois state. But it is also where the media, universities and religious institutions either create or challenge bourgeois ideas and culture. This means that civil society is a battlefield at war with itself. It ‘manufactures consent’ and strengthens bourgeois legitimacy while at the same time allowing hegemonic beliefs and values to be questioned and contested. Stakeholder theory offers a new take on civil society. It is openly critical of the state colluding with business to uphold liberal ideas and policies that support the Wild West version of free-market capitalism. But advocates of multistakeholder dialogue do not present a united front when it comes to challenging the fundamental principles of market economies and the mediating role of the state. Some believe that social ethics can be brought into business through a weak state. Others prefer to pressure the state to forcefully play its part in serving the general interest. The two camps don’t mingle well, especially when it comes to supporting the counter-hegemonic movements of civil society – from anti-imperialism, alter-globalization and the Occupy Movement to adult literacy, civil rights, feminism, gay and LGBTQ liberation, green politics and nonviolent resistance. Evidently, civil society strengthened through stakeholder dialogue can be twisted to mean entirely different things. The notion can be used to support state-centred reforms and broad-based political struggles for a public sphere designed to achieve greater justice and the welfare of society as a whole. The same notion, however, can be defined narrowly to uphold a softly associative, liberal-humanistic approach to democracy and market economics, against the laissez-faire policies of public officials inclined to accommodate those with the ‘longest purse’. In the latter case, stakeholder thinking does not invite strategies to ‘refound the corporation’ let alone reinvent the foundations of society (Segrestin and Hatchuel, 2012). Nor does it question the historic role of the state in creating the basic rules and laws of ‘civil society’, including those of private property and liberal commerce. Far from taking action against dominant financial and geopolitical interests, stakeholder thinking prefers to keep civil society busy through third-sector, not-for-profit organizations operating at all levels. This makes it easier for governments to cut down on service provision and social care, especially in debt-laden states. Discussions concerning the common good can be conducted from outside government and antagonisms resolved through reasonable accommodation and multistakeholder agreements (Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff, 2017, p. 52). Inequalities will continue to crop up, but they can be tolerated as long as the two conditions of neo-liberal society are met: offices and positions are open to all under conditions of equal opportunity, and productive inequalities spur economic development that brings some benefits to the least-advantaged members of society (Rawls, 1971; Evans and Evans, 2014). Calls for society to become more ‘civil’ on its own, free from state intervention, are legitimate. Still, efforts to reduce the state to only one stakeholder among others are cause for worry. In order to thrive, most expressions of the ‘social contract’ depend on national and international institutions, laws and procedures that firmly support effective representation, public deliberation and collective decision making. This is critical hardware that sustains the stable foundations of government by the people and for the people at both local and global levels. 280

Social Analysis CLIP Given its slippery boundaries, stakeholder theory is not about to dispel the collusion of civil society and business hardwired through state-protected institutions. In the global era, the dialectics of social and public life – engagement in the exercise of reason for the common good, as prescribed by Socrates – still remains a major challenge. Until it is resolved, Plato’s suspicion that tyranny is bound to arise out of democracy will continue to haunt us.

REFERENCES Bonnafous-Boucher, M. and Rendtorff, J. D. (2017) Stakeholder Theory: A Model for Strategic Management, Springer, Cham, Switzerland. Buckles, D. J., Khedkar, R., Ghevde, B. and Patil, D. (2013) Fighting Eviction: Katkari Land Rights and Research-in-Action, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi. Chevalier, J. M. (2002) ‘Natural Resource Project/Conflict Management’, in F. Yoshitaro et al. (eds) Evolving Concept of Peacebuilding: Natural Resource Management and Conflict Prevention, Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development, Tokyo. Courty, G. (2006) Les groupes d’intérêts, La Découverte, Paris. Edwards, M. (2004) Civil Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA. Evans, D. C. and Evans, G. E. (2014) ‘Stakeholder Interests from Behind the Veil: A Rawlsian Approach to Ethical Corporate Governance’, Management and Organizational Studies, vol. 1, no. 2. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1969) ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in Selected Works, vol. 1, trans. S. Moore, Progress, Moscow, pp. 98–137. Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R. and Wood, D. S. (1997) ‘Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 853–866. Nancy, J. L. (1986) La communauté désœuvrée, Christian Bourgeois, Paris. Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R. and Nanetti, R. Y. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Rousseau, J.-J. (1999) [1754] Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men. trans. F. Philip, edited with an Introduction and Notes by P. Coleman, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Segrestin, B. and Hatchuel, A. (2012) Refonder l’entreprise, Le Seuil, La République des Idées, Paris. Seligman, A. (1992) The Idea of Civil Society, Free Press, New York.

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CHAPTER 14

Positions and values

THE WEIGHT OF MORAL VALUES Social Analysis CLIP looks at how factors of power, interests, legitimacy and histories of conflict and collaboration affect a given situation or the possible outcomes of a planned action. While the tool may be put to practical use in many different contexts, it is subject to the limitations of stakeholder thinking flagged in previous chapters. Being mindful of what may be left out is important but should not lead to abandoning the effort. Regardless, whatever tool we use, it should be fit-for-purpose, even if it falls short of covering some aspect of the situation at hand. To paraphrase Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (2011, Book 1, Chapter 3), PAR practitioners should not expect from an inquiry more precision than what the situation requires. Instead they should be content if, when starting from a particular set of assumptions, they succeed in saying things that are ‘only for the most part true’ and therefore ‘good enough’ to provide adequate guidance for action. This is science with a healthy dose of humility. But how do we recognize a ‘skilful means’ that’s not skilfully fit-for-purpose? The short answer to this question is that a thinking process heads in the wrong direction if it leaves out aspects that make a difference in the end. Tools such as the Stakeholder Rainbow provide a rough outline of social reality. Social Analysis CLIP helps stakeholders and PAR practitioners refine the inquiry when power relationships must be further examined and transformed. Both may or may not be sufficient depending on how much detail is required to make sound plans and move forward. There is another caveat to doing stakeholder analysis, however, that we have not yet addressed, an oddity of political life that can easily pass unnoticed. It rests on the fact that people may take stands that go against their own interests. Interests do not always dictate conduct. Why would that be? There are good reasons why people decide to shoot themselves in the foot. The reasons point to the role of moral judgement in rational conduct, an issue hotly debated since Greek Antiquity. On one side of this longstanding debate, Socrates argued that humans never act against their better judgement, at least not willingly. If they bring harm to themselves, it is only because they don’t have full knowledge of the outcome of their decision (Plato, 1967, Protagoras, 351a-358d). On the other side, Aristotle observed that people are 282

Positions and values prone to show ‘weakness of will’, also known as akrasia. In this view, weak and impetuous souls fail to exercise full reasoning because of unmastered feelings, passions or emotions. Saint Paul and Church Fathers spoke abundantly of the everlasting suffering that comes from man’s weakness of will caused by the original sin of Adam and Eve. Kantian and Freudian thinking echo similar sentiments regarding limits on our ability to behave wisely by controlling our emotions and rising above our impulses. Will is inherently limited, putting our well-being in this life at constant risk. Marxists and neo-Marxists propose a rather different explanation, one where existing value systems and the powers that uphold them are part of the problem instead of part of the solution. In a nutshell, the many fail to pursue their own interests because of the few in power who do. The latter are mostly successful in securing whatever it is they want, including convincing others that what suits them coincides with the general interest and demands of the moral order. The end result is false consciousness. In his discussion of fascism, Reich remarks that ‘what has to be explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don’t steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don’t strike’ (Reich, 1975, p. 53). Writing about ‘voluntary servitude’, Rosen also wonders what causes the many to ‘accept the rule of the few, even when it seems to be plainly against their interests to do so?’ (Rosen, 1996, p. 1). Misguided beliefs and values provide an answer to Reich’s and Rosen’s questions. The powerful impose views and ways of life full of illusions designed to fool practically everyone. Mechanisms of religious sublimation, ideological rationalization, technocratic and cultural hegemony are all forms of consciousness manufactured to protect the interests of owners of the means of production and the requirements of capital. The leitmotif running through the whole of Western philosophy (save for Socratism) is clear: dominant moral values, because disobeyed according to some or obeyed according to others, explain people’s inclination to act irrationally, in ways that are prejudicial to their own interests, especially in the long run. In short, morality is key to understanding gaps between actions and interests. This brings us to the thorny issue of ethics and human rationality, viewed in a Habermasian perspective. In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas acknowledges the fact that humans are in the habit of making rational choices between efficient means to achieve particular ends. Every time we consciously allocate scarce means to competing ends, we exercise and further develop our power of ‘instrumental mastery’. However, humans also behave rationally when they ‘neither give in to their affects nor pursue their immediate interests but are concerned to judge the dispute from a moral point of view and to settle it in a consensual manner’ (Habermas, 1981, p. 19). Disputes can be settled through moral claims expressed with truthfulness, in line with societal norms and values that are reasonably shared between subjects. Humans don’t always engage in strategic action to achieve individual goals. They also strive toward mutual understanding and agreement based on consensual norms. This is a feature of everyday language and truthful communication, the foundation of deliberative and rational dialogue in democratic society. Interest-based bargaining (IBB), also known as principled negotiation, shares some of the principles of Habermasian thinking. Fisher and Ury view communication based on truthful and rational arguments as the wise alternative to parties making rigid demands or 283

Knowing the actors major concessions that leave no room for compromise. ‘Positional bargaining’ leads to winlose solutions that may not last. Interest-based analysis and discussions are more effective, the argument goes, because they encourage the parties to acknowledge the concerns, fears and expectations that are important to each side in a conflict. The approach promotes evidence-based thinking about trade-offs made across a range of issues, coupled with creative measures to share the pie fairly or enlarge it to everyone’s benefit. The mediation process focusses on the problem at hand and the interests at stake rather than the people, the emotions, the accusations and the stubborn positions they express (Fisher and Ury, 2011). In a similar vein, Rosenberg’s take on nonviolent communication (NVC) proposes a rational, collaborative, truthful, empathic and non-judgemental process for effective problem solving. Unlike IBB, however, NVC puts the emphasis on identifying and meeting fundamental human needs, which is what really matters in the end, especially when there are enough resources to care for everyone’s needs (Rosenberg, 2015). While effective in many settings, interest-based bargaining and nonviolent communication are not necessarily the right thing for all disputes. One limitation is that they leave aside the practical implications of moral consensus building in both everyday life and the larger-scale struggles of distributive justice and democracy. These struggles include the question of fundamental human rights, which should not be up for trade or depend on the power of human empathy and compassion alone. Claims to moral rightness and ethical goodness have their place in social life and may be more salient in some cases than well-intentioned discussions of individual interests and personal needs (Habermas, 1981, pp. 8–23). Below we present two action-inquiry tools that help actors reflect on their actions in relation to both the interests and the values they hold in concrete situations. The tools are theoretically informed and are reflexive, practical and dialogical all at once. The first one, Values, Interests, Positions (VIP), assumes that cognitive-instrumental reasoning and moral-practical communication are both part of how people solve problems in their daily lives. Addressing competing interests and values, knowing that success may or may not be assured, is the source of many tensions, small and large. The process is a constant juggling act where having one’s cake and eating it is sought but never assured. VIP helps formalize the principles behind this struggle, by inviting parties to ask themselves whether or not their actions serve their interests and are consistent with their sense of right or wrong. The tool also helps people decide what action strategy to follow in a given situation: negotiate interests or make important concessions to upholding values that count. The tool may seem a bit mechanical. In reality, values and interests are not absolutes in theory or clear-cut categories in day-to-day language. The two overlap and invite greyzone thinking. For instance, while making money serves material interests, it can also be viewed as a means to care for others or an expression of merit gained through hard work. Having said that, there are countless situations in life where people see gaps between the interests and the moral values they hold, or between their actual conduct and their ideals of moral behaviour. Views on these gaps, and the way they should be handled, vary considerably and cannot be resolved through rigid positions couched as universal theory. Reflexivity and dialogue are needed. This chapter suggests that questions of values and interests be grounded in reality and put directly to the parties involved. 284

Positions and values

PHOTO 14.1  Sustainability education values and priorities, Canada (Source:

J. Wonnacott)

VIP is a visual and conceptual support that in practice can raise additional issues for reflection in context. One of them concerns the distinction between interests and basic needs. Another is the difference between explicit norms of conduct and deeply-felt values that may be hard to express and yet influence the positions that stakeholders adopt in real settings. We return to these later in the chapter. One last point before illustrating VIP with a story from Bolivia: this tool is just another way to approach problem solving in a dialogical mode. Insights gained through its use should not preclude integrating other skilful means of action inquiry, as needed. With Habermas, we agree that the social sciences must ‘bear the tension of divergent approaches under one roof’ (Habermas, 1988, p. 3).

VALUES, INTERESTS, POSITIONS   : CONFLICT OVER THE CONTROL OF TIMBER IN BOLIVIA Timber in the Chiquitania region of Bolivia includes many precious woods of commercial value. In the early 2000s, timber buyers in the region acquired timber from people and communities at a very low price. They did so by advancing money for basic needs in exchange for commitments to deliver timber at a fixed price. Much of the better wood was captured in this way. With help from the Spanish Government, a municipality in Chiquitania set up a lumber mill and carpentry shop to purchase and partly process timber locally so that communities could realize more of the potential value of the forests. The municipality also employed a Forestry Officer to develop forest management plans and authorize and monitor all agreements between buyers and sellers. National laws supported these and other efforts by municipalities to ensure that timber is cut legally and, to the extent possible, processed locally. The challenge for the mill, however, was to keep sellers to their supply agreements with the mill when they were also under the pressure of debt to independent timber buyers. Despite promises, high-value timber was routinely diverted away from the municipal mill, 285

Knowing the actors undermining its economic viability. To address this problem, the municipality convened a meeting of various stakeholders, including representatives of four forest communities, the mill and forestry professionals. The meeting was facilitated by Jorge Téllez Carrasco, a PhD student at the time undertaking research in the region (Téllez Carrasco, 2009). The meeting began using the tool Social Analysis CLIP, with a view to exploring the power, interests and legitimacy of the actors at play. The assessment was interrupted part way through, however, when a participant suddenly accused the Forestry Officer, who was married to a timber buyer also present at the meeting, of being in a conflict of interest. He said the Forestry Officer ignored improper efforts by her husband to capture high-value timber formally contracted with the municipal mill. He called on the municipal government and the mill manager to fire her immediately. The mill manager hesitated to do this because he relied on the Forestry Officer to deliver on many other individual timber agreements important to survival of the mill. The stakeholder analysis no longer seemed relevant, and the discussion began to falter. The facilitator, Jorge, quickly offered to adjust the focus of the discussion to the interests and moral values at stake in the conflict. People representing the forest communities, the municipal government and the municipal mill agreed. The Forestry Officer and the timber buyer remained to defend themselves, but did not participate in the rating exercises. VIP is a participatory inquiry tool that helps compare the positions that stakeholders take on an existing situation or proposed course of action with their actual interests and the moral values they hold. The exercise starts with a Cartesian graph drawn on a flip chart or marked out on the floor. Before they address the problem that concerns them, participants determine whether they will express their positions openly or anonymously and whether this should be done individually, as subgroups or collectively. On the vertical line of the graph, they plot the extent to which the situation or course of action corresponds on the whole to the values they hold, using a scale of +10 to – 10 (placed at opposite ends of the line). They use the horizontal line to plot the extent to which they observe or expect to see net losses or gains (e.g. financial, professional, political) from the situation or course of action, also using a rating scale of +10 to – 10. A mark is placed where scores from the two lines meet. To round out the discussion, participants analyze the collective results and explore ways to improve or modify the situation or course of action so that it better matches their values and interests. The visual and conceptual support is there to structure conversations about what to do.

To facilitate an anonymous and dynamic version of VIP, consider the following option. Create a large-scale version of the diagram on the floor using masking tape. Ask each participant to recreate the diagram on a card and mark their position on the situation or course of action using their personal ratings on the two factors (values and interests). Then ask them to exchange their card with other participants several times so that it can’t be traced. End by inviting all participants to place the card they received or stand in the floor diagram at the location marked on the card. Discussion of the distribution of positions can thereby maintain anonymity, making it easier to discuss sensitive issues openly.

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Positions and values Over a period of several hours, participants in the timber dispute identified four possible positions in response to the conflict and assessed the moral acceptability and the collective gains and losses (interests) associated with each. They began by assessing the status quo where the timber buyer pays very low prices for high-value timber and diverts some contracted timber away from the municipal mill, while the Forestry Officer turns a blind eye. People argued that allowing the Forestry Officer to ignore the illegal actions of her husband was morally unacceptable to them. They gave a value of –5 to the moral acceptability of the current situation and a value of +1 to gains they now have from the sale of timber. This resulted in Position 1 in Figure 14.1. A number of participants repeatedly pushed the mill manager to immediately fire the Forestry Officer. This is position 2 in the figure. The group thought this was the right thing to do because government officials should not be allowed to favour family members when they hold public office. This position received a value of +5 in terms of its moral acceptability. Participants recognized, however, that doing so would put at risk many agreements with the mill set up by the Forestry Officer. Failure to acquire timber as agreed could throw the municipal mill and forest communities into an even deeper crisis. They also acknowledged that firing a local official would have a political cost for the municipality in the form of embarrassment and concerns about their ability to deliver a successful project. On balance, the action could result in significant losses, rated by the group as –8.

Corresponds to my/our values +10

Fire the Forestry Officer

Interests high losses (expected)

-10

Proposed agreement

+10

0

Interests high gains (expected)

Current

community

-10

Contradicts my/our values FIGURE 14.1  Forest conflict management, Bolivia (Source: Adapted from Téllez

Carrasco, 2009, p. 285)

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Knowing the actors During the discussion, the Forestry Officer threatened to organize a community petition to support her if she were fired, an action represented as a third position. She said that many forest communities were satisfied with the agreements they had with timber buyers. She also denied giving any favours to her husband. Participants assessed the possibility of a community petition against the mill and concluded that, even if it was signed by the majority of the forest communities, their concerns about the moral acceptability of the situation would remain (–3 on the scale of moral acceptability). Potential losses, however, could be very damaging. Even if only some of the current agreements were affected by the petition, the municipal mill would fall short of its goal and be embarrassed by the situation (–2 on the scale of gains and losses). The group decided that this position might result in fewer losses than the disruption caused by firing the Forestry Officer, but allowing the behaviour to pass remained morally unacceptable to them (Position 3, Figure 14.1). When writing up his thesis, the facilitator remembered how tense he felt during these discussions as he improvised a line of inquiry different from what had originally been agreed. A shift in energy nonetheless happened when he asked whether participants could imagine a compromise that would satisfy their interests and the moral values they hold. The group was aware that it needed to change from its first position if the mill’s season was to be saved and community commitment maintained. Based on ideas emerging from the discussion, the group developed a series of conditions it would be willing to accept. First, the Forestry Officer would need to commit to active monitoring of all harvest agreements made by timber buyers, including her husband, to ensure that timber committed to the mill was not diverted away. Second, the Forestry Officer would need to work closely with a representative of the municipal government who would monitor her work and make sure there was no favouritism. Third, the timber buyer married to the Forestry Officer would have to sell to the mill some of the timber he had captured improperly, thereby increasing the supply the mill needed for the current season. In exchange, the municipal government, acting through the Forestry Officer, would sign off on new harvest agreements he had already made with forest communities that were still waiting for municipal approval. The group assessed the proposed agreement and concluded that it would satisfy their current interests (+6 on the scale of gains and losses) and would be morally acceptable to them (+6 on the scale of moral acceptability). Their position, shown by the number 4 in Figure 14.1, reflected the group’s view that the proposed compromise could meet their interests and their moral values to a satisfactory degree. Eventually, the Forestry Officer and the timber buyer agreed. The exercise was difficult for everyone. Sometimes the Mayor had to use his authority to keep the discussion going. Occasionally the Forestry Officer and the timber buyer would leave the meeting, only to return after tempers had calmed. Overall, however, the process worked. The initial discussion using the Social Analysis CLIP tool, while aborted, had provided the group with concepts needed to discuss the interests at play for different stakeholders. As the matter at hand was essentially a question of ethical behaviour, a framework bringing interests and values together in a single conversation offered more scope for making headway than the more complex Social Analysis CLIP tool. Using a flip chart to graph the positions helped to focus the discussion on common understandings of the interests and values at stake, and shifted thinking from personal blame and criticism to exploring the values and 288

Positions and values interests the group was willing to negotiate. When a final resolution was reached, all parties agreed that the proposal was satisfactory. This is not to say that it got a perfect score on each count. Nor was it win-win for all parties. The main characters of this story, the Forestry Officer and the timber buyer, lost some feathers in the process, and rightly so. Other participants said that the discussion was more productive than they had initially thought possible given the circumstances. Importantly, the decision held until the end of the harvest season. Although the municipal mill did not get all of the wood it needed, it got enough to show communities the viability and potential benefit of a local mill. The Forestry Officer continued her work but was eventually replaced and the new hire given clearer conflict of interest guidelines. On top of this, the facilitator managed to generate rich ‘field data’ for his doctoral dissertation. But why didn’t this experienced facilitator use other tools to go deeper and unpack each concern, starting with the question of interests associated with each position? No formal inquiry tool was used to pursue the matter of moral acceptability either. In our companion handbook, we offer two tools that can do this. Positions and Interests proposes a table to compare each stakeholder’s net gains or losses with the stakeholder’s level of support for the current situation or proposed action. We also provide instructions on how to insert the results of value discussions into the Social Analysis CLIP table, enhancing the content of an inquiry tool that already covers many aspects of social life. The facilitator could have used Interests as well, a tool to calculate gains and losses with more precision. These tools were familiar to him. So why not use them? Isn’t more advanced thinking always better? The question is rhetorical and the answer obvious: there was no time and no need to go beyond an inquiry that was sufficiently ‘true to life’ to make sense of the conflict at hand and act on it. Although improvised, the action research resulted in an analysis that was ‘for the most part true’, and an outcome that was ‘for the most part good’, as Aristotle puts it. On the analytical front, the questions the facilitator asked about each possible course of action, including the status quo, were clear and simple. They nonetheless led to discussions rich in nuance and with far-reaching implications for the parties at hand. They also fed into a thesis in social forestry that won Jorge a national prize for excellence. Being more systematic and methodical about moral values would not have been the most skilful response to the people and circumstances they were facing. Nor was it necessary for the research at hand. Other situations might provide better opportunities to delve deeper into issues of moral-practical communication, as long as this is for practical reasons and with potentially worthwhile results. The following tool, entitled Lessons and Values, offers just such an option, to be used as needed with and among other tools.

LESSONS AND VALUES : IMMANUEL KANT IN COSTA RICA When exploring moral issues, listing the values that people hold and share may be an obvious place to start. This is a ritual in many organizational development settings where culture change is on the agenda. The exercise is not always straightforward. A good command of the language by participants is needed because values are more abstract and more difficult to put into words than concrete interests. Supplying the buzzwords may seem easy. But the exercise tends to bore those who are mostly concerned with getting things done. 289

Knowing the actors So, the question is how can a discussion about people’s moral compass provide effective and practical guidance to real-life situations? To answer this, we must look for inquiry tools that can do justice to the complexity and implications of value judgements in everyday life. Lessons and Values provides one possible response. Its purpose is to help people better manage a problem by becoming aware of the moral values they hold and applying the lessons learned from other successful actions that are consistent with those values. Figure 14.2 illustrates the different steps to follow, using a real example from Costa Rica (facilitated by J. Chevalier during a training workshop). The exercise starts with a clear statement of the problem that participants find difficult to resolve and that has moral implications they are not entirely satisfied with. In this example, the problem is that people with few livelihood options are being accused of cutting trees in a protected forest near where they live and that was once part of their traditional territory. The next step consists in asking why the rangers doing the analysis take the stand they do, using positive terms to

VALUE 3

VALUE 3

about other people’s needs.

forest guards.

VALUE 2 We must protect the forest for those who need water. VALUE 1 It is important that we protect the forest. LESSONS LEARNED Other problem: locals complain about the forest entrance fees.

LESSONS LEARNED Other problem: last month

Response: we explored

Response: we and made some concessions that showed how much we care about the forest and its mission. But we also gave

of something new that i.e. using some of the revenues to improve local roads.

RESPONSE No one should be allowed to extract reason, and those who do will go to prison. INITIAL PROBLEM Poor people are in the forest.

some gains.

Imagine if we did the same …. FIGURE 14.2  Forest conflict management, Costa Rica

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Positions and values describe the principle or value at stake (protect the forest). The question of why this value is important is repeated for each explanation given. Identifying the higher moral end behind each response is an exercise in laddering up – a form of attentive listening where the ‘why’ question is repeated until one or two core values are reached (see box). Once the hierarchy of values is clarified, participants identify at least one positive situation where they managed to confidently apply their core values to good effect. The situation may be different from the starting problem, but should be a real-life example involving at least some of the same actors and where the actions taken by the participants were consistent with their core values. This provides a comparison. The exercise then returns to the situation identified in Step 1 and invites participants to imagine a response that uses lessons learned about how core values can guide actions toward positive results.

Laddering up or down Laddering up to identify core values is tricky. To begin with, when using a ‘why’ question to understand behaviour, people may provide answers that explain one of three things: what factors cause them to act as they do, what they expect to gain from their response, or why it is the right and moral thing to do. In other words, the discussion revolves around either external factors, the interests that people pursue, or the principles they hold. Since Lessons and Values is concerned with moral issues, the question must focus on people’s sense of right and wrong. To do so, participants must ask themselves ‘Why do we think this value (e.g. peace) is so important?’ or ‘Why is this (e.g. peace) essential in life?’ These questions help people express their life ideals from a moral perspective. Participants will recognize values that are higher up the ladder when they express things that are deeply felt and are central to the image they have of their ideal selves and relationships to each other. The same line of questioning may be used to move in the opposite direction, from abstract principles to their practical implications. This is called laddering down. The end goal here is to discover the concrete interests or needs that follow from the rights or principles people hold. The grounding question can be formulated in different ways, such as ‘What are the benefits for us?’, ‘What would we gain if we did it our way?’, or ‘How would we be affected if it did not go our way?’ For example, principled statements about the right of people to use a forest (such as ‘We live here and this is our forest’) can be laddered down to the concrete needs at play (such as ‘We need firewood for cooking’).

Apart from being practical, Lessons and Values has theoretical underpinnings of its own. The basic inspiration is a mix of positive psychology, Kantian ethics and pragmatic philosophy. Briefly, shades of positive psychology are found in the tool’s search for instances of ‘positive human functioning’, to use the expression coined by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000). Telling stories of what makes life worth living is part of the process. More 291

Knowing the actors is said on this in the next module (on assessing options). For the moment, we explore the Kantian and pragmatic perspectives on people striving to live a moral life. When speaking of their core values, people typically view them as self-evident, completely natural and only-too-logical. They are supreme standards, essential in life, to be recognized by all people of good will. Each core value ‘feels’ like an overriding reason to act in certain ways, an intuitively obvious end that has no end other than itself. These attributes resonate with what Kant says of ‘pure practical reason’. His understanding of morality revolves around the notion of ‘categorical imperative’, as distinct from ‘hypothetical imperatives’, as he calls them. Hypothetical imperatives are statements calling for the exercise of free rational will understood as means-end reasoning. They guide people when choosing among competing ends and the appropriate means to achieve them. By contrast, the categorical imperative is a command that is morally necessary on its own. It involves a ‘moral ought’ that people commit to as an end in itself, not the means or effect of something else. It cannot be tied to any particular situation and must be pursued non-instrumentally, irrespective of the gains and the ‘good life’ that may follow when practised. Last but not least, the categorical imperative commands people to act according to duty and duty alone. This is required not only when it is difficult, but also when there are no obstacles to doing so. The implication here is that compliance with the categorical imperative does not always require a show of Greek virtue or ‘strength of character’. Kant (1993) offers his own formulation of the categorical imperative and what it demands of us using principles that are key to understanding the rise of humanism in the modern age. His view is that our humanity and moral being is defined by free will expressed through rational action. This is the path that humans must follow at all times, whether it be difficult or not. Nothing should be done to put obstacles on this path. Blocking the path of self-governing reason is what people do when they treat themselves or others as objects, i.e. as mere means to some other ends. The formula that captures this understanding of the categorical imperative is well-known: ‘Each one will treat all of his fellowmen as ends in themselves, instead of means to achieving one’s own selfish goals’. In the Kingdom of Ends, as Kant coins it, rational beings come freely together and sovereignly decide to accept this universal law. They govern themselves according to everything that follows from it, including clearly-defined duties of right (e.g. ‘don’t steal’) but also the more flexible ‘duties of ethics and virtue’ (e.g. ‘provide assistance to others as much as you possibly can’). Instead of being free from any laws, persons of ‘good will’ abide by moral principles of their own making. Kantian ethics invite us to reflect on the fundamentals of life and the fulfilment of our humanity. Our current world cannot afford to decline the invitation casually. Some pragmatic thinking is nonetheless needed if we are to cope with the complexity of real-life situations riddled with ethical dilemmas of all kinds. Moral-practical thinking acknowledges that life is a constant juggling act where circumstances insist on playing havoc with practically every categorical principle we can think of. Lessons and Values builds on this dose of softness towards ‘purity’ on the premise that values are like interests: many intersect in ways that are highly variable, and some may be more important than others depending on the situation at hand and the people who decide what really matters ‘in the end’. The juggling act requires that we treat each problem as a ‘case’, with all the circumstances 292

Positions and values surrounding it, including those of culture and history. Kant may be of the view that lying is to be forbidden in any circumstance because it is a denial of the other person’s exercise of reason and free will. Yet no one in his right mind would tell a known murderer the location of his next prey, as Kant would have it. Why? Because lying is a much lesser evil compared to not saving a person’s life, and the only right thing to do. The advantages of not telling the truth more than balance the disadvantages of being truthful. Judging the relative weight of competing moral values, in view of the known circumstances, the factors involved and the consequences of one’s action, is an integral part of ethical wisdom at work. The everyday world and habit of ‘balancing’ many considerations captures an inherent feature of moral-practical reasoning. It is also the term used to describe one method U.S. state and federal courts use to decide constitutional cases. A ‘balancing’ decision involves weighing competing rights and analyzing the relative strengths of many factors, towards a decision that will be case-specific and may be hard to predict. For instance, the court may decide to uphold a statute criminalising distribution of child pornography because the evil eliminated by the statute far outweighs any infringement on free speech interests. Lessons and Values allows for this kind of deliberation regarding competing values and the specifics of the situation at hand. It does so without ignoring core values. While not as ‘absolute’ as Kant’s categorical imperative, these core values are more fundamental to people and less negotiable than lower-ranking values. Decisions based on them may follow a method used in U.S. constitutional hearings, called ‘strict construction’. As in Lessons and Values, the final judgement is based on the strict construction of findings as to how a fundamental right has been protected in previously decided cases, as opposed to taking a ‘balanced’ view where competing rights and social circumstances play a determining role. Lessons and Values straddles the middle line between the ‘no exception’ approach and judgement calls based on the proverbial ‘it all depends’. What falls on each side is itself a matter of considerable debate where conflicting interests combined with profound differences in worldviews matter more than Kantian logic. In the field of morality, what is sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander. Core values that are self-evident and in no need of ethical justification to some people may be viewed as utterly objectionable by others. In U.S. politics, some will insist on using the strict no-exception method and the imperative of self-defence when interpreting the second amendment guaranteeing people’s right to keep and bear arms. Others will prefer to interpret the amendment in light of the conditions when the Constitution was written and changes in society since then. Unfortunately, lessons learned from countless outbursts of gun violence at home may or may not be critical factors for settling the debate.

GETTING TO NO VERSUS THE HARVARD MODEL Conflicts that seem intractable typically revolve around entrenched either-or positions, emotional and principled claims concerning who is right and wrong, the imposition of rule and the exercise of power. An alternative to rights or power-based contests is interest-based negotiation, known as the Harvard model of negotiation. The focus is on discussing underlying 293

Knowing the actors goals, assessing key gains and losses to each party, and negotiating a win-win solution to the dispute. It is principled in its own way, in that it is truthful and non-adversarial. It is a call for the exercise of reason and dialogue with an enlightened and creative understanding of self-interest (Fisher and Ury, 2011). ‘Getting to YES’ has nonetheless a darker side, a strictly pragmatic orientation that can accept practically anything, including unprincipled behaviour. When closely examined, the primary purpose of interest-framed dialogue is to bargain for peace and order, not to eradicate injustice. The approach is not meant to challenge existing power imbalances. Addressing individual or group interests without first attending to the non-negotiables of life – without clearly saying ‘no’ when ‘no’ is clearly called for – is objectionable. When ‘Yes’ is simply not the ‘right’ thing to say, truthful dialogue should enable people to voice an intractable ‘No’. This is the approach expressed in the resolve of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. It also underlies Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of active but nonviolent resistance in the face of injustice. Through civil disobedience, non-cooperation, fasting and the positive statement of demands, the force of reason and moral conscience uphold a position of unarguable truth. This is not weakness or pacifism but rather satyagrapha, ‘truth force’ as an alternative form of persuasion and politics in the pursuit of a just cause. For Gandhi, debate and respectful discussion with opponents are a crucial part of nonviolent resistance. Adversaries are always worthy of regard, patience and even compassion. Dialogue and reason prevail over the use of force. There are no losers, only winners. The satyagrapha path, however, is never complacent about existing regimes of power and wrongdoing (Gandhi, 1928). Apathy and cowardice as a response to oppression and the pillage of Nature is not an option. Also, in this approach to conflict management, answers to problems are never simply utilitarian and pragmatic, placing reasoning or immediate interests above all else (Gupta, 2009, p. 30). Rather, core values always come first and are best expressed through non-violence, i.e. ahimsa, a resolve that is as demanding of the oppressed as it is of the oppressor. By steadfastly refusing to retaliate against violent acts, Gandhi drove opponents to defeat through the pressure of moral bankruptcy. By holding to this deeply-felt value, he also reminded the world that people can engage in a principled struggle without submitting passively. In these teachings lies an instance of getting to NO: negotiating agreement without giving in. When compared to interests and principles, basic needs and core values matter more deeply and last longer. They are what organs and bones are to skin and muscle – the foundations and compelling forces of social life, not their strategic day-to-day formulation and regulation. Wise planners and conflict mediators must take them into account. This is not to say that life in society should be reduced to its bare bones at all times. Surface interests and principles are also vital, provided they are fleshed out and kept in line with what is deeply felt and matters the most.

REFERENCES Aristotle (2011) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. R. C. Bartlett and S. D. Collins, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

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Positions and values Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (2011) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in, 3rd edn., Penguin, New York. Gandhi, M. K. (1928) Satyagraha in South Africa, trans. V. J. Desai, Navajtvan, Ahmedabad, India. Gupta, D. (2009) ‘Gandhi Before Habermas: The Democratic Consequences of Ahimsa’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no.10, pp. 27–33. Habermas, J. (1981) Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. T. McCarthy, Beacon, Boston, MA. Habermas, J. (1988) On the Logic of the Social Sciences, trans. S. W. Nicholson and J. A. Stark, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Kant, I. (1993) [1785] Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. J. W. Ellington, 3rd edn., Hackett, Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge. Plato (1967) Plato II: Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Reich, W. (1975) The Mass Psychology of Fascism, transl. V. R. Carpagno, Penguin, Hardmonsworth. Rosen, M. (1996) On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Rosenberg, M. B. (2015) Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 3rd edn., PuddleDancer, Encinitas, CA. Seligman, M. E. P. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000) ‘Positive Psychology: An introduction’, American Psychologist, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 5–14. Téllez Carrasco, J. A. (2009) ‘Aproximación a los proyectos de desarrollo forestal desde el diálogo entre los sistemas de conocimiento y los intereses involucrados. Los pequeños productores forestales en la Chiquitania (Bolivia)’, PhD Thesis, CID-CRUMA, Madrid.

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MODULE 5

Assessing options

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CHAPTER 15

Thinking outside the box

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL INNOVATION Participatory Action Research attempts to make sense of the world and make it better as well. The endeavour requires ‘skilful means’ to plan research and assess results against goals across a range of settings and conditions, knowing that evidence gathering and rigour must be balanced with dialogue, sensemaking and flexibility through design. Module 2 addressed and illustrated the design process at some length. Modules 3 and 4 went on to explore the ‘skilful means’ needed to inquire into the nature and the causes of existing problems, and then the ways the concerned parties interact with one another, based on the power at their disposal, the interests they pursue and the values they hold. This Module pursues a new line of questioning, which no longer concerns actors and the problems they face but rather the options they choose. The focus in on ways to imagine the future, recognize and bridge differences in views and language, build collaborative relationships and anticipate the risks involved in choosing a course of action, including the status quo option. We open up the topic by looking at creativity and innovation from a social perspective – people thinking outside the box and joining efforts to imagine and achieve a better future. The topic attracts the attention of many researchers and organizations in the private and public sectors concerned about meeting the challenges of our time. Innovation Labs are popping up everywhere, creating fertile ground for the rediscovery of PAR and the development of novel adaptations. A Canadian Government Innovation Lab at ISED (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada) is one of them. In the summer of 2017 it received a request from the Executive Director for Consultations and Public Engagement at the Privy Council Office to introduce her team and others in the Government of Canada to the methods of PAR. The request was prompted by curiosity about PAR and a commitment by the current government to meaningful public engagement in the development of government priorities, policies, programmes and services. We were invited to plan and deliver the workshop, announced as ‘Tools for public deliberation: Beyond surveys and focus groups’. Our intent was to highlight a key challenge for proponents of meaningful public engagement: how to innovate methodologically. Within a few hours places in the

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Assessing options two-day workshop were filled with 40 mid- and upper-level public servants responsible for public and workplace engagement across many government departments. We decided to start the ball rolling by using an online tool to explore participant profiles and expectations. Prior to the event, registrants were invited to use an open-source editor called Framapad to state their primary work areas and cluster themselves with others having a similar profile. Affinity groups formed quickly. We also asked the group as a whole to complete the following aspirational statement: ‘We take this workshop because we think that workplace and public engagement by the Federal Public Service needs to be more. . . . ’ Following is a summary of participant responses. Workplace and public engagement by the Federal Public Service needs to be. . . More innovative, by •

•

experimenting with new approaches and adapting them to meet the needs and expectations of the audience, not just what is easiest/most convenient for us, including in the context of building nation-to-nation relationships with indigenous peoples; cultivating creativity, which means acknowledging that all public servants have value to contribute and unleashing that creativity and talent so that we can all do better work for Canadians.

More user-centred, by •

•

designing for and with people, not for the system. This means putting the needs of Canadians at the centre of all we do, especially in policy and programme development; going to people where they’re at, instead of expecting them to come to a single platform with limited options for two-way engagement.

More interactive, by • •

rallying expertise beyond our own, which should be second nature to us and part of our collective skill-set and mindset; creating interaction spaces where Canadians connect with each other and creatively use their differences of opinion and their diversity of experiences to build bridges to new futures.

More inclusive, by • •

reducing barriers to participation, whether physical, cultural, gender, geographic, linguistic, digital, or other; offering a variety of channels and methods to ensure the widest possible participation.

More open, by •

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being ‘open by default’ with participants, talking about what we heard, explaining how we understood the feedback coming in, including how their input was used, and looping back to say ‘this is what we heard; what did we miss?’;

Thinking outside the box •

making the data we gather available and accessible to Canadians (on an open data platform) whenever possible, so that others may reuse and build on our work in the future.

More critical, by •

• •

developing an honest, self-reflexive understanding of where our inadequacies lie, acknowledging our failures so we can learn from them and stop repeating them; taking action based on evidence; always asking more questions, and challenging assumptions about problems and solutions.

More sustainable, by •

incorporating better practices as habits in our public service culture, talking about them and sharing examples.

These elements, co-edited by participants using the online editor, are the crux of a vision and mission statement expressing individual and collective aspirations for public engagement. Developing it further was not part of the workshop plan, but the process helped us discover what aspects of the workshop we needed to emphasize to meet their needs. The dialogue had begun, using a simple online tool creatively. This modelled what we were looking for: a novel process designed to engage groups of people in thinking outside the box, collaboratively and efficiently. What came next took us into the ‘how’ of public deliberation, that is, the tools, skills and process design concepts helpful to creating innovative, user-centred, interactive, inclusive, open, critical and sustainable engagement in the public sphere. It also firmly established why we need to move beyond the conventional survey and focus group methods that largely define the world of public consultation by governments. Calls for new approaches to engaging citizens in discussions of their own future connect a wide range of perspectives and activities under the rubric of social innovation (SI). They reflect widespread recognition in both scholarship and policy that current responses to the major challenges of our age are not up to the task (Nicholls et al., 2015; Moulaert et al., 2013; Mulgan, 2012). Saving the planet, and co-creating a better world, is not business as usual. It requires moving beyond routine adjustments to existing situations and creating new relationships that work and make a difference. For some scholars, SI is also grounded in efforts to address social exclusion and manage growing demands on public resources through more efficient and effective public services (Evers et al., 2014; Harris and Albury, 2009; Jenson, 2015). The ‘innovation imperative’ in the public service focusses on social needs ‘which can be neglected by traditional forms of private market provision and which have often been poorly served or unresolved by services organized by the state’ (Harris and Albury, 2009, p. 16). Public sector reform is only one thread in SI practice, however. ‘Bottom of the pyramid’ commercial undertakings are another way to address the failure of markets to meet social needs, especially among the world’s poorest populations (Prahalad and Hart, 301

Assessing options 2002; Cannatelli et al., 2012). Low-cost water, energy and communication technologies are examples, bringing together the Appropriate Technology Movement of the 1960s with emerging opportunities to create profitable businesses serving consumers on the margins of mainstream markets. The emergence of new institutional structures, commercial arrangements and governance rules also have the potential to reshape markets and change who benefits from markets (Nicholls and Murdock, 2012). Fair trade and micro-finance are leading examples. A common feature of these initiatives, other than the focus on marketeconomic relationships, is that they bring together ‘the traditionally disparate logics of the private, public, and civil society sectors’ (Nicholls et al., 2015, p. 16). This creates hybrid business models with the potential to generate both public and private value (Phills et al., 2008). The wide-ranging character of SI has prompted many researchers to conclude that the idea is a ‘quasi-concept’ – a hybrid idea used to empirically describe different observable phenomena. This assessment raises a fundamental issue concerning tools and methods for novel thinking: who are they for? Much like the stakeholder concept, SI is ‘adaptable to a variety of situations and flexible enough to follow the twists and turns of policy that everyday politics sometimes makes necessary’ (Jensen and Harrison, 2013, p. 15). The plasticity of the concept leaves proponents of market-oriented SI open to criticism, especially when it comes to addressing the role of politics and power as drivers of social history. In practice, SI may be no more than another ‘caring liberalism’ that privileges ‘social enterprise as the key agent for social change and the economy as the primary sphere of social life’ (Jessop et al., 2013, p. 111). The fact that welfare services are continuously dismantled through social innovations designed to free up movements of markets and capital seems to confirm the point. ‘In public policy, there has often been the suggestion that such innovations will substitute for, rather than complement, present welfare arrangements. This has made the [SI] concept rather suspicious, in the eyes of many’ (Brandsen et al., 2016, p. 4). In the same vein, Nicholls, Simon and Gabriel, referencing Schumpeter’s Marxian-inspired notion of ‘creative destruction’, remind us that SI creates value for some and destroys it for others. The rise of the digital economy and the myriad unanticipated consequences of social media show that SI ‘can have a “dark side” that challenges normative assumptions that (social) innovation is always positive (i.e. improvement rather than just change)’ (Nicholls et al., 2015, p. 6). While open to varying interpretations, SI can play a positive role in social history provided it is critical of existing structures and addresses key challenges of our age. If it is to transform rather than simply attenuate the tendency of business and the state to serve the interests of the few, it must also reshape ‘relations of power, solidarity and affect between individuals and social groups’ (Moulaert et al., 2013, p. 2). From this perspective, SI is more akin to a driver of social movements, with political goals and tactics that cannot be interpreted in narrowly market-economic terms. Popular education, urban renewal, worker cooperative federations, transition communities and various initiatives in participatory democracy are people-centred social innovations that empower and mobilize socially and politically. Nonviolent resistance (Sharp, 2002), we would argue, is another example of an SI, inspiring the Gandhian struggle for Indian Independence, student sit-in action for Civil Rights, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and Idle No More, among many other 302

Thinking outside the box movements giving voice to new political ideas and advancing an emancipatory agenda on a national and global scale. This is a far cry from older notions of social entrepreneurs as the focal point for innovation. SI seen as a force for social justice and alternative development invites a whole systems approach, including an ecological view on human beings interacting with other life forms and their biophysical surroundings (Olsson et al., 2017). As in PAR, the strategies used are typically collaborative, multi-disciplinary and disruptive, just like the end goals SI strives to achieve (BEPA, 2011; Kershaw et al., 2017). They include efforts to create new organizational models and apply new technology to help ideas scale out to local settings and scale up to support broader system transformation goals (Simon et al., 2017; Westley et al., 2014). Much of the focus is on creating favourable conditions and environments for innovation, including collective spaces for the expression of creativity (Johnson, 2010; Westley and Laban, 2015). On the whole, however, the SI literature is vague when it comes to the concept of creativity and how it fits in the larger context of science serving the goals of life in society.

CREATIVITY AND METHODOLOGICAL BRICOLAGE Efforts to stimulate creativity for effective problem solving have a long history and have produced a rich body of tools and practice. In Chapter 3, we saw how historical changes in the way we understand science, industry and the world paved the way for the development of a new science of people- and evidence-based action experiments. This pragmatic and democratic shift in science involved a probabilistic understanding of quality control in the sphere of production, and the extension of step-by-step scientific thinking to collaborative problem solving, mostly in workplace settings. Along with this also came a more flexible understanding of the relationship between scientific reasoning and other forms of thinking, ranging from Freud’s free association to Bergson’s intuition (Bergson, 1952) and Osborn’s ‘applied imagination’ (Osborn, 1963). Since the 1950s, people have developed and promoted legions of techniques to support group-based ‘outside of the box’ thinking. ‘Creative problem solving’ is now a routine part of facilitated group dynamics at work, at school, in community life and in multistakeholder settings. While a major step in the right direction, efforts to promote creativity can fall prey to two common traps. The first consists in using creativity tools on their own (for visioning, brainstorming, ideation, etc.), without due attention to the goal-oriented actions that bring people together in the first place. Unless they harness the skills of pragmatic and critical social thinking, creativity exercises can trivialize important issues that require effective action. The second trap is to simply insert creativity steps into fixed, standard methodologies, as though creativity were a single moment in a process that remains rational and routine-like in all other respects. In our view, PAR needs to take creativity to a higher level, beyond isolated leaps of imagination or fully-packaged methods that incorporate creativity tools along the way. An alternative that goes further and has a wider scope consists in making the design of each action inquiry a creative act of its own. This means selecting, designing, combining, scaling 303

Assessing options and tweaking the tools that suit the precise situation, some of which may be creativity tools proper, and making sure the overall process is lively, generative, rigorous, useful and flexible all at once. Ultimately, this is the creativity we’re aiming for in this book, illustrated through stories of how tools can be adjusted and combined to help people think outside the box while being methodical and action-oriented at the same time. Creativity never exists in a vacuum, emerging out of nothing, ex nihilo, as it were. If it is to add value to problem solving, it must be built into the entire process, by blending the human imagination with practical and moral reasoning, weaving all capabilities into a single fabric. Creativity should thus inform the way PAR practitioners set context-specific goals, determine the rules to follow and ensure a good match between the objectives pursued and the means chosen to attain them. At stake here is creation ex materia, an art form grounded in reality, the kind where ‘nothing comes from nothing’, as Parmenides would say. Brainstorming that fits a purpose, for instance, is an art that must follow certain rules if it is to be effective. Osborn, who first coined the term, explained how to frame the exercise: participants must suspend judgement while they generate and creatively build on as many different ideas as possible, including the crazy ones (Osborn, 1963). Of course, going for quantity rather than quality makes sense if people are to free their minds and explore the open terrain that lies outside the proverbial box. However, the success of brainstorming hinges on people exercising sound judgement and reasoning when establishing the goals and specific conditions and procedures that launch the process. As usual, the devil is in the details. Masters of brainstorming such as Kaner, Kelley and Littman insist on a well-honed statement of the problem people gather to brainstorm around in the first place (Kaner, 1996; Kelley and Littman, 2001). The considerations are: choosing the right topic to focus on and the right time for it; defining the purpose of the exercise and whose interests it will serve; engaging the right people and making sure they are sufficiently informed about the topic so they will not reinvent the wheel; and deciding who will do the facilitation, where and with what procedures (time frame, online or not, individually, in groups or collectively, etc.). The critical use of brainstorming should also consider how to keep the discussion going after the initial creative burst. Good ideas may need to simmer for a while and continue to collide and inform each other over time and in different spaces, as in an iterative and networked brainstorming process. In our experience, rushing into the creative mode with little concern for these end-goals and follow-up considerations invites feelings of time wasted and predictable frustration. Giving due attention to the role of critical social thinking and action is also key to filling creativity with a sense of purpose. The French mathematician Poincaré once said ‘It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better’ (Poincaré, 1952). Given our remarks on brainstorming, Poincaré’s maxim could be amended to read as follows: ‘It is by the combined efforts of logic and intuition that we prove and discover. To know how to create is good, to know how to be creative with a critical mind is better’. Creativity and critical thinking working in tandem is all the more relevant as calls for original and novel ways of thinking have long since ceased to be original and novel. When treated as panaceas for the many challenges we face, routine calls for ‘thinking outside the box’ add up to what is now a tired message: the 304

Thinking outside the box power of human imagination can fix the many messes of our age and still leave the power structures of business, state and science unscathed. In the end, individual and local creativity matters more, we are told, than political courage and struggles for greater justice. Breton and Trotsky’s thoughts on art and revolution are not out of place here: ‘we cannot remain indifferent to the intellectual conditions under which creative activity takes place’ (Breton and Trotsky, 1968, p. 483). Creativity framed as a claim to a free and libertarian spirit runs the risk of ignoring the many constraints on creative potential in society in general but also in settings specifically ‘designed’ to silence alternative voices and views of a better world. Using creativity tools is good. Being creative and critical when developing a full action inquiry process is far more challenging. Process innovation grounded in real settings is all the more important as it may affect the way we actually use creativity tools. It also helps us avoid old habits that may pass unnoticed. For instance, what if creative thinking started not with a problem in need of a solution, as per normal practice, but rather with an appreciation of what is and what we have, including dreams of the future? What if we were to see the box differently, more positively, introducing light and openings into it from the start? Appreciative Inquiry (AI) contributes to this line of reasoning by focussing on ‘the search for the best in people, their organizations, and the strengths-filled, opportunity-rich world around them’ (Stavros et al., 2015). AI doesn’t propose methods and models of organizational change proper. Nor does it offer fixed rules or techniques to frame the inquiry process. The practitioner’s code is more what might be called ‘guidelines’ than actual rules. These guidelines, designed to inquire into a system’s strengths, possibilities and successes, follow a cycle through five steps: (1) defining the topic of inquiry, or what the system wants more of; (2) discovering the best of what is already there to work with; (3) dreaming or imagining a preferred future or what might be; (4) designing a future that should be, by bringing together what’s already working with what might be; and (5) delivering this vision through concrete decisions and plans to implement the design. Strengthsbased thinking is combined with consensus building to produce a positive future result. Design Thinking is another forward-looking and solution-based perspective. Initially it was a body of research into how creative designers (architects, industrial design engineers, product designers) give shape to ideas, with results feeding into efforts to teach industrial design and improve design practice (Archer, 1965; Rowe, 1991; Cross et al., 1991). While this research continues, today it is also closely associated with deliberate efforts to innovate socially both in business environments and more generally in response to large-scale public policy challenges (Bason, 2017; Kelley and Littman, 2001). Design Thinking is now a fully-packaged social innovation methodology. In general, it uses representational languages (drawing, modelling, whole-body ways of doing) to design not only buildings and products but also user experiences and problem-solving action by all the interested and affected parties (Faste, 2001; Kershaw et al., 2017). It applies an ethnographic lens to problem posing by inviting designers and stakeholders to walk in each others’ shoes. Techniques such as Journey Maps (reconstructing the path of users), Empathy Maps (exploring what users think, see, hear, do, say and feel) and Pain to Gain Diagrams (identifying the symptoms and root causes of ‘pain points’, providing stop-gap measures and identifying opportunities for a fundamental fix), among many others, are used to collectively formulate the problem or opportunity at hand. Idea generation follows, using techniques like brainstorming to ‘go 305

Assessing options wide’ in terms of possible futures (divergent thinking), followed by efforts to recombine the best ideas into new forms (convergent thinking). Diversity of stakeholders and perspective, teamwork and openness to the risk of failure are critical ingredients for maximizing creative possibilities on the margins of current ideas. Finally, Design Thinking as a methodology shares with PAR a commitment to innovative action, embedded in the design practice of creating prototypes of possible solutions that are tested and redesigned through rapid cycles of iteration and refinement (Bason, 2017). Design Labs, MakerSpaces and LEGO Serious Play Kits, along with technology-enabled modelling such as three-D printers, create opportunities for designers and users to test out new ideas to see if they actually work. Creativity is a faculty that finds expression in paradoxical ways. For one thing, it allows something new to emerge from the present state of things and from routine ways of being and doing. This is the realm of ‘the adjacent possible’, what Johnson describes as ‘a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself’ (Johnson, 2010, p. 31). Whatever form the roadmap may take, however, one thing remains constant: to unlock creativity, the mind must step outside the strict rules of science, and engage with human intuition and other forms of thinking. This brings us back to a central issue in this chapter (and the whole book): the relationship between creative thinking, on the one hand, and the mind following a set path inspired by logic and the rational pursuit of social ends, on the other. Thus far we have cautioned problem-solvers against using creativity techniques uncritically, without a good compass to guide the journey. We now caution against veering to the other extreme, which consists in framing and packaging action inquiry methods too strictly (or for ‘social engineering’ purposes mostly, as in some variants of Design Thinking). This is the risk when creative thinking becomes a fixed methodology or a single step in a well-planned journey, rather than a principle to help design methodologies that break new ground. Tools to foster creativity on its own or as part of well laid out methodologies should not be too methodical less they defeat the purpose of unleashing the power of free thinking and social innovation. To avoid this risk, we make a distinction between two kinds of methodologies: the generic and the specific. The first kind consists of generally accepted practices, procedures and rules to conduct an inquiry. For instance, standardized, multi-step methodologies in the health field have been developed to assess cases of severe obesity. Exams and tests generally involve the doctor reviewing the person’s health history, doing a general physical exam, checking the body max index, measuring the weight circumference, assessing other related health problems, and then conducting blood tests. Despite the debates that may surround them, these procedures are well known and widely used. By contrast, specific methodologies vary according to the needs of each inquiry. Students and researchers in the social sciences are familiar with this context-specific understanding of methodological design. To undertake an inquiry, say the causes of eating disorders on the rise in a given population, researchers must explain and justify how they propose to identify, collect and analyze the information needed to better understand the problem. This means no copying and pasting of a ready-made methodology is allowed. Hard scientists also have a tradition of developing methodologies fit for use. This is what Eddington did when he designed and performed the perfect experiment to test Einstein’s general 306

Thinking outside the box theory of relativity, using a total solar eclipse (on May 29, 1919) to see if light travels in a straight line or not. Applying generic methodologies in situations that call for specific methodological strategies is symptomatic of a widespread problem called solutionism. This is the belief that all problem situations can be understood and fixed using relatively stable, clearly-defined methodologies. The latter may include brainstorming or some other form of creative thinking as an important step or method in finding a solution. Creativity is then applied to substantive issues but not the overall problem-solving process. Another word for this orientation is technophilia, the fascination for tools that will repair whatever happens to be broken. One consequence of this is summed up in Mark Twain’s saying: every problem looks like a nail when the only tool you have is a hammer. This is not to say we should be suspicious of tools and techniques in general, and put our trust instead in the ‘general spirit’ of whatever approach we use. Operating on a wing and a prayer is not the alternative. In our view, the art of PAR lies somewhere between technophilia and technophobia. It consists in exercising judgement creatively when choosing between using generic methodologies and inventing specific methodologies that best fit the situation. If the latter is the right choice, which should be the case more often than not, practitioners must take steps to create, select, sequence, combine and adapt tools they judge will get the job done. They must tailor the sequence of methods to specific needs, even at the risk of failure. Seeking success despite the uncertainty of outcomes is preferable to setting oneself up for failure through fixed methodologies that allow no doubt. When it comes to designing inquiry methodologies that are action oriented, socially engaging, user-centred, interactive, inclusive and sustainable, innovating outside the box of standardized procedures and manuals is essential. If they are to adapt to local circumstances, available methods must be ‘tinkered with’ and combined with original tools like building blocks in the advancement of concrete goals. Reconfiguring tools and introducing novel techniques is particularly important in complex settings where problems get ‘messy’ and ‘wicked’ in the sense that they are not clearly understood and both the solutions and methodologies to find them remain unknown (Buchanan, 1992). Our approach to PAR consists in constantly inventing and reconfiguring a wide array of group facilitation and inquiry tools, some of which focus on creative thinking proper. The latter include exercises from improvisational theatre, storytelling, visualization and other forms of art and imagining to support aspirational thinking, the disruption of fixed ideas and perspectives, or creative synthesis (see our companion handbook and books on improvisational theatre). From this perspective, innovation achieved through action inquiry has more in common with do-it-yourself bricolage than with the development of fixed methodologies, however novel they may be. A bricoleur is by definition a tinkerer, someone who likes to get inside a machine and fiddle with it, learning it inside out before reassembling the parts and combining them with parts from other existing machines to create new uses. This is how ‘ingenious contraptions’ get built to serve a particular purpose, if only for a while. When brought together and adjusted to fit, all the parts obtained from different sources help generate unique PAR events that are reflexive, practical and dialogical all at once. This is in line with Lévi-Strauss’s understanding of the ‘savage mind’ (LéviStrauss, 1966), except that our version of the ‘science of the concrete’ takes goal-oriented 307

Assessing options action into consideration, real-world issues that Lévi-Straussian studies of symbolic systems generally ignore. To illustrate an approach to creativity and the action inquiry process, we turn our attention to The Carrousel, a novel and flexible variation on the World Café. As we’re about to see, the tool and its building blocks bring together creative thinking and analysis with rational dialogue and consensus building, towards the development of a shared vision of the future, and a meaningful course of action suitable to all the parties involved.

THE CARROUSEL, CREE TOURISM AND ANIMAL HEALTH Over the last 20 years or so, public engagement has tried to move away from conventional conference-like events dominated by experts. A style of presentation called PechaKucha, from the Japanese for ‘chit-chat’, is a relatively recent contribution in this regard. The logic, invented in 2013, is brutally simple. As speakers almost always talk too much, they are given a precise amount of airtime to present: 20 slides with 20 seconds to present each slide, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. PechaKucha events are typically organized by city networks and used mostly in the creative fields. Open Space Technology (Owen, 2008) has a broader range of applications. The process starts with people sitting in a circle, to be welcomed by the host and a facilitator who briefly explains the general principles. Participants are invited to think of an issue and opportunity that really matters to them and announce what they want to discuss with others. They post their core idea on a wall or a bulletin board, and invite others to join the discussion by signing up, if only for a while. Each self-identified convenor is responsible for proposing the topic, scheduling the session, starting the discussion, and taking notes. Once sessions are identified, discussions begin, with health breaks scheduled at periodic intervals. Participants follow the ‘law of two feet’, which is the unspoken permission to go somewhere else, at any time, if they consider they are neither learning nor contributing. At the end of the allocated time, everyone comes back to the circle for concluding observations and highlights. Notes may be compiled later into a proceedings document, if appropriate and if time is allowed for it. Other tools may be used within each session to identify main recommendations and next steps, if relevant. The strength of Open Space Technology lies in the power of shared leadership, emergence and self-organization to guide the ‘business of learning’ – enabling participants to co-create the working agenda that suits them, with minimum intervention from convenors and facilitators. The World Café (Brown and Isaacs, 2005) applies similar principles, using rules of engagement that are different but equally simple. Meetings are convened around predefined topics and participants invited to discuss the same topic at different tables. They switch tables periodically so participants can continue to share their views and learn from each other. They may change their views along the way, based on what they hear and summaries of previous discussions from people that stay at a table. Notes may be taken (e.g. doodling on paper table coverings) in preparation for a final whole group discussion. The last phase of The World Café, often called the ‘harvest’, invites the whole group to identify patterns of thinking and collective insights on the matter at hand. 308

Thinking outside the box These group facilitation techniques are refreshing alternatives to formal conferences and public meetings limited to presentations with questions and answers. They spare people from the risk of death by PowerPoint, and the associated constraints on participation and creative thinking. Even so, they should not be applied in all situations. Nor should they be treated mechanically, as stand-alone methods to create dialogue for its own sake. In a PAR perspective, conversations about things that truly matter must by definition attempt to answer the ‘so what’ and the ‘now what’ questions. Open Space Technology events help people explore ‘topics of interest’ identified on the spot, but they should not stay there, like ‘chit-chatting’ that leads nowhere. The Carrousel, our adaptation inspired by features of PechaKucha, The World Café and Open Space Technology, is another highly flexible group-facilitation technique with no pre-conceived ideas regarding the issues that merit discussion. Instead of using it as a stand-alone, we normally combine it with other tools to respond to the needs of complex, action-oriented situations. This requires that we ‘tinker with’ and combine The Carrousel with other skilful means illustrated in this book, plus methods such as the Pomodoro Technique, the graphic arts, improvisational theatre and storytelling. Tools used often in our designs are attentive listening combined with the Balint method, Free List and Pile Sort, The Socratic Wheel, Sabotage, Contribution and Feasibility, Levels of Support, Ranking or Rating and VIP (Values, Interests, Positions). The resulting bricolage may seem complicated and potentially ad hoc, but it’s not, provided people know the purpose of coming together in the first place, and never lose track of it. First, let’s see how The Carrousel works on its own. As with the World Café, the purpose of the exercise should be defined ahead of time, as clearly as possible, and validated with participants before discussion begins. The importance of this step cannot be overstated. Groups of people asking themselves the right question at the right time and in the right form is fundamental to the practice of PAR. The ‘question of the day’ sets the scene for everything that follows. Once the question is explained and modified as needed, participants divide themselves into teams of five to eight people for rounds of small-group discussion. Each team may work on the same question, or focus on a different task, depending on what the process is meant to achieve. Team members elect a skilled note taker and a spokesperson and develop a proposal of their own, in the time allotted for the task. When ready, all members of the team except the spokesperson and the note taker move together to hear the proposal of another table, provide comments, and ‘steal’ good ideas to advance their own team proposal. If teams are working on different tasks, travellers to other tables can focus on taking note of possible connections between different proposals, and ways to integrate them. Spokespeople and note takers stay at their original table, present their proposal to each visiting team, and take detailed notes of the feedback. They act as hosts for visiting teams. The key idea of PechaKucha (don’t talk too much) limits presentations. Furthermore, the host task is not to debate or counter the observations made by visitors, but rather to collect them as new design elements for consideration by the original proponents. Two or three rounds of visits are usually enough to share key ideas and collect ideas for new iterations of idea prototypes. Once the rounds are completed, each team reconvenes to review the feedback, discuss ideas picked up from other teams and revise and create a 309

Assessing options new synthesis of their own proposal. The exercise ends with a plenary session where all teams present their result, with a focus on revisions from earlier iterations and an overall synthesis. The process as a whole allows for reflection and several rounds of improvements to action-oriented ideas. Consensus is developed gradually, through fast iterations of prototypes, before decisions are reached in plenary. As with other tools, apparently small decisions on design can make or break the process. A good example of this, as we’re about to see, is whether the original teams should be homogeneous or mixed. More generally, PAR practitioners should never miss an opportunity to mix, match and adapt the tool, by tweaking the process and combining it with other facilitation and analytic techniques that add value to the overall process and increase the chances of success. Combinations can remain simple. Mixing The Carrousel and The Socratic Wheel is a good place to start. To illustrate, here is a story from Northern Quebec and a government programme to foster economic development by supporting tourism ‘niches of excellence’ that are competitive in the North American context and globally as well. In October of 2010, Quebec government officials convened a meeting of representatives responsible for consulting and engaging key players, businesses and leaders on a common vision of the tourism niche and brand for the northern region of James Bay and Eeyou Istchee (Cree for ‘The People’s Land’). Sixteen Cree and non-native representatives from the region attended the meeting, which took place in the Cree community of Ouje-Bougoumou. For some, this was considered a last chance to reach agreement as previous efforts had failed. J. Chevalier designed and facilitated the meeting, in consultation with an organizing committee. The first day began with a brief presentation of the programme and discussion of what a successful brand would look like. On the whole, the participants felt that the niche of excellence should be unique to the region, reach an international market and build on existing natural assets, infrastructure and human resources. It should be viable and sustainable, bring tangible benefits to the partners and communities involved, and remain under their effective control. Also, the overall approach used to develop the niche should be participatory and guided by principles of mutual trust, respect and effective teamwork. We converted these vision statements, elicited through Free List and Pile Sort, into criteria for assessing the brand within an application of The Socratic Wheel (see Chapter 5). The circular graph was presented as a Dreamcatcher, an Ojibwe symbol of protection. The second day posed a greater challenge: agreeing on the precise wording of a shared vision of tourism in the North. This would be a formal statement that would satisfy the criteria laid out in The Socratic Wheel and receive full committee endorsement leading to substantial financial backing from the government of Quebec. Previous attempts to create a vision that both natives and non-natives would endorse had failed. The facilitator proposed The Carrousel to unblock the situation. Participants formed three mixed groups (natives and non-natives) and went through several rounds of The Carrousel to iron out differences in language and views regarding tourism in their region, towards a draft vision statement that everyone would be willing to endorse. Groups were mixed for the following reason: natives and non-natives had been arguing back and forth over this question for several years, knew each other’s positions, and had not reconciled differences. Creating homogeneous tables of only natives and only 310

Thinking outside the box non-natives would have put the devil in the group-formation detail. Mechanically applying a rule that homogenous groups should first discuss matters separately, as is often done where power differentials are present, is no substitute for the exercise of judgement in context and design fit-for-purpose. In this case, homogeneous tables of natives and nonnatives would likely have brought people back to their entrenched positions and reaffirmed views on both sides of the divide. Considerably more time would have been needed to move beyond what had already been tried and failed. In each round, participants were asked to evaluate their own proposal and those of others against the criteria established on the previous day, now drawn as spokes in a Dreamcatcher. At the end of the process, the plenary converted the three negotiated statements into a final wording. To do so, the whole group first underlined the key words and phrases that met with general approval, and used them to produce two complementary formulations. One message invited the broader public to ‘Discover the great open spaces of James Bay and Eeyou Istchee by travelling heritage routes through time. Learn and experience our living history and the Cree traditional land use and way of life’. The other was a vision statement for the programme funding, and evoked a mutual agreement to ‘Position James Bay and Eeyou Istchee as a vast northern territory of rare natural beauty, rich in biodiversity, with a vibrant Cree culture to be discovered’. While superficially noncontroversial, the two statements acknowledged the importance of Cree culture in a region now inhabited by both natives and non-natives. Tensions between the two communities remained, but both statements received full support from all participants, much to everyone’s surprise. The rest of the day was dedicated to discussions about innovative tourism products and services as well as plans to put the vision into effect. Figure 15.1 brings our discussion of methodological ‘bricolage’ to another level. It shows how PAR practitioners can assemble The Caroussel and several other tools within a broader process that supports action inquiry over time, rather than coming down to a single event. Both authors have had many opportunities to use more advanced ‘methodological combos’ in different settings and countries around the world on topics ranging from nutrition policy in Mali and Burkina Faso (Chapters 9 and 16) to research on aid transparency in a half dozen countries (Chapter 6). In Canada alone, we have combined The Carrousel with a range of PAR tools in a dozen major multistakeholder events focussed on issues of animal health and attempts to reduce the use of antimicrobials in the farm sector. Most of these events, held between 2015 and 2018, were convened and hosted by the Canadian Animal Health Surveillance System (CAHSS), an initiative of the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council (NFAHWC), with broad-based collaborative support from producers and governments across the country. Collectively, they have helped to strengthen animal health affecting horses, wildlife, aquatic species, swine, poultry, beef and dairy cattle across the country. One of these events stands out for its blend of well-integrated and sequenced tools, using The Carrousel as the organizing framework. The event was designed and facilitated by J. Chevalier in the province of Quebec to address a specific animal health problem known as the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS). The PRRS costs Quebec’s pork industry between 40 and 50 million Canadian dollars every year due to lost productivity. Over the years efforts to contain the disease have only had mixed results. In 2016, 311

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FIGURE 15.1  Playing with The Carrousel

Les Producteurs de porcs du Québec and the Government of Quebec (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) launched a three-year PAR initiative to develop a province-wide multistakeholder approach to minimizing the impact of the disease, building on local initiatives already in place. Some 70 people representing all facets of the industry, including 312

Thinking outside the box small- and large-scale producers, processors, government officials and scientists attended the first meeting, held in early October 2016. The event started with a word of welcome and PechaKucha-like presentations on the agenda for the day and overview of the PRRS situation. We also added a quiz on known statistics and key aspects of the problem, using polling clickers to test responses. An exercise in paradoxical psychology followed, using Sabotage combined with Free List and Pile Sort: that is, each participant had to think and write on a card a good way to make sure the PRRS problem would persist or get worse. Groups were formed around cards that showed similar ideas, and each group took two or three minutes to present their ‘evil plan’ to other groups. Participants were not short of self-awareness and humour as well; one group proposed that the best way to maintain the problem was for everyone to keep on blaming others for the problem! Shifting the discussion to more positive thinking involved a combination of Free List and Pile Sort and a key step from Open Space Technology – where people brainstorm and offer to champion ideas that might be of interest to others. Participants used a brief ‘open space’ time to move around and talk with others until everyone could come up with a promising idea to propose. As people already knew that solutions would have to involve everyone, they focussed on things that ‘could be done collectively and that no single party could do on its own’. Each idea had to be written on its own card, and teams formed around similar ideas by circulating and comparing cards (see Free List and Pile Sort, in Chapter 5). Each team had to think of a symbol to represent the general idea they wanted to advance. Six teams emerged: namely, the Protectors, the Mother Hens, the Maternity Free, the ‘Sang Connaissance’ (play on words meaning ‘unconscious’ and ‘blood knowledge’), the Monitoring 2.0 and the Centre de Gouvernance Provinciale. The Carrousel came next, with all the ‘bells and whistles’ indicating the time allowed for each round of discussion, and short breaks between each round, as in the Pomodoro Technique. Each table had a template to make sure their proposals addressed key questions such as who should be involved and proposed first steps, assuming others would support the plan. Participants had to bear in mind the obstacles to action evoked during the earlier Sabotage session, posted as reminders at the back of the room. The proposals got the ball rolling and were followed by rounds of discussion divided into three steps: the spokesperson explained the team’s proposal while others remained silent; travellers asked questions for clarification; and then travellers discussed the proposal amongst themselves while the spokesperson and note taker remained silent. These instructions are adapted from the Balint method developed in France in the 1950s, a process designed to encourage people to listen with close attention to what others have to say in a group setting. The rules are simple and effective at overcoming negative features of the 80–20 rule, that is, the tendency for 80 per cent of the talking being limited to 20 per cent of the people in a group setting. The Balint method can be constraining for presenters inclined to play leading roles or forcefully defend their positions, but helps prevent individuals from ‘capturing’ or ‘gaming’ the outcome. When visiting other tables, travellers also had to think and take note of possible ways to integrate the various proposals into an overall plan. Just before the original team came back to discuss the feedback received from others, the facilitator used clickers to poll all 313

Assessing options participants on their level of support for each proposal, using a simple five-point rating scale (from ‘Awesome’ to ‘Dream on’). Two proposals received average-to-low ratings, confirming the need for another iteration before bringing the proposal to plenary for decision. Towards the end of The Carrousel, when preparing themselves for the whole group discussion, teams were encouraged to compete with one another to produce the best visual synthesis of the proposals up for decision. This included references to connections between their respective ideas, towards an integrated plan. Finally, teams also had to check with other teams to come up with a plan for presenting each proposal in order. The session ended with six brief presentations, and another quick poll on the level of support for the revised course of action advanced by each team. To wrap up this account of PAR bricolage, a few comments are in order regarding the tool Levels of Support we used for the final polling, described more fully in the companion handbook and at the source, Sam Kaner’s book on participatory decision making (Kaner, 1996). The tool, as its name suggests, is a poll to determine whether there is enough support from stakeholders to go on with a proposed action. It works with ‘gradients of agreement’ rather than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ voting procedure. In many settings, it may be important to know if support is simply a lukewarm ‘if we must’ or an enthusiastic ‘count me in’. Similarly, people may have serious concerns but not feel comfortable simply saying ‘no’. Taking action without knowing how stakeholders feel about a plan and their actual level of commitment can be hazardous.

PHOTO 15.1  Using floor democracy to assess support for proposals, Montreal, Canada

(Source: D. Buckles) 314

Thinking outside the box When using Levels of Support, the shift from building proposals to preparing for final decisions begins by creating an agreement scale from phrases or local expressions that are meaningful to the people involved. The pork producers and Quebec government officials considering proposals to deal with the impact of a serious animal disease used a five-point scale from ‘awesome’ at the most positive end to ‘dream on’ at the other end. In some cases, stronger vocabulary may be better, even to the point of allowing people to express formal disagreement. Gradients of agreement make it easier for people to be honest while en route to their decision. Polling technologies such as clickers and text-messaging can come in handy, enabling everyone to express their views anonymously. When discussing the distribution of responses, people may express their concerns directly or use role-play to anonymously raise concerns. What is novel and powerful about Levels of Support is that it prepares the ground for making participatory decisions with eyes wide open, even when unanimity is not achieved. As Kaner (1996) points out, participatory decision making can acknowledge that unanimity is not needed to reach closure, and that some level of disagreement may be acceptable. The key is having a rule that clearly indicates that a decision has been made. For the participants in the animal health event, the polling showed five proposals with high levels of support from all stakeholder groups. The consensus was strong. One proposal, however, failed to marshal much enthusiasm. Participants agreed that further discussion and improvement to this proposal was needed before they could proceed. Admittedly, this was a busy day where people developed an overall plan from a diverse range of ideas generated on the spot. Also, participants acknowledged that many things would have to happen, including follow-up meetings and actions, before meaningful results could be achieved. Still, people were surprised at how far they had gone towards a collective strategy in so little time and with so many people. In fact, the process saved time compared to more conventional presentation formats, surveys and working group processes that had characterized their planning in the past. As with any action inquiry process, the boundaries of the investigation into animal health were strategic and provisional. Dealing with the full complexity and the larger context of the industry would take more time and involve other people and interventions. This serves as a reminder that PAR practitioners are always working ‘in the middle’ of a broader story unfolding in multiple directions and at different levels. Efforts to co-create a better world never end, and only part of the ‘system’ can ever be in the room at any one time. Creating a special methodology, simple or advanced but always tailored to the situation at hand, is part of what PAR offers to inform this ongoing dialogue. It supports fit-to-purpose efforts to both voice and organize thoughts towards possible futures. PAR is a science of the concrete forever in motion.

REFERENCES Archer, L. B. (1965) Systematic Method for Designers, Council of Industrial Design, London. Bason, C. (2017) Leading Public Design: Discovering Human Centred Governance, Policy Press, Bristol. BEPA (Bureau of European Policy Advisors) (2011) Empowering people, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union. European Commission, Luxembourg.

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Assessing options Bergson, H. (1952) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. M. L. Andison, Carol, New York. Brandsen, T., Evers, A., Cattacin, S. and Zimmer, A. (2016) ‘Social Innovation: A Sympathetic and Critical Interpretation’, in T. Brandsen, S. Cattacin, A. Evers and A. Zimmer (eds) Social Innovations in the Urban Context, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies (An International Multidisciplinary Series), Cham, Springer, pp. 3–18. Breton, A. and Trotsky, L. (1968) [1938] ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’, in H. Chipp (ed) Theories of Modern Art, University of California Press, Berkeley. Brown, J. and Isaacs, D. (2005) The World Cafe Community, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Buchanan, R. (1992) ‘Wicked Problems in Design Thinking’, Design Issues, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 5–21. Cannatelli, B., Masi, A. and Molteni, M. (2012) ‘Green Technology Implementation in Developing Countries: Opportunity Identification and Business Model Design’, in A. Nicholls and A. Murdock, A. (eds) Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, pp. 248–267. Cross, N., Dorst, K. and Roozenburg, N. (eds) (1991) ‘Research in Design Thinking’, Proceedings of a Workshop meeting held at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, May 29–31. Evers, A., Ewert, B. and Brandsen, T. (2014) Social Innovations for Social Cohesion: Transnational Patterns and Approaches from 20 European Cities, WILCO (Welfare Innovations at the Local Level in Favour of Cohesion), EMES European Research Network, Liege. Faste, R. (2001) ‘The Human Challenge in Engineering Design’, International Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 17, nos. 4 and 5, pp. 327–331. Harris, M. and Albury, D. (2009) The Innovation Imperative, NESTA, London. Jenson, J. and Harrison, D. (2013) ‘Social Innovation Research in the European Union: Approaches, Trends and Future Directions’, paper commissioned for the European Commission, DirectorateGeneral for Research and Innovation, Brussels, Belgium. Jenson, J. (2015) ‘Social Innovation: Redesigning the Welfare Diamond’, in A. Nicholls, J. Simon and M. Gabriel (eds) New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, pp. 89–106. Jessop, B., Moulaert, F., Hulgård, L. and Hamdouch, A. (2013) ‘Social Innovation Research: A New Stage in Innovation Analysis?’ in F. Moulaert, D. MacCallum, A. Mehmood and A. Hamdouch (eds) Handbook on Social Innovation: Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 110–130. Johnson, S. (2010) Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Riverhead Books, New York. Kaner, S., Lind, L., Toldi, C., Fisk, S. and Berger, D. (1996) Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, Canada. Kelley, T. and Littman, J. (2001) The Art of Innovation, Doubleday, New York. Kershaw, A., Dahl, S. and Roberts, I. (2017) Designing for Public Services, IDEO, Nesta, Design for Europe, London. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind, trans. George Weidenfield and Nicholson, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D., Mehmood, A. and Hamdouch, A. (eds) (2013) Handbook on Social Innovation: Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Mulgan, G. (2012) ‘The Theoretical Foundations of Social Innovation’, in A. Nicholls and A. Murdock (eds) Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, pp. 33–65. Nicholls, A. and Murdock, A. (eds) (2012) Social Innovation: Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills. Nicholls, A., Simon, J. and Gabriel, M. (eds) (2015) New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills. Olsson, P., Moore, M. L., Westley, F. R. and McCarthy, D. P. (2017) ‘The Concept of the Anthropocene as a Game-Changer: A New Context for Social Innovation and Transformations to Sustainability’, Ecology and Society, vol. 22, no. 2, Art. 31. Osborn, A. F. (1963) Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving, 3rd revised edn., Charles Scribner, New York.

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Thinking outside the box Owen, H. (2008) Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World, BerrettKoehler, San Francisco, CA. Phills, J. A. Jr., Deiglmeier, K. and Miller, D. T. (2008) ‘Rediscovering Social Innovation’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 36–43. Poincaré, H. (1952) Science and Method, trans. F. Maitland, preface by B. Russell, Dover, Mineola, New York. Prahalad, C. K. and Hart, S. (2002) ‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’, Business and Strategy, First Quarter, no. 26. Rowe, P. (1991) Design Thinking, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Sharp, G. (2002) From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, The New Press, New York. Simon, J., Bass, T., Boelman, V. and Mulgan, G. (2017) Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement, Nesta, London. Stavros, J., Godwin, L. and Cooperrider, D. (2015) ‘Appreciative Inquiry: Organization Development and the Strengths Revolution’, in W. J. Rothwell, J. M. Stavros and R. Sullivan (eds) Practicing Organization Development: A Guide to Leading Change and Transformation, 4th edn., Wiley, San Francisco, CA, pp. 96–116. Westley, F. and Laban, S. (2015) Social Innovation Lab Guide, University of Waterloo, Waterloo. Westley, F., McGowan, K. and Tjörnbo, O. (2017) The Evolution of Social Innovation: Building Resilience Through Transitions, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

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CHAPTER 16

Reconciling differences

The previous chapter explored a range of techniques to engage people in thinking creatively. All are relatively easy to use, like empty boxes that can be filled with the richness of ideas grounded in local language and stories, both real and imagined. They are like ‘serious games’ where all parties stand to gain. Participants can take pleasure in voicing their views and ‘coming together’ to enjoy the game (from O.E. gamen ‘joy, fun, amusement’, and also Goth. gaman ‘participation, communion’, or ‘people together’). At the same time they can mix creative design with rational communication, critical thinking and consensus building across social divides. Readers are reminded that the ‘serious games’ of PAR are not for rooting out and putting aside political thinking and discussion of competing views and interests. Investigations conducted in a participatory mode should not be depoliticised under the pretence that collaboration and harmony must prevail over dissent and conflict. Nor is it our intention to promote ‘serious games’ for the sake of expediency, under the false assumption that people don’t have the education or the time needed to address complex issues. Instead, we highlight the importance of tapping into the powers of local expressions of language and creative thinking. All brief stories told in this chapter should drive the point home. They address gender-based differences in village priorities in West Bengal, competing goals of Cree and government officials in Canada and nutrition policy in Burkina Faso. All raise critical questions and tensions that had to be voiced first, plainly and directly, before they could be addressed. On this note, we start this chapter with a theoretical commentary on the use of ordinary speech to provide structure and meaning to people’s ‘serious games’. Our focus is on investigating the not-so-simple issue of everyday language-games from a Wittgensteinian perspective, with due consideration for the politics of it all.

PLAYING WITH ORDINARY LANGUAGE We use language to conduct inquiries that contribute to knowledge and action. But what kind of language? The science-based answer to this question revolves around principles of

318

Reconciling differences clarity and universal logic, and the failings of everyday language on both scores. In the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophers such as Russell, Frege, Carnap, Quine and the young Wittgenstein were of the view that ordinary language is too ambiguous and confusing to solve major issues in philosophy. They also argued that sweeping philosophical systems that use obscure language are equally hopeless. Neither ordinary language nor obscure words can spearhead the forward march of science. Instead, the solution lies elsewhere, in the sort of language used in the natural sciences and mathematics: formal logic and clear reasoning, uninfluenced by culture, language and historical context (Wittgenstein, 1981). These are needed to carry out the business of science and philosophical investigations as well. This view, which made its way into Lewin’s ‘topological’ psychology, was not left unchallenged. From the 1940s onwards, analytic philosophers such as Austin, Ryle and the older Wittgenstein set out to demonstrate quite the opposite: a better understanding of native speech can help resolve some of the most abstract problems in philosophy. Ordinary language thinkers are now heard everywhere in both science and philosophy. Like anthropologists, they pay attention to the multiple and malleable ways in which words function in different contexts. More importantly, they no longer trust abstract words to capture universal ideas. This implies that no direct relationship can be posited between abstract words such as ‘cause’, ‘evidence’ or ‘knowing’, and clearly identifiable things that exist ‘out there’, like ‘tables’ and ‘chairs’. The word ‘cause’ employed in the English language must be explored instead for its contribution to doing things and communicating on a day-to-day basis. The same can be said of many terms discussed in this book, including ‘stakeholder’, ‘value’, ‘power’, ‘creativity’ and ‘social innovation’, to name just a few. All of them take on different meanings in different settings, for a variety of reasons. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein abandons the search for a perfect language that brings together ‘simples’, that is, ultimate logical facts or atoms of meaning that cannot be broken down any further, as in mathematics (Wittgenstein, 1999). He argues instead that language is fundamentally part of how people conduct their lives and interact with others. Philosophers err when they force language out of its proper home and deprive it of the contextual clues needed to make it work. In real life, clarity of meaning doesn’t come from strict dictionary-like rules of reference or the classificatory logic of ‘essential’ features, those shared by all items covered by a term. Intelligibility comes rather from how words play themselves out in precise settings and ‘forms of life’ rooted in social history. The word ‘innovation’ is a case in point. According to most dictionaries, to ‘innovate’ is to bring or introduce something new for the first time, something that did not exist before. The SI literature adopts this meaning. But the word meant something else in the sixteenth century, evoking the Latin verb innovare, ‘to renew or change’, from in- ‘into’ and novus ‘new’. To ‘make new’ implied the possibility of renewing something that already existed, bringing it back to its original condition. The question we may ask is therefore the following: should we not restore and renew this meaning of innovation? If we did, calls for ‘innovation’ might head in novel directions, perhaps towards the most critical ‘adjacent possible’ (Kauffman, 1996) of our time – ‘renewing’ the planet’s capacity to sustain itself, going back to the future of life, as it were.

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Assessing options What a word or sentence means depends on the language-game in which it is used, and the particular rules that apply to that game. These rules are neither universal nor purely personal or private. Instead they allow the same word to play itself out in different ways, according to social circumstances and settings. The word ‘innovation’ heads in one direction when associated with ‘social’, and another when coupled with ‘technical’, for instance. On its own, the term has no singular meaning. It merely connects things within a ‘family of resemblance’ characterized by overlapping similarities. The strength of such words does not reside ‘in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. . . ’ (Wittgenstein, 1999, pp. 67–68). Words such as ‘rule’ and ‘meaning’ are no exceptions to the rule: they have no essential meaning. They are deeply woven into our lives and stand for complex social phenomena that cannot be boxed into simple concepts. All acts of speech weave their way into actions that blend into each other through ‘family resemblances’, playing themselves out through multiple games that vary according to context and purpose. Paradoxically, this no-general-rule principle is a general rule, to which there is no exception. It applies to all word games, even those that revolve around the word ‘game’. Wittgenstein confirms the point. ‘For how is the concept of a game bounded?’ he asks. ‘What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No’ (Wittgenstein, 1999, pp. 67–68). But if this is true, should we not question the way Wittgenstein handles the word ‘game’? Is he framing the word for a particular use, with a precise purpose, as part of a dispute that we should be aware of? If so, should we suspect him of pushing out other possible meanings within the broader family of activities called ‘games’? Is he making a move, taking sides in a family quarrel about what counts as a language-game? The question is this: how is Wittgenstein using the word ‘game’, in what setting, and to what end? In his later writings, a word-game denotes primitive forms of language that can be invented to help children learn language or philosophers clarify the workings of language. The expression also points to the infinite plurality of language practices and situations (including whole languages) that people can engage in and fashion according to purpose. This framing of language-games creates a ‘family of resemblance’ that brings together four attributes: simplicity, usefulness, regulation and playfulness understood as elusive change and freedom of action and movement. If this framing is accepted, all other possible readings of ‘language-game’ into his Philosophical Investigations must be ruled out. For instance, the expression cannot evoke people playing word tricks on each other, competing for alternative ways to manipulate a particular ‘family of resemblance’, gambling on some usages instead of others. Nor is there any hint in these attributes of deceitful moves to gain power, let alone a ‘playing field’ that is mastered by some at the expense of others. In Wittgensteinian philosophy, a language-game is not designed to ridicule or ‘make game’ of the weak and the defenceless, taking profit from those who are ‘fair game’ for exploitation. Political interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘language-game’ are simply inappropriate, one might conclude. Declaring these possible readings as misrepresentations of Wittgenstein, however, is self-defeating. After all, Wittgensteinian rulings on language cannot be simply false or true; rather, by his own account, they are moves in language that make sense in context. Given this ruling, political ‘misreadings’ of Wittgenstein should be understood

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Reconciling differences for what they are, namely, ‘alternative moves’, manoeuvres to see through ‘ordinary language’ thinking, with the intent of revealing the game. But what is Wittgenstein’s secret game, and where is it going? Could it be in the direction of scheming and plotting, as in ‘hide and seek’ – hide the playing field of power in language, by not letting anyone see through it? Wittgenstein expels politics from the business of language. A very different stance can be found in Lyotard’s notion of differend, partly inspired by Wittgenstein (Lyotard, 1988). A differend is a conflict between discourses that are incommensurable, with no rules that apply across the discourses, not even rules of appeal for the wrong suffered by those whose language is ignored. Lyotard’s differend points in turn to Bourdieu’s theory of agency and positioning in the field of language. As with any social field, language is governed by practical dispositions that define the extent to which someone has the right to be listened to, ask questions and provide answers. Moves, positions and dispositions in language fall under the rule of a doxa that defines what is taken for granted and goes without saying in a particular setting, including the rulings of class distinction and domination (Bourdieu, 1977). This means that language is more than a simple and useful game, a field of playful and flexible logic that achieves clarity and usefulness in context. It is also a dangerous game to play, with serious stakes, obscure motives and interests, not to mention attacks of the few on the freedom of speech and action by the many. Language is a battleground for words and interpretations competing for attention, contending for the status of authoritative meanings, universal buzzwords and categorical imperatives of the mind. From this perspective, Wittgenstein is right to denounce essentialism, but for the wrong reasons. As Spivak (1987) observes, essentialism is a move in hegemonic theory. The move is wrong in the sense of being objectionable, worth opposing through counterhegemonic actions and subaltern voices that speak to and struggle for an alternative world. The paradox, however, is here: the voices of alter-globalization should welcome the opportunity to dress up their common cause in the language of essentialism, confident that their ‘universals’ have justice and history on their side. If we were to look for the essence of ordinary language, if only strategically, where should we go? Perhaps in the rule of plurality and freedom, as in the work of Wittgenstein and all social theorists who let go of their commanding voices and claims on universal truth. Their thinking guides the way to writing history that makes room at the table of knowledge and sensemaking, creating space for all actors to co-create compelling dialogues and narratives of life in society. While contributing to the grand narrative of science, social scientists can be stakeholders in the business of promoting pluralism of voice, language and meaning. They can draw their inspiration from a flexible use of language and a detachment from all definitive idioms and pronouncements of authoritarian discourse. If anything, the role of social inquiry and theory is to remind us that the invariants of life remain artificial essences, like oils and flavours extracted from particular life forms and regions of the world. In the language of Sartre, essences are crucial, but their strategic existence in language and history precedes and rules them. From this perspective, nothing should become a dogma, not even the idea that human universals are absolutely meaningless. Rebellious minds about to be shot at dawn will appreciate the paradox.

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Assessing options

DISAGREEMENTS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN NORTHERN ONTARIO AND WEST BENGAL The preceding commentary makes a case for tools for rational dialogue and communication that make room for ordinary language, creativity, playfulness and critical social thinking. The following technique, Disagreements and Misunderstandings, is guided by these principles. It asks two questions, plainly: what are our priorities, and what do we think are the priorities of others? The instructions are simple and do not require prior knowledge of specialized language or concepts. First, select a focus and list related goals. Then divide into two homogeneous groups based on a meaningful difference potentially relevant to the focus (men and women, old and young, locals and outsiders, etc.). Invite each group to rank the goals in order of importance from their point of view, and then in the order in which the group thinks the other group will rank them. We normally don’t reveal the second ranking exercise until after groups have ranked the goals for themselves. This is partly to minimize the pressures of manipulation and group cohesion in the first ranking but also because announcing the step later is a fun surprise for everyone (see Free List and Pile Sort for facilitation variations). Finally, compare the rankings of the two groups and explore actual differences in priorities, on the one hand, and differences in understanding of the priorities of the other group, on the other (see further instructions in our companion handbook). The West Bengali and Canadian Cree stories used below to illustrate the tool show how exploring the nature of difference, using straightforward questions and responses in everyday language, is an important basis for building agreement. Mehi is a small tribal village some 336 kilometres from Kolkata in the district of Purulia, West Bengal. In May 2006, the non-governmental organization Development, Research, Communication and Services Centre (DRCSC) convened villagers as part of a strategic planning process. DRCSC wanted to know the priorities of women and men in this and other villages before deciding on the renewal of projects that had been in place for several years. At their request, D. Buckles designed and facilitated discussion among 20 villagers, most of whom were couples. In separate men’s and women’s groups, people drew pictures on cards representing projects active in the village during the year. They compiled these into a single list shared by both groups (Free List and Pile Sort). Each group then ranked each project from the most to the least beneficial, discussing internally until a consensus was reached. Once both groups had finished, they tried to imagine the ranking the other group might have made. Predicted scores were recorded on the reverse side of each card. Participants then compared the rankings of the two groups by forming two lines of people (men and women) holding the pictures they had made of each project in the priority they had indicated. After a discussion of major differences, the order was shuffled to show how each group predicted the priorities of the other group. This led to a discussion of misunderstandings between the two groups (see Table 16.1). The companion handbook contains details on the math for calculating the levels of agreement and understanding, to be done if appropriate. Differences in priorities, and the negotiation of future plans, centred around three activities: maintaining fish ponds, the children’s nursery and the grain bank. There was

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Reconciling differences

PHOTO 16.1  Women rank priorities prior to discussion about men’s priorities, Mehi, India

(Source: D. Buckles)

little disagreement on the relative priority of the other projects. But the level of misunderstanding was high for both groups, with women showing a slightly better understanding overall of men’s priorities than the other way around (scenario 5 in Table 16.2; tables were not needed in Mehi because people could see and directly discuss the differences and similarities between the two lines of cards facing each other). As can be seen in the last column of Table 16.1, the men overestimated the benefits women see in the kitchen garden project and underestimated the benefits women see in the children’s nursery project. The women overestimated the benefits men see in the road construction project. The ensuing discussion of priorities concluded with participants asking DRCSC to put its resources into fish ponds (highest among the men’s priorities) and the children’s nursery and grain bank (highest among the women’s priorities). They also acknowledged that the grain bank would help them continue independently with mixed cropping (a priority for both). Participants said that the communication gap between the women and the men was surprising, considering most shared the same household. Several resolved to talk more with each other about what benefits they see from different livelihood options and project supports. As one man put it, ‘I need to ask my wife what she thinks’. The exercise could have been combined with other tools to explore the reasons that may account for differences in group rankings and communication gaps. Time did not allow for this. Nor was it really needed as Mehi men and women had become more aware

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5

Kitchen garden

All activities

3

Children’s nursery

2

4

6

Grain bank

Road construction

4

1

Fish ponds

5

1

6

3

2

Mixed cropping

Women

Men

Priorities

8/18

0

2

0

2

3

1

Disagreement

6

5

1

4

2

3

Women predicting men’s priorities

TABLE 16.1  Competing priorities of men and women in Mehi, West Bengal

10/18

1

2

5

0

1

1

Women’s misunderstanding

1

4

6

3

2

5

Men predicting women’s priorities

12/18

4

3

0

1

2

2

Men’s misunderstanding

Reconciling differences TABLE 16.2  Disagreements and Misunderstandings – six scenarios

SCENARIO

Understanding

Misunderstanding

Agreement

Scenario 1 The parties agree and both know it.

Scenario 2 The parties agree but one doesn’t know it.

Scenario 3 The parties agree but don’t know it.

Disagreement

Scenario 4 The parties disagree and both know it.

Scenario 5 The parties disagree but one doesn’t know it.

Scenario 6 The parties disagree but don’t know it.

of differences and misunderstandings between them concerning their respective priorities and could continue the discussion independently. DRSCS also had a clear message from both genders regarding where to invest in community priorities. Our use of the same tool in the Oji-Cree community of Keewaywin in Northern Ontario, tells a slightly different story, one of disagreement and misunderstanding between Canadian government officials and First Nation community members concerning the purpose of federal government consultation. In this case, the discussion came about unexpectedly, and the exercise was improvised. The discussion took place in February, 2010, in the middle of a three-day training workshop (facilitated by J. Chevalier) focussed on the use of participatory methods for community-based land use planning. A large team of government officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources had arrived in the community to consult local authorities and community members on specific matters pertaining to land use, creating a scheduling conflict for the workshop participants. The government official in charge had a detailed agenda consisting of bubbles organized into a circle reminiscent of the medicine wheel. Some bubbles were empty, allowing participants to raise unplanned issues, in any sequence desired. While the proposed agenda and engagement process were well intentioned, the Band Chief felt uncomfortable with it and even joked that he was a person more of the ‘square’ kind! Prior to the government team’s arrival, he also made it clear to community members that he wanted to drive the agenda of the visit instead of adopting a reactive response. An issue he was set on raising with them concerned the lack of trust and clarity surrounding the priorities of each party when consultations are held. Since they had just learned Disagreements and Misunderstandings, workshop participants proposed to use the tool to support a frank discussion with the officials about the delicate issue of trust and hidden agendas. The Band Chief insisted that the facilitator guide the discussion between the two parties, in the spirit of ‘learning by doing’ already adopted in the workshop. After some hesitation, the facilitator agreed to help both groups address these issues using the tool. Although taken by surprise, the visiting officials graciously accepted the change of plan, refocussing the agenda to include discussion of the goals of government consultations with the community. The facilitator explained the process and invited participants to create a common list of the main reasons for holding consultations. Each group went on to rank the importance of the reasons, from first to last, and then predict the other group’s rankings (Table 16.3). Participants compared the rankings, observing some disagreement regarding the relative importance of two goals: (1) timelines for results, more important 325

2

3

1

5

4

6

Participation

Trust (authenticity)

Treaty rights

Rainbow dialogue

Timeline (results)

Conflict resolution

All activities

Government rankings

Priorities

5

6

3

2

4

1

Community rankings

8/18

1

2

2

1

1

1

Disagreement

4

6

5

1

2

3

Government predicting ranking by community

TABLE 16.3  Competing goals of government consultation, Keewaywin, Canada

8/18

1

0

2

1

2

2

Government’s misunderstanding

3

1

2

6

5

4

Community predicting ranking by government

18/18

3

3

3

5

2

2

Community’s misunderstanding

Reconciling differences to the government, and (2) creating a ‘rainbow dialogue’ between the parties concerned, more important to community participants. Participation and treaty rights, however, were top priorities for both groups, a finding that surprised community participants who had enormous difficulty predicting the rankings of government officials. On the whole, they underestimated the importance that government officials grant to treaty rights, participation and trust. They also overestimated the importance that government officials grant to timeline, conflict resolution and rainbow dialogue. When asked to explain their high level of misunderstanding of government priorities, community members gave two reasons. Firstly, the government had recently made a shift in its approach to native community consultation. Secondly, community participants felt that what the government says is not necessarily what the government does. For instance, while government officials say that recognition of the importance of treaty rights is fully acknowledged, community participants believe that respect for treaty rights has always been a problem and is likely to remain a source of mistrust and conflict. Our two stories of Disagreements and Misunderstandings illustrate how meaningful conversations can be structured around voicing and reconciling differences using simple tools that make room for ordinary language, improvisation and adaption to the particularities of each situation. Stories using Negotiation Fair, explained next, make the same point. They also provide more insight into the contributions of positive psychology to action inquiries that seek to overcome distance and bridge gaps in expectations among stakeholders, recognizing that all parties may want to move together on common plans while staying true to their own goals.

NEGOTIATION FAIR : NUTRITION POLICY IN BURKINA FASO Imagine a busy market square where many people gather for trade using relatively simple rules of exchange that apply to everyone. As emergence theory points out, features and patterns of the whole system can emerge from self-organized interactions between the parts. The tool we call Negotiation Fair follows the same logic. In Chapter 17, we illustrate how Negotiation Fair incorporates quantitative measures to assess system dynamics at a fine level of detail. Here, however, the simple, non-mathematical version simply imitates the marketplace and the ordinary rules of supply and demand to support creative thinking and rational dialogue across social divides. As with other tools, the exercise begins with a decision on the focus or topic for discussion and collaborative action, and continues with a list of all the parties (individuals or groups) that wish to work together to achieve common goals. To be effective, most parties must have some knowledge of what others are doing and the ways in which it affects or may affect what they do. Prior steps might involve any number of techniques to build that knowledge base if it does not already exist. Once the parties are ready to proceed, each group writes a postcard to each other group, or at least the groups they wish to work more closely with. One postcard may be self-addressed (with a view to strengthening collaboration within the group) and another addressed to all parties forming a network or coherent group of stakeholders, if appropriate. 327

Assessing options The postcards communicate two messages to their recipients: on one side, what it is they request from the other party and, on the other side, what they would like to offer in return (Figure 16.1). Both messages must be directly linked to the topic up for discussion and potentially contribute to common goals. When these are exchanged, for example through a ‘post box’ for each recipient, groups have the opportunity to review and consider the offers and requests, and select those they would like to explore further towards possible agreements. As in open markets where people circulate freely, the process needs ample time for parties to meet, discuss what it is they are looking for from others and what they have to offer, and negotiate an exchange that is mutually satisfying and worthwhile. Agreements on transactions should provide scope for overcoming distance and breaking down silos, but may include things that need more discussion or approvals from people not in the room. In Chapter 9 we learned about efforts to combat chronic undernutrition in Mali through policy action fostering inter-sector planning and intervention. The tool Gaps and Conflicts was used in that setting to identify barriers to collaboration both within and across sectors. Agriculture, water and sanitation, education, health, social protection and research institutes all have something to contribute but cannot on their own address the interrelated causes of undernutrition. Disagreements over strategies and interventions, often professional and mandate driven, also create distance between actors (Pelletier et al., 2011). In Burkina Faso, progress on the same issues was further hampered by an existing national nutrition policy narrowly focussed on the health sector. There had been no prior national debate on the potential benefits of an inter-sector approach. D. Buckles was invited to design and facilitate a four-day meeting in May, 2015 on inter-sector planning, attended in Ouagadougou by 55 people from national institutions and international partner organizations responsible for virtually all sectors touching on undernutrition. Dia Sanou, a nutrition specialist and researcher at Cornell University, helped convene and co-facilitate the event. It began with brief presentations on nutrition-related initiatives by different sectors, followed by a stakeholder analysis using a modified version of the Stakeholder Rainbow (Chapter 11). Together these sessions grounded understanding of the Burkina Faso nutrition system in specific people, organizations and interventions. It also piqued interest and built awareness of what different groups were doing. Negotiation Fair followed, with each sector creating a statement of what they requested and what they could offer others that would bring their work on nutrition closer together.

To: ………..

5

Requested:

4 3 1 0

2

From: …………

FIGURE 16.1  Negotiation Fair postcard

328

……………………………………….. Offered:

Reconciling differences Results were strategic rather than comprehensive as not every sector chose to make requests and offers of every other sector. They decided instead to focus on groups where bilateral agreements seemed most promising based on what they knew of each other’s current programmes and activities. Many specific bilateral agreements emerged. In postcards written to the entire group, many sectors called for collective monitoring of shared outcomes and documentation of best practices, a request funders in the group offered to support. Offers of information and analysis by each sector were also recurring themes. For example, the agriculture sector offered to routinely share with all others their regular projections of where food insecurity risks are highest within the country. The education sector offered to adapt training for particular sectors in need of teaching and communication materials on nutrition themes. While these exchanges and commitments to collective action were in many cases provisional, pending approval at higher levels, participants could see concretely the potential benefits of working together. The rather abstract concept of ‘an inter-sector approach’ had become more definite and real for them. Importantly, distance was reduced between the agriculture and health ministries, groups that had previously ignored each other’s work on the nutrition agenda. In the end, participants agreed on the importance of creating and funding an enabling policy framework, and developed criteria for selecting a coordinating body that could broker the remaining distance between sectors. Gaps and Conflicts and The Socratic Wheel played a role in rounding out the planning process. Later, after much lobbying and further negotiation, the national government passed in 2016 an inter-sector nutrition policy and created a secretariat that could break silos and refocus efforts on cooperatively fighting the various and interrelated causes of undernutrition (Dia Sanou, personal communication with D. Buckles, October 17, 2017; Pelletier et al., 2017).

REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kauffman, S. (1996) At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Lyotard, J. F. (1988) The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. G. Van Den Abbeele, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Pelletier, D., Gervais, S., Hafeez-Ur-Rehman, H., Sanou, D. and Tumwin, J. (2017) ‘Boundary-Spanning Actors in Complex Adaptive Governance Systems: The Case of Multisectoral Nutrition’, The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, October, pp. 1–27. Pelletier, D., Menon, P., Ngo, T., Frongillo, A. and Frongillo, D. (2011) ‘The Nutrition Policy Process: The Role of Strategic Capacity in Advancing National Nutrition Agendas’, Food and Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. S59–S69. Spivak, G. (1987) In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Taylor & Francis, London. Wittgenstein, L. (1981) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed. D. F. Pears, Routledge, London. Wittgenstein, L. (1999) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

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CHAPTER 17

Anticipating the future

THE SCIENCE OF RISK AND SOCIETY AT RISK Module 5 is an invitation to practise skilful means to collaboratively explore better futures and ways to achieve them, such as building on existing strengths, supporting innovative thinking and addressing disagreements and misunderstandings that might arise. The tools and methodologies we have reviewed and illustrated are flexible and open to using language appropriate to the parties concerned. They are designed to bring a healthy dose of dialogue, pragmatism and deliberative reasoning into situations that may be confused, tense or stuck in inaction. They cannot, however, pretend to remove all elements of uncertainty about possible futures. Where there is genuine innovation and real challenges to overcome, there is always risk of failure. This needs to be acknowledged and full measure taken of the implications for steps into uncertain times. This is where risk assessment conducted in a participatory mode can make a difference. It can help strike the balance between audacity and good-old practical wisdom. In this chapter, we explore several tools that help people discuss and decide how to balance risks and anticipated futures. The tools allow people to adjust their plans based on what they confidently know about the past and present, the relative value of different possible outcomes, and the likelihood of certain events happening or not. Again, we emphasize the importance of leveraging collective wisdom as an alternative to relying on experts alone to allay any concerns people may have about factors of uncertainty and the unknown. PAR-based invitations to factor in risk assessment are particularly relevant now that we all live in a world ‘increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced’ (Beck, 2005, p. 332). Our ‘risk society’, Beck argues, is characterized by unprecedented fears of ecological disasters, worldwide pandemics, nuclear catastrophes, terrorist attacks, chemical warfare, uncontrolled GMOs, massive unemployment and financial crises on a global scale (Beck, 1999). One might add fear of authoritarian and amoral leaders in high places. Despite the remarkable progress achieved over the last two centuries, or rather because of it, modernity is now exposing us to the disintegrating effects of advanced industrial technology, globalization and radical individualization. When brought together, these developments undermine family support networks, traditional

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Anticipating the future gender roles, territory-based institutions and welfare state mechanisms, otherwise designed to keep the turbulence of society in check. Beck’s level of confidence in our ability to control the hazardous effects of ‘late modernity’ is alarmingly low. Paradoxically, his scientific study of the gloom and doom of ‘risk society’ further exacerbates the problem, by increasing our fears about the limits of science itself. His bleak and fatalistic outlook on the world’s future brings the whole of humanity back to square one. As in the past, all humans now share the same fate that has united us since the dawn of time: little control over the natural hazards and complex, socially created risks we now face. The risk calculus of individuals choosing the right career, eating the right food, or raising children the right way also turn out to be wishful thinking. In this view, not much can be expected from anti-globalization protest and climate action movements either. For all intents and purposes, they come too late. Critiques of Beck’s depressing thesis are many. Jarvis finds no evidence to confirm the breakdown of state-based safety measures aimed at regulating the turbulent effects of globalization and individualization. Equally important, he objects to Beck’s denial of politics and the ability of political actors to change the world they live in (Jarvis, 2007, p. 45). We concur with Jarvis in his effort to maintain hope. Our commitment to PAR proceeds on an assumption that runs contrary to Beck’s thesis. Instead of giving up on ‘reflexive modernity’, the social sciences must take advantage of every opportunity, local or global, to promote dialogue and reasoning towards the effective handling and social sharing of risk in all areas of our lives. Our take on risk contradicts Beck’s argument in another important respect. We question the widely shared notion that deliberate risk management is a pillar of modernity. Bernstein’s Against the Gods adopts this tired stereotype. ‘The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature. Until human beings discovered a way across that boundary, the future was a mirror of the past or the murky domain of oracles and soothsayers who held a monopoly over knowledge of anticipated events’ (Bernstein, 1996, p. 1). Giddens’s Runaway World makes the same point: ‘Traditional cultures didn’t have a concept of risk because they didn’t need one. Risk isn’t the same as hazard or danger. Risk refers to hazards that are actively assessed in relation to future possibilities. It comes into wide usage only in a society that is future oriented – which sees the future precisely as territory to be conquered or colonized. Risk presumes a society that actively tries to break away from its past – the prime characteristic, indeed, of modern industrial civilisation’ (Giddens, 2003, p. 22). The thesis is that risk assessment is essentially an offshoot of the rise of scientific knowledge, the kind that defines the West but not the Rest. Except for our ‘risk society’, all civilizations and people have chosen to let tradition, the gods and nature determine their fate, so the argument goes (Aven, 2016). This narrow, dualistic interpretation of human history is risky, pun intended. Surely, we can grasp the essence of modern history and science without having to distort everything that lies outside its reach. Defining risk as ‘the modern approach to foresee and control the future consequences of human action’ (Beck, 2005, p. 3), to the exclusion of all other periods of history, oversimplifies the matter. It denies the

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Assessing options ability of all humans to perceive danger, anticipate and weigh its possible effects, think of different possible responses, and choose the right path based on past experience and the assessment of likely outcomes. It supposes that the modern West lives in the future, the Rest in the past. The findings of neuropsychology may help set a few things straight by showing how conscious risk assessment is wired into the human brain. As LeDoux demonstrates, we run from danger not because of pain but rather because of the pain we might suffer if we did not run (LeDoux, 1996, p. 42; see pp. 228, 233). This ‘if-then appraisal’ rests upon a calculus of expectations based on working memory assessments of how stimuli relate to short- and long-term memories and cognitive associations. No matter what social historians might have to say about our relationship with time in the modern age, the human brain is always a forward-looking machine. Neuropsychologically speaking, we do not simply live in a world that is and with memories of a world that was. We also live in a world that might be or that shall be. The prefrontal cortex is one critical site where possible futures are encoded and domesticated. In situations of danger, the brain is busy sustaining related attentions, protecting the mind from distracting events, assessing the risks involved and predicting possible outcomes. The brain also explores the means by which gains can be maximized and risks minimized. Prefrontal brain interaction between the basal ganglia and the amygdala is particularly important in this regard. It allows the subject to convert plans into instrumental behaviour pursued with emotive enhancement (LeDoux, 1996, pp. 176–177; Chevalier, 2002). Anthropological studies of indigenous knowledge confirm the findings of neuropsychology. Andeans living in the Peruvian region of Puno dread the prospects of drought or excessive rain undermining their livelihoods. However, far from letting nature, tradition or the gods decide their fate, they busy themselves from March to October observing stars, animals and plants – e.g. the sancayo cactus, Corryocactus brevistylus – for ‘signs’ of things they can expect and should plan for. In his insightful study of ethnoclimatology, Claverias shows how everyday ‘conversations’ with nature and spirits, extensive social networks, communal assemblies and ritual festivities allow peasants to share and use a broad range of natural observations to collectively predict when rains will start, how much rainfall can be expected, the likelihood of frost, what diseases might spread, and so on. Information covering over a hundred indicators is gathered from all corners of society and the universe such as to inform local decisions on what plant varieties or species to select, which to introduce from other regions, where to plant, when and how, using what inputs and infrastructure (irrigation, terraces) to ward off the risk of poor harvests. Interestingly, the author documents how local predictions made in 1997–1998, a year affected by the climatic phenomenon El Niño, proved to be more reliable locally than official forecasts (Claverías, 2002). This observation is not radically new. Many other anthropological studies of local knowledge pertaining to biodiversity, agricultural practices, climate change and risk management drive home the same argument. Risk management has always been and continues to be a matter of common sense and survival for all people around the world and throughout history. This is not to say that ‘science proper’ has always existed and is everywhere the same. While risk management is as old as human history itself, we recognize that the ‘science of risk management’ has its own history. One line of reasoning can be 332

Anticipating the future reconciled with the other provided we adopt a two-pronged approach to the issue at hand. On the one hand, the scientific enterprise exists by virtue of the distance it takes from other fields of social activity such as religion, family life, market transactions and state politics. The risk-assessment tools presented in this chapter are in line with this ‘institutional tradition of evidence-based and logical reasoning’ dating back to the Renaissance. On the other hand, far from being strictly an invention of recent history, the science of risk we’re about to explore taps into the reasoning and dialogue that already goes on in everyday life, the kind that may at times be embedded in other aspects of life. In our Peruvian example, risk assessment and management closely associates with symbolic, social and religious conversations within society and the universe as a whole. In the Andes, all ‘parties concerned’ must be heard. This includes the many life forms inhabiting the earth. Given the state of our current world, the wisdom of evidential dialogue conducted on a ‘universal’ scale should not be dismissed too lightly. For science to emerge as a specific domain of knowledge production, it must tap into the power of the human brain in everyday life, acknowledging people’s social capacity to think rationally, solve problems and achieve goals in varied contexts. This means we must take stock of the findings of neuropsychology and build on the insights of social anthropology, as opposed to reducing the ‘scienticity’ of human thinking to the history of Western science and the technological interventions of scientists alone. With these principles in mind, we propose below participatory methods to help groups or people organize their own knowledge and thoughts about risk assessment and management. For illustrative purposes, we focus on disaster relief and risk reduction conducted in a participatory mode. The methodology highlights two tools not yet presented, Hazards and Contribution and Feasibility, used in combination with tools discussed in previous chapters.

DISASTER RELIEF AND RISK REDUCTION: WORKING WITH THE CAMILLIAN ORDER The Philippines lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are frequent because of the collision of tectonic plates along the Pacific rim and the presence of many volcanoes. The Philippines is also on the path of regular tropical cyclones (typhoons) with powerful winds, torrential rain, high waves and damaging storm surges. These hazards are not, however, what makes the country prone to disasters. Other places on the Pacific Ring of Fire, including San Francisco, Vancouver and Auckland, face similar dangers but not the same number of casualties when disaster strikes. The difference lies in how the hazards interact with sources of vulnerability to create risk. Inadequate prevention, lack of preparedness, haphazard responses to disasters and recovery activities that do not address underlying threats all conspire to leave populations exposed to the risk of harm when a hazardous event occurs. The challenges also raise a key question in the field of emergency management: what happens after the storm? While it is well known that effective disaster relief and risk reduction at the local level depends on peoples’ participation, how that participation is created and for what purpose matters a great deal (Chandrasekhar, 2010). The field is weakened by a tendency to view 333

Assessing options planning for emergency as a strictly technical problem best managed by technical experts, a perspective also present in stances on accident prevention theory discussed in Chapter 10. In 2012, the Roman Catholic Order of the Ministers of the Sick invited us to develop a process for engaging communities and Church organizations in planning responses to disasters, and efforts to reduce risk and enhance resiliency. The Order, founded by Saint Camillus de Lellis in the sixteenth century, now runs hospitals in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. It also provides through the Camillian Disaster Service responses to natural disasters and human-caused emergencies. Over a period of several years, D. Buckles facilitated workshops in the Philippines, Peru, Burkina Faso and Rome aimed at developing a participatory methodology for disaster relief and risk reduction (DR-RR). J. Chevalier contributed as the methodology developed. The process needed to achieve two complementary goals: (1) create plans that communities and Church organizations could use to improve disaster relief efforts; and (2) help people at risk build capacities for harm reduction and self-preservation. The first goal reflects the centrality of planning to DR-RR. Well-developed plans worked out beforehand describe the actions and inputs needed to achieve the goals of reducing the loss of life, property and livelihoods. Given the complexity of the task, good planning and effective implementation depend on a high degree of cooperation and coordination among multiple stakeholders – individuals or groups affected by disasters or with the capacity to influence the emergency response or actions aimed at reducing risk. The challenge is to create plans that reinforce, rather than undermine, peoples’ capacities to independently manage the individual and collective tasks that must be carried out urgently when disaster strikes (IIRR and LWR, 2011). The second goal goes to the heart of the human experience of disaster – the sense of fear, helplessness and loss in the face of an uncontrollable force. While the complex problems of shattered livelihoods and long-term trauma are widely recognized, relief agencies are poorly trained to deal with them (Lettieri et al., 2009). Furthermore, disaster relief often fails to tap individual and community capacity for self-care. Once the professionals have gone home, disaster victims are left on their own with minimal support. On this point, Barrs remarks that while ‘we may support some local responses, there are many more – particularly the discreet and unorthodox ones – that we fail to assist. Indeed there is a whole understory of local preparations against harm that we tend not to even recognize’ (Barrs, 2010, p. 1). Developing proactive, strategic and inclusive plans for DR-RR, and doing so in ways that build capacities for people to become the subjects of their own security, is both a practical and ethical imperative. The methodology, summarized in Figure 17.1, is a step in that direction. As with any structured process, the methodology is a guideline to be adjusted and with side avenues to be explored in light of many considerations arising from a context. Part A, the preparatory stage, begins with the formation of a core planning group charged with the task of identifying and convening the stakeholders that can influence or are affected by DR-RR planning. For example, members of the Camillian Order in the Philippines used their experience working with a population of 1,300 people living illegally along the waterfront of Manila to do a stakeholder analysis using the tool Stakeholder Rainbow in a 334

Anticipating the future

STEP 1 Experiences

(Resource Mapping, )

threats during each phase of the disaster management cycle?

STEP 2 Disaster management cycle

the physical and social hazards? Past accomplishments? Lessons?

(Timeline)

STEP 3 Risk assessment (Hazards)

What is the level of risk (severity, probability and capacity to respond) for each threat?

Preparatory stage A Who should be involved, when, and in what capacity/role?

STEP 4 The remedy (The Carrousel)

the stakeholders that can influence or are affected by DR-RR planning

What are the remedies for high risk threats, and what is their level of feasibility and reducing risk?

STEP 5 Validaon

What is the level of support for each remedy? Are stakeholders ready to proceed with detailed planning?

(Levels of Support and Mapping)

FIGURE 17.1  Methodology for disaster relief and risk reduction planning

planning mode. The exercise acknowledged the role of well-known government organizations and municipal groups directly responsible for DR-RR in the city. But it also highlighted the fact that women and elders in this community, affected by storm surges and other disaster risks, are also key players in any action plans that might develop for the urban slum. Other important observations were made concerning Port Modernization authorities, higher ranks of the Security Forces and legal representatives of the slum population: all of them would need to be involved at some stage if opportunities for long-term risk reduction were to be pursued. Given the complexities of the DR-RR undertaking, the group decided that some actors could only be engaged later in the process, when local groups had demonstrated 335

Assessing options their ability to organize themselves and coordinate with municipal disaster responses. Based on these reflections, participants produced a plan outlining who needed to be involved in the initial planning phase and what needed to be done to make it happen, including logistical questions, leadership of the convening process and steps to empower marginalized groups. Workshop participants used Activity Mapping (Chapter 3) as the planning tool, although any local method or planning procedure would have done just as well. Part B of the methodology gets into the planning process proper, engaging the right stakeholders at the right time and in the right numbers, according to the analysis of the core planning group (Part A). It involves a series of assessments organized in a sequence where the output of one becomes the input to the next. Participatory mapping (Chapter 8) can be adapted and combined with visioning tools to show spatial and social variations in local experiences with disasters and then identify past accomplishments and express aspirations for the future. The Camillian team from Northern Mindanao in the Philippines created a hazard map for the city of Iligan profoundly affected by typhoon Sendong in December 2011. The typhoon had flattened homes, broken bridges and upended vehicles in various parts of the city, including a neighbourhood near one of the cities’ hospitals. In the surrounding hillsides, torrents of water had stripped deforested mountainsides bare and flooded villages with mud. The map they created showed not only the affected areas but also the places in the city not directly disturbed. Unharmed places included schools that make up the primary system of evacuation centres established under the National Framework on Disaster Response. The group discussed the difficulties people encountered trying to get to these centres, and mapped the location of other key resources available such as communication nodes, hospitals and areas of stable high ground. Along the side of the map they noted details regarding the socio-economic profile of specific neighbourhoods devastated by the typhoon and neighbourhoods that escaped relatively unharmed. Once completed, the map showed that the impacts of the typhoon in IIigan were concentrated not on the coastal side but rather at the upper side of the city where landslides were very intense and the homes poorly constructed. The city’s main transportation corridor along the entire length of the valley floor was also heavily affected by flash flooding, where the loss of life was also greatest. Mapping the path of the hazard helped participants ground discussions in the spatial and social distribution of the impacts and begin to identify factors and behaviours that contributed to harm, including the role of human intent, negligence or error. Step 2 in the methodology uses the standard four phases in the disaster management cycle – prevention, preparedness, emergency response and recovery – to help organize these observations as a four-part Timeline. Four chairs in a row provided the space for groups to generate a list of threats to effective action in each phase, using a variation on Free List and Pile Sort. For example, failures to manage the seasonal flow of water from dams in the weeks prior to the typhoon and poor regulation of house construction near riverbanks were key threats to effective action in the prevention phase particular to the typhoon in Iligan. Preparedness is a phase in the management cycle focussing on individual and institutional behaviours that make a difference to survival in the moments the disaster strikes – knowing where to go, what to do and how to help. Examples of threats to effective action 336

Anticipating the future

PHOTO 17.1  Priests, nuns and lay members of the Camillian Order identify priority threats

during earthquakes, Lima, Peru (Source: D. Buckles)

identified by community members in Peru included unclear evacuation routes, the absence of early warning systems, inadequate stocks of emergency rations of food and water, and limited knowledge among the general population of basic first aid, among others. The unevenness of knowledge of what to do and where to go among different segments of the populations was also identified as a threat affecting preparedness. Free listing and pile sorting threats to effective action on a timeline of phases of the disaster management cycle allows participants to characterize each phase and select where to focus their attention. Step 3 in the methodology, which involves a detailed assessment of the level of risk for each threat, can be applied phase by phase, to a single phase, or to a selection of threats from all phases. The tool, called Hazards, builds on the calculation of two components of risk (R): the magnitude or Severity of the potential harm (S), and the Probability (P) that the harm will occur. This approach reflects the equation widely used in quantitative risk assessment in various sectors including finance, environment and public health. People rate each threat using a scale for severity or magnitude of the potential harm from 0 to 10. They also rate the probability that the harm will occur using a scale from 0 to 100 per cent probability. Each threat is then placed on a graph where the ratings on these two variables intersect. At the same time, people rate the current capacity (C) of stakeholders to manage the threat, using a scale of low, medium and high capacity. This rating is added to the graph by colouring the plotted threat green, yellow or red to show the ‘C’ value associated with the threat. The equation can be summarized as R = (S × P)/C. Figure 17.2 shows the result of an assessment by a group in the Philippines looking at threats to effective emergency response to typhoons by the Camillian Order. Selected threats rated on severity and probability, combined with an assessment of the current 337

Assessing options capacity of the organization to manage the threat, provided an opportunity to prioritize which threats to carry forward into detailed discussions of solutions, the next step in the methodology. The group decided that poor communication between agencies involved in emergency response and the scarcity of expertise in helping people deal with the psychological impacts of trauma were too risky to ignore. This conclusion reflected not only the high probability of the threats and moderate severity but also serious gaps in current capacities to overcome them, a rating illustrated in the figure by a solid or partly filled dot. They also felt that they had something to offer that could fill these gaps, which was not the case for other severe and probable threats to effective emergency responses (such as road blockages). Databases of volunteers and their skill sets and detailed maps of alternate transportation routes were largely in place in the setting discussed, prompting the group to set these threats aside for the time being. Other threats identified but not rated included overcrowding in evacuation shelters, the inability of traumatized people to clean their homes following a flood, and the tendency for men to delay fleeing to a safer place during a disaster in an attempt to protect their belongings. These were noted and brought into later discussion of solutions to poor communication and the scarcity of expertise in trauma treatment, the priority focus for the group.

Severity high Severe but unlikely

10 Volunteers not available

No local

Road blockages

between agencies Probability low 0%

Neither severe nor likely

Severe and likely

trauma treatment 100 %

0

Probability high

Likely but not severe

Severity low FIGURE 17.2  Priority threats for the Camillian Order when responding to typhoons, the

Philippines

338

Anticipating the future Hazards is an assessment that can be been done separately with different populations, men and women for example, to see who might be more or less exposed to specific threats. This brings us to the concept of vulnerability, widely used in the emergency management literature but with different meanings (Birkmann, 2006). Essentially, vulnerability is a blend of subjective and objective considerations, that is, irrational feelings mixing with rational doubt based on experiences and personal circumstances such as age, gender, income and other characteristics inherent in social interactions. People are likely to experience fear differently and assess the probability and severity of vulnerability to perceived threats accordingly. The methodology can address these issues in two complementary ways: by marshalling all the available information to better understand perceived threats, on the one hand, and by supporting genuine dialogue between different assessments of threats. Attentive listening techniques, described in Chapter 6, and tools such as Lessons and Values can complement or enable these deeper conversations, if and when useful. Another key judgement concerns the depth of evidence, planning and participation needed to achieve meaningful results. Adjusting the number of steps and the level of detail to the right scale for the purpose and context is a skilful means critical to effective engagement. For example, in Burkina Faso, where the selected topic was the national emergency prompted by the Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, participants wanted to deepen their analysis of the reasons for the rapid spread. They used Force Field in combination with a Timeline of response phases to identify the factors at play. Instead of four phases only, three were used, to simplify the analysis. In Peru, fewer threats were assessed and later steps focussed on priorities for groups of Church laypersons supporting the local hospital. The rest of the methodology follows the familiar organizing framework of The Carrousel (Chapter 15) combined with Contribution and Feasibility or Levels of Support (Steps 4 and 5). As with all action-oriented inquiries, the choices and details depend on the time available, group dynamics and the depth of evidence needed. In essence, the process engages small groups to develop and share plans for solutions to priority threats, with critical feedback and improvements made along the way. The tool Contribution and Feasibility is particularly handy for stimulating fast prototyping of ideas. It helps people quickly assess and potentially adjust a proposed course of action in light of two criteria: the contribution or impact that action can make to achieving goals, and the feasibility of the action. Proposed courses of action are rated on a scale (for example, from low to high) and located on a figure that brings both factors together. A Cartesian graph or rainbow figure can provide the visual support. A large floor version of the Cartesian graph is another approach we use often. The facilitator invites participants to place an object on the spot where their two ratings meet. People can quickly see where difficulties with the action lie, whether it be a weak contribution or poor conditions affecting feasibility. Insights from brief explanations of concerns reflected in the ratings can then be brought back into The Carrousel for another round of solution tweaking and synthesis. One advantage of the floor version of the tool is that it keeps people on their toes, literally, by allowing them to move and ‘vote with their feet’ after each solution presentation. Discussions of solutions to priority threats take people into detailed action planning specific to each context and grounded in the mandates of those involved. In the Philippines, 339

Assessing options MODERATE FEASIBILITY

High

ITY

Low

Volunteer train on early sig ing ns of trauma

IBIL

EAS

FEA SIB IL

ITY

Moderate Expand professional trauma team

HF HIG

LOW

)

s/Parish

gencie

(Gov. a

(NGO/Parish)

FIGURE 17.3  Contribution and Feasibility of alternative actions, the Philippines

community members noted that volunteer training on the early signs of trauma and logistics coordination between the Parish and non-governmental organizations were highly feasible for them compared to other potential actions (Figure 17.3). A general threat across the work of the Camillian Order in all countries related to the challenge of helping victims of disasters deal with trauma, given the scarcity of professional resources. Experiencing injuries, or witnessing others injured or killed during a disaster, and feelings of fear, horror or helplessness can leave people with short- and long-term trauma expressed through symptoms of hyper-arousal, avoidance and emotional numbing, or re-experiencing of the events. Some participants in the planning sessions had experienced these things themselves, and professional counsellors in the groups understood deeply the importance and demands of treating individuals and communities experiencing trauma. Collectively, they agreed that expanding the number of professionals in trauma teams would have an impact but was not feasible given the cost. The preferred course of action, fleshed out and refined through The Carrousel, pointed instead towards the identification of the skills needed to accompany people experiencing trauma, and guidance on the development of these skills for members of the Church parish and other community groups. In some settings this led to a side exercise using The Socratic Wheel to draft a tool for self-assessment and learning of listening skills. For example, the group in Rome identified five attentive listening skills they felt were important in a trauma situation and could be learned (graduated criteria shown in brackets): • • • • 340

Unconditional welcome (no demands, no judgement); Being present (being with, avoiding distractions, self-awareness); Being authentic (no manipulation, coherence with one’s own values); Providing an empathetic response (reflecting words and emotions you receive,

Anticipating the future

•

linking and ordering words and emotions, using a metaphor rooted in words and emotions received); Reflecting and learning from one’s own life and past (noticing one’s own memories, without commenting, and practising a daily check-in).

The exercise was combined with an exploration of community-centred strategies that provide support and anchoring for people immediately following a disaster, using a tool called the Safety Palm Tree developed by our colleague Rachel Thibeault. While tentative and partial, the overall process helped launch detailed planning for disaster relief efforts and follow-up activities that are managed and owned by the community in each of the organizational settings. It also helped discuss ways to empower people to be not only the first responders in emergencies but also to carry on after relief groups leave. Today, the Camillian Disaster Service offers training and promotes psychosocial support for intelligent and effective care in emergency situations around the world.

REFERENCES Aven, T. (2016) ‘Risk Assessment and Risk Management: Review of Recent Advances on Their Foundation’, European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 253, no. 1, pp. 1–13. Barrs, C. (2010) Preparedness Support: Helping Brace Beneficiaries, Local Staff and Partners for Violence, The Cuny Center, Arlington. Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA. Beck, U. (2005) Power in the global age, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA. Bernstein, P. L. (1996) Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Wiley, New York. Birkmann, J. (2006) ‘Measuring Vulnerability to Promote Disaster-Resilient Societies: Conceptual Frameworks and Definitions’, in J. Birkmann (ed) Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Towards Disaster Resilient Societies, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, pp. 9–54. Chandrasekhar, D. (2010) ‘Setting the Stage: How Policy Institutions Frame Participation in PostDisaster Recovery’, Journal of Disaster Research, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 130–137. Chevalier, J. M. (2002) Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time: The 3-D Mind, McGill-Queen’s, Montreal, Canada. Claverías, R. (2002) Conocimientos de los campesinos andinos sobre los predictores climáticos: elementos para su verificación, Centro de Investigación, Educación y Desarrollo (CIED), Lima, Peru. Giddens, A. (2003) Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives, Routledge, New York. IIRR and LWR (2011) Concepts and Principles of Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction, International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, Lutheran World Relief, Cavite, Philippines. Jarvis, D. S. L. (2007) ‘Risk, Globalisation and the State: A Critical Appraisal of Ulrich Beck and the World Risk Society Thesis’, Global Society, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 23–46. LeDoux, J. (1996) The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, Simon & Schuster, New York. Lettieri, E., Masella, C. and Radaelli, G. (2009) ‘Disaster Management: Findings from a Systematic Review’, in Disaster Prevention and Management: A Training Package, vol. 1 (Section 4.4) and vol. 2 (Activity 32), FAO, Rome.

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MODULE 6

Understanding systems

343

CHAPTER 18

System Dynamics

Some of the tools presented so far, and the stories to illustrate them, are technically simple. Still, practitioners will know that these tools, their conceptual underpinnings and the events or processes they support are more complex than they seem. As one colleague put it, they are ‘deceptively simple’. Knowing what tools are needed, when to use them, for what purpose, who with, how to adapt them, at what level of detail, in combination with what other methods and in what sequence is an art that requires practice. Engaged inquiry, evidence-based and people-based, is a constant puzzle drawing on the judgement and ‘skilful means’ of practitioners. The same applies to the analysis of the findings of each tool, and their interpretation in context. Making sense of the information collected and organized into stories, tables and diagrams, and acting on it, is not a mechanical exercise. Furthermore, success is never guaranteed. With these lessons in mind, we turn in this module to more advanced tools that acknowledge complexity from the start. The chapters focus on tools and processes that involve understanding and working with systems, holistically, some might say. At first sight, holistic ventures seem to set us up for failure. Attempts at the comprehensive view, with plans to act on it in the fullness of time, can guide people and organizations into a morass of competing priorities, unprovable assumptions and inflexible responses to persistent messiness and uncertainty. Unrealistic plans and overly optimistic accounts of final outcomes often result. All the same, attempts to see the forest for the trees are essential. People and organizations are constantly struggling to understand and manage relationships between elements forming complex arrangements and patterns exhibiting system-like behaviour. This is no small feat. Soft-systems thinking and methods can respond to this challenge. As we’re about to see, they can do so by avoiding the pretension of holism and oversimplifications that ignore vast differences in local settings, cultural mindsets and historical circumstances. In this module, two well-tested methods based on a soft-systems approach to engaged inquiry are explored in detail. The first is System Dynamics, our social adaptation of the input-output matrix used in economics to depict the interaction of sectors in an economy. The second is Domain Analysis, our social adaptation of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology, designed to help people characterize domain elements by determining similarities and differences between them. While technically advanced, applications of these methods and

345

Understanding systems their variants are not as difficult as they seem. Actually, they are ‘deceptively complex’. With practice, and learning in light of errors along the way, practitioners can apply them to real-life problem solving and engaged research with great effectiveness. They can do so provided they never lose sight of the purpose of the inquiry and the real conversations the tools are meant to support. To make sure this central point is not forgotten, the last Chapter in the module presents a full-length case study bringing together three meaningful applications of systems thinking:  Causal Dynamics, Ecological Domain and Social Domain. The real-life story, set among tobacco farmers in Bangladesh, also includes an evaluative application of The Socratic Wheel. Readers that prefer to ground their learning in real stories may proceed directly to the chapter and return later, as needed, to review the tools and their theoretical foundations. The example of PAR in Bangladesh reinforces a key argument developed throughout the book: simple and advanced action-inquiry tools can be adapted to a complex task and goals established under difficult circumstances. The story is also an instance of ‘thinking outside the box’ – tapping into systems of local knowledge while encouraging innovation and learning. Following are some of the conceptual underpinnings of the tools in the soft-systems mode.

SYSTEMS THINKING: LINEAR, CLASSIFICATORY, RULE-BASED, PART-WHOLE, DYNAMIC When undertaking an action inquiry, the temptation to reduce problems and solutions to their simplest expression is hard to resist. Instead of aiming for scientific wizardry, PAR practitioners may choose to keep things simple. If they do, they will find comfort in knowing there are many philosophers who advocate a common-sense and user-friendly approach to science, with an emphasis on understanding the ‘most simple elements’ that make up the world we live in. Perspectives that view our physical, mental or social universe as no greater than the sum of ‘simple’ parts reflect this stance: physical particles, atoms of meaning and human individuals precede whatever organization brings them together as a whole. When it comes to society, liberal economic theory naturally comes to mind. It assumes that the common good is the unintended consequence of efforts on the part of individual people and firms to maximize their particular gain. Those who share this simple view pin their hopes for a better future on facilitating individual goal achievement, by making education available to the largest possible number, for instance, as opposed to revisiting key institutions or society as a whole. As in quantum mechanics, everything revolves around the centrifugal force that naturally directs everything away from the imposition of central laws in the system. Since the individual is the basic unit for all social life, a considerable degree of entropy – disorder, randomness and freedom from constraint – is both inevitable and even desirable. The notion that simplicity comes first can nonetheless create problems, especially where there are clear indications to the contrary. Many situations call for system-level thinking and action consistent with Aristotle’s longstanding principle: since the whole precedes

346

System Dynamics its parts, it cannot be deduced from the properties of the elements alone. These situations vary considerably, and with them the actual meaning of a system. As should be expected, the concept can be interpreted and used in a variety of ways. One understanding of a human-made system is that it is ‘an organized and coordinated method’, that is, a linear procedure or series of steps taken to accomplish an end. All stepwise models that propose an efficient system for resolving a problem or stimulating growth, for instance, fit the definition. In that sense, a production line qualifies as a system. Taylor’s science of management rests on this logic – the arrangement of workers, machines and equipment in which the product being assembled passes consecutively from operation to operation until completed. Another definition points to arrangements not in time but rather in space. Any exercise in classificatory thinking illustrates the approach. In biology, scientific taxonomies involve the systematic placement of organisms into hierarchical groups or taxa. As we know, systems of categorization based on comparative logic, or the order of similarities and differences, abound in the history of science and knowledge systems in general. While efficiency is a prime concern in a linear system, comprehensiveness is what classificatory logic seeks first and foremost. A sorting process that categorizes a whole body of domain elements, or most of them, is all the more systematic if it is complete or nearly complete. A third definition highlights a different feature of systems thinking: the coherence of all parts and relationships with some unifying concept, principle or rule. Kant’s categorical imperative is the thread that runs through his entire system of ethics, for instance. Likewise with the idea of free rational choice in economic theory: all implications of the liberal doctrine are coherently linked to this founding principle. It becomes the defining feature of the ‘system as a whole’. In short, systems thinking may involve an exercise in linear sequencing, comprehensive sorting or system-wide coherence. Many of the tools and the overall approach to PAR presented thus far illustrate these ‘whole system’ arrangements that add up to more than the sum of parts. For instance, Timeline and the Problem Tree are an invitation to linear systems thinking. So is our insistence on designing tools and processes that place the right questions and tools in the right sequence. Every step in the conversation acts as an input into discussions that follow, towards final outputs that help achieve individual and collective goals. The sorting of elements into a system of categories – stakeholder groups, problems, solutions of different kinds, etc. – is also an essential part of our work. The tool Free List and Pile Sort and its many variants come first in many of the discussions we facilitate. As for the third orientation to systems thinking, it is equally present in our approach to PAR. This is evident in our guiding principles and skilful means, an organized and unifying set of ideas about PAR we have explained and illustrated at some length, hopefully with a reasonable degree of system-like coherence. But systems thinking and its uses are not limited to these three orientations. Tools such as Force Field, Social Analysis CLIP and Paradox introduce yet another way of making sense of whole-part relationships, based on the organic analogy: i.e. life in society is like a body consisting of parts that fulfil different functions and contribute to maintaining the whole system over a period of time. In Force Field, the system under investigation brings

347

Understanding systems together two sets of factors that head in opposite directions and maintain the overall system in moving equilibrium, until some factors change. Social Analysis CLIP is precise as to what the component parts are in a system of relations between actors: power, interests, legitimacy and relations of collaboration and conflict are key elements that come together to create the situation at hand. Paradox offers its own list of system ingredients – namely, actual behaviour together with the interests, the values and the attitudes that contribute to the problem at hand. These tools attempt to bring together all the parts that make up a functional system and organic whole, a perspective reflected in Smuts’s classic formulation of holism (Smuts, 1927). In this chapter, we extend our understanding and use of systems thinking to include two other dimensions that PAR practitioners need to address: the dynamic and probabilistic connections among parts. We do so in response to situations that call for more advanced forms of systems thinking, with due attention to system dynamics and the inevitable effects of entropy and chaos. To this end, we introduce a tool called System Dynamics, our reworking of the input-output model that won Wassily Leontief the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1973. The tool supports discussions about complex systems. It does so by helping people explore local perspectives on how they define and understand differences between parts of a system and how parts interact with each other and relate to the whole. As in Leontief’s work on the interaction of different sectors in an economy, the process enables people to identify potential entry points into a system and build on opportunities for effective problem solving. This chapter provides instructions on how the generic System Dynamics tool can be adapted to different themes, including systems in nature (Ecological Dynamics), activities that interact (Activity Dynamics) and stakeholder relationships (Network Dynamics). Short stories from real-life applications in India, Mozambique and Canada illustrate these variants. In Chapter 20, we offer a detailed illustration from Bangladesh of another variant, Causal Dynamics, which assesses how causes of a key problem interact. We encourage readers to review this application of System Dynamics in conjunction with their reading of the generic method. Another variant, known as Sinfonie, helps assess the ways in which key stakeholders, problems and actions influence each other in a particular situation. However, discussions based on this comprehensive variant can be hard to follow. As a result, we rarely use it in our own work, and have not illustrated it in this book. At the end of the chapter, we say more about our extension and loosening of Leontief’s input-output economics to accommodate situations of uncertainty and unpredictability, chaotic forces that inevitably turn whole systems into systems with holes.

SYSTEM DYNAMICS : THE GENERIC METHOD AND MIXED CROPPING IN INDIA System Dynamics is a generic method to assess how elements in a given system interact, actually or potentially, to create specific behaviours and situations. The following description provides step-by-step instructions illustrated with a story on the interaction of crops in an Indian mixed cropping system, an application we call Ecological Dynamics. 348

System Dynamics

PHOTO 18.1  Crop diversity valued by dryland farmers in Medak District, India (Source:

D. Buckles)

Step 1 Define the topic area and identify the key elements of the system involved. These should be concrete, distinct from each other and clearly described. Participants may use Free List and Pile Sort (Chapter 5) or description and storytelling to explore the topic, and then use this information to identify the elements. Write key words or draw each element on its own card, with details on the back of the card or on a flip chart. When using a rating table, make a copy of each element card. For alternatives to using a table, see Tips below. In the example provided here, the elements consist of nine crops that are part of a mixed cropping system observed in India (Lundy, 2006). They include rice, maize, sorghum, and so on. The purpose of the assessment was to understand how the component parts of the crop system (plant species) interact with each other, and identify relationships that might be worth adjusting to improve overall system performance from the point of view of the farmers involved.

Step 2 Create a table on the floor or wall. Place one set of element cards (or objects such as pots of seed) in the top row and the other set (showing the same elements in the same order) in the first column (see Table 18.1).

Step 3 Decide on a rating scale to indicate the level of contribution that each element makes to other elements (for example, from 0 for no contribution to 10 for a maximum contribution). Develop indicators for points on the scale, if need be. 349

Rice

  x

–2

–3

–5

–4

–3

–5

–5

0

– 27

Elements

Rice

Maize

Sorghum

Barbaty bean

Pearl millet

Black gram

Sesame

Pigeon pea

Green gram

Total dependence

–6

0

0

2

0

–5

–3

0

x

0

Maize

–5

0

–2

–3

0

0

0

x

0

0

Sorghum

11

–3

4

–5

0

5

x

5

5

0

Barbaty bean

–5

0

–2

–5

0

x

0

0

2

0

Pearl millet

TABLE 18.1  Ecological Dynamics of an Indian mixed cropping system

– 13

0

0

0

x

–3

–3

–4

0

–3

Black gram

–1

0

0

x

0

0

–4

0

3

0

Sesame

– 11

0

x

–1

0

–4

–2

–4

0

0

Pigeon pea

– 13

x

0

0

0

–3

–3

–4

0

–3

Green gram

– 70

–3

–5

– 17

–3

– 14

– 20

– 10

8

–6

Total contribution

System Dynamics Unlike other variants of System Dynamics, the rating scale used in Ecological Dynamics can include negative as well as positive values (– 5 to +5 in our example). The exercise focusses on the extent to which one element either provides benefits to other elements in the system or harms and competes with them.

Step 4 Use the scale created in Step 3 to rate the level of contribution that each element currently makes to each other element. Ask ‘At what level does this (name the row element) contribute to that (name the column element)?’ Clarify the question and adapt it to the topic and the specifics of each variant of System Dynamics. In the case of Ecological Dynamics, the question could be: ‘To what extent does this row element provide benefits to or harm that column element?’ When both situations apply, estimate the net effect. As in all rating exercises, the same score can be given to two or several elements (i.e. the scores are ratings, not rankings of importance). Proceed with the rating exercise column by column rather than row-wise. Start by rating the extent to which element B contributes to the element heading column A. This will ensure that the direction of the contribution is clear and consistent. If participants accidentally invert the question and indicate how A contributes to B, insert the score in the appropriate cell and return to the questioning by column. Record each score on its own card and write the reason given for each score on the reverse side of its card or on a flip chart. Place the scores in the appropriate rows and columns of the table (see Table 18.1). Leave empty all cells that combine an element with itself (A contributes to A), unless the element interacts with itself (as do members within a stakeholder group, for instance; see Network Dynamics).

Step 5 Once the table is complete, total all scores in each row and write Total contribution at the top of a new column to the right. Insert the total scores in this new column, in the appropriate rows (see Table 18.1). The column shows the total contribution of each row element to all other elements. Total all scores in each column as well. Write Total dependence at the beginning of a new row below. Insert each total score in this new row. This indicates the total dependence of the column element on all other elements. Different terms are used for these row and column sums in Causal Dynamics and Network Dynamics.

Step 6 Calculate the dynamic interaction between all elements by totalling all contribution scores (or dependency scores) and dividing the result by the maximum total score that could be obtained if all cells in the row (or the column) received the highest possible rating. Insert the resulting percentage figure at the bottom of the last column.

351

Understanding systems In the example presented in Table 18.1, the total level of interaction between the nine crops is −70 out of a maximum of −360. The overall level on dynamic interaction is therefore −19.4 per cent.

Step 7 Create a Cartesian diagram with four quadrants. Write or draw a symbol representing the topic (identified in Step 1) above the diagram. Write at opposite ends of the vertical and horizontal lines the minimum score (usually 0) and the maximum possible score that could be obtained if all cells in a row or column received the highest possible rating. For instance, the maximum total score that can be obtained with a list of four elements, where each element interacts with three other elements, using a scale of 0 to 10, is 30. Insert the number that represents the middle score (the sum of maximum scores in a row divided by two) where the lines cross. The vertical line indicates the total contribution of an element (its row total) and the horizontal line, its total dependence (or column total).

Helps a lot +30

Helps a lot Is harmed a lot

Helps a lot Is helped a lot

Maize

Is harmed -30 a lot Rice

Green/Black gram

+30 Is helped a lot

0

Pigeon pea Sorghum Pearl millet Barbaty bean

Sesame

Harms a lot Is harmed a lot

-30

Harms a lot Is helped a lot

Harms a lot FIGURE 18.1  Ecological Dynamics of an Indian mixed cropping system (Source: Adapted

from Lundy, 2006, p. 155) 352

System Dynamics In the case of Ecological Dynamics, the contribution may be positive or negative. The resulting matrix produces an index for ‘Helps/Harms other crops’ (vertical axis) and an index for ‘Helped by/Harmed by other crops’ (horizontal axis). Summary of this example: In this Indian mixed cropping system the most important livelihood crops (marked with circles) are rice, pigeon pea and sorghum. The analysis shows that some crops interact in positive ways (see Table 18.1 for precise ratings, and note the quadrants occupied by maize and barbaty in Figure 18.1). For instance, widely planted maize helps most other crops by providing a stalk to climb. It is also positively affected by sesame cultivation (as shown by the arrow). The growth of the barbaty bean benefits significantly from other crops, mainly by climbing on the stalks of maize, sorghum, millet and pigeon pea. On the whole, however, the diagram indicates that most crops affect other crops in slightly negative ways, generally by competing for resources (space, water, light, nutrients). This dispersion in the system is tolerated by farmers because crop diversity allows them to manage risk. If unpredictable environmental factors such as drought or pest attack affect some crops, others will survive. When this happens, some competition is eliminated, allowing the remaining crops to produce more. Farmers also adjust how much of each crop they sow and the planting time to meet specific priorities (markets, home use, feed for livestock, etc.). For example, a farmer may increase the ratio of rice in their field while reducing the ratio of pearl millet if market conditions are right (Lundy, 2006).

Step 8 Label the four corners of the diagram with the scenario obtained by combining the possible outcomes of each axis. Top right elements contribute and depend more; those in the top left contribute more and depend less; bottom right elements contribute less and depend more; and those that contribute and depend less are in the bottom left. In Ecological Dynamics, the labels include negative relationships (see Figure 18.1). To facilitate the analysis, find an idea or a symbol to represent each corner of the diagram. Keep in mind that elements that interact little with other elements (or compete with each other) may still play an important role in the system.

Step 9 To locate each element in the diagram, mark where the element’s total contribution score is located on the vertical line and where the element’s total dependence score is located on the horizontal line. Draw a line from each location and insert the name of the element where the two lines meet (see Figure 18.1).

Step 10 Include in the diagram other information that may be useful for the analysis, such as the overall level of control that stakeholders have over each element in the system, the time and level of effort it would take to act on it, or the order in which people plan to act 353

Understanding systems on certain elements. Use a code (such as dot size, colours, circles or numbers) to identify elements with these characteristics (see example in Figure 18.1). Odd scores that contradict the main tendencies of the diagram may also be important and affect the interpretation of results; one element (e.g. sesame in Figure 18.1) that contributes little to other elements may still contribute a lot to one important element. To identify these odd scores, compare each cell score appearing in the rating table with the average row score to see if both scores are on the same lower side or upper side of the middle point of the scale (5 in a scale of 0 to 10, for instance). If a cell score is not on the same side as the average row score, compare the score with the average column score to see if both scores are on the same lower side or upper side of the middle point of the scale. If the cell score is not on the same side again, use colour or bold font to highlight the cell score. Once these odd scores are identified, draw arrows in the diagram to indicate the relationships that contradict the main tendencies of the system. Use continuous arrows for scores above the middle point of the scale. These indicate bottom-side elements that contribute significantly to some elements located on the left side of the diagram (see example in Figure 18.1). Use broken arrows for scores below the middle point. These indicate upper-side elements that do not contribute significantly to some elements located on the right side of the diagram.

Interpreting the results Step 11 Discuss the overall level of dynamic interaction of the elements calculated in Step 6 and review the location of the elements in the diagram, considering three possible scenarios: integration, hierarchy or dispersion. See the summary of the Indian mixed cropping system (described earlier) for an example of the dispersion scenario. 1 There is integration in the system when many elements are located in the top right section of the diagram. This usually reflects a high score for dynamic interaction (above 60 per cent, as calculated in Step 7). In an integrated system, increasing or decreasing the contribution of one element in the top right section may in turn affect the level of contribution of all other elements located on the right-hand side of the diagram. The result is a ripple effect that influences the dynamic interaction of all elements, including the element that receives initial attention (see example in Figure 20.1, Chapter 20). 2 There is hierarchy in the system when the diagram consists mostly of top left elements and bottom right elements. This usually reflects a middle score for dynamic interaction (between 40 per cent and 60 per cent, as calculated in Step 7). In a hierarchical system, attention to elements in the top left section may have an influence on the bottom right elements. In the case of Ecological Dynamics, attention to elements in the bottom right section will also have an influence on the top left elements. 3 There is dispersion or fragmentation in the system when the diagram consists mostly of elements in the bottom left section of the diagram. This usually reflects a low score for dynamic interaction (below 40 per cent, as calculated in Step 7). Elements 354

System Dynamics in this section may be important even if they interact little with other elements in the system. In a dispersed system, however, the elements can be modified mostly through direct actions (see examples in Figures 18.1 and 18.2). In the case of Ecological Dynamics, attention to elements in the bottom left section will affect other elements in the same section of the diagram.

Step 12 Summarize the scenario or combination of scenarios that best describe the results in the diagram. Discuss the way that participants reached decisions at each step, the elements included and left out of the analysis, the kind of information or knowledge used to rate the elements, the contradictions identified and the other information added in Step 10. If need be, modify the scores for one or several elements considering the discussion, and recalculate the overall interaction of all elements (see Step 6). When completed, use this analysis to identify system entry points, rethink priorities or modify some elements so that they interact differently with the other elements. This is a key moment in the analysis, when participants can reflect on the purpose and meaning of their assessment and plan ways to improve synergy in the system (as in the case of Ecological Dynamics, Activity Dynamics and Network Dynamics) or overcome vicious circles that perpetuate problems in the system (in the case of Causal Dynamics).

Tips •

Be sure to review in detail the scoring tips in Chapter 5. These are critical to proper application of System Dynamics. elements used in System Dynamics can be real or proposed (e.g. ongoing or • The  planned activities in a project). • A table designed in Excel with formulas to calculate totals and create a graph automatically can be prepared ahead of time or used after the event. • Other options lend themselves to a direct conversational style of facilitation rather than a focus on constructing a table. One is to use a flip chart to represent each column element. On each flip chart place the rating cards that indicate the contributions other elements make to the flip chart element. Once the flip charts are completed, compile the scores in a table and go on directly to the diagram in Step 8.  Another option is to make only one set of element cards and place these in a column in plain view of all participants. When discussing the elements, move the top card to one side and begin by asking to what extent do the remaining column cards contribute to the isolated element. Continue this line of questioning down the column, always referring to the isolated element card. Once these relationships have been scored and recorded in a table by a note taker, return the top card to the column and pull out the next element card. All cards remaining in the column can then be discussed as elements contributing to the isolated card. Continue until all interactions have been assessed and recorded. Once the scores are compiled in a table, go on to the diagram in Step 8 and review the results and the process. The single column 355

Understanding systems

•

approach to facilitation also makes it easier to use objects or drawings instead of written cards, and work in a smaller space. To compare current levels of interaction between elements with levels people are aiming for in the future, divide each cell of the table created in Step 2 into two parts and insert a score in each part. The first score describes the actual contribution that an element makes to another, and the second score, the ideal contribution it should make. Write details on how to achieve the ideal contribution on the reverse side of each score card (see Figure 18.2).

ACTIVITY DYNAMICS AND NETWORK DYNAMICS : BREAKING DOWN SILOS IN MOZAMBIQUE AND CANADA Activity Dynamics Activity Dynamics is a powerful application of the generic System Dynamics method focussed on activities in a project or programme and how they interact with each other. The tool helps to assess and increase synergy within a system by identifying activities that could interact differently, by contributing more to others (and therefore drawing more strongly from each other). Over many years now our use of this tool has proven its worth, especially to organizations that want to bring greater efficiency and effectiveness into the interaction of disparate activities in a project or programme. It is also the simplest and most commonly used application of System Dynamics, because of the concrete nature of activities and goal of increasing synergy among them. It is also the closest to Leontief’s original model. Table 18.2 and Figure 18.2 show the interaction of Cuso International programme components in Mozambique. The exercise was part of a strategic review held in November, 2011 involving the Country Director, Program Managers, staff and volunteers. They focussed on five programme components: mobilizing both National and International volunteers, contributing to women’s empowerment through a gender fund, monitoring and evaluating programme activities, and building institutional capacity through a Program Capacity Development Fund (PCDF). The question that prompted the assessment was whether or not and in what ways the programme could be more efficient in its investments towards overall programme goals. Table 18.2 shows that national and international volunteering contribute the most to other programme components. On the whole, however, the interaction between components is weak; each activity makes a limited contribution to other components. This means that activities and resources of the programme are dispersed, reflected as well in a low overall score for dynamic interaction among components (34.5 per cent). While important in themselves, institutional capacity-building operates in relative isolation from other components (lower left quadrant in Figure 18.2; see also Table 18.2). The observations supported discussion by participants about how to implement programme activities differently so that they could contribute more (or draw more) on other components of the programme. For example, how could the monitoring and evaluation activities be adjusted to contribute 356

National volunteering

x

4.0

2.0

1.5

1.0

8.5 (20)

Activities

National volunteering

International volunteering

Women’s empowerment

Monitoring and evaluation

Institutional capacity building

Dependence index

8.0 (20)

0.5

1.5

2.0

x

4.0

International volunteers

8.0 (20)

1.0

2.0

x

2.0

3.0

Women’s empowerment

8.0 (20)

1.0

x

2.0

3.0

2.0

Monitoring and evaluation

2.0 (20)

x

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

Institutional capacity building

TABLE 18.2  The interaction of Cuso International programme components, Mozambique (Activity Dynamics)

34.5 (100)

3.5 (20)

5.5 (20)

6.5 (20)

9.5 (20)

9.5 (20)

Contribution index

Understanding systems

high 20

Contributes a lot

Dependency index 0 low

Contributes a lot Depends a lot

Dependency 20 index high

10 volunteering Women’s empowerment

capacity building

volunteering

Monitoring and

0

Depends a lot

low FIGURE 18.2  The interaction of Cuso International programme components, Mozambique

(Activity Dynamics)

more information and insights to the design of the Capacity Building Development Fund? These discussions concluded with plans to adjust the programme and repeat the exercise after some time to see if greater synergies had been achieved (Owens, 2001).

Network Dynamics The problem of working in silos is present not only within projects and programmes but also between groups of people or organizations working on shared goals. One variant of System Dynamics takes on a slightly different twist to address this common situation and is worth explaining and illustrating at some length. It involves substituting the list of activities, such as the one appearing in the preceding story, for the list of parties that carry them out, whether they be individuals, teams or organizations. This variant, which we call Network Dynamics, usually incorporates Negotiation Fair (Chapter 16) to help people assess and negotiate what they can expect of each other so as to better achieve everyone’s goals. We have used Network Dynamics in many different contexts over the years, with considerable success. It figured prominently in a meeting of the Canadian swine health surveillance network, held in the winter of 2016 and facilitated by J. Chevalier. This two-day

358

System Dynamics workshop was convened and hosted by the Canadian Animal Health Surveillance System (CAHSS), an initiative of the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council (NFAHWC), with broad-based support of producers and governments across the country. The role of CAHSS is to create the space needed for key actors to develop collaborative strategies aimed at more effective, integrated and responsive animal health surveillance in Canada. The emphasis is on detecting animal diseases (emerging, endemic, foreign, zoonotic) that may limit production and commercial trade, or threaten animal health and welfare, food safety or human health. Other important considerations include reducing antimicrobial use and resistance and improving biosecurity methods and standards. Most experts in the field realize that surveillance components cannot be separated from the broader issues of animal disease prevention and mitigation, crisis management and environmental sustainability. All network meetings hosted by CAHSS nonetheless focus attention on surveillance issues proper. The first swine network event held in 2016 brought together delegates from national and provincial bodies representing producers, scientists and government agencies. The organizing committee responsible for convening the meeting decided to aim for collaborative agreements between the various stakeholders and networks invited to attend. The question that was put to everyone was simple: to what extent were people assisting each other in achieving their swine health surveillance goals, and could they do more? When doing this exercise, the question can be addressed at different levels, in support of discussions that may be internal (within a group), bilateral (between two parties), multilateral (between multiple parties) or collective (between all parties). The Negotiation Fair ‘postcards’ (see Figure 16.1) can therefore be self-addressed or sent to different parties depending on the purpose. In this event, bilateral ties across provincial jurisdictions were emphasized, with a view to exploring national initiatives in due time. In Step 1, participants drew up a list of all the parties attending the meeting. Observers were excluded. The name of each party was written on two index cards. (For a touch of levity, each group may choose and draw a symbol to represent themselves.) A double entry table was drawn on the floor using masking tape, with the first set of cards distributed in the top row, and the second in the first left-hand column, in the same order (see Table 18.3). In Step 2, each party prepared a series of postcards addressed to other parties that could help them better achieve their goals. As Figures 18.2 shows, each postcard indicated on one side • • •

who the postcard was from and to whom it was addressed; a diagonal line showing a rating scale of 0 to 5; two marks recorded on the diagonal line showing how the party signing the postcard rated the other party’s current contribution to its surveillance work (e.g. 1 out of 5), on the one hand, and the expected level of contribution (e.g. 3 out of 5), on the other.

On the back of each card, the signing party described two things to bridge the gap between current and expected levels of contribution: namely, what it is they requested from the other party, and what they would like to offer in return (see Figure 18.2).

359

Understanding systems Step 3 was to exchange all postcards and read them in preparation for discussions between the interested parties. Following this, a time (about 90 minutes) was set for a negotiation fair during which any party could meet any other party to discuss mutual expectations and specific ways to meet them. When two parties reached an agreement, they used decorative paper to put the agreement in writing, including signatures and notes concerning things that needed more discussion or approvals from others. Participants announced agreements by clapping, congratulating each other, or making some other celebratory gesture. Step 4 involved a final synthesis in a plenary session. Participants stood in a large circle to present and celebrate the agreements reached during the negotiation fair. (This is a good time to address proposals for collective initiatives, if any.) A few examples of agreements that were later put in place include Quebec and Western Canada agreeing to share information on disease and response in a more timely manner; the Canadian Pork Council welcoming the invitation to join swine health meetings in Quebec; the Ontario Animal Health Network promising to attend western networks and exchange reports with Quebec and the Canadian Pork Council; and so on. A total of 21 agreements were discussed and formalized during the day, most of them with a view to enhancing communication across separate jurisdictions. The plenary also reviewed the table showing the ratings for current and expected contributions obtained from the postcards (see Table 18.3), compiled by the facilitator during the negotiation fair. The two scores appearing in each cell represent how the column party rated the contribution of the row party to its surveillance work – the actual contribution above, and the contribution aimed for below. Totals in the bottom row are estimates of the overall assistance that each column party felt it was actually receiving and could receive from all other parties. Totals in the last column represent the overall contributions each row party was making or could make to all other parties, according to others. Cells with two zeros indicate that no postcards had been exchanged between the parties involved. Only four cells fit this description. All other cells, 45 of them, show gaps between current and desired levels of contribution. Interestingly, the total score showing at the bottom of the last column – i.e. 113, from a maximum total of 280 – pointed to a total network integration level of 40 per cent. The desired integration level was significantly higher but not across-the-board in all respects, i.e. 69 per cent (or 194/280). Interactions among some parties needed to be closer than others. Figure 18.3, also discussed during the plenary, helped analyze existing network patterns and new directions to pursue. The vertical line in the middle of the diagram indicates the total contribution of each party (its row total), as seen by others, and the horizontal line, its total dependence (its column total), self-assessed. Opposite ends of the vertical and horizontal lines display the minimum score (0) and the maximum possible score (35) that could be obtained if all cells in a row or column received the highest possible rating (5 out of 5). Arrows indicate where each party is currently located and where it would be located if all collaborative expectations were met. As could be expected, all arrows head in the same upper-right direction, towards a more integrated network. The starting point for five 360

Total dependance (self-assessed)

CIPARS

QC

ON

WEST

CAHSN

CPC

CSHIN

CAHSS

14 27

25

2

3

21

0

2

5

3

5 3

3

3

3

4

3

3

4

3

4

4

4 2

3

4

4

  1

3

3

25

16

5

4

4

3

4

2

4

3

0

0

 

5

0

CPC

1

CSHIIN

3

5

4

 

CAHSS

27

10

3

0

5

1

5

1

5

5

 

2

0

4

3

3

0

CAHSN

TABLE 18.3  Breaking the silos of swine health surveillance, Canada

23

5

5

1

3

0

3

0

 

0

0

2

1

5

3

5

0

WEST

24

19

4

3

5

4

 

4

3

2

2

4

3

3

3

2

1

ON

 

21

14

4

2

4

2

4

3

0

0

3

3

4

4

2

0

QC

 

22

14

5

4

5

4

5

4

0

0

2

2

3

0

2

0

CIPARS

194

113

26

12

30

18

29

15

29

25

10

7

21

13

29

21

20

2

Total contribution (perceived by others)

Understanding systems

FIGURE 18.3  Breaking the silos of swine health surveillance, Canada

parties is located in the lower left section of the diagram, close to the centre, confirming a tendency for parties to operate in silos. The starting point for the three remaining parties is somewhat different: while CAHSS and CAHSN contribute less to network dynamics, the West contributes more and receives less. The table, the diagram and the discussion that followed were eye-openers for network members. Their analysis revealed the potential for major improvements in the coordination of swine health surveillance activities across the country. Agreements reached by the parties were a step in the right direction. However, some felt that efforts to enhance bilateral communications across Canadian jurisdictions would not go far towards addressing the need for a more effective, integrated and responsive approach to swine health surveillance at the national level. The meeting was almost over and there was not enough time to think through collective initiatives along these lines (by inviting participants to address new ‘postcards’ to the network as whole, for instance). To remedy the situation, another meeting was held sometime later, using The Carrousel, among other action-inquiry tools (see Chapter 15). This follow-up event served to define collective priorities. The network also stressed the need for collaborative initiatives to better understand the incidence, prevalence, strain emergence and movement of endemic diseases affecting swine health, production and trade. 362

System Dynamics Network Dynamics works well in situations where people are keen to strengthen collaborative ties, as opposed to operating in silos. However, the full assessment tool assumes that most parties have some knowledge of what others are doing and the ways in which this affects or may affect their work. A similar condition applies to Negotiation Fair. If people know little about each other’s work, prior discussions may be needed to get a better sense of who’s who and who does what. The same qualification applies to the application of Network Dynamics to the assessment of the network of influence or the network of trust that exists between stakeholders, applications outlined in our companion handbook and illustrated in the earlier edition of this book (Chevalier and Buckles, 2013).

WHOLE SYSTEMS ARE SYSTEMS WITH HOLES The tools we have developed to examine system dynamics take their general inspiration from input-output economics. They replicate the logic of Leontief’s ‘interindustry analysis’, a method designed to trace the direct and indirect interdependence among the many sectors of an economy over a stated period of time, say, a year. As Leontief explains, The horizontal rows of figures show how the output of each sector of the economy is distributed among the others. Conversely, the vertical columns show how each sector obtains from the others its needed inputs of goods and services. Since each figure in any horizontal row is also a figure in a vertical column, the output of each sector is shown to be an input in some other. The double-entry bookkeeping of the inputoutput table thus reveals the fabric of our economy, woven together by the flow of trade which ultimately links each branch and industry to all others. (Leontief, 1986, p. 5) Leontief’s method, inspired by the Tableau économique of eighteenth-century French economist François Quesnay, works efficiently on three conditions. First, the listing of spheres of activity must be relatively complete. Second, inputs and outputs must represent empirical quantities, physical or monetary, documented through systematic factual inquiry (Leontief, 1986, p. ix). Third, all of the activities must be practically interlinked in the sense of being transformable into other goods and services flowing through the system. The actual volume of an output in one sphere of activity (e.g. cars) thus determines the size of inputs going into it (e.g. glass), which in turn depend on inputs that come from other sectors, and so on. It follows that the ‘effect of an event at any one point is transmitted to the rest of the economy step by step via the chain of transactions that links the whole system together. . . . This makes it possible to calculate in detail the consequences that result from the introduction into the system of changes suggested by the theoretical or practical problem at hand’ (Leontief, 1986, p. 14). The practical applications of input-output economics are far reaching and too numerous to list in full. It forms part of national accounting in many countries and is routinely used to calculate the effects of changes in demand in an economy of any size, whether a single enterprise, a region within a nation, a whole country or the entire world economy. 363

Understanding systems This allows for the immediate assessment of alternative scenarios (e.g. raising the minimum wage by 10 per cent) based on the dynamic implications described in projected input-output tables (Leontief, 1986, pp. 19–20, 35). Admittedly, our tool System Dynamics and its variants are loose adaptations of Leontief’s input-output reasoning. Hasty conclusions from results would not be wise. Having said that, the caution is needed not because the new tool is inherently flawed. More to the point, looseness is a strength when dealing with systems that are inherently uncertain and complex, and where dialogue is essential. To explain this claim, we need to explore more deeply the nature of complexity. Do we mean that order is there but somewhat hard to find? If that were the case, the solution would lie in making steady progress towards unravelling the many secrets of social and natural history, using appropriate methods of linear, classificatory, rule-abiding, integral or dynamic input-output reasoning, on their own or combined. Leontief’s approach is particularly impressive in this regard. It mobilizes many forms of systems thinking to account for the complete linear system comprising all neatly classified sectors interacting within an economic system driven by principles of monetary gain and material growth (Leontief, 1986, p. 137). In the field of methods, Leontief’s thinking process has the merit of leaving no stone unturned. All is clear and logical. But what if complexity meant something else – that order is one side of how the world actually works, and sheer randomness and messiness is the other side? Could it be that many systems that claim our attention are not as hardwired as we might think?

PHOTO 18.2  Cuso International assessment of interactions among programme

components, Costa Rica (Source: J. Chevalier) 364

System Dynamics Hardwired systems may be simple or complicated but they can’t be chaotic. They can be investigated provided key elements and relationships, including feedback loops, are predictable and known quantities, and system boundaries are well defined. When a system under study generates problems for humans, people can design a finite number of optimal solutions to address them, using scientific reasoning and technology. Social and organizational steps and rules to enhance functional efficiency in real settings are at home in this closed systems approach. They shore up a vision of interlocking parts that work like ‘organs’, i.e. cohesively and instrumentally, towards a proper functioning of the ‘body social’ striving to maintain equilibrium, achieve system goals and adapt over time. System Dynamics is based on a different set of assumptions regarding the meaning of complexity. The tool is soft-wired to offer a wide-angle perspective on how the component parts of a system behave and how related events unfold. But the ‘whole system’ it seeks to understand – say, how activities, stakeholders or factors interact in real life – functions less like a living body and more like a configuration of key elements that happen to connect at a given moment of social history and may change as circumstances evolve. To accomplish this shift in perspective on complex systems, the tool we use departs from Leontief’s model in important ways. For one thing, the list of activities, stakeholders or factors that must be considered need not be complete for the analysis to serve its purpose. Focussing on key elements in a particular context and moment in time matters more than listing and covering all component parts of the system. ‘Systems thinking’ of this kind inevitably cuts out some elements and relationships that might be part of an even broader configuration, to be explored at a later stage, if and when the need arises. While still based on input-output reasoning, the analysis consists in mapping out a field of interaction in context, that is, with a sense of purpose and perspective on what matters the most. Secondly, measurements provided by participants may include ‘hard empirical facts’ but also experience-based estimates of how elements contribute to each other. Given their complex nature, the elements and relationships under consideration include not only objects but objectives as well; not only observable facts but also observations about them; not only quantities (of goods and services) but also their qualities and characteristics (e.g. the estimated value of one stakeholder, activity or factor contributing to another). By design, every inquiry into System Dynamics meshes its subject of study with the perceptions, the hopes and the lives of thinking subjects. It is dialogical, practical and analytical all at once. Complexity lies in situations that are driven as much by people’s experience, understanding and feelings as by the known quantities of material life. Last but not least, System Dynamics does not assume that one contribution can be mechanically converted into another. For instance, while one team or organization may value the assistance or trust it receives from another, it may not be in a position to ‘transform’ this and other inputs into outputs that can be passed on to others in the system. There may be no mandate or mechanism in place to do so, like money in an integrated economic system. Elements and relationships may not be closely connected to each other, which means that the trickle-through effect of change somewhere in the system may not come to everyone. More trust or information received from others will not necessarily translate into more trust or information passed on to others. The cause-effect relationship between one element and another is always a probabilistic connection between parts, true to some extent only. 365

Understanding systems This brings into question Leontief’s notion that change somewhere in the flow of goods and services will have measurable effects throughout the economy. The principle works if and only if several conditions are met: increases in outputs require proportionate increases in input; there are no bottlenecks or barriers to production and trade; all intervening factors are accounted for; and everything else within the system remains unchanged (prices, technologies, services and goods, final demand). In other words, all the qualities, characteristics and movements of goods and services flowing through the system are known, and their actual quantities accounted for. This means that the system is at a standstill, save for the proposed change. All other things being equal, the change will have the intended result. Although input-output economics is a breakthrough in systems thinking, this drawback should not be underestimated. Unlike Leontief’s closed input-output model, System Dynamics assumes a partial integration of system parts and therefore an imperfect ripple effect from any change occurring somewhere in the system. Why? Because the method acknowledges random inputs into social and natural history. Chaos theory strengthens our argument for the loosening of ‘holistic’ thinking. It shows how starting events that seem insignificant can produce disproportionately large variations in the system, which explains why long-term weather forecasts (as opposed to climate change) are rarely reliable, for instance (Lorenz, 1966). Soft systems have unstable components and loose connections that lend themselves to fuzzy logic and partial truths. In this perspective, errors in predicting observable phenomena are to be expected. Some arbitrariness in measurements and predictions of future events also results from the techniques and scales used by the observer and the exercise of judgement in context. The same reasoning holds in fractal theory which teaches that the precise length of a coastline depends entirely on means to measure it and the goal pursued. However advanced science may be, predictions can do no more than quantify infinite possibilities on the dimensions of roughness, probability and purpose. Leontief’s closed-system view of relationships between inputs and outputs may lend itself to central planning. By contrast, open systems are less responsive to planned change. They are more amenable to the rise of emergent phenomena, i.e. novel forms of spontaneous self-organization arising out of a multiplicity of interactions guided by simple rules, without central control (Burnes, 2005; Grobman, 2005). Both ant colony behaviour and synaptic connections in the human brain generate aggregate effects and patterns adding up to more than the sum of the parts. The dynamics of culture, language, human intelligence and social movements also show emergent properties that play a vital role in society (Logan, 2007). In short, chaos and complexity theory models a rough and turbulent world using a flexible and dynamic framing of the making of social and natural history. It pays attention to variability, instability and unpredictability in the universe. In keeping with these principles, System Dynamics does not assume a full integration of component parts. On the contrary, some degree of dispersion or chaos is expected, which means that linear interactivity has its limits. Trickle-through effects are partial at best, and they are not easily measured let alone predictable. In the end, some looseness exists in all systems, a feature of real-world conditions that research methods should accommodate. Scientific insights into dynamic systems do not eliminate basic limitations in the assumptions of science. Any attempt to convert ‘complex situations’ into hardwired systems 366

System Dynamics has inherent problems, those of scientific modelling. But in the end, if whole systems act as systems with holes, it is not only because of the messiness of real-life events. It also results from the way we experience the world and the freedom it offers (Popper, 1993; Prigogine, 1980). A critical expression of this lies in the ethics of human freedom, a fundamental disposition to acknowledge other possible worlds and our responsibility in allowing them ‘to be or not to be’. Holes, gaps and faults pervading life and human thinking are not signs of emptiness and confusion. They are more appropriately seen as windows of opportunities in the face of uncertainty and the unknown. Chanciness is an invitation to reinvent ourselves and the world we live in. In the words of Leonard Cohen, ‘there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in’. Our geological epoch, known as the Holocene (holos, whole or entire, kainos, new), could use these openings. Systems thinking would do well to rewrite Smuts’s classic formulation of holism to evoke this ‘fundamental factor operative towards the creation of holes [our deliberate mispelling] in the universe’ (Smuts, 1927, p. 88). Human logic must cope with complexity, acknowledge uncertainty, face difficult choices, take risks, put things into perspective, show creativity and struggle to adapt and evolve. In so doing, it has no choice but to design whole systems as systems with holes, with opportunities to challenge and improve the parts, their relationships, and meaning in the system. To some, logic may be unshakeable. But, to paraphrase Kafka (The Trial), it will not withstand others who are determined to go on living and learning. ‘Systems with holes’ emerge at the edge of chaos. They make room for some manoeuvre in shaping the course of history. Complexity theory, while trendy and generally useful, should nevertheless be used with caution. Emergent systems can also be maladaptive and take their toll on world history. Speculative bubbles in stock markets are an example. Unforeseen crises in economic history suggest that self-organization may contain seeds of self-destruction, social and economic hurricanes that spell ruin for intelligent collective behaviour. The ‘laissez-faire’ constitution of emergent society (Hayek, 1973) is rife with contradictions and bias for those in power and vested interests in politics, science, industry and the corporate sphere. In the end, evolution that only obeys liberal rules is ‘chaos with feedback’ at best (Gleick, 1987). It dismisses the historic obligations of collective thinking and principled planning for the good of all. Holding both order and chaos to account is by far a higher wisdom.

REFERENCES Burnes, B. (2005) ‘Complexity Theories and Organizational Change’, International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 73–90. Chevalier, J. M. and Buckles, D. J. (2013) Participatory Action Research: Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry, Routledge, London. Gleick, J. (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin, New York. Grobman, G. M. (2005) ‘Complexity Theory: A New Way to Look at Organizational Change’, Public Administration Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 350–382. Hayek, F. (1973) Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, vol. 1 (Rules and Order), Routledge and The University of Chicago Press, London and Chicago, IL.

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Understanding systems Leontief, W. (1986) Input-Outputs Economics, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Logan, R. K. (2007) The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind and Culture, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Lorenz, E. (1966) ‘Large-Scale Motions of the Atmosphere: Circulation’, in P. Hurley (ed) Advances in Earth Sciences, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Lundy, C. (2006) ‘Growing Seed Knowledge: Shifting Cultivation and Agricultural Biodiversity Among Adivasi Communities in India’, M.A. Thesis in Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON. Owens, J. (2001) ‘Measuring System Dynamics in CUSO International Programming’, unpublished report, CUSO, Ottawa, ON. Popper, K. (1993) The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge Classics, New York. Prigogine, I. (1980) From Being to Becoming, Freeman, San Francisco, CA. Smuts, J. C. (1927) Holism and Evolution, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

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CHAPTER 19

Domain Analysis

FRAMING THE PROVERBIAL BOX: CLASSIFYING FOR A PURPOSE At the heart of systems thinking, and the practice of PAR for that matter, lies a formidable riddle: is there a theory of everything where important issues can be viewed from all perspectives? Chaos theory and common sense suggest that a meta-system that rules all the different ways of discovering and bringing order into a complex world is simply not within our reach. Linear reasoning, classificatory logic, rule-based design, part-whole relationships, dynamic modelling and probabilistic framing all lie before us as alternative or nested paths to systems thinking. Yet there is no overarching guidance on how to choose the right path. Given that ‘an eerie type of chaos can lurk behind a facade of order’ (Hofstader, 1985, p. 299), some guessing and risk taking is inherent to mindfully ‘navigating the system’. That is, whatever organization we encounter or create and whatever science we apply, some looseness in the links we establish is bound to find its way back into how we understand and experience the world. As a result, linear plans keep turning into stories that unfold in unexpected ways. Rules that govern systems become riddled with anomalies and contradictions that complicate our efforts to master them. Functional views of societies also have limits, and the analysis of dynamic interactions between system parts is prone to some margin of error. As argued in the previous chapter, input-output relationships may head in so many directions that all system-wide predictions must be taken with a grain of salt, no matter how rigorous and well-informed they may be. In this chapter, we show how classificatory logic must also make room for a deliberate loosening of systems thinking. Studies that organize elements into systems of classification, whether they be scientific or folk taxonomies, can take their cue from the chanciness assumed in chaos theory. But first, we ground our discussion in the story of a meeting that took place in March 2009, in Dakar, Senegal. The Coalition for the Protection of Africa’s Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN) decided to hold a West African colloquium on strategies to preserve and promote peasant varieties of agricultural crops, in response to the risks posed by the spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) throughout the continent. About 40 village farmers, NGO staff and scientific experts met for five days. One important

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Understanding systems item on the agenda consisted in exploring participatory methods that could tap into local ethnobotanical knowledge, in support of COPAGEN’s efforts to develop community seed banks. Methods already in place involved questionnaires and interviews designed to gather data on food plants and their qualities organized into comprehensive taxonomies, with a view to preserving traditional knowledge and passing it on through the generations. Given the limits of inquiries of this kind, the workshop facilitator, J. Chevalier, proposed a ‘soft system’ alternative to conventional studies of local knowledge systems. The challenge consisted in moving away from describing tradition-bound taxonomies – inventories of empirical knowledge assumed to be free from theory and from external influence – and focus instead on strategic variables that may combine in flexible ways across ‘knowledge systems’ and evolve over time. Participants were invited to identify five strategic and vulnerable crops grown in their respective countries. They also identified a series of characteristics and their opposites that reflected three questions: in what way are the crops strategic, what makes them vulnerable, and what action is being taken to preserve them. In short, the discussion that followed revealed, among other things, that COPAGEN should focus its attention on using conventional plant breeding to reduce vulnerability to drought and increase seed diversity in the marketplace, thereby helping to protect strategic crop varieties from being displaced by GMOs. The analysis took a few hours only and lacked both analytic depth and empirical breadth. The findings may have been ‘for the most part true’, but they were not actionable. The exercise nonetheless prompted some participants to learn more about the basic principles and steps of Domain Analysis, our social adaptation of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology. The key assumption of this method, used in psychology and the cognitive sciences since the 1950s, is that people understand a domain by dividing it into parts and creating a description of the whole based on comparisons (or degrees of similarity and difference) between the parts. For example, to know the meaning of ‘good-tasting food’ requires not only a sense of what all foods with ‘good taste’ have in common but also words and ideas to describe the opposite (in this case, the opposite was ‘multi-use foods’). In Personal Construct Psychology, domain parts are called elements and the contrasting characteristics are called constructs. Our use of Kelly’s method builds on this perspective and gives it a social twist. Key features of the method are as follows. •

•

•

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Domain elements and their characteristics are described using terms that participants choose and negotiate; scientific experts may contribute, but they don’t control the process. Instead of aiming for completeness, the list of elements and characteristics selected for the analysis is determined pragmatically, in light of a strategic question asked in a particular setting and the purpose for which the analysis is conducted (e.g. actions to prevent seed from being displaced). Elements form clusters because of the high level of similarity observed between them, not because of a standard definition and shared properties that apply to all members of the same class.

Domain Analysis •

•

•

Domain Analysis does not simply describe what people know. The tool is designed to help advance knowledge, by creating opportunities for problem solving and dynamic learning based on evidence and experience (e.g. how can we reduce the vulnerability of niebe and red sorghum by applying lessons from millet and Lakobo Yam?). Instead of being fixed by tradition, domain elements and their characteristics may come from different source (e.g. farmers and plant breeders), forming hybrid systems that continue to borrow and evolve over time. In addition to being descriptive, the method takes the analysis to a systemic level, using cluster and principal component statistics to identify patterns in the relationships between domain elements and characteristics.

Another attractive feature of Domain Analysis is that it can be applied to many different domain areas or topics (illustrated in our companion handbook), with a focus on similarities and differences between: • • • • •

individual or groups in a given social setting (Social Domain); elements in nature, such as food plants, animals, soils, etc. (Ecological Domain); activities, such as areas of livelihood, project or programme interventions (Activity Domain); problems, such as situations of fear, stress, conflict, poverty, environmental degradation, etc. (Problem Domain); options for action (Option Domain).

PHOTO 19.1  Staff look for breakthrough insights into organizational knowledge sharing

practices, while the data is entered for further analysis, Montreal, Canada (Source: D. Buckles) 371

Understanding systems In the next chapter, we illustrate the use of Ecological Domain to help break the dependency of farmers in Bangladesh on tobacco production. The story illustrates the generative potential of Domain Analysis, helping farmers innovate beyond the boundaries of what they currently know. Below, we provide generic instructions together with an illustration of Social Domain, a variant designed for stakeholder analysis and applied to the same action inquiry among Bangladeshi farmers. At the end of the chapter, we return to the theoretical implications of a constructivist method that brings into question all closed systems of knowledge and classificatory thinking. As readers are about to discover, Domain Analysis is an advanced tool that may not appeal to PAR practitioners who prefer to keep things simple, or stick to qualitative methods that are intuitive and less daunting to learn. Having tested and tweaked Domain Analysis in many different settings, including remote villages with low literacy rates, we are convinced that this tool has a lot to offer action-oriented research on local knowledge systems. Some conditions for success must nonetheless be met: facilitators must know the method inside out and be willing to play with it in context. Equally important, they must know where they are going with the analysis, by putting it to practical use for the people involved.

SOCIAL DOMAIN : TOBACCO FARMER PROFILES IN BANGLADESH Domain Analysis helps people describe how they view a domain or topic area and create new learning opportunities based on this understanding. The instructions that follow explain all steps and provide practical tips as well (for full-length instructions on personal construct analysis, see Jankowicz, 2004). As we proceed from one step to the next, we illustrate Social Domain as one possible application of the tool, drawing on D. Buckles’ work with tobacco farmers in Bangladesh. With Social Domain people examine how they view themselves and others using terms and characteristics that participants choose and negotiate. The tool may be used to identify different groups or categories of stakeholders based on the types and levels of interests they have in an initiative; the forms and levels of organization or power they can apply to a situation; the degrees and ways in which they are trusted or viewed as legitimate by others; the actions or positions they take in a conflict; or the information, skills, values or leadership styles they might apply in a situation. Understanding the social domain may help people innovate, solve problems or test views against experience and other sources of knowledge.

Step 1 Defining the domain and the elements To start the analysis, participants must define the domain or topic area and identify at least six elements and usually no more than 12 that belong to the domain. These elements should be concrete, distinct and clearly defined. Each element is drawn or its name written on its own card, with a brief description on the back of the card. Objects, such as pots of seed or samples of plants, are even better if relevant.

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Domain Analysis The group then decides on a rating scale with a range from 1 to 5 or 1 to 7. They also create a table on the floor or wall and place the elements in the top row. The term ‘Characteristics’ is written at the top of Column 1, as in Table 19.1. Instead of being elicited from the participants, some or all the elements may be supplied or negotiated, depending on the purpose of the discussion and previous inputs into it. Sometimes the elements are so obvious (e.g. the parties involved, existing programme activities, crops, etc.) that listing them on the spot rather than compiling them beforehand may be time wasted. Another point worth mentioning is that the list can include an ideal or a problematic element, eventually to be compared with other elements (as we shall see, this was done for the analysis presented from Bangladesh, where tobacco was included in a list of candidate crops from the start). One thing to avoid is a list of elements that are rather abstract or vague. When that happens, participants may use the laddering down method in Chapter 6 to make the elements more specific and meaningful. Another option is to use description and storytelling to explore the topic, and then use this information to identify the elements. When using Social Domain, the elements are the people (individuals, groups) involved in a particular situation (as in Table 19.1). All of them are, ideally, taking part in the analysis. In Bangladesh, where ten different exercises were conducted with farmers interested in developing alternatives to tobacco production, the sessions involved separate groups of men and women and, in the case of one region near the Myanmar border, separate groups of ethnic and Bengali communities. We say more on these applications of Social Domain in the next chapter.

Step 2 Generating a key characteristic and rating all elements To make good use of Domain Analysis, it is important that participants have a clear idea of what it is they’re investigating and to what end. This is where a ‘dependent variable’ helps focus the analysis. In Domain analysis, the dependent variable is what you are trying to explain and possibly change. It involves a key domain characteristic and its opposite. By way of example, the first row in Table 19.1 contrasts farmers that produce ‘little or no tobacco’ with those that cultivate ‘large fields of tobacco’. The question then becomes: are those that produce more tobacco different in other ways? Do they have other characteristics that may explain their greater involvement in tobacco farming? While readers will find the full background in Chapter 20, the reason for this focus is that tobacco farming has many serious negative consequences for farmers and their communities, including crushing debt to manufacturing companies, significant occupational health risks and numerous environmental impacts. Delving into the characteristics of tobacco farmers is consequently important to planning for ways to help them break the dependency on tobacco production as a livelihood. Once a key characteristic is identified (in advance or at the beginning of the exercise), the group writes it on a card, using one or two key words, and gives it a score of 1. Then, they identify its opposite on the same card and give it a score of 5 (or 7, depending on the scale used). The card showing the two opposite characteristics and the corresponding scores is placed in the table. Participants may proceed to rate all the elements using the

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Understanding systems key characteristic and its opposite (and the rating scale established in Step 1). To facilitate interpretation of the table, the group can then reorganize all the elements in order based on the ratings given, as in Table 19.1. When using Social Domain, each party can rate itself without having to discuss their reasons with others. Each household head rates its involvement in tobacco farming, for instance. This saves time. However, when using other variants, such as Ecological Domain, the group must discuss the score for each element until they agree. Each score is recorded on its own card, together with the reason given for each score on the reverse side or on a flip chart. Each score card is placed in the row for the key characteristic, below the corresponding element.

Step 3 Generating other characteristics The technique to generate other domain characteristics and their opposites is known as triadic elicitation. While the name appears very academic, the exercise is actually fun. It consists in choosing three element cards at random, and then identifying two of them (a pair) that are the same in some important way, and different from the third. Participants name what it is the pair have in common, and what is different about the third element, thereby creating a contrasting characteristic. They then write the contrast on a card and give a score of 1 to the initial pole in the contrast and a score of 5 (or 7) to the other pole. Participants use the same process to identify other sets of opposite or contrasting characteristics and add a new row in the table for each set (see Table 19.1). Between 12 and 20 people participated in each exercise focussed on tobacco farming in Bangladesh, seated outdoors on mats in the shade. They listed the different kinds of livelihoods they and immediate family members engaged in, and the kinds of resources at their disposal. The triad method helped elicit from the group meaningful differences among households. The research team arranged cards with family names and contrasting characteristics in a table on the ground. To save time, participants may divide themselves into groups of three. Each group chooses three elements at random and proceeds to identify two in the group (a pair) that are the same in some way relevant to the domain or topic, and different from the third. Once this is done, the whole group compiles these characteristics and their opposites, discuss and clarify their meaning and merge those that are the same. Reducing the list to a maximum of six or seven constructs that matter the most will facilitate the overall process and the interpretation of results. When using Social Domain, the three people forming each triad should look for significant differences among themselves relevant to the topic at hand. The task consists in finding a characteristic that is shared by two persons (in Table 19.1, Azizul and Salan are younger), and then the characteristic that makes the third person different (Hakim is older). These general instructions for Step 3 apply in most cases. However, they can be refined and modified in several ways; see our companion handbook and Jankowicz (2004) for options.

374

Aminul

1

6

5

1

3

Characteristics

1  Little or no tobacco 6  Large tobacco fields

1  Little or no farmland 6  Big farm

1  Few food crops 6  Many food crops

1  Rare tobacco trade 6  Frequent tobacco trade

1 Young 6 Old 6

1

3

4

2

Hakim

4

5

4

1

2

Razzak

TABLE 19.1  Tobacco farmer profiles, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Social Domain)

2

4

4

2

2

Azizul

4

2

5

6

2

Nazmul

6

1

2

4

2

Alim

5

1

2

2

3

Abu

4

6

4

3

3

Huq

2

6

3

6

6

Salam

Understanding systems

PHOTO 19.2  Triadic elicitation by farmers in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh (Source:

D. Buckles)

Step 4 Rating all elements The group is now ready to rate the elements against each characteristic, using the rating scale established in Step 1. Participants discuss the score for each element until they agree. Each score is recorded on its own card, with the reason given for each score on the reverse side or on a flip chart. Each score card is then placed in its row, below the corresponding element. The ratings must be based on a common understanding of what the numbers on the scale mean for each characteristic and its opposite, using observable indicators whenever relevant and feasible. In Bangladesh, the rating exercise used a three-point grey scale in some cases and stones in another, to reduce reliance on numeracy during the rating process and facilitate collective analysis of patterns. The rating of elements can be done without focussing attention on the table. To do so, a card representing a characteristic (e.g. young) is placed at some distance from another card representing its opposite or contrast (e.g. old). Participants then take each element card and locate the element somewhere on the continuum between the two characteristic cards. Someone can be tasked with converting each element location into a point on the rating scale and tracking the scores separately in a table. The group repeats this exercise for each characteristic and its opposite. Be sure to review in detail the scoring tips available in Chapter 5. These are critical to proper application of Domain Analysis. One tip is worth repeating here. To save time, participants may divide themselves into groups, preferably large and of mixed composition, and then task each group with rating the elements in one or two columns. Rating by columns of elements rather than rows of characteristics creates a more coherent rating result. 376

Domain Analysis TABLE 19.2  Actor’s card (farmer’s profile), Bangladesh

Actor’s card: Aminul Characteristics

1

Little or no tobacco

x

2

3

4

5

x

Few food crops Young

7

Characteristics Large tobacco fields

Little or no farmland Rare tobacco trade

6

x x

Big farm Many food crops Frequent tobacco trade

x

Old

When using Social Domain, time is also saved by letting each party rate itself without having to explain its reasons to others. Each party rates itself on each characteristic and its opposite, from 1 to 5 (or 7), and then records its ratings on an Actor’s card formatted for easy reading and comparing. Everyone’s card must show the same characteristics, in the same order and with the same format, as in Table 19.2. Incidentally, if a characteristic does not apply to many elements, try rewording it or leave it out of the analysis. If the scores for a characteristic and its opposite are nearly the same across all elements, redefine the characteristic or leave it out of the analysis. This problem is all the more serious when the scores do not vary much in several rows, creating vagueness in the system as a whole. Searching for the likely cause is essential here, before proceeding to later steps. Some possibilities are: participants have very different views on the elements and negotiated the differences by assigning average scores; they emphasize the connections and similarities between the elements, not the differences; they have limited knowledge of the domain or topic area; or the elements chosen are simply too general (a common problem to avoid).

Step 5 Reviewing the process and interpreting the results Before interpreting the results, it is good practice to review the process, including the way that participants interacted and reached decisions at each step. Discussing the substance of the exercise is worth the effort as well. This includes the topic that participants selected, the elements and the characteristics identified, and the kind of information or knowledge used to rate the elements. A quick look at the overall distribution of column scores may also help identify obvious patterns such as scores that vary a lot (as in Table 19.1), are mostly in the middle range or tend to be closer to the poles. Looking for matching elements – those that have similar scores for most characteristics, including the key characteristic – comes next. This is a key moment in Domain Analysis. It helps organize all the elements into ‘families of resemblances’, i.e. clusters of people, seed varieties, stressful situations, acts of violence, words to talk about conflict, etc. For instance, comparing scores across columns in Table 19.1 indicates that Razzak, Azizul and Huq are alike in many respects (including tobacco trading). The use of a three-point grey scale in Bangladesh greatly facilitated collective analysis of these patterns. 377

Understanding systems Identifying matching characteristics may also reveal some interesting findings. There is a match between two or more characteristics when row scores are similar (or show an inverse relationship) to each other. Characteristics that match the key characteristic identified in Step 2 serve an important purpose here: they help answer the initial question asked, such as how are farmers that produce more tobacco different from those that cultivate less? Table 19.1 partially answers the question by showing that farmers who have large, specialized tobacco fields tend to be younger. To help people participate actively in the analysis, copies of the element cards and scores on characteristics can be prepared and distributed among the participants so they can identify other elements with row scores that are identical or very similar to theirs. Participants should give special attention to similarities in the key characteristic and other characteristics important to the domain. Groups formed around similar elements can then prepare and present a brief description of what their elements have in common. Following this, all participants can discuss the main differences observed between groups. Facilitating Social Domain by forming clusters of similar actors can be even more dynamic. Each participant rates themselves as an element, using a common set of characteristics. They must then find others that have cards with many row scores that are identical or similar (only one point apart in a majority of rows) to theirs. Special attention should be given to similarities in the rows that describe the most important characteristics. All participants circulate and compare their cards with others until groups or families with similar profiles are formed. Groups formed around similar cards can then prepare and present to the whole group a brief description of the characteristics group members have in common. At the end of the exercise, all participants can discuss the main differences observed between groups. This technique is also handy for group formation when homogeneity of perspective is needed in small group work. All the key comments made during the review process and the analysis of matching elements and characteristics form part of the inquiry and should be summarized on a flip chart. Here a word of caution is in order: a common error is to over-interpret the results, by assuming that all relationships are meaningful. Instead of aiming for an exhaustive review, participants should focus on those relationships that are more important or interesting and will make a difference when it comes to making plans around the topic at hand. Domain Analysis is a powerful tool for understanding complex systems. It should nonetheless be applied with flexibly and a sense of purpose. Knowing this, participants should feel free to modify, delete or add to the list of elements, characteristics and scores at any time during the process, to meet a need. This may be useful when some elements or characteristics are very similar and need to be distinguished from each other more sharply. Participants may opt to consult our companion handbook to manually calculate the level of difference between elements and between characteristics. Alternatively, they can enter the data into an online computer program such as OpenRepgrid (www.openrepgrid.org), and perform either a cluster or a principal component analysis. Figure 19.1 shows a principal component analysis of tobacco farmers using Repgrid and the data from Bherama appearing in Table 19.1. The graph is a two-dimensional representation of multidimensional relationships among farmers and their characteristics. Dots show the location of each farmer in relation to all other elements and to characteristics 378

Domain Analysis represented by straight lines. Nearness indicates closer relationships between elements (dots), between characteristics (lines) and between elements and characteristics. The main horizontal line (principal component 1) and vertical line (principal component 2) are summary variables for these multidimensional relationships. Each cluster is like a constellation in a night sky seen as a two-dimensional image, with no sense of depth and the actual distance that separates one star from another. The percentages at the end of each line indicate the extent to which each component explains these multidimensional relationships. If the two numbers add up to more than 75 per cent, the figure has high explanatory power. This and a number of other applications of Domain Analysis were created and used by D. Buckles and the Bangladeshi non-governmental organization UBINIG to help plan work with farmers who had expressed a desire to move away from tobacco into other kinds of farming. The initiative needed to form subgroups from among hundreds of farmers involved in experiments with alternatives to tobacco. The exercise, repeated in ten different locations, helped identify different farmer profiles UBINIG would need to involve in the evaluation of completed experiments in each major region. For example, in the Kushtia area the analysis converged around four household types: (1) younger specialized tobacco farmers; (2) older farmers with mixed crops including small areas of tobacco; (3) tobacco traders with limited tobacco production of their own; and (4) older, land-rich farmers who no longer engaged in tobacco farming directly. The study suggested that being involved in the tobacco trade is particularly important to land-poor farmers (such as Razzak, Azizul and Huq), giving them a distinct profile that should be taken into account when evaluating alternatives to tobacco production. These patterns, represented in Figure 19.1, account for about 78 per cent of the variance within the observed system (see percentages on the horizontal and vertical axes). A plan was developed to engage each of the household types in experiments with alternatives to tobacco on livelihoods. Other profiles were identified

Little or no farmland Older small farmers

Tobacco traders RAZZAK HUQ

AZIZUL

ALIM HAKIM

Frequent tobacco trading

Large tobacco field Young

ABU TALEB

Few food crops Old Small tobacco field

1: 48.8%

Occasional tobacco trading SALAM

Younger tobacco farmers

NAZMUL AMINUL 2: 29.4%

Older land-rich farmers Many food crops Big farm

FIGURE 19.1  Tobacco farmer profiles, Kushtia, Bangladesh (Social Domain, Principal

Component Analysis) 379

Understanding systems in regions with a shorter history of tobacco farming, or where ethnic minorities were an important part of the farming population. All profile types informed group formation for experiments with alternatives to tobacco and subsequent evaluation activities. (For more details on this story, see Chapter 20.) To conclude, the ultimate purpose of Domain Analysis is to create learning opportunities that help planning in real settings. Learning opportunities are of various kinds. In the story we have just told, the goal was to learn more about the parties so as to adjust research plans in response to different characteristics and to meet different needs. Domain Analysis can also address situations where patterns in the system are limiting and innovation is needed. In keeping with its clinical origins, patterns, once identified, can be unlocked, creating opportunities to shift in new directions. As Chapter 20 shows, overcoming a pattern of polarization was a dramatic turning point in farmers’ struggles to move out of tobacco production. People can use Domain Analysis for many purposes, such as to strengthen their own knowledge of a domain or investigate whether or not their views on a problem change over time and why. The basic message of Domain Analysis boils down to this: a knowledge system is like a box. To step outside the box, you first need to know the box and its possible openings well enough to find your way out and explore new grounds in the adjacent possible.

ASSOCIATIVE LOGIC, MIXITY AND THE INVENTION OF TRADITION Domain Analysis raises fundamental issues regarding the nature of knowledge and the human ability to group things into categories and ‘construe’ the world in different ways. The method departs radically from the Western logic of categorization outlined by Plato in his Statesman and further developed by Aristotle (1963) in his Categories – the mind organizing objects and living beings, by assigning fixed attributes to all elements in Nature, using a hierarchy of higher and lower order properties. In the modern era, philosophers continue to see permanence in the natural order of things. The logic of categorization is extended to all spheres of natural and cultural history, including species, nations, races and stages of evolution. Rational subjects, however, are free to argue for different understandings of the world, backed up by philosophy and science. Rules of correspondence between thinking and things – laws that frame the framing process itself – are now up for discussion and continue to be debated to this day. Longstanding disputes revolve mostly around the relative weight of logic versus experience of the senses, and the subtle ways to connect the two. Among the contending views, Ayer’s logical positivism claims that clear theoretical reasoning can be considered true and meaningful only if verified through empirical evidence and value-free experience (Ayer, 1952). Popper’s critical rationalism, however, rejects the logic of empirical verification. Popper views observation as a means to test whether or not theoretical reasoning can be refuted, and nothing more (Popper, 1959). A scientific explanation is the right one as long as it has not been proven to be wrong indirectly, by observation and experimentation. In a note dated November 11, 1922, two days after he 380

Domain Analysis won the Nobel Prize, Einstein makes the same point. He remarks that no experimentation in Nature can ever say ‘Yes’ to a theory. ‘In the most favorable cases it says “Maybe,” and in the great majority of cases simply “No.” If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter “Maybe,” and if it does not agree it means “No.” Probably every theory will some day experience its “No” – most theories, soon after conception’ (quoted in Dukas and Hoffmann, 1979, p. 18). Science thus evolves by the successive rejection of falsified theories, to be replaced by theories that have greater explanatory power and account for phenomena that were previously anomalous. The insights of Einstein and Popper suggest that our mind can ‘reflect’ reality only for the most part, until proven otherwise. Also, the world is so complex and mind frames so numerous that any attempt to unify knowledge and science is bound to fail. As in Kelly’s work, every grid is ‘just a grid’, and every theory is ‘just a theory’: it builds reality through a particular differentiation of parts fitted and joined together, subject to change without notice. Advances in psychology, linguistics and the social sciences converge on the same observation: all humans have their own way of categorizing elements, perceived or real, and making sense of relations between them. They do so through myriad systems of understanding that differ from one person or culture to another. Reasoning and logical reckoning is not the prerogative of scientists alone. It is part of everyday life. More than ever, the existence of a single reality or universe progressively captured through the forward march of science lacks credibility. Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology is one of many ways to introduce plurality and malleability in workings of the mind (Kelly, 1963; Jankowicz, 2004). Our adaptation of Domain Analysis shows how each person or group makes sense and copes with the world by ‘construing’ differences and relations between elements and testing these ‘constructs’ against evidence and experience. Similarly, ethno-linguistics and structural anthropology teach us that systems of classification abound in cultural history and extend to all spheres of life, from culinary and healing practices to systems of descent and alliance (Lévi-Strauss, 1966, 1969; Chevalier and Sanchez, 2002). Studies of local knowledge systems point to the same conclusion: far from describing cultural oddities, they help expand the horizons of knowledge beyond the confines of Western academic and corporate science. Postmodernity reinforces these principles of diversity and inclusiveness, by taking science and reason out of its ivory tower and conjugating truth in the plural. It also introduces malleability and approximation into our understanding of human reasoning. Personal Construct Psychology is a precursor of this new perspective on the framing of knowledge. It acknowledges that the constructs that people create and organize to make sense of the world are finite in number and have a limited range of events they can be applied to and against which they can be tested. This means that mappings of reality do not work at all times and in all situations. They cannot be derived or logically inferred from each other as building blocks in some monumental work that precludes other constructions of reality. In real life, mental grids vary according to the people, the domain and the circumstances that give them meaning. In the Internet age, hierarchical systems of categorization mirroring attributes fixed in nature have given way to associative forms of logic where human minds act like ‘search engines’ endowed with maximum freedom and adaptability. While still produced in the 381

Understanding systems workspace of brain neurons, the binary differences of language – male versus female, rich versus poor, nature versus culture, time versus space, life versus death, etc. – can now be created, combined, questioned and transformed in ways that are practically infinite. They can be organized into ordinal and analogical signs to accommodate graded relationships on a continuum, as in Domain Analysis, in lieu of the digital either/or reasoning of classical logic. They can be assembled, disassembled and reorganized in all sorts of fuzzy ways, depending on what matters most to the people involved. The dialectics of life and the blurring of boundaries in logic are not idle academic questions. They now pervade our lifeworld and question the existence of clear distinctions, classes and categories in social and natural history. In the global era, flows of genes, neurons, knowledge, culture and social history proceed through cracks and doors in our traditional frames of reference. These openings are now more visible and tangible than walls built around well-insulated spaces. Webs of life and windows of learning are now opening out in all directions. Connectivity achieved through co-mingling and fraying of edges has reached a point where every culture is merely another hybrid, a special combination of behavioural and symbolic DNA enduring and moving among myriad ways of life. Original varieties have been lost, if they ever existed. Maize varieties in a traditional Mexican community, for example, are better understood as dynamic varieties in an open genetic system under continuous cultural construction (Louette et al., 1997). The same comment applies to knowledge systems, packaged methods or coherent theories that claim to be fully original, like ‘species of thinking’ whose ‘right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals’ (Huxley, 1893, p. 229). By nature, every species of coherent thinking is profoundly mixed-up with others. Human learning thrives on borrowing and adapting. Knowledge moves on through the constant juggling of objects, facts, words, ideas and beliefs, co-opting them into serving variable ends and new constellations of meaning. Cross-fertilization rules over all knowledge, culture and even living organisms. Accordingly, Domain Analysis is premised on the idea that the circumstances of social history can bring together elements, characteristics and perceived relationships that are of various origins, mixing them in ways that are completely novel. This calls into question the notion of ‘tradition’, a relatively recent invention that is now becoming something of the past. Knowledge systems that make constant ‘reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983), create a habit of mind, a disposition to mummify things in the hope that they will last forever or be superseded once and for all. When informed by anthropology, the habit includes assigning a distinctive science to every people or class, a move that forces all learning into a tight corner – what people already know, and their current habits of thinking. If social life is to flourish and endure, it must thrive on living knowledge, the kind that feeds on problem solving and ongoing conversations across boundaries. Custom-made thinking may be a habit of mind, but so is new learning outside the box. Domain Analysis lends itself to the fostering of new ways of thinking. All forms of knowledge, including well-developed theories and methods, are like living organisms. They come to life by virtue of the distinctive features they possess and display. But their existence also hinges on their ability to adapt and mix characteristics and ideas scavenged from elsewhere. When life thrives on learning, the twain can never fully part. 382

Domain Analysis This means that apostles of either pure models or absolute muddles err on the side of simplicity. They ignore the fact that bodies of knowledge can be different from each other at the same time as they are profoundly mixed-up, just like humans.

REFERENCES Aristotle (1963) Categories and De Interpretatione, trans. J. L. Ackrill, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ayer, A. J. (1952) Language, Truth and Logic, Dover, New York. Chevalier, J. M. and Sanchez, A. (2002) The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Dukas, H. and Hoffmann, B. (eds) (1979) Albert Einstein, The Human Side Glimpses from His Archives, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. O. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition, Plato Press, Cambridge, MA. Hofstader, D. (1985) Metamagical Themas: Questions for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Basic Books, New York. Huxley, T. H. (1893) ‘The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species’, in Collected Essays: Darwinia, vol. 2, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 227–243. Jankowicz, D. (2004) The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids, Wiley, Chichester. Kelly, G. (1963) A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Norton, New York. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind, trans. G. Weidenfield and Nicholson Ltd., The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969) Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. J. H. Bell, J. R. von Sturmer and R. Needham, Beacon, Boston, MA. Louette, D., Charrier, A. and Berthaud, J. (1997) ‘In situ conservation of maize in Mexico: genetic diversity and maize seed management in a traditional community’, Economic Botany, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 20–38. Popper, K. R. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York.

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CHAPTER 20

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production

Practitioners of the art of engaged inquiry do not look for problems that match the tools they know best. They choose, mix, adapt or create methods that fit the situation. This means they must develop their own understanding of action research at the same time as they engage with people and content in real settings. Designing the right PAR process can never be a mechanical exercise. Each situation calls for skilful means to inquire into a situation and act on it. Judgement and complex reasoning are needed to apply simple methods in some situations. Equal skill goes into selecting, adapting and applying more advanced tools to systems thinking and problem solving, with full participation of the parties involved. In either case, purpose comes first. In this chapter, we illustrate how PAR methods, including Causal Dynamics and Domain Analysis (i.e. Ecological Domain and Social Domain), were combined with other tools in a complex setting to fit a purpose – breaking the dependency of farmers on tobacco production as a livelihood in several districts of Bangladesh. Tobacco farmers requested the research in the first place. They are, in their own way, as dependent on tobacco as smokers of the final product. Debt to the tobacco companies, and the seductive appeal of facilities they offer, bind tobacco farmers to an industrial mono-crop that depletes soils, denudes forested hillsides and compromises the health of field workers and the women and children curing the leaves (Lecours, 2014). Many tobacco farmers, especially older ones who have seen the impacts on their families and on their lands, are desperate to shift into other livelihoods, but don’t. Breaking the dependency is not easy, and many farmers that try end up going back to the companies asking for more. The British American Tobacco Company (BATC), the largest in Bangladesh, is particularly effective at drawing farmers into tobacco farming. For decades they have been setting up operations in prime food-producing areas such as river valleys and flood plains close to abundant sources of firewood for curing kilns. As these resources are depleted the company shifts to new areas, leaving damaged landscapes, neglected agricultural markets and indebted people in their wake. From both a farmer and national perspective, tobacco production in Bangladesh and many other countries is a disaster (Leppan et al., 2014). The problems of tobacco farming are not widely known outside of specialist circles. The World Health Organization-sponsored Framework Convention on Tobacco Control does, however, call for the reduction of the supply of tobacco products by calling

384

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production on governments to support a transition out of tobacco production. Some 168 states are parties to the convention, including Bangladesh. Special anti-tobacco legislation in Bangladesh also establishes the principle of support to tobacco farmers wanting to shift out of tobacco production, in recognition of the many detrimental effects it has on the environment and public health. How to do so remains a key challenge. Little detailed research has been undertaken on the constraints farmers face or practical ways to make the transition to alternative systems (Leppan et al., 2014). An initiative funded by IDRC and launched in 2006 by UBINIG, a Bangladeshi policy and action research organization, and D. Buckles at Carleton University sought to address this gap by engaging with tobacco farmers interested in shifting out of tobacco production. The initiative proposed to combine research with action and participation to change key factors keeping farmers tied to producing tobacco. It focussed on three districts of Bangladesh: Kushtia, Cox’s Bazaar and Bandarban. Informal discussions with tobacco farmers in each of these areas determined that many tobacco farmers acutely feel the negative impacts of tobacco production and want to stop. This felt need prompted an exploration of the constraints tobacco farmers face and strategic entry points, from the perspective of both men and women, older and younger farmers as well as small- and medium-sized farms. The analysis and interpretation by participants led in turn to a critical realization: farmers themselves hold the key to successful transition strategies. When engaged in thinking creatively about current conditions and crop choices, new options and transition strategies emerged that had not been considered previously. Using these insights, farmers designed and tested field experiments and evaluated the results over several agricultural seasons. Policy action followed. The story reported below describes this cycle of participatory inquiry into strategic constraints, innovative experimentation, evaluation and policy engagement. It also includes instructions for use of the Causal Dynamics variant of System Dynamics method explained in Chapter18. D. Buckles designed and facilitated the process in close collaboration with Farida Akhter and Rafiquel Haque Tito of UBINIG.

WHY GROW TOBACCO Why do farmers continue to grow tobacco, despite the many concerns they have about its impacts on their health, environment and land? This question launched the first full cycle of diagnostic assessments, planning, implementation and evaluation in 2006. Tobacco farmers in each of the three regions of the project sat together to state their reasons for growing tobacco, develop a common understanding of the situation, and decide what to do about it. During the first diagnostic step the facilitators supported the discussion by eliciting the reasons behind decisions to grow tobacco and facilitating an assessment of the interaction of these reasons using the Causal Dynamics tool (Chapter 18). The final discussion converged around potential entry points for action, and decisions by the group to plan and implement a strategic and systemic intervention. Participants in one of the assessments included seven men and three women living in Daulatpur village in Kushtia district. All had grown tobacco for many years and decided that they had to find a way out without completely undermining their livelihoods in the

385

Understanding systems short term. After tea and introductions, they identified six reasons why people continue to grow tobacco. To paraphrase the views expressed: •

•

•

•

• •

Tobacco production pays well. The price for the highest grade of cured tobacco set by the BATC is higher than for any other crop we know. We hope we will get the top price, but often we don’t (the price drops a lot for leaf judged by the BATC as of lesser quality). The BATC issues a card to farmers they buy from, and will only buy from farmers with a card. This creates an obligation to the BATC, cemented by access to credit for fertilizers, pesticides and tobacco seed. We can also use the card to buy cured tobacco from farmers that don’t have one, setting ourselves up as tobacco traders as well as producers. We usually receive a single payment for our entire crop. This is attractive because we can use the lump sum to repay debt, buy land, improve our houses or pay for other large expenditures such as marriages and social obligations. We can also use the cash to buy tobacco from other farmers and thereby join the tobacco trade. Lump sums of money are not available for other crops. There are currently few cash crops for us to consider or compare with tobacco. Markets for traditional crops have withered away over the years and no new crop has emerged to challenge tobacco. Most farmers in the area grow only tobacco. We feel peer pressure to also farm this way because it is what all farmers do here. Tobacco farming makes use of our family labour, especially women and children at home. By tending the fires to cure the tobacco leaves, they contribute directly to generating household cash income.

Men and women in the group discussed each of these factors, and others set aside by them as less important or variations. The key question posed for each factor is simple: to what extent does it contribute to other factors in the list? In other words, what is the causal weight of one factor on another? To answer the question each time it was asked, the group used a scale from 1 indicating a very minor contribution to 5 indicating a major cause. The group justified and negotiated ratings for each factor’s causal interaction with other factors until a consensus emerged. Table 20.1 shows the ratings given in the Daulatpur exercise, numbers reflecting the complex rationale for continuing to grow tobacco. The last column records the total active score of the row factor, i.e. its overall weight on all other column factors. This is the cause index. The third row from the bottom records the total passive score of the column factor, i.e. the overall weight that all other row factors exercise on it. This is the effect index. The two indices tell us to what extent each factor is a cause and an effect of other factors. For readers, a brief discussion of causal attribution is in order. Any analysis that unravels the root cause of each factor at play in a system is logic operating at its best. Logic and causal reasoning has countless implications for science and pragmatic interventions in real life. It can, however, create what might be called a farmer’s nightmare – ‘root digging ad infinitum’. If we know that problem X (unemployment) is the root cause of problem Y 386

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production (poverty) and that Y acts in turn as the root cause of problem Z (indebtedness), chances are we will target X in order to do away with both Y and Z. But why stop the causal chain at point X? Should we not go back to the root cause of X (why is there unemployment in the first place?), and so on, ad infinitum, cognizant that there will never be a problem A at the end of the line? Causal Dynamics proposes a common-sense solution to this puzzle, expressed in the last two rows of the table (real and apparent weight). The tool assumes that each factor has a weight of its own that may persist, at least to some extent, even in the absence of contributing cause(s). We call this the ‘real weight’ of any given factor. For instance, indebtedness may not disappear entirely even if the unemployment problem is fully resolved. It will continue to exercise ‘real weight’ on people’s livelihoods, as it does for indebted tobacco farmers. This notion differs from the ‘apparent weight’ of a factor – the weight it seems to have at first sight, before factor interaction and real weights are considered. Back to our story. The second row from the bottom of Table 20.1 records the conclusions of discussions with farmers about the ‘apparent weight’ of each factor (as a first estimate of its overall weight in the system), using a scale of 1 to 7. The rating, done immediately after agreeing on the final list of reasons for growing tobacco and prior to assessing interactions, was obtained by asking how important each factor is as a reason for growing tobacco (see Rating in Chapter 5). In Daulatpur, people felt that the single lump-sum payment and the lack of an alternative cash crop carried the greatest weight in keeping farmers engaged in tobacco farming; each received the highest score in the scale (7). Other reasons got relatively lower ratings, shown in Table 20.1. These reflect the apparent weight of each factor. The values in the last row in Table 20.1 were generated after rating the interaction of all factors (i.e. after completing the rating matrix). Participants reviewed their earlier assessment of apparent weights and revised them to determine the ‘real weight’ of each factor. This involved thinking about each factor in isolation from all other factors, as if these were resolved or did not exist. We took a card expressing each reason and asked people to give it a score as though it were the only factor at play. This provided a second chance to reflect on the real weight of each factor independently using counterfactual reasoning. Ratings for real weights are recorded in the last row of the table and represented in Figure 20.1 by the relative size of each factor marker. They point to persistent reasons for continuing to grow tobacco, factors (e.g. the lack of alternate cash crops has a high real weight) that people may choose to address regardless of what else may change in the system along the way. Debate among farmers and the negotiation of ratings took place largely as a direct conversation among themselves, with clarification of the question from the facilitators. Facilitators compiled the numbers in a table once agreement was reached. A tree metaphor and image with trunk and roots supported the discussion and helped people keep track of which relationship they were talking about – is it A causing B, or B causing A? While the basic question became repetitive, the discussion remained lively due in large part to the good humour of various participants and the high relevance of the topic. The facilitating team applied a light touch to turn the reasoning by participants into a final score, verified and adjusted when needed along the way. The focus was on understanding farmer perspectives on the direction of the causal relationship and where, roughly, it fit in the scale 387

0

3

4

Uses family labour

Most grow tobacco 8/25

18/25

6

3

Total score

Apparent weight

Real weight 4

6

 

2

 

Effect index

2

4

Scarcity of cash crops

x 2

3

4

BATC obligations

Lump-sum payment

2

x

Pays well

BATC obligations

Pays well

Factors

4

7

14/25

 

3

0

3

x

4

4

Lump-sum payment

6

7

18/25

 

5

2

x

4

4

3

Scarcity of cash crops

1

4

13/25

 

3

x

1

3

3

3

Uses family labour

3

5

19/25

 

X

3

5

4

3

4

Most grow tobacco

 

 

90/150 (62%)

 

17/25

8/25

15/25

17/25

17/25

16/25

Cause index Total score

TABLE 20.1  The interaction of factors behind farmers’ decisions to continue to grow tobacco, Daulatpur, Bangladesh (Causal Dynamics)

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production of interactions. A tea break also helped, bringing the first part of the discussion (reasons, apparent weight, rating of interactions, real weight) to completion within three hours. Interpretation of the results and discussions about what they meant to farmers and to UBINIG as a supporting organization followed on another tea break and brief tour of the gardens at UBINIG’s rural facility. Meanwhile, the facilitation team turned the results from the table into a large graph showing the location of each factor based on the intersection of the cause index and the effect index (Figure 20.1). The graph was an unfamiliar image to the farmer participants. They nonetheless understood what it meant when they saw that most of the reasons for growing tobacco were both causes and effects of each other (upper right quadrant of the figure), roots and their own ramifications at the same time. This pointed to an integrated system of causes and effects, a vicious circle of reasons for continuing to grow tobacco. Participants summed up this interpretation up as a seductive trap. Their reasoning was as follows: 1 The  obligation to the BATC (upper left quadrant) is a direct cause of all other factors in the system. Ownership of a BATC card would remain a persistent and compelling reason for farmers to continue to grow tobacco even if the other factors did not exist (represented as a medium-sized square in the graph to show that the real weight would not change). After all, the BATC card gives farmers an assured market and access to credit, a rare benefit in the world of farming. 2 The  lump-sum payment for an entire season’s output gives the impression that the product pays well, even though prices are unpredictable and costs spread out over a much longer period. This factor acts as a moderately persistent cause, linked to the perennial hope that their leaf will be judged of high quality and receive a high price. 3 Together with the appeal of a lump-sum payment, the scarcity of substitute cash crops accounts for the fact that most grow tobacco, another factor in the system. In turn, this dominant land use has undermined experimentation with new crops and the development of a range of crop choices. Over time, the diverse technologies of farming (native seed, knowledge, integration with livestock, etc.) and markets for food and other economic crops withered away. Productive uses of family labour also declined (e.g. livestock management and marketing of foodstuffs used to employ women and children), making family labour primarily an effect of the other factors (lower right quadrant). Farmers also noted many other effects downstream from the set of immediate reasons for continuing to grow tobacco (not appearing on the graph), including poor health from processing the tobacco leaf and deforestation of the hillsides. The scarcity of substitute cash crops is the most strongly persistent reason farmers continue to grow tobacco (shown by the larger cube in the graph). The gap would persist even if all other reasons were not at play. It is also the only factor that participants felt they could address themselves. This, as we shall see, became the focus of later action. All of these factors combine to keep farmers prisoner to an entrenched monocropping system with no process in place to find substitute crops or innovate their way out of the conundrum.

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Understanding systems

Cause index high Causes

25

Causes and effects

Lump sum payment

Most grow tobacco Pays well

Effect index low

0

25

12.5

Effect index high

Uses family labour

Independent factors

0

Effects

Cause index low FIGURE 20.1  The interaction of factors behind farmers’ decisions to continue to grow

tobacco, Daulatpur, Bangladesh (Causal Dynamics)

Later that day, one of the farmers, a practitioner of the rural art of song improvisation, composed a spontaneous musical lament about the pain and suffering of tobacco cultivation. He also added a few lines about tree roots becoming spoiled fruits on branches, a humorous reference to the work of the day and powerful imagery to capture the notion of a vicious circle where causes turn into their own effects. Since ‘scarcity of substitute cash crops’ is a persistent factor that partly accounts for other factors, the group decided to focus its attention on doing something about it. The course of action that emerged from the assessment was to start experimenting on a small scale with other agricultural crops with cash potential. If successful, farmers might be able to create a positive ripple effect on the other factors as well due to their integration with each other. Talk within the group focussed on crops such as peanuts, jute, mustard seed, lentils and pulses that were traditionally grown in the region and remain important in other areas. These crops could generate a smaller but steady stream of cash income and ultimately pay more than the single payment obtained through tobacco farming. Fewer farmers would grow tobacco, encouraging others to make the shift as well and 390

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production

PHOTO 20.1  Aminul Begum composes a song about freedom from tobacco before a

group of farmers discussing the results of their research (Source: D. Buckles)

stimulating new markets. Meanwhile the real weight and appeal of a lump-sum payment and obligations to the BATC would remain. As farmers have no control over the practices of the BATC, they could do nothing about this directly. Developing new cash crops, however, was within their sphere of influence and became the focus for later explorations of farmer ecological knowledge and innovative ideas for field experiments in the coming season.

FOOD FOR LOCAL THOUGHT Tobacco farmers in Daulatpur and in various other communities doing a similar analysis converged in their decisions to experiment on a small scale with crops they could sell. It was a necessary step within their control and key to breaking out of the addiction to tobacco production. The strategy made sense to the research team as well, and was more feasible than trying to compete directly with the financial services provided by BATC or to simply lobby the government for a total ban against tobacco production. An alternative was needed to guide any political or policy initiative to create or reinforce incentives to grow other crops. Efforts to put in place disincentives to restrict tobacco production would hurt farmers if there were no viable cash crops available to them. Conducting field experiments is no small matter for farmers, even on a small scale. Land and other resources dedicated to an experiment expose farmers to risk. Furthermore, potential crops are many but few will work economically for farmers. To help plan 391

Understanding systems experiments that responded to the concerns farmers had about growing tobacco, a process was needed to develop crop options that had not already been widely considered. Radical innovation was needed. The research team responded by inviting tobacco farmers from various parts of Bangladesh to sit together and share ideas about crops of interest and ways to shift out of tobacco production. The underlying strategy was to tap into traditions of local knowledge and continuous learning – what farmers actually know about crops and their capacity to ‘think outside the box’. During the first day of a subsequent meeting participants used Causal Dynamics again, but this time to assess the impacts of tobacco production on the farmer’s resource base. The exercise gave the group an opportunity to identify a strategic entry point into a degraded ecosystem that might create the possibility of change in the cropping system. The main conclusions from the assessment, not presented here for lack of space, were that the degradation of soil by years of tobacco cultivation and the lack of locally available seed for other crops were prominent causes of other technical constraints faced by tobacco farmers. These other technical constraints included: • • • • •

the low productivity of other crops grown on tobacco soils; persistent weed infestations; the loss of fish ponds in the community that provide sources of irrigation and food; the loss of deep-rooted trees useful to the management of surface water; the decline of livestock in the farming system.

A few participants used this assessment to directly identify and experiment on their own with varieties of crops well adapted to tobacco-degraded soils. (Since everyone had contributed directly to the analysis and results were shared immediately, farmer participants had the option to act on their own based on the learning they had achieved on the first day.) The research team used this systemic assessment of the impacts of tobacco production on the resource base as an input into a deeper assessment of desired crop characteristics. Ecological Domain is the method the facilitators chose to build on farmer knowledge of a wide range of crops and explore novel options farmers could consider through field experiments. Our reasoning was that innovation would be key to going beyond what was immediately available to farmers from within their own knowledge system. The key assumption of Ecological Domain is that people understand a natural resource domain by dividing it into distinct elements and ‘constructing’ similarities and differences between them. As explained in the previous chapter, application of the method produces clusters of similar elements (in this case, crops) that differ from each other along characteristics organized into contrasting pairs (e.g. ‘farmers can market the product directly to consumers’ versus ‘the product must be sold to a broker’). In keeping with its clinical origins in the work of George Kelly, the method supports breakthrough thinking about novel ways to resolve tensions within a domain, using the language and knowledge of the people involved. To ground the discussion in specific ecosystems and agricultural histories, farmers from each of the three regions did their own comparisons of crops separately and then shared their results. The assessments followed the same steps in the three groups, starting with 392

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production making a list of crops participants thought would be useful to farmers wanting to shift out of tobacco production. For example, five farmers from Daulatpur (two men and three women) sat together and listed about 35 crops grown in their area, from which they selected 13, including tobacco, various grains, pulses, vegetables and other plants with industrial uses. Participants collected samples of seed for each crop from UBINIG’s seed collection and placed them in small bowls laid out on the floor for systematic comparisons. To establish similarities and differences between the sampled crops, they selected three bowls at random and identified a feature shared by two crops different from the third crop. For instance, participants from Daulatpur said that lentils and amaranthus, two of the crops selected at random, help increase soil fertility while the third crop (maize) requires fertilizers to be added. This process (known as triadic elicitation) generated a contrast using terms and concepts meaningful to the farmers. All in all, participants in Daulatpur generated eight sets of contrasts to describe crops in terms of differences and similarities they felt were important to understanding their cropping system. The facilitating team proposed a simple rating scale of 1 to 3, represented by white, grey and black cards, to score each crop in the list on a continuum between the two poles of each contrast. Rows of cards on the floor were used to record the scores and facilitate group discussion of patterns. The Daulatpur exercise revolved around a dependent variable – whether a crop ‘helps increase soil fertility’ or ‘fertilizer needs to be added’. This strategic entry point, revealed by the earlier Causal Dynamics analysis of technical constraints, was used to organize discussion by arranging the seed pots in order from one end of the continuum (‘helps increase soil fertility’) to the other (‘fertilizer needs to be added’). Organizing the elements in this way made it easier for participants to see patterns and relationships between different clusters of crops recorded in the table (Figure 20.2). Participants then rated each crop on the seven other elicited contrasts and added the values to the table using the grey scale. This active organization of the information and visual presentation of the findings supported a progressive and collaborative interpretation of the results as the exercise proceeded. For example, participants observed that crops that increase soil fertility also tend to grow well in available soil moisture and can be cultivated as mixed crops. Crops requiring the addition of fertilizers tend to have the opposite characteristics. Figure 20.2 showing the associations using the software Repgrid confirms and quantifies this advanced clustering performed directly by participants. The research team did not attempt to use the specialized software jointly with the farmers because they were unfamiliar with and uninterested in the technology. Also, electricity was often interrupted during the sessions. By comparing row and column cards (differentiated on a grey scale), participants were able nonetheless to identify the main patterns shown in Figure 20.2, a cluster analysis of the data. For example, farmers could see that crops that require added fertilizer tend to be mono-crops that also need extra water. They also noted that cash crops tend to be external to the food and fodder system, and crops that require hired labour typically are sold through a broker. The research team later shared their statistical analysis with participating farmers, which helped inform subsequent actions. The statistical technique used to create Figure 20.3 is called principal component analysis. It simplifies a data set by reducing the multidimensional relationships among observed 393

Understanding systems

PHOTO 20.2  Women farmers establish similarities and differences between crops, and rate

each on a grey scale, Tangail, Bangladesh (Source: D. Buckles)

variables to a cross-shaped, two-dimensional representation. Shorter distances between crops (dots) and crop characteristics (crosses) indicate closer relationships. In the figure, the scores assigned to crops and crop characteristics (the observed variables) are mapped in relation to two fictive variables. The horizontal line (first component) represents a fictive variable that in this case accounts for 54.4 per cent of the total variance in the data (pattern of relationships among dots and crosses). The vertical line (second component) represents a fictive variable that accounts for another 19.9 per cent. Together, the two principal components account for 74.3 per cent of the total variance, a good score for assessments of this nature. Figure 20.3 confirms and quantifies the main patterns observed by participants in the session based on direct row and column comparisons. It shows that crops and crop features combine to form two major groups. One group is composed of crops oriented towards local (internal) food and fodder needs (left side). These crops can be taken to consumer markets by farmers themselves and managed using family labour. They tend to be planted and harvested during the same season as tobacco, lend themselves to mixed cropping, grow well with available soil moisture and increase soil fertility. Examples of these crops are mosura dal (a pulse), garlic, coriander, amaranthus and cucumber. The other major group is composed of 394

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production

Fits within tobacco season Internally oriented Grows well with available soil moisture Primarily food/fodder crop Family labour sufficient Farmers can market it

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1

1 1 3 2 2 2 1 1

1 1 2 3 1 1 1 1

1 3 3 2 2 2 2 2

1 3 3 1 2 2 2 1

2 2 1 2 1 1 1 1

2 3 3 1 2 1 3 3

2 3 2 3 1 2 1 1

2 1 1 2 1 1 2 1

3 2 1 3 1 3 2 1

3 1 1 2 1 3 2 1

3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3

Straddles tobacco season Externally oriented Water needs to be added Primarily cash crop Mono-crop only Hired labour required Must be sold through broker

Tobacco Wheat Winter rice Potato Cucumber Sugarcane Corn Peanut Jute Amaranthus Garlic Coriander

FIGURE 20.2  Crop options rated against eight contrasting characteristics, Daulatpur,

Kushtia, Bangladesh (Cluster Analysis, Ecological Domain)

crops grown in response to external market demand (right side). These crops must be sold to brokers, mill owners or company buyers before they get to market. They tend to be grown as a mono-crop and require inputs such as water, fertilizers and hired labour. Tobacco and sugarcane are examples of crops that combine these characteristics. Participants explained that by combining these two sets of crops farmers can grow food and fodder for their households and also secure some cash income. They felt that this dual strategy was necessary but also problematic – the two contrasting crop groups are grown in the same season and therefore compete directly with each other for land and other resources. This forces farmers to choose between them or split their land into two separate blocks. They also explained that current local food and fodder crops are at a general disadvantage compared to the externally oriented crops such as tobacco and sugarcane. That is, they receive little policy support, and markets for them have declined locally or do not exist. Under these circumstances, the current set of local food and fodder crops, while important to them, cannot be viable substitutes for tobacco. More of the same will not solve their problem. Figure 20.3 also shows that some crops stand apart from all others in that they combine features quite differently, an observation that created an important learning opportunity for the farmer participants and the research team. Crops such as rice and to some extent potato are grown in a way similar to externally oriented crops (mono-crops, external inputs needed). Unlike the external crops, however, they help meet local food and fodder needs and can be marketed by farmers themselves. These crops usually occupy the land at 395

Understanding systems

Grows well with available soil moisture Can be cultivated as mixed crop Helps increase soil fertility Garlic Coriander Amaranthus Family labour sufficient

Straddles tobacco season Externally oriented Primarily cash crop Peanut

Mosura lentil Corn Cucumber Farmers can market it Potato Internally oriented Primarily food/fodder crop 2: 19.9% Fits within tobacco season

Jute

Sugarcane Must be sold through broker 1: 54.4% Tobacco Hired labour required

Mono-crop only Fertilizer needs to be added Water needs to be added

Wheat Winter rice

FIGURE 20.3  Crop options rated against eight contrasting characteristics, Daulatpur,

Kushtia, Bangladesh (Principal Component Analysis, Ecological Domain)

the same time as tobacco. A second group of crops (jute and peanut for instance) combine features in odd ways as well. They are like local food and fodder crops in many respects but also have well-established external markets. Furthermore, they do not compete directly with tobacco but rather straddle the tobacco season, either before or after. These unusual combinations of features generated a lot of excitement in the group, especially with respect to jute and peanut. These would be new crops in Daulatpur, and good candidates to compete with tobacco. More importantly, the clustering of crops and crop features based on local knowledge stimulated thinking about how to unblock the dual strategy in the current cropping system. Rather than trying to find the perfect crop to substitute for tobacco during the same season, participants started to think about crops that could support a transition out of tobacco into different cropping patterns. In practical terms, the innovation strategy would need to begin with planting in the season before tobacco is grown and continue to generate benefits in the weeks and months after tobacco is normally harvested. This would allow for gradual and steady improvements in soil quality and a better stream of financial benefits throughout the year. The distinction between substitute crops and transition strategies had not occurred earlier to farmers or the research team, and provided a new lens to reflect on ways to shift out of tobacco production. Importantly, it brought to light the fact that tobacco not only competes directly with crops that have the same growing season but also blocks the land for two other potential seasons of crops, before and after tobacco. The insight moved thinking by the group beyond current local knowledge and conceptual categories into a new space of innovative thinking and experimentation. It became a new conceptual model, more attractive than the current dual strategy. This group insight parallels the psychological process of breakthrough thinking central to Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology. 396

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production One of the women farmers in the group, Sheuli Begum, gave shape to this new thinking with an example. She explained that recently she saw a spice in the market that she and other rural women regularly buy. It contained seeds of three different plants not currently grown in her region. She had decided to sprout all three types, and then chose one (Methi) that she believed could be easily grown in her current mixed cropping system. She noted that it needed to be planted before the tobacco season and would help create some cash income at a time when she would be tending to other crops that would mature later on. Inspired by this idea, participants decided to also search local markets for products that combine crops and crop features in novel and fruitful ways – crops that have a demand in markets they can access themselves (either locally or regionally), that can be grown in mixed cropping systems and that precede or straddle the tobacco season. Transition rather than substitution had become the new guiding narrative.

EXPERIMENTING OUTSIDE THE BOX Participatory action research into the social and technical constraints faced by farmers seeking to shift out of tobacco, and the development of a new conceptual model for thinking about innovation in their cropping system, helped to create independent research capacities among tobacco farmers. Participants immediately started to design a number of new strategies. For example, farmers from Cox’s Bazaar thought that potato, French bean and felon would combine well in their cropping system and help with the transition out of tobacco production. Potato, maize and lentil combinations seemed promising to farmers in Kushtia, and potato, tomato, felon and coriander combinations in Bandarban. To support this process, and consolidate the learning that had occurred, the final days of the weeklong regional meeting focussed on developing a tool for planning and evaluating farmer-led field experiments. This involved creating and using a local adaptation of The Socratic Wheel that could help farmers assess specific crop combinations to support a transition out of tobacco farming in particular agro-ecosystems. The Socratic Wheel (Chapter 5) drew on elements from the analysis of the previous days to create criteria for assessing the balance of benefits from particular crop combinations. A specific crop or other symbol was identified to express the maximum positive value for each criterion, resulting in five spokes: • • • • •

potato to represent market access as it is very easy to sell directly; leaves of the pumpkin to represent early harvest potential because it produces some yield very soon after planting; the Ginga gourd to represent storage because it stores extremely well; rice to represent fodder and fuel because it supplies both; a green coconut to represent health because the water and soft pulp are used to nurse people back to health after suffering from stomach problems.

Participants reproduced these criteria and symbols on the ground using bamboo sticks for each spoke in the wheel and a sample or picture of the plant symbolizing the maximum 397

Understanding systems positive value (Photo 20.3). Farmers then proposed a combination of three crops and assessed how well they balanced the various criteria at play (by creating a web of three sets of ratings). For example, the group judged that in Cox’s Bazaar combining potato, French bean and felon was a good decision because the combination met all criteria reasonably well. The initial proposal in Bandarban to combine potato, tomato and felon was shown to be potentially problematic, so farmers added coriander to the mix, allowing for a better balance in terms of early harvest potential. Women in farming households led this process, sometimes forming separate groups to develop their own collective position on what criteria to include and rating the performance of particular crop combinations in their own fields. Dialogue was key, allowing farmers to adjust their ratings and potential combinations in light of learning from other group participants. These adjustments allowed for a grounded and gender-sensitive discussion of how household and field circumstances affect economic performance from one situation to another, and what goes into making ‘the best decision’. Farmers said that the exercise helped them think through the various considerations that implicitly go into an overall assessment of a farming season. ‘I can now assess myself’, said one farmer in reference to how he was now thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of his season and where he needed to pay more attention in the future. In the weeks following the initial meeting, farmers in each region validated with others their thinking about the best decisions and requested support from the research team for

PHOTO 20.3  Farmers assess crop combinations on five criteria, Banderban, Bangladesh

(The Socratic Wheel) (Source: D. Buckles) 398

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production access to seed of the selected crops. The research team then acquired seed and made a fixed amount available to establish field experiments. We did not tie access to seed for the experiments to any kind of contractual arrangement other than a commitment to consider the combinations that seemed most promising and to use the seed for experiments with some combination of crops during the upcoming season. While many opted to test the recommended combinations in their entirety, others adopted slightly different combinations in light of their own judgements and preferences. Over a period of three years, from 2009 to 2011, some 411 tobacco farmers in three districts established field experiments, generating a wealth of new experience and stimulating a concerted effort to innovate and evaluate outcomes. Before launching the farmer-led experiments, the research team also developed a simple application of Social Domain analysis to form groups of farmers with similar characteristics so they could support each other during their experiments (see Social Domain in Chapter 19). Working in separate groups of men and women and, in the case of Bandarban near the Myanmar border, separate groups of ethnic and Bengali communities, the research team engaged people from the same or neighbouring villages in each area to elicit household features and identify major subpopulations within each setting. The household typologies that resulted from ten different exercises helped organize farmer-experimenters into meaningful groups. It also informed efforts to engage different segments of the population in project planning and evaluation. For example, young farmers specialized in tobacco farming needed additional encouragement and support from older tobacco farmers with broader farming experience. In Bandarban and Cox’s Bazaar wage workers and forest workers emerged as additional household types likely to be affected negatively by a wholesale shift out of tobacco production (they rely on the sale of wood for tobacco kilns and labour in the tobacco fields). They represented important groups to consider when assessing the economic performance and social impact of transition strategies.

FROM FIELD TO POLICY DEBATES The results of the two assessments – one designed to generate specific crop combinations for experimentation, and another to evaluate field experiments sensitive to different farmer criteria – helped the research team plan new activities. In the months following the launch of the first field experiments, we used the findings of our collaborative research to design various researcher-led evaluative studies, including • • •

surveys comparing the economic performance of tobacco farmers and experimenting farmers; an assessment of demand for firewood produced by forest workers; an inventory of plant species and varieties that used to be cultivated but were no longer available in local settings.

These provided detailed information on matters of direct concern to farmers and other stakeholders potentially impacted by a shift out of tobacco such as forest workers and wage labourers. The studies also helped create a proof of concept for the tobacco transition. 399

Understanding systems A survey in 2007 incorporated measures of economic performance developed with farmers using the tool Interests to assess the gains and losses associated with working capital, yield, product quality, food independence and impact on the well-being (happiness) of the household. Based on these grounded criteria and indicators, the survey showed that about 20 per cent of tobacco farmers experienced severe difficulties repaying their loans and 30 per cent did not have enough food to meet their needs for three months or more. By contrast, only a few farmers testing alternative combinations experienced food shortages and none had problems repaying loans. On one criterion, yield expectations, the alternative crop combinations did not do as well as tobacco. Farmers produced enough food to meet their subsistence needs, but surplus yield fell below expectations for almost half of the farmers testing alternatives. Only a third of tobacco farmers experienced a similar level of disappointment in the yield of tobacco. This measure raised doubts about the production potential of alternatives and prompted a more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. The analysis of financial performance, conducted in 2011 with 150 farmers (60 tobacco farmers and 90 experimenters), provided a more complete picture. It found that while gross returns on tobacco and mixed crop combinations were similar, labour costs and the costs of purchased inputs (seed, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation water) were much higher in the tobacco production system. A full-cost accounting of financial returns on land, labour and investment showed the lower overall performance of tobacco farming, a finding that had not been immediately evident to tobacco farmers. Cash advances from the tobacco companies and lump-sum payments for product obscure costs and the calculation of annual profits. In other words, the contracting system hides deep flaws in the business case for tobacco (see details in Akhter et al., 2014). To recap, the complete cycle of diagnosis, innovation, testing and grounded evaluation with tobacco farmers involved a flexible methodology adjusted as the research evolved to take advantage of new insights and emerging opportunities. The approach emphasized generative processes rather than fixed finished products. It started with a detailed assessment of the reasons for growing tobacco and then stimulated innovation and experimentation with means to overcome a persistent constraint that farmers could work on directly (lack of substitute cash crops). Importantly, a new conceptual model emerged – transition strategies (as opposed to substitute crops) that improve soil incrementally and spread costs and benefits over the full agricultural year – opening up a wider set of possibilities. Innovation by farmers was considerable, going well beyond what they had traditionally grown in the study areas. Testing and evaluation of promising crop combinations by a sizeable number of farmers resulted in a proof of concept within two years. At the end of the cycle, the research team and farmers could confidently conclude that there was reason for more optimism about breaking the dependency on tobacco production than was initially the case. For every farmer that had joined in the research there were many more that had expressed interest, in the same villages as well as in neighbouring villages. Furthermore, the farmers involved in the field experiments did not return to tobacco farming even after the experiments concluded. A survey in 2012 of 365 experimenting farmers found that none had returned to tobacco production. This was an encouraging situation. Even the British American Tobacco

400

Breaking the dependency on tobacco production Company (BATC) took notice, opting in 2012 and 2013 to increase tobacco prices in the areas where the experiments with transition strategies were most visible. The successes nevertheless presented a new challenge: how to scale up a proof of concept to an even larger number of farmers in a wider variety of settings? There are more than 50,000 hectares of land in Bangladesh dedicated to tobacco production, involving some 100,000 farmers or more. The impacts on soil, forests and water, not to mention farmer debt and human health, are staggering. At first we thought we could simply promote the most promising crop combinations and encourage farmers to make their own adjustments along the way. It quickly became apparent, however, that a new cycle of action inquiry was needed, involving different stakeholders, actions and methods to mobilize evidence and address issues arising at different levels. At the village level, steps were needed to break tobacco company control of access to quality seed, a hook that gives tobacco companies considerable influence over crop choice at the field level. Tobacco farmers wanting to try new crops typically have little access to locally adapted and good quality seeds of other crops, or information about how to manage the seed and crop. To meet this need, the research team turned to the Nayakrishi Andolon, an established farmers’ movement in Bangladesh comprised of more than 300,000 households in 19 districts of the country. For many years UBINIG and the Nayakrishi Andolon had worked together to develop Seed Wealth Centres at the household, village and regional levels with samples of a very large number of crops and local seed varieties. The research team decided to sponsor a farmer-to-farmer exchange process adapted to the needs of tobacco farmers. Between 2011 and 2016, some 723 tobacco farmers visited the Nayakrishi Seed Wealth Centres closest to them where they learned about crop varieties, seed germination and viability, seed storage and farming practices such as mixed cropping, crop rotation and the making of compost. They also discussed with other farmers the calculation of input costs and the broad range of economic benefits from mixed crop production, taking into account factors beyond the yield of a single crop such as tobacco grown in a monoculture. This helped farmers situate the transition out of tobacco production in broader terms, including how crops are linked to livestock and water use, the costs of chemical dependence and the many incremental gains that stem from reduced household expenditures and a small but steady stream of income. The exposure and training process for each group of farmers lasted three to five days. Importantly, almost half of the participants in the exchanges were women. This design feature was aimed at increasing the chances of successfully improving access to quality seed in or near tobacco producing communities, in keeping with the prominent role women in Bangladesh play as seed keepers. Scaling up the tobacco transition also needed to address constraints at the regional level, particularly with respect to markets for alternative crops. As noted in the analysis of reasons for growing tobacco, tobacco farming quickly becomes the only game in town. Once it is dominant in an area, local and regional markets for food crops and other potential outputs from farmers’ fields weaken as more and more farmers turn to a single crop and associated facilities provided by tobacco companies. This creates a serious hurdle to marketing other crops. To address this problem, UBINIG helped organize former tobacco farmers into groups to facilitate collective transportation of goods to market.

401

Understanding systems Arrangements were made with local officials to establish collective local and regional market stalls where product could be sold at scale without incurring the full cost of marketing. The research team also collated and shared information on prices for a wide range of products at village and regional markets and wholesale depots so that farmers could make independent decisions about where to sell their products. The intervention was designed to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of normal markets, without trying to compete directly with the tobacco company’s more extensive market supports and facilities. In some areas it worked because all farmers in entire villages shifted completely out of tobacco. ‘We have suffered a lot from tobacco farming, so we do not want to grow tobacco anymore’, farmers in Bandarban and Chakaria districts told everybody. In one area (Lotoni) local authorities no longer allowed tobacco companies to even come to their villages. While the local seed and regional market interventions were helpful to the households and villages involved, they could not be sustained over time. Policy change was also needed, based on new information and new perspectives on the public policy implications of shifting out of tobacco production. At this national level, UBINIG and the national farmers movement Nayakrishi Andolon began to articulate the broader reasons why the Government of Bangladesh would want to support an orderly transition out of tobacco cultivation and actively regulate against the continued expansion of tobacco into foodproducing areas. The arguments brought together the well-known concerns expressed by urban anti-smoking advocates about the health impacts of smoking with new arguments regarding the negative impacts of tobacco farming on national food security and the health of kiln workers (mainly women and children). By linking urban and rural actors and issues, advocacy engaged the general public, farmers, journalists, scientists and government officials in discussions on the public policy implications of shifting out of tobacco production. It focussed on the cost to the nation of allowing tobacco companies to continue to divert scarce arable land away from food production, and the obligation of the government to ensure food and health for its urban and rural population. These arguments, and the regular participation of farmers and the Nayakrishi Andolon in protests on World No Tobacco Day, captured the interest of the national media and helped to raise public understanding of the full range of harms from tobacco. Within this broader discourse, UBINIG and other advocates called for specific policy changes focussed on practical measures related to technical assistance, inputs and marketing support for crop production. The big picture for policy change was linked directly to specific policy steps, some of which were taken quite quickly. For example, in 2011 The Bangladesh Bank, the monetary and financial regulator for Bangladesh, ordered all scheduled commercial banks to suspend the practice of granting loans to individuals and companies for the purpose of tobacco farming. The Circular cited the threats to public health from the use of tobacco products but also noted the negative impact of tobacco farming on the food crisis in Bangladesh and on the environment. It also instructed banks to close previously disbursed loans for tobacco production on schedule and to not renew or extend them for any reason. That same year and in subsequent years the Ministry of Agriculture

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Breaking the dependency on tobacco production suspended individual subsidies on fertilizer for tobacco production and the Ministry of Industries reduced its fertilizer subsidies for tobacco companies. Local officials in Bandarban made use of existing administrative procedures within the Ministry of Land to ban tobacco cultivation on government-owned lands in the district. Given its role in advancing the cause, UBINIG won a 2016 national award for its work on the tobacco transition, presided over by the Minister of Health and Family Welfare. It was also invited to play a lead role in drafting the National Tobacco Cultivation Control Policy, currently before Cabinet. Critically, the policy includes government support for crop transition strategies covering the entire agricultural season (Shimu, 2018). The accomplishments, while impressive, are part of an unfinished struggle (see www. ubinig.org). The tobacco lobby is powerful and the institutional environment very complex and unpredictable (Buckles et al., 2014). This complexity provides numerous avenues for bringing new information from untapped sources into policy debates, but also leaves more avenues for the tobacco industry lobby to delay action and undermine initiatives in a wide range of institutional contexts. Consequently, directed coordination among actors is immensely difficult. In addition to the ministries noted previously, other Bangladeshi government actors that could make collective action possible on a large scale are the Ministry of Health (responsible for occupational health hazards associated with tobacco production, especially for women and children working in kilns), the National Board of Revenues (managing the Value Added Tax paid by both national and international tobacco companies), the Ministry of Commerce (regulating the trade licences of tobacco companies), the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management (monitoring food deficiency for the country), the Ministry of Labour (responsible for the enforcement of laws regulating the use of child labour in tobacco production), the Ministry of Education (concerned with high levels of child absenteeism during the tobacco curing season) and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (charged with limiting deforestation and controlling air pollution). The challenge serves to underline a key feature of ‘scaling science’ (Gargani and McLean, 2017) shared with our approach to PAR: methods and solutions that seem viable at one level cannot be assumed to work at another. Context changes as solutions are scaled, and so too do the ‘skills in means’ needed to make them happen. Methods to engage stakeholders in problem solving can never simply be taken off the shelf, let alone ignore methodologies for achieving scale and fostering the myriad forms of sociability that shape the course of human interaction.

REFERENCES Akhter, F., Buckles, D. J. and Haque Tito, R. (2014) ‘Breaking the Dependency on Tobacco Production: Transition Strategies for Bangladesh’, in W. Leppan, N. Lecours and D. J. Buckles (eds) Tobacco Control and Tobacco Farming: Separating Myth from Reality, Anthem Press, London, pp. 141–187. Buckles, D. J., Lecours, N. and Leppan, W. (2014) ‘Reframing the Debate on Tobacco Control and Tobacco Farming’, in W. Leppan, N. Lecours and D. J. Buckles (eds) Tobacco Control and Tobacco Farming: Separating Myth from Reality, Anthem Press, London, pp. 247–270. Gargani, J. and McLean, R. (2017) ‘Scaling Science’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, pp. 34–39.

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Understanding systems Lecours, N. (2014) ‘The Harsh Realities of Tobacco Farming: A Review of Socioeconomic, Health and Environmental Impacts’, in W. Leppan, N. Lecours and D. J. Buckles (eds) Tobacco Control and Tobacco Farming: Separating Myth from Reality, Anthem Press, London, pp. 99–137. Leppan, W., Lecours, N. and Buckles, D. J. (eds) (2014) Tobacco Control and Tobacco Farming: Separating Myth from Reality, Anthem Press, London. Shimu, S. (2018) Exploring Institutional Mechanisms for Economically Sustainable Alternatives for Tobacco Farmers, Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs, Dhaka.

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Conclusion

In May 2014, Dr. Peter Dodek, a Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, approached J. Chevalier to discuss his research on moral distress among healthcare workers – the distress that people experience when they are caught between what they think should be done and what they are told to do. Dodek and his colleagues had already used quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the magnitude of this problem in his own hospital environment (Dodek et al., 2016; Henrich et al., 2017). Intrigued by PAR as a strategy for building action into the research process, he read through our handbook and asked how he and his colleagues could develop a research proposal that would use PAR as a strategy to investigate and reduce moral distress among personnel in intensive care units (ICUs). Many conversations followed, until an international research team was created to undertake a new PAR-based initiative, developed in close collaboration with J. Chevalier. Informed by previous work in the field, the project sought to engage people in developing, testing and evaluating solutions to moral distress that fit their unique circumstances. Dodek’s past and ongoing work is part of a growing body of empirical research that points to high levels of frustration, anxiety, fear, anger, sorrow, self-doubt and guilt that healthcare providers experience when they feel powerless to practise according to their ethical standards. These emotions develop when professionals believe they know what is the right thing to do but cannot because of internal or external constraints. Threats to moral integrity are usually driven by end-of-life controversies, inconsistent care plans and pressure to reduce costs. Consequences range from diminished workplace satisfaction to absenteeism, burnout, attrition, workplace incivility, increased adverse events, and ethical numbness over time. Research from around the world shows that this problem has reached alarming prevalence in ICUs, particularly among nurses. Yet there is almost no empirical evidence about how to prevent or treat moral distress. The idea of exploring these workplace issues using a novel methodology, now called the Moral Conflict Assessment (MCA) tool, strongly appealed to us for various reasons. The most important reason is the topic of moral distress itself, a phenomenon now so widespread that it may have become a defining malaise of our age. Problems of conscience and the loss of meaning affect not only healthcare workers but also people providing routine frontline services in practically all settings. The growing list includes firefighters, social workers, international aid workers, street-level bureaucrats, police officers, and military personnel. One factor exacerbating the situation is political cynicism in the general public.

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Understanding systems More than ever, mistrust towards elected officials leaves citizens disillusioned with the workings of democracy, discouraging them from engaging in critical thinking, social action and civic engagement. All of this points to ‘the continued relevance of Arendt’s warning about the risks mass technological society poses for the capacity of human beings to think and make reflective judgments’ (Burdon, 2015). To make matters worse, the lay public has more and more reasons to doubt the role of higher learning and scientific research in problem solving for the common good. In its own way, our journey to advance PAR theory and methods reflects the widely-felt need of university students, teachers and researchers to find meaning in formal education and the discovery process. In our view, science-insociety is an appeal for all of us to think ethically, by going beyond the pursuit of professional advancement and ‘knowledge for its own sake’, and giving serious thought to the many pressing issues of our times. Another feature of the MCA project is that it gave us a unique opportunity to develop a flexible methodology suited to the complexity of real-life situations, this time by incorporating the three core dimensions of PAR thinking and practice outlined in Chapter 2: the rational-pragmatic dimension of ‘instrumental reason’, the psychosocial-transformative dimension of ‘expressive reason’, and the critical-emancipatory dimension of moral thinking and ‘communicative reason’. Since moral distress can take many forms and involve a wide range of factors, any tool designed to assess and address the problem must allow participants to adopt the focus that matters to them, depending on the situation at hand and their assessment of where the problem lies. To this end, the questions asked in the MCA process can lead people to concentrate on interest-based issues, if they so choose. They can also opt to delve deeper into personal and interpersonal issues, including those of self-worth, identity and fulfilment. At the same time, they can apply their critical thinking skills to sort out the ethical aspects of their work. The moral distress project coincides with our goal of scaling up PAR thinking and practice, beyond small group dynamics (see Chapter 2). The project lends itself well to the development of an interactive web-based methodology for collaborative data entry and analysis, including a ‘back-end’ database that can aggregate data. This is available for broader use in professions and institutions concerned with better understanding and dealing with moral conflict in their own setting. Supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the project thus began, in the fall of 2016, with a focus on first testing a hands-on methodology and then creating an online interactive tool, now available on our website www.sas2.net/mca. As we write these lines, people can register on the site, apply the tool to their own situation, save their assessment, and then share it with others, anonymously, if they so wish. The MCA process involves eight steps with techniques similar to those described in this book. This allows participants to contribute to broader discussions about the prevalence of moral conflict situations in different professions and regions and collectively identify possible solutions. Implementation of the MCA tool is too recent to comment on its impact. We cannot say for certain if our vision of PAR in the digital age will be well served by this initiative. Announcing this project is nonetheless a fitting way to conclude our book, if only because it is work in progress, much like PAR itself. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argued that ‘knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, 406

Conclusion impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other’ (Freire, 1970, p. 72). It is in this spirit that we have designed the MCA methodology, and all other applications of PAR described and narrated in this book, in the hope they will foster more critical thinking, meaningful action and genuine dialogue in our lives.

REFERENCES Burdon, P. D. (2015) ‘Hannah Arendt: On Judgment and Responsibility’, Griffith Law Review, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 221–243. Dodek, P. M., Wong, H., Norena, M., Ayas, N., Reynolds, S. C., Keenan, S. P., Hamric, A., Rodney, P., Stewart, M. and Alden, L. (2016) ‘Moral Distress in ICU Professionals Is Associated with Profession, Age, and Years of Experience’, Journal of Critical Care, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 178–182. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. M. Bergman Ramos, Continuum, New York. Henrich, N. J., Dodek, P. M., Alden, L, Keenan, S. P., Reynolds, S. and Rodney, P. (2017) ‘Causes of Moral Distress in the ICU’, Journal of Critical Care, vol. 26, no. 4, e48–e57.

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Index

abstinence, psychoanalytic 45 – 46, 139 abstract and concrete 57, 83, 101, 121, 289, 291, 319; see also laddering up or down accident causation 5, 23, 29, 216 – 226, 231, 236 Action, Research, Training (ART) 71, 73 – 76 Action Evaluation 13 action inquiry, and action research 4, 22 – 25, 31 Action Learning 12 action–reaction 83, 85, 111 Action Science 12, 24, 29, 31 Activity Domain 371 Activity Dynamics 348, 355 – 358 Activity Mapping 71, 83 – 85, 106, 141, 336 adjacent possible 306, 319, 380; see also proximal development agile planning 84, 111 akrasia 283 analytic philosophy 183, 319 animal health surveillance 194 – 197, 311, 315, 358 – 362 anonymity 61, 122, 152 – 155, 160, 286, 315, 406 anti-psychiatry movement 51 anxiety 45 – 46, 159 – 160, 163, 236, 405 Anzieu, D. W. 45, 159 – 160, 163 Appreciative Inquiry 12, 24, 134, 232, 243, 305 Appropriate Technology Movement 13, 302 Aquinas, T. 226 Arendt, H. 406 Argyris, C. 12, 23 – 24, 26 Aristotle 56 – 57, 86, 167, 184, 226, 279, 282, 289, 346, 380 artisans 56, 59 attentive listening 121, 144 – 146, 214, 291, 309, 339 – 340, 373 attribution 88, 94, 104 – 105, 146, 386

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Attribution and Contribution 182 Audubon, J. J. 187 authorship, and participation 29, 154 auto-ethnographies 25 autonomy: group 26, 41 – 42, 44 – 45, 51, 60; and research ethics 151, 153 Ayer, A. J. 181, 380 Balint, M. 45 Balint method 309, 313 Barthes, R. 86, 184 baseline, evaluation 100, 126, 128 – 129, 131, 138, 234 Bavelas, A. 201 – 203 Beck, U. 330 – 331 beneficiary 103, 107, 244 – 246, 254 Bergson, H. 303 Bernstein, P. L. 331 big data 196 – 197 big tent approach 3, 13 – 14, 21 – 22, 30, 50 binary thinking 40, 95, 101, 103, 255, 264, 382 biodiversity 1, 178, 188, 311, 332 Boal, A. 13 Bourassa, M. 129 Bourdieu, P. 321 Bradbury, H. 12 – 13, 23, 24, 30, 49, 54 brainstorming 57, 115, 145, 174, 303 – 305, 307, 313; see also creativity bricolage 307, 309, 311, 314 Buddhism 5, 130, 214 bureaucracy 2, 15, 41 – 43, 51, 91, 94, 103, 260, 271, 279 Calton, J. M. 259 – 260 capitalism 40, 42, 62, 246, 260 – 261, 278 – 280 Carrousel 113, 211, 308 – 314, 335, 339 – 340, 362

Index categorical imperative 292 – 293, 321, 347 Causal Dynamics 105, 346, 348, 351, 355, 384 – 387, 390 – 393 causation 5, 167 – 168, 174 – 176, 180 – 184, 216, 365; assignable and chance 18; and evaluation 104 – 105, 108; see also accident causation Cavalier, D. 189 Certomà, C. 13, 61 – 62 Chambers, R. 13 – 14, 26 – 27, 39 – 40, 54, 190, 256 chanciness 140, 183, 367, 369 change agent 20, 40, 94 change experiment 19 – 20, 25, 30, 37, 201 chaosmos 86 chaos theory 71, 366, 369; see also Order and Chaos Citizen Science 3, 5, 13, 31, 61, 186 – 190, 196 Citizens’ Juries 13, 23, 26, 31, 61 civic engagement 126 – 127, 406 civil society 4 – 5, 258, 277 – 281, 302 Clarke, T. 245, 259 – 261 class analysis 167, 245 – 246 classification 162, 167, 319, 347, 364, 369, 372, 381 – 382; see also Free List and Pile Sort class struggle 47 – 48 Clegg, S. 245, 259 – 261 climate change 26, 86, 184, 191, 332, 366 cluster analysis 378, 392 – 393, 395 Coghlan, D. 13, 18, 22 – 24, 26 – 27, 39 Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry 12 collaborative research 30, 153 – 154 communicative reason 39, 49, 61, 283 – 284, 406 Community-Based Research 12, 27, 153 Community-led Total Sanitation 13 community service 2 comparison table 117, 122 complexity: and causation 183; cultural 256; and evaluation 88, 138; political 403; and process design 5, 115, 140, 406; psychological 16; social 202, 255, 258, 264, 334; and System Dynamics 6, 345, 364 – 365; systemic 181; technological 224; theory 71, 366 – 367; and uncertainty 42, 76; and value systems 290, 292 confidentiality 45, 139, 152, 154, 159 – 160 conflict management 41, 255 – 256, 287 – 291, 294; see also Moral Conflict Assessment; Social Analysis CLIP consciousness, false 283 consensus, building 49, 108, 122 – 123, 142,

149, 201, 258, 261, 284, 305, 308, 310, 315, 318, 322, 386 consent: informed 139, 152 – 154; manufactured 280 constructivism 98 – 99, 372 constructs 370, 374, 381, 392; see also Personal Construct Psychology contradiction: of emergent society 367; methodological 95; real-life 46; systemic 369 Contribution and Feasibility 105, 309, 333, 339 – 340 conversations: critical 2, 49, 51; cross-boundary 28, 30, 73, 382; enduring 238; and evaluation 93 – 94, 96, 98 – 99, 102, 105 – 106, 108; and experts 162, 214; methodological 151, 204, 208; multistakeholder 261; narrative 86; with nature 332 – 333; plural 30, 260; problem-solving 170, 173, 215 – 216, 226, 232, 237, 346; and process design 141, 347; safe 159; structured 93 – 94, 98 – 99, 105, 115, 142, 150, 286, 327; and System Dynamics 355; in theory 52, 54 Cooke, B. 26, 43, 55, 94, 142 Cooperative Inquiry 12, 26 counterfactual reasoning 105, 112, 182 – 183, 226, 387 counter-hegemonic 39, 49, 280, 321 counter-mapping politics 187, 193 craftwork 56, 60 creative arts 13 creativity: and critical thinking 50 – 51, 305; methodological 3 – 4, 40, 44, 62, 147, 161 – 162, 303 – 309, 322; and planning 86; and science 16; and social innovation 299 – 300, 303, 319; and structure 93; and systems thinking 367 criteria 128; see also indicators critical-emancipatory perspective 3, 13 – 14, 38 – 40, 47 – 51, 53, 55, 60, 406 Critical Pedagogy 13, 48 crowdsourcing 13, 61, 189, 196 customs, local 135 – 136, 142, 170, 187, 202, 209, 274 defence mechanisms 19, 45 – 46 Dejours, C. 46 Deleuze, G. 87 deliberative: democracy 13, 31, 61, 283; polling 13, 61; reasoning 123, 330 Delphi method 123 Deming, W. E. 12, 18 – 19

409

Index democracy: deliberative 13, 31, 61, 283; digital 3, 61; distributive 284; and education 48; floor 147 – 148, 314; Human Relations 18; knowledge 47, 60 – 61, 254; and Lewin, K. 20 – 21, 37 – 38, 41, 202; liberal 44, 280; and moral conflict 406; participatory 24, 39, 190, 257, 302; radical 47; and science 303; and stakeholder theory 264, 277, 280 – 281; workplace 41 – 42, 44 – 45 dependent variable 373, 393 Derrida, J. 54 Design Thinking 12, 24, 305 – 306 determinism 183 Developmental Evaluation 90, 99, 106, 110 Dewey, J. 14, 37, 48, 73 dialectics 48, 106, 279, 281, 382 dialogical 24, 27, 48, 56, 73, 107, 125, 180, 284 – 285, 307, 365 differend 321 digital: age 277, 406; democracy 3, 61, 277; economy 302; participation 300; reasoning 382; shift 60 – 62; tools 189; see also ICT Dilthey, W. 180 – 181 Disagreements and Misunderstandings 39, 123, 322 – 327 disaster relief 5, 61, 333 – 341 discipline: action research 38, 41, 54; safety engineering 223; scientific 2 – 3, 27, 51, 55 – 56, 74 – 75, 138, 152, 180, 190, 244, 256 – 257 dispute resolution 245; see also conflict management documentation process 142 – 143 Dodek, P. 405 Domain Analysis 6, 39, 97, 106, 150, 167, 345, 370 – 382, 384, 399 domino theory 217 – 218 double bind 224, 234 double-loop learning 27 doxa 321 Dubost, J. 27, 40, 44 – 46, 55 Duflo, E. 90, 92, 100, 104, 110 eclectic approach 14, 98 – 99; see also pluralism Ecological Domain 346, 371 – 372, 374, 384, 392 – 396 Ecological Dynamics 348 – 355 efficiency 15, 17, 19, 38, 41, 111, 116, 121, 201, 222, 259, 347, 356, 365 Einstein, A. 254, 306, 381 emergence 154, 308, 327, 366 – 367 Emery, F. 12, 42

410

emic 93, 256 – 257 empathy 145, 284, 305, 340 Empathy Maps 305 empeiria 56 – 57 empiricism 23, 88, 100, 104, 160, 186, 370 empowerment 1, 12, 26, 62, 188, 197, 213, 248, 254, 257 – 260, 264, 269, 271, 274, 276, 278, 302, 336, 341; women 252, 356 – 358 Empowerment Evaluation 13 Energy Release Theory 217 – 218 engaging, skill at 143 – 146 engineering: design 305; and planning 77, 86; safety 218 – 225; social 37, 306; see also Safety Engineering and Management (SEM) entropy 140, 346, 348 e-PAR 13 epidemiology 13, 188, 195, 218; see also accident causation; animal health surveillance epistêmê 54 – 56 Erfan, A. 12, 25, 28, 52, 54 essentialism 226, 321 ethics: action research 1, 5 – 6, 46 – 47, 115, 139, 151, 153 – 154, 406; and causation 184; communicative action 283; discourse 61; and human freedom 367; Kantian 291 – 293, 347; and moral conflict 405; participation 21; scientific research 50, 139, 151 – 153; sharing 155 – 158, 160; stakeholder 245, 259 – 260, 278, 280; see also values Ethnographic Action Research 13 etic 93, 256 – 257 evaluation: accounting 94, 110 – 111; and action research 5, 139, 141; and empiricism 100, 104; contribution of 356 – 357; counterfactual 105; defined 89 – 90, 152; and farmer profile 379 – 380, 385, 399; frameworks 89 – 90; goals 110 – 111; impact and outcome 104; through interactive engagement 93; participatory 13, 88, 92; phases 93; proxy 93; and Quality Movement 18; self- 20, 93, 128 – 129, 143, 146; skilful means 146 – 151; using Rating or Ranking 120; using The Socratic Wheel 125 – 133, 138; see also attribution; methodology; methods; Planning, Inquiry, Evaluation (PIE) Event Tree analysis 217 experience: Aristotle on 56 – 57; real-life 21 – 23, 45, 212; and science 20, 150, 190, 367, 369; of senses 105, 175, 180 – 181, 380; sharing 161; Stoicism on 59; subjective 14, 39, 46, 51, 139, 180, 365; training 26, 52; see also Systematization of Experiences

Index experiential learning 2, 12, 47, 61, 71 – 74, 160, 162, 221 experiments: action research 22, 24 – 26, 40 – 41, 61, 159 – 160, 174, 197, 303; change 19 – 20, 24 – 25, 30, 37, 201; controlled 56, 95, 105, 181; educational 74 – 75; farmer 2, 75, 379 – 380, 385, 389 – 392, 396 – 397, 399 – 401; Industrial Democracy 44; organizational 15, 18, 43, 45; public engagement 300; scientific 15, 19, 21, 31, 42, 44, 55, 139, 188, 197, 306, 380 – 381; and social psychology 44 – 45, 159 expressive reason 39, 406 facilitation: autonomous 26; services 20; techniques 13, 142, 147 – 148, 161, 307, 309 – 310 Fals-Borda, O. 6, 13, 48 – 49, 51 – 52, 57, 180 falsification 86, 381 farmer-to-farmer learning 13, 401 Farming Systems Research and Extension 13 Fault Tree analysis 217 feasibility see Contribution and Feasibility feminism 13, 23, 47, 49, 280 field theory 29, 202 – 203 first-order change 214 first-person action research 25, 47, 52, 54 Fisher, R. 283 – 284, 294 focus groups 2, 25, 55, 94 – 95, 139, 299, 301 Force Field 5, 40, 100, 105, 175, 204 – 208, 214, 226 – 230, 339, 347 forestry 176, 178, 188, 191, 285 – 290 fractals 96, 101, 366 free association 45, 159, 303 freedom: academic 151; associative 381; democratic 37; and entropy 346; human 367; and humanism 44; in language 320 – 321; and science 37; and structure 161 – 162 free expression 6, 39, 46, 55, 139, 145, 159 – 162 Free List and Pile Sort 75 – 76, 83, 100, 112, 115 – 120, 123, 125, 156, 158, 167, 209, 309 – 310, 312 – 313, 322, 336 – 337, 347, 349 free speech 158 – 159, 293, 321 free will 279, 292 – 293 Freire, P. 13, 23, 47 – 49, 51, 86, 170, 406 – 407 Freud, S. 16, 20, 45 – 46, 51, 139, 159 – 160, 283, 303 functionalism 41, 62, 182, 348, 365 fundamental research 190 Future Search 243

games: and humour 147; language 320 – 321; serious 318, 321 Gandhi, M. K. 294, 302 Gaps and Conflicts 39, 150, 208 – 212, 244, 328 – 329 gender: differences 146, 152, 318, 325; equity 42, 116, 120 – 121, 124 – 126; relations 3, 31, 265, 300, 339, 356, 398; roles 331 Geographic Information Systems 13, 187 gestalt 41, 201 Giddens, A. 331 globalization 40, 54, 62, 252, 330 – 331; alter- 280, 321 global warming 181 – 183 good enough 109, 121, 148 – 149, 252, 282 governance: democratic 42 – 43, 60 – 61, 83; municipal 193, 198; and stakeholder theory 261, 277; state 264; transparent 156 Gramsci, A. 279 – 280 green politics 47, 280 Gross National Happiness 115, 130 – 133 grounded theory 105 grounding, skill at 144, 146 – 147 group dynamics: and creativity 303; interpreting 20; and psychosociology 12, 45; rules of 41, 160; and sharing 39, 159; small 6, 40, 46, 50, 196, 406; sociotechnical 225; training 31 group illusion 160 Guattari, F. 51, 53, 87 Habermas, J. 23, 38 – 39, 47, 49, 61, 260, 283 – 285 Haddon, W. 218 – 219 Hawthorne: effect 92; factory 15 hazard see accident causation; disaster relief; Hazards; risk Hazards 100, 105, 226 – 230, 333, 335, 337, 339 Hegel, G. W. F. 196, 279 hegemony 261, 279, 283, 321; counter- 39, 49, 280, 321 Heidegger, M. 139 Heinrich, H. W. 217 – 218, 221 – 222 hermeneutic 86, 180 – 181 Hobbes, T. 279 holding environment 161 – 163 holistic 6, 53 – 54, 61, 130 – 132, 181, 197 – 198, 222, 345 – 348, 366 – 367; see also part-whole; systems thinking Holocene 367 humanism 14, 23, 37, 42, 44 – 45, 51, 62, 279 – 280, 292

411

Index Human Relations Movement 16, 18, 26 humour 145, 147, 234, 313, 387, 390 hybrid systems 302, 371, 382 hyperlocality 252; see also micro-perspective ICT 60 – 62, 91, 187, 189, 223; see also Internet ideal scenario 172 identity: fulfilment 406; loss 160; politics 60, 62 imagination see creativity incompleteness theorems 16 indicators 88, 95 – 96, 100 – 105, 111, 121, 125, 127 – 128, 130, 133, 138, 332, 349, 376, 400; see also progress markers indigenous knowledge 13, 153, 190, 332 individualism: liberal 279; methodological 73; radical 330 Industrial Democracy 44 innovation: farmer 42, 392, 396 – 400; ICT 61; methodological 4, 42, 133, 142, 305, 346; organizational 18; social 5, 41, 299 – 306, 319 – 320; systemic 380; technological 219, 221 – 223, 307 Innovation Labs 299 input and output 6, 103, 111, 142, 345, 347 – 348, 363 – 366, 369 inquiry: defined 4, 152; diagnostic, evaluative, scientific 89 – 90, 107 – 108, 141 institutional psychotherapy 50 – 51 instrumental: reason 38 – 39, 44, 47, 49, 283 – 284, 292, 332, 365, 406; tools 55 – 60, 88 – 89, 98, 139, 167; see also means and ends intellectual property rights 154 interactive engagement 93 – 94, 146, 154, 160, 300 interests: -based 277, 283 – 284, 293, 406; defined 209, 274 Interests 264, 289, 400 Internet 5, 60 – 61, 83, 187 – 188, 196 – 197, 381; see also ICT intersubjective 39, 47, 49, 54 interviews 2, 20, 25, 46, 55 – 56, 91 – 95, 119 – 120, 139, 142, 180, 200 – 201, 258, 370 intuition 16, 44, 303 – 304, 306 ironic problem-solution loop 214 – 215, 234 Ishikawa, K. 173 – 175 Ishikawa diagram 18, 167, 173 – 175, 217, 227 – 228, 232 iSIKHNAS 194 – 198 iterative process 19, 71, 77, 83 – 85, 106, 120, 123, 143, 255 – 256, 265, 272, 304, 306, 309 – 310, 314

412

James, W. 72 – 73 Jankowicz, D. 372, 374, 381 Jarvis, D. S. L. 331 Johnson, S. 302, 306 Journey Maps 305 Jung, K. 11, 20 Kaner, S. 145, 304, 314 – 315 Kant, I. 283, 291 – 293, 347 Katkari: land struggle 39, 78 – 83, 168 – 173, 175 – 176, 203 – 207, 265 – 272; priority setting 134 – 137 Kelly, G. 6, 97, 345, 370, 381, 392, 396 Kemmis, S. 13, 49 Kennedy, E. B. 189 kinaesthetics 117, 147 Kjellén, U. 217, 219 – 220, 223, 225 knowledge: advancing 1, 4 – 5, 14, 16, 21, 23, 30, 42, 47, 58, 72, 89, 95, 152 – 153, 184, 190, 196, 216, 238, 371, 406; and body 72, 143; and certainty 77, 80 – 81, 86, 140; democracy 47 – 48, 60, 190, 254; differences in 146, 150; disciplinary 75; distribution 256, 337; experiential 61, 174, 181; expert 49, 51, 256; forms of 27, 60, 189 – 190, 382; hierarchy 58; inputs 141; limited 183, 205, 207, 267, 282, 327, 377; living 2, 4, 382; local 6, 13, 31, 150, 187, 193, 198, 332, 346, 370, 372, 381, 391 – 392, 396; making 14, 21, 24, 37, 133, 160, 321; and measurement 150; performative 42; possessed 190; and power 184, 189, 209, 274; scientific 15 – 17, 24, 59, 187, 189 – 190, 264, 331, 333, 381; self- 37, 47; sharing 278, 371; and skills 126 – 128, 217, 261; social construction of 73; system 107, 150, 257, 347, 370, 372, 380, 382, 392; technical 56 – 58, 62; theoretical 31, 54, 56 – 58, 100; tradition 190, 370, 382, 392; see also empiricism; indigenous knowledge Kothari, U. 26, 43, 55, 94, 142 Kuhn, T. 17, 184 Kurland, N. B. 259 – 260 Lacan, J. 51 laddering up or down 101 – 102, 116, 121, 148, 291, 373 language: abstract 289; body 145, 161; and causation 167, 175, 181; creativity in 16; cultural-discursive 49; and Design Thinking 305; differences in 93, 145, 250, 299, 310, 382; game 318, 320 – 321; and inclusion 152;

Index local 145, 318, 392; and measurement 96; ordinary 29, 47, 83, 283 – 284, 318 – 322, 327; overarching 62; of participatory action research 11, 189; symbolic 45, 51, 170; theoretical 57 – 58, 105 lean production 18; see also Quality Movement Learning History 13, 24 learning system see Action, Research, Training (ART); Planning, Inquiry, Evaluation (PIE) LeDoux, J. 332 legitimacy: business 261; defined 274 – 276; gains or losses 209; see also Social Analysis CLIP Leibniz, G. W. 51 – 52, 182 Leontief, W. 348, 356, 363 – 366 Lessons and Values 39, 148, 289 – 293, 339 Levels of Support 211, 309, 312, 314 – 315, 335, 339 Lévi-Strauss, C. 307 – 308, 381 Lewin, K. 14 – 15, 19 – 21, 23 – 24, 26, 29 – 30, 37 – 38, 40 – 41, 45, 51, 55, 141, 200 – 206, 208, 216, 319 Lewis, D. 182 – 183 liberalism 15, 44, 49, 91, 279 – 280, 302, 346 – 347, 367; neo- 52, 225, 244, 261, 277, 280 Liberation Theology 48 life histories 25, 55, 95, 139 life space 29, 38, 41, 203 – 204, 208 lifeworld 39, 49, 57, 260, 277, 382 linear logic 2, 41, 85 – 86, 104 – 105, 138, 140, 143, 168, 173 – 175, 180 – 182, 184, 347, 364, 366, 369 literacy 2, 48, 93, 96, 134, 137, 145, 372 living knowledge see knowledge local knowledge see knowledge Locke, J. 279 logical positivism 23, 181 – 182, 380; see also positive science Lundy, C. 349, 352 – 353 Lyotard J.-F. 86, 321 Mackenzie, C. 196 – 198 Mackie, J. L. 182 Marx, K. 196, 278 – 279 Marxism 244, 283, 302 mathematics 16 – 17, 23, 95, 161, 182, 187, 202 – 203, 214, 319, 327 Mayo, E. 15 – 16, 18 – 19, 26, 45 McTaggart, R. 13 means and ends 15, 38, 40, 42, 44, 49, 55 – 59, 73, 84 – 85, 87, 162, 167 – 168, 171 – 172,

175 – 176, 180, 184 – 186, 220 – 221, 226, 234, 260 – 261, 265, 283, 292 measurements 55, 61, 115, 117, 120 – 122, 138, 146, 150, 224, 327, 365 – 366; evaluation 88, 95 – 105, 110, 128, 130; impact of 16; and Quality Movement 18 memory, collective 40, 52 metatheory 38, 52, 54 methodology: context-specific 88, 99 – 100, 106 – 107, 197, 306 – 307; creative 3 – 4, 40, 44, 62, 147, 161 – 162, 303 – 309, 322; defined 99 – 100; eclectic 99; generative 88, 99, 105 – 107, 304; generic 88, 99, 306 – 307, 348; multi- 94 – 98; schematic 88, 99, 252; see also bricolage; individualism; pluralism methods: ‘little-m’ 2, 56 – 57; mixed 56, 95 – 99; qualitative 22, 44, 49, 55 – 56, 95 – 98, 180, 372; qualitative and quantitative 95 – 99, 405; and theory 5 Michelot, C. 15, 44 micro-perspective 44, 60; see also hyperlocality Mitchell, R. K. 272 – 274 mixed methods see methods modern: bureaucracy 91; humanism 292; rationality 44, 380; risk society 331 – 332; science 2, 21, 26, 58, 175, 187, 218, 331; state 264, 278 – 279; technology 62, 330 – 331 modernity, advanced 49, 330 – 331 Molina, L. 182 monad 51 – 52 Moral Conflict Assessment 6, 39, 405 – 407 Moreno, J. L. 45 Most Significant Change 90, 97, 99, 110 multi-methodology see methodology multistakeholder approach 5, 94, 140, 149, 196 – 197, 203, 225, 232, 246, 259 – 261, 277, 280, 311 – 312 narrative: code 86; counter- 49; evaluation 111; language 321; transition 397; see also storytelling navigating, skill at 144, 147 – 148 needs: assessment 91, 243; basic 284 – 285, 294, 400; community 12, 48, 60, 196 Negotiation Fair 327 – 329, 358 – 360, 363 Neighbourwoods 193 neocorporatism 258 neo-liberalism see liberalism Network Domain 252 Network Dynamics 276, 348, 351, 355, 358 – 363 neuropsychology 332 – 333

413

Index Nietzsche, F. 53 nonviolent communication 284 nonviolent resistance 280, 294, 302 Nureva Span Workspace 116 nutrition policy: in Burkina Faso 311, 318, 328 – 329; in Mali 208 – 212, 311, 328 Obertelli, P. 224 – 225 objective: knowledge 51 – 54, 184; methods 39; praise 37; view 200 – 201, 219, 256, 339; world 14; see also etic observation: effect 16, 96, 366; and indicators 101 – 102, 121; method 2, 22, 91, 96, 105, 139, 220 – 221; about observable facts 365; participant or non-participant 25, 55, 94 – 95; in Problem Tree 176; scientific 61, 160, 174, 181 – 182, 186 – 188, 332, 380 One Health 197 – 198 online editor 300 – 301 open politics 61 – 62 Open Space Technology 13, 308 – 309, 313 Option Domain 76, 371 Order and Chaos 71, 76 – 78, 80 – 81, 85, 105 – 106, 140, 271 organismic view 62 Organizational Development 12, 18, 26, 40, 202, 204, 289 Ortega y Gasset, O. 51, 53 Osborn, A. F. 303 – 304 Outcome Mapping 89 – 90, 93 – 95, 99, 103 – 104, 110, 131 over-interpreting 378 Palmade, G. 44 Palo Alto 214 – 215, 232 Pame people 88 Paradox 39, 100, 106, 150, 175, 214 – 216, 226, 232 – 238, 244, 347 – 348 paradoxical psychology 100, 213, 313 Pareto diagram 174 participation: as partaking 25, 27 – 28; as partnering 25, 27 – 30, 153 Participatory Epidemiology 13 Participatory Geographic Information Systems 13, 190 Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) 13, 24, 26, 40, 89 – 90, 94, 99, 110, 245 participatory mapping 2, 23, 38, 40, 50, 180, 186 – 194, 198, 208, 335 – 336 Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) 2, 26 Participatory Statistics 13 Participatory Video 13

414

part-whole 175, 181, 278, 327, 346 – 348, 363, 365, 367, 369 – 370; see also holistic; systems thinking Patton, M. Q. 90, 105 – 106, 110 PDSA cycle 18 PechaKucha 308 – 309, 312 – 313 Peirce, C. S. 72 Personal Construct Psychology 6, 39, 97, 345, 370, 381, 396 perspectivism 14, 31, 38, 51 – 53 Photovoice 13, 26 phronesis 57, 86 Pimbert, M. 13, 61 – 62 planned change 19, 37, 40, 71, 108, 110, 366 Planning, Inquiry, Evaluation (PIE) 89, 107 – 110 planning in the middle 71, 83, 85 – 86, 89, 106, 140 – 141, 163, 238, 315 Plato 56 – 57, 279, 281 – 282, 380 playing field: of causality 181; of knowledge 24; of language 320 – 321; levelling 43, 57, 257; of PAR 19; stakeholder 272 pluralism 3, 14, 17, 23, 38, 40, 52 – 54, 72, 84, 95, 98 – 99, 190, 260, 321 Poincaré, H. 16, 304 Polanyi, M. 184, 190 policy: accident prevention 218 – 219; and action research 12, 43, 190; animal health 197; and Delphi method 123; and Design Thinking 305; and evaluation 104; and ICTs 61; nutrition 125, 209, 211, 311, 318, 328 – 329; and public engagement 300 – 301; and science 184, 188; and social innovation 302; and stakeholder analysis 245 – 246, 255, 257; tobacco farming 385, 391, 402 – 403; transparency 155; Tri-Council 151 – 152 polling 13, 20, 61, 92, 95, 121 – 123, 146, 160, 211, 312 – 315 Pomodoro Technique 309, 313 Popper, K. R. 16, 49, 367, 380 – 381 populism 26 Positions and Interests 264, 289 positive psychology 232, 234, 236, 291, 327 positive science 14 – 16, 38, 50, 54, 58, 86, 102, 180 – 182, 184; see also logical positivism possibilism 183; see also probabilism possible worlds 57, 167, 176, 182 postmodern 49, 98 – 99, 184, 261, 279, 381 post-truth era 185 power: defined 209, 272, 274; differences in 43, 45, 92, 94, 152, 244 – 245, 252, 256 – 260, 265, 283, 293 – 294, 311; relations 46, 176, 189, 193, 198, 302; sharing 25; and state

Index 279; structure 26, 44, 48 – 49, 60, 202, 208, 278, 305; see also empowerment; Gaps and Conflicts; Legitimacy; Social Analysis CLIP Power 264 Power Lab 52 pragmatism 19, 40, 71 – 73, 98, 219, 258, 291 – 292, 294, 303, 330, 370, 386; see also rational-pragmatic perspective praxis 12, 23, 57, 86 prediction: accident 226; in Disagreements and Misunderstandings 322, 324 – 327; and indigenous knowledge 332; managerial 15, 174, 220; planning 71, 81, 83, 85 – 86, 140; quality 18; risk 332; scientific 61, 89, 181; systemic 365 – 366, 369 Prevention of Atrocities Act 206 principal component analysis 378 – 379, 393, 396 priority setting 2, 6, 38, 76, 115, 118, 124 – 125, 134 – 138, 141 – 143, 147, 150, 211, 229, 322 – 327, 337 – 338, 355, 362 private property 278 – 280 probabilism 174, 183 – 184, 303, 348, 365, 369 problem-based learning 2 Problem Domain 371 Problem Tree 5, 55, 105, 167 – 176, 180, 204, 208, 214, 243, 265, 272, 347 process design 5, 53, 78, 115, 139 – 143, 168, 244, 299, 301, 303 – 304, 313 progress markers 121, 125, 131, 138 Project Cycle Management 243 proximal development 163; see also adjacent possible psychiatry 20, 50 – 51 psychoanalysis 16, 42, 45, 47, 159, 163; see also Freud, S. psychodrama 45 psychosocial-transformative perspective 3, 14, 38 – 40, 44, 50 – 51, 53, 55, 406 psychosociology 6, 11, 12, 40, 44 – 46, 202, 220 public: consultation 61, 299, 301; engagement 3, 187 – 189, 193, 281, 299 – 301, 308, 406 qualitative methods see methods Quality Movement 12, 17 – 18, 44, 173 – 174, 303 quantitative methods see methods quantum mechanics 16, 183, 346 questionnaires 2, 25, 56, 91, 95, 120, 139, 370; see also surveys radical pedagogy 47 Randomized Controlled Trials 90, 95, 99, 104 – 105, 110

Ranking 120 – 123, 309 Rating 112, 120 – 125, 309, 387; see also Socratic Wheel rationalism 23, 380 rationality, hidden 106, 213 rationalization 283 rational-pragmatic perspective 3, 14, 19, 38, 40, 42 – 43, 53, 55, 406 realism, modal 182 – 183 Realist Evaluation 89, 99 Reality Checks 13 Reflect 13 Reflective Practice 12 reflexivity 12, 47, 54 – 55, 220, 225, 231 – 232, 284 Reich, W. 283 relativism 16, 52 – 53, 99 Repgrid 378, 393 resource mapping see participatory mapping Results-Based Management 83 – 84, 89, 93 – 96, 99, 101, 103 – 104, 107, 110 – 111 ripple effect 73, 354, 365 – 366, 390 risk: accident 216 – 220, 222 – 238; assessment 38, 89, 96, 100, 105, 115, 184, 330 – 333, 337; and causation 184; and planning 77, 86; and research ethics 151 – 152, 154, 156; society 330 – 331; see also disaster relief; Hazards Risk Homeostasis Theory 224 – 225 Rogers, C. 45 role reversal 27, 256 Rosen, M. 283 Rosenberg, M. B. 284 Rousseau, J.-J. 48, 252, 278 Russell, B. 184, 319 Sabotage 39, 100, 214 – 216, 234, 309, 312 – 313 safe space 49, 55, 144, 230 safety culture 224 – 225 Safety Engineering and Management (SEM) 218 – 224, 231, 238 Safety Palm Tree 341 scaling: skill at 144, 148 – 150; up PAR 40, 61, 108, 110, 125, 142, 187, 190, 196, 254, 264, 303, 403, 406 Schön, D. A. 12, 23 – 24, 26 science: and society 2, 13 – 14, 19, 21 – 23, 29, 31, 39, 58, 60 – 61, 140, 154, 174, 188 – 189, 225, 333, 406; see also knowledge; positive science scienticity 333 Search Conferences 13, 31

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Index second-order change 214 sensemaking, skill at 144, 150 – 151 service learning 31, 74 sharing: ethics 151 – 152; ethos 39, 46 – 47, 139, 154, 160, 162; and not sharing 159 – 162; and PAR 25, 30, 143, 189; see also transparency; truthfulness Shewart, W. A. 17 – 19 shuttle approach 149, 258 Sinfonie 348 single-loop learning 27 skilful means 27, 40, 56, 57, 71, 73, 106, 115, 162, 255, 277, 282, 285, 299, 309, 330, 339, 345, 347 skill assessment 125 – 130, 146 – 151, 340 – 341 skills in means 5 – 6, 39, 106, 138, 141, 143 – 144, 403 SMS 60, 194, 197 Smuts, J. C. 348, 367 sociability 60, 62, 403 Social Analysis CLIP 39, 100, 106, 149 – 150, 244, 252, 255, 264 – 275, 277, 282, 286, 288 – 289, 347 – 348 social contract 277 – 280; see also state, role of Social Domain 39, 252, 346, 371 – 375, 377 – 379, 384, 399 social movements 26, 60, 278, 302, 366 sociotechnical analysis 12, 41 – 42, 225 Socrates 128, 279, 281 – 282 Socratic Wheel 125 – 133, 138, 143, 150, 156, 158, 309 – 310, 329, 340, 346, 397 – 398 soft systems 6, 12, 86, 345 – 346, 366, 370 solutionism 307 sorting see Free List and Pile Sort Spivak, G. 321 stakeholder: analysis 4 – 5, 115, 243 – 245, 252, 254 – 260, 264, 272, 282, 286, 328, 334, 372; capitalism 260 – 261, 280; closed-door analysis 155, 160, 259 – 260, 272; community 251, 278; defined 245 – 246; democracy 264; identification 6, 158, 246, 251 – 252, 255, 257; non-human 251; open-door analysis 259; representation 255, 258 – 259; salience 272 – 273; and Social Domain 372; theory 39, 47, 244 – 246, 257 – 258, 260 – 261, 264, 272, 277 – 282; see also multistakeholder approach; Social Analysis CLIP; Stakeholder Rainbow Stakeholder Rainbow 244, 246 – 248, 252, 282, 328, 334 state, role of 222, 264, 277 – 281, 301 – 302, 331 Stepping Stones 13

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Stoicism 59 stop-rule, and causation 183, 220 – 221, 224 – 225 storytelling 13, 39 – 40, 57, 60, 94, 97, 111 – 112, 116, 121, 134, 142, 169, 173, 179 – 180, 182, 252, 307, 309, 349, 373 stratification theory 244 – 246 Suazo, L. 74, 76 sublimation 283 surveys 299, 399 – 400; history 90 – 92; see also questionnaires SWOT Analysis 55 symbols, using 39, 45, 51, 57, 117, 127, 131, 134 – 137, 145, 156 – 157, 159, 172 – 173, 176, 272, 310, 312 – 313, 333, 353, 359, 397 synergy, system 197, 355 – 356, 358 Systematization of Experiences 13 System Dynamics 6, 150, 175, 345, 348 – 356, 358, 364 – 366, 385 systems thinking 4 – 5, 115, 167, 175, 181, 346 – 348, 364 – 367, 369, 384; see also soft systems talk therapy 6, 46, 139, 159 – 160 Tavistock Institute 12, 20 – 21, 41, 44 – 45, 225 taxonomy 167, 347, 369 – 370 Taylor, F. W. 15 – 19, 41, 58, 174, 347 technê 56 – 59, 62 technocracy 14, 51, 58, 60, 283 technophilia, and technophobia 307 Téllez Carrasco, J. 53, 286, 287 T-groups 13, 24, 31, 41, 45 theatre, improvisational 45, 252, 307, 309, 312 Theatre of the Oppressed 13 theory: Einstein on 381; espoused 26, 29; and evaluation 90, 94, 98 – 99, 104 – 105, 111; grounded 105; and language 57, 321; Lewin on 19 – 20, 41, 141, 202 – 203, 216; and PAR 2 – 5, 11, 23, 30, 42, 47, 49, 52, 54 – 57, 139, 369, 406; in-use 26 – 29; see also metatheory Theory of Change 89, 99, 110 Thibeault, R. 176, 341 third party 93, 143, 146, 149, 152, 245, 276 Thorsrud, E. 12 three ‘Rs’ 275 – 276 Timeline 39, 167, 173, 176 – 180, 182, 208 – 209, 211, 226 – 228, 230, 252, 269, 335 – 336, 339, 347 Tocqueville, A. de 279

Index topological psychology 23, 319 Torbert, B. 12, 25, 28, 52, 54 tradition, knowledge 13, 190, 331 – 332, 370 – 371, 382, 392 Training Within Industry 18 transect walks 187 transference 42, 45, 51, 159 – 160 transitional space 161 – 162 transparency 6, 47, 61, 139, 151, 155 – 158, 160, 189, 244, 258 – 260, 277, 311; see also sharing; truthfulness transversality 51 Tree of Means and Ends 167 – 168, 171, 175 – 176, 265 triadic elicitation 121, 374, 376, 393 triangulation 95 triple-loop learning 28 Trist, E. L. 12, 41 – 42 trust 42, 143 – 144, 151, 153, 228 – 232, 237, 260 – 261, 268, 276 – 277, 310, 325 – 327, 363, 365, 372, 406 truthfulness 59, 156 – 158, 283 – 284, 293 – 294; see also transparency UBINIG 379, 385, 389, 393, 401 – 403 uncertainty 2, 6, 16, 42, 71, 76 – 77, 81, 85 – 86, 106, 140, 190, 307, 330, 345, 348, 364, 367 unconscious 11 – 12, 39, 44 – 45, 159, 163 unfreezing 19, 41, 202, 206, 213 upaya-kaushalya 5; see also skills in means Ury, W. 283 – 284, 294 user-centred 300 – 301, 307 utilitarianism 12, 15, 73, 294 Utilization-Focused Evaluation 90, 99, 106, 110 Utopia, real 39 – 40 Validation 149 value for money 111

value-free 57 – 58, 184, 380 values: cultural 96, 156; defined 209; spiritual 130; stakeholder 255 – 256, 277 – 279; systems of 5, 37, 39, 153, 283; see also ethics; Gaps and Conflicts; Gross National Happiness; Kant, I.; Lessons and Values; Moral Conflict Assessment, Paradox; Positions and Interests Values, Interests, Positions (VIP) 38, 106, 264, 284 – 289, 309 visioning 77, 117, 172, 243, 247, 301, 303, 305, 308, 310 – 311, 335 – 336 visuals 39, 48, 83 – 84, 117, 120, 122, 125, 127, 134, 138, 147, 155, 168, 174, 180, 202 – 203, 217, 252, 285 – 286, 307, 314, 339, 393 vulnerability, and risk assessment 229, 333, 339 Vygotsky, L. S. 163 Wallis, N. C. 52 Watzlawick, P. 213 – 214 Weber, M. 180 Weighting 122 – 125 wicked problems 307 Wikipedia 13 Wilber, K. 52 Winnicott, D. W. 161 – 163 Wittgenstein, L. 16, 167, 184, 318 – 321 work through 39 – 40, 44 – 45, 47, 53, 216 World Café 13, 24, 308 – 309 youth: and accident prevention 229 – 233, 235 – 238, 268; engagement 115, 126 – 128; First Nation 247 – 252; and generational differences 119 – 120; and justice 13; Katkari 135 – 136, 172, 205 – 207, 374 – 379, 385, 399 Zeno of Citium 59 ZOPP 168, 243

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