Participatory Practice: Community-based Action for Transformative Change 9781447365495

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PARTICIPATORY PRACTICE Community-based Action for Transformative Change Second edition Margaret Ledwith and Jane Springett

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK +44 (0)117 374 6645 [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-6007-0 paperback ISBN 978-1-4473-6008-7 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-6549-5 ePDF The right of Margaret Ledwith and Jane Springett to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Clifford Hayes Front cover image: Helena Pallarés Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books, Padstow

For all children of the world; they deserve better. For Grace, in particular, as she flexes her wings to fly out into a world in urgent need of the gifts she brings. Knowing that she will continue my work brings me immense pride.

For Ian, whose love has been a constant companion and who has consistently supported my work in the world. It has truly been a shared journey.

Contents List of figures and tables ix Glossary x Acknowledgements xvii Introduction: Our stories Jane’s story Margaret’s story Our joint story Note on terminology Note on icons

1 1 4 10 10 10

PART I A participatory paradigm 1

2

Participatory practice What is participation? Theme 1: Participatory practice as social justice in action Theme 2: Participatory practice as a worldview Theme 3: Participatory practice as the embodiment of values and principles Theme 4: Participatory practice as a relational process Theme 5: Participatory practice as interdependence and interbeing Theme 6: Participatory practice as inner and outer transformation Theme 7: Participatory practice as living the questions and critical thinking Theme 8: Participatory practice as an ecological imperative Towards collective health and well-being through participatory practice What is to come in this book Troubled times Values lie at the heart of the matter We are living through an epoch in world history Critique of the political context is the catalyst for transformative practice Question contradictions! Values change the way we see the world The British welfare state: a social justice revolution The Beveridge Report: a common good embedded in policy The invention of neoliberalism The year of the barricades that heralded an opportunity for change A missed opportunity v

13 16 18 19 21 23 25 28 30 31 33 34 37 37 38 40 40 41 41 43 44 46 48

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Explore the question ‘Who gets to eat?’ Big electoral change from Right to Left (or so we thought) A decade of ‘austerity’ Britain At last, a critical analysis from a human rights perspective! Values, critical consciousness and change How did they pull it off? Whose lives matter? What do we care about? What are our values? Kindness and kinship: a different lens for a decent future

50 51 52 54 56 56 58 60 62

3

The participatory worldview 65 The Western mind 66 Indigenous ways of knowing 73 The medicine wheel 74 Ecological and complex systems as participatory thinking 78 Western participatory worldviews: ecological ways of thinking 78 Characteristics of a living system that help us to think participatively 79 The Relational: cooperation, co-evolution and co-creation/co-production 82 Consciousness, the self and the spiritual 84 Putting it all together: reframing our view of the world to change 88 our practice So, what does thinking participatively really mean for our practice? 90

4

Participatory practice in a non-participatory world Participatory practice over the last decade Participatory practice in the arts Community arts in health as a case study Participatory practice in health research Participatory practice in local government Participatory practice in food and resource management systems Reflections on participatory practice in a non-participatory world The embodiment of values

91 91 95 100 103 109 117 119 119

PART II Participatory praxis 5

Storytelling praxis 125 The relevance of story to participatory practice 125 The personal is political 126 The importance of voicing values 127 The use of story to critique the dominant narrative 128 Counternarratives 129 Be curious! 132 Emancipatory action research as a unity of praxis 133 Change the story! 136 Listening from the heart 137

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Contents

Slowing the mind and reaching inside to the spirit Imagination in the art of storytelling Imagination in the art of poetry ‘Transformation of silence into language and action’

140 141 143 144

The role of dialogue So, what is dialogue? Going deeper: deconstructing the essence of dialogue Creating a collective identity Creating the conditions for dialogue: understanding your context and preparing people The conditions for dialogue: circle as a safe dialogical space Creating dialogical/rhetorical/communicative spaces: some examples from practice Dialogue and social change The dynamic of dialogue as a key to transformation

147 148 152 156 157

7

Critical reflection and reflexivity Being critical Understanding reflection as the key to learning and transformation Opening up space for reflection in a non-participatory world Towards critical reflexivity Becoming critically reflexive: drawing on critical theorists Reflecting on power Antonio Gramsci Jürgen Habermas Pierre Bourdieu Michel Foucault Moving critique further Taking critical reflection forward

169 170 171 174 175 177 178 178 182 182 185 187 192

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Transformative practice How to make participatory practice transformative What sort of world do we want to live in? Paulo Freire and transformative practice Values are the bedrock of change Radical empathy Empathy in action Getting familiar with Freire Digging deeper into Freire Extending Freire into intersectionality Acting on Freire

195 195 198 199 199 201 204 208 209 218 220

9

Becoming whole Crisis is a chance for change Critique is essential for change

223 223 224

6

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160 162 166 168

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Storytelling is great at raising questions Digging deeper A participatory ideology A counternarrative of change A participatory paradigm shift An ecological framework for a participatory worldview From Ego to Eco Paradigm wars The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021 Neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm Practising participatory values Gramsci: the old is dying and the new cannot be born Gramsci and feminism Freire and intersectionality: reconceptualising power Education for critical consciousness Storytelling as problematising Critical connections in participatory practice Participatory action research as a unity of praxis Ideas are the basis of change – but are we asking the right questions? Changing love of POWER to the power of LOVE!

225 226 229 230 231 232 232 233 236 237 240 242 243 246 248 249 250 252 254 256

Notes 259 References 261 Index 279

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List of figures and tables

Figures 1.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

The themes in this book The medicine wheel Building our community connections Self-care medicine wheel An integrative model of our experience of the world through a participative lens 4.1 Participatory practice in a non-participatory world 6.1 Broadcast vs Gathering 7.1 The process of transformation through presencing 7.2 Gaventa’s Power Cube 8.1 Three pivotal connections in transformative practice 8.2 Freirean dialogue 9.1 Skywoman 9.2 The PAR model

Tables 3.1 6.1 7.1

Different ways of seeing the world The fundamentals of the dialogue process Becoming critical in thought and action

ix

16 75 77 77 90 92 150 173 191 196 217 238 253

74 158 176

Glossary Action/reflection: the foundation of community development praxis, where our knowledge base is developed through reflection on action, and our subsequent action is informed by this analysis – hence theory in action and action from theory. Alienation: a state of bring socially fragmented and disconnected from the whole. Power asserted over people results in a loss of personal control over life circumstances, a disconnection from society, and condemnation to the margins that dehumanises, resulting in the erosion of belonging. Austerity: under neoliberal governments, ‘austerity’ is the political imposition of policies that have no apparent benefit other than to punish vulnerable social groups for their own poverty by cutting funding for housing, education, health, work and welfare, privatising public ownership, at the same time as giving tax cuts to and allowing tax avoidance for the rich. Throughout this book we often use inverted commas to denote that unnecessary, punitive ‘austerity’ measures have been imposed on the poor since the financial crisis of 2007–08 at the same time as the rich have got richer. Banking education: this is Freire’s term for the traditional approach to education in which a powerful teacher pours dominant knowledge into the unquestioning minds of passive learners, reinforcing dominant power interests. It is an approach to education which is controlling, which is why Freire also refers to it as ‘domesticating’. Changing this system is the aim of the knowledge democracy movement so that subordinated knowledges are recognised and claimed as legitimate. Civil society: in Gramscian theory, civil society is the site in which the dominant ideas of the ruling class invade our minds persuading us that their way of seeing the world is common sense. The institutions of civil society which engage us in life – the family, media, schools, religious organisations, community groups, and so forth – play a role in getting us to consent to ideas that favour the already privileged in society. It is also the site for grassroots action for change. Codifications: in Freirean pedagogy, these are representations of familiar local situations that capture life experience in photographs, drawings, drama, story, poetry, music and so on, in order to ‘see’ a situation decontextualised from reality more critically as the focus for dialogue. Colonisation: the process by which one group of people dominates another to control and exploit for its own gain. The term has often been used to cover European colonisation of territories but is also used to describe other dominations in the past, and on-going.

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Common inheritance: every last one of us is indebted to those who have gone before us, and the natural world, for the advantages we are born into. From roads to fresh water, to hospitals and to developments in art, literature and science, the bedrock of all this is the biosphere that makes all else possible – energy, minerals, rivers, oceans, soil, plants, animals and the climate. We are but one small part and have no given entitlement. We have responsibility for reparation of the wrongs of the past and present – slavery, xenophobia, misogyny, racism and environmental degradation – all exploitations which live on through inheritance to continue to privilege some at the expense of others. Common sense: dominant narratives are told with authority and repeated through the media until they become accepted as a form of common sense that is not challenged as nonsense! In this way, political strategies, such as ‘austerity’, designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, are accepted as inevitable, with the result that foodbanks become the order of the day in rich countries and social inequalities widen to push the poor towards destitution. Commons, the: resources, natural or cultural, held collectively by groups of people for individual and collective benefit. Originally applied to land in the medieval period in Europe but now applies to all sorts of different resources. We mean a wider concept of the commons, a sense of collective ownership of the outcomes of progress, including of knowledge and action. Under neoliberalism much of the commons has been privatised and sold for profit when it belonged to the people, so was not for sale. Communicative space: where time is put aside and a safe space is held so people can talk to one another freely and intentionally, listening and talking in equal proportions. Conscientisation: translated from the Portuguese conscientização, Freire used this concept for the process of becoming critically aware of the structural forces of power which shape people’s lives as the basis for critical action for change. Counternarratives: compelling stories that inspire hope and possibility for a different social reality based on values of equality, cooperation and connection running counter to the dominant narratives that justify inequality, competition and alienation. Critical alliance: strategic alliances across difference, which are built on the collective strength of diversity in mutual collective action for social justice. Critical analysis: refers to the theories and conceptual tools with which to analyse practice so that the contradictions we live by and accept as common sense get exposed and subsequent action is targeted at the source, not the symptoms, of oppression and therefore has the potential to bring about transformative change for social justice.

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Critical consciousness: Freire’s third level of consciousness (after ‘magical’ and ‘naive’), indicating a level of insight at which people recognise oppression as a structural problem rather than as an individual failing. Critical consciousness is reached when life situations are connected with socio-economic contradictions, such as seeing hungry children in a rich society as a political contradiction rather than as a personal pathology. Critical pedagogy: refers to that type of learning based on a mutual search rooted in a ‘profound love for the world and for people’ (Freire, 2018: 89). It is a democratic process of education that encourages critical consciousness as the basis of transformative collective action. Cultural invasion: is a Freirean concept which captures the way that the values, beliefs, ideology, cultural norms and practices of a dominant culture are superimposed on the culture of those it oppresses. It links to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Culture circle: Freire’s term for what we would call a community group, which provides the context for mutual, critical dialogue of equals intent on questioning life’s contradictions in order to act collectively for change. Culture of silence: Freire used this concept to capture the dehumanisation, apathy and disaffection that silence people into accepting their alienation. His challenge was to release their innate energy by teaching people to question lived reality, exposing the contradictions we live by. Decolonisation: analysis and action which seek to expose the effect of colonisation, for example, slavery, ethnic cleansing and the suppression of indigenous groups. Degeneration: where a place, ecosystem or a community declines due to the taking away of energy and resources. Dehumanisation: people are robbed of the right to be fully human when they are stigmatised as worthless, incapable objects. Freire saw dehumanisation as an act of violence; his prime concern was humanisation – how to restore people’s right to be fully human subjects in the world. Democratic fascism: refers to the current extreme Far Right populist movement founded on old political and social values of violence, patriarchy, xenophobia and racism, wrapped up in a politics of hatred of ethnic minorities, women, the disabled, gay, refugees … and all advocates of equality and social/environmental justice – intellectual activists, the judiciary, feminists, anti-racists, anti-poverty activists (see Imogen Tyler’s 2017 blogpost discussed on p 133). Dialogue: in Freirean pedagogy, is a mutual, respectful communication between people engaging the heart and mind, the intellect and emotions, which Freire saw as the basis of praxis.

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Glossary

Dichotomous thought: refers to a binary, either/or way of seeing the world that defines one thing in relation to its opposite, with a subject/object power implicit in the relationship, for example, working class/middle class, male/female, White/Black. This is a limited understanding of power relations, which hides more than it reveals. Intersectionality challenges current thinking to embrace the complexity of interconnected oppressions as one mutually reinforcing system of domination. Difference: is shorthand for the wide range of social differences that create our identities, and which are related to the process of discrimination, for example, ‘race’, class, gender, faith, ethnicity, age, sexuality, ‘dis’ability and so forth. Discrimination: refers to the process by which people are disadvantaged by their social identity and therefore given unequal access to rights, resources, opportunities and power (Thompson, 2020). Diversity: a rich multidimensional community which honours difference and benefits from the richness. Dualism: is the idea that the mind and the body are two separate things and not connected. Ecosystem: a collection of communities of both living and non-living things that are connected and which interact with each other and their environment. Ego-system: where the system is directed towards enhancing individual egos through competition and the accumulation of monetary wealth. Empowerment: people have their dignity and self-respect restored through empowerment, which is the consequence of critical consciousness: the understanding that life chances are prescribed by structural discrimination, an insight which brings with it the freedom to take action to bring about change for social justice. Empowerment is not fully achieved unless it becomes a collective process. Environmental justice: calls for action to redress exploitation of the environment by capitalism which is destroying biodiversity and causing climate change, endangered species, pollution and degradation of land and water resources. The impact is experienced disproportionately by already disadvantaged communities and poorer nations, and so is inextricably linked to social justice. Epistemology: ways of seeing and making sense of the world. False consciousness: refers to the unquestioning view of the world in which subordinate groups accept their reality in passive and fatalistic ways, leaving the power and privilege of dominant groups unchallenged. False generosity: Freire saw this in empty gestures that give illusions of equality without changing structural discrimination. He saw charity, benevolence and tokenism as forms of violence that perpetuate poverty for the masses. Feedback loops: the flow of energy within a system that comes from the connection between things. Such flows can either dampen change or encourage it.

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Feminism: feminist theory in community development places patriarchy as an all-consuming oppressive force, a system operating in an intersectional way over boundaries of class, ‘race’ and other oppressions to maintain domination of the privileged and powerful. Feminist theory, committed to the flourishing of everyone and everything, seeks to inform action for change for a diverse and biodiverse world where peace, cooperation, participation and sustainability are the imperatives to change the essentially exploitative system created by capitalism. Framing: the gaze or the viewer with which you look at reality, ‘framing’ can be a theoretical perspective or socialised perception. Generative theme: an issue that repeatedly crops up in the stories people tell about their lives. Freire referred to it as generative because its relevance generates an energy for action for change out of the hopelessness that is often a result of alienation. Globalisation: refers to the acceleration of neoliberal capitalism’s global reach by the most powerful systems in the West, not only exploiting the most vulnerable people and environments in the world for economic gain, but also invading other cultures with a Western ideology which reproduces discrimination on a complex global level within and between countries. Hegemony: conceptualises the ways in which one class maintains dominance over the rest of society by a subtle system of coercion and consent. Coercion is maintained through the law, the police and the armed forces, and through a parallel but mutual process of ideological persuasion. Gramsci’s important contribution gives insight into the way that our minds are colonised by dominant ideas through the institutions of civil society – the family, religious organisations, schools and so on – persuading us to consent to our lot in life. Intersectionality: the way that power relations of ‘race’, class, gender and all other differences overlap and intertwine as a complex whole to benefit the interests of White, patriarchal supremacy. Intersectionality is a flexible analytic tool that emerged from Black women’s wisdom to deepen knowledge of power by connecting the overlapping, intertwining, mutually reinforcing complexities of social inequality, power and discrimination to reveal one overriding system of mutually reinforcing oppressions, operating in diverse contexts, at diverse levels. Knowledge democracy: seeks to re-claim multiple epistemologies and ontologies subsumed under the weight of a dominant truth as a legitimate right, and key to the process of diversity and inclusion. This places cognitive justice as inextricably connected to social justice and environmental justice. Liberating education: Freire’s vision was the transformation of humanity to a participatory democracy founded on diversity and biodiversity, achieved by dispelling false consciousness for critical consciousness simply by teaching people to question. This frees people to see discrimination for what it is and to act collectively for change. This process of liberating education is action for freedom, and runs counter to domesticating or banking education. Love: a multidimensional consciousness that accepts others just as they are.

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Glossary

Magical consciousness: is Freire’s concept of a fatalistic, disempowered and passive way of seeing the world. Naive consciousness: is Freire’s concept of partial empowerment that relates to the symptoms of oppression, engaging with single issues rather than the underlying roots of injustice. Neoliberalism: refers to a free market non-interventionist ideology based on profit, individualism, competition, privatisation and the deregulation of trade and finance. Neoliberal capitalism: refers to the accelerating system of modern capitalism that operates from a profit-over-people-and-planet imperative and has taken on global proportions. Ontology: ways of being and acting in the world. Oppression: is the outcome of discrimination. While categories of discrimination can be seen as class, ‘race’, gender, ethnicity, and so forth, the forms of oppression which result are classism, racism, sexism, xenophobia and so forth, which are now seen in intersectional terms as a complex overlapping net of oppressions which act in the interests of the dominance of White, patriarchal supremacy. Participation: true participation is achieved in community development through the empowerment of people to engage in collective action for justice and democracy from a critical perspective. Social change comes from bottom-up grassroots action, not top down. Participatory democracy: people directly and actively participate in decisionmaking through deliberation and dialogue. Participatory democracy is seen as a more authentic form of democracy. Praxis: a unity of theory and practice, which, in community development, involves theory generated in action, the link between knowledge and power through critical consciousness which leads to critical action. Prejudice: can be seen as the expression of discrimination at a personal level in overt or covert ways, and involves judgemental attitudes which are based on stereotyping and resist reason or evidence (Thompson, 2020). Presencing: being in a situation or with a person, without judgement and paying full attention to the moment. Problematising: the essence of Freirean pedagogy; people are encouraged to ask thought-provoking questions and ‘to question answers rather than merely to answer questions’ (Shor, 1993: 26). This calls for strong democratic values as the basis of a mutual, transformative learning context where educators expect to be co-learners. Radical community development: is committed to the role of community development in contributing to transformative change for social, cognitive and environmental justice, and develops analysis which moves beyond local symptoms to structural causes of oppression, and action which moves from local to global. Regeneration: the development of a place, community or landscape through enhancement so that it flourishes economically, ecologically and spiritually.

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Salutogenesis: the creation and promotion of health rather than the prevention of disease. Social justice: for radical community development, social justice aims to create equal worth, equal rights, opportunities for all and the elimination of inequalities reinforced by poverty (Commission for Social Justice, 1994). Today we know that we cannot achieve social justice without environmental justice and without knowledge democracy; all oppressions are interlinked, to solve one, we need to solve all. Stigma politics: based on social abjection theory, explains the way that the state targets some social groups as disgusting and unworthy, reinforced by the media and normalised in everyday conversations. The powerful are represented as worthy, deserving subjects; the disempowered as unworthy, undeserving objects. The one reinforces the other, justifying social divisions of poverty and privilege. Systems thinking: the idea that everything is connected and there is an energetic relationship between things. Thus, all is relational and it is the connections that should be the focus not the things. TINA, or ‘There is no alternative’: the mantra of Margaret Thatcher and rally cry of neoliberalism designed to persuade us to accept that this broken capitalist system is the only choice we have. White privilege: refers to an invisible, assumed entitlement of Whiteness as superior. It calls on us to engage with intersections of ‘race’, class, gender and all other discriminations, including environmental degradation, in order to understand, challenge and change Whiteness as a political ideology that acts in the interests of the privileged. Worldview: a set of attitudes, beliefs and values that are held by a society or an individual about how the world is and should be.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements: Margaret Giving birth to ideas involves teamwork. My gratitude goes to the multitude of thinkers and activists who have inspired me and provided a foundation for the development of my lifework. At this point, I could list many but, in particular, I thank Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci for plunging me into critical consciousness when I was on a quest to understand power. I am indebted to Black feminists, including my late friend and colleague Paula Asgill and many others who challenged the limitations of us White feminists and paved the way forward with intersectional feminism, Patricia Hill Collins and many more; and to my contemporary thinkers, a host of whom contribute to both the critique of this crumbling social order and the construction of a long-overdue counternarrative to replace it: Imogen Tyler, Kate Raworth, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Annie Lowrey, Danny Dorling, Rutger Bregman, George Monbiot, Andrew Sayer, and many others honoured within the pages of this book. The process is symbiotic: its integrity is embedded in the lived experience of those in community – my Vietnamese mothers and Wendy, Celia, Mary, Paul, plus so many more who welcomed me into their lives – they are woven into the ideas I develop; its purpose is invested in those who act on these ideas to create a better world for generations yet to come. I have a wonderful team gathered round me, supporting me in my work: Steve, whose love, interest and political commitment nurture the fire in my soul, the fury and indignation that rises up against social injustice, violations of human rights, degradation of the planet; Grace, whose engagement with my ideas is a pure joy, reaffirming that our future lies in this upcoming generation which is far more outraged by the greed and recklessness that has come to mark our generation, and who will join with others to clear up the mess we are in for the sake of those who follow in her footsteps: Seb, Flo and Beau, and all children of the world. In getting our word into the world to speak our truth to power, my grateful thanks to Sarah Bird, whose enthusiasm for our work fuels me to be my best; to Jo Morton, whose interest in our ideas and dedicated attention to detail present the text in its most readable and exciting form; to Ruth Wallace for her fine-tuning; to Emma Cook for her behind-the-scenes hard work; to Angela Gage for her marketing skills; and to the wonderful team behind them who lift the book into the world. To this vast team and more, thank you!

Acknowledgements: Jane This book was written in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) on Treaty 6 territory, the territory of the Papaschase, and the homeland of the Métis Nation, xvii

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at the crossing place for many peoples and settlers. I honour the land that supported me and the wisdom of both the indigenous communities of Canada and the settlers for which I will be forever grateful. I particularly want to thank the women I met through the Inside Outsider leadership course in 2012 and the monthly Ginger Saloons which provide me with solace and spiritual support while facing the challenge of an academic life. I learnt so much from you all. You will know who you are, too numerous to mention here. That journey led me to Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea’s The Circle Way. It was like coming home, thank you; it was privilege to sit in circle with you. Finally, I would like to thank my students at the University of Alberta from whom I have learnt far more than I have taught. Canada is a truly optimistic multicultural country and while the deep-seated problems inherited from the impact of colonialism continue to reverberate, the students with their creativity and thoughtfulness give me hope for the future, both for that country and the planet.

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Introduction: Our stories This second edition of our book was written slightly differently from the first. Both are the product of a shared journey, influenced by the experiences of two very different lives. In this, as in the first, edition we have approached the task in the spirit of the book itself, founding our approach on dialogue, on mutuality and respect for each other’s ideas, and on an openness to a dialectical challenge, locating dissent as central to knowledge creation within a frame of ‘connected knowing’ (Belenky et al, 1997). The original book was the product of an organic, transformative process for us, a process that continued afterwards. When we were approached by Policy Press to produce a second edition we were both in very different places, geographically and temporally. This, together with the pandemic during which we were writing, posed a challenge to our previous way of working. The result is a book that reflects our two voices and our experiences since the first edition. In the book itself, we emphasise the use of story as a way of anchoring the process of change in lived experience. True to this approach, we share aspects of our own stories with you here. A participatory approach calls for us to acknowledge the ways in which our own life experiences have shaped the ideas that we share with you, and these vignettes give you insight into critical moments that have influenced our theory and practice over the years. We met in 1992 and became firm friends, who recognised our shared values long before we recognised shared academic interests. That recognition surfaced in 1996, when we both attended one of the participatory action research conferences at Stroud organised by Peter Reason and Judi Marshall. It was a coming together of the personal and professional at an event that aimed to do just that: understand life as a connected form of knowing.

Jane’s story When I met Margaret, I had already moved my focus from geography to health promotion, and through the latter had become attracted to the ideas of Paulo Freire, introduced to me by Nina Wallerstein at a chance meeting at the University of Liverpool. Nina, who is now a professor at the University of New Mexico, had been using Freirean approaches in her work with marginalised young people in New Mexico as well as in her previous work in South America. This approach to popular education resonated through my work as a part-time tutor with The Open University, helping me to gain much greater practical understanding of how adults learn to be questioning and confident. Over the years, both in my work with The Open University and elsewhere, I saw people blossom when they gradually gained insight into new ideas about themselves in their world. 1

Participatory Practice

At first glance, a move between geography and health promotion might appear strange and disconnected. Yet the two are more closely linked than it appears on the surface – many of the ideas in this book were first introduced to me as an undergraduate geography student, and they have resurfaced time and again in different contexts. It was during my time as an undergraduate that I became aware of ecology and our place in it. We debated ‘A blueprint for survival’, published by The Ecologist (1972), the first time the environment and our impact on it reached a wider audience. Inspired into action, we collected and dumped non-returnable bottles on Schweppes’ factory doorstep. It is easy to think back and identify crucial turning points in one’s life that at the time seemed to have no great significance. One such turning point found me sitting in a lecture theatre at the first Healthy Cities conference in Liverpool in 1987 thinking, as I was listening to the various plenary speakers, “But this is urban geography!”. A chance conversation over coffee with a colleague had brought me here. He talked about his partner, a landscape architect working with a community in Vauxhall, Liverpool. That community, which came to be known as the Eldonians, was hailed for its community action in rejecting the city council’s plans for regeneration. Instead, they developed their own Eldonian village in partnership with community architects. Here was my first taste of participation and both my heart and my head wanted to know more. Healthy Cities was and is an initiative spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office in Europe aiming to engage local government in health and well-being. In order to create healthy communities, it is important to see health and well-being as influenced by a range of dimensions. This notion of ‘healthy cities’ struck a chord, not only because the approach emphasised the need for an interrelationship between humans and their social and physical environment, but because it acknowledged that without peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice and equity, human flourishing is just not possible. These ideas resonated with me as a human ecologist, a geographer for whom notions of the interrelationship between humans and their environment is core. It was an understanding that was second nature to me: notions of reciprocal maintenance, caring for each other, our communities and the natural environment, and central was the empowerment of communities and individuals to take control of their lives. The Healthy Cities/Health for All movement, whose origins lay in an opposition to the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s that denied the existence of health inequalities, attracted me. Albeit often described as a social movement in bureaucratic clothing (Stevenson and Burke, 1991), it was at this time starting to roll in the UK, and I rolled with it, so starting my journey from pure theory to an integration of theory and practice, and from geography to health promotion. Having been drawn to new approaches to inquiry, intellectually engaging with the ideas of John Heron, John Rowan and Peter Reason in the 1980s, the experience of putting these ground-breaking ideas into action followed later. I was working with a local community worker on an outer estate in Liverpool to 2

Introduction: Our stories

pioneer a participatory approach to evaluation across a whole range of initiatives in one neighbourhood. It was agreed that the community worker would train local people in research skills to enable them to do their own evaluation. He began by asking them to think about how they would celebrate their success in a year’s time. By making the experience relevant to them, he released passion, energy and enthusiasm. This, in turn, was transmitted beyond the boundaries of the room, with the result that even more people turned up to the next meeting. The reference to heart and head is important here: passion as well as intellect need to be integrated. I remember visiting a health centre for Native Americans in downtown Berkeley, California. A peripatetic ‘medicine man’ happened to be visiting that day and agreed to meet us. He talked about health problems involving drug and alcohol abuse faced by Native Americans in relation to spiritual health, and the importance of a holistic approach to life. Taking a book, he placed it laterally level with his throat. The trouble with Western society, he said, is that the head is cut off, like this, from the heart. I can still see that picture in my mind’s eye. It made so much sense in relation to health promotion. Here was a principles- and values-based approach to practice which encapsulated not only notions of ecology, but also notions of wholeness. This was a concept of health that had been with me since my childhood, and which, as I was starting to discover, underpinned other worldviews. At around the same time as I started to change my focus, I also started to seek changes in myself. I grew up into a shy and sensitive young adult, whose fear of people led me into the world of academia. From here, personal circumstances then jettisoned me into a world on the fringes of life, on boats on the canals and in the docks in different parts of England. Here, living off the land with very little money, estranged from my family because my mother did not approve, had a profound effect on my attitudes to the material and the social. I started questioning reality and my place in it, and increasingly became selfreflective, more self-aware. Just as the health promotion movement enticed me out of my academic ivory tower, personal life experiences were drawing me into an inner journey, along The Road Less Travelled (Peck, 2002). Indeed, it was a colleague giving me that book that started the process off. It was at this juxtaposition, between a movement of increasing inner and outer awareness, that my path crossed with Margaret’s. We met at the same series of spiritual development workshops. The reflective process involved working in groups and pairs, and we only found ourselves together once, towards the end, during a workshop focused on shamanic practices. In this exercise we were asked to try a self-managed shamanic inner journey encouraged by drumming. Our partner’s role was to record the journey as we described it during the process of deep self-reflection. In this way, I recorded Margaret’s story of her journey and she recorded mine. And so began our story. Much has happened both personally and politically since this time in the early 1990s. When we wrote the first book I was living and working in Sweden taking forward participatory action research. I returned to the UK in 2009 but 3

Participatory Practice

the crash of 2008 was beginning to have its impact and cuts were taking place in Higher Education. When I was headhunted for a post in Canada, I took the opportunity. Canada is a relatively more equal society than the UK, but it does display all the markings of the downsides of contemporary neoliberalism and a colonial inheritance. Social class is less dominant as a vehicle for oppression but the legacy of the colonial past is everywhere and raised my awareness of those issues. Here, however I have been blessed with connections with many practitioners locally, working with rich multicultural communities and exposed to indigenous knowledge, both of which have shaped my understanding of participatory practice from a different perspective. My experience here has deepened my knowledge and strengthened my practice in a way I could not have foreseen. The values and principles underpinning community-based practice that attracted me to health promotion are shared by others engaged in many different contexts. What connects us are those deeply held values and principles that provide not just a foundation for practice, but a foundation for life – values of respect, trust, dignity, mutuality, reciprocity. This book reaffirms those values that drew the two of us together, which are shared by those who seek social justice. The aim is to reinvigorate community and connection to new levels by putting participatory practice at the centre of all that we do, to promote the well-being of all.

Margaret’s story I began life as the daughter of Grace Constance: when I became the grandmother of Grace it felt like the wheels had turned full circle. Reflecting back on those austere but optimistic post-World War II years, life welcomed me into the bosom of a loving extended family headed by adoring grandparents and surrounded by a stable community. So much of my sense of self was formed in that Birmingham suburb, nestling at the bottom of the steep hill that led to Erdington Parish Church, a church that witnessed all our family births, marriages and deaths. I can still name our neighbours and local shopkeepers, can still picture Mr Shute, the chemist, in the High Street, who would make up a ‘cough bottle’ when I was ‘chesty’. Opposite was Dr Treadwell’s home and surgery, Coton Cottage, tucked behind a little picket fence. He was the doctor who nursed me through polio when my mother was too scared to hear the word, let alone allow me to go to hospital. The village green at the other end of the High Street, where I stood to attention in my new Girl Guide uniform on Sunday mornings for church parade, had the Victorian public library and baths to one side, and Wrenson’s, the local grocers, to the other, the delivery boy’s bicycle propped up against the wall outside. All these remain symbols of my early stability. I did not know the meaning of schooling as hegemonic at the time, but this concept has retrospectively been key to my experience of schooling as a child, and to triggering my critical consciousness as a teacher in young adulthood. Picture 1972, with me in the frame, a newly qualified classroom teacher, nervously contemplating a class of 36 eight- to ten-year-olds, looking out across a sea of 4

Introduction: Our stories

faces eagerly weighing me up. The school building was Victorian, with classrooms leading off a central hall. Inside, the classrooms had fixed desks, and windows were set too high for anyone under six feet tall to see a world outside. On first examination, the only resources available to me were geography textbooks, 20 years out of date. These were stacked in enormous cupboards that flanked the long wall opposite the windows. As the days went on, I was perturbed by what I saw acted out before my eyes. Three years of teacher training had reinforced over and over again that politics should be kept out of schools; classrooms were apolitical spaces. What I witnessed, of course, was hegemony in action: power acted out in this microcosm of wider society, and relations of ‘race’, class and gender reinforced. I did not know what hegemony meant at the time, but very simply it refers to the way that dominant ideas resist change, in this case by classrooms acting as places where children get silenced and learn their ranked status in the world according to the status quo. In the culture of the staff room, I listened to pronouncements that diminished the life chances of young children, just as I had experienced as a child. I had no analysis to give me any understanding of how to make an intervention in this process of disempowerment; I just knew that it was profoundly wrong. From the primary classroom, my search for insight and understanding led me in a number of directions, from adult literacy to educational psychology. In the early 1980s, I worked with Vietnamese refugees, those known as the ‘boat people’, who risked death and abandonment on the South China Sea to escape tyranny in their own country, only to find a different kind of tyranny in the West. As I listened to their stories of separation from children, of giving birth on the high seas on rusty old landing craft that offered no dignity and no protection, of facing death as ship after ship from the West abandoned them to starvation and dehydration, we held each other for comfort; we became friends in our common humanity, as they taught me more than I could ever teach them. I began to realise that my quest for critical insight was out there in the real world, in community, where everyday lives are shaped. That was the point at which I chose to study for a Master’s degree in Community Education and Development at the University of Edinburgh, and it proved to be the context in which my search for a critical analysis of power was realised. David Alexander, with great passion, introduced me to the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who was imprisoned and died under Mussolini in the rise of Italian fascism simply for teaching people to think, and Paulo Freire, the Brazilian adult educator, who was imprisoned and exiled for teaching people to read and to question. Such is the power of ideas! As I read about Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and began understand his analysis of the way that power is threaded through our everyday lives from our time of birth, it became so obvious, it was hard to believe that I had not spotted it myself. But the way we are taught to see the world powerfully permeates the essence of our being and influences the way we act in the world. Gramsci felt that false consciousness is so pervasive that it takes external intervention from ‘traditional intellectuals’, as he called them, to act as a catalyst in the process of demystifying power. My experience was certainly testament to that. 5

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The political context of the time saw the New Right in ascendance. Thatcherism took hold, poverty escalated and my life became one of street activism. The miners’ strike of 1984–85 brought support from broad-based alliances all over the world as we witnessed hegemony at work: while the power of persuasion was asserted through control of the media, convincing the country at large that the miners were undermining the very moral fabric of society, freedom of movement from mining communities was blocked by the police who were, cleverly, drafted in from other parts of the country to avoid mixed loyalties. The women of the mining communities took immediate action, to the shock of Margaret Thatcher who had expected that she could appeal to them to force the miners back to work. Women Against Pit Closures became their organised action as they rose up in support of their families and communities, threatened in their survival by starvation tactics. Initially they set up soup kitchens to feed families whose benefits had been cut. Many of these women had never been outside their mining communities, built round the pithead to serve the interests of the industry; their role was one of unpaid labour. Their outrage at the burgeoning threat of the government’s desire to dismantle the last large union of organised workers gave them the confidence to give public talks all over the country and abroad, seeking support. Alliances across difference emerged, and at many demonstrations coachloads of supporters would swell the numbers. This was the heyday of new social movements, and women, LGBTQ groups, greens and others stood together against injustice. This was the stamping ground of my political activism. Participatory democracy in Nicaragua captured the hearts of those who stood for a just and peaceful world. The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign was central to my life. In Nicaragua, in 1985, living with the people of Puerto Cabezas, in particular, helped me to experience participatory democracy in action. Under the Sandinistas, advised by Paulo Freire, literacy and health campaigns swept the country, led by young people, filling hearts with hope. As part of a twinning campaign between Manchester and Puerto Cabezas, we organised for John McDonald, the outstanding health educator, to go to Puerto Cabezas to develop a health centre. He wrote saying, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Even for someone like John, with many years’ experience in Africa, Puerto Cabezas was at the edge of the world – all those who could get out had left, and the town was under constant threat. Frequent attacks were made by sea from Honduras, and overland routes were landmined by the Contra. It did not stop those of us whose vision of a democratic future lived in the hope of Nicaraguan success. Yet this little country, striving to achieve true participation, was perceived as such a threat to the US that sonic booms were heard every day over Managua, creating fear in the minds of everyone. On a bus trip to Bluefields, we were almost swept up into a Contra raid – attacks like this were commonplace. The Contra, trained in terrorist tactics in Florida, would descend from the cover of the rainforests of the interior and abduct local women, rape children in front of their fathers, cut off the fingers of husbands and force wives to drink the blood. It was terrifying for someone like me who had had such a sheltered upbringing. 6

Introduction: Our stories

We supported: workshops for the many permanently ‘dis’abled in conflict: the twinning of Nicaraguan schools with schools in Manchester; the setting-up of women’s sewing projects sponsored by Manchester women’s groups; and a resident community artist to capture the lived experience of local people in community wall murals. Nicaragua inspired hope in all of us that a harmonious and just way of life, founded on participatory democracy, was possible. In relation to becoming critical through border crossing (Giroux, 2005; Giroux and McLaren, 1996), this was a transformative experience for me. I saw life from an altered perspective. Recently, in Katharine McMahon’s novel The Rose of Sebastopol, I read, ‘What good is their reference out here? Can’t you see? We are in a different place, where we have to think differently and find ourselves a new way of being’ (2007: 218). Just as Mariella was faced with this stark fact by her lady’s maid, Nora, in the Crimean War, I quickly learnt the meaning of changed thinking leading to changed doing. One particularly critical encounter was when we were invited to meet the head of the army battalion defending the northern region, a dangerous area bordering onto Honduras. He willingly agreed to talk to our little group about the struggles they faced on a daily basis, but then took my breath away: “We send money to support your miners’ strike. Tell me how you have used this struggle as a way to true democracy.” In the face of the courage shown by the Nicaraguans, how could I explain that the false consciousness fostered by dominant hegemony had persuaded popular opinion against the miners, who were seen as undermining, rather than acting for, democracy? Back home, I was very involved in the women’s movement. We were active in our local groups, reflecting on our lived experience, building practical theory from grassroots action. It was visible and powerful. We organised Greenham support groups to maintain the women’s peace action. It was a time of organised activism: we marched the streets carrying banners to say who we represented – Quakers, LGBTQ groups, civil rights activists – all joining together as one, singing, “Free Nelson Mandela!”. We joined with the anti-deportation campaigns of the civil rights workers. We loaded lorries full of supplies for War on Want, supported Médecins Sans Frontières, the list went on. It was a time of inspiration and hope. In this period, I first worked in Old Trafford and Moss Side in Manchester, with multicultural inner-city communities, then with the people of Hattersley, a Manchester ‘overspill’ or ‘peripheral’ estate invented to house people from ‘slum clearance’ areas of inner-city Manchester, built on damp land that was no good for farming, on the foothills of the Pennines in North West England. My newfound praxis, a unity of critical reflection and transformative action, gave me a lens through which to see power acted out in everyday lives, in tangible ways before my very eyes. This not only helped me to understand life on the margins, but it gave me insight into who was destined to occupy this space outside the mainstream. I began to understand the way that poverty is a tool that reinforces discrimination, and that the process is not indiscriminate, but targets very specific social groups. From experience, I began to understand that knowledge is power, and that ideas sold as ‘common sense’ make no sense whatsoever but are internalised and obscure 7

Participatory Practice

the blatant contradictions that we live by in the West. Theories of power gave me conceptual tools to see and understand the world in more critical ways. The theories on their own in the academy would have remained academic, but they came alive in my practice in the community, building knowledge in action from lived experience, a living praxis. I hit a point of dissonance in the theory/practice divide when I decided that my practice would evolve more critically if I developed it within a PhD framework working with the internationally respected adult educator Ralph Ruddock. I struggled to make sense of research methodologies that attempted to decontextualise the lives of the people with whom I worked until my colleague, Paul Jones, handed me a copy of Reason and Rowan’s Human Inquiry (1981). This was another critical moment in my politicisation. I read: ‘this book is about human inquiry … about people exploring and making sense of human action and experience … ways of going about research which [offer] alternatives to orthodox approaches, alternatives which … do justice to the humanness of all those involved in the research endeavour’ (1981: xi; emphasis in original), and my eyes lit up. This revolutionary book, the product of new paradigm researchers’ action for change, was transformative in my thinking. It gave me insight into participatory action research as a liberating practice, and profoundly influenced my approach to knowledge creation in everyday life. The approaches to research I discovered here were consonant with the value base of community development practice, and offered an integrated praxis, a way of building knowledge in action and acting on that knowledge. A basic model that has stayed with me ever since this time is Rowan’s cycle model, which offers a structure for integrating theory and practice as an ongoing dialectical cycle of action and knowledge generation (Rowan, 1981: 98). In 1992, when I met Jane, I had just made a move from grassroots community development practice into the academy. I faltered on the interview day, questioning the relevance of moving to such a cloistered context after being at the heart of community life for so many years. In my mind’s eye, I could see myself sitting in Mottram Churchyard, having a picnic lunch with Paul. Our partnership was so good for so long, and we thrived on the challenges of Hattersley life, “Could there ever be life after Hattersley?”, we asked ourselves. But, life moves on, and my challenge was to locate myself where I could make most difference to the process of change, to keep community development critical, to give it the label ‘radical community development’ simply to emphasise its unequivocal commitment to social justice. In my new role as a community work educator, my life was woven together with Paula Asgill, a woman of Jamaican heritage, who became my close friend and colleague. Through shared experience, we became aware of differences in our lived realities as two women, divided by racism. We worked together on research into critical alliances between Black and White women in order to gain deeper insight into the process of sustaining alliances for change, and I began to touch at the edges of White power as it manifests itself in daily encounters. She died at the age of 47, 14 years later; racism snuffed out the candle burning in her soul. 8

Introduction: Our stories

During this period, a young student came bursting into my office, waving a call for papers for the ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ conference in Omaha in 1995. He had been excited by my passion for the work of Freire, and was urging me to submit a paper. I did, and I found myself beginning a long connection with what is now known as the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed organisation. In 1996, Doug Paterson from the University of Nebraska at Omaha invited Paulo Freire and Nita, his wife since 1988, who continues to support his work today, and Augusto Boal to the conference, where it was my great pleasure to meet them just a few months before Freire’s death. This was the context for my engagement with such radical educators as Ira Shor, Peter McLaren, Antonia Darder, Peter Mayo, Michelle Fine, Maxine Green, Chris Cavanagh and many others significant in the critical pedagogy movement. I wrote that 12 years ago! In that short space of time, the global political context has changed beyond recognition. Neoliberalism was invented by a small group of men in the Swiss village of Mont Pelerin in 1947. The intention was to come up with a story to counter the socialism of the post-war consensus on welfare expressed in the British welfare state. Neoliberalism was a dubious idea. But an opportunity appeared when Margaret Thatcher stepped into an interregnum several decades later, championing the idea with great gusto, selling to it to Ronald Reagan … and from there it spread like wildfire. This extremely strange idea changed the world into a place driven by the excess and greed of the rich. Its compelling story mesmerised people into a coma of inaction, unable to see power for what it is and therefore grappling with injustices in a fragmented and incomplete way, engaging with the surface symptoms of injustice, failing to get to grips with intersectional power. Founded on profit as the indicator of progress, its inevitable consequences have been extreme inequalities within and between countries that privilege the rich at the expense of the poor. Environmental degradation and human destitution are markers of the ‘success’ of that story as the super-rich of the world transcend all cultures in their common interests to avoid fair taxation and to live lives beyond the capacity of the ecosystem. These are the social and environmental justice preoccupations that have driven the writing I do and the talks I give as time runs short. Now we face multiple crises of immense proportions, all related to excess and consumerism. This book is an attempt to put inequality and environmental degradation at the heart of all our conversations and develop a wisdom that is an integrated whole. Interconnected thought is much more akin to women’s intuitive ways of knowing and indigenous thought, embracing the soul, the Universe and everything that constitutes life on Earth as a mutual ecosystem. This exposes neoliberalism as driven by the interests of patriarchy and profit at the expense of the rest. Imagine replacing economic growth and profit with human kindness and friendship, a world reconnected by empathy. The neuroscientific evidence that we have an empathy circuit in our brains places this idea firmly on the table as not only possible but necessary for humans to survive and flourish. This would 9

Participatory Practice

place us in the ecosystem taking responsibility for each other, those we know and strangers, as part of the family of humanity, caring for the planet that’s our home – all interdependent. On a personal level, I am now grandmother to Seb, Flo and Beau, as well as Grace, and that role fills me with love, connecting me to all children of the world, as my own, all part of the family of humanity, the family of life on Earth which carries responsibilities for decisions that ensure the wellbeing of seven generations to come.

Our joint story Now, 30  years after we first met, this book has been influenced by all these significant experiences in our lives. Our inspiration for writing it comes from a shared commitment to a participatory worldview as a way of life predicated on peace, cooperation, social justice, diversity and sustainability. Here we present you with the results of the process we have shared, and the ideas that have emerged from that dialectical engagement, in the belief that participatory practice is the path to participatory democracy. In what follows, Chapter 1 provides you with an overview of our ideas. At the end of that chapter, we provide a chapter summary to act as guide to the book as a whole and the interweaving of our thought processes as we came together again 12 years after the first edition.

Note on terminology Throughout, we have used ‘race’ and ‘dis’ability to emphasise the socially constructed nature of these concepts, and White and Black to indicate the political nature of these broad categories.

Note on icons Look out for these icons as you read through the book: Key point

Reflective question

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Story

PART I

A participatory paradigm

1 Participatory practice Jane Springett

To be denied the capacity for potentially successful participation is to be denied one’s humanity. (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 184) ‘May you live in interesting times’ goes the old Chinese saying, and certainly that has been the case for us all recently. During the last 40 years, we have seen an increase in inequality in health and well-being, with wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of the few and, most seriously, an assault on nature in such a way as to undermine the very existence of life, including that of humanity itself. At the same time, we have seen rising demands for social justice with the emergence of movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, reflecting a general rise in citizen organising supported by the internet. Former colonising powers are being asked to face up to their past, but at the same time, social cohesion seems to be breaking down as people become polarised, angry and frustrated, whipped up by those whose aims are to retain power for themselves, rather than for the many, through creating division. Add a pandemic to the mix and we were able to see the cleavages in technicolour and the contrasts highlighted by the differential impact of the virus on population groups, alongside excess profiting by already privileged individuals and corporations, but at the same time, an outpouring of self-organised care and support by communities and people for each other. Historically, humanity has been here before, wealth has been accumulated in the hands of corrupt tyrants, division has been fomented by dictators and civilisations have collapsed due to ecological disaster and disease. However, it is the global scale at which this happening that is so unprecedented, and for those who live in the privileged West, it seems that the advances made in the middle of the last century with regard to social justice are slipping away. We appear to be at a point of no return. For the last 300 years we have developed institutions and systems that have been increasingly based on the story of selfish ‘man’, and those institutions that have been created reflect that dominant story, reinforced by a particular interpretation of economics – the ‘free market’; also of science – Newtonian; and, finally, of religion – man is sinful, all based on the notion that humans are basically selfish. As Europeans colonised the world, this story went with them and this Western mindset was imposed on others, taking away what had previously been shared and appropriating the collective into private ownership. Increasingly, power has been concentrated in the hands of 13

Participatory Practice

the few: largely sociopaths who, as they acquired power and wealth, felt less and less connected to humanity (Bregman, 2020: 204), while encouraging those they dominate not to trust one another. Such is the pervasive mindset that appears to be co-creating the future at this moment in time. Another world is not only possible; she is already on her way. On quiet days I can hear her breathing. (Attributed to Arundhati Roy and posted on www.ThisSpaceshipEarth.org on 29 March 2019) This book is about how to co-create that future. A future that is different from the one we seem to be heading towards. It is about how to change the way we think about our relationships between one another – and also between ourselves and the natural world – and, therefore, the way we act in the world with others. It aims to make visible and encourage an alternative view of humanity, one that builds on the reality of human being. A reality that is based on kindness, love, empathy, connection and cooperation. The focus is on community transformation through participatory practice, which we see as the bedrock of moving forward to create systems and communities in which all our needs are met, for the many, not the few. How do we enhance diversity and connection, not by some constraining top-down authority but grounded in a participatory democracy? How do we acknowledge how we value each other, and how do we regenerate society and move from damage to wholeness? We create this alternative future by living with intention and visualising a different reality from the one we are seeing. Through raising our consciousness to a new level of awareness and understanding and, in doing so, coming to act in the world in a different way, we can bring into being that alternative future. To draw on a well-worn phrase: we have to be the change we want to see in the world. For us, social justice goes hand in hand with ecological balance, and so we will be drawing not only on critical theory and community development thinkers such as Gramsci and Freire, but also on ecology for creating a road map towards a participatory consciousness and consequently participatory practice. We are not offering a toolbox for, as Bateson (1972) argued, ‘the map is not the territory’, but rather bringing to the fore a way of thinking about reality and, thus, a way of acting in the world. Our purpose in this book is to take you on a journey that transforms your thinking about participation. Our aim is that, in turn, this will transform your practice in the world. We believe that in becoming more critical of our thinking, our perceptions of the world around us change. In other words, becoming critical, developing a questioning approach to practice, challenges the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life. Attitudes that have been sold to us as ‘common sense’ no longer make any sense at all, and we begin to see beneath the surface-level symptoms that often distract practice to discover, in turn, an interconnected network of power relations that create inequalities. This is a hopeful and inspiring process. In that process, we become more aware that change is possible, and how it can be achieved. 14

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On the journey, we will provide many examples of how participatory practice has been applied so far, in all its flaws, in the real world. These green shoots or seeds for change help to show what is possible. When we seek to regenerate a garden, we often have to clear the land. To do so we need to know what to keep and what to discard. We can then plan what we want to plant. But deciding where to plant or put our seeds is not enough, the soil needs tending to. In the last 50 years, it was thought that this was best achieved through tilling the soil and applying fertiliser and pesticides, but that is the worst thing you can do. You need to replenish the soil with mulch and compost which you lay on the surface. Then the myriads of insects and bacteria can participate in the process of improving the soil, to create an environment that is rich in humus and nutrients. In time the plants with their roots, flowers, seeds and fruits themselves contribute to the soil and gradually the system comes into balance. Underpinning the process of regeneration is a set of natural principles without which the seeds for growth would not flourish. Such a natural area is complex, there is much hidden; indeed, only now, for example, are we beginning to know that trees talk to one another, that fungi help to transmit nutrients from one plant to another. So, too, is the way current society operates. Much is hidden and complex. Moreover, there is a great deal of difference between a garden that someone else has planned and executed than one that you have created yourself. When you create a garden yourself you no longer see it as an object but you are in a relationship with the plants and soil by the mere process of co-creation with nature and as a participant in the ecosystem. This is the essence of participatory practice. In this chapter, we will introduce you to some of the key themes that are interwoven throughout the book and that make up a participatory practice ecosystem. In doing so we will be creating a counternarrative to the one that is currently dominant, one that reflects and creates a different interconnected reality. These themes are the seeds for change, which in Figure 1.1 we present as the petals of a flower around its calyx, becoming whole. Each of the petals (or themes) contains some aspects of the other petals, and together they all contribute to the whole, the flower. By the end of the book, as we develop these themes, the seeds will have become more recognisable plants, which you will be able to use to co-create, with others, your own garden, your own participatory practice. Before we explore those themes, we invite you to think about what participation actually is.

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Figure 1.1: The themes in this book

H+W

I+

R

P

Key H+W SJ WV V+P R I+I I+O Q+C E

WV

V+

I

I+O

SJ

+C

Q

E

Health and well-being for all Participatory Practice as social justice Participatory Practice as a worldview Participatory Practice as the embodiment of values and principles Participatory Practice as a relational process Participatory Practice as interdependence and interbeing Participatory Practice as inner and outer transformation Participatory Practice as living the questions and critical thinking Participatory Practice as an ecological imperative

What is participation? We elicit what is ‘out there’ in continuous acts of participation. Participation is the essence not only in our cognitive acts but also in our social activities and endeavours. Tell me what you participate in and I will tell you who you are; and what the meaning of your life is. We become that in which we participate. As we participate so we become. (Skolimowski, 2001) Participation is fundamental to the nature of our being, an ontological given. (Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 8)

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Participation is about co-labouring for change, co-creating knowledge and co-creating the future. It is also a way of being that requires some humility and openness to others. Moreover, it is about acknowledging that we are all participants in nature. As many indigenous people of Canada and elsewhere will tell us, we are not separate from the environment but intimately connected to it. Our future is inextricably tied up with it and with each other (Gadgil et al, 2021). So, participation is about connection and relationship. Participation means recognising how everything we do is entangled with others, including the natural world (Barad, 2017). Participation is both an existential idea and a reality.

Several tools have been created to ‘measure’ participation. The earliest is based on the work of Arnstein (1969), in the form of a ladder of participation. Arnstein originally developed this ladder to explore different aspects of citizen power to distinguish between real power and an ‘empty ritual of participation’. Her ladder of diverse citizen participation and therefore power ranged from non-participation (manipulation, therapy), to tokenism (informing, consultation, placation), to citizen power (partnership, delegated power, citizen power). But the implications of this first and other subsequent attempts at exploring participation tend to be concerned with a hierarchy, whereas others see it as a continuum such as from going from ‘light’ to ‘intense’ or from ‘pragmatic’ to ‘emancipatory’ participation (Cornwall, 2008). Such frameworks and tools are useful in helping you to become aware of the widespread tendency to believe that participation has taken place when a group is consulted. However, without an in-depth examination of power per se and critical reflexivity, such inauthentic or pseudo-participation will remain unchallenged. To be really authentic, participation has to be embodied. You cannot talk about participation and then engage with communities as if all you really want is for them to agree to your initial idea, or without being in relationship. There has to be parity in decision-making, in developing understanding and sense-making together, ultimately acting together through a collaborative iterative process. In that process of discovery, all are considered equal and deserving respect whatever their circumstances. Participation is grounded in participatory democracy; it begins in everyday life and is reflected in the stories we tell ourselves and each other. However, participation is also a way of life, a way of seeing the world and a way of being in the world (see Chapter 3). We say this to emphasise that it is not simply an approach to working in community; it has far-reaching implications for practice when the thinking behind it is more fully understood. Underpinning participation is a philosophy that is founded on principles of peace, justice and equality, a profound belief in the worth of everyone and the sanctity of the natural world. It is, in essence, a world that runs counter to the top-down, competitive values of the contemporary Western worldview. Seeing our world in a much more connected and cooperative way profoundly influences how we act. 17

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Social change begins with reframing and that reframing of a new way of being starts when we begin to surface our hidden and not-so-hidden frames through a critical inquiry process.

Participation therefore empowers people to take action through the telling of their stories, engaging in quality dialogue and deliberation about those stories and their meaning. Through critical reflection and questioning we change the way we see the world and consequently how we act in it. From those new frames and actions, we create the future. So, having introduced participation, as we see it in this book, we will now explore the themes that we believe make up true participatory practice.

Theme 1: Participatory practice as social justice in action The most general meaning of justice is parity of participation. According to this radical-democratic interpretation of the principle of equal moral worth, justice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction. (Fraser, 2009: 16) According to Nancy Fraser (2009), participatory parity is the backbone of social justice. It is not only about deciding together rather than one person or another deciding and others agreeing, but it is also about having structures and decisionmaking rules that encourage such involvement. Any participatory practice also involves engaging in an exploration of the bigger political issues and the underlying reasons for the day-to-day issues people face. It is through an analysis of prevailing social norms and assumptions that we start the process of transformation and contribute to pushing back the tide of neoliberalism (see Chapter 2 for more detail) that has created the current brain-fog concerning the collective and the essential goodness of human beings. By coming together and encouraging critical questioning of the status quo, we can together start to unpick the roots of injustice, making sure that all those affected by injustices have a say in resolving them. ‘Nothing about us without us’ became the slogan of the ‘dis’ability movement in the 1990s, but it applies to all those affected by social injustice. To generate knowledge about persons without their full participation in deciding how to generate it, is to misrepresent their personhood and to abuse by neglect their capacity for autonomous intentionally. It is fundamentally unethical. (Heron, 1996: 21) ‘The worst thing about living in poverty is the way it gives others permission to treat you – as if you don’t matter, as if your opinions 18

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don’t count, as if you have nothing to contribute.’ (Participant at Forum on Poverty, Scotland, 2006) To return to Fraser, she argues we must change the deep grammar of contemporary forms of injustice. Existing critical theories can help the process of questioning (see Chapters 7 and 8 for examples of these), but by engaging directly in the entangled processes of knowing and being in everyday life, the process of critical questioning can take place immersed within the process of participatory practice. By engaging in this way, we do not fall into the trap of critique from the outside, at a distance, like traditional social science, but raise questions from within the realities of daily life. This is what Barad (2014) calls ‘defractive practice’, opening things up like opening up soil to aerate it and encourage new light to come in, while viewing the roots that are interconnected with the whole. In doing so we also have to address the underlying worldview of how we relate to one another (see also Theme 4). Justice, thus, is not morality, but a responsive ethical relationality with the other, and about reworking our relationships with each other

Social justice cannot be achieved unless it is grounded in a truly participatory democracy, one in which every voice is heard. We need to return to the original source of the word. In Greek, demos means people and kratos means power. So, as participatory practice is social justice as an embodied act, that embodied act also requires a reimagining of democracy, one that nurtures our relationship with each other and nurtures each other’s spirit. This is an act against widespread epistemic injustice, the silencing of voices on the margins. It is also an act of challenging the status quo of single-issue tokenism, which is so pervasive in contemporary society, serving to divide us rather than bring us together.

Theme 2: Participatory practice as a worldview Why would anyone bother to articulate a theory of knowledge of her beliefs, if the ground for those beliefs were not challenged? (Harding, 1990: 87) Our behaviours, our habits and our actions in the world, consciously or unconsciously, reflect the frames through which we view the world. If we believe ‘there is no such thing as society’ we will act as if there is no society, and if we collectively think that way, we will co-create a world whereby society does not exist, with everyone isolated, disconnected and mentally ill. As Wahl (2016) argues, the mental models and worldviews we employ act as organising ideas that help to structure what we see and pay attention to. A pervasive concept that has dominated economic and scientific thinking since the 18th century is the notion of separation, whether it is mind from body, matter from spirit, or humans from 19

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nature. This dominant worldview is so hegemonic in contemporary society that it is assumed to be the most accurate view of reality and is one that has been imposed on those countries colonised by Europeans. An alternative worldview is a participatory one that takes us beyond this illusion of separateness. It is one shared by many indigenous people in those same colonised countries and found in the ancient myths and legends of the European countries themselves. Opening up to this alternative ‘reality’ changes your perception of the world and how you act in it. As you will see when we bring in the ideas of ecological and system thinking later, at the core of participatory consciousness is the understanding that all life is a circle. It is not the linear cause-effect model of the world, which currently dominates. Instead, a participatory worldview gives us a different lens or frame through which to view the world, providing a different picture of what we see and do not see. For example, it sees our world as one that seeks balance and one in which we engage with our environment and each other with our hearts, not just with our minds alone. Most of all it is one where there are no dualistic opposites; rather, it is about interconnection and wholeness. In many ways we instinctively know this, but socialisation and institutional structures, trauma and life circumstances have distorted our perceptions, clouding our minds and preventing us from connecting with our hearts. By changing our awareness, bringing what has hitherto been unconscious to the surface through critical questioning (see Chapter 7), we can start the process of awakening and hence transformation. At this moment in time humanity is facing a terminal crisis of an outdated worldview. We argue in this book for an alternative participatory worldview with its emphasis on complexity and connection; one where spirit, consciousness and matter are inextricably linked. Further, we argue that you cannot truly engage in participatory practice unless you also adopt the lens of participatory consciousness (see Chapter 4). Focusing on separation, for example, also justifies competition, whereas focusing on connection leads to cooperation and an emphasis on the process of relating rather than one of ‘putting one over’ on the other. ‘Cognition is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather the act of bringing forth a world through the processes of living as relating’, according to Maturana and Varela (1987). These biologists also suggest that we have to realise that the ‘world-as-we-know-it’ emerges out of the way we relate to each other and the wider natural process. Drawing on Biology of Love by Maturana and Verden-Zöller (1996), Wahl (2016: 34) writes: Is our ability to love what makes humanity worth sustaining? We are not the pinnacle of evolution but participants in its processes – conscious participants capable of self-reflection. We are only just beginning to understand consciousness and in the process are becoming aware of our intimate communion and entanglement with all there is. Every living being reflects the whole, the evolving and transforming universe, back onto itself in its own unique way. 20

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However, it is not easy to view the world in this different way. The hegemonic colonisation by the outdated worldview of our minds is reinforced on a daily basis in the stories we tell ourselves and those that others tell us, whether heard in the media or from our peers. The alternative voices required to bring about change must shout louder and more consistently to be heard above the cacophony we are subjected to. A participatory consciousness underpinned by love creates the lens that is needed to create the change we want to see in the world and helps us to be that change with others.

Theme 3: Participatory practice as the embodiment of values and principles Take away love and our earth is a tomb. (Browning, 1855) If we are to succeed in co-creating new social realities, we cannot choose between love and power, we must choose both. (Kahane, 2010) We know that it is important when working with community groups to spend some time agreeing on the rules of engagement, often called ground rules. In more formal workshops these are usually posted on the wall, and when someone strays from those ground rules a member of the group will often refer to that wall chart, pointing out gently what has been agreed. None of us is perfect, so occasionally any of us might forget what has been agreed or fall back into habitual practices that deviate from those agreed. However, the collective agreement holds sway because if the process has been truly participatory – that is, there has been participatory parity in decision-making – the rules are owned. Those ‘rules’ will be based on agreed values and principles. They are embedded in the values of those who shape their practice and act as a social bond between people. In the more informal setting, a community group dialogue as a general discussion of values is a useful starting point. The values and principles of empathy, compassion, kindness, mutual respect, dignity, diversity, including honouring all ways of knowing, are fundamental to participatory practice.

The principles of participatory practice form the basis of the most important value of all: love. This is not being ‘Pollyannish’ in perspective; rather, we are brain-wired to love, as current neuroscience developments show us, just as we are wired to collaborate. We are not talking about love in the romantic sense but the wider concept of love which the Greeks differentiated by seven different words,1 one of which, agápe, reflects Freire’s (1972) love of all humanity. Embarrassment with talking about love is a reflection both of the way contemporary language reinforces 21

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the current Western mindset of duality and also of how love and its associate, care, are devalued in Western society and institutions. Love and care are not acknowledged for their contribution to society, either as a skill to be paid for appropriately, or for their central role in maintaining social cohesion and connection. If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. (Thich Nhat Hanh, 2014: 1) To love is to act towards another from the heart and not just the mind. This is no mean task, given the Western pathology of cynicism. It is a skill that has to be developed. As the Marxist and philosopher Eric Fromm argues, this type of love requires deliberate practice, just like any other skill. In his book, The Art of Loving, he argues that love demands both knowledge and effort (Fromm, 2000). We only become masters in the art of love, when both the theory and the practice are blended into one. This holds true, of course, for anything: for music, for medicine, for carpentry – and also for love. Here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art. Despite the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important: success, prestige, money, power – almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. As a consequence, we become immune to the suffering of others, and walk on by, passing shop doorways, foodbanks, hungry children, blaming them for their own suffering. Fromm (2000) goes on to explore the misconceptions and cultural falsehoods keeping us from mastering this supreme human skill, outlining both its theory and its practice with extraordinary insight into the complexities of the human heart. Love, in the widest meaning of the word, is not something that can be measured but can only be experienced. Transformation implies a move from the love of power to the power of love.

Our values dictate how we see the world. Participatory practice requires us not only to keep these values to the forefront intellectually but also to embody them in the way we act. This requires a radical approach to kindness, one that reaches across divides and seeks healing, one that holds the space for dialogue, that listens 22

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to stories with deep attention and with the ethics of care. It means focusing on how we relate to one another, how we act towards one another, how we care for one another, create a feeling of safety and trust, and welcome each other’s perspectives. It is about deep listening and seeking understanding. Since, when we talk, the words we use can potentially be divisive, we need to be careful of how we communicate our thoughts and feelings and also of how we convey our values through our actions. These values run counter to current trends whereby those who hold power try to create a required distance between people through encouraging anger and division, fear and culture wars. However, by embodying and acting with the intention of holding these values, we model and co-create an alternative way of being. Of course, cultural norms about how to enact and talk about love will vary in different societies and groups, and thus in how the value of love might manifest, whatever the context. Nonetheless, the intention in participatory practice is always the same, to move the value norm from the love of power to the power of love.

Theme 4: Participatory practice as a relational process Transformational culture work is always relational; it is not transactional. Real diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging work is not about a checklist. It is about relationships. (Aiko Bethea, 20202) … this is participative universe, nothing lives alone. Everything comes into form because of relationship… Even reality is created through our participation on relationships. We chose what we notice; we relate to certain things and not others. Through these chosen relationships we co-create the world. (Wheatley, 1999, quoted in Wahl, 2016: 143) As already alluded to, participatory practice is a relational process. The dominant story that puts economics and consumption at its centre creates a particular type of relationship, and it is an unequal one. Indeed, as we have argued, there is no value put on caring, equal, reciprocal relationships at all, despite the fact that they are the glue that keeps things functioning and sustains social cohesion. Society is currently structured to downgrade relationships and prioritise the material, or ‘things’. It also promulgates the primacy of competition over collaboration. This is both a misleading mindset and an unsustainable ‘reality’. The richness of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships, both between ourselves and with the environment around us. But this is barely acknowledged in some areas. Take scientific papers in the so-called health sciences, for example: they are stripped of the relationships at the centre of the healthcare process. Yet, as we know from our experience of the recent pandemic, a hug, a smile, a pleasant word from another person is fundamental to our well-being, as is our relationship with nature. Participatory practice is a manifestation of the relational: co-creation, 23

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co-learning and critical pedagogy. It promotes genuine authentic relationships and represents the strong link between individual responsibility for ourselves, for each other and community well-being.

  Participatory practice in cameo The Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (MCHB) works with, among others, immigrant and refugee families suffering domestic violence in Edmonton, Canada. Working with the many different cultures that make up the diasporas that have come to Canada, health brokers act as cultural brokers with the many service organisations supporting families in the city. Because they are from the communities they serve, they can work with families in a way that reflects cultural norms, and they do so through participatory practice. Within the African communities the dominant cultural norm of the concept of family differs from the Western norm. So, the MCHB practices when working with this group are grounded in the collectivist cultures of that region, whereby the family is highly valued. The practices that are adopted aim to encourage family safety and harmony. They also address the need to be respectful and flexible when developing relationships. In working with families, presence is integral in establishing and maintaining relationships. However, they also adapt their practice to be culturally sensitive to individual interpretations of family customs in terms of the role of husband and wife, while encouraging the valued collective decision-making by the extended family and mediation through elders within the community that is the social norm. It is a delicate path to tread given that social norms in the host community of Canada as to the role of men and women are often different. Participatory practice is embedded in the cultural brokers’ way of working and grounded in a collectivist culture. In every encounter it is considered important to create a sense of self-worth with appropriate validation so that families and individuals feel listened to. Their entire approach is non-hierarchical, in which learning from each other’s lived experience is seen as contributing to collective wisdom. Whatever community-based initiatives – whether research projects, intervention programmes or community development projects – the MCHB are involved in, including those addressing family violence, all are considered to be interconnected and part of the overall work towards a common end goal: helping immigrant and refugee communities attain optimal health and well-being for 24

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their families and their communities and addressing inequities experienced by communities. Source: Based on Zulla (2021)

Relational processes shape who we are as individuals and how we can be in this world. We are constantly constructing the sense of ourselves and others through the social and cultural practices in which we participate. Sociocultural environments shape how individuals relate to each other and how they affirm each other. Through relational processes, self-conceptions are stabilised, threatened, or opened up to new ways of being. This is why dialogue and opportunities to create what Kemmis (2008) drawing on Habermas (1984; 1987) calls ‘communicative spaces’ are so key to participatory practice (see Chapter 6). Hearing each other’s stories, and entering into dialogue about what we hear, reshapes our meaningmaking as we co-create meaning, understanding and knowledge together. This, in turn, changes the way we act towards each other and the world. But that dialogue will not take place if there is no trust between people. Participatory practice therefore seeks to create relationships based on trust and reciprocity. Only when we have created trust and deep listening can we then start to expose and transform power relationships. In doing so, our aim eventually is to move from power over to power with. Moreover, the power one experiences in such a relational process is not the limited conception of power we are presented with in the press and other media, rather it is the power of the life force in all living things.

Theme 5: Participatory practice as interdependence and interbeing In a participatory worldview, the individual gains knowledge to grow and connect within society and with the natural world. The aim is to pursue a shared vision of thriving together, while being sensitive to the uniqueness of place and local culture. Out of this process emerge the types of community-level collaboration that regenerate the social capital that has been so depleted in our society. Through our participation in relationships we become part of a dynamic whole within which we both define ourselves and create our reality and, in seeing this, we can start to reframe the narrative of separation to one of interbeing (Wahl, 2016). With this new frame, or way of seeing the world, our perceptions as to the value of the commons begin to change. By ‘commons’ we mean not just the common land enclosed against the wishes of local people in the later medieval and early industrial period. Nor do we mean its current manifestation in the appropriation of public land and public capital for private use in the form of selling off publicly owned property such as water, or town squares and spaces in shopping centres. We mean a wider concept of the commons, a sense of collective ownership of outcomes, of knowledge, of action. There are signs that such an alternative is 25

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re-emerging in virtual reality, with examples such as Wikipedia, crowdsourcing, open-source software, and no doubt many others by the time this book is published. This recognition of the importance of our interdependence is driving a whole plethora of social innovations in which people are reorganising themselves and creating common value together. This goes beyond the passive involvement generated, for example, by YouTube, where you share information but do not work together towards a common object or share common property. The rules of participation of these new shared enterprises are established so as to negate any potential predators looking to buy out or dominate (Bauwens and Ramos, 2018). Thus, creating is an alternative economic relationship to the current dominant corporate enterprise. Can you think of other examples of such shared enterprises?

But recognition of interdependence goes beyond this, if you think about it in ecosystem terms (see below). It involves recognising that our actions collectively shape the world. Language around the narrative of ‘public’ is important here, particularly in relation to the idea of the collective. By using the word ‘public’, we buy into an old discourse which is embedded in the dualism of public versus private. It is also a word fraught with ambiguity. Who are ‘the public’? Given that in the age of the internet so much private information becomes ‘public’, what ‘public’ means is fuzzy and easily appropriated. Take, for instance, the use in the UK of the words ‘public schools’. These are actually private schools that educate the elite and wealthy and are the seedbed of class inequality. This is an extreme example, but more generally the use of the word ‘public’ hides and muddies the collective and social element. It is a great example of how neoliberalism controls thought patterns. By reimagining the commons and acknowledging our interdependence we can transform the notion of ‘public’ and substitute the word ‘collective’, which highlights that interdependence where no one individual is entitled and we all have responsibilities to one another. We need to constantly ask ourselves, to what extent are we framing the problems we are seeking to address and proposing a solution informed by the narrative of separation, and how much are we looking from the perspective of interbeing?

To reiterate, we are all interconnected and interdependent. Any action we take individually and collectively has an effect on other people. Nowhere is this clearer than in a pandemic, although, for some, this is difficult to grasp.

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  How a virus spread because of interconnections: the example of a wedding in Maine, US, on 7 August 2020 It was attended by 55 people in a hotel. The bride and groom came from California. One of the guests had COVID-19. Over the next 38 days the virus spread to 177 other people because social distancing and masking was not attended to. 27 of the 55 got Covid plus a staff member from the hotel, another patron unconnected who was staying there and a vendor. One person of the group also attended a school meeting which infected two school staff members, another visited a parent in a long-term care facility which infected a health worker who carried on working and spread the virus in that facility 100 miles away. Another visited a prison 200 miles away and infected 82 people. Source: Mahale et al (2020)

This idea of interconnection – collective participation in the whole, and that whatever action we take has collective consequences – goes beyond the wellknown idea of butterfly’s wings leading to a storm somewhere else in the world. Everything is a product of our interbeing and how that manifests collectively. For example, if there is greater inequality in society people trust one another less. This, in turn, has an impact on overall levels of ill health because of the stress created. It is no coincidence that the Scandinavian countries, who have more equal societies, have the highest levels of average life expectancy. When more people live in poverty, there is a greater level of crime. Greater inequality has economic repercussions, too, as the more equal a society is the higher the standard measure of economic health, GDP per capita. The butterfly wings analogy points, however, to deep interconnection between humans and nature, and the repercussions of that relationship globally. The climate crisis has highlighted this in recent years but there have been many other examples. For years, acid rain as a consequence of industrial pollution in the UK was shown to have damaged pine trees in Scandinavia. we are able to see ourselves and our immanent value as related to and connected to others – family, community, the world, those behind and those yet to come. Through embracing this world view, each individual becomes intensely aware of personal accountability for the welfare of others. (Graveline, 1998) As this quote from a member of the Cree in Canada points out, the cultural system of Canadian indigenous systems recognises the interconnection between the individual and the collective and the collective and nature. In many such 27

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indigenous systems, the individual is only knowable as a member of a specified community, and communities are only recognisable through their constituents. This flows through not just previous generations, but generations to come, and through nature itself. According to Paula Gunn Allen (1986: 67), another indigenous writer, this perception of co-creation actively discourages people from setting themselves up as tyrants or dictators, in other words as ‘entitled’. This, of course, is not always the case. Nonetheless, many such indigenous communities are currently regarded by numerous people as backward and needing to ‘be developed’. However, the destruction of their lifestyle and livelihood means the destruction of potential plants to obviate pests and diseases globally, as such indigenous and traditional communities actually manage 95  per cent of the world’s genetic natural resources, which in turn are important to human survival in the long term (IPBES, 2019).

Theme 6: Participatory practice as inner and outer transformation We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the outside world would also change. As man [sic] changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. (Accredited to Gandhi) Winter (2011) argues that the transformation of political and economic institutions necessitates the transformation of individual self-awareness. Otherwise, any transformation of institutions will disintegrate into the old forms because they are a product of the motives, interpretations, feelings and aspirations of people who remain stuck in old ways of being and thinking. Thus, former communist countries, he argues, came to reflect centuries of thinking and aspirations embedded in their culture despite economic reform. In the Soviet Union, the culture continued to reflect ways of being found in Russian Tsarist history, with a single dominant dictator and a secret police agency. Despite Mao’s attempt through the Cultural Revolution to break the cycle of history in China, it did not upset cultural norms around the family which re-emerged afterwards. For real transformation to take place, we also need to address what Winter calls ‘our ethical being’ and be constantly self-reflective of our knowledge, our awareness of where it comes from and what motivates us. He argues that in order to challenge prevailing structures and processes we must understand how the nature of their operations are effectively disguised. The processes of distraction and concealment permit systemic injustice to continue or to be transmogrified into an issue involving a few individual corrupt people. Surfacing and making visible the systemic injustice requires a raising of awareness, and an awakening, at a mass level. 28

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That inner work, in a participatory paradigm, takes place when we engage with others, not just through individual inner contemplation, because existence is interactional. Being in this world, constructing reality, creating meaning, and shaping one’s destiny are all tasks that involve participation. We become more aware (that is, we learn) through interaction with others and with the world. This generates an inner transformation that proceeds from not only an increased awareness but also a sense of agency. That sense of agency is both individual and collective. Once you engage with others, whatever their background, around common experience you feel connected on an equal level. This, in turn, gives you a sense of value and the power to act. Such experiential knowing enables individuals to connect with each other through their emotions and their embodied experiences (that is, their presence). This connection between individuals is not solely a cognitive experience but a phenomenological experience in which the mind and being are whole. Storytelling either verbally or through art is a means through which this process can take place (see Chapter 5). In listening to and telling our stories we learn in relationship. In this way we can connect our felt experience (that is, experiential knowing) to the felt experience and the emotions of others and these are then all brought to group awareness. This enables us to gain awareness of each other’s worldviews and, in particular, our felt experiences. Through this awareness, we develop empathy for each other. As we share experiential and expressive ways of knowing with each other through imaginal forms, we start to engage in wholeperson dialogues. We grow a deep sensitivity towards how others are experiencing and conceptualising reality, and we begin to develop a shared validation of reality and co-create knowledge. In highly populous societies, engaging in such a process has largely been neglected. One of the ironies of both charities and the welfare state is that both have emerged in societies where populations are too large and dispersed for givers and receivers to know each other. The result is that such societies face the challenge of persuading the wealthy and those just getting by that aiding the less fortunate is both their obligation and a matter of shared interest. We would argue that the solution comes through a participatory approach to raising awareness and through the consequential inner transformation, empowerment and emancipation. As Freire argued, oppressed people can become more empowered by learning about social inequality through the process of conscientisation, encouraging others by helping them to feel confident about achieving social equality (inspiring) and finally encouraging them to take action (liberating). This has both an individual component, developing power from within, as well as a collective component, that is, working with politicised power with others to generate the power to bring about change. It can also generate resistance and recalcitrance and thus opposition to changes generated top down by others. 29

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Theme 7: Participatory practice as living the questions and critical thinking Some believe that the notion of education for emancipation is utopian … [T]his sort of ‘realism’ breeds acceptance of social evils. It offers docility and compliance with the powers-that-be. (Kemmis, 2006: 463) Critical theory has no special influence on its side, except for a concern for the abolition of social justice…. Its own nature … turns it towards a changing of history and the establishment of justice. (Horkheimer, cited in Kemmis, 2008: 125) It will have become clear by now that participatory practice is not a method, a tool or a technique, it is a process that flows directly from a worldview and underlying values and principles. There are no prescribed outcomes or goals but, as you engage in the process, things unfold and emerge. That emergence and the consequential transformation will not happen without questioning the takenfor-granteds – what Freire (1972) and Gramsci (1971) call ‘false consciousness’ – or an analysis of power. While children are full of questions as they engage with the world, as soon as they go to school, their ability to question diminishes (Berger, 2014); yet it is through questioning that we inquire about the world. We have a tendency not question things in our daily lives but, as Freire (1972) has shown, critical questioning of things we take for granted starts the process of conscientisation and the power to act. Critical theory can help with the process of critical questioning (see Chapter 7). In critical theory being critical means inquiring whether and how the status quo is leading to situations that are inhuman, alienating, unjust and irrational. Such theory helps us to question what we think is reality. However, it is only one form of knowing, and needs to be combined with other ways of knowing that can intertwine with practice and experience, helping social change as we inquire into it. This is the notion of praxis, the idea that we generate knowledge and understanding through our efforts to transform the world. In this way, we use theory not as an expert outsider but dissecting it within the moment and within the context. Through sitting with the questions and in different ways exploring the unarticulated frames and assumptions that are held, we can surface the power relations and the social injustices that lie underneath and hidden. Bregman (2020) in his book Humankind discusses how power corrupts and how powerful people feel less connected to others, because power makes you feel superior. Not having power, we know, has the opposite effect. People who consistently are oppressed and have their power taken away from them often lack confidence, hesitate to offer an opinion and underestimate their own intelligence, and are therefore less likely to strike back. This creates a ‘culture of silence’ (Freire, 1972). Hence, the importance of asking questions to help 30

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people to understand and surface their innate knowledge, while at same time valuing that knowledge. The starting point of living the questions is again the everyday stories we tell ourselves. People’s lived experience is both explained and questioned as they recount their experience to others. Telling our story is a meaning-making process and so is the dialogue that will follow it. One of the most illuminating questions we can ask each other is ‘Why?’. In the film Misbehaviour, which is set in 1970, the main character is asked in an interview for a university why Britain had not had a revolution: her reply was: “A better question is why no revolution in Britain has been successful.” We are not given the answer but when we sit with the question, the spiral of understanding begins to unfold. There is some merit in sitting with questions and not necessarily knowing the answers. This encourages an openness to alternatives. As we spiral in and out with the questions, we start to see the bigger picture. The writer Myss (2019) often uses a high-rise apartment block as a metaphor. When we are on the ground floor, we can hear the traffic but, as we rise further up the building, people and vehicles become smaller and the noise decreases. From up here we can see the bigger picture and start to understand the wider structures that impact on our daily lives. This creates a more holistic and less splintered thinking and perspective. This is why Freirean pedagogy is a key element within this book. Its power lies in how it encourages people to question. Such expansion of the mind is what traditional teaching practices of indigenous cultures encourage by using all forms of knowing, including ritual storytelling, dreams and altered states of consciousness. By engaging the right brain, you are tapping into a wealth of knowledge beyond the rational. In the Cree tradition of transformative practice, for example, healing takes place only when unconscious conflict and resistance is brought to a conscious level. Once we are conscious of them they can be worked with. As with feminist consciousness raising (hooks, 1990), the process begins with airing our feelings, perceptions and personal reactions. This then leads to discovering that those feelings, perceptions and personal reactions are socially constructed. Thus, moving from surface phenomenon immediately related to the present, we move into the depths of pain, anger and bitterness related to the past and then outwards to a utopia we can aspire to (Hart, 2000). This is a large undertaking, as what is required is an overcoming of what Graveline (1998) calls the ‘cage of oppression’, which is not a singular experience but an ongoing set of social relations. Knowing how one experiences those relationships on an everyday basis is a group process and through the co-creation of such grassroots knowledge new social movements are born.

Theme 8: Participatory practice as an ecological imperative Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness. (Hildegard of Bingen, 1982) 31

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Plotkin (2008), in his book Nature and the Human Soul, argues that being truly human is only possible in relationship with the natural world. The dehumanising effect of contemporary power dynamics, with its emphasis on separation, also separates us from nature. Under Western-derived religious doctrine, nature is there for humans to exploit and own. However, many indigenous knowledge systems argue that all things have inherent value, that there are cycles of growth and change in nature. In ancient and indigenous societies these cycles were and are marked by rituals that honour them. In Celtic culture, for example, the seasons are marked by the festivals Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasa. In some countries in Europe similar festivals are integrated into the system of holidays. For example, in Sweden Walpurgis night (30 April), which celebrates the end of winter, and Midsummer are both still celebrated with festivals and collective rituals. Yet in the UK and its former colonies, the seasons are generally ignored, and for holidays, with the exception of Christmas and Easter (themselves the Christian appropriation of so-called pagan festivals), any connection to nature has been replaced by commercially driven ‘bank holidays’. So, there are no longer any reminders that, just as we are inextricably connected by the web of common humanity, we are woven into all forms of life on Earth: we participate in the ecosystem. Recognising that we are a part of an ecosystem, held in fragile balance, is the final theme of this book. The concept of the ecosystem helps us understand that by harming anyone or anything we are violating our interdependence, and so endangering the well-being of the whole. Ecosystems are constantly trying to keep balance. Thus, if we upset the balance too far, as James Lovelock (1995) argued, this could mean the extinction of humanity itself. In some ways, thinking about our connection with nature and humanity as a whole using an ecosystems lens is the modern equivalent to older indigenous ways of knowing: that we are participants in nature, not external to it. The notion of separation from nature has been nurtured not just by modern industrialisation but also through the idea of dualism, the belief that humans are separate from nature and mind from matter. Dewey (1925a) argued that under a dualistic perspective experience is dismissed as irrational and that nature becomes defined as separate from experience. For Dewey, knowledge is derived from embodied intelligence, not from mind alone. So, decontextualising humanity from the natural world creates internally alienated selves, as well as ecological problems (Heron, 1992). In seeing ourselves as part of, not set apart from, the ecosystem, we act differently. We become aware of how our actions on the world can have an impact elsewhere in the system – what Capra (1996) calls ‘the web of life’. In his book of the same name, Capra describes some of the salient characteristics of the organisation of ecosystems that, he argues, it is necessary to understand in order to develop sustainable human communities. These include, first of all, interdependence, which is how the behaviour and success of one person is tied up with the behaviour and success of everyone else. Secondly, there is the cyclical nature of ecological processes that consist of exchanges of energy and resources 32

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which are, in turn, sustained by the third characteristic of ecosystems: cooperation, partnership and co-evolution. These latter characteristics appear somewhat at odds with the notions contained in Neo-Darwinism’s focus on the survival of the fittest, where the emphasis is on competition and profit that underpins the free market forces of globalisation. By contrast, cooperation, partnership and co-evolution are processes of integration and connection necessary for a flourishing world. These processes are further sustained by the characteristics of diversity and flexibility that enable ecosystems and communities to survive and adapt to change. Ecosystems are always in constant flux but there are certain limits to change beyond which the whole system will collapse. The aim is to reduce the long-term stress in the system: maximising a single variable will eventually lead to the destruction of the system as a whole; optimising all variables will create a dynamic balance between order and freedom, stability and change. This means accepting that contradictions within communities are signs of diversity and viability. However, this can exist only where there are strong and complex patterns of interconnections. A healthy community needs members who are aware of the need for interconnectedness, so that information and ideas flow freely through the networks to create a flourishing whole. Rather than a naïve notion of social capital that assumes homogeneity in community, it calls for an understanding that communities are contested spaces that flourish when practical strategies knit them together as part of a diverse, cooperative, interconnected whole.

Towards collective health and well-being through participatory practice The world will be different only if we live differently. (Maturana and Varela, 1987: 245) The overall aim of participatory practice is to promote a flourishing community that thrives in terms of health and well-being. This is the calyx of the flower whose petals we have unfurled in this chapter. Health and well-being are a matter of balance. The word ‘health’ itself means, in Anglo-Saxon, to make whole. To promote a flourishing community that thrives in terms of health and well-being we need a process of salutogenesis, that is, a process that revolves around making whole (Wahl, 2016: 143). Historically – at least for the last 200 years – Western society has viewed health as something that can be fixed, to be treated piecemeal. The body is separated from the mind, and the body is composed of parts, each of which is treated in isolation of the other, entirely material with no reference to the spirit or the unseen and unmeasurable. Moreover, an individual’s health is treated as if they are independent of the society of which they are a part, although, in the last 30 years, the idea of the social determinants of health has now much more traction and is well researched (WHO, 2008). However, while there is much known about the relationship between the health of a society and the health of 33

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the individuals and groups within it, much less action has been taken to reduce inequalities and address the underlying structural issues that create imbalance. That imbalance is everywhere: pollution is an imbalance between dirty air and the ability of nature to process it. Unemployment is an imbalance between those in work and those who are left out. Poverty is an imbalance between those who accumulate material wealth at the expense of others and those who suffer as a result. These are just a few examples; there are many others. Inequality is imbalance. Social injustice is imbalance. Our world, our system – ecological and social – is out of balance and unhealthy. So, how do we co-create a balance ‘wholistically’? How do we become whole? As we have argued earlier, each theme we have presented in this chapter has within it elements of the others because they are all interconnected, as we are all interconnected. Together they are essential for collective health and well-being, emotionally, psychologically, materially and spiritually. Thus ‘the whole of which comes forth within all of its parts and the parts find their significance and identity in belonging to the whole’ (Wahl, 2016: 93). In the following chapters we dive deeper into participatory practice as community-based action for the transformative change which we believe is possible to co-create.

What is to come in this book The ideas in this book are complex. This stems in part from the interconnections between the elements and themes we have introduced you to in this chapter and which we will examine in greater depth in the chapters to come. But it is also complex because we are using linear text to describe an experiential phenomenon that stems from a way of thinking about wholeness. At the beginning of this chapter, we used the metaphor of the garden. But as you continue to read this book, we want you to think also about a tapestry. Tapestry has been made for thousands of years. It is a piece of work that involves a warp and weft being woven together to form a pattern. The strands highlighted in this chapter are woven into the chapters that follow and only when you have read the whole will you see the pattern in all its glory. The book comes in two parts. In the first part of the book, we look at the bigger picture. After introducing you to the ideas that are woven into the book, in Chapter 2 we start by taking a critical look, using the UK as a case study, at a world that has been created as the result of a focus on individualism and in which the common or collective has been diminished through the effects of neoliberalism and ‘austerity’. We demonstrate how these current challenges are rooted in a narrative that has created an unjust and ecologically devastated world. In Chapter  3 we explore the alternative, participatory consciousness in an ecological context, as a different narrative and worldview, revisiting the ancient wisdom still conserved by many indigenous populations and integrating it with alternative views of science and society. In Chapter 4 we explore current approaches to participatory practice and how they have evolved over the last ten 34

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to twenty years. In doing so, we highlight the challenges the many initiatives have faced working against the backdrop of a non-participatory world and the issues raised in Chapter 2. In the second part of the book, we start to dig deeper into what participatory practice actually entails. In Chapter 5 we explore the use of story, both at a metalevel, in terms of the hegemonic narrative that has been promulgated over the last 50 years, and at the local level, looking at the power of story as a way to unlock people’s imagination and help them to explore their own experience. In Chapter 6 we dive deep into the process of dialogue that follows the telling of stories. This is a process of knowledge creation as people start to co-create meaning together. This process can raise emotional responses and also conflict, but both are integral to the process of transformation. In Chapter 7 we unpick the role of critical reflection in teaching to question, furthering the process of raising awareness and conscientisation. In Chapter 8 we unpick what transformation means and looks like as the result of these participatory practices. Finally, in Chapter 9 we look to the future and how we can co-create hope, wholeness and a practical utopia through connecting on a wider scale beyond the local to the global. Throughout the book, as we take you on this journey into participatory practice, we will provide you with some examples from the literature and from our own practice. Each chapter has been written by one of us and so your guide at different stages of the journey will vary.3 The final destination is up to you, but our aim is to lead you to what Macy and Johnstone (2012) call ‘Active Hope’. Peter McLaren, in a discussion of disutopia, states that ‘our internal and external worlds seem to have been split apart’, a disconnection he links to the process of disutopia as ‘not just the temporary absence of Utopia, but the political celebration of the end of social dreams’ (Dinerstein and Leary, cited in McLaren, 2000: xxv). We want to offer you an insight into a participatory approach to practice that restores hope from hopelessness, connects the unhappy times that we live in to the fractured state of our external world, and situates critical agency as a form of autonomous being in the world that leads to action for transformation. Think of it as a practical utopia: a way of shaping a better world impassioned by outrage over the injustices that we have created in the present. This releases the energy of possibility. From our disenchantment with what is, we become enchanted with what might be. Participatory practice is the future without which there will be no future. It means not paying lip-service to participation but a total regenerative transformation underpinned by the values of love.

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2 Troubled times Margaret Ledwith

The universal is in the particular.… We are all part of one another, interconnected beyond the separations made by the mind. (Quinney, 1998: xi) We are all interconnected, inextricably part of life on Earth. We need each other to survive, and we need the planet, which is our home, to be healthy and in balance. A world in balance is the way forward for people and the planet to flourish. By this I mean we are part of an ecosystem that is in self-adjusting balance – until it is taken to its extremes. Neoliberal capitalism has exploited inequality to an unsustainable extreme and environmental degradation beyond levels of recovery – unless we change our ideology now. In this book, we challenge the idea that the strong and ruthless rule the world. Even Darwin, who is associated with the idea of survival of the fittest, was impressed with the kindness and cooperation he witnessed in nature and wrote that the communities with the kindest people would flourish best (Hare and Woods, 2020). Lead from a kind heart and cooperation flourishes. These ideas form the bedrock of this book.

Values lie at the heart of the matter The world we create is founded on the values we live by. It is those values that shape the way we see the world, the policies that get embedded into law, and the way we act towards each other and the environment. This creates a mutually reinforcing system, but it is the values we choose to adopt that frame the lens through which we see the world and which influence the way we act in the world. Values lie at the heart of the matter! Our concern is that social inequalities and the destruction of biodiversity have fractured the health and well-being of the web of common humanity at the heart of participatory practice as well the survival of the planet that is our home. Accepting the idea that we are all inextricably interconnected in an ecosystem challenges the concept of individualism at the heart of neoliberal politics. Individualism casts mutual responsibility to the winds, elevating the self above the collective, encouraging decisions that are about self-gratification and irresponsibility. Seeing life on Earth as an interconnected whole brings mutual responsibility for human and planetary flourishing to the fore. It faces each of 37

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us with a role to play in creating a happy society on a healthy planet. In order to deal with this responsibility, the first step is to understand how the current human and environmental crises have been allowed to develop, escalating in such a short space of time, unconstrained.

We are living through an epoch in world history We are at a pivotal point in the history of the world. A world in crisis brings an opportunity for change. This bigger picture shapes our place in the ecosystem and shines a light on the reality of local lives at the sharp end, a world in which people have been dehumanised, swept to the brink of survival into wastelands of poverty and destitution, on an angry planet that is not just murmuring its displeasure but screaming as it spirals out of kilter. Despite the warnings, we continue to suffer from a total breakdown of imagination, an inability to focus on the evidence before our eyes. What comes to mind as I say this is not only the images of the planet on fire in 2019 – Australia, the Amazon, Indonesia, Russia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Canada, Greenland, Spain and India burning out of control (Vasilieva, 2019) – but also the normalisation of foodbanks, child poverty, homelessness, depression, suicide and other symptoms of unwell, unsustainable, unequal societies that face us in our everyday lives. Across the planet, in countries rich and poor, shop doorways are turned into homes for the homeless, tents appear for shelter in the most unlikely places, donations for foodbanks are parked in supermarkets, refugees are cast adrift on dangerous seas … and we walk on by, failing to focus and failing to question why we have allowed ourselves to be persuaded that this is normal, that there is no alternative, or TINA as it has come to be known. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, in April 2021, as I write this, I sit here in my 14th month of social isolation, at the height of a coronavirus pandemic, a virus previously unknown to humanity, sinister, unseen, capable of killing swathes of the world’s population. This has done more than anything else to expose the grim reality of neoliberal politics, illuminating the full consequences of its greed and ruthlessness. I live in the North West region of England, an area systematically drained of its assets by the power base in the South East, creating enormous inequalities and rendering it vulnerable to the highest COVID-19 death toll in the country. I have witnessed my homeland, not only stripped of the quality of its infrastructure, but stripped of hope and dignity as wind-blown plastic waves alarmingly from the branches of trees and people walk by with heads bowed, surviving. This is the story of the short life of neoliberal politics from my experience, but it is the same story, to a greater or lesser degree, in most countries of the world. In the UK, neoliberal ‘austerity’ politics has plundered the public sector infrastructure of its support for a common good, systematically privatising its resources into the pockets of the rich. One of the greatest contradictions of this global pandemic is that it exposes the reliance of a population on the National 38

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Health Service (NHS), as all the doctors, nurses and ancillary workers, many of them immigrants or Black, are called on to put themselves on the frontline of risk at a time when the NHS has been stripped of its capacity by unjustifiable ‘austerity’ measures.

  Let me tell you a well-kept secret … Not many people realise that, in 2016, a government war game called Exercise Cygnus, the sort often carried out to assess how prepared we are in the event of risk, revealed that more personal protective equipment (PPE) was urgently needed for those working on the front line – and that includes those who keep the country going, like delivery drivers, taxi drivers, bus drivers and shopkeepers, as well as hospital workers. In hospitals, much greater capacity for intensive care was needed to save lives, and in the country overall much more capacity was needed in the care system. This was known by the UK government, but they still continued with their punitive, unnecessary ‘austerity’ measures… As a consequence, one of the highest death rates in the world has been experienced by the UK. Source: Booth and Sample (2021)

The struggle to get through this crisis is proportionate to the stripping of public assets, and this must be called out. As Mazzucato (2019) says, it is impossible to strip back the assets of public institutions and expect that a sudden injection of cash will restore their capacity. In relation to the NHS in crisis, the loss of years of investment in medical science, the depletion of nurses and doctors compounded by anti-immigrant, radical-right populism, the lack of life-saving ventilators, of PPE … all of this illuminates in sharp relief the social evils of a politics of greed. Within this perspective comes the awareness that the rich are the source of the problem (Sayer, 2016). It is the workers at ground level who keep us going, health workers, care workers, bus drivers, shop workers, delivery drivers, refuse collectors … those who have been kept poor in a precariat economy while the rich have increased their riches opportunistically. These introductory thoughts pave the way for my unequivocal challenge: social and environmental justice are intertwined, all part of the same problem, and we simply cannot claim to practise either without a critique of the political times that construct personal lives and frame local, grassroots participatory practice.

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Critique of the political context is the catalyst for transformative practice Quite simply, we cannot understand how to act for social or environmental justice without contextualising people in time and place. This is a precursor to understanding the nature of oppression in order to identify practice interventions which then link from local projects to global movements for transformative change. Anything else does no more than scratch the surface, engaging with symptoms of injustice but leaving the root causes of inequality and environmental degradation to continue unabated. So, this chapter is a quest to trigger your imagination, using story to illuminate the contradictions we live by and accept as normal, but which are far from normal! Here’s a transformative thought: read this chapter through the lens of critical kindness seeing empathy, compassion, caring, cooperation, community and connection not only as an alternative way of being but as the focus of policy decisions …

Question contradictions! In order to deepen understanding of the ways in which people are persuaded to see the world differently, I will explore the changes we have lived through in recent history, and I will do this through the use of story. Storytelling invites curiosity and excites the imagination. Story has the power to change the course of history. This chapter examines the nature of dominant ideologies and the impact they have on people and the environment. Power, threaded through dominant stories we are told, reaches from the top down into local communities as a real truth, one that influences the way we make sense of life, the values we live by and the way we act in the world. Participatory practitioners begin their quest for social and environmental justice by critiquing the political context in which practice takes place, naming the values people want to live by, creating a counternarrative of connection, of wholeness, oneness to replace the alienated, disconnected and fragmented approach to life on Earth that we have created.

In this sense, story lends itself to Freirean problematising, a way of seeing critical connections by decontextualising local issues from lived reality and presenting them to a dialogue group in a different form – say, a photo, story or film – one that highlights contradictions that are taken for granted, accepted unquestioningly in everyday life. After reading this chapter, you will no longer be able to walk past shop doorways filled with sleeping bags and begging bowls or to see flooding 40

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as a random occurrence without questioning why we have chosen to let this happen. Read on!

Values change the way we see the world The past is in the present, so looking back opens our eyes to how we got to where we are. Knowing how we got here helps us to steer society towards a better future. It is precisely why I will take a critical look at where we have come from in order to change the trajectory of where we are heading! This past–present–future dimension is vital. We live in the in-between, making sense of the present by revisiting the past. And, it is this more focused view of the here and now that enables us to see differently in order to understand how to change our future for the better. Imagine the world we want to live in as the basis of a counternarrative …

Imagination is key in the process of change. We cannot dismantle the dominant narrative without having a story to replace it, a counternarrative of connection, one that reflects a kinder, gentler, more sustainable future in which humans and the planet flourish. In order to start this process, I will wind back history to World War II.

The British welfare state: a social justice revolution Between 1939 and 1945, a brutal and destructive war raged across the world. In Britain, ‘The population was facing daunting psychological, social and economic challenges and was desperate for change’ (Ballatt et al, 2020: 1).

  A story of the way that changing values changes lived reality … Life in Britain during World War II was grim. Violence, destruction and fear permeated everyday lives. My mother was 10 at the outbreak of war so her young life was about community, compassion, pulling together. The context of my early years was dereliction: dangerous bombsites provided playgrounds for children, grimy industrial buildings reached skywards with their insides exposed, halfcrumbled houses gave glimpses of flowered wallpaper, a life that used to be… All this punctuated the post-war landscape. Most of all, I remember it as colourless, dull, monochrome. Food was rationed and life was a struggle, even though the fear and violence of war was over, grief, loss and the rebuilding of lives and communities was very present. 41

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What I didn’t know as a little girl growing up amid the remnants of the atrocities of war was that new ideas had come out of the violence and destruction. War had called for cooperation. Stripped of humanity, people pulled together, cared about each other in the struggle to survive. This gave birth to general consensus on a common good, the desire for a society in which everyone could feel connected; we could call it a politics of belonging in which the well-being of all was a shared responsibility, one based on cooperation and connection. This is the mark of a true civilisation, a commitment to everyone’s right to benefit from wealth and progress, agreement that we have a common right to mutually flourish and play a participatory role in society. People started to see differently; values changed and formed the basis of policies that had never been known before. The post-war British welfare state took responsibility for education, health, housing, employment and social security. It was a world people never dreamed possible, and we all flourished! This is the world I was born into and took for granted. I had no memory of the two world wars and a global economic Depression that had gone before. I didn’t experience the fear, destruction and deprivation, even though I was entertained by family stories of my grandfather’s antics as an ARP (air raid precautions) warden, checking that the blackout was observed, marching through the streets making sure no chinks of light peeped through to offer targets to passing bombers. Closer to home, my father was absent from my life for four years in Burma on post-war army peacekeeping missions, and he came home a stranger. I was raised in my early years by the love and fortitude of my maternal grandmother, a powerhouse of the family and community, while my teenage mother, forced to leave sixth form, went to work in the Tax Office. My community was defined by war, but I grew up feeling the post-War hope that anything was possible, that opportunities were endless, that jobs were abundant and that choices were mine to make. Optimism was in the air, and much of this was due to the independence claimed by women in the war years, the good times created by the political will that brought about a radical welfare state, and the burgeoning youth culture that exploded through the ’50s and ’60s. The reality of the common good was that education became free for everyone, health care was available for all (and developed into the most impressive national health service in the world), a programme of excellent-quality council housing grew across the country, employment conditions were protected by unionisation and workers’ rights, and a social security system ensured that there was a safety net for hard times. It was an everyday utopia unknown before! What none of us realised was just how easily this could change! 42

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The Beveridge Report: a common good embedded in policy After the hardship and destruction of two world wars, separated by a global Depression, people were ready for change. The 1941 wartime coalition government established an interdepartmental committee to look at health, social insurance and allied services as a way of keeping hope alive and the spirit strong. The report was written by William Beveridge and heralded the most revolutionary changes for the common good imaginable. It became a milestone in British history, known ever after as the Beveridge Report (1942). Recommendations were made for a ‘cradle-to-grave’ welfare state which provided for the health and well-being of everyone, the ‘five giants’ of which were: social security; a national health service; free education (including free school meals and milk); good-quality council housing; and the promise of full employment with decent pay and conditions. This was a revolutionary ideology that transformed the lives of British people. All this came about because of a change in the way society was seen, a freedom from oppression to accept a collective, cooperative responsibility for the well-being of all, a common good. The Labour Party led by Clement Attlee was elected into office at the end of the war in 1945 on the welfare state platform and met their promise of delivering these transformative changes. This was a major landmark in social justice thought and action. [Post-war Britain] emerging from a long, bloody and destructive war … was desperate for change … the new laws were a paradigm shift: a radical change in the funding and organisation of health and social care and the support of those in need. (Ballatt et al, 2020: 1) This was the political formalising of a radical new approach to welfare, an inclusive society, a radical act of kindness to care for each other by sharing ‘the risks of accident and illness, of unemployment, disability, dependency and poverty’ (Ballatt et al, 2020: 1). The costs of the war had been high, but the strength of the commitment was enormous, more a statement that we had become conscious that we needed each other. In much the same way, the COVID-19 pandemic is witnessing acts of kindness and connection in times of severe disconnection – a move towards values of kinship, community, cooperation. Critique is essential for deepening democracy, and there have been retrospective critiques of the Beveridge report, notably its emphasis on class, that it ‘hid the giants Racism and Sexism, and the fights against them, behind statues to the Nation and the White Family’ (Williams, 1989: 162). Ironically, this was at a time when the ‘armies’ of women who stepped out of their roles as homemakers to play such a significant role in the ‘war effort’ were ‘persuaded’ back into the unpaid labour of home and family so as to leave the workplace free for ‘returning heroes’ – by both moral and legal means! In fact, although women over 21 got the vote in 1928, it was not until 1964 that the marriage bar preventing married women working in certain professions was ended by law, and not until 1975 that 43

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a woman could legally own a bank account or take out a mortgage in her own name without a male guarantor. How do values influence people and change lives? Here is a thought from Will Hutton: The good society is one in which, through argument and deliberation, we create law and justice as a moral system enshrining human dignity and accept mutual responsibilities – and then live by its injunctions across the board. (Hutton, 2015: 44) Let’s hold this in mind as we explore a paradigm shift.

The invention of neoliberalism During those post-war years, when the welfare state was addressing the common good, there was a plot going on. It was as simple as that! A group of men decided to promote a very different way of seeing the world to counter the socialism of the welfare state, and the seeds of this idea led to a very different way of being in the world. I want to pay attention to this; it gives a clue as to just how easy it is to influence people to change their minds – and it emphasises the importance of critiquing democracy through the lens of values. Social justice values provide a system of checks and balances which deepen, not weaken, democracy.

  A political story of corruption on the part of the rich … In 1947, hidden away in the little village of Mont Pelerin in Switzerland, a group of 40 men plotted a very different story based on very different values: one that would replace cooperation and compassion with competition and exploitation. They became known as the Mont Pelerin Society and their ideology became known as neoliberalism, and it was an extremely strange idea indeed. In fact, it was so strange that they knew better than to put it into the public domain until the time was right. People had always been told that the market served society. How could a small group of men convince the world that profit comes before people and the planet? It was the antithesis of the welfare state! Nevertheless, they gave it a go, prepared to wait for the right opportunity before going public. What an enormous challenge to convince people to see life upside down: the market ruling people, the rich deserving even more riches, and the poor and the planet paying for this greed and excess!

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Despite a global economic recession which brought a crisis in welfare spending in 1973, the equal society created by the values of the welfare state continued along its social justice path. Not many people realise that equality peaked in 1978, when Britain was the second most equal country to Sweden in Europe (Dorling, 2018b). It was a wonderful achievement and opened up many possibilities for a society that could be inclusive and happy. But, in 1979, the Mont Pelerin Society’s ‘Big Chance’ appeared. Margaret Thatcher entered the political stage as Conservative prime minister, and this was to be a defining moment in British and world history. She really liked the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society and their story of individualism. The key plot was the free market, uncontrolled and driven by profit. She came up with popular slogans, repeated over and over again until they got inside people’s heads: ‘there’s no such thing as society, only individuals and their families’, ‘it’s good to be greedy’, ‘profit comes before people’, ‘the rich need to get richer and the poor need to tighten their belts’, ‘wealth will trickle down’! Nothing trickled! This story was the first Big Lie! The rich got even richer (and much more greedy) and the poor were dismissed as work-shy welfare scroungers! Make people poorer and pillage the Earth in the name of profit was the moral of the story. ‘There is no alternative’, we were told, and it was such a compelling story, we all shut up and just got on with it. Community ties were weakened and individualism was the order of the day. Two years later, in 1981, Ronald Reagan became President of the US. He liked this story, too. Thatcher and Reagan became pals, but, more importantly, together they became the most powerful leaders in the Western world. It was such a good story, it went viral. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank joined in, and others, like Pinochet in Chile, also wanted to be part of it. We began to see global structural adjustment programmes emerge, with the IMF creating a debt trap by forcing poor countries to pay back loans. This, of course, made the poorest of the world suffer dreadfully. But it made the rich richer than ever, justified as the deserving rich and the undeserving poor. This, of course was another Big Lie. Profit gets generated by workers at ground level, but it is projected upwards into the pockets of the privileged. Inequality within and between countries soared.

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And so, the process of neoliberal globalisation took hold. Before too long, a global super-rich appeared. Strangely, they had more in common with each other than with their own cultures. They were full of ideas about social status, and bought lots of really expensive stuff to show us all how very important they were. Consumerism was born! Not only did this create enormous social divisions, but it polluted the Earth with throwaway consumption! The well-kept secret, though, is that people are not naturally selfish – this is another Big Lie. We have an empathy circuit in our brains, and to be more fully human, we need to be connected in community and society; we have a natural propensity to be compassionate and caring, and to cooperate with each other rather than compete! The trouble is that sometimes people don’t tell the truth and the story they tell leads to a different reality, a reality that is quite the opposite to the one we need in order to thrive!

The year of the barricades that heralded an opportunity for change 1968 was a critical juncture in world history. Social unrest sought change, and popular protest reverberated around the world. It was a year of rebellion in the form of race riots, student demonstrations, civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam protests, which also witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. It was a time of the emergence of new ideas which prompted new social movements. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks both became available in English in the early 1970s, profoundly influencing people’s understanding of power and oppression. … Inspired by new thinking, grassroots movements erupted during the 1970s and 1980s, generating theory from lived experience – second-wave feminism, anti-racism, greens, LGBTQ rights, ‘dis’ability rights … – and street protests abounded. Ideas and action are a symbiotic unity, a unity of praxis. Neither is much use without the other!

The way we make sense of the world has a direct impact on our being, how we behave towards each other and towards the planet. Ideas and action as a symbiotic unity, straddling the divide between theory and practice, constitute a unity of praxis. This is the foundation of Paulo Freire’s education for critical consciousness. Freire developed his critical praxis by listening to the stories people told about their lived reality in the favelas. He heard the consequences of structural discrimination in their stories, how power reaches into personal lives to privilege some and punish others. Practice for social justice begins by listening from the heart to people’s everyday 46

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stories. Theory in action emerges from the stories we tell simply by questioning life’s unacceptable contradictions. This was the foundation of second-wave feminism and Black feminism: women meeting in local groups sharing their lived experience, identifying the contradictions we live by. Participatory practice is a bottom-up process, starting in people’s lives in community, questioning everyday experience by contextualising it in its bigger political context, recognising that surface-level symptoms of oppression are connected to structures of discrimination that are woven through society at every level to such an extent that they are accepted as normal and natural. Freire’s vision was the transformation of humanity to a state of mutual and cooperative participatory democracy through a process of liberating education, developing critical consciousness which leads to collective action for social change.

  A personal story of Freire in action … As a grassroots community worker in the 1980s, I listened to Freire on the streets of Manchester. It brought his ideas to life for me. I learnt what his concepts looked like in reality, expressed in people’s everyday stories. And, it opened my mind to the way that injustice is woven into the structures of society. I began to see that the answers to understanding political power and social change are all around us, in the stories people tell about their lives! This is the beginning of critical consciousness, the questioning of life’s everyday contradictions starts people seeing things differently and thinking more critically. Collective action for change grows from these small beginnings into global movements, all informed by understanding how power acts in the interests of the privileged. In the 1980s, as activists, we took on international issues of freedom. I travelled out to Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with the twinning agreement from Manchester City Council and witnessed the transformative power of Freirean approaches to literacy and health. The Sandinista Government, following their revolution, invited Paulo Freire to advise them on transforming the terrible levels of illiteracy and poor health their people were suffering. We connected local projects with Manchester community projects in alliances of mutual support. In Manchester, we took to the streets to voice our dissent: “Free Nelson Mandela”, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out”. Christy Moore’s ‘Hey! Ronnie Reagan’ was sung with great gusto as we proudly marched in solidarity: “Hey Ronnie Reagan, 47

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I’m black and I’m pagan, I’m gay and I’m left and I’m free, I’m a non-fundamentalist environmentalist, Please don’t bother me.” And one of the finest examples of alliances of solidarity was during Thatcher’s vicious attack on the National Union of Mineworkers as the largest surviving organised labour union, and it almost brought her down: “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners”, “Black People Support the Miners”, “Women Support the Miners” … Manchester’s imposing Victorian town hall opened its doors and offered a critical communicative space for the people. We organised collectively from local groups to international movements, meeting in identity groups, forming theory from experience, rising up to become politically conscious and determined to change the world. It was the time of new social movements: women, Black, ‘dis’ability, LGBTQ, greens and peace protesters across the world rose in solidarity to strike out for social change around identity and culture, adding ‘White’ feminist thought and Black women’s wisdom on intersectionality to the class struggle. We had a hard time making sense of it all. We needed the security of compartments, fixed boundaries rather than these new intersecting, overlapping, overlaying, fluid complexities that defined an issue in relation to its opposite. This left us stuck when we considered ‘White’ women’s experience in relation to Black women’s or ‘dis’abled people’s, or sexual preference … let alone dealing with environmental issues and class. We often found ourselves ranking each other in terms of multiple, disjointed oppressions or even locking horns or running away from the pain of it all, as we did when we tried to form alliances around women’s action, Black and ‘White’, or where it intersected with class. We didn’t have the benefit of today’s insights into ‘White’ privilege and the role of stigma as a neoliberal class project within the complexity of intersectionality … but just as Paulo Freire transformed our understanding, we paved the way for these ideas to evolve.

A missed opportunity Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative Party in the UK from 1979 to 1990, and, during that short period of time, the face of the UK changed beyond recognition. The previous decade, 1968 to 1978, had been pivotal. Society was at its most equal. As Danny Dorling (2018b: 32) points out, this was a moment when we could have chosen to go down a different route, making different decisions based on values that reflect human and environmental flourishing, such as creating a sovereign wealth fund for future generations based on oil like Norway, or we could have been leaders in science and technology like Finland, 48

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or could have been as environmentally conscious as the Danes. But, no, we allowed different choices to be made by the Thatcher government that led us to slide abruptly from being the second most equal country in Europe in 1978, when we had good comprehensive schools, good housing, full employment and a rapidly diminishing deference to the class system, to being the most unequal country in Europe by 2015 (Dorling, 2018b). Caught like rabbits in the headlights, spellbound, we were unable to come up with a critique or a counternarrative to the Thatcher proposal. Grace Blakeley refers to the powerful capitalist narratives laden with emotive language – freedom, creativity, dynamism – with the promise that working people would have more power over their lives (Blakeley, 2021: 49). The reality has been a concentration of power and wealth into the hands of the few defined by very different terms – inequality, corruption, crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these trends, delivering super-corporations like Amazon monopoly shares over the retail sector and extraordinary profits, with Jeff Bezos’ wealth growing by $75 billion in 2020 alone. (Blakeley, 2021: 49) There is a need to understand the nature of neoliberalism more fully. Slobodian challenges the story of the ‘new’ right, posturing to the poor by claiming to believe in the people, nationhood and culture while at the same time reaping the harvest of the injustices of poverty, inequality and discrimination that they planted in the first place. The market fundamentalism that defines neoliberal capitalism is evident in right-wing populist politics from the US to the UK to Austria as ‘mutant strains of neoliberalism’ (Slobodian, 2021: 67). What we have witnessed in the last few years is not so much the clash of opposites as the public surfacing of a long-simmering dispute in the capitalist camp about what is necessary to keep the free market alive. As irony would have it, the conflict that split the so-called globalists from the populists erupted first in the 1990s – at the very moment when many claimed that neoliberal ideas had conquered the world. (Slobodian, 2021: 67) Slobodian’s point is that history is now revealing not global capitalism beyond the nation state, but that new right populist politics is simply a front to cover the same neoliberal ideology that Hayek, who remains an icon on both sides of the neoliberal/populist divide, still promotes. The nation state is being rethought to restrict democracy in order to protect competition – in other words it is a project to save capitalism and exploit national and global economic inequality. The dominant narrative of caring for people, nationhood and cultural identity belies the harsh reality of neoliberal ideology across the world.

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Explore the question ‘Who gets to eat?’ Addressing the problem of creating a food system where everyone gets to eat, Hazel Healy (2021) outlines 10 steps to end world hunger, summarised in the following:

10 steps to end world hunger 1. Put food before trade: change global trade regulations – end the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and bring civil society to the table. 2. Curtail corporations – and end impunity: famine, malnutrition and hunger are political choices, make them punishable crimes. 3. Redistribute riches: distribute wealth fairly and repay historical debts for slavery, colonialism, patriarchy, and so on. 4. Rights to land, seas – and better pay: recognise indigenous rights and customary rights to pastures, forests and fisheries as well as women’s rights – women are crucial in preventing hunger and malnutrition in families. 5. Smaller, fairer, slower trade: local markets and short supply chains privilege suppliers from indigenous and traditional communities, plus urban farming and fair trade cooperatives. 6. Free lunch – or funds to buy it: social safety nets must be extended and based on entitlement – not charity! 7. Balance with nature’s systems: slash carbon emissions to balance ecosystems and fund alternatives to industrial scale agriculture. 8. Incentivize good food: target unhealthy food and drink and redirect subsidies to reduce the price of healthy diets. 9. Eat ethical: consumer power as wealthy societies move to ethical, organic and vegetarian diets needs sourcing with public data tools that check sustainability claims. 10. Organize: civil society needs to build critical alliances between consumers, workers and producers to forge more democratic food politics the world over. See further Healy (2021). Each one of these points diametrically opposes the fundamental aims of neoliberal ideology and the policies that emerge from it.

The reality is that we are living with a worldview that is killing humanity and the planet, and until we realise the flawed and unjust thinking behind it, the world will face increasing crises. The symptoms of violence and division will get bigger and will continue to be normalised – images of people homeless and destitute in shop doorways, seen as responsible for their own poverty in rich countries, with 50

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hungry children dismissed as coming from families of welfare scroungers; the building of walls to keep immigrants out; terrified Afghan families passing their babies to the Canadian airforce as they are refused asylum … the list is endless, and is getting bigger. ‘We need more people who can see “the big picture”’, calls Al Aynsley-Green (2019: 230) in relation to ‘the British betrayal of childhood’. With some of the worst outcomes for health, education, social care, youth justice and poverty, the UK is at the same time among the richest countries of the world. But we need to see beyond this to the global picture in order to understand the lack of connection, empathy and compassion of neoliberal capitalism that breeds hatred, violence and destruction in relation to all humanity and the environment. Neoliberal capitalism is a toxic global problem that has polluted life on Earth. Meanwhile, as Bregman (2018) says, we still seem to be in a coma, lacking the ability to understand what is happening, let alone the imagination to see a new world order to replace the devastation of neoliberal politics. And there are many ideas in action across the world based on Universal Basic Income, participatory budgeting and the like that could set the ball rolling in your community immediately. Environmental degradation and poverty violate human rights, so we need to think harder and act quickly! It is the rich who are the problem, not the poor (Sayer, 2016). Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. (Mandela, 2005)

Big electoral change from Right to Left (or so we thought) The landslide election of the Blair government in 1997 filled those of us committed to social justice with hope and optimism. The promise, both personal and political, on the part of Tony Blair, Labour leader and newly elected prime minister, was to end child poverty. The reality is that it was the dawning of the centre-ground politics of New Labour: neither Left nor Right, but all on the same side, the age of partnership with no dialectical tension. It was a pandering to the rich and a betrayal of the poor that was not clear in the beginning. At Toynbee Hall, in March 1999, Tony Blair delivered his speech on the legacy of Beveridge’s welfare state, the hiatus of which was his personal and political commitment to end child poverty within 20 years. After the long Thatcher years when ‘poverty’ was eliminated from political debate, this sounded revolutionary. A raft of policies appeared on child poverty, unemployment, neighbourhood deprivation and inequalities in health and educational achievement. Optimism soared! But Blair’s principles were flawed. He was playing his cards in favour of the privileged, not the poor, and this started to show. Owen Jones (2016: 100) accuses him of taking working-class voters for granted. Optimism started to fade and disillusionment set in. He was 51

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more interested in children as future workers than in happy, healthy childhoods, saying that we do not lift the poor ‘by hammering the people who are successful’! (Sayer, 2016: 164). Blair was a warmonger. He allied with then president George W. Bush on the US’s ‘war on terror’ to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, despite widespread public dissent. In fact, during his first five years, he took British troops into battle five times, more than any other prime minister in British history. This was to be his downfall, but his legacy remains that, on Tony Blair’s watch, ‘the top 1% carried on taking more and more each year as compared to the year before, just as fast as they had done during the Thatcher years’ (Dorling, 2018a: 18). The naivety of New Labour under Tony Blair (1997–2007) was based on a belief that neoliberalism could bring about the end of class, a new classless society, based on meritocracy. This completely missed the point: ‘neoliberalism is itself a class project: an ideology which aims to restore and consolidate class power, under the veil of the rhetoric of individualism, choice, freedom, mobility and national security’ (Tyler: 2013: 7). This decoupling of class inequalities directly led to the abjectification of the ‘chav’ so firmly stitched into media ridicule by comedians David Walliams and Matt Lucas with their representation of Vicky Pollard as a feckless, irresponsible, ignorant, teenage mother to be both feared and ridiculed. Tony Blair, far from his promise, brought in a new political formula in the name of socialism: ‘a neoliberal perceptual frame through which to perceive “the masses” as an underclass of people cut off from society’s mainstream, without any sense of shared purpose’ (Blair, 1997, cited in Tyler, 2013: 176). No wonder Margaret Thatcher described Tony Blair as her biggest success! Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings. (Mandela, 2005)

A decade of ‘austerity’ Britain The general election of 2010 brought an inconclusive result. The ‘Big Society’ was the platform on which David Cameron ran for office and became the driver of the coalition between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats. The ‘small state’, so we were told, was about handing over power to communities and local people, an act of participatory democracy and community empowerment. Nothing could have been further from the truth. This was a smokescreen for ‘austerity’ measures, absolving state responsibilities for the poorest in society by making the poor responsible for their own poverty while dismantling public sector provision. It was a pincer movement. Political persuasion was applied, Gramsci-style. David Cameron was an ‘enthusiastic purveyor of the austerity narrative’ (O’Hara, 2020: 138). This independently wealthy, public school educated, White, male Oxford University graduate used a ‘toxic narrative’ based on ‘“troubled” families who were the dangerous zombie vanguard of an out-of52

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control “intergenerational” poverty and welfare “dependency” epidemic’ (O’Hara, 2020: 137) to create hatred and fear in the minds of the general public. This convincing rhetoric was based around ‘welfare scroungers’, making a lifestyle choice to live on benefits, ripping off hard-working families who pay taxes, and bleeding the economy dry. ‘None of this was borne out by the facts – none’ (O’Hara, 2020: 138). The result has been a disaster for everyone, rich and poor alike. By 2015, the UK was the most unequal country in Europe, and there are no winners in divided countries. This sets the scene for a discussion on ‘austerity’, the antithesis of social justice! Imogen Tyler talks about austerity as ‘a twenty-first-century enclosure movement’ (Tyler, 2020: 170). I think that captures the essence of the concept perfectly. ‘Austerity’ was not an economic necessity, it was a political choice to serve the interests of the rich by robbing the poor of the welfare commons, the infrastructure of public goods and services that had been the mainstay of society since the implementation of the welfare state. In 2010, the most savage attack on public goods began: … the rapid closure of local hospitals and clinics, public libraries, local museums, post offices, children’s nurseries, community and youth centres, day-centres and residential care homes for disabled people and pensioners, and the enclosure of common land, including parks and playing fields. The amount of services, facilities, buildings and land once held in common by local communities, now sold by cashstrapped local authorities to developers, or simply abandoned to decay, is staggering. (Tyler, 2020: 170) Generations of public sector knowledge and expertise as well as buildings, facilities and land have been contracted out from the public to the profit sector in a system of fragmented, precarious organisations, with the voluntary sector trying to protect those worst hit with street provision, homeless shelters, foodbanks, breakfast clubs for the swathes of poor children who go to school hungry, and so on and so on. The public sector was never the right of the government to sell: it belonged to the people. Austerity is nothing less than a government-orchestrated programme of theft. (Tyler, 2020: 170) Exploring this concept of the commons further, Sayer’s (2016) analysis is critical and tackles the misconception of individualism. We do nothing on our own; we are part of a whole. That whole includes the past and the present, determining whether or not we meet our responsibility to hand over the world in better condition for next generations to inherit. We are always immensely indebted to previous generations; what we inherit provides a platform for what we are able to develop, including the natural resources that the Earth offers us. So, our common 53

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inheritance spans accumulated experience, intelligence, inventions, investments and hard work, together with environmental assets – energy, minerals, rivers, oceans, soil, flora and fauna and climate. We should never take for this for granted, ‘no one has the right to more of the earth’s resources … than the total of those resources divided by the world’s population’ (Sayer, 2016: 341). The concept of the commons extends from what we take for granted in our everyday lives, like roads, waste disposal and public transport to the riches of the arts, past and present, to advances in science, past and present. Inequalities in the development of the commons privilege the powerful over the less powerful, often leading to slavery and exploitation. As a global phenomenon, neoliberal capitalism exploits poorer people within rich countries, making societies more and more unequal, at the same time as exploiting poorer countries, keeping countries unequal. The result is a divided world. These points certainly challenge any dialogue that centres on the ‘Because I deserve it’ narrative of individualism. ‘The commons are our collective heritage, our common wealth, our collective knowledge and our traditions of sharing in society’ (Standing, 2019: 349). David Cameron claimed his ‘Big Society’ was about participatory democracy and community empowerment. This is not true! It was an exercise in making the poor responsible for their own poverty. Thatcher’s ‘care in the community’ and Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ need to be critiqued for ‘community engagement [being] used as an excuse for social dumping’ (Monbiot, 2017: 81). The small state simply absolved itself of responsibility for protecting democracy by ensuring fair distribution of resources, maintenance of human rights and a balance of power between the powerful and powerless, using ‘austerity’ as a smokescreen for robbing the poor to pay the rich, with dire consequences. This was the final dismantling of the values that informed the welfare state. Philip Alston revealed the shameful state of British poverty to the world, so let’s see what he had to say.

At last, a critical analysis from a human rights perspective! Philip Alston, the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, came on a mission to investigate Austerity Britain in November 2018 and did not hold back on speaking truth to power.

  A story of speaking truth to power … Once upon a time in Austerity Britain a visitor from Australia spent a fortnight travelling round UK communities, listening very carefully to the stories people told about their everyday lives. He just happened to be not only a human rights lawyer, but the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. In the fifthrichest country in the world, he witnessed with his own eyes such extremes of 54

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poverty and destitution … long queues for foodbanks, people sleeping rough on the streets, the sense of deep despair and hopelessness, loneliness and isolation … he was shocked! A situation so bad, a government minister for suicide has been appointed. Local authority budgets so dramatically cut by government policies that safety nets for poor communities have been destroyed, with libraries, youth and community centres, public spaces, parks and recreation centres closed or sold off … But worst of all are the cuts in social security and related policies that have targeted the poor, women, minority ethnic groups, children, single parents, asylum seekers and people with disabilities, violating human rights agreements in relation to women, children, disabled people and economic and human rights. Alston was so shocked by all of this, he shamed UK poverty as a political choice, not an economic necessity, and accused the government of being out of touch with reality. Everyone with their eyes open can see the suffering, it’s all around you, and this could easily have been avoided had there been the political will. Just one player stubbornly refuses to see the situation for what it is, and that’s the government! For almost one in every two children to be poor in the fifth-richest country is not just a disgrace, it’s a social calamity and an economic disaster rolled into one! A government spokesperson said in response, he’s got it wrong, and so everything carried on just the same …

The UN Rapporteur’s remit is to investigate countries with the extremely high levels of deprivation associated with developing nations, but the US and Britain are ‘outlier nations on poverty and treatment of the poor’ (O’Hara, 2020: 9). Both use the neoliberal stigma narrative of ‘welfare scroungers’ to justify extreme inequalities, portraying the rich as hard-working and deserving and the poor as feckless, lazy and irresponsible wasters to justify radical changes in the value system, at variance with the common good. At the time of Philip Alston’s visit, the UK was in chaos with the all-consuming Brexit fervour that raged long and hard at the expense of any form of sensible government. Alston managed to penetrate the raging Brexit madness by speaking truth to power, naming and shaming UK poverty as a political choice. He accused the government of a ‘complete disconnect’ with the reality of the impact of poverty on people’s lives, saying, ‘Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so.’ Alston’s 42-page report (Alston, 2018) was presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with an accusation that austerity measures in the UK had violated UN human rights agreements in relation to women, children, disabled people, and economic and human rights. He critiqued government policies that have made deliberate choices to divert 55

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resources from the poor to the rich, underlining the decision to hand tax cuts to the rich in the November 2018 Budget rather than easing the suffering of poverty for millions. Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times – times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils. (Mandela, 2005)

Values, critical consciousness and change My juxtaposition of the stories of the welfare state and the neoliberal state highlight the way that different values have different outcomes. Values of collectivism, a common good, connection, kindness, caring, compassion, cooperation and community were considered good and worthwhile after World War II. They led to the welfare state, but were abandoned for a neoliberal project which appeared out of the blue promoting values of competition, alienation, individualism, personal greed, profit above people and planet, privatisation and privilege for the rich. [Values] represent the importance we place on fundamental ways of being, offering a guide to what we consider to be good and worthwhile. (Monbiot, 2017: 7) Who would have believed that it was possible to influence people’s democratic voting rights to accept a dramatically different political ideology instantly? This is the power of false consciousness. Substituting cooperation with competition has led to outcomes that have plunged society into crisis. Unnecessary ‘austerity’ measures, imposed on Britain since 2010, have created immense suffering for the poor, stalling life expectancy in England – something that ‘has not happened since at least 1910’ – with life expectancy for women falling in the most deprived areas, and these foreshortened lives more likely to be lived in ill-health (Marmot et al, 2020a: 3). This is a violation of human rights, and a warning sign of a society in decline. What a strange anomaly this is for the fifth-richest nation in the world, so my purpose is to trace how, in such a short space of time, the radical, transformative changes that brought about a flourishing welfare state could be so dramatically reversed. This understanding is essential for social justice practitioners. As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest. (Mandela, 2005)

How did they pull it off? Understanding the answer to this question calls for insight into the austerity state’s use of stigma. Public shaming rituals have been revisited in the 21st century. 56

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Stigma permeates everything about life today, using humiliating acts of violence to dominate, dispossess and exploit, in the name of profit, and it is all pulled off by the intensely clever insight into how to gain popular consent. This links to the work of Gramsci: ideological persuasion achieves popular consent, telling stories that shame, denigrate, humiliate and dehumanise. If you tell these stories, such as that of the ‘welfare scrounger’, convincingly enough and they are then echoed and reinforced by the media, they penetrate people’s minds and get accepted as ‘common sense’. Portrayed as worthless, confidence is eroded, hope is destroyed and people become convinced that they really are responsible for their own poverty, not seeing that they are being discriminated against by the forces of power and privilege. This gives the go ahead for policies that punish and shame, policies that put a price on human lives based on class, ‘race’ and gender to reinforce the power and importance of White male supremacy. … welfare stigma changed the ways in which the public made evaluative judgments about inequality, welfare, poverty and need. … stigma was crafted to tutor the public into believing that people living in poverty had chosen their fates, and how the disenfranchisement and distress which have followed in the wake of cuts to social provision were deserved: a consequence of people’s poor behaviours, indiscipline and shamelessness. (Tyler, 2020: 28) Tyler’s purpose is to make stigma a more useful concept for understanding the subtlety of power in the struggle for freedom, most particularly extending an analysis of neoliberal capitalism into the complex web of intersectional inequalities it creates, for example, people who are poor, female, Black, immigrants, Travellers, in any combination, in any context and at all levels from local to global. This is a valuable extension of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. To understand stigma as ideological persuasion in action, take a look at George Osborne, the ‘austerity chancellor’ after the 2010 general election, who promised a revolutionary welfare reform. What he had in mind was based on no evidence at all. He used stigma to justify a change of values, telling lies about millions of people idling their lives away on unemployment welfare benefits, abusing the system, wanting something for nothing… painting a picture of a shameful dependency culture that needed workfare to force them to work, rather than welfare. This heralded a punitive change in values from those of the welfare state to what has become the dehumanisation of the poor as the scourge of modern society, reducing swathes of human life to social detritus. As a result, the UK has sunk to the bottom of the equality league tables in Europe, all achieved by ‘an extraordinary political and media propaganda campaign which sought to manufacture public consent for austerity by stigmatising those in receipt of relief ’ (Tyler, 2020: 5). Tyler’s contribution is a profound addition to the intersectional analysis of power needed for social justice practice. Gramsci extended the traditional Marxist 57

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analysis of hegemony, the way that a dominant social group asserts control over the masses by coercion. Coercion works through the law, the courts, the police and armed forces. Gramsci developed the concept of ideological persuasion working in parallel with coercion to get inside people’s minds, influencing them to consent to the dominant power, persuading people that the dominant story is the real truth, or common sense. Of course, it makes no sense at all, but without the tools to dismantle this paradoxical truth, subordinated groups start acting out contradictions that are often against their own best interests. Tyler (2020: 8) extends Gramsci’s profound analysis by ‘disrupting’ the taming of stigma to expose it as a form of violent power entangled in capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy, both in the past and in the present.

Whose lives matter? One blatant example, imprinted on my brain, of wasted lives treated with impunity as human detritus is that of the floodwaters of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

  The story of Hurricane Katrina… The images that shocked the world were not those of the force of a hurricane, but that of human inhumanity: largely Black, mostly female, overwhelmingly poor and often children or older people … some desperately calling for help to the rest of the world, for others it was too late, dead and abandoned, floating in the floodwaters while the rest of the USA carried on with business as usual. The Bush government knew the storm risks from Hurricane Katrina, knew that the flood defences could not withstand a Category 5 hurricane, but refused to fund the upgrading requested with their logic of market forces. The $500m was not forthcoming, and over 1,800 people died, with a million made homeless. Ironically, $23bn of property damage, far more than the cost of reinforcing the storm defences, was sustained. Source: Mason (2019: 164–5)

We were warned by Henry Giroux of this politics of disposability on the part of the neoliberal state (Giroux, 2006). We should have heeded the warning! As neoliberal politics has globalised and entrenched, the atrocities have worsened. People’s value is now unashamedly differentialised along lines of discrimination.

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  The story of the Windrush Scandal … In 1948, the MV Empire Windrush docked in London with workers from the Caribbean actively recruited by the British government to rebuild post-war Britain. Many of them had fought for Britain in World War II and felt proud to be part of the British empire. This heralded a large-scale immigration programme from 1948 to 1971. Their free movement ended with the 1971 Immigration Act which called for a work permit and a parent/grandparent born in the UK, but Commonwealth citizens already here were given the right to remain. Not only did Enoch Powell shame Britain politically with his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968, but what’s now become known as the ‘Windrush Scandal’ unfolded in the spring of 2018, exposing the Conservative Brexit Government’s disgraceful, dehumanising plan to keep aliens out, under the leadership of Theresa May. Generations of families who have the legal right to citizenship have been denied passports, lost jobs, been refused the right to re-enter Britain, refused health care, social care and welfare benefits because the government had cleverly destroyed their legal documentation that provided evidence of residence, thereby making them illegal citizens. Source: Gentleman (2019)

This paved the way for a ‘hostile’ approach to all immigration applications, setting targets, success measured by deportation (Ballat, 2020: 172–3). ‘The list of regulatory failures under neoliberalism is long and global’ (Mason, 2019: 165), and there is no better example of this than the Grenfell Tower Disaster.

  The story of the Grenfell Tower nightmare … Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey council housing apartment block, was ablaze, with people jumping from it in desperation floating down as the world watched. It was just after 1 am on 14 June 2017 when a fire broke out on the fourth floor and it took just 15 minutes to turn the entire building into a blazing inferno. This was public housing owned by Kensington and Chelsea London Borough, Britain’s richest and most neoliberal local council, an important point to bear in mind (Mason, 2019). The extremely rich and the extremely poor live here, side by side. The councillors who made decisions about the housing for the poor are among the privileged who have benefited from neoliberal policies and who have no empathy with

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their poor neighbours, but plenty of stigma stereotypes in their heads. Seventyone people died and all that was left was enormous grief, trauma and tons of ash. Later it emerged that the fire spread due to council decisions to clad the building in cheap, unsafe, flammable material, putting the lives of everyone who lived there at risk. More than that, it was estimated that over a hundred buildings in Britain had been clad in similar material to Grenfell, violating basic fire safety regulations (Ledwith, 2020). ‘The Grenfell disaster was caused by the lack of regard that the rich councillors of Kensington and Chelsea had for their poorer neighbours’ (Dorling, 2018a: 87).

Stories such as these illuminate the starkness of the change in values, not only threatening the very nature of democracy, but questioning the moral compass of governments that sanction the abuse of human rights in rich countries where poverty is a political choice, not an economic necessity. Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. (Mandela, 2005)

What do we care about? What are our values? The dominant way of seeing the world is constructed by the powerful, but it has a massive impact on everyday lives in community. Ideas influence public attitudes and, subsequently, social policy in the interplay of power and disempowerment. Understanding how this happens is the basis of effective participatory practice interventions. Individualism does not encourage a way of life that takes a collective responsibility for the well-being of all. It is more likely to justify why some people are privileged while others are in poverty. Consumerism, driven by market forces, has justified levels of exploitation and greed that increase social divisions and deplete natural resources, with the consequence that life on Earth is adrift from the ecosystem on which it relies. Biodiversity and cooperation are concepts based on respect and reverence for the Earth and all humanity. This perspective comes from an awareness that there is a balance to life on Earth, that we are all part of a complex ecosystem that can only flourish in its interconnectedness. The New Economics Foundation (NEF),1 which works with people at grassroots, and campaigns and produces research for political change at the top – a vital connection for participatory practitioners – calls for a new economy based on: 1. A new social settlement: A new social settlement will ensure people are paid well, have more time off to spend with their families, have access to affordable housing, know there is a decent safety net if they need one, and are provided with a high level of care throughout their lives. 60

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2. A Green New Deal: The Green New Deal is a plan is for government-led investment to reduce the carbon we emit and massively boost nature, while creating good, unionised jobs. These jobs should be targeted in parts of the UK that have most lost out over the past 40 years. A decade ago, NEF was part of the visionary group that proposed a Green New Deal and it is now part of a growing movement reviving this concept. 3. The democratic economy: We need to devolve state power and transform ownership of the economy. The thinking behind this is that our existing economic system is failing us so badly. Based on corrupt, flawed thinking, it was designed to benefit the privileged at the expense of the poor by pioneering a free-market principle based on profit at any price. There is an urgent need for change. The New Economics Foundation questions reviving the welfare state because its reliance on state ownership does not fit with the current demand for devolved local power. A new social settlement and a Green New Deal will not succeed unless there is an active, decentralised state, new forms of democratic ownership, an ideological change to cooperation and collaboration, and policies explicitly designed for the participation of those who are affected by them. This is refreshing, radical thinking that calls for distinct change for a new political ideology. Addressing similar issues in her ground-breaking work, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-century Economist, Kate Raworth engages intersectionally with the social and ecological crises of our times to construct a new economic story, one of a world in self-righting balance. It is a counternarrative, a new vision which asks new questions, putting the economy in context to ‘create human prosperity in a flourishing web of life, so that we can thrive in balance’ (Raworth, 2018: 287). The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a simple visualisation of the dual conditions – social and ecological – that underpin collective human well-being. The social foundation demarks the Doughnut’s inner boundary and sets out the basics of life on which no one should be left falling short. The ecological ceiling demarks the Doughnut’s outer boundary, beyond which humanity’s pressure on Earth’s life-giving systems is in dangerous overshoot. Between the two sets of boundaries lies the ecologically safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive. (Raworth, 2018: 295) The Doughnut Model is a highly sophisticated tool founded on both social justice and environmental justice theory, a model that inspires hope with the enormous potential to remedy the crises created by the politics of the past 40 years (see also Ledwith, 2020: 66). In the model of a doughnut, Raworth visually captures the safe parameters for human and environmental flourishing in detail. We have the ideas, the experience, the technology – what is lacking is the political will! 61

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Meanwhile, the UN highlights the global emergency: ‘there is a decade left to stop irreversible damage from climate change, to protect the climate for future generations according to the economic, social and environmental dimensions of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ (UN General Assembly, 2019). The irony is that both human suffering and environmental destruction are neither natural nor necessary; they are human-generated. We have more than enough for everyone to live without hunger, with need but not greed. The problem is that we are choosing consumerism, a system that favours the greed of the privileged at the expense of the poor and the environment. The argument for economic growth as the route to ending poverty is not only a futile defence of capitalism, but is a trajectory that is killing the planet itself. The time for connected ideas is urgent: What we urgently need is an economy that replaces the universal of profit with a universal of care for both each other and the natural world which keeps us alive. (Swift, 2020: 26)

Kindness and kinship: a different lens for a decent future Values change life on Earth! Not only do they frame the way we see the world, but also they influence how we behave towards each other and how we treat the environment. Tracing a timeline from World War II to the present day illuminates the ways in which changing the values has changed the world. From a post-war commitment to the common good based on a natural propensity for people to be kind, caring and cooperative, the British welfare state was born. But within a few decades a dramatic change in values, driven by Margaret Thatcher, planted the seeds of a global neoliberal revolution, one that has now reached world crises of catastrophic proportions. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. (Gramsci, 1971, quoted in Hoare and Nowell-Smith: 276) We find ourselves in that ‘interregnum’, the gap referred to by Gramsci where the current global social order is dying but the new has yet to be born. It is a space in which morbid symptoms erupt in the form of political, social and economic contradictions culminating in crises that cannot be solved by the existing social order. Consider just some: the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008; the rise of extreme right movements in Europe and the US; populist politics in the form of Donald Trump in the US, Boris Johnson in the UK, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil; the environmental crisis; the world hunger crisis; the crisis of misogyny as violence against women and girls escalates the world over; the crisis of structural racism; and the rise of xenophobia as millions of displaced refugees seek sanctuary from climate change, war and poverty … And, on top of all this, as this book 62

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goes to press, not only Europe but the world has been thrown into crisis as Putin rages a savage war on Ukraine that constitutes a crime against humanity. Using the benefit of hindsight, let’s glance back at the UK to discover how changes in values have steered it from having the second most equal society in Europe to being the most unequal (Dorling, 2020). The key to understanding how such a dramatic change has been achieved lies in the use of stigma (Tyler, 2013, 2020). Constantly repeated stories of the poor and vulnerable as welfare scroungers, the detritus of society, have permeated the popular imagination as a ‘real truth’, endorsing punitive policies that have punished the poor and privileged the rich, dismantling the welfare state and privatising the commons (Standing, 2019). The exciting part of this awareness is that a counternarrative of kindness and connection, so much more part of the human condition than alienation and selfishness, could bring about a counter-revolution for the better. What constitutes a good society? What are our responsibilities and obligations to one another? After more than four decades of a dominant ideology driven by individualism, how do we begin to reconnect with each other through kinship, community and the common good? The last vestiges of a social contract are evaporating: instead, we no longer have means-tested benefits, more a punitive system of stigma-tested poor relief! But life is risky for everyone: family breakdown, unemployment, poor health, ‘dis’ability, age, mental illness … ‘A good society recognises these risks and insists they should be shared and insured against in an agreed system of collective insurance’ (Hutton, 2015: 45). In other words, the risks of being alive and part of a society call for a social contract that underwrites those risks. That is social justice. Imagine a society based on the common good, in which our common humanity is the focus for everything we do. Intelligent Kindness (Ballatt et al, 2020) changed my thinking. Ideas do this. They grow and evolve. Kindness is much more than a rather weak, wishy-washy emotion; it is part of the essence of our being, a concept with ancient roots that link to kinship, meaning that we are of a kind, connected across time and space, interdependent, with responsibilities to each other … Kindness is kinship felt and expressed … it emerges from a sense of common humanity, promotes sharing, effort on others’ behalf, sacrifice for the good of the other. (Ballatt et al, 2020: 10) This extends beyond personal relationships in family and community to other cultures, countries and continents. Being kind is a way of life that embraces the entire human family. ‘It is the “glue” of cooperation’ (Ballatt et al, 2020: 16). A radical, transformative concept, it offers a lens on the world framed by compassion, caring, reciprocity, mutuality, equality … Imagine how the world would be if kindness was our greatest priority! … every living creature has its own variety of genius, and everyone is born into this world with a mind brilliantly capable of solving the 63

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problems relevant to their survival … Our lives should be measured not by how many enemies we have conquered but how many friends we have made. That is the secret to our survival. (Hare and Woods, 2020: 196)

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3 The participatory worldview Jane Springett

The human being is essentially a holistic being who lives in integrated totalities. When the human being is forced to lead a fragmented life, he/she shrinks, is frustrated, diminished. (Skolimowski, 1994: 91) In Chapter 2 we began to explore some of the neoliberal thinking that underpins the structures and institutions that dominate current ways of relating economically, socially and politically, and how current trends seem to be reinforcing that dominance and resisting change towards an alternative way of being. Certainly, our democratic institutions, organisational structures and educational practices have continued to remain resilient to the changes that new forms of thinking imply. Indeed, many people appear to have become further entrenched in old thought processes and institutions have become even more alienating. There are, however, also signs of change suggesting that as the old order resists, there are green shoots of possibility. Central to that change is a shift in perspective and consciousness towards a radically different set of worldviews based on a participatory mindset. In this chapter, we take a deep dive into this alternative way of viewing the world and invite you to think about what this means in terms of the way we act in the world. In other words, what does seeing the world from an integrative or participatory perspective imply for our practice? In doing so we will be inviting you to look at the deep-seated roots of the dominant way of viewing the world, at least here in the West. A worldview is a belief set which groups hold consciously and unconsciously about their place in the world, and how the world works. Because this consciousness is collectivised beyond the individual, it is also socially and historically constructed. As such, it affects how people relate to each other and to the environment of which they are part. It also affects the consequential power structures that have evolved to maintain it. It pervades the stories about the world we tell ourselves. How you think the world operates and your place in it also influence how you act in the world to change it.

So, to engage in participatory practice, we need to hold a worldview – or story about the world that is different from that which currently dominates. It also requires a critical awareness of how the dominant worldview continues to pervade 65

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our own ways of thinking and doing and shapes our meaning-making and action. We can only then start to integrate different ways of knowing that will serve to help create a more integrated world. The separation of theory and practice is false; they are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. We cannot act wisely without making sense of the world and making sense of the world is in itself a profoundly practical action that informs our reality. (Wahl, 2016: 20) As we make the deep dive into exploring the underlying mindset that needs to change and the reconfiguration that is needed before we can be embodied participatory practitioners, bear the above quote in mind. As Skolimowski (1994) argues, the nature of our mind is the nature of our knowledge and the nature of our reality. In other words, ontology, a theory of being, and epistemology, a theory of knowledge, are intimately related. We are socialised into a particular mindset which creates a particular form. Hitherto, that mindset has been largely a monological approach to the world. What is needed is a multidimensional one. So, let us start by unpicking our old ways of thinking before we take on new ways of thinking and a more participatory mindset.

The Western mind Man [sic] faces the existential crisis of being a solitary and mortal conscious ego thrown into an ultimately meaningless and unknowable universe. And he faces the psychological and biological crisis of living in a world that has come to be shaped in such a way that it precisely matches his world view – ie in a man-made environment that is increasingly mechanistic, atomised, soulless and self-destructive. The crisis of modern man is essentially a masculine crisis. (Tarnas, 1991) Even those of us who think we have moved towards a participatory view of the world are often not aware of how Western ideological perspectives pervade the very essence of our existence. Beneath the forces of domination and subordination, alienation and fragmentation there is a worldview that came to dominate globally through European colonialism, but also through scientific development and patriarchy. This worldview has affected the way we view what knowledge is and how it is created, and also how we see ourselves in relationship to nature and each other. In both cases, the dominant worldview has been one of dualism, or opposites – of separation of mind from matter, subject from objects, parts from the whole – and a search for linear causality to develop simple solutions to problems. The above quote comes from The Passion of the Western Mind (Tarnas, 1991), which traced the development over the last 300 years of this approach to making sense of the world and its implications. While the mechanistic reductionist methodology of science and the associated continuing separation of knowledge 66

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into specialisations did lead to an explosion of technological innovation, it also came to be seen as the only legitimate way of generating knowledge about the world, against which all other forms of knowledge generation were to be assessed and found wanting. Although often branded as Newtonian and Cartesian ways of thinking, there are philosophical connections that are innately European and go back to Plato and Aristotle, among others. Philosophers in other civilisations, in India, Japan or China, and indigenous groups in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere developed other systems of thought. It is important to recognise that certain aspects of contemporary scientific thought and social theory are embedded in Western European culture and have been imposed through colonialism. This is not to say such thinking is wrong: it is an extremely useful tool or frame, if used with awareness. For example, in understanding poverty we need statistics, and in understanding the causes of problems we need systematic analysis. Our argument here is that such a view has come to dominate our systems as part of a grand narrative, creating a worldview that is fundamentally unbalanced: an unbalancing that is reinforced by neoliberalism, as discussed in Chapter 2. What are the elements of the inherent dualism that are so embedded in mainstream ways of thinking?

So-called objectivity and the downgrading of emotion and experience We lost the Poetry of the Earth under the illusion that the sciences, in describing to us the physical functioning of the natural world, were revealing to us the true reality of things… We have lost the dream world, the mythic world, the sacred world, the spirit world. Ultimately, we lost the vast world of meaning without which humans become unbearable, even to themselves. (Berry, 1988) One element is the notion that reality can ultimately be explained in terms of basic laws, discovered only through precise measurement. In other words, there are objective facts about the world that do not depend on interpretation, and it is through improved forms of measurement we will reveal real ‘truth’. Moreover, that ‘truth’ can only be revealed if the observer of the ‘facts’ is detached from nature and the object of interest. The difficulty with taking this approach, however, is that you also strip away the essential nature of things and their meaning. It fails to acknowledge humans as whole beings that not only think but also feel, and who need to experience meaning. Damasio (1994) was one of the first neuroscientists to demonstrate that those who have no emotion act irrationally and that emotional engagement is essential to how human beings make decisions and live in the world. For the fundamentalist scientist, however, any way of understanding reality other than through ‘objective’ science is dismissed as ‘magic’ or ‘biased’ (for example Dawkins, 1976). Indeed, there are cases where the assumption is 67

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made that the objects of mathematically formulated physical laws are more real than the phenomena they are describing. In other words, the abstract models for the supposedly hidden reality behind experienced phenomena take on a higher ontological status than the experiences themselves. It is not surprising, therefore, that in many parts of the world the general population are alienated from science when their emotions and experiences are dismissed as irrelevant, and are attracted to populist leaders who play on those previously unacknowledged emotions. However, the discounting of emotion and experience has long been a concern. Dewey argued that to really understand nature we need to look at the world in an integrative way, combining different perspectives and knowledge, including science (Dewey, 1925b). For Dewey, knowledge is derived from embodied intelligence, not from the mind alone. How do you balance measurement with experience and feeling?

Separateness and parts Most of us live in a society where there is an emphasis on the individual. This is reinforced by dominant economic discourse and also arises from the inherited belief that humans are separate from nature, often referred to as dualism. But is this an illusion?

Think of a time when you have felt ‘at one’ with the world. It may be laughing with friends, being in a soccer crowd when your team scores a goal, singing in a choir, watching a glorious sunset while in nature or that occasional time when you meditate where you seem to dissolve. Often these moments are fleeting but it is as if our consciousness has recognised we are all connected with each other and our environment. We are relational beings, psychologically, spiritually and socially. It is the human need to connect with each other that underpins the popularity of social media, social connection is as important for health and well-being as lifestyle choices, while the physiological and psychological benefits of being in nature are now well attested. It is not just an experience of the mind but of our whole being.

The notion of separation in dualistic thinking manifests itself in several ways. First, there is the idea that the mind is separate from the body. This has historically been the main driver of medical science with its emphasis on the physical and the downgrading of the emotional and psychological. Arising out of the notion of separateness and objectivity there is also the tendency to focus on analysing problems by drilling down into the minutiae of particular knowledge areas. Many institutions, such as universities, are still very much structured to encourage specialisation into discrete areas of knowledge. So is the case with 68

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medical science. How often has a medical problem been exacerbated as you are shifted from one specialist to another because your illness is chronic and not restricted to one organ? While breaking down a problem scientifically or otherwise into smaller and smaller components to understand its nature is useful, such a culturally dominant worldview fails to identify what Capra (1996) calls the hidden connections between things. Nor does this fragmentation make sense physiologically. As Pert (1999) has shown, peptides, the biochemical manifestation of emotions, are not just found in the brain – all bodily functions are emotionally connected. More recently, it has been recognised that our emotions are influenced by our gut’s micro-organisms. Cognition, or our understanding of the world, is a phenomenon throughout the body, operating through a system that integrates mental, emotional and biological activities. This has been recognised by non-Western healing systems. Indeed, dissatisfaction with the dominant Western medical model has meant that those who can afford it have sought these alternative, more holistic modalities of healing outside state-funded health care. Two of these modalities, Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, have their roots in Eastern philosophy and are based on observations over many centuries. Others have their roots in indigenous knowledge and often inherited women’s wisdom that was denigrated by the patriarchy during the early years of modern medicine in Western societies. Intrinsic in all is the notion that you cannot heal the part without consideration of how it is connected to the whole. A visit to a qualified practitioner in any of these modalities will involve questions relating to a person’s symptoms, including those other than physical. Diseases, within this view, are seen as dis‘ease’, or lack of balance, so physical symptoms may be reflecting emotional or psychological imbalance. Although Western medical science is changing, albeit slowly, so pervasive is the medical model of health in Western society that it underpins several assumptions held by different professional groups, their responsibilities, how they behave towards one another and their expectations. In community settings, it has often been a real uphill struggle to persuade those working in a community that health is more than medical care, and just as central to community development as it is to the so-called ‘health’ sector. Similarly, it is difficult to persuade health professionals that they do not hold the remit for all health work. Medical hegemony (ScottSamuel and Springett, 2007) pervades all government documents, research and project funding. Until recently, projects directed at promoting health and well-being had to demonstrate that they were directed at heart disease, diabetes, specific cancers or suicide or that they focused on an individual lifestyle factor such as smoking, physical activity or weight control, or lifestyle diseases such as obesity or alcoholism. Where well-being was considered, it was differentiated as mental health promotion, tying it closely to mental illness. This dominant approach to the promotion of health does not pay real attention to the complexity inherent in how people negotiate their everyday lives. It also objectifies people into categories such as class, socio-economic, gender or ethnic groups, labelling them as members of target groups, ignoring the relational aspects 69

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of their lives and therefore decontextualising so-called ‘health-related behaviours’ from everyday life. Instead, the different elements of lifestyle are separated out rather than seen as real issues that face people in their lives, with physical health as part of a larger whole of well-being and community, and ordinary people as thinking, feeling beings. The downgrading of the emotive, value-based aspects of thinking processes is perpetuated by privileging the rational and ignoring the meaning systems people share as a result of sharing the same social world (Bolam et  al, 2003). In fact, the failure to understand and value different knowledge systems and cultures in a broader context has led to the differential impact of public health interventions, increasing the very health inequalities that they are trying to address. Yet practices that create health and well-being are embedded in a co-creation process involving both the individual and the collective. This is often revealed in people’s ‘knowledgeable narratives’ (Popay et al, 2003).

Consequences Interventions in the context of health promotion that ignore the everyday reality of people’s lives litter public health history. A classic example is smoking cessation. In the late 20th century getting people to give up smoking became the focus of government policy. Evidence-based interventions were the prerequisite for local funding but these were based on the so-called ‘gold standard’ for those which had been tested through randomised controlled trials, leading to a list of cost-effective options including counselling by a GP and nicotine patches. Actual implementation was less successful in poor communities because interventions failed to take into account why people smoked and, in some ports, the availability of cheap black-market cigarettes. The more successful programmes involved peer support from volunteers who had themselves given up smoking and to whom people could relate, rather than a White middleclass professional who ‘talked posh’. Subsequently, a number of places have involved local people as health champions, engaging them in ways to adopt healthy lifestyle practices, despite contexts that act against them. (See https://www.altogetherbetter. org.uk; Atkinson et al, 2020.)

We are using health as an illustration, but there are similar examples in other areas, such as transport, housing and regeneration, where a particular perspective dominates and where the part is not seen as connected to the whole. Many social and community interventions treat a particular issue as an isolated phenomenon, acting on an isolated individual, operating in vacuum. Moreover, when ‘evidence’ is being collected to measure its impact, data collection is restricted to the isolated phenomenon. If there are consequences beyond the immediate intervention – the ripple effect (Trickett, 2019) – these are rarely picked up. Dualistic thinking around how we should act in the world also creates the notion that scientific knowledge or evidence is something created separately 70

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and is then ‘translated’ or ‘transferred’ into practice. Underlying these debates on evidence into practice or research translation is a failure to realise that the evidence that is being transferred into practice is only partial; real understanding can only come from an interactive process of engagement with practical reality, involving what Polanyi (1958) calls ‘subsidiary awareness’. This is intuitive, or first-order, perceptual knowing. Instead of seeing the world as something out there, we need to view ourselves as embodied participants of a greater whole, and thereby become more responsive. In other words, our inner and outer worlds are connected and cannot be treated as unrelated. This also puts a different spin on the issue of generality. The craving for generality in a traditional scientific sense, when applied to society, often leads to an imposition of general principles in inappropriate contexts: for example, we have tested this solution in Salford, UK, so we can apply this to the whole of Canada. This ignores the necessary variety of human experience in specific contexts. As we see later, diversity is important for the survival both of humanity and of the planet. Human–nature relations According to neo-Darwinists, evolution is a product of fierce competition, with each species pitted against the others in a vicious battle to survive. A quite different perspective now accepted by mainstream science is called endosymbiotic theory. This theory proposes that important steps in our evolution have occurred through cooperation between species, even to the point of separate organisms joining together to create entirely new forms of life. (Macy and Johnstone, 2012: 98) One of the insidious effects of the idea of separatism has been that nature is seen as separate from humans and only there for the latter to exploit for their own use. In other words, the planet is there for us alone, a belief reinforced by many religions. As a result, ecology and nature are seen as something that can be taken from without consequences, a perception that has placed us in the current sustainability crisis. This is further reinforced by the encouragement of individualism and othering, as well as a sense of competition and scarcity. This separation from nature and the primacy of competition are intimately related to the current climate crisis and to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Both have brought into sharp relief how erroneous this worldview is and how such a perspective has created those crises. Under the dualist mindset, though, technological development, science and economics can deliver a more rational, efficient and productive life for all and solve all such problems. Yet the rules of classical economics go against the basic rules of long-term survival of the planet. Land and nature are treated as a potential commodity for the market, a raw material for exploitation by capital, effectively validating a utilitarian approach to nature, which has led to an increasing detachment from nature reinforced across the planet by the history of colonialism. Nature is something out there 71

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to watch in an environmental documentary, not something of which we are a part, especially in highly urbanised society. Our place in the living world is also absent from many economic and social theories and the associated solutions to social problems. However, social justice is intimately tied up with environmental justice; they are not separate issues (Adebowale, 2008). The Doughnut Model of Economics (see p 195) goes some way to address this relationship. What other examples are there where economic thinking has changed to incorporate nature?

The dangers of mechanistic thinking In the 1970s cult book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig (1974) compares some organisations to a motorcycle and argues that they share systemic qualities in that they are sustained by structural relationships, even when they have lost their meaning and purpose. However, to tear down the organisation, like pulling apart a motorcycle, is to deal with the effects and not the causes when the real cause is the system of thinking. If you tear down an organisation but do not change the thinking, the patterns of thought that created it will repeat themselves. For the character in Pirsig’s novel, the separation of subject and object is an artificial interpretation imposed on reality that destroys its quality or essence. In the case of the motorcycle, this is embedded in the craft that created it: Man [sic] is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he [sic] the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man [sic] and his environment. He [sic] is a participant in the creation of all things. (Pirsig, 1974: 368)

Values, spirituality and consciousness There is no place in the Cartesian worldview for values or for spirituality and consciousness. Indeed, there is an innate dialectical relationship with spirituality. Moreover, objectivity implies value-free, although that, in itself, is a value. Leaving everything to the invisible forces of the market implies a set of values that privilege the economy but in a particular way. Rarely are values discussed or questioned in political debate or, indeed, in many contexts. More often they are taken for granted or assumed. Similarly, spirituality is talked about in hushed voices and is rarely part of any mainstream conversation, along with moral values and meaning. Religion and spirituality are also often conflated. Spirituality is a way of being that flows from a certain profound sense of heightened aliveness experienced 72

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by both the mind and the body at the same time, a deep sense of connection difficult to put into words. Religion, on the other hand, is an organised attempt to understand the spiritual experience, while the history of religion is one of patriarchy and the search for control. Consider the following: 1. To what extent are you comfortable with the idea of talking about spirituality and consciousness? If not, why? 2. What other manifestations of the hegemony of the Western mind and its influence on practice can you identify?

Indigenous ways of knowing “The Circle has healing power. In the Circle, we are all equal. When in the Circle No one is in front of you No one is behind you No one is above you No one is below you. The Sacred Circle is designed to create unity.” (Dave Chief, Oglala Lakota, quoted in Kovach, 2009: 35) A complete contrast to the dualistic and positivist-reductionist worldview outlined in the previous section are the worldviews held by many indigenous groups, despite large-scale historical cultural oppression, as well as cultural appropriation. Notwithstanding the complexity and great variation between different groups around the world, almost all indigenous knowledge systems consist of a complex interplay of knowledge, practice and belief, and all hold a participatory worldview. In some cases, aspects of these cultures have been incorporated into so-called New Age practices, often, but not always, without respect for ancient traditions and devoid of the original context. Despite great variation in indigenous knowledge globally, there are some universal elements in indigenous epistemology that can be distinguished. First, there is an ethic of non-dominant, respectful human–nature relationship, a sacred ecology (Berkes, 2017). There is a belief in immanence, that all things are of equal value because all things have unseen powers and energy, whether an animal, a rock or a human. These powers can be seen in the changes of the seasons and of night and day. These cycles of growth and change are marked by ceremonies to recognise the spirits of the seasons. Along with this is the idea that humans cannot predict and control nature. This all leads to a second element and that is the centrality of the spiritual in everything. Thirdly, indigenous ontology recognises the importance of balance and that ill health or discord is a product of lack of balance. Fourthly, respect and reciprocity between the inner and outer world, between individuals and the community, and between nature and humans is seen as fundamental. This is tied up with the notion of interconnectedness. All things and all people, although we each have our own individual gifts, are dependent on and share in the growth and work of everything and everyone else. People thrive when 73

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there is a web of interconnectedness between the individual and community and between the community and nature. This, in turn, means that everything is relational and by attending to the relational we can attend to the whole. Thus, an individual is only knowable as a member of a recognised community, and communities are only recognised through their constituents. This connection includes our relationship to the land and where we are born and live. These beliefs and ways of being have meant that indigenous groups have often come into conflict with Western views of knowledge creation. Generalisation in indigenous thinking, for example, only takes place at the level of values, while learning is achieved through experience, ceremony and storytelling (Graveline, 1998). For indigenous groups, knowledge is a blend of mind, practice, trusted authority, spiritual values and local social and cultural organisation: a knowledge space (Turnbull, 1997). Tying everything together is the primary focus on nurturing relationships, not only with each other but also with the past and the future, as well as with nature. It is through ceremony, talking circles, wisdom councils and generally taking time to be with people that is so core to indigenous ways. This is a hard lesson for those working with tribal communities but a necessary one. Relating comes before anything else. Table 3.1 illustrates the differences between Western models and indigenous ways of seeing which Peat (1986) discussed in his book Blackfoot Physics some years ago. Table 3.1: Different ways of seeing the world Western science

Indigenous science

Linear thought logic and structure

Being, experiencing relationship

Fragmentation, dualism

Connectedness

Material and concrete

Spirit and emergence

Fixed laws

Flux, change and transformation

Knowledge as something to be processed and accumulated

Coming to knowing through experience, watching and listening, ceremonies and songs, and entering the silence

Individual rights and justice

Obligations, dialogue and balance

Abstraction

Stuff of life

Source: Based on Peat (1986)

The medicine wheel A common – and the most widely recognised – symbol of indigenous ways of viewing the world is the medicine wheel, a circular symbol that encapsulates the essential holistic and participatory nature of this way of thinking (Bopp et al, 1985; Marsden, 2005). 74

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It is a perfectly balanced shape without a top or bottom, length or width. It represents constant movement and change. It also represents and symbolizes unity, peace, harmony and courage. It is a testimony of the human being’s ability to survive and to maintain balance. The ultimate goal is to strike a harmonious balance in life. The circular form of the Medicine Wheel shows the relationship of all things in a unity, a perfect form, and suggests the cyclical nature of all relationships and interactions. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. (From Teachings of the Medicine Wheel, Unit 2, Student Manual, Ontario Native Literacy Coalition, 2010: 3) The circle, therefore, acknowledges the connectedness of everything in life, such as the four seasons, the four stages of life and the four winds; and it represents the continuous cycle and relationship of the seen and unseen, the physical and spiritual, birth and death, and the daily sunrise and sunset (see Figure 3.1). The wheel is usually divided into four coloured quadrants. The colours can vary, but the symbolism and concepts remain similar. The wheel moves in a clockwise direction, with the teachings always beginning at the yellow, or eastern, quadrant.

Figure 3.1: The medicine wheel

Source: Graveline (1998: 14)

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The medicine wheel is used in different ways by different tribes and groups in North America. It is also interpreted in different ways. Some indigenous cultures use medicine wheels in prayer, in healing, in learning or in caring for the land and other sacred teachings. These teachings can be as diverse as the hundreds of indigenous cultures. Sometimes rather than being drawn as a picture or made into an artefact it is also represented in stone on the land or as a community garden. Of all concepts contained in the teachings it is the importance of relationships that is crucial (see Figure 3.2). This is the idea that everything we do, every decision we make, affects our family and our community; it affects the air we breathe, the animals, the plants, the water, in some way each of us its totally dependent on everything else.

The Métis teacher and community organiser Fyre Jean Graveline has used the medicine wheel to develop a cross-cultural education course to engage students from all backgrounds in exploring oppression. In her wheel the East represents Knowing and Thinking, the Air; the South: Spirit and Culture, the Fire; the West: Relationships/ Emotions, Water; and finally the North: Doing and Acting, the Earth. The entire course is based on some core principles: (1) the principle of First Voice, which emphasises the importance of your own experience, with the implication that you should not talk about what you do not know from experience, (2) the principle of Storytelling, which is crucial for transmission of the Gifts of Cultures, through (3) the Talking Circle: the principle of speaking from the Heart and listening respectfully, and finally (4) the principle of Taking Action: that is, doing more than saying. These values and ways of being permeate the entire learning cycle. In her book, Circle Works (1998), Graveline documents her experience and theirs, through their voices, of delivering the course to multicultural groups of students in Canada as she takes them through what she calls the four doors. The first door is Eastern door, where Eurocentric consciousness is challenged and where the question is asked: how do we know? How do we learn? The process unlocks the dimensions of White privilege. The second door is the South, which introduces the students to Talking Circles and other elements of aboriginal spirituality. The third door is the West and this focuses on learning to understand the self in relation through acknowledging all our relations. The final door is in the North, where action for change based on experience is taken.

Graveline’s work illustrates how the wheel can be used in teaching about oppression. Another practical application is the ‘Self-care medicine wheel’ (Figure 3.3) developed by Elsipogtog Health and Wellness Centre staff as a guide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Elsewhere, through a process of participation and sharing, The First Nations Health Authority (2014) in British Columbia, Canada, came up with a reinterpretation of the medicine wheel to frame its long-term strategy for health. 76

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Figure 3.2: Building our community connections

Source: Graveline (1998: 161)

AL

M

Wash your hands Go for a walk outside Practise social distancing Take a relaxing bath Do an at-home workout Eat a good meal and stay hydrated Get enough sleep

E

Read a book

TA

Practise deep breathing

L

Take a social media break Try a 10-minute meditation Establish and stick to a routine Learn something new

Pray for your loved ones Make prayer ties Smudge

O

AL

Learn more about your culture Call an elder

TI

Be in nature

U

EM

Call a loved one Write a journal Find laughter – watch a funny movie List what you are grateful for Hold space for your feelings Listen to your O N favourite music A

IT

PH

IC

N

YS

Figure 3.3: Self-care medicine wheel

SP

L

Source: Based on Elsipogtog Health and Wellness Self-Care Guidance

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Ecological and complex systems as participatory thinking It is my deep conviction that the only option is for something to change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience, in the actual attitude of man [sic] towards the world and his understanding of himself and his place in the overall order of existence. (Havel, 2007: 18) For those of us raised on a diet of Western ways of knowing it is difficult to grasp the true essence of indigenous knowledge. We will always be outsiders looking in, unable to have anything but an inkling of this way of being, as we do not engage in the everyday practice of ceremony handed down through generations of ancestors, and we do not have the wisdom of elders to turn to or even the spiritual nature of the language of a Maōri or Cree with which to express the holistic nature of knowing. We can only at best learn what we can within our limited resources and acknowledge how far we have been led away from the ancient wisdom of this way of being, knowing and acting by privileging Western science and European thought. So, it is to a Western interpretation of participatory ways of viewing the world that we now turn while learning from the wisdom of indigenous people as we attempt to decolonise ourselves as well as others. It is through the modern language of ecology that we may return to the indigenous worldview that we have lost. We can be both the colonised and the coloniser. How aware are you of both, in yourself, others and society?

Western participatory worldviews: ecological ways of thinking At the core of a participatory worldview is a wholistic understanding that is focused on the relational and ecological. More fundamentally it is about getting to grips with the idea that everything is connected. Thus, the mind is not separate from the body, as individuals we are not separate from others, and humanity is part of nature, not separate from it. We are all part of a world that is a living dynamic system and when you change anything within that system there are repercussions for all. Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves. During the early 20th century these ideas were being put forward by a number of writers working in the field of ecology and biology. Indeed, the terms ‘ecology’ and ‘ecosystem’ were first coined in the 1920s and 1930s and finally emerged as an area of scientific study in the early 1950s. What came to be known as ‘deep ecology’ acknowledged that we are all part of, and participants in, a living ecosystem and therefore understanding the characteristics of that system and its dynamics is crucial (Capra and Luisi, 2014). As the century progressed, the notion of an ecosystem also provided a different lens for looking at complex issues of society and the role of the community. It is 78

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this lens of the ecosystem – or living system, as it is sometimes called – that we can draw on to understand participatory thinking. When we start to look at the world in an ecosystems way, through a lens that sees the world in relationship to ourselves, new understandings and actions are generated. We also begin to move from a social reality based on outmoded models of thinking – what Scharmer and Kaufer (2013) call ego-system awareness – to one based on ecosystem awareness. Can you think of examples of ego-system thinking and ecosystem thinking?

Characteristics of a living system that help us to think participatively Everything comes into form because of relationship. We are constantly being called into relationship – to information, people, events, ideas and life. Even reality is created through our participation in relationships. We choose what we notice: we relate to certain things and ignore others. Through these chosen relationships, we co-create our world. If we are interested in effecting change, it is crucial to remember that we are working within the webs of relations not machines. (Wheatley, 1999) Interdependence A fundamental characteristic of ecological relationships is that the behaviour of one member of the community depends on the behaviour of many others. Thus, the success of the whole community depends on the success of its individual members, while the success of the individual members depends on the community as a whole. To nourish a community means that you need to nourish relationships that create this interdependence. However, those relationships are not straightforward or linear. A small change introduced into an ecosystem can have a major effect. Small changes can spread out and be widened through ever-increasing, interdependent feedback loops, which may in time obscure the original source of the disturbance. At the time of writing, we are in the middle of a global pandemic and governments are struggling to persuade people to self-isolate and socially distance to prevent the spread of the virus within the population at a rate that would outstrip the ability of society and the health services to cope with increased levels of sickness and deaths. The virus cannot spread without people coming into contact with other people. Some people are finding it difficult to understand why they should obey the requests; many only see the issue as a matter of taking risk themselves and judge (whether rightly or wrongly) that they are not likely to get the disease or are likely to experience only mild symptoms. However, this is a perfect lesson of our interdependence. Although you can ask people who 79

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are vulnerable to self-isolate for their own sakes, the spread of the virus generally within the community is dependent on others socially distancing to save the community as a whole. A mass lesson in interdependence is taking place. But it is not only interdependence between humans and communities, it is also a lesson of our innate interdependence with nature. We are not separate from nature, our survival depends on it and our living in harmony with nature. The cyclical nature of things A second characteristic of ecological processes is that they are cyclical. One organism’s waste becomes another organism’s food. Nothing is wasted and this cyclical process ensures the system is kept in balance and is therefore sustainable. Feedback loops in an ecosystem are important for the provision of information to ensure that the system keeps in long-term balance. We can see now, within human communities, that sustainable patterns of consumption and production need to be cyclical too. Most businesses are not cyclical as they create enormous amounts of waste. However, in the current free market, the social and environmental costs of such production are treated as external variables in current accounting. Thus, not only is the environment treated as a free good, but so are the webs of social relations external to the companies concerned. The market, as a result, feeds back partial information concerning impact on the system as a whole, and this failure to add in the real external costs of pollution and exploitation of labour gives rise to the current crises of climate change and widening social divisions. Living systems continuously create and recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components. They undergo continual structural change while preserving their web-like organisation, each sub-system nested in the wider system. Living systems are complex and in a state of constant adaptation to the environment. Regeneration and degeneration Arising from the importance of feedback loops is the concept of regeneration and degeneration. A sustainable and healthy community is one that makes a positive contribution to the well-being and health of its individuals (Hancock, 1993; Cave et al, 2004). However, communities can be regenerative or degenerative (Bird, 2003; Wahl, 2016). Regenerative communities are communities where individuals have a sense of involvement, commitment, learning and change. They actively encourage joyfulness, creativity, love and a sense of belonging, an understanding of the totality and a sense of wholeness. A core element is a sense of and the creation of meaning. Degenerative communities are those in which members experience lack of satisfaction, frustration, hatred and sorrow. Such degeneration is reinforced by actions within society that focus on instrumentality and consumption, and where emotions and feelings are not allowed to be expressed, resulting in stagnation and even decline. For complex systems to retain regenerative aspects there needs to be some form of friction and an input 80

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of new energy which causes a sense of disorder, otherwise they will reach a state of equilibrium and die (Prigogine, 1997). However, too much change can cause chaos. So, what is required is a combination of stability and change. Indeed, some systems thinkers argue that development occurs in complex adaptive systems, like communities, on the edge of chaos (Pascale et al, 2000). Stability comes from what is called corrective feedback: actions that constitute planned results aimed at fulfilling predetermined objectives. This is the common practice and also a common reaction, manifesting most often in bureaucratic responses to potential change. But it also requires something else: reinforced feedback. This type of feedback is unpredictable and will contain new information. Thus, healthy communities constantly operate through a set of contradictions and paradoxes that construct new information via two apparently opposing types of feedback, both necessary for maintaining dynamism. At its best, regeneration is about enabling living things to become themselves, to develop the full potential of communities to become more themselves and more able to contribute to the larger system of which they are part. Emergence According to Capra and Luisi (2014), throughout the living world, the creativity of life expresses itself through the process of emergence. The phenomenon of emergence takes place at those critical points of instability mentioned previously which arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops. Emergence results in the creation of novelty that is often qualitatively different from the phenomena out of which it emerged. The constant generation of novelty is a key property of all living systems. In a community, the event triggering the process of emergence may be an offhand comment, which may not even seem important to the person who made it but is meaningful to some people in that community. Because it is meaningful to them, they ‘choose to be disturbed’ and circulate the information rapidly through the community’s networks. As it circulates through various feedback loops, the information may get amplified and expanded, even to such an extent that the community can no longer absorb it in its present state. When that happens, a point of instability has been reached. The system cannot integrate the new information into its existing order; it is forced to abandon some of its structures, behaviours or beliefs. The result is a state of chaos, confusion, uncertainty and doubt; and out of that chaotic state a new form of order, organised around a new meaning, emerges. The new order was not designed by any individual but emerged as a result of the community’s collective creativity. This process of emergence involves several distinct stages. To begin with, there must be a certain openness within the community, a willingness to be disturbed, in order to set the process in motion; and there has to be an active network of communications with multiple feedback loops to amplify the triggering event. The next stage is the point of instability, which may be experienced as tension, 81

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chaos, uncertainty or crisis. At this stage, the system may either break down/ degenerate, or it may break through to a new state of order, which is characterised by novelty and involves an experience of creativity that often feels like magic. Since the process of emergence is thoroughly non-linear, involving multiple feedback loops, it cannot be fully analysed with our conventional, linear ways of reasoning, and hence we tend to experience it with a sense of mystery (Capra and Luisi, 2014). Wahl (2016) has shown how such an adaptive system works and how a system can cycle through different stages and the opportunities that this creates. However, we cannot direct a living system, we can only disturb it. (Scharmer and Kaufer, 2013). There have been some great examples of this in recent years such as the actions of the Extinction Rebellion and Occupy Movements in co-creating disruptive change. Can you think of others?

Diversity and flexibility These emergent processes are further sustained by the characteristics of diversity and flexibility that enable ecosystems and communities to survive and adapt to change. As discussed above ecosystems are always in constant flux but there are certain limits to change beyond which the whole system will collapse. The aim is to reduce the long-term stress in the system: maximising a single variable will eventually lead to the destruction of the system as a whole; optimising all variables will create a dynamic balance between order and freedom, stability and change. This means accepting that contradictions within communities are signs of diversity and viability. However, this can exist only where there are strong and complex patterns of interconnections. A healthy community needs members who are aware of the need for interconnectedness, so that information and ideas flow freely through the networks to create a flourishing whole. Rather than a naïve notion of social capital that assumes homogeneity in community, it calls for an understanding that communities are contested spaces that flourish when practical strategies knit them together as part of a diverse, cooperative, interconnected whole.

The Relational: cooperation, co-evolution and co-creation/ co‑production Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness. (Hildegard of Bingen, 1982: 41) One of the most pervasive ideas of Darwinism is the notion of competition and ‘survival of the fittest’ or ‘ego-based thinking’. These ideas also reinforce current 82

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notions of patriarchy regarding masculinity and the nature of leadership. However, contrary to this popular narrative, research has demonstrated that the cyclical exchanges of energy and resources in the ecosystem are best sustained though cooperation, partnership and co-evolution all of which involve processes of integration and connection that are necessary for a flourishing world (Capra, 2003). Thus the system co-learns, co-creates and co-produces in what Wahl (2016) calls the processes that underpin interbeing. In this co-learning there is potential for transformation, reaching across the diversity referred to earlier to create a common vision and collective meaning. This brings us to another core feature of thinking participatively: the role of the relational and the collective. Life is essentially a network of relationships. By becoming aware of new interconnections and relationships, new questions can be asked about things we have hitherto not paid attention to. The participatory mind looks beyond events and superficial fixes to acknowledge the deeper structures and forces at play and does not allow boundaries – institutional, social or cultural – to limit thinking, but works so it can create those self-reinforcing loops or cycles of innovation that create regeneration through acting with others (Senge et al, 2005). This also means that through self-reflective consciousness (see the next section and also Chapter 7) we become conscious of how we are bringing forth a world together through how we experience and what we pay attention to (Wahl, 2016). The Goethean approach to science incorporates experience in this way: ‘The organising idea in cognition comes from the phenomenon itself, instead of from the self-assertive thinking of the scientist themselves. It is not imposed on nature but received from nature’ (Bortoft, 1996: 240; see also Haila and Dyke, 2006; Berkes, 2017). Indeed, some years ago, Bateson (1972) in his book Steps to the Ecology of Mind argued that the false reification of the self – the idea of a separate self rather than one emerging out of and sustained by relationships – is at the root of the current ecological crisis. He encouraged people to understand the world as one entirely made up of relationships, and how we continuously bring forth the world and ourselves through relationships, as we move from seeing the world as a collection of objects to experiencing the coming into being of perspectives and identity through the act of relating itself. Co-learning and the co-creation of knowledge in place through mutual learning and questioning are core to the notion of systems and also system transformation. It is about coming to know, coming to being through the interconnections and reciprocity between everything. Thus, understanding is not a representation of an independently existing world, but a continual bringing forth of the world through the process of living (Maturana and Varela, 1987). ‘Reality’ is only a reflection of how we look at it, and a particular ‘spiral of understanding’.

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Consciousness, the self and the spiritual A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He [sic] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. (Einstein, 1950, cited in Calaprice, 2005: 206) While thinking in ecosystems terms helps us begin to understand how participatory our world is, it is not sufficient. The relational also includes our inner world and its relationship with the outer world, as well as our relationship with the intangible, that which we cannot see and measure. There is a dynamic relationship between the inner and outer. As Macy and Johnstone (2012) argue: The distinction often made between selfishness and altruism is misleading. It is based on a split between self and other, presenting us with a choice between helping ourselves (selfishness) and helping others (altruism). When we consider the connected self, we recognize this choice as nonsense. It is from our connected selves that much of what people most value in life emerges, including love, friendship, loyalty, trust, relationship, belonging, purpose, gratitude, spirituality, mutual aid, and meaning. Our ideas, thoughts and visions of the future affect what kind of future emerges.

Our intentions become the way we contribute to the design of the world through our collective unconscious. This requires paying more attention to our intuition, our feelings, our perceptions and experiences: listening to our inner world to make more sense of our outer world. Heron (1996) calls this ‘in the presence of something’, a process of engaging all the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, experiencing it with attention and intention, like when you engage in mindfulness practice. As Scharmer and Kaufer (2013: 31) point out, the role of this inner knowing is rarely talked about by activists but is reflected in the way they speak truth to power: ‘They are connected to deep sources of knowing, sensing the future that wants to emerge.’ Senge et al (2005), in their book Presence, see such a participative experience as that point before which transformation takes place, and draw on the analogy of the experience as one of being ‘at one with nature’. Such presencing does not just happen automatically but requires us to commit to paying attention to the underlying source of our actions in the world, our intentions and our habituated thought patterns. Merleau-Ponty (1962) argued that the experience of perception is our presence in a single moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us. For him, perception is a nascent logo, it teaches us outside all dogmatism, and in his sense 84

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‘perception’ is knowledge being born. Such perception is holistic and almost pre-thought. Much of the time we do not engage in such a ‘perception’ of the world: perception in everyday life is second-order perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). In other words, we look at the world through a prism of habitually established meanings rather than engaging with the experience itself. However, when our experience creates meaning, this results in a more participative mode of experience and knowledge creation. Moreover, anything we experience is interrelational, interdependent and correlative. Indeed, as soon as we try to describe an experience in words, a linear exercise which in itself is an abstraction, we often lose its essence. Even when we tell a story, the telling in itself changes the perception of the experience, and is limited by the very nature of language. This is why images are so powerful and account for the success of communicating through multi-sensory media, like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, to name but a few social media platforms. Among the developments that have been part of new scientific thought in physics, ecology and neurobiology, and which have been taken up and developed in transpersonal psychology, deep ecology and soft mathematics, has been a reinterpretation of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the material/ natural world. These ideas find resonance with the work of Dewey (1925a), and Merleau-Ponty (1962), referred to earlier. Consciousness, it is argued, creates physical reality. So, although there is a widely held belief that there is a separation between inner and outer worlds, there is a growing body of thought that sees both as part of an underlying, unseen energy system, what Bohm (1996) has called the ‘implicate order’. When we start to think in these terms, we see how important patterns of thinking are in creating the world around us, and vice versa. It also puts a new slant on the feminist adage that the personal is political. Within this view, any of us working with or in communities are co-creating realities through our thoughts and beliefs, conscious and unconscious. It requires us to be critically conscious: that is, not only to be self-aware but also to realise that in any transformation process we are part of that transformation and that it needs to proceed both within ourselves and in the outer world. Everyone thinks about changing humanity out there, but few think about changing themselves (Murphy, 1999). Thus, at any point in time, everyone, whatever their background, is engaged in an act of developing consciousness and in generating meaning. Furthermore, if we see this relationship between the inner and outer worlds as a complex energy system and therefore connected to the wider ecosystem, then we can see how the same characteristics of complex adaptive systems that we talked about earlier provide us with useful metaphors for understanding transformation and change. In seeking to understand reality, the mind actively transforms reality. We are sentient beings, however, and thinking is only one of the many threads with which the tapestry of our sensitivities is woven. All the senses and the emotions are part of the process. Things become what our consciousness makes them.

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Our mind participates in the creation of our world and the nature of that process is important in determining outcomes. We make sense of reality by filtering it through our minds and our emotions, constantly processing and transforming what we experience, and in doing so, co-creating our reality. Skolimowski (1994) argues that our Western traditions have locked us into language, perception and thinking that creates a bias towards being rather than becoming. However, to understand the world is to understand this process of change, for every act of reality-making is an act of change, part of the process of transformation. Hence our emphasis on learning to question as a route to critical consciousness: by so doing, we create an upward spiral of understanding, just as in complex adaptive systems, this encourages regeneration within the system; in other words, learning and new information introduces a new energy. In this way, we expand consciousness and our world by shifting the inner place from which we operate (Peat, 2008).

Skolimowski (1994) talks about the need for a ‘yoga’ of transformation. He uses the word in the sense of a set of strategies and principles that one needs to follow to develop a new mindset. He argues that this is part of the methodology of participation. The gift of transformation is one you give yourself at the end of the long and difficult journey that these principles imply. He identifies ten principles: 1. Become aware of your conditioning. 2. Become aware of deep assumptions which you are subconsciously upholding. 3. Become aware of the most important values that underlie the basic structure of your being and your thinking. 4. Become aware of how these assumptions and values guide and manipulate your behaviour, action and thinking. 5. Become aware of which of your assumptions and values are undesirable because they limit your horizons or arrest your growth. Each of these assumptions may be held at a subconscious level and, from there, may be controlling you. 6. Watch and observe instances of your actions and behaviour while they are manipulated by undesirable assumptions and values. Identify the causes and defects. 7. Articulate the alternative assumptions and values by which you would like to be guided and inspired. 8. Imagine the forms of behaviour, actions and thinking that would follow from these assumptions and values. 9. Deliberately try to bring about the forms of behaviour, thinking and action expressing the new assumptions. Implement these in everyday life and watch the process. Repeat the process because practice is important. 10. Restructure your being in the image of these assumptions and thereby restructure your spiral of understanding.

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At first glance, the yoga of transformation would appear to be an individualistic process. In a participatory world, however, the old dualism between structure and agency, between self and society, no longer pertains. Community integration is as much about the integration of the self, as of the self with other. In order for the self to be integrated, you have to participate in the wider whole. As different perspectives on reality are shared through this process, then a wider reality is co-created. Different ways of knowing create different ways of understanding a particular phenomenon. We need to put the whole together to get the best picture. What has challenged you in the above?

Some of what we have talked about in this chapter may appear to readers to be far removed from the practical reality of working with communities. Perhaps what has been said seems largely metaphorical or even metaphysical. Yes, in practice, it is difficult to hold a vision of connection in the way described here and to act on that, at the same time as being in a dualistic world where the norm is to think and act in a separated way. Constant critical self-reflection is called for on the long journey to the active embodiment of participatory thinking – that is, its incorporation into the cells of our bodies so that it becomes as natural as eating and breathing. However, it does not require a total shift away from systematic and scientific thought or from sociological and political theory. Just as a mind without emotions is unbalanced and can lead to irrational acts (Damasio, 1994), the alternative is also true. It is all a matter of balance: that point at the edge of chaos where stability exists alongside change, where people’s stories exist alongside statistics and where emotions form part of any analysis. This is the point of paradox encapsulated so well by the symbol of the Tao, the yin and yang. Nature and our relationship with it cannot be left out of the equation. Poverty, social justice and sustainability, the key themes in this book, cannot be treated as issues in isolation from nature. We are not just talking about relations between ourselves, but with the Universe. This means working with nature rather than on it, just as a participatory approach works with people rather than on them. This means a vision of the world that encompasses heart and head, the soul and the spirit, whereby knowledge is acquired through a coming to knowing. This requires us to stand back from a surface reality to engage with a much deeper knowing in a search for underlying connections at different levels, including consciousness. In the same way, Chinese characters favour a sense of a fuller meaning, deeper than the literal (Ong, 1997), quite unlike the symbolism of the Western alphabet. This is what Heidegger (1963) calls ‘being in the world’, where the world around us is experienced as so much part of us that it is not viewed as an object. This consciousness is at the heart of indigenous knowing based on a world in common, which questions Western notions of personal ownership of land, sea and sky.

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Putting it all together: reframing our view of the world to change our practice Our cultural narrative shapes our individual experience of how we perceive and explain what is out there. Becoming more aware of this process is the first step towards what Einstein referred to as the new way of thinking that might help us to resolve the ‘problems’ created by the narrative of separation (the way of thinking that created these problems in the first place). I believe that the narrative of interbeing and participatory whole systems thinking will help us to transform and/or resolve many of these problems. (Wahl, 2016: 103) It will now also have become apparent to you that there is strong similarity between indigenous and many non-Western ways of knowing and the ideas that have developed in Deep Ecology. Ecological and ecosystem thinking looks at the relationships between phenomena rather than the parts. Restoring health, for example, is not about fixing a specific body part but about restoring the balance between the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social dimensions of a person’s life. The ecological paradigm fits with the notion, previously referred to, that the mind is not separate from the world; rather, that reality is always in subjective– objective relation. Thus, cognition is not a representation of an independently existing world, but a continual bringing forth of the world through the process of living (Maturana and Varela, 1987). As Gregory Bateson (1979) argues, we need to move our focus from seeing ‘things’ to seeing patterns, we are part of any field we study and, to understand the field, we must also reflect on ourselves as part of that world, what Capra (1996) calls the ‘web of life’. As participants in that living system, we need to cultivate the art of appropriate participation. The ideas presented in this chapter are at their heart very simple. Everything is connected. However, we have conveyed those ideas largely through a propositional approach whereas, if we are true to the philosophy, you can only really engage with the ideas through a process of coming to know with all your experience – emotional, practical as well as cognitive. We urge you to explore other modes of knowledge creation to explore these ideas, such as poetry, art and human sculpture.

Challenge yourself: 1. Spend some time in nature without any technology, and experience how you feel before, during and after? Find a way to express those feelings through any medium you choose: art, sculpture, music …

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The participatory worldview 2. Take a piece of paper and put a line down the middle. On one side of the paper draw a figure (which can be a stick person) that expresses how you are feeling at the moment. On the other side draw a figure representing how you would like to feel. What small thought or action will move you from the figure on the first side to the one on the second?

We have suggested that Western science provides a useful but limited tool for understanding reality and needs to be integrated with embodied and other forms of knowledge to help us to make good deliberative interruptions that can change the world. Thinking in a participatory way is a different way of knowing; it alters our view of the world and leads to ways of being that are based on cooperation and a world in common. Ecological ways of knowing lie at the core of this worldview, and we can take metaphors from the natural world to understand communities and their relationships in a more dynamic way. We can also learn much from indigenous philosophy and ways of being. It is important, however, to remember Bateson’s (1972) reminder that these are maps, not the reality. They are frames that affect our understanding of the world and hence underpin how we take actions. What are the frames through which you view the world?

Wilber et al (2008) provide a useful model to help us understand with our limited Western minds the different interrelated elements that we need to address at one and the same time in the process of expanding consciousness. There are echoes of the medicine wheel in its quadrant structure. Although largely rejected by academics, these ideas have been incorporated and applied to a variety of contexts, including recent work on integral cities by Marilyn Hamilton (2019) and by Beth Sanders in her book Nest Cities (Sanders, 2020a). The model has been applied to the adaptive cycle in systems in Wahl’s work on designing regenerative cultures, where he describes it as ‘the rhythmic dance between order and chaos, between stability and transformation as a fundamental pattern in complex living systems’ (Wahl, 2016: 107); see Figure 3.4. It is also found in the notion of spiral dynamics approaches to organisations, developed by Beck and Cowan (2014), and in relation to creating organisations for the next stage of human consciousness, by Laloux (2014). The integral map can make our experiences of participation more intelligible in ways that can guide wise action. Our individual and collective relating to the world actually brings forth the world we experience … [it] includes the dualism of the ‘out there’ of objective description and the ‘in here’ of subjective experience. (Wahl, 2016: 75)

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Figure 3.4: An integrative model of our experience of the world through a participative lens

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So, what does thinking participatively really mean for our practice? Thinking participatively means focusing on process, while holding a vision and intention regarding the world we want to live in but not holding on to a specific outcome. It is about placing relationship at the centre of all we do. Relationships with each other and the living world are predicated on a set of values and principles that are about reciprocity, respect and caring. It is about being conscious that everything is connected both across and between levels, and that any action can have consequences elsewhere. It therefore means engaging in relational practices and creating spaces where people can hear their own voices and then see the larger system of which they are part. It is also about asking questions, and not just of others but of ourselves. In this way we can change the patterns of thinking that are the source of how we act in the world. But most of all it is about seeing ourselves as part of the living world regeneration. The old ways of thinking are no longer adequate, and have left us with a world that is emotionally hollow, aesthetically meaningless and spiritually empty (Goodwin, 2007). In the next chapter, we explore examples of where people are increasingly engaging in participatory practice in a non-participatory world but, while in the past, they were finding resistance to change, there are now signs that participatory practice is breaking out everywhere. 90

4 Participatory practice in a non‑participatory world Jane Springett To resist co-option by the powerful and being drawn into tokenistic, or even tyrannical, projects, participatory workers must systematically reflect on the lessons of the history of participatory work. (Wakeford, 2016)

Participatory practice over the last decade So, is the way of thinking explored in the last chapter coming to the fore and challenging the status quo? Well, yes and no. Over the last decade there has been a remarkable increase in the adoption of the idea of ‘participation’ in a wide range of sectors and organisations. ‘Involving people’ has become a common mantra in areas as different as health research, urban planning, food security, social work and broadcasting. Ironically, the decline of the state and the imposition of performance measures by neoliberal governments, such as the need for universities to demonstrate the impact of research, has pushed some previously reluctant institutions to seek, at the very least, the opinion of their ‘customers’ and, at the best, the active involvement of those who have a stake in the outcomes of their endeavours in decision-making. The advent of social media has encouraged this trend with its ease of gauging opinion and giving access to people, allowing commentary on the actions of those in positions of power. This has created an expectation of involvement, although the level of that involvement is often superficial. There is rarely in-depth critical reflection or dialogue. Indeed, neoliberal corporations have hijacked involvement and turned it into consumer opinion. Community engagement has become the watchword of both private and public sector institutions keen to validate their actions or their products. We have also seen a rise in the development of new participation ‘tools’ and activities, and the wider use of existing ones. On the positive side, this wider use has had a knock-on effect as people who have never previously engaged in participatory activities experience the power of collective learning and colabouring and disseminate their use to other groups and organisations. This has been accompanied by an upsurge in interest in participatory and deliberative democracy around the world.1 91

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The widespread use of participatory tools and the clamour for involvement does not create a participatory mindset.

To be truly participatory and to reap benefits of potential for transformation, processes need to enhance critical reflexivity and learning, as we will argue later in this book. While so-called participatory practices have become more commonplace, they are still mostly used in what can be described as a nonparticipatory world. In other words, the institutional context limits the change possible (as demonstrated in Figure  4.1) and, in some cases, appropriates the idea of participation to create ‘participatory greenwash’ (Abma et al, 2019: 15). Moreover, years of social injustice that generate internalised notions of inferiority have become embedded across the generations and cannot be reversed overnight. Can you think of examples of participatory greenwash?

Accompanying the rise in ‘participation’ there has been a wider use of systems thinking and the associated use of activities which encourage this way of viewing the world, in business, and among NGOs, particularly those working with nature and the resource use. Ecosystems and the issue of climate change are much more to the fore in the general public consciousness, although not as extensively as green campaigners would hope. However, wherever it is engaged with, this type of thinking has yet to become embedded in action. The core relational mindset required has still to be mainstreamed, but the change in the collective mindset is probably further advanced than when the first edition of this book was published in 2010. Collectivist thinking still remains hidden behind the onslaught of the reification of the individual and their ‘right to freedom’. The lure of top-down thinking hijacks the process, leaving the systems thinking in the hands of so-called Figure 4.1: Participatory practice in a non-participatory world A useful metaphor is a visual one. If participatory practice is a circle, a triangle represents a hierarchical organisation, and a box a rigid mindset or way of doing things, then participatory practice can be seen as trying to combine a circle with a box or a triangle.

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expert committees without including the participation of the actual actors within the system – particularly the poor and marginalised – in the thinking process. Or, the actors get addicted to what Green (2016: 230) calls ‘tool kit temptation’, namely, busy people seeking a quick fix of recipes under the pressure to get shrinking funding and the need to prove success in a linear manner. So, we are left with a paradox. Since 2011, we have seen a rise in dictatorial right-wing regimes, but occurring alongside an increase in systems thinking and participatory practice. While the latter are becoming more visible, so too is the dark underbelly of centralised control being revealed. Centralised control has its place, but it requires acceptance, in terms of actions taken, through the development of collective trust in any context. Those countries and provinces that were more successful in containing the COVID-19 epidemic early on did so by combining rules that were well explained and emphasised kindness, with a participatory self-organising approach that brought local knowledge and cultural norms to bear on action. They also employed the right balance between the use of power, the imposition of control and the need for freedom.

  A story from Canada: participatory practice in community development meets community engagement In a neighbourhood of Edmonton, Canada, a group of citizens got together to have a conversation about the future use of a school building following the amalgamation of schools. Meeting over a number of months, while reaching out to others, generated a network of participatory conversations, creating some local ideas regarding school use, as well as some solutions to ongoing issues within the community, facilitated by a community animator using circle practice. Over time a range of new initiatives were put into action. These included a unique intergenerational scheme which brought seniors into the new replacement school to work with emotionally challenged newcomer and refugee children, teaching them different skills on a one-to-one basis. A key factor was the recognition by the school principal of the benefits of allowing people to work in creative new ways. The time came for the community to engage with the local municipality and other local public sector and charity institutions. Decisions started to be made top down, the community engagement process became one of informing and the focus changed from helping and supporting the community leaders and champions to providing services, leading to conflict with local community members, generating dissatisfaction and eventual disengagement.

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This chapter looks at some examples of participatory practice in different contexts and how they have succumbed to, or – more rarely – overcome, the challenges inherent in engaging in participatory practice in a non-participatory world. It is by no means a comprehensive exploration. For every example selected here, there will be other examples, both similar and different, to match them. We draw on examples from four areas: the arts; health research; agricultural development and local urban government.

  Reconciling indigenous knowledge with Western structures: the story of Canada Over the last ten years I (Jane), a product of the settler history of Canada and the colonial power of Britain, have witnessed the process of change that is taking place as Canadians begin to acknowledge the appalling treatment of the indigenous population since European settlement and then try to incorporate the lessons into existing organisations. This is a difficult process. It has included a Truth and Reconciliation process modelled on the South African response post-apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission work began in 2008, and finished with a published report in 2015 which included 94 calls for action. Since then, there has been increased awareness and an attempt to remind people of the indigenous history by including acknowledgement of the Treaty land at the start of meetings and in email signatures (including my own). Indigenous elders are invited to lead ceremonies at the start of research workshops or at student orientation, while an indigenous gathering space was built in the Faculty of Extension Studies, University of Alberta. It is an interesting juxtaposition of Western and indigenous practices and, indeed, attitudes to time and relationships. It works best in environments and among people who are already imbued with the values inherent in indigenous worldviews, such as participatory researchers and evaluators, but seems perfunctory in other settings, just paying lip-service in the face of peer pressure. However, the indigenous voice is being heard in an increasing number of places, for example, End Poverty Edmonton had a separate indigenous circle who were integral to the development of its Strategy. However, the process of change is very slow and will continue to be so while indigenous ways of knowing are not incorporated more fully in how institutions work. Recent organisational changes at the University of Alberta have led to closure of the Faculty of Extension Studies and while the indigenous gathering place remains at the time of writing, it will be interesting as to how its future fate will be determined. Small steps can easily 94

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be destroyed and, since the relationship between indigenous people and settler populations has been governed by the Indian Act for over 150 years, unless a new relationship is written into the law of the country, local relationships will remain fundamentally fraught. Indigenous people want to contribute to Canada, but on equal terms and those that they have chosen, not those dictated by the Federal Government. This is an issue of relationships.

Participatory practice in the arts The creation of an artwork – be it a painting, a sculpture, a play or a dance piece – is often seen as a uniquely individual activity driven by an inner process of self-discovery and passion. Artists engage in a process of the pre-verbal through engaging all the senses and not just the mind. The act of creation of an artefact, whether a piece of embroidery or music, is the ultimate in non-dualism, combining skill with intuition in an inherently holistic process of flow. Although in a consumption-orientated society art has become elitist and commodified, there are many examples of art as a collective participatory process and as a tool for participatory change. So, it is with the arts that we start this process of learning about participatory practice. One of the preconceptions about participation in decision-making is that it automatically happens if you just bring people together. However, the institutional contexts in which that occurs can have a bearing on how people respond, while years of oppression or having no expectation of participation can initially create quite passive behaviour and a lack of capacity to participate. In Modelle partizipatorischer Praxis [A Model of Participatory Practice], Vienna-based writer Christian Kravagna (1998) helps clarify how truly to understand participatory practice in a community arts context and thereby to understand the nature of participatory practice in other contexts as well. He differentiates between four different types of approaches to contemporary community art and gives examples of each type of approach, with echoes of the ladder of participation model: • • • •

working with others interactive activities collective action participatory practice

The first category, working with others, he dismisses as merely fashionable ‘sociochic’. Art curators, for example, may work with other organisations, but only in a superficial sense. It may include artists outsourcing the production of a piece of artwork, but they will get all the reward and recognition and will have personally designed the piece of work in the first place. There are many examples of such public art in sculpture parks and town centres throughout Europe. 95

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The second category, interactive activities, permits one or more reactions that can influence the appearance of the work without deeply affecting the structure developed by an individual artist. Examples include ‘push-the-button’ works in so-called ‘new media’ art exhibitions, and even the daily Google logo. The interaction is usually momentary, reversible and repeatable. The third category, collective practice, refers to the conception, production and implementation of works or actions by multiple people, with no principal distinction among them in terms of status. Examples might include lantern parades where the community gets together to produce lanterns that they then parade through a local village or town or a collectively produced wall mural on the theme of Black Lives Matter. Participatory practice, on the other hand, is initially based on a distinction between producers and recipients, is geared towards the participation of the latter and turns over a substantial portion of the work to them, either at the point of conception or in the further course of the work. Whereas interactive situations usually involve the individual and their own art, participatory art is usually realised in group and everyday spatial situations. The aim is to work in different ways with people in their immediate environs in order to create shifts in how we think about and relate to each other. As a result, there is much more of a dynamic of reciprocity. It is not just the aesthetic experience that is participatory, but also the transfer of power enabling participants to take control of the process, not simply to comment on something produced by others. Participatory art, as described here, is a medium for conscientisation, a route to becoming critical in a Freirean sense.

Examples of participatory practice Open Public Library Open Public Library can be described as a library without librarians and without surveillance, the stock of which is determined by the users themselves through a system of exchange, according to which every borrowed book is to be replaced by another chosen at will by the user. ‘As an institution, a library of this kind could contribute to the self-definition of a community … and would thus be a kind of portrait of the community’ (Kravagna, 1998: 7). There are many such examples around local communities, these days, such as those housed in old telephone boxes. One such initiative was the subject of social research, when a series of three open libraries were placed in different communities in Hamburg in East Germany in the 1980s. Local residents donated books. The project was highly successful, generating alongside a complete replacement of the stock of books, increased trust and solidarity. Yes, there were variations between communities, and some vandalism, and as it was still under communist rule, it was potentially more collectivist in thinking. However, it was described as: the ‘utopian dimension of a radically democratic institution with a real foundation’ (Kravagna, 1998: 9).

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Supporting public space The artist Willats (1976) felt that blocks of flats, built largely in the 1960s, were the ultimate in repressive structures and had a profound impact on the mental and social life of their inhabitants, creating a ‘community of the isolated’. So he developed a set of processes of perception in motion, which might lead to critical analysis and change in both individuals’ relationships with the environment and social relationships with one another. He believed that there was a latently present ‘counter-consciousness’ expressed through the subversive recoding of signs and symbols, from graffiti to vandalism, to inappropriate use of public spaces. His aim was to enable the articulation of different forms of counter-consciousness by connecting them from an individual to a collective level. An example of this participatory practice took place in a social housing block of flats called Skeffington Court, in West London. Initial contacts with the caretaker and a friend’s mother who lived there led to conducting conversations with inhabitants, over the course of three months, about the relationship between the building and daily living habits, leisure time and social contacts. The collected conversations helped to identify local issues, which provided the focus for further discussion. Finally, picture panels were prepared, each produced by one resident in cooperation with an artist, addressing a particular issue with photographs and texts. The panels were displayed in the entrance hallway next to the lift, and in the same position two floors up. Other residents were invited to fill in response pages offering suggestions for solutions, and these became incorporated into the public presentation. Aside from necessitating physical movement within the building, the project created a flow of communication that resulted in a network of social relationships. These were found to be so productive that the residents continued beyond the end of the artist’s involvement.

In the second example, even though Willats started from a concept of art as a socially relevant practice, his purpose was not predetermined: based on his perceptions of the impact of buildings on people’s lives, he developed an interruption, a participatory intervention in the system that encouraged critical reflection on reality. This opened up a new framework of action that led to sustainable changes. The emphasis was on people’s participation in the issues that were affecting their own lives and, through a process of critical consciousness, reaching a collective awareness of the ability to act together to bring about change. There are obvious parallels with the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (see Chapters 5 and 8). That was then, but what about now? These examples may seem quite dated but the approach at the time was innovative. Since then, social media and video have both increased the opportunities for participatory community art in all its forms, whether visual or audio, while at 97

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the same time also reinforcing the idea that only certain people are ‘talented’ and able ‘to do art’. During the pandemic, there was also an upsurge of people creating their own music, individually and together on line, helping to bust the myth that art, or rather the act of creation, is for others. Historically, art was always such a collective enterprise, and in some parts of the world continues to be so. In many non-Western and indigenous communities around the world, there is a tradition of very wide artistic expression through dance, singing and drumming. However, with the rise of capitalism, artistic expression became commodified, designed by a few specialists and then marketed, distributed and sold to the public at a profit to the manufacturer. Thus, instead of singing our own songs, we buy downloads; instead of telling our own stories or engaging in theatre, we watch Netflix; and instead of making our own crafts, we buy massmanufactured products. As with all forms of human expression, the making of art is an essential part of our being and of our need to express our feelings and thoughts, joys and sorrows. In addition, it can be satisfying and fun in a way that no art-commodity can possibly be, because one is actually doing instead of just watching. By starting to make our own art together we begin the process of liberating ourselves from the alienation of commodity culture, and thereby regain our ability to fulfil our expressive needs. However, while the innate well-being benefits that are spread through society by participatory arts are important, it is its potential for transformation that is the key, both in raising awareness about social injustice among the participants themselves, as well as enabling them to become more fully human players in their own lives. ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ (Virgil, 440 bc) But there is a proviso to the contemporary enthusiasm for participatory art. Because many community arts projects are essentially one-off and short term, such a ‘participatory shift’ in the arts simultaneously creates new hierarchies and differentiations, as well as new fears and obstacles.

Some of the artists who have been engaged with participatory art practices and have involved underprivileged communities in their projects turn towards commercial and profit-driven artistic practices and continue to produce objects and cultural artefacts based on the previous collaborations. Paradoxically, by turning towards underprivileged groups, artists profiled as ‘participatory’ actually also play into the hands of the market. Ironically, this creates a vicious cycle which, at the same time, recuperates the art market and perpetuates both the elitist not-for-profit and the commercial art system. In the case of participatory art, these mechanisms of appropriation, recuperation and rejuvenation are, however, not easily recognisable because they are dictated by the rules and institutions of the political and economic systems rather than by the art system and its institutions. The aims of having more open art institutions, and involving

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Participatory practice in a non‑participatory world the audience more profoundly in the process of artistic practice and production and fostering their participation, produce new distinctions and ‘elites’ by inviting the audience to become directly involved at different levels. This is because, at the same time, the participants are not given equal credit or involvement in the various stages of the process, such as the presentation of results at future exhibitions, participation in travelling exhibitions, or a share of the income from possible sales. The participation of audiences can lead to the development of more diversified art and cultural policies among curators and art administrators, and it can foster a greater awareness among the ‘elitist’ museums and gallery audiences of the existence of ‘other’ publics/participants. However, such ‘other’ audiences often turn out to be difficult to control and manipulate, and are frequently excluded from any possible recognition (for example, in the end, they are merely recorded on a documentary video). Based on Milevska (2006: 27)

There are only rare examples where the artists create self-sustainable projects that continue even when they leave; for the most part, the collective element only lasts for the duration of the exhibitions. The general sociopolitical and economic context in which art is produced and practised inevitably overwrites participatory art’s ambitious goals of democracy and emancipation.

What is clear from the very many examples from around the world is that the type of arts medium and initiative depends very much on the local context, the nature of the facilitation and the enabling contextual factors. Creative arts need to be introduced sensitively to people who have spent the majority of their lives marginalised and who see art as elitist and not for them. A formulaic approach does not work as this tends to undermine that central feature of art – creativity – where separation from the world ceases. Its impact is particularly strongly felt where people are involved in a creative act for the first time in their lives, once that initial reluctance is overcome. Of itself, this creates a sense of power and control out of powerlessness, and the impact ripples out, like a raindrop in a pool, to impact on other areas of their lives: improved self-esteem, expression and sociability (Angus and White, 2003). Not only does the individual feel change and a sense of connection to the whole, but since the act of creation is also a social act, it encourages further social connections. However, no matter how many examples we read about in research journals and on the web, they tell us very little about what went on inside the official story, and how the act of co-creation, through, for instance, a lantern festival, a mosaic, a quilt, a play, the creation of a community garden or the building of a community centre, really felt. 99

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Community arts in health as a case study Health is usually described in medical language, but it also needs the language of everyday and of poetry, visual imagery, metaphor, myth, music, celebration and dreams. (Wilson, 1975: 5) The fate of community arts to promote health is a good example of the tale of a tussle between the merits of participatory arts and the reality of neoliberalism.

  An insight into types of community arts projects: a recent example Project eARTh has been established in the Peak District since 2010. It provides weekly group arts activities for people who use mental health services. The groups are led by professional artists with the support of volunteers. The lead artists’ role is rotated approximately every 6–12 weeks to allow for different approaches and a variety of media. The project has a focus on the local environment and seeks to integrate arts activities within local communities. For example, art works created by the groups have included mosaics, sculptures, bird boxes, wood carvings for parks and installations for public buildings, railway stations, general practitioner surgeries, and so on. Around 15–20 people attend each session and the sessions are deliberately informal. Hot drinks and biscuits are provided and the social aspect of the project is encouraged. A recent research study of the project concluded that the projects created a sense of identity and selfexpression, connectedness through occupation and personal growth and well-being (Hui et al, 2019).

The connection between art and health has been recognised for years and at the turn of the 21st century there were many such initiatives. Back in 2003 alone, there were at least 78 solely in Cumbria (population: 500,000) (Allen, 2003). In 2007 a National Strategy for the Arts, Health and Well-being, supported by the Arts Council and the Department of Health, announced itself as a legitimate arm of public health policy in England. But, with austerity hitting public health spending, little was done. The enthusiasm for the approach to health continued nonetheless. By 2012, a National Alliance for Arts Health and Wellbeing had been formed with its own Charter for Arts, Health and Wellbeing. Two years later an All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Arts, Health and Wellbeing was set up, which finally produced a report in 2017. It concluded: 100

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Whereas the many excellent examples of the arts improving health and wellbeing suggest a resoundingly positive picture, it is essential to stress that good-quality arts activity within health and social care is far from universal in England or the UK. The examples and case studies woven into this report are thinly spread and patchy, often short-term and usually dependent upon persuasive individuals and enlightened commissioners. There has, regrettably, been a general refusal to take the arts seriously in the context of health and wellbeing, and longrunning, exemplary projects – such as START in Manchester, which grew out of the Manchester Hospital Arts Project in 1986 – have been decommissioned. At the same time, a team evaluating the Arts Council of England-funded Be Creative Be Well project noted: ‘For many years, participatory arts projects have been observed to make a significant contribution to the health and wellbeing of local communities – only for beneficial outcomes to disappear without trace when short-term project funding runs out.’ The impact of austerity and the commodification of art is seen everywhere, even where there is considerable experience and long-term commitment to the community arts for health. For example, in Victoria, Australia, VicHealth, an independent foundation that supports health promotion, which produced an exemplary community arts training manual in 2014, has now reverted to encouraging engagement in lifestyle change rather than community building. Indeed, in Australia as a whole, the support for the arts has changed from community expression to one of culture as a business agenda for generating employment. Meanwhile, in the UK, the integration of museums into the National Alliance for Arts Health and Wellbeing has also swung the pendulum back to the artist as entrepreneur, not community facilitator. Was community based arts for health promotion participatory practice in the truest sense?

The drive for money is incessantly competitive and undermines the potential for collaboration and for continuity. The fragmentation, evident at the beginning of the 21st century, remains, in a context of diminished public funding. The impact of these potentially liberating forms of practice are diluted through absorbing them into mainstream agendas resulting in diffused transformative potential. Moreover, if we dig deeper into many of these initiatives, mostly what we see is the ‘expert’ in one aspect of life reaching out to the ‘other’ with the agenda, the mode of art, and the boundary of the participatory process predetermined. The potential for social change is clouded by the imbalance of power in favour of the expert. In true participatory practice there is an animator, or co-facilitator, who is sharing in the process of transformation. That does not take away what 101

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is a consistent theme in these examples of community arts for health: that it is the very act of ‘doing art’, and particularly of doing art collectively, that changes people’s lives by engaging with underlying elements of personal empowerment that, in turn, connects individuals with a wider collective empowerment. The popularity of arts for health initiatives still lies in the power of their engagement with the way that people ‘see’ their world. But they have become manacled by the beast, and will lose the creative fire that is their strength and, along with other participatory practices, become the new tyranny whereby excluded people are brought into areas of control, reducing spaces for dissent by reinforcing the status quo (Barnes, 2007).

  When community arts for health really works The inspiring Lawnmowers Independent Theatre Company, a company based in Gateshead, run by and for people with learning disabilities, was originally formed in 1986 and became an independent company in 2001. The company has been walking the talk of participatory arts practice and inclusion with their own unique approach based in part on Boal’s forum theatre. They devise their own work through engagement with other people with learning disabilities to research issues experienced by them and then through drama and autobiographical representation of situations have maintained a learning disabled led and owned space whose artsbased work has expanded to include advocacy, training and activism. The impact on those involved has been life-changing but they have also met the neoliberal system head on and commissioned in 2005 a social return on investment impact report which went on to demonstrate that for every pound invested they added £4.25 to the economy. The key to survival in a non-participatory world has been their commitment to learning and collective capacity building, constantly reflecting and adapting, training and retraining themselves and those who come anew. The core spirit is reflected in their work: ‘not blaming but showing the truth with grace, wisdom and plain commonsense , how things might – if we reconnect with our infinite potential for change – be made much better’ (Campbell, 2013: 103; see also Campbell, 2021). For an example of the theatre company’s work in health, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NerMUG2SODg&t=300s

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Participatory practice in health research Another common example of the dangers of expert domination is participatory research in health. Here, too, there is potential for transformation, if participatory practice is truly realised. In essence a participatory research approach is an act of co-labouring on the co-creation of knowledge. In the case of health research, it involves maximising the participation of those whose health and well-being, life or work is the subject of the research in all stages of the research process. Research is not done ‘on’ people as passive subjects providing ‘data’, but ‘with’ them to provide relevant information for improving their life (ICPHR, 2013). All participants, not just academics, decide which questions will be asked in the research, what the goals of the research are, how the research will be done and how the results will be used. It is action research, engaging people in making change for the better, for example by finding ways to make neighbourhoods safer, helping health professionals to know what patients need, and empowering citizens to take political action to improve the living conditions which impact on their health. At its best, it empowers people to continue the research beyond any particular funded project process because, during the process, local people have developed the capacity and skills to continue the process over the long term (Abma et al, 2019). Participatory research has a profound impact on all involved, participants and the original researchers alike (Abma et al, 2019). This can range from the realisation that survey instruments often ask the wrong questions about the wrong things, to an emotional and political awakening about the purpose of the research.

We see the position of participatory approaches to research as analogous to the people of Kurdistan. Kurds live as fugitives, recognised by none of the three nation states in which they have historically resided. Like them, participatory processes continue to exist in fugitive spaces in what Anzaldúa calls the borderlands – the contested terrain between Western academic disciplines and those outside research institutions who have often been subject to structural violence enacted by those same institutions. Existing in these spaces makes such approaches challenging, both intellectually and practically, for both those with professional research backgrounds and those whose expertise has been gained through life experience. But such initiatives also expose their practitioners to risks – ranging from a mild career crisis to physical injury or even death. Source: People’s Knowledge Editorial Collective (2016)

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Participatory Practice What started as a video training project in which the workers exchanged stories of sexual harassment and abuse that they had never told before developed into a participatory research project in which they decided to get the views of the general public, and chose to interview men and women about their perceptions of domestic workers’ situations. The solidarity and trust they had developed in telling each other stories encouraged them to research these other views, and share their experiences with a wider audience. The reciprocity of telling their stories to each other, and then researching others’ views, meant that they not only worked through their own trauma, but also understood those experiences in a broader context. The final outcome was not the video presenting their analysis of their situation, which had been the original aim, but the development of political awareness and the confidence to argue their case in other settings. Source: McIntyre (2008)

Given the potential for profound impact of such participatory practice, it is not surprising that many research projects that are called participatory merely use participatory methods in the context of a traditional approach to research. This is where the so-called expert, usually an academic, uses a research method as a means of extracting data from a selection of subjects for the purpose of enhancing their own career. A participatory research approach actually flies in the face of the raison d’être of many universities, whose existence depends on the reification of the expert at the expense of the other, because it encourages different ways of knowing and democratises knowledge creation. An example of participatory practice in health research is photovoice or photo elicitation and participatory video, although the activity has also been used in other contexts such as social work and community psychology. Essentially, photovoice is a participatory action research method that combines documentary photography, individual storytelling, and critical group discussion processes. Curated photographs and stories that constitute the data of photovoice projects often serve as catalysts for community-driven social change. Traditionally excluded voices are amplified through the strategic dissemination of knowledge generated through photovoice exhibitions. Subject to the same critique about scale and longevity under the constraints of neoliberalism outlined previously, many such initiatives have tended to be small, geographically constricted, demanding on participants, and resource intensive, thus limiting the potential for use in large-scale social change efforts. Nevertheless, the sheer quantity of such exercises, as well as some examples that have focused on longevity (Lykes, 2020), coupled with the movement to online is creating social change (Lichty et al, 2019).

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  An inspiring story of change In 1992, the Martín-Baró Fund provided a grant to ADMI in Chajul, Guatemala, when they identified the need for a corn mill. Their community had few mills and the women saw the opportunity to develop, manage, and run their own mill as a way to generate support for their developing organisation, with which Lykes had collaborated, and which was formed to respond to women and child survivors of the nearly 36-year civil war in Guatemala. The ADMI women used photovoice methodology to document the effects of the war and political repression on themselves, their families, their community and its surrounding towns. The interactive process of taking and analysing photographs as well as interviewing the women, men, and children whose pictures they were taking continued for two years. During the second year, the women concentrated on winnowing through their analyses and photographs and organising them. These focus on the civil war’s violence and its effects in their lives, their Maya Ixil culture, women’s daily lives, and the work of ADMI as a response to the war and its effects. All were put together in a book. The 54 women were already heavily engaged in taking action for justice and seeking reparation for racialised sexual violence; however, they were finding that indigenous ways of knowing and conceptions of justice did not lie easily with individual Western human rights law and processes. The research created space for a wide range of creative tools to explore and reflect on their experiences and link their work with others globally. Source: Lykes (2020)

Participatory health research is another example of the potential misappropriation by some of a participatory practice without adherence or reference to its central values and principles concerning knowledge creation. Since 2009 there has been a rise in the number of health funding agencies demanding wider involvement in the development of research protocols and research in general, leading in the UK to the notion of public and patient involvement in research (Springett, 2018). In Canada, it became commonplace to involve those who would benefit from research but only in the specifically defined areas of indigenous research or HIV research, both areas where there was a strong community-based movement pushing for community involvement. While engaged scholarship was advocated for in other areas, the so-called partnerships required by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are merely paying lip-service to that notion, while focusing on the issue of research impact through insistence on plans for knowledge mobilisation. Indeed, a whole new area was developed called ‘integrated 105

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knowledge translation’ to address the issue of the dominance in health research of a pipeline model of so-called knowledge transfer. We need to go beyond this and change our understanding of what reality is and also decrease the authority given to science and the expert and increase the authority of those with lived experience. (Gaventa, 2006) However, while the legitimacy of community involvement in research has increased, the scepticism around its validity as research remains, as well as substantial institutional barriers to true participatory practice. Indeed, the many, often archaic, academic structures and processes undermine the participatory research process and its central ethos of local control and local action. Whereas such challenges have been felt across the disciplines, it is the area of health research that was most resistant to change. So much so that a group of frustrated academics (including Jane, who was a founding member) working with participatory research practice in health got together in 2009 and created the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research2 to change this. Other initiatives focusing on knowledge democracy have mushroomed too, for example the 1st Global Assembly on Knowledge Democracy.3 True knowledge democracy remains an aspiration rather than a mainstream reality. Those of us who navigate the academic system to ensure we are true to the tenets of participatory practice fulfil our ‘publication obligation’ by reporting on those challenges in an increasing number of academic papers. These challenges include: a lack of funding for building relationships over the long term and supporting capacity building, ethics committees who demand ethical requirements that have been rejected by a community or who have narrow definitions as to what constitutes ethics; unrealistic timelines and demands regarding outcomes, which fly in the face of the necessary ‘slow’ research; the separation of research into a different funding stream from learning and change; the emphasis on individual research rather than on community-driven and collective ownership; the need to generate income and an emphasis on commercialisation over social value. So, we are back to that paradox: understanding of real participatory practice in research is growing and the spaces for this type of health research have increased substantially and hold the potential for change; however, many parts of world still retain a hierarchical and expert model of research or practise a form of participatory research that is at the pragmatic rather than the emancipatory end of the spectrum (Springett, 2018). Participatory research is particularly popular with many development agencies, such as Save the Children and Action Aid, and it has attached to it a number of specific techniques and tools often talked about under the umbrella term of ‘participatory rapid appraisal’, now variously called participatory reflection and action or participatory rural appraisal (PRA) (Chambers, 1997). The challenge, as always, is that as participatory research is scaled up, it moves away from 106

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delivering the views of the people, becoming ‘tone deaf to subtle characteristics of the lifeworld in ways of seeing and experiencing’ (White and Pettit, 2004: 32). Ironically these approaches to research, as with other participatory practices, have been brought to the North from the South. In the South they have proved useful and effective in addressing the previous failure of the development industry to consult local people. However, they have also been much criticised for becoming a new form of colonialism whereby Western perspectives and priorities are imposed on oppressed groups (Jackson and Kassam, 1998). PRA has been at its most effective when there is regular reflection on the nature of power in the relationships created both between participants and between those participants and the power structures of which they are a part.

  Rural Health in Kyrgyzstan as an example of scaling up a participatory research approach over the long term From a small project in the poorest rural area of Jungal in Naryn Oblast, where the population subsists on farming horses in a harsh environment and inhabits scattered villages, a model based on participatory rapid appraisal (PRA) was developed and extended to the whole of rural Kyrgyzstan using a ‘training the trainers’ approach. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the abrupt end of funds from Moscow had led to an almost complete collapse of the health system. The Swiss Red Cross (funded by the Swiss and Swedish governments) has supported this approach to rural health care development for over 20 years and the community-driven initiative now covers 82 per cent of the country across very different habitats and types of rural economy, proving adaptability to local conditions. The process starts with an analysis of the health situation in each village, with the people using a tool specifically designed for this purpose based on principles of PRA. The project staff trained local primary care staff, usually one per village, to facilitate people’s analysis by using this tool. The analysis is done in small groups of about 10 people brought together from neighbouring households for a session that lasts an average of one or two hours. As many group sessions as needed are undertaken to provide most households with a chance to participate. Following the training, project staff, many of whom were part of a developing health promotion workforce, supervise the local staff member for one or two weeks in order to ensure the quality of their facilitation, since it is crucial to guide people through the process without influencing the outcome.

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The tool centred on the question, ‘What do you need to stay healthy, to live a healthy life?’. This focuses the discussion on the determinants of health rather than on the treatment of diseases. The people list these determinants on a sheet of paper. When they have finished, the facilitator shows them a list of the main elements of primary healthcare, as outlined in WHO’s Declaration of Alma-Ata, and asks the group to compare it with their own list. Invariably, the people will have named all or most of the same elements in their own list: healthy nutrition, clean drinking water, education, hygiene and sanitation, special services for mothers and children including pregnancy care, vaccinations and family planning, provision of essential drugs, and basic treatment. Often, they will have named additional determinants, such as sport, clean air, and so on. The facilitator asks the group to list the most common and important diseases in the area. The group then ranks them and identifies the five diseases that are most burdensome for people in the village. The determinants of health and the most important local diseases are then listed along the side of a big sheet of paper. Two lines are drawn to mark a system of coordinates, the vertical axis indicating the degree, between 0 per cent and 100 per cent, to which a given determinant or disease is present in the village. The group discusses and assigns a percentage value to each issue. At the end a line is drawn connecting the individual estimates. The result is a graph profiling the village’s health situation as seen by this group of people. Such an analysis is done up to 100 times per village taking up to a month, depending on its size, in average involving members of about 70–80 per cent of households. Sessions with only women and only young people are also carried out. The results of the analysis are compiled on village, rayon (district) and oblast (region) levels in the two categories: determinants of health and burdensome diseases. Village health committees (VHCs) are created to act on those diseases that emerge as priorities on the oblast levels. The VHC is elected through representatives of neighbourhood blocks, and forms action groups for each campaign issue which plan, implement and monitor the activities. There is careful documentation and record keeping, all of which is kept in a room at a relevant local centre, usually the first aid post. VHC members’ intimate knowledge of the neighbourhoods means that they can help people with specific problems that have gone undetected by the primary care team, as well as being a vehicle for spreading health promotion messages about good practices, for example, hygiene. Continuous organisational capacitybuilding for the VHCs is provided by the donor agency, with the aim of developing

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sustainable organisations that can become a permanent partner of the health system for health promotion, and which also include other health issues in their agenda, such as access to sports facilities for young people and tree planting, where appropriate. An organisational structure has been developed that avoids overburdening the board of the VHCs and brings many people into the activities, including local schools. The system works well despite the national health care system largely ignoring their efforts. A recent report for WHO critiqued the public health system for not making better use of the local initiatives. Barriers for not doing so included a public health structure that focused on surveillance and epidemiology, and medical personnel who had an overdeveloped sense of their own importance as experts, thus undermining any possibility of using the great potential of local knowledge and working effectively for better health (WHO, 2018).

Participatory practice in local government A Healthy Democracy Is Never Exclusive. It recognises and welcomes the unique contributions of every person within its constituency. It understands that without input from everyone, on their own terms, it cannot reach its highest potential. (Lawson, 2019) Participatory practice both requires and supports the development of participatory democracy and deliberative governance, and these are inextricably linked. Engaging in participatory practice requires an acknowledgement of how the rules by which decision-making operates in contemporary society contribute to and reinforce dominant power relations that assume superiority. It also requires an understanding of how the micropolitics of engagement can subvert even the best institutional designs (Gaventa, 2006). Paying attention to and changing the rules and processes by which decisions are made helps to encourage and support participatory practice (Gaventa, 2004).

Paying attention to the ‘small’ practices Much is taken for granted in the way meetings are conducted in existing bureaucracies. How a room is set out, how the agenda is set, who records the discussion, whose voices are heard, what is talked about and how decisions are reached contain the very essence of liberation/domination. In such contexts, even the simplest of changes, like renaming chairs as facilitators, alters the dynamics. Incrementally changing such practices within the existing non-participatory world can start a cultural transformation. It is such

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In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in deliberative and participatory democracy. There is a recognition that representative democracy, a system developed largely in the 19th century, is outdated and serves only to maintain the status quo for those who hold power. At the same time there has been an increasing disillusionment with politics as currently practised, resulting in the decline in the numbers of those who vote, and the emergence of populist groups. This has been especially true of countries like the US, Canada and the UK that have retained the first-past-the-post system inherited from British colonial rule. Other countries have adopted a form of proportional representation which allows those with minority views to have a voice, while fostering a culture of compromise, consensus and collaboration as parties seek to create alliances, but they too are facing challenges. These challenges come in part from a disillusioned youth who do not see the relevance of traditional politics to the issues they face in their lives. How do you view democracy and governance? How often have you really engaged with the current political system?

Deliberative and participatory democracy takes the process further. It is argued that people cannot make decisions without debating, exploring and understanding the issue. This can only be achieved if opportunities are given for people to engage in dialogue or deliberation together. As Peter Macfadyen (2016) has argued, this was the basis of Greek democracy – albeit for the male few – whereas the idea of voting with its associated shoring-up of an elite was introduced by the Romans. There are now many examples and experiments at the local level, and these experiments are instructive not only in how the rules of engagement enable participatory practices, but also in how the status quo limits them.

  How one community has changed the way local democracy works Frustrated with the way party politics and traditional ways of doing things have dictated local decision-making, some citizens in the UK are taking matters in their own hands by electing an independent council or, at least, a majority of independent councillors. Frome, in Somerset, is famous for starting the trend by electing an independent town council, which runs its meetings and allows decisions to be made in a participatory way. The Frome story is best told by the originator,

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Peter Macfadyen. In his book Flatpack Democracy (Macfadyen, 2016) he describes how the independents gradually won over local councillors, showing how it is possible to cross the divide between old antagonists through new forms of relating and achieving consensus through deliberative practices.

Changing the relationship between communities and government at the local and national level means establishing a different contract between citizens and the state. The extent to which this leads to a shift from a transactional relationship (whereby councils provide services or resources in response to expressed needs or direct requests) to a transformational shift in power is a question at the core of development. (O’Hagan et al, 2017: 5) In a world where the material dominates, power over decisions on budgets is real power, and it is to participatory budgeting (PB) we turn as an example of participatory governance at the local level. This is instructive in three ways, demonstrating how: • an idea gets disseminated and adopted globally, but in doing so gets transmogrified because of culture and context; • even with PB, we have only a few examples of the scaling up of participation across a country or region while there are many examples of small individual initiatives which are limited in their financial impact or which have lost the pedagogical transformative ethos of the original model; • unless embedded in a country through some form of legislation, the idea can ebb and flow with the political context.

  Where participatory budgeting had its origins The idea of participatory budgeting was linked with the expansion in citizenbased community associations and civil society as a practical way to put people’s priorities at the forefront of public investment in Brazil. It was pioneered by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]) and, in 2002, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva from that party won the Brazilian national elections to become President. This further encouraged the take-up of participatory budgeting in Brazil and beyond (Rodgers, 2007). Porto Alegre operated through public forums in 16 regions of the city. Members of the public met together in their neighbourhood each year, in April, to discuss key issues, and to agree their priorities for investment. This could be a range of issues, but past ideas included

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pavements, sewage facilities, evening classes and children’s play areas. The findings of these neighbourhood meetings then fed into regional plenaries, which were held in May. Community groups from across the region came together to choose their top three priorities for local investment. School gyms, often the venue for these plenaries, started to fill up from early evening, and in many areas over a thousand people attended. Schoolchildren entertained early arrivals with samba performances on the stage, while participants queued up to register. Large screens were displayed at the front, and the participatory budgeting process was explained to participants by staff from the community relations council, a key department at the City Hall responsible for facilitating the participatory budget. A number of speakers were then given three minutes each on the microphone. Anyone could choose to speak, if they put their name down when they registered. They put forward their main priorities for investment and campaigned for others to vote for the same issues. The mayor then addressed the meeting to discuss key city-wide issues for people to consider that year. S/he reminded people that participatory budgeting was a good opportunity for local communities, and that they should think carefully before choosing their priorities. The meeting ended with two votes. In the first, people chose three priorities for investment, according to 15 themes. These included education, youth services and transport. Councillors for the participatory budget council (one of a number at the City Hall) were chosen through a second ballot. The overall result of the process was the shifting of resources to poorer areas of the city.

In Porto Alegre in Brazil where the idea was originally implemented in the late 1980s, the process as outlined was abolished in the 21st century as populist movements took hold, the municipalities became dominated by neoliberal thinking and there were cuts in public funding. While governments from the right continued to pay lip-service to participatory democracy, even upscaling the process across the local region, the original underpinnings of deliberation and dialogue were watered down. The status quo, namely clientelist politics reasserted itself within the system, the amount of resources over which citizens had a say diminished and, in time, less than half the projects agreed were actually implemented. Civic organisations, which were the vehicle for mobilising the population, were now providing services funded by the municipality and were unwilling to challenge the change. As PB declined in its city of origin, internationally it became a popular democratic innovation (Elstub and Escobar, 2019). This is partly due to its impact on tackling inequalities, addressing local issues, improving governance 112

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and increasing civic engagement (Touchton and Wampler, 2014; Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2017). But if you look at the proportion of the budgets that people have control over in the many local examples across the world, this has declined from nearly 50 per cent in the original budget to less than 10 per cent and, in the case of Scotland, where an initiative has been in place since 2014, to only one per cent of the rapidly declining local authority budgets in those municipalities involved. Moreover, in its application beyond South America, the political pedagogical nature of PB was not easily understood and was ambiguously taken into consideration. As with other examples of participatory practice, participatory democracy provides the scope to be transformational, but the forms PB activity can take vary from ‘symbolic participatory gestures to transformational impact’ (Cabannes and Lipietz, 2018). The positive correlation between the amount of resources put under discussion and the capacity of the process to act as a driver for learning, has generally been ignored, as was a concern for participation quality. In addition, little attention has been paid to follow-through into action, and public scrutiny of that process. In order to create new political spaces to enable the redistribution of voices and power, many other things need to change, both in the organisation of public administrations as well as in the way political and institutional communication is provided. Participatory budgeting requires reshaping mindsets and ways of working so that participatory governance can take hold. This requires learning and commitment from public and third sector organisations, elected representatives, community groups and citizens. New forms of facilitative leadership are necessary, that is the ability to bring people together across divides in order to engage in collective problemsolving, deliberative decision-making and creative co-production. Participatory budgeting requires skills around process design, organisation, coordination, knowledge brokering, communication, mediation and facilitation. It also takes local knowledge and the know-how to build trust, negotiate competing agendas and create those spaces for meaningful dialogue and deliberation. Since PB can bring a new type of participatory politics, this clash with established relationships and dynamics inevitably challenges the status quo of existing organised interests in a particular community. It can clash with party politics and electoral dynamics, and it may be difficult to build the cross-party support that can give PB a stable framework for long-term development. As with any public participation process, there is the risk of tokenism, by which PB may become a symbolic rather substantial opportunity for community empowerment. In the financial context of austerity policy, there is also the risk of using PB merely for administering spending cuts, and this may undermine its perceived legitimacy. Moreover, PB that fails to mobilise substantial resources to address community problems and priorities may be seen as a distraction from other initiatives, thus losing support from people who want to make a difference in their communities. Consequently, PB must be worth people’s effort, time and commitment, otherwise it cannot grow. 113

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All of the above suggests that PB requires sustainable funding, long-term commitment, ongoing learning and adaptation, and perhaps institutional reform. Accordingly, it can take years to bed it in and make it work effectively. There is evidence that suggests that early success pulls more and more people into the process because people see change happening and want to be part of it. Democracy becomes re-oxygenated. This is not just to do with the number of people participating. The process builds confidence and skills, for instance, talking effectively and empathetically with and between political leaders, specialists in agencies, and fellow citizens from many different backgrounds. The transparency of the process involves much more than accountability; it has become an important factor in widening the scope and acceptance of participatory budgeting.

‘There can be maybe a touch of ideology of superiority with the council workers. That they know best and a lack of trust that people who live in a community can actually have maybe even a better understanding of what they need than what the professionals think that they need. I think it is … it’s how do you make that shift. It comes down to respect and care for the community doesn’t it? To a level where you will actually … people will actually listen, genuinely listen to what people are saying, rather than just sitting in a room waiting for an opportunity to speak. I think change can happen at that level. I think the responses from the community … I think they will respond quite quickly in a very kind of meaningful way. As long as people feel as though there’s a lack of trust … there’s always going to be the kind of us and them thing. You need to blur that edge between the workers and the people who live in a community and it needs to be much more a soft edge between the two.’ (Interviewee in Escobar and Katz, 2018) In Scotland the early iterations of PB as a small grants process have varied in how they have been presented to communities and the extent to which communities have been engaged in decision-making beyond a transactional – funder: beneficiary relationship. Where there is evidence of transference of decision-making power over local priorities and resources, communities and councils (and their partner organisations) responded by changing, or aiming to change, their ways of working around service planning and design. The small grants process as a transactional model has had important benefits around community cohesion, transferring knowledge and awareness of local activity, if not power over resources. While the transformative potential of PB is clearly seen, it does require significant deliberative opportunities and processes for supporting participation in decision making at local level and at the level of council budgets. Uncertainties over levels of funding and stability of resources to councils undermined the ability of local authorities to scale up community participation. Established organisational and behavioural norms also impeded innovation and the cultural change necessary to effect the systemic and political shift to increased community participation in budgeting and priority setting. It was found in an evaluation that, without significant

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Participatory practice in a non‑participatory world shifts in understanding of the relevance of equalities characteristics and the structural constraints that arise from gender, ‘dis’ability, ‘race’ and class discrimination, there is a significant risk that approaches to PB will not engage across the depth and diversity of local communities. The report argued that it was imperative to invest in accessible and deliberative processes, challenge established perceptions and behaviours, and take the lived realities of people’s lives as a starting point if participation in public service decision-making was to be inclusive and transformative. Local communities do not all have the same capacity or share the same interests in being engaged in decision making. Capacity can be developed by increasing knowledge, supporting participation and access to opportunities, and by clearly articulating the purpose and rationale for individuals and community members to give their time and effort. Building trust in public authorities and the belief in the commitment to listen and respond are central to improving community capacity. Ultimately, participation requires resources of time and finance from local authorities and other public sector partners to secure and sustain local capacity and interest. As councils develop their approaches to ‘mainstreaming’ PB, factoring in participation to spend is an essential consideration. Currently, many councils regard participation as an additional cost or that funds allocated to participation are lost to core service budgets. This mindset represents one of the most significant challenges to mainstreaming PB. It requires clear guidance from Scottish Government ministers and officials that participation is both the objective and the process through which community empowerment is to be supported, and community engagement in decision making is to be operationalised. (Escobar and Katz, 2018)

Other examples of participatory democracy place a different lens through which to view democratic governance from that currently in use in the West. Melucci and Avritzer (2000) argue that such approaches are more able to reflect and deal with the complexity and cultural diversity that exists today. The democratic elitism of representative democracy means that the complex environmental and social problems we face today are reduced to bureaucratic technical fixes and simplistic, inflexible and potentially harmful solutions, rather than engaging with a rich variety of background and life experience. In a comparison of different participatory institutions, Avritzer (2017) has argued that in cases where civil society is strong but state actors are divided over participatory processes, a legally institutionalised ‘power-sharing’ design that provides sanctions for non-cooperative local administrations will more likely sustain the democratising or redistributive impact of participatory innovations than the ‘bottom-up’ participatory design represented by Porto Alegre’s PB, which requires both supportive civil society and state actors. Avritzer gives the interesting example of São Paulo’s health councils, where a legally institutionalised ‘power-sharing’ set-up had less grassroots participation but enabled civil society representatives to ‘share decision-making with state actors’ on health 115

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policy. Because this ‘power-sharing’ design is accordingly less dependent on the political will of state actors and provides more legal and political prerogatives to civil society compared with ‘bottom-up’ participatory designs, it is ‘more difficult to disempower’ where state actors do not support popular participation. But, as a lesson for participatory practice in a non-participatory world, the example of participatory budgeting shows how transparent, formal rules and accountability procedures can oil the wheels of true participatory practice.

  The participatory city approach: a story from two London boroughs An alternative approach to the local economy comes under the umbrella of the participatory city. The idea behind this initiative is that there is a need for new methods of co-producing society, co-creating value, cost savings and mechanisms for financing or collective investment that go beyond current welfare approaches and adopt an ecosystem approach to change (see www.participatorycity.org). People come together to identify local needs and to design and implement projects producing socially useful products. The approach has been successfully trialled at a neighbourhood level in London: in Lambeth (Britton, n.d.; Billings and Britton, 2016), and in a five-year programme which began in Barking and Dagenham in November 2017 (see www.weareeveryone.org/every-one-every-day). This work aims to combine the benefits of peer-to-peer co-production projects with businesses and services – working together to improve the overall well-being of the neighbourhood, leaving no one behind. From the start, people were invited to suggest ideas for projects and businesses they would like to create together, and then support was provided to bring hundreds of these ideas to life quickly, and without any complicated processes, to work with people to: create projects, arrange insurances and health and safety procedures, facilitate the use of smaller functional spaces for the projects (kitchens, workshops, storage spaces, and so on), set up websites, produce newspapers, and hold festivals, workshops and business development incubator programmes. The overall idea is to enable people to work together more easily to improve everyday life for everyone living in the borough, ensuring it is an exciting, vibrant place to live and work, to grow up in and to grow older in. The projects include sharing knowledge, spaces and resources: for families to work and play together; for bulk cooking, food growing and tree planting; for trading, making and repairing;

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and for growing community. The initiative is dedicated to making practical participation fully inclusive and combines community building and improvement with participatory and collaborative enterprise development, keeping money local. At the time of writing, 3,000 people have participated in 94 projects, and three new businesses have begun. However, perhaps more significant are the networks and relationships created which enabled a successful community support structure that responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic (Compass, 2020). A key element to this initiative has been the ecosystem approach, the commitment by the local council to move away from a paternalistic professional servicedriven approach to a facilitative one with residents at the centre, and a support structure aimed at co-creating a participative culture based on everyday actions.

Participatory practice in food and resource management systems As a complete geographical contrast, there has also been an exponential rise in participatory practice in the field of agriculture and environmental resource management. This is, of course, not unsurprising, there are many welldocumented examples globally of ignoring local environmental knowledge, with disastrous consequences. Over the past decade and beyond, agricultural and resource management experts have been working together with local communities. For example, in the northern parts of Canada environmental scientists have been working with indigenous communities to integrate their local knowledge with scientific knowledge. Northern Canada aside, however, although in many Western democracies legislation around conservation and agriculture increasingly encourages stakeholder participation, often no specific direction is given regarding the way to engage local people. Thus, more often than not, the type of participation sought is utilitarian and at the consultative rather than the transformative end of the spectrum. A recent study of water resource management in Sweden and Canada showed that community involvement needs both top-down legislation and bottom-up activism to be effective and to be sustained. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, supported by international agencies such as the World Bank, there has been a quadrupling of projects with a participatory element since 2010. Here, too, isolated action does not lead to community change, and there is some evidence that existing practices are reinforcing local hierarchies. It is also being increasingly recognised that those engaging in participatory practice in such contexts need to link with others working in this way in other sectors within a local area to really challenge the status quo. It is in the area of agro-ecology that this is being done most effectively. Agro-ecology covers a range of issues, largely tied up with food security and sustainable agriculture. Industrial agriculture supported by large corporations has been responsible for the decimation of entire ecosystems and has undermined 117

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local and indigenous knowledge and destroyed small-scale farming. The harm caused by the spread of industrial food systems has prompted a groundswell of responses from civil society and social movements. These movements contest corporate-industrial food systems, policies and knowledges and work actively to develop alternative approaches to reduce hunger, to improve the sustainability of food systems and to reclaim the power for people to determine their own food systems. This resistance is occurring through decentralised and informal networks, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and social movement organisations as well as, in rare cases, parts of public institutions such as universities. Through a range of tactics and strategies, food movements are working to take back power by reclaiming the importance of multiple knowledges and ways of knowing – especially those knowledges that embody ethical and spiritual commitments to social justice and ecological stewardship. There are a number of examples that use the tools of Freire to promote a critical pedagogical approach. These include the use of forum theatre, video and storytelling, as well as participatory systems mapping and participatory scenario development, to facilitate the development of local knowledge through creating local social learning systems which also help to build adaptive capacity in the face of contemporary environmental change.

  A story of resistance from Africa Wadada Nabudere (2008) describes cases of critical pedagogy among communities in Africa which resisted the neo-colonial methods of practitioners calling themselves participatory by publicly criticising their terms and practices and redefining what participatory research meant to them. The co-production of knowledge between scholars and community members, who were in the most part illiterate, was developed, following Freire, into a three-pronged approach: first, the necessity of direct involvement of the community in the research, then the discussion of findings and their meanings with the wider community before any publication, necessarily in the local African languages ‘to develop African knowledge, expressing and preserving African values, ethos, norms, and spiritual systems, and bringing about social and economic transformation’. Finally, the discourse was allowed properly to develop only when ideas were ‘assimilated and debated through people’s own traditional techniques of communication and learning’, for example through dance, drama and poetry.

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Reflections on participatory practice in a non-participatory world If you believe you have a goal which you can reach in your lifetime, then it is the wrong goal. (Horton, 1998: 228) As we saw in Chapter 3, an awareness of the interconnectedness of life generates a different starting point in how we operate in the world. This can be profoundly challenging to existing power structures and institutions, where hierarchy and the need for control reinforce non-participatory practices. Moreover, if participatory approaches to practice, where they are emerging, are either partially absorbed into existing practices or remain piecemeal, the transformative potential of this approach will be deflected. This chapter has explored only a few of the many examples of potentially participatory practice that have been on the rise in the last decade and beyond. As we said at the beginning, it is by no means an exhaustive account, but a number of common themes emerge that are worth reflecting on before we explore the key elements of participatory practice in more depth in the next part of this book. • The rise in the numbers of participatory practice projects and initiatives has coincided with a reduction in social welfare resources and a rise in dissatisfaction with current democratic systems. • There is a great deal of lip-service paid to participation, and this can create damaging disillusion. • Institutional barriers and mindsets are just as important as monetary ones. • While the exponential rise across so many sectors is heartening, there is a need for these various initiatives to link together to gain further momentum into the mainstream and system change. • Since the late 1980s, participatory practice has ebbed and flowed in waves, but the tide seems to be coming in rather than receding, despite facing barriers. How can we meet the challenges and help the seeds of change to flourish?

The embodiment of values By placing a set of principles and values at the centre of our practice we can potentially transform existing conditions through their pursuit and operation. Such values and principles are common to all good participatory practice, whether at the level of a workshop or a bigger experiment in new forms of democracy. These are the principles of dignity, respect and social justice, values that govern how we relate to one another and which engage both the heart and the head. Participatory practice involves a set of relational values over which there is no compromise. 119

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There are institutional barriers and constraints on such practice because many in positions of power are acting in the world heartlessly. Bühler (2004) argues that dignity and respect mean becoming a participant in a dialogue in which neither speaking nor listening is one-sided, taking into account the life histories of people, and not ignoring the informal everyday processes of people’s lives. These values demand commitment to a genuine search for solutions that respect the ‘other’ as well as the ‘self ’. And the starting point is the honouring of the contextual, subjective and non-material dimensions of human experience.

  What dignity means Central to the practices of the Zapatistas in Mexico is the principle of dignity. They argue that dignity is not something to be studied but something to live or die for, something that does not walk with the head but with the heart: Dignity is a bridge. It needs two sides that, being different, distinct and distant become one in the bridge without ceasing to be different and distinct, but ceasing already to be distant. When the bridge of dignity is being made, the us that we are speaks and the other that we are not speaks. On the bridge that is dignity there is the one and the other. And the one is not more or better than the other, nor is the other more or better than the one. Dignity demands that we are ourselves. But dignity is not just being ourselves. For there to be dignity the other is necessary. Because we are ourselves always in relation to the other. And the other is other in relation to us.… Dignity, then, is recognition and respect. Recognition of what we are and respect for what we are, yes, but also recognition of what the other is and respect for that which is the other.… So dignity is the tomorrow. But the tomorrow cannot be if it is not for all, for those who we are and for those who are other.… So dignity should be the world, a world where many worlds fit. Dignity, then, is not yet.

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So dignity is yet to be. Dignity, then, is struggling [to] eventually be the world. A world where all worlds fit.

Source: Words of the EZLN during the ‘March of Dignity’, Puebla, 27 February 2001, quoted in Bühler (2004)

Institutional barriers frequently serve to prevent the creation of spaces for this type of engagement to take place, often shrinking the opportunity for critical reflection, dialogue and understanding of difference and creating the conditions for non-participation, closing spaces for ecological knowing, both in the public and private sectors of our lives. The path to participation is a fine line to tread: it is the line that marks the interface of liberation and domination. Dangers arise when transformative concepts are not fully understood and embodied in theory and practice. We have to be mindful of claims to participatory practice that are superficial, giving lip-service by using the language of participation but not following the process according to the underlying principles discussed in this book. Taking a partial perspective is dangerous, and can reinforce the very system that it seeks to change, creating what Cook and Kothari (2001) call the ‘new tyranny of participation’.

Without a critical understanding of both participatory processes and the broader structural processes in operation, there is a risk that anything participatory is seen as a good thing in its own right, regardless of outcomes. Anyone working in the current system knows that, whether you are a bureaucrat, a commercial facilitator or a citizen participant, you are forced to walk the moral tightrope between: participatory ideals and the failure of those in power to value participatory democracy or to credit knowledge to people who have expertise, but are from a non-dominant group, and the challenge of dealing with demands for representative processes, which can lead to the token involvement of groups in society who are either in a numerical minority or normally excluded from policy debates. (Bherer et al, 2016) In the end, promising participatory practice initiatives can achieve broad social transformation only when they are scaled on three levels: • ‘scaling out’ to bring social innovations to more communities • ‘scaling up’ to influence systemic and policy change • ‘scaling deep’ to affect cultural norms and patterns at local level (Riddell and Moore, 2015) 121

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With this in mind, in what follows we explore those ways of working that are necessary to push open the door for change and create the conditions for transformation through the consistent application of a set of values and principles and critical questioning, to reach a point where people change the way they think about the world. In this way participatory practice becomes embodied. But there is no step-by-step guide – each context calls for a different emergent process founded on the core principles we explored in Chapter 1. It calls for an evolving critical praxis.

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PART II

Participatory praxis

5 Storytelling praxis Margaret Ledwith

The relevance of story to participatory practice As human beings, we live our lives as storytelling animals. We are born into a world of stories and storytellers, ready to be shaped and fashioned by the narratives to which we will be exposed. The stories we hear and the stories we tell are not only about our lives, they are part of them. Our lives are rooted in narratives and narrative practices. We depend on stories almost as much as we depend on the air we breathe. Air keeps us alive; stories give meaning to our existence. (Bochner and Ellis, 2016: 75–6) The key to change lies in the stories people tell. By naming the world, we change it (Freire, 1972). Stories of everyday life transmit culture and maintain the dominance of the status quo. In telling our stories, questioning them, critiquing them in relation to the dominant narrative, we open the space for a new story, engaging in a dance of ideas in the search for a better story to replace the old one. Our first encounters as participatory practitioners begin with the way we listen from the heart to the stories of everyday life as it is experienced. This is the foundation of critical dialogue, the point at which trusting mutual relations are formed. In a process of mutual dialogue and reflection, we learn to question the stories we tell, and by examining them a little more critically we find they contain the key to understanding the personal as political. This process begins to turn taken-for-granted beliefs upside down! Contextualising personal lives in their political times is the key to understanding structural discrimination and, for that reason, this chapter picks up critical connections with the dominant neoliberal narrative as developed in Chapter  2 and applies them to ideas for participatory practice. Story surrounds us. Human beings are storytellers by nature, and we are drawn to them for many reasons. Margaret Atwood sees that stories are powerful because they hit the spot between the intellect and pure emotions where we exist as human beings (cited in Bazalgette, 2017: 262). This important insight offers the key to a holistic, interconnected way of being within the self, with each other and with the planet. 125

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This powerful potential of story to critique personal life experience in order to understand power, then moves into story as the creation of counternarratives that inspire action for a new way forward. Counternarratives are the vision for the future, the life we want to live.

To open our minds to a vision of the world we want to live in involves imagination, and the test of an imaginative world is that our daily lives are filled with aspiration and possibility, are less fearful, are overflowing with new ideas and opportunities, are healthier and less anxious … The success of the new narrative will be best measured by the health of the ecosystem, and the health of society, the extent to which all people across all difference and diversity participate in the market, society and community to the fullest level (Hopkins, 2019). Stories can be dominating or liberating, depending on whether they are absorbed as truth or whether they are questioned. In using story to question why things are as they are, we transgress the false consciousness that the world is a fixed experience, that it cannot be changed. Developing the imagination to tell new stories then becomes part of the toolkit of transformative participatory practice. Stories can be interruptions in our everyday lives that lead to new ways of seeing the world. The process of telling and being listened to with respect inspires confidence. If we are not heard with respect, our voices are silenced, and we feel demeaned. But the simple act of listening to people’s stories from the heart, respectfully giving one’s full attention, is the beginning of the process of personal empowerment. The stories we tell about who we are and how we make sense of the world around us can be told and retold as we learn to question given truths. For instance, women’s stories have exposed relations between knowledge and power, revealing that positivism’s quest for a single truth was an expression of dominant White male interests.

The personal is political The notion of beginning in experience reveals multiple truths and different ways of knowing. We begin to rewrite our stories with new insights. Second-wave feminism’s banner cry ‘The personal is political’ went to the heart of storytelling as generating theory from lived experience. As women, we met in local groups to talk about the nature of our experience, and in the telling of our stories we discovered the commonalities of our lives, awakening to the fact that personal lives are politically constructed. Unfortunately, as White women, we set the agenda and failed to be fully inclusive. We arrogantly failed to listen to the stories of Black women’s lives. Despite our emergent awareness of subordination based on gender, as White women we did not grasp the extent to which this was compounded by other oppressions. We were guilty of seeing misogyny as a stand-alone oppression, finding it too much of an intellectual stride to expand our analysis from dichotomous either/or thought to intersectionality. But Black women challenged emerging White feminist knowledge as inadequate: sexism and 126

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racism work together to create a different reality for them. It was Black women, in analysing their lived experience, who exposed the interlocking, overlaying, intertwining ways that inequalities are connected in a complex web of oppressions, working together to create a systemic force that maintains the interests of topdown power and privilege. This became known as intersectionality, the wisdom that emerged from the sisterhood of Black women in struggle. Black and female truths become eliminated from a dominant truth, subordinated by both racism and patriarchy. The questioning of their life stories took Black women deeper into intersectionality as a multifaceted critical analysis, extending beyond race and gender to include oppressions in the widest sense, a major intellectual contribution to the body of social justice thought. For the first time, the binaries of race or class or gender became understood as one all-encompassing interlinking, overlapping political system of oppressions. In summary, early feminist pedagogy focused on narratives of lived experience as a participatory strategy with groups of women to identify the social and historical forces that shaped these narratives falling into the trap of a limited White women’s perspective. In the 1970s, radical grassroots action – such as Sistren, a theatre group formed by Jamaican women in Kingston who wrote plays based on their own experience; the Combahee River Collective, a Black, lesbian, feminist organisation in Boston, USA; Southall Black Sisters, an Asian group who still act for Asian women’s rights in London, and many more – was fundamental in using women’s stories to develop deeper insight into intersectionality as a theory of oppression that got beyond binary thinking to shunt our intellects into the more sophisticated understanding of power that we need to identify the interconnected nature of oppressions necessary for action for change. The exciting message of this chapter is that we are all storytellers, and stories change the world. Once we see critically, we can change the story we tell to create a better reality. We are all storytellers, and we are the stories we tell. (McAdams et al, 2006: 3)

The importance of voicing values The stories we tell are embedded with values. We become the stories we tell and those values shape the way we live our lives, how we relate to each other and the Earth. Stories frame the lens through which we make sense of our world. This is the very reason that changing the story has changed the world in the past, and it is a reminder that simply by changing the story we can change the future. The power of story is able to cut through the atomised, alienated, fragmented, disconnected world we have created to reconnect all humanity with its place on Earth by listening with empathy, responding with compassion. Let’s put inequality and environmental degradation at the heart of our conversations and develop a wisdom of the heart and mind. 127

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… here’s an idea: imagine that we replace economic growth and profit with kindness … not just random acts, but the way we organise everything – reconnecting with empathy to take our place in the ecosystem, with responsibility for each other and for the planet. To do this we need to dislodge the dominant narrative to make room for a counternarrative based on many knowledges that have been subordinated under its weight – take Ubuntu, the African wisdom (Ngomane, 2019): Desmond Tutu says all we need to do is recognise that ‘my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours’ and we see each other, those we know and strangers, those from different cultures, different places, as fully human, we don’t treat them as dispensable, disposable, worthless human detritus, dehumanised and abandoned. Instead, we reach out with compassion and friendship, feeling our interconnection. We begin to see critically that social justice, environmental justice and knowledge justice are all interconnected.… What if we valued compassion as the most important attribute of living well, what then?

The use of story to critique the dominant narrative The process of transformative change begins in the personal stories people tell about their everyday lives. This is where we discover the taken-for-granted contradictions that we live by, unquestioningly living lives that act in the interests of domination, not liberation. A Freirean approach to participatory practice starts in dialogue groups, using story as a catalyst to unlock personal narratives. Identify a theme from the everyday stories you hear, take it out of its lived context and present it as a story to your community group, or culture circle in Freirean terminology, to encourage questioning the meaning of the way we live our lives. If it is relevant to people’s lives, the dialogue will begin to turn to similar experiences shared by people in the group. This is the point at which the personal becomes political, and critique becomes the foundation of change. Critique is essential for exposing and dismantling the status quo. Contextualising personal lives in their political times is the route to critical consciousness. Without this, participatory practice is not transformative, it engages with the symptoms of oppression on the surface of humanity, but fails to reach to the root sources of discrimination that are embedded in society. The world is at an existential crossroads involving a pandemic, a deep economic recession, devastating climate change, extreme inequality, and an uprising against racist policies. Running through all of these challenges is the longstanding neglect of extreme poverty by many governments, economists, and human rights advocates. (Alston, 2020: 1) 128

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Philip Alston, Australian human rights lawyer and the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, emphasises that the common thread linking all the crises he has listed is our neglect of extreme poverty, despite the fact that we are fully aware that fair taxation of the rich is the most effective way to create socially just societies. At this point, you may wish to revisit some of the critical connections made (in pp 52–8) on the impact of ‘austerity’ measures as a political choice to target the poor. But critique alone is not enough. We need a counternarrative, a new story … You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one. (Monbiot, 2017: 1)

Counternarratives The act of telling stories interrupts our taken-for-granted, unquestioning minds, stimulating the curiosity to see more critically and to aspire more imaginatively. Counternarratives are inspired by the values we place at the heart of the future we would be proud to be part of. Storytellers are revolutionaries, they can change the world. Those who tell the stories run the world. (Monbiot, 2017: 1) Critiquing dominant narratives gets us to the root of the values embedded in the stories we are told about life. They become exposed to question and challenge. We begin to see more critically and realise we are living contradictions. For instance, to be told ‘there is no alternative’ to a system that is causing suffering to humanity and destroying the environment is a living contradiction. Of course, there are many better ways for life on Earth to be organised, based on values that are kind not cruel. But without new stories to put in place of the old, critique alone is simply not enough. A counternarrative that helps people to imagine a different way of life, based on human values, is central to the process of change. To open our minds to change, we need imagination, we need to see things differently and to believe change is possible. New ideas excite the imagination: they inspire hope, open up new possibilities for a better future, and fire the determination for action. To fully enter into this process, slow down your racing thoughts, let the busyness of your mind calm down, let the detritus fall away to create the space for new ideas. Take a few seconds for this to happen. As you engage with new ideas – take time to let them unfold. Pause … here and there … give thoughts time to catch up with words. Read the chapter slowly … give it chance to become a journey of consciousness. Now, in this epoch in human evolution, is the time to take a deep breath, relax and create the space for new ideas, focus on what’s really important – and on what’s gone wrong – in order to act for change. It is time to change the story: 129

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Imagine that you have spent your life on a speeding train and you suddenly feel the brakes applied. You would worry what was about to happen next… However, because the train is still rushing forward, people all around you are still talking of acceleration – the increasing pace of change – although in reality the train is no longer going ever faster. Something has changed. Out of the window the landscape is going by less quickly; everything is slowing down. An era is ending. (Dorling, 2020: 2) Let’s imagine a new story of hope and possibility to replace the one that is crumbling. At this point, I am mindful of Rutger Bregman, Dutch political commentator and activist, saying ‘“Be realistic, demand the impossible” was the rally cry of the 1968 Paris demonstrators – think about ending slavery, emancipation of women, the welfare state – all seen as crazy and eventually accepted as common sense’ (Bregman, 2018: 255–6). This is my challenge to you: Bregman stretches minds, accuses politicians of failing to come up with new ideas, advocates Universal Basic Income, open borders and a 15-hour working week as not only perfectly achievable and realistic, but absolutely necessary for our survival. Ideas for change are as simple as this once we decide on the value-base of a just world, a world in which everyone and everything is treated as worthy, where we cease to equate greed with status and justify dehumanisation as deserved. Krznaric is a public philosopher who writes about ideas to change society. He raises questions about intergenerational justice, whether or not we are good ancestors: ‘How will the people of the future remember us?’ (2020: 37). Empathy relates to our role as good ancestors. We are not empathising with our responsibility as custodians of the planet to hand over the world in a better condition – short-term thinking based on individualism colonises the world through neoliberalism oblivious of the wisdom of the Iroquois: In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation. (Krznaric, 2015: 192) We now face a struggle between short-term greed and long-term responsibility, the perspective of indigenous seventh-generation wisdom which urges us to: • • • • • •

Grasp that we are an eyeblink in cosmic time Be remembered well by posterity Consider the seventh generation ahead Plan projects beyond a human lifetime Envision multiple pathways for civilisation Strive for one-planet thriving

These ideas change the trajectory of history. We already have global movements rising: the global climate strike initiated by Greta Thunberg; Extinction Rebellion; 130

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Black Lives Matter; movements related to women and children’s rights as human rights; as well as many more acting on new economics, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, and the like, walking in the footsteps of the anti-slavery campaigners and suffragettes, that are reaching a critical mass of people acting together, a pivotal point in the story of being human. Dabiri asks us to talk about racial injustice differently, building on the revolutionary ideas of the past but forging new connections: Capitalism, like ‘whiteness’, is a pervasive organism. It infiltrates the innermost aspects of human experience and transforms our understanding of the world, our relationships with ourselves, with others, with our very environment. In fact, in many ways race and capitalism are siblings … Exploitation and inequality are the operating logic of capitalism. (Dabiri, 2021: 71) Those who see themselves as superior are the ones who use disconnection to justify the pursuit of wealth by exploiting Black lives, indigenous lives, women’s lives and the Earth itself. But although critique is the basis of change, alone it is not enough: we need a vision of what we want and the steps to make it a reality. The challenge, says Krznaric (2020: 13), is ‘to create a long-term revolution of the human mind’. Take the issue of workplace democracy. Why do we accept that the profits earned by workers are the property of workplace owners? Here is one to use in practice, a sci-fi story of ultimate possibility to stretch the imagination, from the world-renowned political commentator, Yanis Varoufakis (for fuller detail, see Varoufakis, 2020: 41–6):

  A story of infinite possibilities … No one tells us what to do … No bosses to order us around. Spontaneous order and personal responsibility overcome the fear of chaos … When hierarchies are used to match people with particular roles and teams, the result is clumsy, inefficient, oppressive … Hierarchies simply perpetuate and expand themselves, resulting in a terrible mismatch between a person’s standing and what they actually contribute … Under the flat management model … new staff are recruited on the understanding that once in the company, no one can force them to be secretaries or accountants … it is often the case that people recruited for these tasks eventually branch out into more creative roles in a way that no hierarchy would ever allow … “But what about pay? Surely someone must decide who gets what?” “No, no hierarchy is involved in determining pay either” … Costa was captivated. The corporation Kosti described had eliminated not only bosses 131

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and hierarchies but one of the crucial injustices of capitalism: that the owners of a company control its profits while those who work within it receive only a wage. The realization dawned on Costa that this was a company he would love to work for.

Once we become aware of the rigid thinking we internalise as common sense, we start to explore the infinite potential of our imaginations to steer towards a better future. George Monbiot (2017: 6) talks about going beyond ‘an unintelligible cacophony’ of fragmented parts to tell ‘a coherent and stabilising narrative’ embedded in the values we want to live by, that our failure to bring about change for social justice is ‘in essence, a failure of imagination’. Storytellers change the world. Be curious, take time to stand and stare, notice what is happening around you and imagine a world you would be proud to live in.

Be curious! Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of ‘talking back’, that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject – the liberated voice. (hooks, 1989: 9) Being curious is the basis of making critical connections. Engage with ideas and apply them to what you see around you. Antonio Gramsci helps us to see power in action, to understand that coercion and ideological consent work in parallel to persuade us to see the world we live in from the perspective of the powerful. This is why stories about welfare scroungers, blaming the poor for their own poverty, work so well. Paulo Freire, influenced by Gramsci, put these ideas on power into practice providing a critical praxis, a unity of theory and practice, that continues to influence the world over for effective change through critical consciousness and collective action. The role of the critical educator in Paulo Freire’s education for critical consciousness starts by creating the context for questioning lived reality from the stories people tell about their everyday lives. Seeing life’s contradictions from a critical perspective exposes the structural inequalities embedded in society which marginalise and exclude swathes of people from their human rights to full and engaged citizenship. This is essential. Without understanding the political context that creates people’s lived reality, it is easy to either point the finger of blame at the victims of injustice or at best to see the symptoms of their exclusion rather than the root causes. Understanding the way that power works calls for insight into intersectionality and the enormous contribution of Black women’s wisdom. Audre Lorde challenges the transformation of silence into language and action: 132

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What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of your fears. Because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself – a Black woman warrior poet doing my work – come to ask you, are you doing yours? (Lorde, 2019: 30) Dichotomous thought, the limited binary thinking that epitomises Western ideology, limits our conceptions to either one thing or the other, and continues to get in the way of insight into intersectionality, mystifying the way that ‘race’, class, gender, sexual preference, culture, religion, poverty, status, age, ability, xenophobia, patriarchy, misogyny … are all in that vast mixing pot, an interlocking web of oppressions that act in the interests of White patriarchal supremacy. Our struggles of consciousness lead us, according to Lorde, to making the same mistakes over and over again, often resulting in the very silence that is complicit with oppression. The Black Lives Matter Movement rose after the murder of George Floyd, saying to be silent is to be complicit. We all need to tell our stories, to listen and to act together, to lift as we climb (Davis, 1990). Dominant hegemony relies on the stories it tells to maintain its power. Imogen Tyler (2013) directs our consciousness to the extreme inequalities we witness – poverty, work and precarity, sexual violence, ‘dis’abilities, borders, citizenship, and the blatant differential value placed on human lives in the false imposition of ‘austerity’ which has merely served as a smokescreen for the rich to get richer. Tyler revisits the complexity of intersectionality to name democratic fascism which not only ‘pivots on racism but also incites hatred against non-racialised minorities, the disabled, queers, women and fascism’s political opponents, from refugee advocate to feminists, labour movements and intellectuals, to the judiciary … splintering social solidarity in ways unprecedented since the 1930s’.1 Stories reach out in empathy and are a source of intersectional critical consciousness. Story is song, story is rap, story is poetry – it’s an art form every one of us is familiar with and understands – it teaches us to think and see in new ways. Story is a route to engaging community in self-inquiry and self-knowledge: ‘the telling of a story slows the mind down and lets the story sink underneath the skin to reveal something of the spirit’ (Hustedde and King, 2002: 342). Story, poetry, art … ‘in the process of composition, we may disturb our existing mental constructs and invite new knowledge’. (Robson, 2012: 4)

Emancipatory action research as a unity of praxis The next stage is to identify an inclusive, holistic process, one that shares a value base with participatory practice. Emancipatory action research with its ideology 133

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of equality, and values of mutuality, reciprocity, human dignity, respect and trust woven through every stage of its process aspires to work with, not on, people, not controlling but equalising power relations, co-creating knowledge fits perfectly. Its intention is to engage with subordinated knowledges, to be open to diverse ways of knowing beyond the written word – dialogue, story, music, drama, poetry, drawings, photographs – in a search for multiple truths. More than that, it embraces collective action as part of its purpose for a future built on harmony between people and planet. Action for change emerges from new knowledge; new ways of seeing possibilities for a different world lead to new ways of being. The Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN)2 connects people across the globe developing participatory action research in practice. Participatory action research changed the critical nature of my theory and practice as a grassroots practitioner. It offered a process and structure with which to make sense of the complexity of participatory practice, keeping it focused and critical.

  A story of participatory action research changing my life … Picture me in 1985, in Hattersley Community Centre, the second most marginalised community in the UK … Paul Jones and I were community workers trying to make sense of the sudden changes in the political context brought about by Thatcherism’s neoliberal ideology and the drastic impact it was having on our community … he handed me a copy of Peter Reason and John Rowan’s Human Inquiry (1981) the first book on participatory action research I’d come across … this simple act changed my understanding of research forever … ideas change the way we see the world … the action research movement, triggered by the ideas of Paulo Freire, committed itself to challenging controlling research methods by taking a holistic approach to understanding human lives … overtly naming a value base committed to equality, mutuality, reciprocity, human dignity and respect … the emphasis was ‘researching with, not on people’ as an emancipatory challenge to power relations … using diverse ways of knowing to engage with knowledge democracy – dialogue, story, poetry, music, drawings, photographs … in search of multiple truths, not a dominant truth – inspiring the co-creation of new knowledges, new ways of relating to each other and the planet … and most important of all was action for change as part of the research process … a unity of praxis where theory and action come together in real life situations … At this point, research became part of my life and the dissonance I experienced between my practice and what I had been told was authentic research became a harmony. 134

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The next port of call in my story is Athens, the 2009 CARN conference, where Stephen Kemmis clarified my thinking by talking about participatory action research as a way of life … a unity of praxis.

  Stephen Kemmis’s story of participatory action research as a way of life Live wisely: living a philosophical life is for educators, community development workers, youth workers, medical practitioners and all others committed to social justice: 1. Think well, and speak your truth with integrity. 2. Act well by avoiding harm, waste and excess, and suffering. 3. Relate well to others and the world by living with kindness, caring, compassion and cooperation. This is based on ‘a unity of praxis that comes together as a way of life … if we accept this view, then we might say that action research should aim not just at achieving knowledge of the world, but achieving a better world’ (Kemmis, 2009).

So, my challenge is that participatory action research’s purpose is emancipatory, aiming to achieve a better world through democratic participation. It is precisely why some of us refer to it as emancipatory action research. It cannot be an emancipatory praxis by decontextualising people from their political times, by focusing on atomised units – family, classroom, community – simply because the forces that structure our local lives are reaching in from outside. Fragmented knowing leads only to fragmented doing! With that in mind, my intention is to calm down our racing thoughts to make space for new ideas, for a new story for new times, for a kinder and more compassionate world, and the first stage is to voice the values at its heart. Pause for thought … I’d like you to take a few seconds to imagine the new world that you’d be proud to live in, a place where you would flourish, be fully human, be able to give of your best to society … What would this world look like in reality? How are people living? What’s important to them? … Hold onto these pictures in your mind’s eye as my ideas unfold. Here and there, I’ll pause … let thoughts have time to catch up with words … so let me take you on a journey of consciousness … emphasising that values are the lens through which we see the world … they’re embedded in the stories we tell, and they create the reality of our everyday lives. 135

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Change the story! Ideas and action bound together in praxis influence change. Let’s imagine a new story of hope and possibility, one that is rooted in kindness and cooperation, where we feel fundamentally interconnected with all humanity and the planet. Imagine a counternarrative of kindness … a story underpinning a just society … a story evoking hope that such a world is possible … a story powerful enough to dislodge the dominant narrative of profit for one based on the connected knowledge often found in wisdoms that have been subordinated under the weight of capital. Think Ubuntu, my humanity is inextricably part of yours … so we see each other – both those we know and strangers, those from different cultures, different places – as fully human, we reach out with compassion and friendship, aware of our interconnection. Starting with the hard facts in this book that expose poverty as a political choice, with a community group, imagine the world you would like to live in and begin writing a new story. It is from these grassroots beginnings that new stories emerge.

‘New stories are not just the corrections of old stories, they are visions, certainty that we have a choice, to be open to the fact that for societies to evolve an old order must change’ (Malik, 2019: 263). The important reminder here is that it is futile to fight facts with other facts. It simply does not penetrate people’s imagination. It is the power of story that excites the imagination. But you cannot envision the new story without knowing the facts. By way of example, think about the current xenophobic antagonism towards immigrants. Statistics that detail the work profile of immigrants, their tax contributions, how little crime they commit, how good they are for the economy … simply do not ‘fight fake facts’ (Malik, 2019: 263) forcefully enough to change attitudes built on fear politics. Taking the imagination back to the question ‘What kind of world would we like to live in and what values underpin it?’ is the starting point for a counternarrative. Add to that the neuroscientific knowledge that empathy is a natural part of being human, and we have a springboard into a new story. Emancipatory action research is a storytelling praxis committed to a better world that starts with questions like this to trigger counternarratives of change, conversations with people that connect over time and space, engaging with ideas and new possibilities, to change the story … A participative worldview draws our attention to the qualities of the participative-relational practices in our work. Issues of interdependence, politics, power and empowerment must be addressed at both microand macro-levels, that is, in inquiring relationships in face-to-face and

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small group interaction, about how the research is situated in its wider political context. (Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 448) Emancipatory action research is an integral part of participatory practice in a constant process of search and re-search (Freire, 1972). Story is the beginning of dialogue. Equally, story can encompass first-person praxis (personal level), second-person praxis (interpersonal level) and third-person praxis (collective/ systemic level) – all mutually generating and reinforcing one another (Torbert, 2001). This is a vital concept in relation to collective action for change, but does not happen unless we rigorously structure it into our practice. Change begins at community level, but it does not achieve its transformative potential until it has a global reach. In relation to the idea of personal autonomy leading to collective action, Doyal and Gough (1991) locate this confidence and sense of identity in story. They suggest that autonomy of agency is a basic human need that leads to critical autonomy, and they see this as the prerequisite to critical participation in society, the basis of collective action. These theoretical insights link the practical strategy of reflection as story with a political discovery of who we are in the world. This introduces the vital importance of intersectionality, the urgency to get to grips with intersectional power. … Intersectionality explodes the myth of a single truth by exposing the multiplicity of silenced, subordinated truths. It also raises issues of knower and known. Whose voice is telling the story, and who is making sense of it? The passion evoked by the discovery of voice by those whose voices have previously been shut up and shut out releases the energy to act on newfound confidence from places where large numbers remain unknown and researchers remain unknowing (Bing and Trotman Reid, 1996).

Listening from the heart Emancipatory action research starts in dialogue. Be interested in what people have to say. Listen, pay attention, empathise with the stories you are told. Step outside your own ego, and notice; don’t formulate responses, ask questions; be comfortable with the art of silence and don’t crowd people with words. Hear your tone of voice … Emancipatory action research pays particular attention to ‘listening carefully and respectfully to indigenous voices [by] learning to create spaces for the mutual exchange of wisdom’ (Pyrch and Castillo, 2001: 379). This is specifically designed to counter the fractured parts of our knowing by opening dialogue across difference that connects to ‘soulful voices within ourselves’ (Pyrch and Castillo, 2001: 379).

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Empathy is the key quality in creating active projects to build participatory wisdom as resistance to the neoliberal global project. Engaging across difference, diversity and biodiversity, co-researchers use story to develop knowing beyond the intellect, ‘to hear those quiet sounds of foam, created by Ganma, we need to listen with our hearts, to be aware of the “experiencing”, and not just the experiences that happen to us’, and in doing so, ‘we give, we receive, we unite, and we create something new … if we approach its diversity and complexity with an open spirit of humility, a willingness to be permeated, that the new knowledge also reveals itself to us. Humility helps us to grow, to listen, to share, and to know how to give and how to receive. It teaches us how to create a knowledge that is “ours” not “yours” or “mine” – to create not only a “you” or “me”, but a “we”’ (Pyrch and Castillo, 2001: 380–1).

A world held in common is one in which we are able to reach across all aspects of difference to act together on issues which are wrong. There really is no difference between participatory action research and emancipatory action research other than by placing ‘emancipatory’ in its title we leave no room for weak interpretations of ‘participatory’! Wendy Derbyshire, community activist in Hattersley, uses reflection on the use of story with the Hattersley Women Writers, a group that led to Hattersley Women for Change. Her reflections on practice help us to identify how powerful her use of story was with a group of women who had never had the confidence nor the inclination to write about their lives.

  Wendy Derbyshire’s story of Hattersley Women Writers … I loved my involvement in that group; it was often the high point of my week. It’s such a powerful way of seeing how human beings can learn to connect with each other, I think. What did we have in common, apart from gender? Well, we’d all arrived in Hattersley as part of some social engineering by the power brokers of the early ’60s, but I don’t think those two things could entirely explain the bond that was created between us. We were all ages, and had not experienced life the same way, but something very powerful was at work in that little band of women, most definitely. Everyone started out nervously at first and were hesitant at sharing what they’d produced. I could really identify with the things they said about scribbling away in secret at home, and trying to find either the space to do

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it or the time. Fear of a partner or family member picking it up and saying ‘What’s all this then? Catherine Cookson better look out!’, or some other kind of a jibe, was common. But they did write, they did carry on, despite the butterflies in the pit of the stomach before they shared their most recent offering. Nobody ever needed reminding to give respectful silence to a member who was reading their work aloud, possibly for the first time. Neither could the enthusiasm and appreciation of a participant’s offering be constructed as anything other than sheer pride and admiration, truly felt. We learnt such a lot from and about each other and it was so exciting to see the women’s confidence increasing week by week. The feelings of surprise and wonder that were generated among us as we realised that we were very capable of investigating what was important and meaningful to us about our lives, became replaced by trust and the real desire to have some very frank exchanges about just what constituted our own particular worldview, and how it felt to live it. I liked the silence in the group at those times. It was a time for listening, digesting and reflecting on what we had heard, and just as importantly, respecting the owner of the hand that propelled an ordinary pen to write such extraordinary things. Through Mary’s vivid description of learning to live life differently due to sight loss, our eyes were opened. When she spoke of her pride at living in Hattersley, a place that hasn’t got the most positive image outside of its boundaries, then our chests became inflated by the air of affirmation radiating from her passionate statement. I was proud to stand with her a few months later, on International Women’s Day, in a packed theatre, as we both read our poetry to a lively audience of people who just loved to hear the stories of other people’s lives. For me, I learnt about the power of listening, not only to the spoken word, but to the spaces in between. I began to understand that there are times when each gap doesn’t need to be filled up just for the sake of it. Sometimes though, that left unsaid was the most profound – I began to think of what kind of question would begin to unlock it.

Source: Wendy Derbyshire (10 April 2008)

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Wendy’s reflections on the practice of story help to identify how the significance of trust and respectful listening in storytelling can lead to the personal and collective autonomy for change. Starting in personal stories, a group of women who had never had the confidence to write, let alone share their writing with others, were able to move from deeply personal stories of lived reality to exploring the political relevance of their lives, and then to collectively acting together for change, both in the community and beyond the community, in such a short space of time. Wendy offers us some critical insights into separated and connected knowing: separated knowing being more distanced, critical and questioning; connected knowing more empathetic, open, entering the place of the other person or idea in order to understand it from deep inside. Both kinds of knowing need critical feedback to take the process forward (Goldberger et al, 1996; Belenky et al, 1997). This also links Giroux’s (2005) notion of border crossing to the use of story, a way of being open to different ways of knowing and being by seeing life from across a border. ‘Connected knowing [is] a rigorous, deliberate, and demanding procedure, a way of knowing that requires work’ (Goldberger et al, 1996: 209) and, as such, needs to be structured into our practice. Finding expression to describe what has been silenced and subordinated calls for integrating the inner voice and encouraging new forms of dialogue to reach a collective consensus on new ways of knowing that lead to new ways of acting – and we believe that story offers one such approach. Uncertainty and openness are prerequisites for this connected approach, and in suspending our own truth, we open ourselves to the possibility of empathy as a way of making sense of collective experiences in order to act collectively for change. As Maxine Greene, respected educational philosopher, reminds us, a truly authentic critical space is one in which participants can push one another’s thinking, making critical connections, name that which has previously been unnamed and, most importantly, share dreams that lead to better ways of being, acting from a common ground (Greene, 1988). In telling our stories and our histories, we heal fractures and create new possibilities – with insight, hindsight and foresight, we reach into the past in order to understand the present and create the future.

Slowing the mind and reaching inside to the spirit Stuart Rees (2020a, 2020b) has recently opened my thinking to the power of naming policies emerging from current populist politics as cruelty. A targeted killing of the spirit has resulted, as hope and trust have evaporated. We have become systematically disconnected from each other. Neoliberal free-market societies have benefited foreign investors and the very richest local opportunists ‘while the great mass of people received starvation and oppression for their portion. In every case, however, movement towards free-market society brought mass dislocation’ (Alexander, 2010: 105). This is because ‘[w]hereas the downfall of any society produces mass dislocation, only free-market society produces mass 140

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dislocation as part of its normal functioning, even during periods of prosperity’ (Alexander, 2010: 60; emphasis added). Patricia Hill Collins also talks about the de-spiritualisation of life as a consequence of Western consciousness, separating the knowing self from the known object in preparation for a materialised world of profit and exploitation (Hill Collins, 1990: 70).

Imagination in the art of storytelling Transformative change can be aspired to only if we contextualise people’s lives in the politics of their times. But that point where empathy connects with intellect is vital: The imagination has two aspects: the inventive or poetic aspect, which conceives and finds expressive form, and the sympathetic or ethical aspect, which allows us to perceive, recognize and respect reality from points of view other than our own. (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 100) Together, empathy and imagination become a radical, transformative fusion.

As we start to listen to people’s stories about their own life experiences we develop processes that link the personal to the political. Critical consciousness is not taught, it is discovered. The skill of the critical educator is to develop dialogue for this discovery. Freirean dialogue based on mutual respect and dignity builds trusting relationships where trust has been eroded and a journey of co-creating new knowledge begins. This new learning creates a confidence that lifts us above the demeaning dominant narrative of the welfare scrounger to see critically, to make a different sense of the world which inspires confident collective action built on emotions of outrage – it is an education of the head and the heart. The creative activity of the imagination is a potent source of compassionate energy. (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 100) Our challenge is to be creative, to find forms of engaging dialogue appropriate to the community. Stories can be told through many artistic forms, and here is one.

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A structure for storytelling praxis Stage 1. LISTEN: from the heart to the stories people tell. Find images that reflect the major themes of the stories you’re told, those people feel most passionately about. These are generative themes. Stage 2. QUESTION: Use these images as the focus for group dialogue simply by asking questions: What’s happening? Why? Who is involved? How’re they feeling? Stage 3. TELL: If people identify with the images, conversation will flow. Focus will turn away from the images to the group as people share their own stories. As curiosity deepens, critical connections will be made with the political context, for example: Why is this happening to some people but not others? Is it related to discrimination? You are a co-teacher and a co-learner in the process! Stage 4. IMAGINE: What values we would like at the heart of the best society we could imagine ourselves living in? This is the start of a new story, a counternarrative. Stage 5. REFLECT: What are the values that we live by in this society? Identify different values that we experience, both negative and positive, and see what emerges naturally in group dialogue. Stage 6. RESEARCH: A desire to find out more will emerge from the group and everyone should play the role of co-researcher. It may be relevant to take a look at the UK National Values Survey (see pp 200 and 202) … or if the issue of people being naturally greedy comes up, introduce new discoveries on empathy … or introduce Stuart Rees’s ideas on cruelty … point towards UNICEF or the Joseph Rowntree Foundation or Child Poverty Action Group if there are questions on child poverty … or to the New Economics Foundation if there are questions on a new economy … Stage 7. KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING: From here, this could, for example, become a group endeavour to create a collage for a community noticeboard to prompt wider debate. It could be in two parts: one containing images of Utopia, the other Dystopia – this contains the potential for critiquing the dominant narrative and plants the seeds of a counternarrative. Stage 8. DISCOVER: It will almost certainly prompt people to want to find out more. What is going on? Where is it happening, and to whom? Why is it happening? How did it happen? These are searching questions that lead thinking to a past–present–future dimension which, in turn, leads to action for change. Stage 9. ACT: Build a community noticeboard to display your collage. Open a dialogue café and invite people to join ‘community conversation meals’ – take the discussion deeper and wider: what can be done about it? Plant the seeds for change!

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To find inspiration on the use of political collage for promoting dialogue look at the work of the popular satirist Cold War Steve for inspiration.3 He uses online photographs of people in the public domain to create collages that invite curiosity and questioning. This technique could be used as a codification in the Freirean process of problematising (see pp  211–12). The visual impact is enormous compared with talking about abstract ideas and facts. It hits the spot between the intellect and pure emotions where we exist as human beings and where our real holistic truth is created.

Imagination in the art of poetry Stuart Rees talks about the need to imagine a common good by crossing the boundaries of disciplines to free our intellects to take risks by removing the separations of ‘love and action, poetry and politics’, and to have fun in the process (Rees, 2020b)! Here I want to draw on his use of poetry to prove ideas into insight into a politics of cruelty. Lessons could be learned from poetry which unmasked the past, undressed the present and forecast a more socially just future. Images and messages in poetry contribute vision and understanding. Without the insights, irony and softness of poetry, accounts of cruelty could seem relentlessly macabre. (Rees, 2020a: 3) Poetry is a democratic and participatory form of communication. In fact, Bob Geldof suggests that W.B. Yeats helped the Irish to find out who they are, creating a cultural revolution with the pen, not the sword. The artistic imagination is what speaks to the soul of the country, and Yeats held up a mirror which spoke to the Irish people and brought a revolution of the Irish mind in which no one was killed! The intellect needs space to move from one idea to another and emerge in cultural action for change.4 Consciousness is an inner narration of experience. Out of our personal stories emerges a deeper understanding of the way that our lives have been socially situated by structures of power, and we begin to see the personal as political. Together, we discover that we can change the world by changing the way we make sense of our experience of the world. Stories of everyday life, then, begin the process of transformative change at the point of personal empowerment. ‘In the process of telling the story, people realize they have acquired a tacit knowledge about things that previously they would not have been able to articulate’ (Bray et al, 2000: 95). A more critical consciousness emerges when we start to question our stories. Gramsci was clear that a catalyst is needed to prime the process of becoming critical, and this can take the form of people, thoughts, ideas, insights that we brush up against, critical encounters in the everyday. These encounters create interruptions in our acceptance of what is, opening up ‘the places where we rework what has already happened to give current events meaning’ (Steedman, 143

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2000: 5). And it all begins in the understanding that ‘any sense of the extraordinary is grounded first of all in ordinary experience’ (Quinney, 1998: xiii). Our histories have been written for us. Whose story matters? The dominant power tells dominant stories. The rest get hidden from history. This is precisely why we need to revise the school curriculum, otherwise what we are taught is reinforcing our worth in the hierarchy of whose lives matter. Participatory practice works with silenced voices that have been ‘hidden from history’ (Rowbotham, 1977), telling and retelling stories that reclaim hidden identities and, in the telling, identify dominant power relations that subordinate. In these ways, personal stories become collective narratives which, set within our political times, have the power to make interventions which transform unequal relations and move towards a participatory ‘world worthy of human aspiration’ (Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 1), one which acknowledges difference and diversity in all its richness and strength, and honours the natural world of which we are a part.

‘Transformation of silence into language and action’ (Audre Lorde, 2019) The powerful, transformative message from neuroscientific research is that our brains have an empathy circuit. This means that to be fully human we need to express our need for compassion, kindness, caring, cooperation – feeling the experience of others as our own. This is the nature of connection. This new knowledge from neuroscience changes the story (see pp 201–7). It is the basis of a counternarrative, the foundation for changing the way we relate to each other and the Earth. It has the power to change the course of history. We are natural storytellers, this is how we empathise with each other, sharing experience through the spoken word, the written word, pictures, poetry, rap, song … engaging the intellect and the emotions for a deeper wisdom. The power of ideas is the birthing ground for action, and ideas are at their most powerful in the stories we tell.

Story opens the space for dialogue, and in dialogue we explore the values of a new way of being, using imagination to see a new world. Small grassroots stories merge into big stories for global action. Participatory projects in communities join forces with local action in other places, in other countries and cultures, to unite us in one global coalition against oligarchy. Wall-building, going back to being ‘great’ again, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, fear of difference are all morbid signs of decline, but they do offer a crack where the light shines in, an opportunity for change: The good news … is that one of the reasons things are getting worse is that they are getting better … Power is shifting, and with that shift 144

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comes discomfort and resistance from those who now have to listen to new ideas and humble themselves, when they have always had an advantage. (Malik, 2019: 262–3) Inspired by Black women’s wisdom on intersectionality, combined with emergent new analyses of power from people like Imogen Tyler on the use of stigma to dehumanise swathes of humanity (Tyler, 2013; 2020), we have bourgeoning intellectual critiques. Together with new developments in doing things differently – such as Kate Raworth’s (2018) Doughnut Model of the new economy, factoring in a flourishing humanity and a flourishing planet in mutual balance, and developments in technology – we have the complete package! We are inextricably part of global humanity, just as we are inextricably part of the ecosystem of life on Earth, and: We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet … climate justice is intergenerational justice. (Garces, 2019) In these ways, a deep love for all humanity becomes a collective wisdom for a healthy, flourishing planet. Competition against becomes cooperation with as a participatory worldview begins to dismantle the power of global neoliberal capitalism with a counternarrative rooted in a common humanity. Putting values at the heart of the matter, we can transform knowledge for profit into knowledge for a participatory world where all life on Earth flourishes.

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6 The role of dialogue Jane Springett

Dialogue is the encounter between men [sic] mediated by the world, in order to name the world. (Freire, 1972) … a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. (Winnie the Pooh, in Milne and Shepard, 1989) While story can be seen as an essential starting point on the journey to transformation, dialogue lies at the heart of engaging in participatory practice. Participation involves a dialogical relationship with the world, both human and physical. So, without true dialogue there is no real participatory practice. Through dialogue we make meaning together, we interact with others, receiving and giving feedback and information. This creates a learning ecosystem. Indeed, dialogue is fundamentally social and relational. It is central to collective life (Habermas, 1994: 106), and through dialogue we begin to create what Sanders (2020a) calls ‘collective ingenuity’. Dialogue is more than a conversation, which is an informal interchange between people. Dialogue has a purpose and involves both listening and communicating. It is therefore a fundamentally reciprocal but also embodied process. Egalitarian at its best, dialogue is about ‘with-ness’ rather than ‘on-ness’. (Shotter, 2006) However, engaging in genuine dialogue takes time, requires the right conditions to flourish and does not necessarily have to consist solely of sitting and talking. Other modes of dialogue, for example through the creative arts, are possible; indeed, to be encouraged, as long as there is inbuilt reciprocity. The role of the participatory practitioner is to use creativity to find ways of building what Kemmis (2006), building on Habermas (1984, 1987), calls ‘communicative spaces’, either within existing structures or through the creation of new ones. These communicative spaces provide an opportunity for not only collective meaning making but also creative opportunities for self-organisation and lateral thinking. They are spaces structured to create free-flowing dialogue. Whatever form they take, social learning is the outcome. Ideas and experience are explored together across differences and, while there may not be agreement, mutual understanding develops. It is through dialogical inquiry we come to different ways of knowing and start to question the ‘taken-for-granteds’ that influence our lives.

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This chapter will explore the nature of dialogue, how it underpins Freirean approaches, the preconditions for dialogue, and the challenges in creating the context for a dialogue of equals (Arnstein, 1969). It will also provide some examples of ways that might help to achieve this. There are considerable limits to dialogue in the era of social media. However, critically affirmative dialogue and the capacity to listen is crucial to enabling the co-production of knowledge necessary for social change and transformation. In many ways, social media actively encourages the opposite. With a few exceptions the companies that own social media seek to create markets through their algorithms and exploit differences for financial gain. Moreover, the flow of information is one way only. They know a great deal about us through the way they collect and use our data but we know little in return about them. A truly powerful imbalance. Our resulting social bubbles emphasise tribalism and difference rather than shared humanity, an emphasis easily exploitable by those who want to create fear and division. ‌ s participatory practitioners our role is to expand opportunities for A deliberation and constructive dialogue to counteract an increasingly monological culture.

This is both political and ethical work and it needs to be both pragmatic and idealist, what Forester (1999) calls playing the mediating midwife of true dialogue and deliberation. We need to encourage dialogue in new ways to counteract the worst of social media and enhance the best – as envisaged by World Wide Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee – in the form of greater connection across geographical divides, such as was clearly evidenced in the recent pandemic.

So, what is dialogue? A philosophical, social and spiritual concept, the components of the word ‘dialogue’ give a clue to what we are talking about: dia means through, and logos refers to meaning. Dialogue, thus, is meaning flowing through us. Isaacs (1999) argues that dialogue is a conversation with a centre, not sides. However, dialogue is more than a conversation; it is at its best an interactive process of learning together whereby mutual value is enhanced through the process of meaning-making. It is a relational exchange process that allows interplay between people as whole beings, in a trusting and respectful way, to explore new understandings openly through the language of feelings, ideas, facts, dissent, opinions and plans. It is also much more intentional and structured than a conversation. Outside such dialogical inquiry lies everyday talk and conversation, and while this type of exchange is an essential component of dialogical encounters – as it builds the trust and relationships that form the glue that keeps the dialogue moving forward – meaning-making and collective knowledge is not its focus. Indeed, for what Freire calls authentic dialogue 148

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to happen, you need to create the right conditions, which means creating the structures and conditions for collective learning, learning that connects people across differences to share a world in common. Authentic dialogue overtly intends to equalise power relations between people, whereas in most conversations the power relations of wider society get acted out in personal encounters. As Foucault (1980) has shown, power gets acted out in our everyday encounters, reinforcing the dominant order of privilege. Freire was acutely aware of this: Dialogue does not exist in a political vacuum. It is not a ‘free space’ where you say what you want.… To achieve the goals of transformation, dialogue implies responsibility, directiveness, determination, discipline, objectives. (Freire, in Shor and Freire, 1987: 102)

In this sense, dialogue creates an interruption in the course of everyday experience, prising open the space for change by engaging people in a more respectful and equal experience. A number of writers including Senge (1990), Bohm (1996) and Habermas (1994), coming to dialogue from different perspectives, all argue that in the process of authentic dialogue something new is created. Insights previously hidden are shared collectively, not contained within one individual. In dialogue, while paying attention and taking care of the spaces between us, we move from interaction to participating in the creation of common meaning. However, these processes evolve slowly and iteratively, requiring careful attention to building trust and enabling constructive relational dynamics (Shaw et al, 2020). Gradually, out of mutual relations of trust, empathy connects our ideas with those of others. It is this power of connection that leads to new ways of knowing: people feel respected, heard, affirmed and validated, and so discard the need to defend their position. We are not suggesting that this is a form of mutual admiration: dissent and disagreement are part of the process, but respectfully ‘walking in another person’s shoes’ helps us to empathise with different experiences that have given rise to different epistemologies, rather than fight our own corner. This creates a relatedness, a connection: With-ness thinking and talking occurs when we come into living interactive contact with another’s living being, with their utterances, with their bodily expressions, with their words, with their works. (Shotter, 2006: 587) It also creates relational knowledge. Relationship-specific knowledge (Abma, 2006; Harris et  al, 2015) has until recently been ignored by science and is largely absent in academic literature because it is so difficult to capture, define and measure. Relationship-specific knowledge is inherently dynamic, continually refined and co-created by interaction with new experiences. It 149

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is continually changing as the context of knowledge continually changes, creating new experiences. Some relationship-specific knowledge will be shared understanding, some of it will be a diversity of interpretations. It is a form of connected knowing; one that pays full attention to others by suspending our own truth (Belenky et al, 1986). Indeed, Belenky et al’s differentiation between separated knowing and connected knowing echoes Sanders’ (2020b) observations referred to in Figure 6.1. Separated knowing is the type of knowing that comes through discussion rather than dialogue This patriarchal approach encourages an adversarial response in order to generate a debate, and is at its most antiquated in the House of Commons in the UK (and Canada). Discussion that is concerned with the exchange of opinions will almost always be dominated by assertive voices and rarely encourages equality. Figure 6.1: Broadcast vs Gathering In a blog post, ‘When we gather, let’s be in conversation’, Beth Sanders talks eloquently about the downside of traditional conferences whereby speaker after speaker talks at you. Far better, she argues, is to have conversations when you gather where you learn from each other. She illustrates this with the following diagrams distinguishing talking and broadcasting from gathering: in the former you tell, but in the latter you explore.

Source: Sanders (2020b)

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Connected knowing emerges from dialogue in relations of trust and empathy: ‘the deliberate imaginative extension of one’s understanding into positions that initially feel wrong or remote’ (Belenky et al, 1986: 121). Thus, dialogue aims to achieve deeper understanding among participants, moving towards recognising that there are many truths, many ways of experiencing and making sense of the world.

Dialogue engages the emotions. Quite often, in very marginalised communities there is a high level of apathy, resistance and fear. Freire (1972) advocated the use of generative themes as a starting point in the dialogue process, that is, those that are relevant to people’s lives and therefore arouse emotion. Emotions have an energy that emerges from the inertia of apathy, releasing feeling from atrophy and generating action. They are an essential part of being fully human, so a good dialogical space is one that pays attention to emotional energy, which is often the wellspring of creativity. Anger, for example, is very different from apathy; it has an energy that can be channelled towards action, and should not be feared, if it is handled appropriately. Indeed, appropriately expressed anger needs to be released or it can fester. Authentic dialogue is an embodied process that engages the whole person, heart, head and soul. It therefore is a process of humanisation. Dialogue embodies human dignity and respect, encouraging people to relate to each other in ways that are mutual, reciprocal, trusting and cooperative. It is a horizontal communication between people who really believe that they are equal in worth, so it calls for a profound belief in one another, a trust that we are all infinitely capable. This is aptly demonstrated in Freirean pedagogy, which is about listening to the narratives of people and engaging in dialogue, paying respectful attention to the story being told and taking it seriously. ‘Paulo somehow connected his whole being, his reason and emotion, to the whole being of another [in dialogue] about something which he and the other person wanted to know’ (Ana Aranjo Freire, cited in Mayo, 2004: 80). This essence of presence is in sharp difference to many contemporary so-called dialogues where the emphasis is on brief encounters with others, cultural invasion, or anti-dialogue, which involves the imposition of one’s assumptions, values and perceptions of the world on others, silencing and disempowering. Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which humans transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.… If it is in speaking their word that humans transform the world by naming it, dialogue imposes itself as the way in which [humans] achieve significance as [humans]. Dialogue is thus an existential necessity. (Freire, 1972: 60–1) 151

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Going deeper: deconstructing the essence of dialogue A number of writers from very different backgrounds have explored the nature of dialogue and the potential of dialogue for transformation. Their theoretical ideas have been informed by practice-diverse contexts, many involving conflict. They all share the notion that dialogue is fundamental to being human, that to discourage it is to dehumanise, and that it is inherently an embodied experience and practice (Underhill-Sem, 2017).

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1962), Shotter (2006) uses the metaphor of two skins touching each other, becoming cumulatively responsive to each other’s touch, and from this a sense of difference emerges. As this living intertwining takes place, new possibilities of relationship emerge, new experiences and new interconnections, and ‘a third form of life’ is conceived. ‘The interplay involved gives rise to an interpretation (a representation) from our responses that occur spontaneously and directly with our living encounters with another’s expressions. Neither is it merely a feeling, for it carries with it as it unfolds a bodily sense of the possibilities for responsive action’ (MerleauPonty, 1962). In other words, we want to know what comes next; the curiosity moves us forward rather than closes us down. Indeed, Shotter and Katz (1998) have been able to demonstrate that this creation of a sense of moving forward is achieved as people co-create meaning through dialogical inquiry, from within their lived experience and the living experience of their shared circumstances. When the collaborative dialogical activities cease, the generative nature of the process also ceases.

There are three ingredients to a well-crafted, holistic and authentic dialogue: listening, the option of staying silent and critical reflection. Each are threads which help tie the dialogical process together and create in the process a shared meaning and shared collective identity.

  Two stories of how dialogue empowered communities Processes that encourage dialogue differ significantly from mainstream bureaucratic practice. Moore (2007), in an analysis of the SHARP (Sustainable Health Action Research Project) experience in Wales, demonstrated that two enduring features were increased self-esteem of participants and improved connections between local agencies and communities. In examining sources of exclusion, Moore identified that the response and attitude of public servants towards marginalised people reinforced social exclusion, with the result that relations often broke down. Rejection and humiliation results in reinforcing lack 152

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of confidence and low self-esteem, demeaning and dehumanising local people. The same project also found that a more skilled dialogical approach to community development avoided interpersonal conflicts and paved the way towards local people working more equally with local services. In order to address political issues collectively, relationships between people need to be respectful. Many years ago, a student of mine (Jane’s) was undertaking a participatory action research course and had elected to work with a local health forum in Birkenhead, of which she was a member. The forum was part of a local regeneration initiative, and included both residents and officers from a range of local agencies. She recounted how often the meetings had been held up when one of the residents talked incessantly about an issue, generally disrupting the meeting’s business. When she asked people if they would be interested in participating in a collaborative inquiry around an issue of their choice, this particular individual offered to volunteer. Despite her qualms, she went ahead and worked with the forum and the volunteers. There was an overwhelming agreement that the focus should be on communication at forum meetings. As the inquiry unfolded, it emerged that the man who had been the cause of her concern had been so frustrated at not being listened to that he resorted to disruption as a strategy. A number of the residents of the forum shared the same feeling, that they were excluded by professionals, both in terms of the language used and a failure to listen. In the collaborative inquiry group, the experience of working dialogically meant that they were able to express their frustration and decide on action to change the situation.

Listening Authentic dialogue which encompasses collective meaning-making does not take place unless listening takes place. This is not surface listening, which we commonly engage in when we are in conversation, when most of us are busy thinking about what we want to say next while someone else is talking. We are not trained to listen. It requires us to be present as a whole person, it requires silence on our behalf and it requires an active intention to pay attention. When this occurs, there is some evidence (see the next panel) that this gets transferred to the collective field, even though it might only be taking place at the level of an individual self. The quality of listening has to be consciously encouraged, and this can occur through very small triggers that shift listening so there is presencing rather than absencing. Listening increases not only empathy but also reciprocity. When we really pay attention, we intuitively get feedback from any speaker as a direct result of closing down or opening our mind. We often experience that as if we almost become at one with the person who is talking, as the ‘feedback loop 153

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between listening, action and impact awareness is instantly closed’ (Arruda and Gunnlaugson, 2016). Through relatedness and empathy created by deep listening, a new sense of self wanting to help the person emerges as we connect at a deep level inside the dialogical container. This is a collective holistic experience, as collective listening bears witness. Through collective listening, new deeper meanings that go beyond the individual self emerge and are expressed. Collective listening provides an opening through which underlying realities can come through. A participant in such a group echoed Pooh in the quote at the beginning of this chapter: “I worked with what was inside me in the arena of the circle, and it changed my experience, ‘out there’” (personal communication).

Arruda and Gunnlaugson (2016) report on the work of some colleagues who developed a series of small listening practices in which participants of workshops are invited to experiment with the unwanted side effects of non-listening. In pairs, sitting opposite to each other, they move through three rounds of listening, with only the listener getting instructions about how to listen. It can be a handful or a ballroom full of pairs, but each pair always has its own dyadic space and is part of a larger social field at the same time. The speaker is asked to share an activity or story that she loves. The speakers do not know what the listeners are instructed to do. Depending on the instruction (i.e., whether the instruction is ‘open mind, open heart, open will’, a subset of those, or, to the contrary, ‘closed mind, heart, will’), two fundamentally different types of social fields will arise. With the instruction of ‘open mind’ and ‘open heart’, the listeners generate a social field of compassion that makes the whole room buzz like a beehive. Why is this the case if the speakers do not know what the listeners have been instructed to do? The intended level of quality of listening remains invisible to them. They speak their minds into unknown territory. When debriefing the ‘open mind, open heart, open will’ set of instructions, we have heard speakers repeatedly report patterns of experience such as that they had said more than they initially intended to. They surprised themselves and started discovering dimensions of the experience they have not been aware of. They got to say things they did not know that they knew. It helped them to reconnect to the deeper layers of themselves. They loved the listeners for their listening. The listeners noted that the growing enthusiasm of the speakers touched them and helped them to open their hearts even more. The more the invisible dance between listeners and speakers kept unfolding, the deeper became the wish of the listeners for the speakers to be happy. On the opposite end, when the listeners were instructed to close their organs of perception – mind, heart and will – and to listen ‘full of judgement’ and ‘as if they did not genuinely believe what the speaker said’, the collective buzz died down. Speakers report that after a moment of disbelief and confusion, they start turning inwards, checking whether there is something wrong about them. They try harder, starting to entertain the

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The role of dialogue listeners, hoping to re-connect to them and on the way begin to lose themselves. After a few moments, the motivation of the speakers dies down, not much is coming to their minds any more. The ‘paired listening’ practice does not take more than 6–8 minutes. It teaches everyone in the room the difference between a social field of presencing and one of absencing. In a nutshell, the practice brings together cause and effect in time and space of an invisible, inner activity, with the visible results of social reality creation as the co-enacted drama put on stage. Everyone knows this from daily life but most often, most take it for granted. The realization that it is not a natural law unfolding but us who unwittingly create the double split of the social matrix is stunning. Here, we can see the phenomenon unfold in slow motion in front of our eyes. By closing down one’s organs of perception, we cause the other to experience relational disconnect. By the other trying to re-connect to me being in offline mode, she or he disconnects from her/himself. Ideas that seemed to be flying in from nowhere, seizing the speakers to speak more and the listeners to listen even better, cease. That is the disconnect from the social field, a dying down of human relation and creativity. In order to deal with the confusion of their speaking partners, the listeners have to disconnect too. They turn inwards as well, shutting further down their sensing. The traffic of the buzz subsides. I am no longer part of the other’s experience and she is no longer part of mine. We both go offline from the generative source that was fueling us, returning into the isolation of our physical bodies. The room is getting cold. By contrast, the upwards movement with mind, heart, and will wide open, started a dissemination process causing something to travel within the dyads and across the room as a whole. A kind of social soil builds, nurturing and inspiring speakers and listeners, transcending the ego-boundaries of their speaking and listening, giving room to the non-physical presence of a larger sense of resonance. All this is the social field, the container, and the holding space of the collective activity of compassion. Our counterparts sense our listening. They tune in with their whole bodies into the opening of mind, heart and will, co-creating an inter-relational space and collectively shifting the forces of the social field. Further research is needed to understand how collective dialogic encounter shifts the forces of the social field towards either experiencing it as a body of generative resonance and creativity (presencing) or the opposite (absencing).

Silence A counterintuitive element, but one that is a necessary component of the dialogical process, is allowing silence. At its best, this comes in two forms: the ability to choose to be silent, and the ability to allow and be comfortable with silence. Silence encourages us to slow down a dialogue and to truly be present, while engaging with our whole being. It also allows us to process what we are hearing and relating: to slow down, be integrated and be embodied. However, silence can 155

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also be about equalising power. It is a mistake to interpret dialogue to mean that everyone must speak. This is a false notion of democracy that translates into a form of coercion (Darder, 2002). ‘In dialogue one has the right to be silent’ (Freire, in Shor and Freire, 1987: 102) Indeed, for Freire such silence underpinned the ability to negotiate the dialectical tension between authority and freedom that is essential to the development of critical consciousness. This is why some indigenous learning circles and decision-making councils in dialogue use a talking piece or stick. The talking stick is held by the person who has something to say and, when passed round in a circle, people are given permission to pass it on without talking if they so choose. The use of such a piece also slows the dialogue down, allows it to go deeper and encourages deep listening among those who hold the silence. Reflection As we have said, dialogical knowledge is relational knowledge and relational knowledge is reflexive knowledge. So, a dialogical approach to social change requires a periodic review of hidden assumptions during the process, and continuous cycles of learning together in an ongoing dynamic of creating new ways of knowing. This can only come about if we have a preparedness to engage in a process of critical self-reflection. This process of becoming both critical and self-critical was discussed in Chapter 1 and will be discussed more fully in Chapter 7. What we will say here is that self-reflection and critical reflection open the path to critical consciousness. Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. ‘Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education’ (Freire, 1972: 65). Freire sees dialogue as the act of engaging in praxis: by speaking ‘the true word’ we name the world, and by naming the world we transform the world. This involves a critical engagement with the world: we question our reality and expose the contradictions we live by. Through a questioning of taken-forgranteds, a profound shift in underlying values occurs through changes in ways of seeing the world. McGill and Brockbank (2004) argue that something extra is required to move learning into a transformative trajectory and that contained and structured emotion underpins the shift. The containment comes from a structured process that both allows the emotion and also contains it. Facilitated dialogue – that is, structured conversations as described earlier – moves and channels the energy for change. As a process it can unpack hidden and embedded discourses within a community or organisation, challenging what seems natural and exposing unequal power relations. It is the role of the participatory practitioner to create the right conditions for this to happen.

Creating a collective identity In the process of dialogue it is not only participants’ shared circumstances that are refined and developed, but also their identities that change (Shotter, 2006). 156

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In other words, it is our spontaneous and embodied ways of seeing and acting in the world that change. Thus, dialogue is not only the means by which we marry the individual and the collective; it explores our identities, giving us a sense of movement and action that locates us as part of a collective whole. This is why creating the conditions for dialogue and critique is so fundamental for social action. Of course, such a process of identity change can cause anxiety, but emotion, as we have argued, also contributes to the richness that is dialogue. So, there is a need to maintain a fine balance between encouraging the acceptance and validity of identity and emotions, while not allowing it to overwhelm any dialogue. That emotion then becomes a collective phenomenon, part of the collective meaning that is created. This collective meaning respects difference and diversity from an altered understanding of self-identity without subsuming it into a collective melting pot. This development of a shared collective identity is a gradual process and not a given. It arises from the group interaction and the new relational dynamism.

The transition to this collective knowing requires an environment of truthfulness and suspension of judgement. A participant in such a group has said, ‘Truth-telling, about self, about one another, without judgment, but with the desire to serve, enables the process of dialogue to create what is named the “Collective Presence”’ (quoted in Arruda and Gunnlaugson, 2016: 98). This requires the setting aside of personality so that the essential self can be discovered. Seeing the essential self is understanding others as people who are working through their lives, making mistakes and resolving issues (Kasl and Yorks, 2016). Thus, ‘If nobody gets in the way with their own agendas or our personality scenarios, then a possibility can fulfill itself; once we get over the threshold, there is a certain richness – a collective listening capacity that is humbling’ (Scharmer, 2016).

Creating the conditions for dialogue: understanding your context and preparing people Many of the aspects of the processes that have been used in creating such dialogical spaces reflect a return to a world we have lost. In indigenous societies and non‑Western cultures, living knowledge through dialogue is embedded into everyday life. Through oral history, storytelling, elder councils and proverbs, the principles and rules of the community are kept alive. Time is not imposed on people’s lives; life is adapted to a rhythm of the natural world. This sense of connection is removed by a Western worldview that sees humanity as superior to nature. Time restrictions, even in specific dialogical techniques, often reduce the opportunity to suspend judgement, to listen from the heart and to fully engage with others. There are some common elements, whether the tradition is indigenous to Africa, the Americas or the Pacific Islands, where people and 157

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the process of coming together is more important than timing and structure. In these regions too it starts with the calling of a circle. The circle represents unity, an unbroken whole with people facing each other and where everyone matters. Many of these old processes integrate story and dialogue: storytelling as a way of sharing inspired knowledge, and dialogue as way of creating a culture of coming together. Dialogue involves an encounter of equals and so therefore requires, as Freire says, ‘an intense faith in [others], faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in [their] vocation to be more fully human (which is not the privilege of an elite but the birthright of all)’ (Freire, 1972: 63). Freire was firm in his insistence that true dialogue cannot exist without love and humility, and that this is a critical not an emotional positioning. So how do we create the necessary conditions for dialogue in which we listen from the heart with true compassion, listening rather than hearing, and paying attention, noticing rather than reacting, seeking to understand and to trust through reciprocity and mutuality? How do we create the right conditions for such dialogue? Based on their experience of working in ethnically diverse societies that have been entrenched in tribalism and conflict, Dembinska and Montambeault (2020) argue that attention needs to be paid to three elements of the process of dialogue or, as they call it, deliberation (see Table 6.1). They go on to apply their framework to a dispute over land rights between an indigenous community and non-indigenous communities in Quebec province, the setting up of a dialogue between very conflicted parties, and the seeds of success as the impact of the dialogue rippled out into the community more widely. Dembinska and Montambeault (2020) argue that how you set up the conditions for dialogue depends very much on the cultural history and the circumstances. However, that set-up is crucial for dialogue to take place at all and provides the foundations for ‘success’. Success here is not about coming to consensus but, rather, being willing to listen, and accepting that there are different perspectives from one’s own. Dialogue is a fragile process, and to enter into equal, dialogically structured relations with others is not easy. Dialogue, contrary to the notion of Table 6.1: The fundamentals of the dialogue process Moment 1 Pre-dialogue: framing compatible self-interests

Moment 2 Dialogue: in the circle or at the table

• Institutional design incentives • Initiators/organisers • Proposed subject and levels of dialogue • Pre-dialogue meeting and comfort enclaves

• Rules and quality of discourse • Rational and relational moments • Open dialogue • Open/secrecy

Source: Adapted from Dembinska and Montambeault (2020)

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Moment 3 After dialogue: reconciliation (diffusion and societal appropriation) • Leadership and legitimacy thereof • Snowball effect: level and chains of dialogue spaces • Publicity

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non-conflictual consensus, calls for dissent, disagreement, discomfort as ways of dialectically engaging with a thesis–antithesis–synthesis approach to knowing and being. Without this, hegemonic spaces flourish unchallenged. One of the challenges of working with groups is the tendency for certain people to dominate the discussion. Social psychological research has shown that the tendency for one voice to dominate is more likely to happen in larger groups. Groups of five or less tend to encourage more equal participation. This depends, of course, on how the dialogue is set up, the context, the informal and formal power structures and the setting. I (Jane) can remember years ago, as part of an evaluation project, visiting a community group to help them to develop an evaluation framework. Having persuaded the project manager to bring all the interested parties together to meet us, we arrived to find the meeting taking place in a room without a window, dominated by a rectangular table. Since this was a community with few resources, it felt inappropriate to demand a different room, although my past experience had shown that this was not a good setting for dialogue. As it emerged, the dialogue became dominated by a White, retired male, who was very articulate. It was not an equal dialogue, and indeed faltered, as it effectively turned into a monologue. I decided to take the bull by the horns: ‘Let’s get rid of this table!’, I said and, extraordinarily, without comment, everyone got up and helped to get it out of the room. It gave me the opportunity to encourage everyone to get into small groups and begin the process of asking the questions again. Dialogue increased dramatically; the one booming voice was not silenced but became an equal participant. Indeed, when we came together to distil what was said, the dominant participant thanked his group and commented on how much he had learnt that day from them. In well-facilitated dialogue, people become observers of their own thoughts, and more open to new ideas that bring with them new possibilities. This is in juxtaposition to what commonly happens in meeting spaces and conversations, where meaning is filtered through a web of entrenched ideas uncritically, and old positions are defended. This takes time. Pre-existing axes of power potentially can distort the process if care is not taken to create the conditions of equality. These social norms have been created in part by society or culture, as explored in Chapters 2 and 4, which inhibits people from learning together. Modern economic structures and bureaucracies can establish boundaries that become systems of communicative constraint and control. Hierarchy and dictatorship are the most extreme forms because hierarchy tries to impose a singular view of order that denies the reality of complex relations. Most writers on dialogue refer to an essential humanness and how it counters the dehumanisation that is a consequence of social exclusion. Bakhtin, for example, describes the dialogical nature of human life: The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human existence is the open ended dialogue. Life by its nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to 159

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respond, to agree and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his [sic] whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He [sic] invests his entire self in the discourse and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life…. A person enters into dialogue as an integral voice. He [sic] participates in it not only in his thoughts, but with his fate and with his entire individuality. (Bakhtin, 1984: 293) This contrast with monologism: Monologism at its extreme, denies the existence outside itself of another consciousness with equal rights and equal responsibilities, another I with equal rights (thou). With a monologic approach (in its extreme pure form) another person remains wholly and merely an object of consciousness…. Monologue is finalized and deaf to the other’s response, does not expect it and does not acknowledge it in any force. Monologue manages without the other and therefore to some degree materializes all reality. (Bakhtin, 1984: 292–3) This is where the groundwork in creating the space to dialogue is so important. The reward for perseverance is that the achievement of true dialogue is transformative, inspiring, unique and creative outcomes, sometimes out of polarised positions. Successful dialogue requires participation of all stakeholders in a process in full reciprocity of expression, setting aside organisational or professional positions, and other external sources of power. So, most dialogical spaces take place in informal settings. People are encouraged to dress informally, not to use titles or positions on name labels, just given names. This encourages open investigation of participants in a fully human way, with greater freedom in ascertaining collective and mutual interests beyond a role. Open sharing of information and transparency of decision-making fosters mutual understanding, and what is created is done so together, transcending pre-existing beliefs and attitudes. This can best be achieved by selecting the initial dialogue around an issue, based on individual discussions with the potential participants, that has potential for connection to start the process of building relationships, trust and mutual respect (Dembinska and Montambeault, 2020). From this you can begin to enter into dialogue around the real issues which will start to challenge the status quo.

The conditions for dialogue: circle as a safe dialogical space In their discussion of the dialogue in Quebec, Dembinska and Montambeault (2020) talk about how to bring people to the table. Tables for the most part, however, especially when they are square or rectangular, create barriers to exchange. Fundamental to participatory practice therefore is the use of the circle as a core structure for storytelling and dialogue. As Baldwin and Linnea (2010) 160

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explain in their book The Circle Way, sitting in a circle is almost written into our DNA, since our ancestors would sit in a circle around a fire. In oral traditions, storytelling takes place in circles and its use is still a fundamental part of most indigenous cultures. Yet, today, it is rare to find a circular table in a meeting room or in rooms set up for education classes, although young children are often encouraged to sit in a circle when listening to a story read by a teacher. Virtually, our video screens are shown as a grid or line but never in a circle. The digital world cannot accommodate something so fundamental to the human way of being. Yet if you ignore the existing infrastructure and invite people to sit in circle, even notionally, things change. A circle is the most equal way of sitting together. Everyone is on the same level, and everyone can see each other’s eyes and you connect from the heart, however different the perspectives you bring to the circle. Add a centre to the circle, a vase of flowers, a collection of the objects each person has brought or something symbolic of the reason for the gathering and then the group starts to connect as they talk to the centre rather than adversarily direct to someone across the room or adjacent to them. Everyone effectively holds the rim as a container for the conversation, creating a safe space in which people can have a free and profound exchange, respect diversity of views and share responsibility for the well-being of all. With a host to facilitate and a guardian to help in attending to the process, needs, timing and energy, a final ingredient to this fundamental practice is the group agreement which underpins a practice based in respect: • • • •

We ask for what we need and offer what we can. We agree to pause at a signal when we feel the need to pause. We hold all stories and personal material in confidentiality. We listen to each other with compassion and curiosity.

Also, fundamental to circle practice is that leadership rotates among all circle members, responsibility is shared for the quality of experience, and reliance is on wholeness, rather than on any personal agenda. This is achieved through three practices: • speaking with intention: noting what has relevance to the conversation in the moment; • listening with attention: respectful of the learning process for all members of the group; • tending to the well-being of the circle: each member remaining aware of the impact of their contributions. A talking-piece council is often used as a part of check-in, check-out and whenever there is a desire to slow down the conversation, collect all voices and contributions, and be able to speak without interruption, while a conversation council is often used when reaction, interaction and an interjection of new ideas, 161

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thoughts and opinions are needed. But there is also opportunity to pause and reflect in silence, which gives each member time and space to reflect on what is occurring, or needs to occur, in the course of a meeting. Silence may be called so that each person can consider the role or impact they are having on the group, or to help the group realign with their intention, or to sit with a question until there is clarity. Having a check-in, whereby people can bring their focus and their presence to the intention with which all have come together, and a check-out for them to reflect on individually what has taken place, helps to integrate the personal and the collective experience.

  A personal encounter with circle practice … I (Jane) have sat in circle without understanding its potential power completely for years. Margaret and I met first in a circle, as it was used by our mentor in our first personal development workshop together. I came across it again in a book by Christina Baldwin (1993) that I read in 1994 and coincidentally that was one of the books I brought with me to Canada. But it has been here in Canada that I (Jane) have witnessed the practice more fully and have had the honour of meeting with and training with who those have used the Circle Way in education, community development and urban planning contexts in Edmonton, elsewhere and even online. It has been very successful in places where communities are divided, such as in the US and the Middle East. I have also had the privilege of training with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea in their last training workshop before they retired. I was originally afraid I was engaging in cultural appropriation as circle is used by indigenous population groups in North America but was assured it is not. It is a powerful tool to create the social environment for the future world we want to create. For further details, see: www.thecircleway.net/ where, under resources, you will find some excellent videos.

Creating dialogical/rhetorical/communicative spaces: some examples from practice In the past two decades a rapidly growing movement for dialogue has been developing. In the US alone, the website of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation1 serves as a hub for participatory practice, dialogue and deliberation for facilitators, conveners and trainers, and houses thousands of resources on these 162

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communication methodologies. The obstacles that inhibit dialogue and favour more confrontational communication forms, including fear, the display or exercise of power, mistrust, external influences, distractions and poor communication conditions, can be overcome with the right container: a circle and the right preparations. Most dialogical spaces have clarity of purpose that will engage people but are not too structured, that is, completely open-ended, and therefore not attached to specific outcomes. There is usually a set of principles that guides the process. Usually in a dialogical session there are some key questions that are being asked. Most writers would argue that good questions that stimulate thought processes are the key to dialogue. Questions that lead people forward into a dynamically driven future are good questions, and in order for this to happen they need to have meaning for participants, igniting the process of learning and change as answers are co-created collaboratively. These questions should come from the hearts and minds of people involved, so considerable thought and discussion as to the framing and content of these questions has to take place as part of the preparation. Animators/co-facilitators need to talk beforehand to everyone who will be involved, which helps to inspire confidence that each person is recognised and appreciated, so that, from the start, the process moves from fragmentation to connectedness. A dialogical process is like a collective story. It needs to be structured to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Two processes unfold: a divergence process in which all possibility is encouraged, which can be unsettling. Then, periodically, a convergence process is required. At this point, insights are made explicit, perhaps on sheets of paper on the walls, in pictures or words. During this phase a new step in the ongoing process is outlined. Most transformative processes give rise to a painful stage of ‘storming’ or ‘confused fog’ that brings an overwhelming sense of confusion. Holding that and staying with it is crucial; this is the place where innovation and creativity emerge. Senge et al (2005) argue that this is the point at which participants should stop talking and spend some time in silence; others advocate continual dialogue. Whatever course the process takes, all techniques and tools require co-facilitators who are capable of staying with what is at any moment. The facilitator embodies the values and principles that are the foundation of this approach, maintaining its integrity, but at the same time improvising responsibly and intuitively as the unexpected happens. Confidence, humility and the courage to believe in the process are called for. Helping others to ‘trust the process’ is key.

Common examples of dialogical tools • Story dialogue, developed by Ron Labonte and Joan Feather (1996). This holds some similarities to the dialogical process found in Freirean pedagogy and draws on indigenous knowledge. It is quite structured in its approach. In story dialogue, individuals are invited to write and tell their stories around a generative theme, a theme that is important to the group and opens up possibility. Sitting in a circle, 163

Participatory Practice the storyteller tells their story while others listen; some may be taking notes. After the storyteller has finished, there is a reflection circle whereby each listener in turn shares how the story they heard relates to their own story or experience. Each does this in turn, passing the talking stick while everyone listens. Everyone’s voice is heard without interruption. Then a structured dialogue starts, guided by a set of questions: What? (What was the story, that is, what happened, what was going on?) Why? (Why did the events in the story happen in the way they did?) Now what? (What does this mean?) and So, what? (What are we going to do about it?). The participants create insight cards which they group into themes, and then produce a statement based on these themes: a theory. One of the interesting things about the process is that participants often find it difficult to move from the reflection circle, where they usually engage with their heart, to the more intellectual process of analysis. Conversely, people used to ‘being in their heads’, such as academics, find it difficult to respond emotionally, and in the analysis stage tend to objectify other people’s stories rather than empathising from their own experience. Skilled facilitation is required in preventing the first storyteller being questioned and harassed about what they did or should have done in such a situation. Interestingly, in my (Jane’s) experience, it is professionals who fall into this trap of victim blaming and solution finding. Another danger, found in many circle approaches, is that the first person to speak can have a large influence on what is said and the direction of later dialogue. The best way to handle this is to give everyone sufficient time to reflect and collect their thoughts before others start to speak. More naturally vocal people sometimes find the initial process frustratingly slow; however, those who do not normally speak out in groups appreciate the reflection circle approach. Story dialogue is generally quite structured although this is not always necessary – it is possible to have a series of dialogues taking place in parallel and then to bring the insights together in a wider group setting. It is also possible for the process to be self-facilitated, providing sufficient guidance is given on roles and responsibilities. • World café (www.theworldcafe.com) is a way of working with large numbers of people but in small dialogical groups in a flexible and expanding way. It is, however, really useful in disrupting the broadcast type of meeting. Examples worldwide include everything from examining Maōri forestry claims in New Zealand, to developing the next stage of a health and social care system in Southern Sweden, and exploring water reuse in Canada. It makes use of the café metaphor by setting up the room in which the dialogue takes place with people seated in groups of four at different tables for a series of deep participative conversations. Every so often, people are invited to move round. The ‘host’ is the one person who stays at the table while everyone else moves to a new one. The host summarises the essence of the previous conversation, and the new table members connect to what was talked about and take it forward. Gradually everything is interwoven and networked, a bit like a tapestry, with new ideas and insights creating a collective new set of meanings. The energy that is created in a world café dialogue is so profound that many proponents talk of ‘café magic’. As with similar processes, a good question is one that matters to 164

The role of dialogue everyone present. This is important for engaging with passion, moving the process forward. The merits of fostering mutual listening, a spirit of inquiry and curiosity about what is not known are also key elements. This is achieved by talking about café etiquette, which includes encouragement to doodle and draw on the tablecloths! • Open space technology – Who should participate is an important element of truly democratic dialogue. In open space technology, as in world café, the answer is everyone in the whole system. For Harrison Owen, the originator of open space events, who turns up on the day is who is meant to be there. In practice, however, this is often not possible. In the open space processes that I (Jane) have facilitated over the years, it has been important to ensure at least this one principle: that the number of spaces available for each group of people represents the degree to which they are likely to be affected by the actions that come from the dialogue. Usually this means ensuring that community members are involved in significant proportion. Other principles that guide the process, in addition to ‘whoever comes are the right people’, include: whenever it starts is the right time, whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened, and when it is over it is over. There also is only one rule: the ‘law of two feet’, which effectively means that people are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, and if they feel they are not learning or contributing they can leave and move to another group. In ideal circumstances, there is no question or agenda that structures the day. Rather, the agenda is co-created together. The process starts with a circle, however big the group. The facilitator introduces first the main principles of open space, and then the main theme or burning issue that has brought people together. On an empty wall, people are invited to propose sessions and discussions. A period of silence is then provided for people to think, before they are invited to come to the centre and write their idea or question down, read it aloud and post it on the wall. In this marketplace, people gradually sign up for groups, or move their paper to connect with others as a way of identifying common interest. Once the groups are formed, the work begins. Someone in each group compiles a report of what is discussed and conclusions, and these are posted. There can be many such cycles that mix people up, the policy makers and the recipients of those policies alike. Ideally an open space event ends with everyone coming back together to identify an action group to take decisions forward. Open space, or an adaptation of it, has been used in many contexts. I (Jane) have personally facilitated such events to create cross-agency indicators of change in an area of Manchester, to develop a mental health promotion strategy in two areas of Merseyside, and to develop health promotion in Lithuania and Estonia. It is even possible to do this via Zoom. Once people have overcome their natural shyness and realise they are equal participants, they enter into the spirit of the process with enthusiasm. The most difficult thing they find is moving from one group to another, to be ‘butterflies’ or ‘bumblebees’ in Owen’s (1997) terminology. • Appreciative inquiry – Negative language is a tool of oppression. Constantly referring to ‘problems’ can reinforce feelings of low self-esteem and a sense of 165

Participatory Practice being a victim. Appreciative inquiry is the antidote to this. For those who are social problem-focused it can feel rather ‘Polyanna-ish’. However, as a process, it can be very liberating, because instead of focusing on what is wrong, the focus is on what is good in order to find ways to enhance it. In appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider et al, 2007) the underlying assumption is that the questions we ask influence the answers we find. There are four overriding principles. First, every system works to some degree to seek out what is positive and lifegiving. Second, knowledge that is generated by the inquiry should be applicable – that is, what is possible. Third, systems are capable of becoming more than they are, and they can learn to guide their own evolution, so consider bold dreams. Finally, the process and outcome of the inquiry are interrelated and inseparable, so as to make the process a collaborative one. An initial step is taken to define the focus of the inquiry and present it as a positive statement, for example, creating and sustaining high-quality involvement of local people in decision making. This is followed by a collective process called the ‘4 Ds’. Discovery is the process in which there is a system-wide inquiry, through conversations and stories, into people’s experience of the focus at its best. Then people engage in the dream element, building a vision of the future they want, that is, the sense of what the world is calling them to become, a practical utopia. This is followed by design, in which people craft those practices, structures and policies that will bring that to life. Finally, through continuously returning to the group, there is destiny, defining the plan and putting it into practice. One of the strengths of appreciative inquiry is that it can be done as one summit, or it can be an ongoing process of dialogue. It can be enormously empowering for people to start from strengths. This shares some commonalities with a community assets approach to community, with a focus on resources and capability rather than needs. However, there is the danger that this can place responsibility to change marginalised lives on local people, avoiding an analysis of power that helps us target the structural sources of inequality on a transformative level. There are a number of examples of its successful use in Scotland (Sharp et al, 2016).

What do you think are the essential components for dialogue when asking difficult questions?

Dialogue and social change Creating spaces for meaningful, critically reflexive dialogue is the means by which to interrupt existing social relations, existing repertoires of discourse and dominant power structures. Power, rather than being fixed and unchanging, is everywhere and fluid and changing. Dialogical processes disconnect customary practice and enable people to act as reflexive agents in terms of their meaning making. Through deliberation they become aware of the ways in which they are constrained by power dynamics and existing discourses. 166

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Of course, dialogue can be abused when seen by those in power as a mechanism for appeasement or consensus. Our task, as participatory practitioners, is to engage vigilantly in a process that puts values and principles at the heart of what we do. This requires us to tread the line between liberation and domination, to be politically aware of the dangers at the same time as encouraging and expanding opportunities for the silenced to be heard. Carving out spaces for dialogue in different political contexts means being alert to the nature of power in the many places and spaces that it can manifest. It is not only predetermined political agendas that stop true dialogue, but also inherited cultural traditions, such as the role of women in society. Another barrier is resistance to any sort of personal development on the part of the participants. All these can take the form of dialogue-blocking behaviour, such as a refusal to experiment with different forms of communication, such as art and theatre, or intentionally being absent from prearranged meetings. People in positions of power and decision-making, for example, can often disappear at break time halfway through a dialogue session, claiming important meetings elsewhere. The issue of time is often a pseudonym for not wanting to engage at a deep level. Perhaps the greatest challenge to dialogue is from populist leaders who, through different mechanisms, both hidden and overt, try to create division and create the conditions of othering. But we ourselves – unaware of our own colonising tendencies, a product of how our internal selves have been colonised by the hegemonic tendencies of capital – also can close down dialogue that does not fit with our own agendas. Reaching across difference requires an openness of heart that takes time to develop, the ability to deep listen and to see below the surface. But it also requires time in order to build the trust that has been undermined by the fragmentation of late capitalism and identity-based divisions that those who do not want collective challenge seek to encourage. It means starting where people are at, even if those places run counter to what we believe. To address societal problems in his later years, Bohm (1996) wrote a proposal for a solution that has become known as ‘Bohm dialogue’, in which equal status and ‘free space’ form the most important prerequisites of communication and the appreciation of differing personal beliefs. He suggested that if these dialogue groups were experienced on a sufficiently wide scale, they could help overcome the isolation and fragmentation Bohm observed as inherent in society. Certainly, in some places the creation of dialogical spaces is increasing. Dialogue is used in classrooms, community centres, businesses, statutory agencies and other settings to enable people, usually in small groups, to share their perspectives and experiences about difficult issues. It has been used to help people resolve long-standing conflicts and to build a deeper understanding of contentious issues, including interfaith and ethnic differences. Dialogue is essential to participatory practice because, whether through story, pictures, poetry or dance, there is an act of engagement in a space of mutual respect. It enhances the human spirit in a way that goes beyond our desire for affiliation as human beings. But because we are human beings with all our 167

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emotional needs, and because of the existing structures in society, we have to be aware of those very human needs for power and control, of the persistence of old habits and also the cumulative history that acts as a barrier to change. Nonetheless, the progressive engagement in circles of dialogue can generate processes of change towards social justice. In Freirean approaches to adult education the focus is on working in dialogue with oppressed groups. However, the future lies in working in dialogue across whole systems in some of the ways suggested in this chapter. Burns (2007) advocates that we should also work with those who hold the sources of power. It means continuously advocating for such dialogical spaces in a constant critique of taken-for-granted institutional practices such as the way meetings are run, who is invited and what language is used. It also means entering into dialogue with others in such a way as we ourselves, not just others, are transformed in the process. It is about taking care of those important spaces between, those spaces that are largely neglected in current thinking and practice. In the pressurised public sector, current cultural norms run counter to this. Yet there are stories of public servants who hold those spaces of deliberative practice. Forester’s book, The Deliberative Practitioner (1999), is replete with such stories taken from the field of housing and community planning. Using these stories of messy real-world practice, he shows how planners have fostered dialogue to create deliberation about citizens’ worries, fears, hopes, loyalties commitments and self-images, and through sensitive listening have helped to create pragmatic solutions through public learning in safe spaces.

The dynamic of dialogue as a key to transformation Simply by listening, trusting, valuing people in dialogue, we create experiences that are healing, respectful and empowering. Authentic dialogue begins in the everyday stories of lived experience, and involves a deeper connection of the heart and mind, the intellect and emotions, and an acceptance of and trust in the fundamental worth of all human beings. It is this that marks the profound difference between dialogue and any other form of conversation. Facilitated dialogue – that is, structured conversations as described earlier – moves and channels the energy for change. As a process it can unpack hidden and embedded discourses within a community or organisation, challenging what seems natural and exposing unequal power relations. However, it is important to trust the process and not close dialogue down as the contradictions between our basic humanity and the alienating world are brought to the surface. The first step to social change is to bring alive to those who wield power at the expense of others what they are doing, and through dialogue reflect back the values implied by their actions. Through this process of dialogue the seeds of transformation through empowerment are sown. We have now explored two of the core interrelated dimensions of participatory practice: story and dialogue. In the next chapter we move on to the third, which, when combined with story and dialogue, has the potential for learning that leads to transformation: critical reflection. 168

7 Critical reflection and reflexivity Jane Springett

The Map is not the Territory. (Bateson, 1972) We see the world, not as it is but as we are – or as we are conditioned to see it. (Covey, 2004) We have explored so far two elements of participatory practice that are key to transformative change and, in doing so, we have indicated that neither can achieve that potential without the third element: critical reflection. While we can start to open up the spaces for engagement with story and dialogue, to sow the seeds of individual and collective learning for change, reflection and reflexivity need to be interwoven into those elements to create the fabric of critical knowledge and thoughtful action. This cannot be an added extra but has to be integral to all we do. We can encourage people to tell their stories of lived experience and we can enter into dialogue together about what we hear, but this will remain a surface activity unless we add critical reflection for learning to happen. So, this chapter will explore what we mean by critical reflection and offer some conceptual ideas taken from critical and other theorists to help in the facilitation of critical reflection, particularly concerning power, both for ourselves and others. At the core is the art of questioning the taken-for-granteds of everyday life and going ever deeper in that exploration through the continual cycling of reflection and action that underpins praxis and is the basis of transformation, encouraging us all to look below the surface and nurture the development of a sense of curiosity about why things are as they are. In this, we return to the roots of critical pedagogy. Thus, as Carr and Kemmis put it so eloquently, we need to engage in: an open and questioning form of thinking which demands reflection back and forth between elements like part and whole, knowledge and action, process and product, subject and object, being and becoming, rhetoric and reality, or structure and function. In the process, contradictions may be discovered (as, for example, in a political structure which aspires to give decision-making power to all, but actually functions to deprive some of access to the information with which they could influence crucial decisions about their lives). 169

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As contradictions are revealed, new constructive thinking and new constructive action are required to transcend the contradictory state of affairs. (Carr and Kemmis, 2003, cited in McLaren, 2009: 80)

Being critical Before exploring reflection and reflexivity in greater detail, it is worth reflecting on the notion of being critical. The majority of the audience of this book are likely to be drawn from the English-as-a-first-language global population and to have grown up in a predominantly Anglo-American culture. For many such people, the notion of being critical immediately conjures up something negative and confrontational, especially in the pragmatic and instrumental Anglo-American thought-dominated context. This is enhanced these days by the use of social media, by some, to shame and promote hate. Television, politicians and the media reinforce a confrontational and aggressive approach to the debate. ‘Critical’ has thus connotations of negative criticism or attack rather than the contemplative deliberation and reflective questioning that defines it in relation to critical pedagogy, a process out of which we gain knowledge on which to base action for a just and sustainable world. How do you react to the word ‘critical’?

Language barriers reinforce this ethnocentrism and cultural narrowness. As Potvin and McQueen (2008) have demonstrated in the area of health promotion, Spanishand Portuguese-speaking parts of the Americas are much more comfortable with critique and critical theory, with the result that a very different epistemology has influenced practice. Most critical theorists do not originate from the Englishspeaking world: Gramsci was Italian; Foucault and Bourdieu French; Freire Brazilian. But we are not just philosophically deprived; that same Anglo-American cultural influence has been reinforced by neoliberal economic thinking and practices, moving us away from critical thinking by silencing dissent and colonising the public spaces where it might take place, reducing participation to consultation, and creating a culture of fear and a lack of awareness. Conscientisation is the antidote to thoughtless practice through reclaiming spaces for dissent, but in a space of trust and through an expansive loving process. Such critical thinking only comes when you have created the right space for trust to grow and where the values that are fundamental to participatory practice are kept at the centre and foremost. Personal consciousness leads to a transformative autonomy, that in turn leads to a collective autonomy, a precursor of transformative collective action. (Doyal and Gough, 1991)

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We would argue that it is through the process of becoming critical and being critically reflexive, combining reflection with action as praxis, that the art of participatory practice is created. It is also the source of transformation as changes in consciousness begin to happen.

  Cultural differences matter … I (Jane) have run many training workshops on participatory research in a variety of international contexts, and the contrasting cultural acceptance of critique and open debate has often come to the fore. One particular workshop comes to mind. It was in the North East of England, mainly for local people but as it was attached to an international meeting there were some novices to the research process from different countries, including Germany. Debate was central to learning as we engaged in several participatory processes involving sticky notes on the wall. At one point in the workshop, a heated debate in German and then in English arose between three participants around the theming of a particular set of sticky notes. Some people started to look upset as it had been a friendly and trusting atmosphere so far. I was fortunate to be co-facilitating with an American who had lived in Germany for over 25 years and who understood German culture. He explained to us all how heated critical debate and challenge was core to contemporary German culture, and that it was not something to be concerned about. The German participants were surprised that the debate was causing a problem, while the English speaker looked relieved.

Understanding reflection as the key to learning and transformation (1) Reflection as an emotional process Research on adult learning demonstrates how the processes of learning are integrated, the phases one goes through as one learns, and the emotional responses involved. The adult learning cycle first identified by David Kolb (1984) and the model of reflection developed by Boud et al (1985) show how reflection can be seen as a process of sense- or meaning-making. For people to change their ‘meaning’ schemes (specific beliefs, attitudes and emotional reactions), they need to engage in a process of ongoing critical questioning, not just as an intellectual exercise but as an ‘intuitive, creative, emotional process’ (Grabov, 1997: 90), involving a ‘fundamental change in one’s personality involving … the resolution of a personal dilemma and the expansion of consciousness resulting in greater personality integration’ (Boyd and Myers, 1988: 280). 171

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This process involves three interrelated elements: receptivity, recognition and grieving. A person has to be receptive, or open, to considering ‘alternative expressions of meaning’ (Boyd and Myers, 1988: 277) for any learning to take place. Recognition involves a realisation that there is a need for change. Grieving is when the individual takes on a new way of doing things or tries to integrate new ideas into their lives. They must then come to terms with the fact that the steps they have taken before are no longer relevant to what they are going to have to do in the future. This whole process is a cyclical one of going inwards and outwards. It also moves back and forth between the rational and the imaginative, drawing on the ‘realm of interior experience, one constituent being the rational expressed through insights, judgments, and decision; the other being the extra-rational expressed through symbols, images, and feelings’ (Boyd and Myers, 1988: 275). This is why the use of different forms of art in combination with the rational are powerful tools for transformation. Poetry, art and drama all engage with these intuitive elements, involving more holistic dimensions of our being beyond the intellectual – emotional, physical, spiritual. The importance of the emotional dimension in reflection is supported by recent brain research regarding the embodiment of knowledge. Memories and emotions are stored in all cells of the body, so transformation, from this perspective, is also a process of embodiment. We need to be aware of this and to be prepared for our own internal emotional responses and recognise those in others. This back-and-forth is also reflected in the notions of endogenous and referential reflexivity identified by May and Perry (2017) in their exploration of reflexivity in the context of the co-production of research in the social sciences. For them, research is not about moving towards an absolute truth but is an ongoing exploration in which we find better ways of understanding. Through our relations with others, we are helped to see through our own taken-forgranteds, which come from the social conditioning of the contexts we live and work in. In indigenous ontology, too, the Self is not isolated but is always the Self in Relation, thus self-reflection is undertaken with others in circle to allow that collective and individual meaning-making to come fruition (Graveline, 1998). This is what underpins an ecosystems perspective as well (see Chapter 3). To change, systems need to learn through the feedback mechanism. Our awareness and consciousness need to change for any behaviour change or action to take place and, since everyone and everything is connected, that requires collective learning at both the individual and the collective level. (2) Allowing space for reflection This can mean silence to allow the unconscious to sit with the question or idea. The metaphor of the butterfly emerging out of the cocoon of a caterpillar is often used to describe the process of transformative change. The caterpillar holds within it the elements of the emerging butterfly, but in the chrysalis stage, the original caterpillar is broken down and destroyed. Senge et al (2005) grapple 172

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Figure 7.1: The process of transformation through presencing DOWNLOADING past patterns

Suspending Seeing

Redirecting

PERFORMING operating from the whole

OPEN MIND

OPEN HEART

Sensing

Letting go

OPEN WILL

Embodying Prototyping the new Enacting Crystallising vision and intention

Letting come

PRESENCING Who is my self? Source: Based on the Theory of U (Scharmer, 2016)

with this idea of change and transformation. They come up with what they call the theory of U (as illustrated in Figure 7.1). For them, while the logical and rational ‘head work’ can lead you to the point of potential transformation, the shift at the bottom of the U, the stage before you move to change, is difficult to describe or replicate. This is essentially a spiritual experience during which one feels connected to a greater whole. Even if the social and intellectual processes that encourage dialogical and critical reflection can be put in place, it is a more elusive, intangible matter as to whether the change occurs. In an attempt to set up the conditions for change, Jaworski and Scharmer (cited in Senge et al, 2005: 88) developed an approach to collective problem solving that involves what they call presencing, arguing that it is a dimension that has been neglected in social and personal change. They believe that participants need to spend time in silence developing the capacities of letting go and letting come, that is, equivalent to the grieving process. Effectively, they are placing contemplation or meditation at the heart of reflection as a balance to the complexity that the information-sharing nature of the story and dialogue process has generated. Through this process of silence, a shared purpose and a deeper connecting are obtained. While the personal health benefits of mindfulness are now well established (Ludwig and Kabat-Zinn, 2008), here it is presented as a tool for collective change. This is reflection at its most fundamental. Yes, we need to question our taken-for-granteds, but it 173

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is only when we also sit with our unknowing and questioning in silence and be, that transformation takes place. So, stillness and silence need to be present as part of reflection because of the multifaceted, holistic, integrated nature of the process. Asking the question ‘What is going on here?’ as part of the reflective process allows our subconscious to process our thoughts and feelings, and helps us to integrate them into our whole being.

How often have you grappled with a solution to a problem, gone to bed, only to wake up to find the solution has been processed and a new view of the world has emerged?

Opening up space for reflection in a non-participatory world Although it may not feel that way, evaluation is a form of reflective practice and offers spaces for reflection, albeit at the interface between the non-participatory world and the participatory one. An evaluation has often been seen as a burden on local organisations and communities. Yet it provides the legitimate space within the current ways of working for reflection. Much evaluation is undertaken to prove something works or has an impact, often according to criteria determined by someone outside a local project, a funding agency. However, there are approaches to evaluation that encourage learning and change, under the umbrella of evaluation to improve and participatory evaluation (Cousins and Chouinard, 2012). For some, evaluation is still seen as an exercise in ‘getting the numbers’ but, since the turn of the century, the incorporation of new tools and approaches has moved it beyond numbers to explore underlying assumptions, capturing the nuances of local contexts and relationships as well as different forms of knowledge (Picciotto, 2015). Evaluation, after all, is about ‘valuing’, and so a central concern should be, namely, whose values we are using to evaluate a particular initiative. It is through the process of evaluation with the right participatory tools that we can start to dig deeper, reflecting in and on practice and action (Springett, 2001, 2017). Thus, while, on the surface, in non-participatory world evaluation is onerous or required for accountability purposes, in many ways it can serve as a vehicle for introducing critical reflexivity. Such emancipatory and transformative evaluation, while sometimes hidden in plain sight, opens up opportunities for the type of work explored here. How do you exercise reflexivity? What is the difference between that and the types of reflections found in a reflection diary?

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Towards critical reflexivity [R]eflexivity is not just the ability to think about our actionsthat is called reflection, but an examination of the foundations of the frameworks of thoughts themselves  … an examination of the apparently self-evident. Questioning in this way can be seen as a subversive act, particularly among those who hold cherished beliefs in the idea of the Truth. In our troubled times, we can see how challenging accepted truths leads to being cast out of groups or even provokes acts of violence, especially where unquestioning obedience is a condition of belonging. (May and Perry, 2017: 3) May and Perry (2017) argue that reflexivity is different from reflection, contending that the latter is looking back on past experiences to capture learning, whereas the former is a process of meta-learning, not only reflection in but also on action, whereby knowledge and theory are applied to makes sense of remembered reflective episodes (Dalilos and Stedman, quoted in May and Perry, 2017). Much of the reflection that currently takes place is severely limited in its potential for transformation. It remains largely what is termed ‘single-loop learning’. Schön (1903), who is often referenced as the key writer on reflection, was highly critical of what he saw as the dominant rational/experimental model of learning, seeing such approaches as severely limited in situations of social change. Such approaches are also profoundly hegemonic, serving the purpose of maintaining the status quo in the interests of the powerful and privileged. Schön argued for a more ‘existentially’ oriented approach, which, he argued, leads to double-loop learning in which reflection takes place not only on specific actions but on the broader context of the action, that is, why are we doing this in this way, and what are the assumptions implicit in it? Hawkins (1992) further argues that we need to take reflection to a third level, where we reflect on and question our values – ecological as well as social and economic values. This is what Bateson (1972) calls ‘level  3 learning’, whereby constricted awareness is released and new frames of references are accessible. There are parallels with the levels of critical consciousness in Freire’s process of conscientisation. All see the process as a discovery of something that is already there: it is consciousness that learns, and consciousness is a collective phenomenon. Gaby Jacobs (2008), drawing on the work of Barnett (1997), shows how the process of reflexivity, as compared to reflection, takes place within the ‘doing’. It means combining the ability to reflect inwards towards oneself as an inquirer and towards the understanding that is the result of that (see Table 7.1 for domains of self and knowledge); and then outwards to the cultural, social, historical, linguistic, political and other forces that shape the context of the inquiry. The concept of reflexivity is used to refer to the combining of the inner and outer dimensions. This combination of inner and outer makes it different from the kind of reflective practice that encourages only the inward movement. It refers to 175

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Table 7.1: Becoming critical in thought and action Domains Levels of criticality

Knowledge

Self

World

4. Transformatory critique

Knowledge critique

Reconstruction of self

Critique in action (collective reconstruction of the world)

3. Refashioning of traditions

Critical thought (malleable traditions of thought)

Development of self within traditions

Mutual understanding and development of traditions

2. Reflexivity

Critical thinking (reflection on one’s own understanding)

Self-reflection (reflection on one’s own projects)

Reflective practice (metacompetence, adaptability, flexibility)

1. Critical skills

Discipline-specific critical thinking skills

Self-monitoring to given standards and norms

Problem-solving (means-end instrumentalism)

Forms of criticality

Critical reason

Critical self-reflection

Critical action

Source: Barnett (1997: 103), cited in Jacobs (2008: 223)

the challenge of the taking-for-grantedness of everyday life, digging beneath the surface of what appears as ‘real’, or ‘the truth’, to arrive at a deeper understanding of an issue or problem and one’s part in it. It calls for going within to question one’s assumptions about the world. This epistemological reflexivity helps us to see how the way we view the world influences the way we choose to act in it. And at the heart of the process is the empowering insight that the self is involved in knowledge construction (personal reflexivity); in other words, crucially, we can change the world by changing our understanding of what is possible. This process is a result of engaging in critical praxis, that is, combining theory with practice, with action. Only through the interweaving of inner and outer critique with action can we reach transformation.

  A compelling account of these ideas in action Gaby Jacobs (2008) shows how a group of health promotion practitioners transformed as they moved through the levels of reflection and how, over time, critical thought was accompanied by emancipatory action in the world. Labonte (1994) once called health promotion the ‘practice of the disempowered helping the disempowered’. Through coming together in learning circles to explore one

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of the fundamental tenets of health promotion and empowerment, this group of health promotion practitioners started to question their practice in a wider context, transcending the personal and institutional barriers to change. They started asking: Whose voices are heard? Whose stories are told? What is not said, not seen or acknowledged as relevant? In doing so, not only did they transform as people, but this extended to the way they worked with communities, listening more, introducing more expressive ways of working beyond the intellectual, such as flamenco dancing, the use of arts, and bodywork based on Aikido principles. Importantly, they became confident in explaining the greater potential of their new participatory approaches to practice.

Becoming critically reflexive: drawing on critical theorists There is nothing so practical as a good theory. (Weiss, 1995) The body of thinking that comes under the umbrella of critical theory can be an aid to probing the taken-for-granteds we and others hold to create an effective critical praxis. Although reflecting a description that is attached to thinkers who came from what is known as the Frankfurt School, which initially was deeply influenced by the struggles with the Nazis, the tradition that arose around questioning the nature of society and social relations covers a broader array of thinkers. Each generation since the 1930s, including Freire, has critiqued the critiques, as one might expect, given the tradition. Many of those critiques have come through contemporary social movements such as environmentalism, feminism and anti-racism. But the ideas that came from some key people remain the bedrock of critical theory as it has developed over time. It is to these we now turn to help us to dig deeper into our taken-for-granteds, in general, but particularly as a way of exploring both the issue of power in social relations and how ideas construct everyday life. Ontology, or a theory of being, is the way we see ourselves in relation to the world around us, which helps us to make sense of why we live life as we do and how we give meaning and purpose to our lives, the way we act in the world. Epistemology, influenced by our ontological perspective, is a theory of knowledge or making sense of the world that is informed by particular values. So, if dominant attitudes persuade us to see the world in terms of a natural order of superiority and inferiority, we are likely to make sense of and create our lived reality accordingly. However, if we question the world around us and begin to explore values of equality and connection with the whole of life on earth, this will lead us to different ways of knowing and, in turn, to different ways of being. In these ways, epistemologies and ontologies are part of a living theory or practical theory that evolves from everyday life to transform the way things are for the 177

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better. Theory and practice become synthesised into praxis as we create theory as part of life itself. To begin the process of change we need to have theories that help us to understand the rules we live by, how they are agreed by society as a whole and how they become embedded in everyday life. Such theories, often based on historical observation and rigorous empirical analysis, also serve as an antidote to the everyday myths and conspiracy theories that currently are circulating on social media.

Reflecting on power ‘Critical theorists begin with the premise that men and women are essentially unfree and inhabit a world rife with contradictions and asymmetries of power and privilege’ (McLaren, 2009: 61; emphasis in original). As critical educators, we seek dialectical theories that locate the individual as one who both creates and is created by society, to the extent that it is impossible to understand one without the other. In this way, ‘critical theory helps us focus simultaneously on both sides of a social contradiction’ (McLaren, 2009: 61; emphasis in original). By focusing on this idea, you can see that any site of domination is also a site of liberation, and it is by understanding the nature of power that we can transform it into empowerment. It is important to remind you that ideas do not emerge in a vacuum; they emerge in a time and place and build on ideas and experience that have gone before. In this sense, theories are never right or wrong; they contribute to a collective understanding that builds on a past–present–future continuum. While the thinkers we present here are mostly White and male, also a product of their time and place, in the next chapter feminist and non-White critical theorists are also explored in greater depth, reflecting our time and place.

Antonio Gramsci The first thinker we will draw on is Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by Mussolini for 10 years until his death in 1937 for nothing more than taking a dissenting position on fascism. Before this, he had been a political journalist and activist, and his deep concern about power in Western societies was based on this praxis (for a more detailed discussion of Gramsci’s life and ideas, see Ledwith, 2020). Gramsci’s understanding of the way that power permeates society through our participation in social groups has had a profound influence on community development since Selections from Prison Notebooks was published in English in 1971. This coincided with the publication of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was highly influenced by Gramsci’s ideas, and, together, the wide availability of these books transformed the radical potential of community development practice by both offering insights into the nature of domination/ subordination and offering ideas for practice interventions. This is also explored in Chapter 8 of this book.

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Gramsci was concerned that the historical changes of his time were resulting in social control becoming less reliant on overt force. He developed the concept of hegemony, the way that a dominant group asserts control over other social groups, to address not only coercion – the state exercising control through the law, the police and the armed forces – but also ideological persuasion, as a force that persuades people to consent to the dominant social order exercised through cultural institutions such as schools, the family, mass media and churches. His emphasis was on the subtle and powerful nature of persuasion, reaching inside our minds to convince us to consent to life as it is and so slot into our prescribed place in the social order. Dominant attitudes are sold to us as common sense, and we internalise these attitudes, even though they may not act in our interests. He saw this acted out through moral leadership, with teachers and others in positions of influence in our personal lives reinforcing dominant ideas sold as truth, as common sense. Hegemony, in these ways, asserts control over knowledge and culture, affirming the ideas of the dominant culture and marginalising and silencing others.

  An example of domination in education Wink (1997: 42), gives an example of a high school in an African-American community in which the principal stormed a classroom and physically removed a student, saying that rap music and breakdancing was against the rules: ‘we set the rules, and when we do, we mean business’. In this example, the rules and the physical policing by the principal are coercion; the way that the dominant White culture is threaded through the curriculum to the exclusion of Black cultures, and the subtleties of the way it is delivered by teachers results in consent to dominance. In classroom teaching the culture of the staff room is one of constantly judging the worth of pupils, filtering some to the centre, others to the margins in a selffulfilling process. In other words, the messages are so powerful that they are absorbed into the minds of children. Unless teacher education involves an analysis of the power and status of the teacher across the difference and diversity of the classroom, schooling inevitably remains hegemonic: a site where the dominant control ideas that maintain their dominance, and the subordinated produce ideas that maintain their subordination (Mayo, 2004). In these ways, the system becomes self-perpetuating, maintaining the status quo with a flexible balance of coercion and consent.

Gramsci saw the importance of critical education in opening people’s minds to the possibility of change, releasing the intellectual potential inside each of us, and 179

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the role of alliances between diverse social groups in the process of transformative collective action. Hegemony is only maintained through the collective will of the people, therefore the development of a counter-hegemony, a different way of making sense of the world, plays an essential part in the process of change.

A cyclic process of reflection and action is the crux of critical education. Dominant ideas give credence to a ‘natural’ leadership and status in society, an assumed superiority that maintains hegemonic control over the mass of people. The power of hegemony is in this fine balance between coercion and consent, and its flexibility in absorbing challenge through tokenism, giving an illusion of democracy. As can be seen in the previous story, schooling is essentially hegemonic. As an institution of civil society, it reaches into the being of young people to reinforce dominant ideas of inferiority/superiority through a powerful process of success/failure, to maintain the status quo. The illusion of democracy is maintained by the occasional working-class ‘success’, while the social group as a whole remains marginalised. By individualising educational failure, the educational determinants of everyday life are overlooked and ‘failure’ is taken on board as personal inadequacy, resulting in low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. In a similar vein, Freire (1972) refers to false generosity, or tokenism. The inherent contradiction that is revealed here is the way that democratic schooling claims to offer routes out of poverty for children, while the reality is that it is a prime site of hegemony. It is no wonder that during the pandemic more right-wing governments were keen to see students going back to school sooner rather than later. The grand narrative was that students would fall behind, but would they?

  Probably the best example of the full might of hegemony at work … … in the post-war period in the UK is that of 1984–85 miners’ strike, when state coercion took hold of media control and denied the right to freedom of movement to and from mining communities, at the same time as using ideological persuasion to convince the rest of society that the miners were the ‘enemy within’, effectively alienating the miners from popular public support (Milne, 2004). Community groups were active in supporting the mining communities, but this was not enough to change popular opinion, and the outcome is well documented to offer evidence that this had more to do with the government’s desire to dismantle the biggest remaining trade union capable of civic disruption than anything to do with

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diminishing coal supplies. The power of the state when the full force of coercion and consent are used in combination in this way helps us to understand the nature of hegemony.

The struggles against oppression around issues of difference are located in civil society. This places the participatory practitioner at the heart of the process. The values, attitudes, morality and beliefs which are internalised as common sense by the masses but serve the interests of dominant groups have to be challenged at a local as well as an institutional level. For this to happen sustainably, Gramsci believed that the false consciousness of subordinated groups was the starting point for participation in the process of transformative change. Gramsci provides an essential insight into the power of ideas to colonise our minds, persuading us to accept the dominant order of things unquestioningly as common sense.

Gramsci did not think that the process of becoming critical would erupt spontaneously. In line with his belief in the intellectual potential of everyone, he used the term organic intellectuals to refer to those who emerge from their culture of origin. Every social group produces individuals who possess ‘the capacity to be an organiser of society in general, including all its complex organism of services, right up to the state organism, because of the need to create the conditions most favourable to the expansion of their own class …’ (Forgacs, 1988: 301). Traditional intellectuals can be seen as those who have a sympathetic allegiance to social justice that supersedes their commitment to their own class. They are the catalyst in the process of change by creating the context for questioning lived reality. Although Gramsci saw this role as vital in setting the wheels of change in motion, he was sceptical that their allegiance would be sustained; if push came to shove, he believed that historical analysis proved that cultural privilege would be asserted, that they would defect in the face of persecution. Nevertheless, having cut the ties to their own class, traditional intellectuals have a useful role to perform in unlocking the process of critical consciousness and action for change. Gramsci emphasised praxis in the process of change. The term he frequently used in his prison notebooks, ‘philosophy of praxis’, is the concept of a unity of theory and practice. ‘For Gramsci, the philosophy of praxis is both the theory of the contradictions in society and at the same time people’s practical awareness of those contradictions’ (Forgacs, 1988: 429). Theory and practice have been falsely dichotomised. The emphasis on doing over thinking in contemporary society and the closing of spaces for reflection only opens us to manipulation. ‘[A]ctionless thought’ and ‘thoughtless action’ (Johnston, cited in Shaw, 2004: 26) is the antithesis of praxis.

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Jürgen Habermas Habermas was a member of the Frankfurt School and is acknowledged for his insights into power in everyday relations. In The theory of communicative action, Habermas (1984; 1987) explains how what is judged to be normative becomes embedded in everyday behaviour in a way that reproduces the existing social order, the status quo. The structural components of the lifeworld – culture, society and person – are reinforced by interacting processes of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialisation. This gives rise to, for example, the perceived superiority of Whiteness, maleness, able-bodiedness, heterosexuality and Christianity, and results in behaviours that are racist, patriarchal, ‘dis’ablist, homophobic and religiously intolerant, to name but a few. These assumptions of superiority give rise to everyday experience from domestic violence to environmental degradation to female genital mutilation, immigration policy, restricted job opportunities and many more. Attitudes become communicated in everyday discourses, accepted as truths, and structurally integrated into the mechanisms of the state and the institutions of civil society. Many long-held concepts, for example about what it is to be British) are currently being challenged due to increased awareness of colonialism, and also resisted strongly by those who benefit from the status quo or who were taught that they were innately superior by private schools. Whitehead and McNiff (2006: 101) talk about the way that certain practices are accepted as given: it is not considered necessary to stop and examine the underpinning assumptions that guide such practices or to question where these rules came from or whether they are useful or outdated or even wrong; we are expected to accept things as the way they are and the way they should be. In the anti-intellectual times we live in, doing is very much emphasised over thinking. This in turn is reinforced by externally imposed time scarcity, and attention span deficits created by manipulative technology that overloads the brain thereby reducing cognitive capacity (Hari, 2022). Without a critical approach to practice you can unquestioningly reproduce the existing order of things.

Pierre Bourdieu Bourdieu, a French sociologist, adds to these ideas of reproduction of the status quo. He was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is 182

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maintained within and across generations. His theories are strongly rooted in empirical research and a unique theory of society. Within that theory, he sees power as culturally and symbolically created and constantly renewed to maintain legitimation through an interplay of structure and agency. For Bourdieu, each individual occupies a position in a multidimensional social space; a person is not defined only by social class membership, but by every single kind of capital they can articulate through social relations. That capital includes the value of social networks, which Bourdieu showed could be used to produce or reproduce inequality. (Navarro, 2006: 16) Pierre Bourdieu’s work emphasised how social classes, especially the ruling and intellectual classes, preserve their social privileges across generations despite the myth that the contemporary post-industrial period provides equality of opportunity through formal education. He introduced the idea of habitus, which is the socialised norms or tendencies that guide behaviour and thinking. Habitus is the way society becomes embodied in each person in the form of ways of being, seeing and thinking (Navarro, 2006: 16). These are shaped by past events and structures, shape current practices and structures, and condition our very perceptions of these (Bourdieu, 1984: 170). In this sense, habitus is created and reproduced unconsciously, ‘without any deliberate pursuit of coherence … without any conscious concentration’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 170). Habitus, thus, is created through social, rather than individual, processes, leading to patterns that are enduring and transferable from one context to another, but that also shift depending on specific contexts and over time. Habitus ‘is not fixed or permanent, and can be changed under unexpected situations or over a long historical period’ (Navarro, 2006: 16): Habitus is neither a result of free will, nor determined by structures, but created by a kind of interplay between the two over time. Bourdieu, thus, sees the habitus as an important factor contributing to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life. Individuals learn to want what social conditions make possible for them, and not to aspire to what is not available to them. This brings us to the second important concept introduced by Bourdieu: that of capital, which he extends beyond the notion of material assets to capital that may be social, cultural or symbolic (Bourdieu, 1984, cited in Navarro, 2006: 16). These forms of capital may be equally important and can be accumulated and transferred from one arena to another (Navarro, 2006: 17). Cultural capital – and how it is created or transferred from other forms of capital – plays a key role in power relations, as this ‘provides the means for a non-economic form of domination and hierarchy, as classes distinguish themselves through taste’ (Gaventa, 2003: 31). But this is often hidden and yet is key to understanding the causes of inequality. Bourdieu demonstrates how the ‘social order is progressively inscribed in people’s minds’ through ‘cultural products’, including systems of 183

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education, language, judgements, values, methods of classification and activities of everyday life (1984: 471). These all lead to an unconscious acceptance of social differences and hierarchies, to ‘a sense of one’s place’ and to behaviours of selfexclusion (1984: 141). These ideas are internalised by children at an early age and these ‘dispositions’ guide them to certain jobs, certain ways of being, particular consumption patterns and aesthetic choices, as well as fostering aversion to others. One example of this is where a celebrity chef tried to introduce healthy school dinners only to be challenged by local mothers who demanded the food they were used to, such as burgers and chips. Bourdieu sees symbolic capital, such as prestige, recognition or honour, as a key source of power. Unlike economic capital, symbolic capital is not boundless, and its value is related directly to the cultural and historical context in which it originated. Examples could include the priest in the Catholic Church in Ireland or the Royal Family in the UK. The former historically had considerable power over what was acceptable and what was not. The latter has both symbolic power and economic power, and both kinds of power were inherited from the Normans, who confiscated land and wealth from the Anglo Saxons after the invasion of England in 1066. Objects like statues may also possess symbolic capital, which is why the pulling down of statues, whether Saddam Hussein in Iran or Edward Colston in Bristol, is perceived as significant. Most landmarks have symbolic value and utility. They become landmarks precisely because they have symbolic value. This reciprocal relationship provides the landmark with cultural or environmental meaning, while at the same time lending its environment a layer of prestige. Bourdieu argued that when a holder of symbolic capital uses the power this confers against someone who holds less and seeks to alter their actions, they exercise symbolic violence. They impose thought patterns and perceptions on those they dominate, who then take the social order to be right and just, giving the current social order a level of legitimacy.

These thought patterns are reinforced through the way language is used, because the language one uses comes where you are in a society and therefore serves to reproduce it. It also determines who has the ‘right’ to be listened to, interrupt, ask questions and to what degree. Language as a mechanism of power is achieved through the forms of mental representations that manifest in signs and symbols, and are transformed through language into power. Another concept tied to capital is the notion of the field. Fields are the various social and institutional arenas in which people compete for the distribution of different kinds of capital (Gaventa, 2003: 31). A field can be a network, structure or set of relationships, which may be intellectual, religious, educational, cultural, and so on (Navarro, 2006: 18). Depending on the field they are in at any particular time, people experience power differently (Gaventa, 2003: 31), thus context and environment are key influences on any habitus. These experiences in different 184

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contexts cause tensions and contradictions. A person or group of people might resist power and domination in one context or field, but be complicit in another, for example, a feminist who is challenging the status quo at work while being subservient to their partner at home. One is a public field, the other a private, and these differences arise because women and men are socialised to behave differently in ‘public, private and intimate’ arenas of power (Veneklasen and Miller, 2002). For Bourdieu, habitus and field can only exist in relation to each other. That relationship is twofold. First, the field exists only insofar as people possess the habits and perspectives that are necessary to constitute that field and imbue it with meaning. Concomitantly, by participating in the field, people incorporate into their habitus the proper know-how that will allow them in turn to create the field. Habitus manifests the structures of the field, and the field mediates between habitus and practice. A final concept in Bourdieu’s understanding of power is the idea of doxa, which is the combination of both orthodox and heterodox norms and beliefs – the unstated, taken-for-granted assumptions or ‘common sense’ behind the distinctions we make. Doxa tends to favour the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privileging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self-evident and universally favourable. Thus, the ‘adherence to relations of order which, because they structure inseparably both the real world and the thought world, are accepted as self-evident’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 471). This is similar to the idea of ‘false consciousness’ but goes deeper than the manipulation of one group by another. Bourdieu sees this as a cultural phenomenon which embodies a set of active social processes that anchor taken-for-granted assumptions into the realm of social life. ‘All forms of power require legitimacy, and culture is the battleground where this conformity is disputed and eventually materialises amongst agents, thus creating social differences and unequal structures’ (Navarro, 2006: 19). As a vehicle for changing these elements, Bourdieu was a firm believer in reflexivity as ‘a powerful tool to enhance social emancipation’ (Navarro, 2006: 15–16) and a strategy that would expose the invisible processes that reproduce existing power relations and inequalities.

Michel Foucault Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and sociologist, is associated with poststructuralism and postmodernism. Foucault, in contrast to Bourdieu, sees power as ‘ubiquitous’ and beyond agency or structure. He, too, is preoccupied with how people become the conscious subjects of history, experiencing themselves as powerful, not powerless, and by such intellectual emancipation can free themselves from the chains of false consciousness. He talks about how, as subjects, we can become ‘self-determining agents that resist and challenge power structures’ (Danaher et al, 2000: 150). To do this, we need to understand the way that truth 185

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is socially constructed through power/knowledge relations. ‘For Foucault, power comes from everywhere, from above and from below; it is “always already there” and is inextricably implicated in micro-relations of domination and resistance’ (McLaren, 2009: 72). Power relations, according to Foucault, are embedded in discourse, and by this, he means not only words but practices – educational, scientific, religious, legal – that embed dominant discourse in their processes. In this way, we begin to see that truth is not absolute but relational. In this sense, we remain eternally challenged: ‘Critical educators argue that praxis (informed actions) must be guided by phronesis (the disposition to act truly and rightly). This means, in critical terms, that actions and knowledge must be directed at eliminating pain, oppression, and inequality, and at promoting justice and freedom’ (McLaren, 2009: 74). As McLaren points out, empowerment means not only setting the learning context for participants to understand the world around them, but also to generate the courage to bring about change. Much as Gramsci directed our attention from power as coercion to include power as ideological persuasion, Foucault argues that we must direct our attention from a concentration on the role of the state and the institutions of civil society to include the micro-level of society. Hegemonic or global forms of power rely in the first instance on those ‘infinitesimal’ practices, composed of their own particular techniques and tactics, which exist in those institutions on the fringes or at the micro-level of society. (Foucault, 1980: 99) He was not negating hegemonic forms of power but suggesting that they rely on all people being vehicles of power in everyday life, acting out the social and cultural practices at every level. In this sense, our attention is more acutely focused on subjects of power rather than sites or holders of power. We have to become more conscious of power everywhere in the here and now, in the self and in the community, in everyday practices. ‘All individuals are vehicles of power’ (Kothari, 2001: 141). As we begin to stretch our thought capacities from their binary construction which ‘reduces the languages of analysis to white, hegemonic forms of clarity’ (McLaren, 1995), we begin to touch the edges of ‘power … conceived to be relational … rather than something that is acquired, seized or shared’ (Smart, 2002: 79). ‘Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or rather as something which only functions in the form of a chain. It is never localized here or there.… Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization.’ (Foucault, 1980: 98)

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Moving critique further Feminists have contested that much of critical theory has been developed by White European men. It is not just women’s voices that have been excluded but also those of Asia, Africa, indigenous and non-White. How might the ideas of the critical theorists outlined above have been modified if they had been female or from another cultural group?

Feminists have found the theories discussed so far useful, but also weak in terms of understanding identity, resistance, the body and social change (Adkins and Skeggs, 2004). Nevertheless, the basic ideas previously discussed serve as a useful starting point to understand power relations and how they play out in the context of patriarchy, racism and White privilege, all aspects of hegemony. For example, Patti Lather, who provided a feminist critique of critical theory, drew on Gramsci’s notion of a war of position and the role of the intellectuals in relation to feminist political action. She took Gramsci’s emphasis on everyone’s innate capacity to be philosophers and related this to the way that second-wave feminism and its groundswell of experience-based knowledge influenced social institutions to the extent that it constituted a war of position: ‘many small revolutions … many small changes in relationships, behaviours, attitudes and experiences’ (Kenway, 2001: 59). She placed particular emphasis on the role of women as intellectuals in the tide of developing critical consciousness. The influence of feminist scholars, such as Lather, has steered the evolution of critical pedagogy more firmly towards a knowledge base that is constructed from ‘personal biography, narratives, a rethinking of authority, and an explicit engagement with the historical and political location of the knowing subject – all aspects essential to questioning patriarchy and reconstructing the sexual politics that obstruct the participation of women as full and equal contribution members of society’ (Darder et al, 2009: 14–15). Taking this further still, Weiler refers to Gloria Anzaldua’s conception of the new mestiza as a postcolonial feminist, warning that feminism can be an invasion of the self unless patriarchy is critiqued from Western conceptions of linear rationality, White privilege and assumptions of universal truths. Anti-racist feminist educators have ‘stressed that critical and feminist pedagogies, whilst claiming an opposition to oppression, are in danger of taking a kind of imperial and totalizing stance of knowing and “speaking for” those who are to be educated into truth’ (Weiler, 2001: 72). When considering our own power as practitioners, it is important to heed Weiler’s warning of the dangers when we use our authority to speak for marginalised people without an analysis of difference and diversity. In these ways, critiques of critical theory formed from male and White experience raised questions of ‘race’ and gender, with feminists levelling the accusation that

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metanarratives of class hide more than they reveal. As the move into micronarratives progressed with postmodernism, Foucauldian notions of power being everywhere, in every encounter, gave rise to a backlash from critical theorists such as Peter McLaren, Dave Hill, Paula Allman and others, who warn that we are being distracted from the centrality of class and the impact of capitalism as globalisation escalates. From an ecological perspective, critique has centred around the elevation of humanity, freedom and empowerment through the use of dialogue to structure meaning which flies in the face of knowledge from non-Western and indigenous truths that are more focused on biodiversity, claiming that critical pedagogy ‘fractures knowledge and supports the further alienation of human beings from nature’ (Darder et  al, 2009: 17). Although we would like to point out that dialogue can be extended beyond the spoken truth to include such action as that of Vandana Shiva and others in the Chipko movement of the 1970s and 1980s, where Indian women used the Gandhian method of satyagraha, a form of non-violent action, to hug trees to connect with the earth ecologically as a dissenting act against economically destructive practices. Engaging with these critiques has led to a much more considered understanding of the relationship between social justice and environmental justice, with the Paulo Freire Institute for Ecopedagogy expressly committing to ‘the construction of a planetary citizenship, so that all, with no exception or exclusion, may have healthy conditions, in a planet able to offer life because its own life is being preserved’ (Darder et al, 2009: 18). In this way, ecopedagogy embraces all forms of life on Earth in diversity and biodiversity as a love for all life. Paulo Freire was working on ecopedagogy when he died, and some of these ideas are included in his posthumous Pedagogy of Indignation (2004). Power is located within a multidimensional system of relationships that interlink and, as Foucault argues, since ‘power is conceived to be relational … rather than something that is acquired, seized or shared’ (Smart, 2002: 122/79) it permeates people’s relationships in every interaction, influencing attitudes, identities and perceptions  … operating at the microlevel of society’. Thus, he argued that ‘resistance must be carried out in local struggles against the many forms of power exercised at the everyday level of social relations’ (Sawicki, 1991: 23). It was a Black feminist lawyer, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), who gave us the framework for understanding this. Crenshaw was the first person to introduce the notion of intersectionality as a frustration with White feminists who ignored the Black experience. At the same time, she opened our understanding to complexities of social life and power relations and their impact on our lives. Lived realities are shaped by different factors and social dynamics operating together. It is important to explore in any context the interplay between the relationships and power dynamics. Social location and processes (racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, sexism, for example) are linked. They can also change over time and differ depending on geographic settings. Moreover, people can experience privilege and oppression simultaneously. It depends on the context and situation, 188

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so any critical reflection on this issue needs looking at all the levels, structures and systems that shape and experience power dynamics. Intersectionality provides critical insights into how institutional practices and norms (and the power dynamics within these) shape the knowledge and norms used by communities and those in power. By asking questions such as ‘What type of knowledge is privileged in dealing with this social issue?’ and ‘How is the understanding of what is legitimate knowledge related to social categories and to power relations?’, intersectionality-informed analysis can bring to the fore local self-knowledge and understanding across apparent divides. But, equally important, self-reflection on the part of the participatory practitioner can reveal their own privileged social position, role and power in the context they are working. For example, such a lens in reflexive practices may help the practitioner in Canada to consider their connections to colonisation and facilitate questioning about policy and practices that accompanied the colonisation of indigenous peoples (Blackstock, 2005). For a lengthier discussion on intersectionality, see Ledwith (2020); her model of the loci of oppression (2020: 331) is a useful starting point. These ideas will also be taken further in Chapter 8. The above exploration of power may seem somewhat divorced from participatory reality. However, theoretical ideas can provide a ‘source code’ for the development of tools to bring about change. As Kothari (2001: 142) warns: Despite the aims of participatory approaches and the claims made by participatory practitioners, particularly with respect to empowering the disempowered, it is argued here that participative methods of enquiry simplify the nature of power and are thus in danger of encouraging a reassertion of power and social control not only by certain individuals and groups, but also of particular ‘bodies of knowledge’. She asserts that while we fail to see knowledge as an accumulation of norms, rituals and practices that are embedded in power relations, we fall back on dichotomies of power which do not reach how knowledge is produced or the processes by which it becomes normalised. An inability to analyse power at policy and personal levels has led to an inability to understand racism and the subsequent denial of the reality of multicultural societies, with the result that issues of social justice, culture and identity continue to be swept under the carpet. Both these arguments are based on our lack of the conceptual tools of analysis to bring about change but, worse than this, the implication is that our practice not only fails in its intention, but reinforces the existing social order. As Berger (1963: 140) says: ‘the structures of society become the structures of our own consciousness. Society does not stop at the surface of our skins. Society permeates us as much as it envelops us’. Hence our emphasis on becoming critical as an inner process of deep reflexivity and an outer process of critical connections, in what Judi Marshall terms ‘inner and outer arcs of attention’ (Marshall, 2001: 433).

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Tools for reflecting on power Here we present the example of three tools for starting the process of critical reflection on power, which were developed based on the above ideas. These are examples we have used ourselves but there are many others available. There is no prescribed order in which they should be used; rather, each provides a useful start for a conversation or a self-reflection process. This is not to underestimate the challenge both of self-reflection as a practitioner and of enabling others to engage in critical reflexivity. As indicated in the previous chapter, strong emotions can be brought up as one’s self-identity and perspectives are questioned. It requires paying attention to creating spaces of trust and providing support as previous taken-for-granteds are challenged and critiqued. Comedy, satire, fun and the use of the arts can help, in addition to the tools we suggest. When it comes to it, however, one of the most useful tools to start the process is the question ‘Why?’, continuing to ask that question to dig deeper into answers.

1. What’s in my haversack? Developed by a White teacher Peggy McIntosh in 1989 (republished as McIntosh, 2004) who was passionate about civil rights in the US, this tool focuses on exploring, together or individually, the resources one is able to carry around as the result of one’s privilege. Having introduced the idea of privilege and its systemic basis, people in pairs or small circles are asked to reflect in turn, without interruption, in three rounds, on the following questions: • Round one: What are one or more ways in which you’ve had unearned disadvantage in your life? • Round two: What are one or more ways in which you’ve had unearned advantage in your life? • Round three: What is it like for you to sit here and talk about and hear about these experiences of unearned advantage and disadvantage?

2. The Blanket Exercise: exploring the impact of colonial history Originally developed in Canada by Kairos in 1997 to bring to the surface the position of the indigenous people in that country, this process can be adapted to any context with different content. The original exercise has been done with thousands of people of all age groups as a way to continue the conversation about decolonisation and furthering the aims of the Truth and Reconciliation process. In its original form, blankets are arranged on the ground to represent Canada before the Europeans and other newcomers came. Some participants take the role of indigenous people, and they begin moving around on their blankets. While a narrator reads a script, other participants representing Europeans and newcomers begin to interact with those on the blankets. As the script traces the history of the interaction, the participants respond to various cues and read various prepared ‘scrolls’. At the end, only a few participants remain on the blankets,

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Critical reflection and reflexivity which have been folded into small bundles and cover only a fraction of the area. The whole exercise finishes with a discussion of feelings, reactions and implications.

3. The Power Cube This tool, developed by Gaventa (2007), directly integrates the work of the theorists we have discussed earlier with the work of Stephen Lukes on Power (2004). Lukes argued that it is possible to distinguish different types of relational power: power to, power within, power over and power with. These and the power relationships Foucault and others have identified can be explored in the context of three different forms of power, visible, hidden and invisible. These can be put together alongside the levels of power of decision-making – international, national and local – and the spaces for participation that provide potential arenas for action – closed, invited and created. Visible power is the power that we can see in public spaces and formal decision-making bodies. Hidden power is used by vested interests to maintain their privilege and keep others out. Invisible power is the most insidious because it is hegemonic: it creates internal powerlessness and is closely related to false consciousness. Closed spaces are those places where decision-making takes place behind closed doors. Invited spaces are those where challenge to the status quo is regularised, for example planning inquiries. Created spaces are organic spaces that are claimed by communities, for example marches and the work of Occupy. See further www.powercube.net/resources Figure 7.2: Gaventa’s Power Cube

Global

LEVELS

National

Local Closed

Invisible Hidden

Invited

SPACES

Claimed/ created

Visible

FORMS

Source: Based on Gaventa (2007)

The power cube can be used to explore with people various aspects of power and how they interact with each other, like a Rubik’s cube, similar to that used by Ledwith’s sites of oppression matrix (Ledwith, 2020: 233).

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Taking critical reflection forward Critical theory has no special influence on its side, except concern for the abolition of social injustice…. Its own nature  … turns it towards a changing of history and the establishment of justice. (Max Horkheimer, cited in Kemmis, 2008: 125) The challenges in helping people engage in critical reflection cannot be underestimated. As we noted in Chapter  6, on dialogue, in digging deeper, strong emotions will be brought to the surface, denial and anger. It is therefore crucially important to engage in personal reflexivity before engaging others. We need to expose the frameworks we take for granted and make the unconscious conscious, reflecting on our privilege, our power and the language we use. As Kemmis (2008: 124) says, ‘The person wishing to understand their own practices/ praxis, clearly must also attempt to understand the prejudices and perspectives built into their own ways of understanding – a task that may seem impossible.’ The theories we have outlined in this chapter can help with this difficult process of self-reflection It is only when we have asked the right questions of ourselves that we can ask questions of others as we help them explore their ways of viewing the world. Both for us and for them, the process can throw light on the socially and culturally constituted, and therefore shared, unconscious ‘frames’ through which we view ‘reality’. Such frames are effectively our own and their ‘theories in use’. But, as always, we need to be open to the potential of such theories in use as rich sources of knowledge, in the same way as we would the more formal theories of philosophers. So at the heart of reflection lies the questioning.

The 5 Ws 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What is going on here? Who is involved? Where is it taking place? Why is this happening? When is this happening?

  A well-known urban myth says it all … One dark evening a man was on his hands and knees under a street light looking through the grass. A pedestrian asked what he was looking for. “The keys to my car,” replied the man. Having some time and feeling helpful, the pedestrian joined the man in his search. After a while, with no success, the pedestrian asked: “Where 192

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were you when you lost your keys?” “Over there, by my car.” The man gestured. The pedestrian was puzzled. “Why are you looking for them over here?” The man without the keys explained: “The light’s better!”

In this oft-quoted urban myth, we can see that ‘the light’ functions as an unarticulated worldview that frames the situation. The frame – in this case for finding the keys of the car – is, however, not particularly helpful in solving the problem. However, another person’s question helps to articulate what was taken for granted (searching is easier in the light) and offers a new lens to frame the situation and solve it (looking elsewhere, where the keys were lost) (Abma et al, 2019: 24). Framing is what newspapers and social media do to distort and bias our understanding of events or persons. They use language and discourse to do so. Verdonk and Klinge, two feminists, have shown how, in the health sector, framing through discursive power is crucial to the way dominant knowledge structures are ‘translated’ into concrete social practices: In the framing process, aspects of reality are selected that play a role in how  … knowledge is interpreted, communicated and received.… frames select and draw attention to particular aspects (inclusion and emphasis), for instance by the presence of keywords, stereotyped images, sources of information or judgments, whilst they simultaneously direct attention away from other aspects which may then be overlooked, ignored or considered less important (exclusion and downplaying). (Verdonk and Klinge, 2013: 53–4) As Lukes (1975) shows us in his theory of power, such dominant framing can keep issues off the agenda and silence voices. Helping ourselves and others to critically reflect on our own frameworks and theirs in use, our own and their preconceptions and perspectives, lies at the core of what Freire advocated through popular education. Oppressed people can become empowered, he argued, by learning about social inequality, encouraging others to make them feel confident about achieving social equality and, finally, liberating them. This has an individual component (developing power from within), as well as a collective component, that is working together to create power with others, and which in turn will generate power to bring about change. Resistance can be overcome through dialogue and the critical questioning of our colonised minds. In short, social change comes about through reframing, and it is to the process of transformation that results from critical reflexivity and reflection we turn in the next chapter.

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8 Transformative practice Margaret Ledwith

Transformative practice aims to bring about social change for a kinder, more just and sustainable world. Therefore, participatory practice is inevitably transformative in intention. As we argued in Chapter 4, the weak link is that ‘participation’ as a concept is poorly understood and often diluted. Participatory practice is action for a participatory democracy: not a feelgood factor that involves local people in local projects but practice which follows through to collective action by involvement in global movements for transformative change. This is precisely the point at which practice reaches out from being tokenistic or partial to connect with change that reaches structural discrimination and human rights violations. What an enormous task, you may say, and I would agree, but would add that there are some extremely straightforward ways to go about it. This chapter looks at the ideas, skills and structure involved in taking practice forward confidently into its transformative agenda. Its focus is connection! This is precisely why the ideas discussed here transcend false boundaries to connect across human being in its full extent: intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, ecological … Everything about life is inextricably interconnected, and atomisation of thought results in fragmented action, reducing practice to a disconnected, ameliorative activity without potential for transformation. For these reasons, participatory practitioners see a participatory worldview as an integrated whole, with respect and responsibility for everyone and everything, a healthy, happy world in balance.

How to make participatory practice transformative Participatory practice becomes a transformative practice when social justice is placed at the forefront of its agenda, prioritising an intention to act together for social change. This involves seeing beneath surface symptoms of oppression to connect with the roots of systemic discrimination that lead to embedded structural inequalities. Praxis, power and action There are three pivotal connections in transformative practice: praxis, power and action (see Figure 8.1).

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Power

Theory in action and action from theory, a circularity of thinking and doing in symbiotic motion

Situating personal lives in political context within an intersectional analysis

Collective action

Unity of praxis

Figure 8.1: Three pivotal connections in transformative practice

Moving beyond community projects to join movements for change that have potential to transform power relations

These three points in the process are critical in the quest for change, and will be woven through this chapter to provide a failsafe structure within which to adapt your practice to its greatest transformative potential. At this point, let me say just a few words on praxis, power and action to set the background for this thinking. As practitioners, if we stay on the surface, we react to the symptoms of inequality, not reaching far enough down to identify the root causes. If our seeing is contained within binary parameters, limiting our understanding to a dichotomous this or that, Black or White, one thing defined by its opposite, we fail to create the important new knowledge needed for transformative practice. Or, if knowledge is seen as the property of academia, and action is seen as the responsibility of social movements, we fail to harness the synergy that results from critical inquiry and practice coming together in praxis. Knowledge remains abstract and action is uncritical. This insight reveals that transformation is not possible without curiosity and imagination, two ingredients that are vital for practitioners and participants. Curiosity involves asking questions, digging deeper, making connections, and imagination involves seeing possibilities for different ways of organising society, naming different values that give rise to different ways of relating to each other, creating counternarratives that provide a new story to replace the old. These are all key stages in a living praxis built on synergy of action and reflection, theory 196

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and practice, epistemology and ontology; different ways of seeing the world and different ways of being in the world. Separating thinking from doing creates a disconnection. This is why ideas need grounding in lived experience. It is why I regard my only authenticity as being the experience I have had of sharing people’s lives in community on the margins of society, the foundation of building theory in action based on the reality of lived experience. Education for critical consciousness is at the heart of the process of change. It stimulates curiosity from apathy, inspires confidence and frees the imagination to act. This is because nothing changes unless we change the way we see ourselves in relation to each other and the world. If we believe that people are lazy, selfish, unkind and cruel we will adopt a different ideology than if we believe that people are fundamentally kind, compassionate, cooperative and caring. How we make sense of the world (our knowing, or epistemology) will contain values, attitudes and expectations, influencing the way we act (our being, or ontology). The stories we tell and the expectations we have are based on this set of beliefs. They not only inform our every thought and action but form the basis of the structures of society and the policies that are adopted in law to govern society. It is the lens through which we make sense of our place in the world. If we fail to question the authority and authenticity of what is said and done, we fail as a democracy to govern for the whole and accede to power and dominance of the few over the many. When power relations get overlooked, dominant power is free to exploit. Neoliberalism is based on rule by market forces rather than participatory democracy. This means that, unquestioned, it creates an education system that focuses on skills rather than knowledge, on testing rather than autonomy, on competition rather than cooperation, and on employment for profit. Neoliberalism is an intersectional political project. Unemployment, poverty, discrimination, homelessness, hopelessness, illiteracy, poor health, violence, disrespect … all are threats to the common good. Neoliberalism does not believe in a common good: it believes in deregulation, freedom from market constraints and individualism, leaving social issues down to individuals as it dismantles public sector provision. Neoliberal ideology is the antithesis of participatory democracy, but without the knowledge to critique it, we leave spaces open for it to sell its narrative as a good idea without challenge. The greatest triumph of neoliberal government in the UK was when swathes of the poorest people in the North of the England, exploited and impoverished for four decades by neoliberal ‘austerity’ policies, voted for the Brexit Far Right government of Boris Johnson – simply because of a lack of critical consciousness. This is precisely why critical education is at the heart of change. It is why those of us who believe in participatory democracy have been so profoundly influenced by the work of Paulo Freire’s education for critical consciousness, a living praxis which works as action and reflection in symbiotic motion, theory building action and action building theory, never static, always engaged in the political context that shapes the personal lives of the people, striving to be more fully human. Freire believed that peaceful, democratic change can only be achieved 197

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from the ground up: grassroots education for critical consciousness that not only liberates the oppressed, but also liberates the oppressors. ‘Violent protests will only increase the perception of threat, setting off the feedback loop of reciprocal dehumanization’ (Hare and Woods, 2020: 176). This thinking is supported by the research of political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who initially believed that it was logical for people to use violence for transformative change. She collected data on all major peaceful and violent campaigns since 1900 and, to her surprise, found that peaceful campaigns are almost twice as likely to establish successful democracies. She attributes this to the fact that peaceful action is based on wider, diverse participation, of women, children, elders … inclusive and conducted in the open (Hare and Woods, 2020). Its vision is that of a peaceful, kind, just and sustainable future, and its purpose is freedom: ‘the conquest of the world for the liberation of humankind’ (Freire, 2018: 89).

What sort of world do we want to live in? The values that frame our view of a world in healthy balance, in which everyone and everything is interconnected in an ecosystem that has mutual responsibility for planet and everything living on it, are the basis of practice. What sort of world do we want to live in? What does it look like? How are people treating each other? Questioning leads to building blocks in the construction of a counternarrative of interconnection, one based on participatory democracy, an ecosystem in which cooperation leads to mutual, respectful balance. Conversations that raise questions trigger the imagination, and the imagination fires hope in the soul. Voicing values raises social justice from a feelgood, unthought-out tagline to prominence. Reflect on what you understand by social justice, social injustice, human rights, oppression, discrimination and inequality.

The current global dominant narrative, neoliberal capitalism, based on values of competition, status and individualism, gives rise to excessive greed and consumption which inevitably creates extreme social inequalities and causes ecological destruction. Critiquing this system leads to critical consciousness, an awareness of the everyday contradictions that we live by. This is precisely why Paulo Freire said that the answers to change lie in the stories that people tell about their lives. As soon as we begin to question lived experience, we identify the values that underpin the ideology of our times and come to realise that there are other epistemologies that have happier outcomes, worldviews that are more inclusive and mutual. Critique leads to an analysis of power and the way that it works in everyday life, the way that it is woven through our politics, policies and practices. Exploring different ways of knowing, different ways of making sense of the world, builds knowledge that leads to possibilities for change. We awaken to the realisation that what we have been told is common sense is actually nonsense! In a circular process of action and reflection, building theory in action 198

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and building action from theory, a unity of praxis which develops from lived experience evolves into new ways of knowing with new possibilities for a fair and just future.

Paulo Freire and transformative practice Paulo Freire offers an approach to transformative practice that continues to inspire those working for transformative change the world over. This approach is supported by Freire Institutes that act as hubs for the development of practice in the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Canada, the USA, South Africa, India, Finland, Germany, Spain and Portugal, to date.1 Connections such as these offer vital links for the development of critical thought and the support of transformative action, local to global. The Paulo Freire Institute for Ecopedagogy is principled on ‘the construction of a planetary citizenship, so that all, with no exception or exclusion, may have healthy conditions, in a planet able to offer life because its own life is being preserved’ (Darder et al, 2009: 18). Questioning triggers this process, so my failsafe structure for transformative practice is built around systematic questioning in dialogue that takes action towards its transformative potential according to the stages illustrated in Figure 8.2. The strength of a Freirean approach lies in its emphasis on storytelling praxis – a unity of theory and practice. Freire offers a template based on his own experience in his own culture and times. The rest is up to us to adapt his ideas to our politics, our culture, our times and our evolving knowledge. For Freire, values of human dignity, mutual respect, reciprocity, cooperation, compassion, kindness, community, love for all humanity and for the world frame the lens through which every stage of his approach to transformative practice is measured for its integrity. For this reason, I choose to start with the centrality of values to the way we create our reality, and the implications of new neuroscientific discoveries into empathy as a natural state of human being.

Values are the bedrock of change Values are the lens through which we see the world and make sense of the world, they shape the policies by which we govern the world but, more than that, they influence the way we relate to each other and the natural world. Yet we pay so little attention to claiming them and naming them. How we make sense of the world depends on the sort of ideas that we are fed: they fill our minds, and are often small, random and chaotic. But incoherent ideas can leave us disconnected and despairing. Hopelessness, in recent times, has created spaces for the rise of fascism. What twenty-first century fascists want is clear: to destroy liberal democracy, human rights and the rule of law; to cancel the rights won by women since the 1960s; and to create monocultural ethno-states using cataclysmic violence. (Mason, 2021: 21) 199

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Paul Mason explains the current rise of fascism as a result of the opportunity created by the failure of neoliberalism, liberal democracy and globalisation to explain the world for the many. As the dominant order crumbles, there is a crack where the light gets in. This has been seized by new fascism due to the failure of those of us who want a fairer and more just world to create a persuasive and compelling counternarrative that gives rise to hope out of despair. We urgently need to become more critical, questioning and committed to action. And to do that, we need ideas that make sense of the world we have created (critiques of our political context), and to make choices about living life on Earth with kindness, connection and cooperation rather than violence (a counternarrative based on different values). Let’s explore how to make this happen. All subjects, no matter how specialised, are connected with a centre; they are like rays emanating from a sun. The centre is constituted by our most basic convictions, by those ideas which really have the power to move us. In other words, the centre consists of metaphysics and ethics, of ideas that – whether we like it or not – transcend facts. (Schumacher, 2011: 73) Schumacher wrote these words in 1973. He was a person of praxis, discovering that theorising without practical experience is incomplete. He went into business, farming and journalism before becoming a progressive advisor on problems of global rural development, inventing the term ‘intermediate technology’, and serving as President of the Soil Association (Britain’s largest organic farming organisation) and Director of Scott Bader, pathfinders in polymer chemistry and common ownership. This thumbnail sketch is important; we need to understand where ideas have emerged from. It resonates with me, just as it did with Paulo Freire, that we cannot work for change without practical experience of working on the margins and gaining insight into how the political context impacts on personal lives. If we disconnect our epistemology and ontology from that centre, then our ideas are free floating, cut free from the values that we hold dear and the world we want to create. This is precisely what has contributed to the enormous success of the neoliberal project: it has emphatically sold ideas to the people, ideas founded on values that lead to hatred and division, elevating the interests of the few over the many. Monbiot (2017: 12) says, ‘A politics that has failed to articulate its values and principles leaves nothing to which people can attach themselves but policies.’ This disconnects humanity from the ‘centre’ to which Schumacher refers, and it goes some way to explaining why the results of The UK National Values Survey: Increasing Happiness by Understanding What People Value (Barrett and Clothier, 2016) revealed a strong relationship between people’s personal values and the society they would like to live in, at odds with the society that has been created (see p 202). This realisation is the point at which we touch on an insight into the basis of a counternarrative for a world that most people would like to live in. 200

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We are at a pivotal moment in history, where witnessing the violence of humanity to itself and to the natural world is leading to an awakening, greater receptiveness for a world worthy of human aspiration. When we divide the forms of life in taxonomy and name them in our image, we set ourselves outside, omniscient. We structure our difference; we say, we are the only animals that name and order the other animals, the rest of them just exist. But how do we know that the dolphins are not swimming around shouting ‘coral’ at coral in sonar? And naming the animals and knowing the animals, it did not make us look after them better. It is another way for each ‘namer’ to survive time. Our separateness allowed us to bring everything to the brink of mass extinction. (Andrews, 2019: 227) Separation, atomisation, difference, disconnection have elevated White supremacy as a superior form of being over the rest of humanity and the natural world with dire consequences. A ranked order of being has been normalised, together with the growth of what we might call ‘the walk-on-by factor’, an immunity to empathy and a disregard for responsibility. This has been encouraged using stigma to justify greed and wanton waste on the part of the privileged. The work of Imogen Tyler (2013; 2020) has been transformative in exposing how the use of stigma is the bedrock of a strategic, intersectional, neoliberal project that interweaves all oppressions as one extremely clever web of discrimination to subordinate the poor at the same time as elevating the rich. Internalised as common sense in Gramscian terms, it is accepted, not questioned. Changing what is being taken-for-granted in society involves altering the way we see the world. Radical empathy is the catalyst to questioning this suffering. And a good place to start with the key insight into change is by exploring the neuroscientific discovery that our brains are wired for empathy.

Radical empathy We need to see the world differently. Try to suspend the worldview that tells us we are naturally greedy and self-interested. Then substitute this with the knowledge that to empathise ‘is part of our genetic inheritance, with roots deep in our evolutionary pasts’ (Krznaric, 2015: 3). We have been taught to see each other as selfish and untrustworthy by nature, and this simply is not true. It is a story that has been reinforced by somewhat unbalanced interpretations of influential thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, ones that have concentrated on homo self-centricus, subsuming homo empathicus. This began to change with child psychologists, such as Bowlby and Piaget, offering insights into empathy in young children. Not only has neuroscientific research, since the late 1990s, identified an ‘empathy circuit’ in the brain that connects us to one another, but further research evidence suggests that most of us can 201

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increase our capacity for empathy throughout our lives by ‘practising mindful attention towards other people’s feeling and experiences’ (Krznaric, 2015: 26–9). Empathy, the ability to step into someone’s shoes and understand their feelings and point of view in order to guide your behaviour, has the power to bring about transformative social change. The Occupy Movement in the UK and in the US have emphasised empathy in their camps, just one example of a wave of empathy that is challenging individualism. Just knowing that empathy is a natural state for becoming fully human inspires participatory practice. Reflect on the times you have heard it said that people are naturally greedy and selfish. What impact has this had on the way you relate to people and what you expect of them? It has certainly been an argument I have often come across in my life, which is used to justify living in a world of selfishness and greed as inevitable and unchangeable. Yet this development in neuroscientific research offers the basis for a revolution in human relationships, one that is potentially transformative for the quality of life on Earth. Here is a story you could use to provoke dialogue.

  The story of a very well-kept secret I’m going to tell you a very well-kept secret: people aren’t naturally selfish and greedy, as we’ve been repeatedly told – this is simply not true. Developments in neuroscience over recent years prove that our brains are wired for empathy, we need to feel connected, we thrive on being kind to each other … this is how we’ve survived, and it’s how we become more fully human! In fact, the great contradiction is that when people were asked what they cared about in the UK National Values Survey, community, friendship, compassion, kindness and equality came top – people care deeply about each other and the world … yet the paradox is that we have created a culture that’s at odds with the world that people really want. This survey also found that those who empathise with these values generate well-being and are more likely to get involved in community and support collective action for social and environmental change (Barrett and Clothier, 2016). Try actively setting a thought for the day that you will practise empathy, and won’t judge anyone you meet but simply listen and try to understand them.

Paulo Freire believed that we all have an infinite capacity to take responsibility for our lives, that we have a vocation to be more fully human, and that when we learn to think critically we are more likely to act together to change the world. How exciting to find that we have hard, scientific evidence in support of this: 202

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our brains have an empathy circuit, empathy is at the heart of who we are, we need to be compassionate to be healthy, connected and engaged in our world. Empathy can create a revolution; a revolution of human relationships. (Krznaric, 2015: ix)

What if we saw kindness as a way of life, what then? Here is a story about the power of empathy that transcends culture, nationhood and language.

  A personal story of the power of empathy to transcend language and culture … My story begins in North East Scotland, where my life was woven together with those of Vietnamese people, refugees from the harsh, political context of their homeland, seeking sanctuary. The stories we shared bonded us in empathy and compassion. … now, 40 years later, I still experience the moment that Bhi wiped her eyes on her tattered scarf as she shared with me, in halting English, her story of the day she ran, terrified, from a safe house to board a rusty old landing craft and sail away from Vietnam … and then, the realisation that her husband and three of her seven children hadn’t made it … she held me … and her tears of indescribable pain ran down my neck … … the story of Mai, how she gave birth on an overcrowded landing craft, taking turns to sleep – they couldn’t all lie down at the same time … the men held up a blanket to give her some dignity, while the women delivered her baby … no food or water, the ships of the world sailed by, turning away … she talked about death … then overwhelming gratitude when a Scottish ship stopped to rescue them … … these same Vietnamese mothers gathered round me as I lay in my bed with a high fever, so ill, confused, dizzy, the ceiling revolving … they were outraged that any Western doctor could leave me in this state and announced, we want to do Vietnamese medicine, can we take your pyjamas off, Margaret …? I’d say that this is the ultimate act of trust, but I didn’t hesitate … the empathy and respect we shared left my dignity intact …

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A few years after this, I found myself in Nicaragua, just after the Sandinista Revolution for participatory democracy, creating critical alliances between groups in Nicaragua and the UK. One day, I was introduced to the mothers of the ‘disappeared’, children who were active in their Freirean literacy and health movements had been kidnapped by the Contra, trained in terror tactics in Florida, never to be seen again. Contra raids and sonic booms echoing over Managua every night undermined the survival of this tiny country desperately trying to establish itself as a participatory democracy. The mothers of the disappeared children were on hunger strike to get the world to care. I spoke little Spanish, but they simply asked a one-word question: “Madre?” I was held close, and the tears of empathy flowed again. Vietnam or Nicaragua, lives thrown together in crisis were united by the power of empathy and compassion to transcend false boundaries of nationhood, culture and language to connect us in our common humanity …

Empathy is the power of understanding others, imaginatively entering their feelings. It is a fundamental human attribute, without which mutually co-operative societies cannot function … [C]ompassion is the cultural glue that holds us together as communities … it is the executive wing of empathy … it’s when we act on empathy to do something about it. (Bazalgette, 2017: 292 and 263)

Empathy in action Abel and Clarke (2020) develop the theme of our innate capacity for compassion, coming up with a manifesto for compassionate communities. They identify the influence of Margaret Thatcher on a hegemonic worldview that has ruptured human connection from one another and the ecosystem, dismantling communities and managing political and economic human affairs aggressively for profit, based on a lack of trust and a denial of the need for community and society in human survival (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 54). Compassionate energy is released by the imagination in a combination of the inventive/poetic/expressive and the empathetic which connects us with realities other than our own. Compassion releases kindness, it supports and magnifies its potential, bringing rewards much deeper than profit, touching the heart and connecting us beyond self-interest to a common good.

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  The story of a town that changed its values … The Compassionate Frome project began in 2013, an NHS partnership project with an intention to radically change the ideology that underpins the world we live in simply by seeing people differently. It starts from the premise that, rather than being feckless and untrustworthy, people have the capacity to analyse and change the issues they face, in communities that unite them with social assets, skills and talents. The model that evolved is innovative, dynamic, organic, putting people in their communities at the heart of the matter. The first requirement is belief in people; the second is to create ‘a can-do model that is based on trust, kindness, creativity and connections’ (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 57). From social isolation, this model has led to a web of friendship and support. The manifesto for compassionate communities is a call to arms for a social movement that places compassionate communities at the heart of change, ‘recognising that compassion is a fundamental human quality present in all of us’ (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 209). This project, a partnership between medical practice, community development and community groups, is a response to the human need for social connection. A purely medical model does not have the same potential to heal stress-related symptoms, but a social model builds care and connection, love and laughter, friends and neighbours, kinship and companionship, mutuality and respect, a sense of belonging to community. This project, very much based on community development principles, uses interest groups to connect people in community. ‘Together, compassionate communities help to reduce isolation and loneliness and bring a sense of belonging into what is sometimes a disconnected society’ (compassionate-communitiesuk.co.uk).

The Compassionate Frome project advocates putting compassion at the heart of all human activities and in the policies that dictate delivery – ‘education, business, health and welfare provision, in religion and in politics at local, national and international levels, and in proper care for the natural environment which sustains our lives’ (Abel and Clarke, 2020: 209). By introducing the connections beyond the local community into the policy context, this also links to the work of Ballatt, Campling and Maloney (2020) on rehabilitating the welfare state through intelligent kindness. I like the way they emphasise the need to understand the concept of kindness itself, the need for a language that binds us together, a language of dissent, about getting angry together and about ideals motivating us to act for change (2020: 18). 205

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Empathy connects values of compassion, kindness, cooperation, connection, community, it changes the way people relate to each other… but having empathy is simply not enough to challenge the extreme social inequalities that have been created by neoliberal capitalism; transformative action is called for. Radical empathy (Givens, 2021) is a practice that leads to action and change: a stage further than feeling empathy, it is about acting on empathy. One such person who acted on empathy is Patrick Hutchinson, as part of his action with the Black Lives Matter movement. Transcending the boundary between Black and White he touches the potential of intersectionality to act from a common value base. See what you think!

  The story of Patrick Hutchinson … George Floyd was killed in full public view in May 2020 in Minneapolis, USA, by a police officer’s knee on his neck, asphyxiated, despite pleading for his life and the pleas of witnesses. The image shocked the world and for many it was an epiphany, shining a light on the everyday reality of racism. It also sparked a reaction from White supremacists. June, 2020, Trafalgar Square, central London: ‘senseless White rage’ in action – the Far Right had been called to rally against Black Lives Matter protests by White supremacist, Tommy Robinson. Robinson didn’t show up, but violence simmered, the air was tense, racist chants echoed across Trafalgar Square, then resonated globally across social media airwaves. After the statue of slave trader Edward Colston had been pulled down in Bristol the previous week, gangs of drunken, angry, White men were on a mission to protect British monuments, even if they celebrated violations of human rights. Patrick Hutchinson, father and grandfather, and his four friends, knowing the danger to young, Black lives, chose to be there to protect the vulnerable. Ark Security was their small project, already formed out of racist experience to protect young protesters from violence. Fit, strong Black men trained in martial arts, they had already intervened in three incidents before they came across a White supremacist, drunk and injured, abandoned by his friends, being beaten to death by a mob. They were horrified that, while a Rastafarian man tried to protect him, the police watched and filmed but didn’t act to save him. The mob was rising, Hutchinson acted, hauling him over his shoulder. His friends pushed people out of the way, while Hutchinson carried the injured White man over to a line 206

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of police officers. “Well done,” said one police officer, to the sound of cheering, but Hutchinson didn’t get it! Why were the police prepared to see someone kicked to death, no matter who? See further Nosheen Iqbal’s interview with Hutchinson (Iqbal, 2020).

The photograph of Patrick Hutchinson carrying the White supremacist through the angry mob, taken by Reuters photographer Dylan Martinez, became a symbol of empathy in action. It has been made into a mural in the London Borough of Lewisham, and Hutchinson has set up a charity, United to Change and Inspire, and written a book with poet Sophia Thakur, Everyone Versus Racism: A Letter to my Children (Hutchinson with Thakur, 2020). This is an example of how critical consciousness can be triggered by a single act. In just the same way, the world witnessed a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg, take a lone protest – her ‘School strike for Climate’ – outside the government buildings in Stockholm in August 2018, saying ‘I can’t vote so this is one of the ways I can make my voice heard!’.2 Immediately, young people around the world seized hold of school strikes, starting ‘Fridays For Future’, and Greta’s name has become synonymous with action on climate change in all countries, across all ages, linking with Extinction Rebellion in global movement for change. Shaking off the derision of climate change denier Donald Trump and the scathing dismissal of Vladimir Putin, she has been greeted by David Attenborough as the person who has woken up the world and got people to listen. No one is too small to make a difference, she says! We are in the throes of a global pandemic, the result of environmental degradation. It lights up the cruel fractures of discrimination. In the UK, I write this as we mourn the loss of an official 148,000 people through COVID-19, although as not all deaths were recorded as COVID-19 related, the unofficial total is thought to be much higher. Many deaths were avoidable and those who lost their life were disproportionately Black. The virus has pursued the cracks cleaved by poverty, raising questions that lead to a more critical consciousness, a more compassionate calling for a new dawning, and a rejection of returning to the brutality of ‘back to normal’. This is a crisis of values. There are two undeniable aspects of the current market economy: wasteful growth and galloping inequality. (Swift, 2020: 26) Naming values of human dignity and taking responsibility for our place in the ecosystem of life on Earth, seeing life as a mutual balance of diversity and biodiversity, as a thriving interconnected whole, is the basis for critiquing the dominant ideology that is dividing us from each other. Get the values right and transformative practice falls into place!

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This exploration of the role of values in transformative practice lays the foundation for Paulo Freire. His theory and practice of education for critical consciousness across the world demonstrated that people in poverty can quickly develop literacy skills and complex reasoning powers when they are seen as relevant to the reality of their lives. Critical consciousness exposes the power relations that create poverty in the name of profit and greed. When people discover for themselves that they are not responsible for their own poverty, they see themselves as victims of an unjust system and want things changed. Dignity is restored and autonomy is expressed through collective action, working with others to bring about change for social justice. Ideas develop critical consciousness and the imagination for change: action brings about a new future. In this process, understanding the way in which the values we sign up to create the reality we live by is the foundation of dismantling power relations. Freirean values – respect, dignity, trust, mutuality, reciprocity, horizontality – are the lens through which every stage of transformative practice is scrutinised as true to its integrity; this is the basis of an approach to critical pedagogy that changes perceptions of the world, and thereby changes the world.

Getting familiar with Freire Paulo Freire was a Brazilian critical educator who believed we all have a vocation to be fully human. From experience he demonstrated that when people’s dignity is restored and they are respected as being capable of thinking critically, they will understand the nature of power and be inspired to act to change their world for the better: His approach to education has been called a ‘pedagogy of love’. But what does he mean that we have a vocation to be fully human? … To become fully human we need to keep opening our hearts  … (Wheatley, 2009: 62) Paulo Freire was born in 1921, in Recife, North East Brazil. His happy childhood was interrupted by the world economic Depression, a crisis of capitalism in which his family was plunged into poverty and a struggle for survival. His own suffering made him question why people in poverty are often passive and unquestioning, and this experience became the basis of one of his founding concepts, that of a culture of silence. He made a promise to himself to change things so that children never again experienced such hardship: ‘I didn’t understand anything [at school] because of my hunger … It wasn’t a lack of interest. My social condition didn’t allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class and knowledge.’ (Freire, quoted in Gadotti, 1994: 5)

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After his father’s death when he was 13, Freire’s schooling ended abruptly, and an education of the streets laid the foundation for his lifework. He was 20 by time he got to Recife University to study law. After working as a lawyer, he became a Portuguese language teacher in high school, and then his consciousness changed: he saw that education is politics, controlling ideas and life chances, poverty and privilege. Liberating education is education that empowers by encouraging the questioning of lived experience, identifying contradictions, making critical connections with the structures of society that discriminate, and acting to change things for the better. This became his life, his purpose and his passion. Inspired by Elza, for the 40 years they were married until her death, his critical consciousness developed from reflection on lived experience: he came to understand that transformative change will only come from grassroots action; power will never be handed from top down. Random acts of kindness do not change systemic discrimination, benevolence is tokenistic. Real change comes from radical empathy, from listening with the heart with respect for others, trusting that they have the capacity to be intellectuals in their own right with the ability to act to change their world. When people begin to make critical connections that lead them to see that their circumstances are not due to their own inadequacies, they develop the confidence and dignity to act for change in their own name. In doing so, they do not seek to dominate the oppressors, but to liberate everyone to create a more just and fair society for all.

  And so it is time for the new story … … our old one, with its alienating myths, is eating away at us from the inside, rotting from its core. Fewer of us tell it with conviction. Many more of us are beginning to understand that our experience and our beliefs tell a story that celebrates life rather than denying it. We can see this in the pronounced increase in conversations and writing about destiny, purpose, soul, spirit, love, legacy, courage, integrity, meaning. The new story is being born in the conversations. We are learning to give voice to a different and fuller sense of who we really are. Source: Wheatley (2005: 21)

Digging deeper into Freire Freire developed a specific approach to critical education that had ‘an impact on a political plane that reached higher than protest into the very workings of revolutionary government’ (Westerman, 2009: 548). Exploring his critical pedagogy, you will see how the elements of reflection and action, learning and 209

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change, dialogue and story that we have talked about so far in this book are interwoven. While social activists and critical educators such as Myles Horton, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others were challenging discrimination and oppression in the US, Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal were challenging conditions in Brazil. They were arrested, tortured, and exiled by the military junta that came to power in the 1960s, Boal to Argentina and then to Paris, Freire to Chile, Harvard and then Geneva, returning to Brazil in 1980 following the amnesty of 1979: It was his [Freire’s] presence in the United States during that precise historical moment, along with the translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed into English, that became a watershed for radical educators in schools, communities, and labor organizations, struggling to bring about social change to public health, welfare, and educational institutions across the country. As a consequence, Paulo Freire is considered by many to be the most influential educational philosopher in the development of critical pedagogical thought’ (Darder et  al, 2009: 5) Freire’s emphasis was on the political nature of education. Education is never neutral: it is either liberating or domesticating. As a liberating process, it teaches people to be critical, autonomous thinkers; as a domesticating process, it pours facts into passive and unquestioning minds, reinforcing the status quo. He was very clear that a unity of theory and practice, praxis, is fundamental to understanding and transforming the power relations of everyday life. Freire believed that the feelings generated by critical consciousness would motivate community-based action; the emotions generated by seeing life more critically motivate people to act together for change. In cycles of action/reflection, this builds towards a critical praxis; a unity of action and reflection, of theory and practice: The insistence that the oppressed engage in reflection on their concrete situation is not a call to armchair revolution. On the contrary, reflection – true reflection – leads to action. On the other hand, when the situation calls for action, that action will constitute an authentic praxis only if its consequences become the object of critical reflection…. Otherwise, action is pure activism. (Freire, 1972: 41) Freire, like Gramsci, believed that this process is not possible without profoundly trusting that people are able to think and act together to change the world. People, when treated as objects, become dehumanised, robbed of their autonomy. Trapped by false consciousness in a culture of silence, they become passive, unquestioning and devoid of hope. 210

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The process of becoming critical is known as ‘conscientisation’ in Freirean pedagogy. Questioning everyday experience, critical connections are made which expose the contradictions and injustices in social life. This is an empowering process that leads to collective action for change. In the process of conscientisation, Freire identified three interlinking levels: magical consciousness (people are passive and unquestioning about the injustices in their lives); naive consciousness (people individualise their problems and often blame themselves); and critical consciousness (connections are made with the structural nature of discrimination). These should be seen as partial, fluid and incomplete: we are never at one level or another, but always in a process of struggling to make sense of an ever-changing world. Critical consciousness leads us to see a world that is inextricably connected to an interacting whole. The false consciousness of individualism, the way in which we are detached from the whole and persuaded to accept life as it is, results in passive and pessimistic attitudes to life. ‘Conscientization is the deepening of the coming of consciousness’, and with it brings the hope and optimism that change is possible. But Freire warns that ‘not all coming to consciousness extends necessarily into conscientization’; without curiosity, respect and humility expressed through dialogue it is not possible to reveal the ‘truths hidden by ideologies’ (Freire, 1993: 109).

Freire’s work is a unity of praxis: it offers not only critical ideas but practical methods. Problematising is one such practical strategy. Generative themes, the stories that people talk passionately about, generate passion out of apathy, an active energy for change. The emotions and intellect function together, an important aspect of understanding Freire. The issues of everyday life are so familiar they are often taken for granted. In order to create a learning context in which people are encouraged to question this taken-for-grantedness, Freire used codifications to capture everyday experience – in line drawings originally, but equally stories, pictures, music, photographs, drama and poetry become the basis for questioning. Decontextualising taken-for-granted experiences from the everyday, we see life through fresh eyes, through a more critical and inquiring lens. Where is this? What’s happening? Who is affected? Questions, posed by the critical educator, provoke dialogue. And as dialogue develops, the questions move away from the codification to critical inquiry among the participants. Augusto Boal, influenced by Freire’s ideas, developed Theater of the Oppressed as a tool for conscientisation (Boal, 1979; the first publication in English of the first edition). This has had an international impact on the use of drama to capture everyday experiences of oppression through forum theatre, an approach that does not use the spoken word, but works by enabling an observer to freeze the scene and substitute for a participant in order to create an interruption in the experience … which leads to an altered outcome, a new awareness of action for change. In this sense, dialogue can be speechless! 211

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Dialogue embodies the notion of mutual dignity and respect, encouraging people to relate to each other in ways that are reciprocal, trusting and cooperative. Dialogue ‘strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality’ (Freire, 1972: 54) by equalising power in relationships, placing everyone together as co-learners/co-teachers in the process of change, accepting that we all have as much to learn as we can teach. Teacher status is dismantled. Everyone is working together to co-create knowledge for change. The process of action and reflection liberates critical, inquiring and responsible citizens who ‘carry both the seeds of radical change and the burden of oppression’ (Popple, 1995: 64). The integrity of the practitioner is built on teaching people to question through dialogue, to question answers rather than answer questions, to ‘signal that learning is participatory, involving humor, hope and curiosity among people whose voices are worth listening to, whose minds can carry the weight of serious intellectual work, whose thought and feeling can entertain transforming self and society’ (Shor, 1992: 26), the antithesis of mainstream approaches to education. Thinking is the place where intelligent actions begin. We pause long enough to look more carefully at a situation, to see more of its character, to think about why it’s happening, to notice how it’s affecting us and others. (Wheatley, 2005: 215) As questions are raised, the educator takes the questioning to a more critical level. Why? Where? How? Who? What? In whose interests? Successive questions probe deeper towards the source of the problem. It is a process that liberates the thinking of the participants as they become confident, analytic and creative in investigating the issue. They move towards a solution that is likely to be nearer to the root of the problem and as they become active in the process of reflecting on the issue, they are more likely to engage in the action to transform it. It is a mutual process founded on dignity, reciprocity and humility that gets beyond the power imbalance of the traditional teacher–student relationship. Freire’s pedagogy was never focused on methods without theory; he inserted theoretical questions of power, culture, oppression against pedagogical questions related to social agency, voice and democratic participation. ‘In doing so, he reinforced the Frankfurt School’s focus on theory and practice as imperative to the political struggles against exploitation and domination’ (Darder et al, 2009: 5). As Freire says, ‘starting with the “knowledge of experience had” in order to get beyond it is not staying in that knowledge’ (Freire, 1995: 70). An understanding of the relevance of epistemology and ontology is important here. The way we see the world is directly related to the way we act in the world. If we change the way we understand the world, our behaviour will alter as a consequence. As we extend our understanding into complex interrelationships, so we co-create a world based on multiple ways of knowing. We become inspired by hope that change for a better world is possible, and this change begins in grassroots communities. 212

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In the process of empowerment, people often turn against one another in acts of horizontal violence. This refers to the way that top-down power creates divide-and-rule politics: those who are working together in the struggle for freedom turn against each other, eroding solidarity by becoming ‘sub-oppressors’ (Freire, 1972: 27). Our thought has been so conditioned by the contradictions of the context in which we have been formed that we turn on our allies. This is characteristic in community development interventions and is an experience we need to recognise as a natural stage of the equalising of power. The model of power in Western thought is one of legitimising ‘success’ on the back of someone else’s ‘failure’. This is embodied in our education system, our economic system, our personal relationships and so forth. It is the essence of a competitive worldview, one based on arrogance rather than humility. When participation leads to an equalising of power, this can often lead to a desire to possess control and abuse it, according to the dominant hegemony. This becomes an illusion of democracy, because although it is sited in community, it is not representative of participatory democracy. It is destructive rather than liberating. This swing towards counter-oppression gradually stabilises if the horizontal process is eased towards mutual respect, dignity and equality. The process of conscientisation grows organically.

  A personal story of mutual respect in action … Celia, a community activist in Hattersley, said, “Since you and Paul have been working with us, Margaret, people have changed. They like being treated respectfully, and so they are gradually being respectful to each other.” My heart sang when I heard her make this observation about the organic process of change. Early experiences in Hattersley had been punctuated by horizontal violence in the extreme, with petitions to get rid of me, confrontations, aggression and general abuse, not from all, but sufficient to destroy my optimism had I not understood the nature of this concept. It helped me to avoid taking attacks on me personally and sustained my hope that the process would equalise in time. I often say to people that had I not been equipped with a Freirean conceptual toolkit that helped me to make sense of the rawness of life in community development, I would not have survived!

Critical insights are vital in practice. In this case, understanding that a worldview based on competitive power will inevitably result in power being seized and wielded over others – a desirable commodity in powerless communities – helps to see an abuse of power as part of the process of change. Handing over power 213

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is a skilled and risky business. It will result in a swing of the pendulum until the process of critical education leads to a collective understanding that empowerment involves dignity and respect for all. Freire saw the relevance but also the pitfalls of those who work in community as traditional intellectuals, in the Gramscian sense of the concept, engaged in the process of change. The status and superiority is traditionally attached to the role can bring with it a lack of trust in people’s ability to think and act for themselves. ‘They talk about the people, but they do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change’ (Freire, 1972: 36). We are able to hear the influence of Gramsci on Freire’s thought. The role of intellectuals is central to the process of transformative change and, despite its somewhat strange connotations, we can think of its function as that of uniting theory and practice to achieve a critical praxis. If, following Ira Shor, we consider this in relation to participatory practice, we begin to get a clearer idea of how the concept of the intellectual might be useful to our own roles: To be a critical, empowering educator is a choice to be what Henry Giroux has called a ‘transformative intellectual’. Giroux’s notion of ‘civic courage’ and a ‘pedagogy of possibility’ invites educators to become change-agents in schools and society, for critical thought and action, for democracy, equality, ecology and peace, against domination, manipulation, and the waste of human and natural resources. (Shor, 1993: 34) Freire believed it is not possible to achieve transformative practice without dialogue. So, vital to an understanding of reflection as a transformative concept is an understanding of its role as an integral component of dialogue. This is no mean feat; as Paula Allman says, it is not achieved easily. People enter into discussions in order to articulate what they already know or think.… Dialogue, in contrast and complete opposition, involves the critical investigation of knowledge or thinking. Rather than focusing only on what we think, dialogue requires us to ask of each other and ourselves why we think what we do. In other words, it requires us to “problematise” knowledge. (Allman, 2009: 426) Liberating education begins in dialogue, in a trusting, collaborative process of reflection on everyday experience, leading to action stimulated by new, critical insights into the impact of power, poverty and privilege on personal lives. Freire talks about the word as the very essence of dialogue, not just as a tool of communication, but having deeper ‘constituent elements’: There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. (Freire, 1972: 60) 214

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Reflection leads us to the ‘true word’; it is reflection that exposes the contradictions we live by. In the process of conscientisation, reflection helps us to make critical connections with the power relations that lead to subordination and domination, breaking through magical and naïve levels of consciousness that explain away the injustices of life as either fate or personal inadequacies. Reflection on life experience helps us to name the world through a process of curiosity, questioning and becoming critical. In naming the world, we see it differently and develop the confidence to act for change. Dialogue, a transformative, democratic communication between people, fosters relationships in which people build learning communities: They reflect on what they know, their lived experiences, and on how these impact the way they read their world … [and in doing so] they freely give voice to their thoughts, ideas, and perceptions about what they know and what they are attempting to understand, always within the context of a larger political project of emancipation. (Darder, 2002: 103) Reflection exposes the injustices in everyday life, and this new knowledge, in turn, leads to practice that is insightful, analytic and informed. One of the political contradictions raised in Chapter 2 that it is useful to recall at this point is the strange phenomenon of child poverty in rich countries, with its critical connections to racism, sexism, truancy, educational failure, unemployment, childhood accidents, youth suicide, long-term ill health, premature death and more that lead to the erosion of life chances and the general destruction of hope. This not only provides a powerful source of reflection, but can, in turn, lead to ideas for problematising relevant, related issues with community groups. All education and development projects should start by identifying the issues which the local people speak about with excitement, hope, fear, anxiety or anger. (Hope and Timmel, 1984: 8) Freire considered critical praxis to be the essence of transformation, a dynamic interplay between thinking and doing, theory and practice, action and reflection, which brings about personal and interpersonal transformation. It is a political discovery of who we are in the world. The process of reflection in praxis involves creating a distance between the context that we take for granted in order to be able to ‘see’ more critically. Freire referred to his own exile in this way; it provided a distance from which he could reflect on his homeland more critically (Mayo, 2004). Similarly, our discussion of problematising in community groups using codifications to capture a relevant aspect of lived reality offers the same critical distance from the life lived in context. This same notion could be applied to Giroux’s concept of border crossing, ‘To move away from “home” is to question in historical, semiotic and structural terms how the boundaries and meanings of 215

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“home” are constructed in self-evident ways often outside of criticism’ (Giroux, 1993: 177–8). Reflection is only a critical component of praxis when it is in a dynamic relation with action. Freire was very clear that reflection without action results in verbalism, empty words not capable of transformation, ‘actionless thought’; conversely, action without reflection results in mindless activism, or ‘thoughtless action’ (Johnston, cited in Shaw, 2004: 26) – action for action’s sake, which destroys dialogue. The practice of critical reflection and action in the construction of new knowledge is the basis of transformative change. It is a process of transcending our reality in order to understand it and act together to change it. Underpinning this whole process are the values that frame the quality of the process. Praxis does not happen without respect, dignity, trust, reciprocity and mutuality, values that are so much the essence of Freire’s approach to humanisation. The creation of knowledge cannot happen if heart and mind are dichotomised: Freire’s firm belief was that dialogue cannot exist without a profound love for the world. ‘Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself ’ (Freire, 1972: 62). Neither can dialogue exist without humility; it cannot exist in relations of arrogance. So, if we, as practitioners, feel that we are somehow apart from the process, superior or not fully engaged in it, then dialogue as a respectful communication between people involved in a mutual search through action and reflection cannot exist. In Freirean terms, this becomes anti-dialogue, or cultural invasion, the imposition of one’s own assumptions, values and perceptions of the world on others, silencing and disempowering, reinforcing domination and subordination. True dialogue is predicated on a profound belief in the capacity of people to transform the world (see Figure 8.2). In this process of becoming more fully human, of claiming our humanity as subjects participating in the co‑creation of the world, we reflect on the dehumanising aspects of life as it is, and we act together to transform the world into a living whole that is strengthened by its diversity. For these reasons, reflection is integral to praxis, is in dynamic with action as an integrated praxis and is the essence of the dialogical encounter. Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. (Freire, 1972: 65) Beginning in every encounter, we find that true reflection leads to action: that consciousness is the basis of wider collective action for change. But that ‘action is human only when it is not merely an occupation but also a preoccupation, that is, when it is not dichotomized from reflection’ (Freire, 1972: 29). Reflection has a past–present–future dimension in order to make sense of power structures in the world. Action, in response to the critical insights offered by reflection, develops progressively into wider contexts in order to bring about 216

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Figure 8.2: Freirean dialogue • Create counternarratives • What sort of world do we want to live in? • Join movements for change

• • • •

Action

Question

Dig deeper

Make connections

• What is social justice? • Explore intersectionality • Research social trends

What's going on? Whose lives matter? Whose needs are met? Why?

• Share stories • Make connections from personal to political • What are the consequences: to people, to society, to life on Earth?

transformation: from personal to group, to project, to community, to critical alliances and movements for change. In these diverse contexts, reflection and action, in symbiotic movement, constantly reinforce the process of change from local to global. It is not a linear progression, but an organic and constantly evolving process that is mutually reinforcing through the dialogical process of action and reflection, across all difference in each context at each level. This is an approach to knowledge that is intellectual, practical, emotional and spiritual. It is a living process of inquiry into the co-creation of life as a mutual, respectful, flourishing experience that involves all aspects of being fully human in the world. As this process moves outwards, it reconnects our alienated world, and we feel the pain of all as our own pain. In cycles of action and reflection, we become increasingly critical, making connections with the alienating and destructive dimensions of life in order to explore alternatives, ways of seeing the world as an interconnected whole. The thread of humanity is held together by each individual, yet the quality of humanity is determined by collective responsibility to the whole. A commitment to participatory democracy requires new ways of thinking about social reality from a critical perspective that embraces both social and environmental justice: ‘future participation will mean a very different experience of the self, an ecological self, distinct yet not separate, a self rooted in environment and in community’ (Reason, 1994: 37). But the process of change begins in reflection, 217

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in questioning, in conscientisation. ‘In a process of enlightenment there can be only participants’ (Habermas, cited in Kemmis, 1994: 40). The important point here is that participatory practitioners create the context for conscientisation. Participants own their own process of critical consciousness; practitioners are the catalysts in the process.

Extending Freire into intersectionality Intersectionality is an essential analytic tool for engaging with the overlapping, intertwining complexities of systemic discrimination by shining a light on the multiple axes that intersect to mutually reinforce one interconnecting overriding web of oppression: Intersectionality investigates how intersecting power relations influence social relations across diverse societies as well as individual experiences in everyday life. As an analytic tool, intersectionality views categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, ability, ethnicity, and age – among others – as interrelated and mutually shaping one another. Intersectionality is a way of understanding and explaining complexity in the world, in people and in human experiences. (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020: 2) Taking a single trajectory approach to ‘race’, gender, class, or anything else, simply misses the point and deflects attention along a more simplistic binary perspective, seeing life as this or that, as one thing or another. Take racism, for instance. It is impossible to understand being Black without understanding the function of Whiteness in constructing the myth that ‘all “white” people are the same irrespective of, say, culture, nationality, location and class’ and how that idea began in English colonies in the 1660s before ‘scientific racism established the idea that empirical scientific evidence could be used to demonstrate that black people were an entirely distinct species’ in the 19th century (Dabiri, 2021: 45–6). Not only does this dehumanisation justify racism today, but it denies its exploitations within Whiteness itself. As an analytic tool, intersectionality aids critical inquiry by exposing a need for the interrogation of Whiteness and capitalism’s injustices by pointing towards the many corners and crevices that get overlooked. As a praxis, it points a finger in the direction of extending knowledge for more effective action for change (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020). The struggles of African American women activists developed Black feminist experience into intersectionality in the 1960s and 1970s by questioning how their lives could be understood in relation to violence, education, employment and health when the knowledge of discrimination was largely understood through the frame of White-dominated women’s rights, class-based workers’ rights and civil rights. These disjointed perspectives denied the complex lived experience of Black women. Hill Collins and Bilge (2020) are quick to emphasise that 218

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intersectional thought is not the property right of the West – ‘people in the Global South have used intersectionality as an analytic tool, often without naming it as such’ – and they cite as an example the feminist Savitribai Phule who lived in 19th-century colonial India (2020: 3–4). One of the defining moments in my thinking was triggered by bell hooks, who claimed that Paulo Freire offered her the conceptual tools and a structure within which she could define her own experience of racism on a global level when ‘the radical struggle of Black women to theorize our subjectivity’ was not welcomed by early White bourgeois feminist thinkers (hooks, 1993: 151). This is due to Freire’s insistence that the struggle for transformation belongs to us all. If all oppressions are interlinked in a system of domination and subordination, we cannot fight our own corner: the struggle is for human rights, a struggle against all injustices. Hill Collins claims Freire as a true intersectional thinker in the way that he names oppression as a blanket subordination. For a three-dimensional model of intersectionality, capturing the interlinking nature of lived experience along axes of difference, context and levels, see my loci of oppressions matrix (Ledwith, 2020: 233). Its purpose is to stretch the mind to explore the complex set of interrelationships that interweave between axes, but also intertwine on any one axis. Imagine a Rubik’s Cube. The elements are not fixed; it is open to constant re-examination and reconstruction as an analytic tool. It is only by struggling to locate these complex intersections in relation to lived experience that we begin to locate potential sites of resistance. So, for example, the model not only helps us to explore the interrelatedness of ‘race’ and gender and age and ‘dis’ability on one face, but to locate this within an environmental context, and on a community level. Then, if the level is shifted from local to, say, global, different but related issues emerge. It is a model with which to extend insight into the complex interconnections between power and subordination in relation to the whole. This involves threedimensional thought rather than the simplistic linear rationality of Western consciousness. Intersectionality as an analytic tool not only takes social justice thinking to places that often remain invisible but, in doing so, reveals sites of resistance for action. ‘Intersectionality highlights [the] aspects of individual experience that we may not notice’ (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020: 15). As an analytic tool it is also capable of developing knowledge on global inequalities – in relation to women, children, different ethnicities, cultures and religions, subordinated indigenous groups, differently abled people, migrants, refugees and the undocumented, across sexual preference, climate change, biodiversity … – in multidimensional ways, posing questions that deepen analysis and make practice more critical. Participatory democracy grows with critical consciousness; people understand that politics is about everything in life and to participate is to take responsibility for the strengthening of democratic institutions that promote values for the common good.

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Acting on Freire Freirean education for critical consciousness is a complete, not partial, approach. It starts at grassroots level with lived experience as the route to critical consciousness, co-creating new knowledge. Critical consciousness grounds practice in its wider political context, making critical connections with the forces of discrimination. Collective action reaches beyond the community, engaging with social movements for change. This is the only way to get the capacity to bring about transformation. Knowledge is the basis of action for change, ideas are the tools of struggle. So, the thrust of action is to make global connections with social movements as part of a structured approach to education for critical consciousness that builds on knowledge in action. Participatory projects in communities form critical alliances with projects in other communities, in other countries and cultures, to act collectively for change. This is the crucial point at which critical consciousness, praxis and action come together in movement, reaching beyond the person, the project, the community, stretching out in coalitions, campaigns, networks, solidarity across all boundaries to become social movements in global action for social justice. Personal empowerment is the start of a process of critical collective action. The new social movements of the second half of the 20th century were born of the seeds of critical consciousness planted in community groups which then exploded into action, uniting people in movement for change – the second-wave women’s movement, the anti-racist movement, the LGBTQ movement, the green movement … These movements emerged from physical spaces. Virtual, online communities are now generating critical consciousness, building solidarity through digital media platforms and mobilising people to organise in physical spaces – the Occupy Movement, the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter … and in November 2021 the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow attracted tens of thousands of climate change protestors from all over the world. Building solidarity through a digital media platform could offer potential for a more rapid route to critical consciousness with the scope for participation on a much larger scale. Intersectionality is a vital component in organising for social change. Exposing the interconnected, overlapping tapestry of oppressions that act as one blanket discrimination for the maintenance of power and privilege, intersectionality identifies sites of action for change built on broad-based coalition politics capable of transforming the weight of today’s power relations on local-global levels, synthesising praxis (critical consciousness), power (critical analysis) and action (collective movement). This is transformative practice! This chapter has advocated the need for a structured approach to transformative practice through Freire’s education for critical consciousness, addressing the pivotal connections in practice related to a unity of praxis, an analysis of power and collective action that reaches from local to global. Crises of capitalism have created crises of life on Earth, but crises coming together create a historical moment, 220

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an opportunity for transformative change. The key lies in understanding that values are at the heart of the matter: the values we choose to live by create the world we live in. The process begins with critiquing the dominant narrative, identifying its values and analysing its outcomes. This must be accompanied by a compelling counternarrative. George Monbiot (2017) wisely warns that you can’t destroy the dominant story without offering something to put in its place, something to aim for. This new story offers hope and aspiration, it offers choice. There is a clear structure for education for critical consciousness, an approach to practice built on curiosity and imagination – questioning the world we live in and imagining other possibilities, then acting together to make it happen. It gives our practice focus and clarity: explicitly naming values (what kind of world do we want?); making critical connections between lived experience and the dominant narrative we live by (what is happening?); critiquing and dissenting from a social justice perspective (what information can we find to understand social trends?); imagining alternatives (what kind of values do we want to live by?); creating counternarratives (what would this new world look like?); acting together to make it a reality, connecting to social movements to gather momentum for change. Throughout his life, Paulo Freire revisited the questions: ‘What kind of world do we live in? Why is it like that? What kind of world do we want? How do we get there from here?’ (Ira Shor, 2018: 188) Question everything!

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9 Becoming whole Margaret Ledwith

Everything in life is inextricably interconnected. Yet, there is global dominance of neoliberalism, an ideology that is fundamentally based on disconnection. We are living a contradiction, treading a tightrope between cooperation and competition, trying to reform a worldview that is fundamentally at variance with the wellbeing of humanity and the planet. This is a remarkable moment in history: never before has a political system been this successfully destructive; but never before have the ideas, knowledge and skills to build a world of sustainability, peace and justice been at our fingertips.

Crisis is a chance for change The choices we have made have consequences that have taken life on Earth into a multiplicity of crises, shunting humanity and the natural world of which it is part to the brink of extinction. Climate change, a coronavirus pandemic, species extinction, rising sea levels, environmental degradation … are not limited by national boundaries, but reminders of our planetary interdependence, our responsibility for the health of each other and the planet. At the same time, White supremacy is expressing itself in a resurgence of a Far-Right politics of disconnection, of individualism, greed, Brexit, the nationalistic building of walls, targeting all those other than the privileged. This intersectional, neoliberal project interweaves in a tapestry of structural discrimination its threads of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, disablism … and a strange hatred of our next generation, the hope for humanity’s future! We have, quite literally, been stitched up! Neoliberal capitalism sells a dominant narrative of nonsense as political common sense so forcefully that it permeates popular consciousness as economically and socially legitimate, the only choice available. In the 40 short years of its existence, it has created a global super-rich, an oligarchy and, as a result of this greed and excess on the part of the rich, life on Earth is out of kilter, struggling with extremes of unsustainability, not only for the environment but humankind as well. The global dominance of neoliberal ideology, with its emphasis on ‘there is no alternative’, has killed the public imagination to see other choices, choices based on social justice principles of cooperation that would have greater human rights outcomes. Dominant hegemony, according to Gramsci, is in a state of constant struggle to maintain its dominance, but stigma politics has worked remarkably 223

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well to plant a common sense of violence and hatred in popular consciousness, dividing the vulnerable against each other to justify a politics of human detritus and environmental degradation. Gramsci’s concept of the historical bloc refers to the strategy that hegemony employs to maintain control over the masses. Consider this concept in relation to Imogen Tyler’s (2013; 2020; imogentyler@stigmamachine. com) exposure of stigma politics as a strategic, intersectional, neoliberal project that interweaves all oppressions as a complex web of discrimination, internalised as common sense, in which the poor agree to their own subordination and social divisions widen more than ever (see pp 56–8). This concept is precisely why Hill Collins and Bilge (2020: 190) refer to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a core text for intersectionality, a point that I develop later in the section on critical praxis. Time for a reminder: neoliberal politics was unheard of before Margaret Thatcher appeared in 1979 seizing the opportunity for a revolution in FarRight politics in the UK, and almost instantaneously it globalised as a political ideology. My emphasis here is on the fact that this thinking has only been applied in politics since 1980, with disastrous consequences. A lack of sufficient analysis of the strategy to critique and dismantle it has left the neoliberal machine to rumble on, serving the power of the 1 per cent by exploiting the 99 per cent. Now we find ourselves at a moment in time, a historical moment, a conjuncture, a crack where the light gets in, an interregnum, with an opportunity to lead from a broader front towards social transformation for a participatory historical bloc, one with social and environmental justice at its heart: This means a new articulation among social forces, alternative economic forms in rupture with capitalist social relations of production, new forms of political organization and participatory democratic decisionmaking. (Sotoris, 2018: 95) This is fundamentally a crisis of values: on one hand, values of competition, individualism and profit; on the other values of cooperation, empathy and a common good. It really is time to ask searching questions which essentially lead to: ‘What sort of world do we want to live in?’ This chapter weaves together vital strands of transformative participatory practice into a whole for a balanced, healthy, fair and just ecosystems approach to life on Earth.

Critique is essential for change At this point, critique comes into the equation: we cannot build a new story without understanding the one in existence. Critique neoliberalism as powerfully and convincingly as it told its own story. This is the basis for a counternarrative of interconnection, one that cuts through hopelessness and delusion to free the imagination. It involves teaching to question from the reality of lived experience. 224

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Storytelling is great at raising questions

  The power of story to change the world! The year is 1979, the year that Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’, was elected prime minister of the UK. ‘Thatcher’s ideology can be summed up by a single, prophetic quote. That short statement, a mere seven words long, would change the world forever … Those seven, tiny words, which weren’t in the slightest bit true, which had never been true, but which would become the only truth there was’ (Sheldon, 2018: 7): THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY! None of us fully realised that the impact of these absurd words would be instantaneous and enduring: privatisation (public sector assets were sold into private hands); competition replaced the cooperation that had created the post-war welfare state; family, friendships and community ties were broken, the age of the self was born; mental ill health became endemic because human beings need to be connected to stay healthy. Privatisation means that profit is transferred from the public purse into the pockets of the privileged. Think about it, the public sector is NOT FOR SALE – it is the product of generations of struggle and suffering for equality, founded on basic human rights: the right to free health care, free education, decent housing, decent employment and a system of national security to protect us all in times of hardship. Saying that there’s no such thing as society is a justification that nothing can be owned by society, so all the blood, sweat and tears that went into progress was dismantled before our eyes. Nationalised industries, such as British Rail and British Gas, were sold off to private shareholders. The National Health Service was reduced to internal markets which outsourced to private companies. Schools were given away as academies. Council houses were sold into private hands and never replaced. Public spaces became owned … on and on the story goes. Fees for education and healthcare, common land disappeared, parks, community centres, youth clubs, libraries, beaches … Then a global economic crisis hit hard: greedy bankers had taken risks and came unstuck. But, instead of paying for their mistakes, they convinced governments to bail them out with public money. ‘Austerity’ was used as a smokescreen, no one noticed that it was applied to the poorest at the same time as tax concessions were favouring the richest! And, so, we kept opting for the same system that had so badly failed us, and the great machine of neoliberal capitalism went global, selling greed and individualism until, 225

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‘[by] 2016, Oxfam found that sixty-two individuals possessed as much wealth as half the people on the planet’ (Sheldon, 2018: 10).

In a dialogue group, the questions that might arise from using this story as a form of problematising the politics we live by could be triggered simply by asking: ‘Is there anything in my story that you relate to in your life or community?’ Just one connection with a lived experience, such as a community centre closing, foodbanks feeding the hungry, destitute people living on the streets, or other impacts of ‘austerity’ measures, begins a debate, making other connections and exposing other consequences which link to the bigger political context to question the values we live by.

Digging deeper Critique of the current system takes questioning deeper by investigating research evidence available in reports related to social and environmental justice. Here are some excellent examples: first an extract from Alston’s report on poverty and human rights in the UK, introduced in Chapter 2.

  Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights ‘The UK is the world’s fifth largest economy, it contains many areas of immense wealth, its capital is a leading centre of global finance … It thus seems patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty. This is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense growth in foodbanks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair … Libraries have closed in record numbers, community and youth centers have been shrunk and underfunded, public spaces and buildings including parks and recreation centers have been sold off … a fifth of the population live in poverty.… For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one … through it all, one actor has stubbornly resisted seeing the situation for what it is. The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial. …’ Source: Alston (2018) 226

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Philip Alston, as UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, has a remit to investigate those countries with extremely high levels of deprivation. In 2018, he travelled widely round the UK listening to the stories of those most affected by ‘austerity’ measures and consulting with civil society and charitable organisations. His shocking conclusion was that ‘Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so’ (Alston, in Booth and Butler, 2018: 1). In relation to health inequalities, ‘The Marmot Review Ten Years On’ report (Marmot et  al, 2020a) is an important source of understanding the critical connections between poverty and health. This was followed quickly by the Marmot ‘pandemic report’ (Marmot et al, 2020b), highlighting even more critical connections between social and economic inequalities and health outcomes: • Inequalities in social and economic conditions before the pandemic contributed to the high and unequal death toll from COVID-19. • The nation’s health should be the highest priority for government as we rebuild from the pandemic. • The economy and health are strongly linked – managing the pandemic well allows the economy to flourish in the longer term, which is supportive of health. • Reducing health inequalities, including those exacerbated by the pandemic, requires long-term policies with equity at the heart. • To build back fairer from the pandemic, multi-sector action from all levels of government is needed. • Investment in public health needs to be increased to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on health and health inequalities, and on the social determinants of health. The pandemic sought out the fault lines of discrimination, illuminating the health consequences of poverty. The impact of ‘austerity’ measures now calls for a redistribution of the resources that have been siphoned out of the North to the South and from the poor to the rich. There is no doubt that the lived reality of people’s lives determines their health and well-being, calling for policies directed at improving poverty, employment, housing, education and the environment, as well as free good quality healthcare, but this will not happen without an epistemological shift that dislodges the roots of racism, misogyny, xenophobia … Again, the evidence is clear; the solutions are there; what is lacking is the political will to implement a social justice agenda. Partha Dasgupta (2021), a Cambridge economist, provides a landmark review on the failure of economics to take account of rapid depletion of the natural world.

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Dasgupta’s review – steps to curb our excessive demands on nature Dasgupta’s starting point is that ‘Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature. We are part of Nature, not separate from it. Reduce biodiversity, and Nature and humanity suffer.’ The main points in his review (P. Dasgupta, 2021) may be outlined as follows: 1. We need to change how we think, act and measure success. 2. Humanity faces an urgent choice – our demands on nature far exceed its capacity. 3. Sustainable economic growth and development requires us to take a different path, where our engagements with nature are not only sustainable, but also enhance our collective wealth and well-being, and that of our descendants. Choosing a sustainable path will require transformative change, underpinned by levels of ambition, coordination and political will. We need to: (i) ensure demands on Nature do not exceed supply; (ii) change our measures of economic success to guide us on a more sustainable path. By measuring our wealth in terms of all assets, including natural assets, ‘inclusive wealth’ provides a clear and coherent measure that corresponds directly with the well-being of current and future generations; (iii) transform our institutions and systems – in particular our finance and education systems – to enable these changes and sustain them for future generations. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history and the review aims to create a new economic framework, grounded in ecology, that enables humanity to live on Earth sustainably.

Dasgupta’s ideas come together in a different way of seeing life on Earth, a different worldview; it fits perfectly with Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Model, an integration of diversity and biodiversity interconnecting life on Earth for a future that provides for everyone and everything (see p 61). Investigating large-scale research evidence is essential for understanding social, economic and political trends that span from local to global, offering insight into the pervading nature of social injustice. It is also vital to investigate campaigning bodies, such as UNICEF, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Child Poverty Action Group, the New Economics Foundation and many more, for information on poverty trends and collective action for change. Neoliberal globalisation has eroded democracy by working for multinational corporations and against people and the planet, using public money to subsidise corporate giants, eroding public sector protection that provided a common good for all. Life has become deregulated, driven by a free-market economy that puts everyone in competition with one another for the benefit of the few. Without 228

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putting forward the values we want to live by as the lens for a political ideology, ‘it feels a bit like saying, the garden will grow better if it is under the market or under the state, rather than the garden will grow better if the soil is good and we make sure it has the right amount of sun, nutrient and water’ (Beresford, 2021: 134). There is scant mention of the values that underpin the dominant neoliberal ideology. This is a little like putting the cart before the horse: values are the bedrock of an ideology, and a political ideology is not only what we want for ourselves but what we want for each other. Do we believe in and want to see advanced ideals of social justice, treating people with equality and challenging discrimination, valuing diversity and rejecting prejudice and intolerance? Or are we committed to more individualistic, selfish and competitive goals for society? (Beresford, 2021: 135)

A participatory ideology A participatory ideology is based on participatory democracy, on people having a say in society and a responsibility for making it work for the many: an ideology that is developed together, with people involved in every stage. It is underpinned by values of cooperation, of equality, of mutual respect and dignity as human rights. This is the ideology used by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the late 1980s, and when I spent time there, I could see the difference that this made to people’s sense of their own self-worth, even in the remotest of communities. It is committed to a common good rather than the greed of individualism, building from bottom up, dislocating the top-down, power-heavy, superimposed ideologies of greed and individualism for one based on collective critical consciousness to transform the way things are. We have the tools at our disposal to make it happen – Universal Basic Income, citizens’ assemblies, fair taxation, worker ownership of the workplace, free universal healthcare, free education, green energy, a non‑growth economy, sustainable housing … – we have failed to convince the people that a social justice agenda is a viable alternative! A dominant neoliberal ideology founded on values of competition and individualism, of profit over people and planet, of personal greed and privilege results in extreme inequalities, social injustice, environmental degradation, knowledge injustice … Beresford (2021) emphasises that, without participation, people marginalised by exclusionary politics are likely to be manipulated by reactionary populism to perpetuate its disaster course. This was all acted out to the alarming antics of Donald Trump in the US, from his reaction to the murder of George Floyd to his incitement of the mob that stormed the Capitol Building; and to the clowning of Boris Johnson in the UK from his “Let’s get Brexit done” to his duplicitous Downing Street parties while the country was in COVID‑19 lockdown. When people get a real chance to think for themselves, to speak for themselves and to act for themselves, they understand that not only are more equal 229

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societies more just, but they are happier places for everyone to live. Exploring ideology is to discover new possibilities for life on Earth, new values that create a counternarrative, a vision of change that inspires collective action.

A counternarrative of change It is time to take a deep breath! Time to think hopeful thoughts! Time to plan a new future for humankind based on a practical utopia! What sort of society do we really want? What’s really important to human flourishing? What’s important to the ecosystem? How can we create a world in symbiotic balance? This is the basis of a new social contract and a new ecological contract. Western consciousness Rational knowledge comes from that part of the intellect that measures and categorises in order to organise knowledge, often associated with opposites and linear sequencing seen in languages and alphabets to communicate experience and thought in written format. The natural world is a complex multidimensional whole with no straight lines and sequences but everything being part of an interconnected system. Western consciousness rejected metaphysical, intuitive knowledge in favour of hard scientific, pragmatic knowledge, subordinating women’s ways of knowing and indigenous ways of seeing the world for power over people and the planet rather than cooperative ecosystems knowing. This clearly suggests that rational knowledge encourages us to see in terms of linear relationships and opposites, whereas it becomes apparent that the concept of intersectionality is more readily related to intuitive, ecological knowledge, and that single-issue perspectives – ‘race’, class, gender and all the other ‘-isms’, plus the environment – cannot be disconnected from a whole. We cannot solve one of these without solving them all! This leads us to the need for a participatory worldview, one which sees the interconnection of the whole for the health and well-being of people and planet, diversity of knowledges … When the rational mind is silenced, the intuitive mode produces an extraordinary awareness; the environment is experienced in a direct way without the filter of conceptual thinking … The experience of oneness with the surrounding environment is the main characteristic of this meditative state. It is a state of consciousness where every form of fragmentation has ceased, fading away into undifferentiated unit. (Capra, 1982: 47) A participatory worldview Participatory democracy is underpinned by an ideology of participation. This needs to be the lens through which the politics of participation is constantly 230

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examined; this is where the values shine clearly on any shortcomings in practice. Athens, the home of participatory democracy, had structures in place for a constantly active process of decision-making. But, beneath the surface, we find that only 10–20 per cent of citizens qualified to be part of this. The rest were foreigners, debtors, slaves and even freed slaves – and ‘just being the wrong kind of human being – that is, a woman – automatically counted you out. Only adult males who had completed their military training had the right to vote’ (Beresford, 2021: 65). So, my point is that power needs to be under constant scrutiny for it to be seen as true to its values. Participation does not, of itself, mean that there is a shift of power to participants, as the outstanding work of Cooke and Kothari (2001) addressed in relation to international development by pointing a finger at the way that participation can be used as a means of controlling rather than liberating people. In the West, participation is often a piecemeal and tokenistic approach that, at best, is driven by service delivery interests, but fails to engage with the wider political dimensions of participatory democracy, and so remains an illusion that does not get realised, a feelgood factor that makes no difference to the underlying machine of discrimination that continues to manufacture its injustices.

A participatory paradigm shift As Rutger Bregman says, we are at an epoch in world history but find ourselves stuck in a coma, unable to imagine any possible alternative, we just keep voting for more of the same system that has so badly failed us. He urges us to ‘talk differently, think differently, and … describe the problem differently’ (Bregman, 2018: 47), and that way we will begin to see the constant story that ‘there is no alternative’, or TINA as it’s come to be known, as a lie to sustain a corrupt system that has had devastating human and environmental consequences in its short lifetime. Somehow, the experience of living through the hopelessness of neoliberal politics has robbed us of the curiosity and imagination that is essential for transformative change. We are battling to reform a system that is founded on values of exploitation, and so the political will to implement policies that have social justice at their heart is missing. Just one practical and immediately achievable example at our fingertips is Universal Basic Income: a ‘dividend on progress, made possible by the blood, sweat, and tears of past generations’ (Bregman, 2018: 46). Universal Basic Income has been tried in many countries of the world and found to inspire hope, trust, dignity and self-belief in people who had previously been marginalised. It is seen as a form of redistributive justice for the way the public sector has been robbed to divert wealth to the powerful and for the colonisation, exploitation and slavery of the past. ‘This wealth belongs to us all. And a basic income allows all of us to share it’ (Bregman, 2018: 46). It is infinitely possible, could end world poverty overnight, and would make the world a healthier, happier place. Seeing differently leads to thinking differently, opens our imaginations to new ideas that do things differently. If people’s mental health problems are a 231

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consequence of poverty, then targeting poverty as the cause improves mental health as the solution. The same applies to foodbanks, child hunger, destitution … target the cause, not the symptom, in order to stop the problem worsening. Imagine a world in which things are different. Instead of creating a precariat – a new social class on low pay, in temporary jobs, without worker protection or any political voice – a worldwide redistributive tax on wealth would change world poverty overnight, offering the capacity for a three-day working week which would release us to connect with family and community, to care for each other and the environment. This would be administered by a Universal Basic Income which, with a flick of the fingers, would end poverty and destitution, restoring human dignity by offering people the autonomy to take responsibility for their lives as active citizens. At the same time, changing our purpose from profit generation for the benefit of the few to the common good of all would see society reorganised around worker ownership of the workplace, citizens’ assemblies, free lifelong education for all, becoming good ancestors for seven generations to come … Utopia is within our grasp, we have the answers at our fingertips; all we need is the imagination and courage to give progressive ideas a hard sell in a counternarrative of interconnection. What if well-being was the driver for a new economics? What if we all earned the same? What if teachers were paid more than investment bankers? What if we had to pay for damage to the natural world? (Boyle, 2013).

An ecological framework for a participatory worldview The GAIA Journey of Global Activation of Intention and Action has been developed by Vandana Shiva, the celebrated eco-feminist, and her colleagues to connect people in global community in thought and action for an interconnected world founded on cooperation. Vandana Shiva proposes that we give more consciousness to ecosystems and organise around them. This thinking fits very well with the ideas we share in this book: life on Earth is an ecosystem that relies not only on biodiversity, but on the diversity of humankind. Shiva talks about the current global system as creating throwaway people and creating the annihilation of biodiversity.1 After 500 years of colonialism, the exploitation of people for the benefit of others, defending the commons from being privatised, preventing the exploitation of the Earth, of which we are all a part, for greed and personal gain, we face a new colonisation of our knowledge, lands and minds. In the name of bigger egos, we risk our lives, our freedom and our future.

From Ego to Eco The Ego to Eco framework offers a lens on the origins of some of the most fundamental questions of our times:

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What are the deeper root causes of today’s ecological, social, and spiritual crises? What do we see when we look at the evolution of the economy as an evolution of human consciousness? If we are to meet the challenges of our generation, what are the ‘acupuncture points’ of the global economy that could help accelerate transformation?2 Questions such as these are posed in a series of monthly sessions to explore social transformation and planetary healing, building collective action for transforming global capitalism’s social and environmental breakdown into a just, inclusive and regenerated world society. The Presencing Institute propose that we reclaim our capacity for critical consciousness and act through the head, the heart and the hands to draw on the richness of intuitive thought. On their website, listen to the indigenous wisdom of storyteller Dr Noel Nannup talking about the pathway from the past that leads to our future destination. We are on a tiny section of that path, but we have the power to change its trajectory if we learn from the mistakes of the past and act with compassion for a future as an Earth family, as free people, fully human and engaged in an interconnected whole. These are the ideas we need to explore if practice is to become sufficiently transformative to change a world run by oligarchs (R. Dasgupta, 2018), where power operates on a global level beyond the nation state: Today, with the merger of Bayer with Monsanto, Dow with Dupont, and Syngenta with ChemChina, there are precisely three megacorporations controlling global food and health through seeds, agrichemicals, pharmaceuticals, as well as large scale biopiracy from nature and indigenous communities. (Shiva, 2020: 6) Vandana Shiva and her colleagues see critical consciousness as essential for addressing the existential questions that provoke intersectional understanding for transformative action – racial injustice, gender injustice, climate injustice, all forms of social, economic and political exclusion. This is a fine example of a global movement that connects the local, the multicultural and the multiregional into intersectional action for change on the scale needed to dismantle neoliberal capitalism and replace it with a new story, one worthy of our aspirations for human and environmental rights.

Paradigm wars Chapter  1 introduced the idea that a participatory paradigm leads to an interactional existence: that meaning is created through our interactions with others and the world. This is a world of connection, not disconnection, a world in which we are transformed by our learning from others and the world in a process of critical consciousness. This is the basis of a participatory democracy and fundamental to participatory practice; it builds on our natural curiosity and 233

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our predisposition for empathy, developing a sense of agency, the confidence to act in the world for change on an individual and collective level, the essence of participation. Within the self, the soul, heart and intellect become an integrated whole, and this process of becoming more fully human connects us in empathy with all humanity and the world. Storytelling plays a key role in this process, our innate human empathy connecting us with compassion for the experiences of others and tolerance for other worldviews within our place in the ecosystem of life on Earth. Whatever work we do to engage people in making change can be deepened and expanded if it has play at its heart. We need to play at living in the kind of world we want to create … if our campaigning and activism are so serious that there is no space for play or for taking risk … we risk shutting down the very creativity and imagination upon which our future depends. (Hopkins, 2019: 32) Finding meaning in life is almost impossible when the struggle to survive overwhelms the spirit, drains the emotions and erodes the intellect. The adverse life circumstances caused not just by absolute poverty but also by increasing relative poverty as social inequalities escalate, give rise to a complex web of economic, social and emotional problems that kill the imagination needed for autonomous participation in life. This results in the hopelessness of what doctors from the UK and the US call ‘shit life syndrome’ (SLS) (Hopkins, 2019: 33). Imagination gives us hope and inspiration; it inspires joy, ‘and joy is very radical. Joy is a radical force because it connects us all to life, and life is enthusiastic for life’ (Hopkins, 2019: 50). To survive and thrive we have to become more imaginative in how we live, work, connect with each other and with nature, for the survival of humankind and the planet. We need to imagine another world in which we live in harmony to steer a course out of the violence, hatred, poverty and suffering that has resulted in crisis. Creation stories, ways of making sense of human life on Earth, come in many different forms. There is no single truth. Yet Western patriarchy has sought to elevate its truth in the name of dominant power – slavery, missionaries, colonialism, environmental exploitation, misogyny  … – subordinating other ways of knowing to further its own interests. So, simply by accepting that there are many truths, this dominance becomes questioned and dislodged. Our view is that the values underpinning the stories we tell – those values based on connection, kindness, cooperation, compassion … – are the key to restoring wholeness in an atomised world, and they connect our worldviews in cooperation rather than competition. For instance, consider this interesting juxtaposition from Navaneeta Majumder (2021). She names neoliberalism as the dominant worldview but puts it in perspective as only one worldview, not an inevitability but a choice, a choice that has colonised the face of humanity with stories that have sold it as the only truth rather than a new story. Told with such 234

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conviction, it has blighted the world alarmingly, a market growth paradigm that puts profit above people and planet with consequences that present ‘devastating threats to human and other biological life’ (Majumder, 2021: 1). Neoliberalism is now the dominant hegemonic paradigm, promoting individualism rather than wholeness, dominance rather than diversity, and hatred rather than kindness. This flies in the face of indigenous wisdoms which focus on connection to the whole, biodiversity as a mutual responsibility for the flourishing of all life on Earth, an ecosystem in balance with humanity as custodians not opportunists. Majumder (2021) builds on the work of Mander and Tauli-Corpus (2006) to identify the way that different value systems lead to different stories which create different realities. The values that promote a free-market emphasise individualism rather than a common good, exploitation for profit rather than ‘intelligent kindness’ (Ballatt et al, 2020) or ‘radical empathy’ (Givens, 2021). The stories that justify neoliberalism and its free market imperative centre on the deserving rich and the undeserving poor, dehumanising the most vulnerable as responsible for their own poverty. This diverts attention away from structural discrimination, using divide-and-rule tactics to turn the common people against each other. Take, for instance, a story told by my granddaughter who volunteers at a homeless shelter. A kind and gentle homeless man told her of the times when, asleep in shop doorways, passers-by defecate or urinate on him, seeing him as less than human. Policies that emerge from a neoliberal paradigm prioritising profit above the well-being of people and the planet inevitably create enormous divisions in wealth and poverty. National policies that favour the rich and punish the poor are magnified by multinational agreements that focus on free trade as opposed to fair trade, which have led to extreme exploitation of the Earth, and particularly its low-income countries. For instance, multinational Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), supported by policies implemented globally by the IMF and WTO, enable corporate interests to siphon off the assets of the people, the common good, into the pockets of corporations and the mega-rich – an oligarchy class which operates on a global level beyond the reach of nation states, yet using nation states to act in their interests (see R. Dasgupta, 2018), creating extreme inequalities within and between countries. Extractive industries – oil, natural gas, mineral mining – deplete the Earth for profit at the same time as throwaway consumerism pollutes the ecosystem, threatening ways of life that live in harmony with the Earth and with each other, resulting in climate change, species extinction, a world in crisis brought on by human behaviour. This paradigm of individualism and disregard of mutual responsibility for the planet has risen in an amorphous hatred of the poor as humanity gestures its own extinction. Recently, on a campsite in Cumbria, NW England, in a casual conversation I was told, “It’s the scum they let into this country that cause the problems”. This level of confidence to assume collusion with a stranger is astonishing. I enquired whether he was talking about the doctors and nurses that staff the National Health Service … or the agricultural 235

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workers who harvest our crops … or did he see my son, resident in France, as an immigrant … weren’t we all immigrants at one time or another? The thrust of our argument is that these extremes of neoliberal globalisation are nurtured by hatred of each other and disregard for the planet. It is a new form of colonial domination, replacing attempts at fair trade constraints with free trade exploitation. By this, we mean that attempts to make the world a more just place by trading fairly – for instance, erasing debts when the poorest countries cannot repay loans without human suffering – become free trade, which sets up trading treaties that favour the West and the rich. Neoliberal political and corporate values are the antithesis of the values of participatory democracy, resulting in conflict, invasion, corruption, eviction, human violence, pollution, contamination, exploitation, ecological violence and now the COVID-19 global pandemic, a result of human exploitation of the environment. In fact, the World Economic Forum states explicitly that ‘deforestation and the unregulated wildlife trade is to blame for diseases like COVID-19 being transmitted to humans’.3

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021 An ecosystem is in self-righting balance, but when taken beyond its limits of recovery it goes out of kilter with dangerous results that should be heeded. Scientists for many years have warned of the dangers of tampering with the ecosystem. For instance, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, warning of the dangers to the environment from the escalating use of pesticides. Her research was transformative, but as a female scientist, she was accused of being radical, disloyal, unscientific and hysterical with communist sympathies. We continued to ignore the warnings of generations of environmental scientists at our peril and now we find ourselves living through the consequences. The alarming and unequivocal findings of the IPCC Report, produced by hundreds of the world’s leading scientists, were revealed on 9  August 2021: recent human activity has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land resulting in unprecedented rapid changes producing dangerous extremes in the world’s climate system – heatwaves, heavy precipitation, marine heatwaves, agricultural and ecological droughts, reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost, and tropical cyclones. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded this century unless there are immediate reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, and there will be increasing severity of wet and dry events. Urgent unequivocal action is called for to avert the 1.5°C danger limit, with the summary of this report agreed by every government in the world. Scientists will veto all attempts at political greenwash with legal consequences: political leaders will be held to account against the evidence in this document. The climate crisis is a global crisis that demands urgent action and highlights the connections between all life on Earth. Carbon emissions must be reduced with immediate effect, ending the use of fossil fuel. Yet, as we were completing this book, the UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow in November 2021 236

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took place, ironically, a stone’s throw away from a proposed new coal mine in Cumbria that has UK government support! Despite the frustrations of COP26 and the inability to reach agreements on the action needed, the estimated 100,0000 protestors from all over the world reflected the broad-based coalitions we are calling for and also the power of social media organising for direct action. Young climate activists marched alongside Glaswegian refuse workers, indigenous peoples of the world and anti-racist women’s groups stood together on deforestation and climate change, all stretching across the false boundaries of nation and culture to act as one collective force with a common mission. Online generated theory and action reaches beyond the boundaries of political control. The values we live by are embedded in the stories we tell, the world we create and the consequences of that choice. This is precisely why we need a new story, a counternarrative of connection, of becoming whole – one based on values of participation, human rights and environmental rights. Values are the basis of change, which is why participatory practice must be able to name and frame its values at every stage of its process, using them as a system of checks and balances to monitor the integrity of its work.

Neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm Majumder’s discussion of a paradigm war sets out a ‘pan-Indigenous’ vision, based on the work of indigenous scholars, diametrically opposed to neoliberal capitalism: common good versus individualism. This framing is extremely helpful because it brings into stark relief the implications of two polarised worldviews. Engaging with the concept of development, she discusses the concept of postdevelopment to illuminate what it means to be human and how to become more fully human. One end of this polarity is rooted in values and ethical principles of human diversity and a responsible place in the biodiversity of the planet for the many; the other on maximising profit, privilege and power for the few. Indigenous people, and their lands and cultures, have been colonised by the West for 500 years, and now they fear the further threat of ‘bio-colonialism’: ‘yet another weapon in the arsenal of colonialism … to control the definition of what it means to be human and their understanding of “life itself ”’ (Majumder, 2021: 5). This threat comes from transnational corporations that search for genetic resources to produce economic gains, ‘… monopolizing genetic structures, cell lines of native plants, seeds and even people’ (Majumder, 2021: 4). This violates a worldview based on the sanctity of life in common, one that questions the fundamental ethics of buying life, land, water and skies for personal profit. Indigenous scholars are concentrating on ‘theories that help to create conditions for decolonization and post-development … distinct ideas that have come together to form what is called a pan-indigenous vision, one that shares the same values in diverse stories, therefore capable of challenging the dominant worldview’ (Majumder, 2021: 5). 237

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One among many indigenous creation stories is that of Skywoman. Let’s take a look at the values embedded in the story that create a different reality.

Skywoman: a creation story from the Potawatomi Nation, the indigenous people of the Great Lakes Storytellers are messengers, connecting past lives with those yet to come. In the beginning was the Skyworld. Many eyes were gazing up at the shaft of light that streamed down connecting Earth with the Skyworld. As she slowly fell Earthwards, they saw it was a woman, arms outstretched, spiralling towards them. In a wave of goose music, the geese rose to gently carry her downwards.

Figure 9.1: Skywoman

All the animals came together to decide how to keep the woman from drowning, and a great turtle offered his strong back for her to safely rest. They understood she needed land and set about finding some, but the water was too deep … only little Muskrat was left, and he gave his life to bring back a handful of mud. Skywoman spread it on Turtle’s back. ‘Moved by the extraordinary gifts of the animals she sang in thanksgiving and then began to dance, her feet caressing the earth. The land grew and grew as she danced her thanks, from the dab of mud on Turtle’s back until the whole earth was made. Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals’ gifts coupled with her deep gratitude’ (Kimmerer, 2020: 4). Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion and spirit.

This story emphasises the spiritual, the female, the connections within the self and between humanity, the animate and inanimate world, but much more than this is the emphasis on gratitude, cooperation, empathy, compassion and kindness. This sits uncomfortably within a neoliberal paradigm of destroying the Earth that sustains life in order to ‘fuel injustice’ (Kimmerer, 2020: 376). What an interesting juxtaposition of individual greed and the common good. Values are at the heart of the world we create, yet the values that have come to define the West under 238

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the political ideology that is neoliberal capitalism are status, competition, profit and individualism marked by throwaway consumerism, the antithesis of an interconnected ecosystem. It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy. Gratitude plants the seed for abundance. (Kimmerer, 2020: 376) This is a worldview that transcends boundaries of selfhood and nationhood to embrace the connection between all forms of life on Earth and the ecosystem that holds it in balance – an exploration of the past in order to discover a route to a sustainable future. Robin Wall Kimmerer herself transcends what are often seen as fixed boundaries: she is both a scientist and indigenous woman, a member of the Potawatomi Nation who explores environmentalism from a perspective of indigenous wisdom. From personal reflections on her life experience, on the differences between value systems that underpin a Western worldview and an indigenous worldview, and on scientific knowledge, she pushes the boundaries of indigenous wisdom. It is a story of balance and connection, a worldview in which people take only what they need, with respect for each other and the environment: a different approach to being more fully human. She bases her insights on many ways of knowing that embrace living with respect for each other and nature; the importance lies in the value base and the stories we tell that embed the values in our worldviews – gratitude, generosity, reciprocity, mutual responsibility. Imagine: … the vision of the economy of the commons, wherein resources fundamental to our well-being, like water and land and forests are commonly held rather than commodified. Properly managed the commons approach maintains abundance, not scarcity. These contemporary economic alternatives strongly echo the indigenous world view in which the earth exists not as private property, but as a commons, to be tended with respect and reciprocity for the benefit of all. (Kimmerer, 2020: 376) All of us were once indigenous and we can reclaim that relationship with the living Earth and be grateful and generous by writing a counternarrative of life, a story that does not support an economy which destroys the Earth and humanity simply to line the pockets of the greedy few. The well-being of each one of us is linked to the well-being of all, and so generosity is reciprocal – it flows from us and back to us. More importantly, empathy, connection and friendship are part of our innate disposition: we simply need to act to claim them as necessary for our healthy functioning on Earth.

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Our lives should be measured not by how many enemies we have conquered but by how many friends we have made. That is the secret to our survival. (Hare and Woods, 2020: 196) We are the same species, having the privilege to share the same Earth, but different values give rise to different stories, which lead to different realities. We must also look for shining examples of hope and inspiration from within the Western paradigm: ‘Finland is a beacon for those who think that another world is possible. It allows us to put aside fantasies of what could be built, and look instead at what has been created …’ (Dorling and Koljonen, 2020: xvii). Finland transformed itself from being one of the least developed European nations to one of the most admired and respected, simply by the state investing in the people, offering: parental leave and affordable childcare, and in youth and adulthood you receive free education and universal healthcare, and have the security of knowing you will never have to sleep rough, and in old age you receive a decent state pension upon retirement, you appreciate the true value of the tax taken off your salary. (Dorling and Koljonen, 2020: xvii) This is a state with the political will and commitment to create an inclusive society based on a common good; a state that is flexible and determined to keep making things better for its people. Little wonder that, on 20 March 2020, for the third successive year Finland was heralded as the happiest country in the world!

Practising participatory values Let’s move back to the local level and explore how easy it is to start this process of critical education. Paulo Freire saw questioning as the basis of critical consciousness for change, and he was clear that, for this, curiosity and imagination are essential. Freire’s intention was to work for participatory democracy based on a politics of love for people, not hatred. Hatred is based on fear, but ‘love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others’ (Freire, 2018: 89). Freire’s insight into love as courage and hatred as fear is crucial to the values of Freirean pedagogy. It is also key to critiquing the politics of fear and hatred that we live by in the West as the antithesis of participatory democracy. To take his approach is to experience ‘a profound transformation of ourselves as human beings in our work with others’ (Darder, 2002: 205–7). Every choice has consequences – and if we fail to identify the value base of the political system that we put in place, then we end up with policies that are disconnected from our needs and expectations. The most inspiring development in understanding human values comes from recent neuroscientific research. After battling the barrage of insistence that humankind is naturally unkind, greedy and flourishes on selfishness, we have a new weapon in our armoury and can provide 240

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evidence that this is simply untrue: we have an ‘empathy circuit’ in our brains that connects us to each other (Krznaric, 2015). This gives us the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and understand their feelings. More than that, it creates a need to be connected in community, in kinship, in cooperation, caring for each other in order to become more fully human. Developments in natural sciences reveal that trees live with empathy, in community, in cooperation, caring for each other, communicating via an underground web of fungal threads under the forest floor to share nutrients or warn each other of danger (Wohlleben, 2017). We live with such ignorance and arrogance allowing those seven words ‘there is no such thing as society’ to rupture human connection and fracture responsibility for an ecosystem that is functioning on these sophisticated levels. Compassionate energy releases kindness, as we have seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing rewards much deeper than profit, touching the heart and connecting us beyond self-interest to networks of friendship and support. Putting human compassion at the heart of society, transforms the relationships people have with each other, restoring trust, challenging the very nature of the political policies of our times. Imagine if we trusted teachers to provide education that maximises potential for every single child and puts happy childhoods at the heart of education. Imagine health and welfare provision based on human flourishing. Imagine sharing with every single person in the world as though they were our own. Imagine living with respect for the natural environment which is our home. For more than 40 years, all we have heard is the language of profit and competition. Imagine classrooms where children cooperate with each other rather than compete against each other. Imagine living with kindness as a way of being rather than a random act. It is time to reclaim the language of connection, of a common good, of community, kinship and common humanity – of us all being part of the human race. Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. (Dalai Lama, cited in Givens, 2021: 148) Empathy connects values of compassion, kindness, cooperation, connection, community, it changes the way people relate to each other … but having empathy is simply not enough to challenge the extreme social inequalities that have been created by neoliberal capitalism. Radical empathy is a practice that leads to action and change: a stage further than feeling empathy, it is about acting on empathy. Radical empathy: is the focus on taking action and creating change. By using empathy to create change, you are more likely to build trust with others … it is ultimately those human connections that will help us to understanding and have empathy for those around us, regardless of their race or religion. (Givens, 2021: 152)

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Radical empathy (empathy in action) together with a praxis based on intersectionality offer the key to ending prejudice and dismantling discrimination. Problematising power takes us to the heart of intersectionality. The neoliberal project has built on a multiplicity of hegemonies producing a multiplicity of oppressions. Problematising neoliberal capitalism takes us along the fault lines of discrimination into the overlapping, interconnecting structural inequalities that it has deepened as part of a conscious intention to privilege the few at the expense of the many. The challenge for participatory practitioners is to reconnect the atomised whole in order to see the root causes rather than the symptoms of the dystopian reality that exists. From this perspective, rather than reforming dystopia – an impossible task – the focus becomes the creation of a new story, an everyday utopia.

Gramsci: the old is dying and the new cannot be born We are living through a multifaceted global crisis of huge proportions, in which the political strand is a crisis of hegemony. Antonio Gramsci used his concept of hegemony to capture the way that a ruling class makes its domination seem natural by persuading the mass of people to see its worldview as common sense for all society. This is a historical bloc, in Gramscian terms, a coalition of forces in society that maintain the power of the privileged: If they hope to challenge these arrangements, the dominated classes must construct a new, more persuasive common sense, or counterhegemony, and a new, more powerful political alliance, or counterhegemonic bloc. (Fraser, 2019: 10) The neoliberal project had to present itself as progressive, appealing to a broader fan base in order to occupy the centre ground of a hegemonic bloc without exposing its sinister position as a deeply violent and regressive political economy that would inevitably lead to economic, social and environmental crises. This was done by creating an illusion of emancipatory politics within Far-Right capitalism. Interestingly, this was so effective that it brought about the emergence of centre-ground politics in a New Deal that convinced the Clinton Democrats to dismantle the old alliances: In place of a historic bloc that had successfully united organized labor, immigrants, African Americans, the urban middle classes, and some faction of big industrial capital for several decades they forged a new alliance of entrepreneurs, banker, suburbanites, ‘symbolic workers’, new social movements, Latinxs, and youth, while retaining the support of African Americans, who felt they had nowhere else to go. (Fraser, 2019: 15)

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In the absence of a new compelling counternarrative – one that has the authority to convince the people of a new common sense and which appeals to a broad spectrum of society; one which can reverse declining living standards and outof-control debt, the crisis of care and escalating stresses on people, community and society as well as climate change, species extinction, rising sea levels and environmental degradation – we will continue to be faced with the morbid symptoms of continuing crises. Gramsci’s words – ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (Gramsci, cited in Mason, 2021: 70) – warn us of the chaos of a crumbling system. We find ourselves in this space between two systems, one dying and the new yet to be born, because we have failed to come up with a counternarrative. Interregnum, a concept introduced on p  62, holds important Gramscian relevance for our times. But, ‘[u]nlike Gramsci’s era, our interregnum contains a ticking clock’ (Mason, 2021: 72). Climate change has marked our card and given us a deadline, and if we allow new fascism to challenge for global power, there will be a higher price to pay than that of the 1930s. So, the question is where do we look for a politics of intersectionality, of inclusion, that is sufficiently appealing to build a counterhegemonic bloc capable of lifting us out of the chaos with optimism for a better world?

Gramsci and feminism Feminism is committed to a better world for everyone and everything. It understands that a healthy world in balance can never be achieved without respect for all humanity and for the natural world. Black feminist wisdom developed intersectional analysis from everyday lived experience of Black women and now it is time to apply it to Gramsci’s powerful insight into the nature of hegemony. This involves imagining gender justice woven into action to combat a complexity of oppressions in an anti-capitalist form that gets beyond our current crises. To stimulate the imagination and structure the process, Arruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser (2019) offer a manifesto that marks out the road to be travelled, a Feminism for the 99%. It connects with anti-racists, environmentalists, class activism and migrant rights … offering a beacon of hope for a struggling world based on 11 key ideas leading to a broad-based movement for change, summarised in the following.

Feminism for the 99%: a manifesto Thesis 1. A new feminist wave is reinventing the strike: In Poland in 2016 over 100,000 women rose against the ban on abortion. Within days, this system of strikes spread to Argentina, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Turkey, Peru, the US, Mexico, Chile and many more. From the streets to the workplaces and schools, to showbusiness, media and politics, it has risen to become new global feminist solidarity movement reclaiming historic struggles for workers’ rights and social justice, and uniting women’s power by 243

Participatory Practice inventing new ways to strike and form a new kind of politics: ‘the power of those whose paid and unpaid work sustains the world’ (Arruzza et al, 2019: 7). Thesis 2. Liberal feminism is bankrupt: Liberal feminism is part of the problem because it focuses on a market-centred view of equality which privileges corporate women in professional roles rather than the empowerment of all women. This gives the illusion that it is women’s liberation, when it is in fact capitalist tokenism that leaves most women vulnerable. ‘Insensitive to race and class, it links our cause to elitism and individualism … cloaking regressive policies in an aura of emancipation, it enables the forces supporting global capital to portray themselves as “progressive”’ (Arruzza et al, 2019: 12). Thesis 3. We need an anti-capitalist feminism – a feminism for the 99 per cent: We have been facing plummeting living standards, imminent ecological disaster, wars, violence, dispossession and mass migration, together with the building of walls, brazen racism and xenophobia, and the destruction of the commons and hard-won rights from the past. Feminism for the 99 per cent stands for the rights ‘of poor and workingclass women, of racialized and migrant women, of queer, trans, and disabled women, of women encouraged to see themselves as “middle class” even as capital exploits them’ (Arruzza et al, 2019: 14). But it also stands for all the exploited, dominated and oppressed of the world – men, women and children – providing hope for all humanity and the planet which is our home. Thesis 4. What we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole – and its root cause is capitalism: The present crises – the implications of the 2007–08 financial crash, the simultaneous crises of economy, ecology, politics and ‘care’ – constitute a crisis of neoliberal capitalism in its globalised, financialised form, amplified by four decades of exploitation at every level of society, stitched in by free-market competition, trickledown economics, precariat labour and unsustainable debt. This needs to be more widely understood and challenged, so turn back to Chapter 2 and read it with fresh eyes! Thesis 5. Gender oppression in capitalist societies is rooted in the subordination of social reproduction to production for profit: Capitalist societies exploit the many who work for wages to privilege the few who accumulate private profit through inheritance, tax avoidance, and policies that favour the rich. But the organisation of social reproduction relies on gendered roles embedded in capitalist society. An intersectional analysis reveals the interconnections with class, ‘race’, sexuality, age, ethnicity, nation … at every level, in every context of society, intertwining oppressions that conspire to exploit and subordinate. This is the lens that exposes the links between class struggle and social reproduction as not just about economic justice, but about the multiplicity of sites that include racism, xenophobia, war, colonialism … as well as denying access to universal health care, free education, environmental justice, clean energy, decent housing, affordable transport, safety on the streets… The challenge for

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Becoming whole participatory practitioners is to develop ‘projects with the potential to alter society, root and branch’ (Arruzza et al, 2019: 25). Thesis 6. Gender violence takes many forms, all of them entangled with capitalist social relations: Violence against women and girls is a global human rights issue evident in every nation, class and racial/ethnic group. It is not random; it is grounded in structural discrimination and embedded in capitalist relations. Thesis 7. Capitalism tries to regulate sexuality: Feminists for the 99 per cent reject homophobia and misogyny, wanting to revive the radical spirit captured in the Stonewall uprising in New York in 1969, and the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners alliance proudly present in the 1984–85 UK miners’ strike. This is a stand to liberate sexuality from the constraints of family and reproduction, but also from gender, ‘race’, class and all other intersections. This calls for a non-capitalist society that embraces a wide range of families and personal associations that are accepted as not only legitimate but a human right. Thesis 8. Capitalism was born from racist and colonial violence: Therefore, feminism that is anti-racist and anti-imperialist must also be anti-capitalist. Neoliberal capitalism promotes racial oppression globally: land-grabs displace indigenous people, sovereign debt repayments cause poverty traps, and relocation of manufacturing to the global South exploits modern slavery; in the West, precariat unprotected labour, declining social welfare for families and communities, reduced public spending on schools, hospitals, housing and public transport, privatisation of the commons, racism and hatred of immigrants … all conspire to bring new waves of racist exploitation and misogyny that are harming us all. Thesis 9. Fighting to reverse capital’s destruction of the Earth, feminism for the 99 per cent is eco-socialist: ‘Today’s crisis of capitalism is also an ecological crisis’ (Arruzza et al, 2019: 46). Capitalism exploits the natural world with impunity. Women in the developing world are on the front line of the ecological crisis as climate refugees and as providers for families; in the West, poor Black and minority ethnic women are the backbone of communities that have been targeted and depleted by austerity capitalism and are the very ones that face the environmental racism of flooding, contamination, environmental degradation … Women’s struggles focus on real-world issues of social justice and environmental justice: women’s liberation is the key to a world in balance. Thesis 10. Capitalism is incompatible with real democracy and peace: Women are the first victims of colonial invasion and war worldwide, embedded in fear, harassment, rape and enslavement, surrounded by murder and the destruction of the family and community. Neoliberal capitalism trades in militarisation and the weapons of debt, at the same time as subverting attempts to establish participatory democracies, as seen in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

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Participatory Practice Thesis 11. Feminism for the 99 per cent calls on all radical movements to join together in a common anti-capitalist insurgency: Feminists believe that all struggles are part of the same struggle, whether against climate change or workplace exploitation, institutional racism or dispossession, we should all be allies working for social justice. In this way, we can build a movement for change powerful enough to transform all our futures.

… any feminism aimed at liberating all women must itself be anticapitalist … The deep structural change we need can only be achieved through a broad-based anti-capitalist alliance, which must also include radical movements and political parties that have not so far prioritized gender. (Nancy Fraser, in interview with Olimpia Malatesta, 2021: 82) This is a feminism that reaches beyond the workplace, the focus of Gramsci’s site for critical consciousness and action, one that extends hegemony to include a tightly woven web of intersectional oppressions in order to take on the might of capitalism, the political ideology that emerged from colonialism, slavery and exploitation, and which has ‘race’ and gender subordination implicit in its intentions. This is precisely why corporate feminism, which brings privilege to a small stratum of professional/managerial women, is tokenistic, giving the illusion of progress whilst disregarding the vulnerability of the vast majority of women. In this sense, feminism for the 99 per cent must be a political–ideological struggle. But feminism alone cannot bring about the deep structural changes needed to achieve transformation; this has to include radical environmentalists, anti-racists, immigrant rights movements, trade unions – and many of these may not have included or prioritised the gender issue. So, the big challenge is to create a hegemonic bloc by allying a diversity of people from a diversity of contexts who understand that, however random their problems appear to be on the surface, they are all anchored in the same corrupt political system: that of neoliberal capitalism. ‘This means offering them a map on which each group can locate itself in relation to the other, identify their common enemy and envision the possibility of joining forces against that enemy’ (Nancy Fraser, in Malatesta, 2021: 84). This manifesto offers a template to adapt and extend, in conjunction with the intersectional loci of oppressions matrix (in Ledwith, 2020: 233).

Freire and intersectionality: reconceptualising power Feminist praxis is intellectual activism that has grown from grassroots experiential knowledge of how power and patriarchy construct what it is to be a woman. But, far more than this, feminist praxis is committed to a fair and just world for everyone and everything: a world in harmony and balance, a world built on respect and mutuality. Second-wave feminism emerged as a new social movement 246

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in the 1970s and was particularly powerful in the 1980s, a time when women met in groups in diverse communities to share their life experience, and in doing so challenged the personal as political, creating theory in action. Women strode confidently into the public sphere to challenge inequality and to form alliances for collective action. As community workers, we established and took part in women’s groups, often building Freire into feminism. Freire offered the conceptual tools to make sense of power and the way it constructed diverse lives within the blanket concept of oppression. We not only worked at local level, but also we made alliances within regions and across regions, celebrating the Women’s Forum at the UN intergovernmental conference in Beijing in 1995 as a triumph of many years of organising collectively. It was attended by 30,000 women from all over the world, united across class, nationality, ethnicity, age, ability, sexual identity, and many suffered persecution and violence to get there. The outcome was the recommendations of the Global Platform for Action, defining women’s demands for justice and human rights the world over, duly signed by the governments of the 189 countries present to be monitored by the UN. In due course, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders in 2015, has gender equality and women’s empowerment integral to each of its 17 Goals.4 Finally, it is starting to be recognised on a global level that liberating women holds the key to a healthier, happier, sustainable world. However, there was an underlying problem that constantly presented itself within this process of women in movement. As White women, we were acutely aware of our subordination in relation to men, but not so critically conscious of our power in relation to Black women. Often alliances between Black and White women ended in hostility and defeat for the simple reason that, as White women, we were unaware that we were using our power to set the agenda and failing Black women by not fully paying attention to their stories as different from ours. Our failure triggered the triumph of Black women’s wisdom in the major theoretical contribution of intersectionality, a praxis that holds the key to the true nature of oppressions as all connected to one global political project to subordinate, control and exploit in the interests of White male privilege. The understanding at the base of this revolution in theory is that the oppression of women cannot be understood from a class or gender or ‘race’ perspective; it needs to be understood within an intersectional whole. Intersectionality emerged from the lived reality of Black women’s lives and their collective struggles as sisters in resistance. Black feminism has taken this wisdom into a much more refined analysis of power operating as an intersecting system of interlocking injustices that weave a web of oppressions to favour the privileged. In other words, we cannot understand injustice from a single-issue perspective, like class or ‘race’ or gender or sexuality or human rights or environmental justice. It is a much more complex, targeted, form of discrimination that works on many levels in many contexts to create an interlinking system of domination and subordination cleaving divided societies shaped by enormous wealth and abject poverty. The potential of intersectional thinking is beginning to be understood. For instance, 247

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Godrej (2021: 18) cites Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): ‘we cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither.’ This echoes the need for an intersectional approach that embraces environmental justice and social justice. Godrej, citing Jedediah Britton-Purdy (2015), develops this point, emphasising: ‘here is where environmentalist and egalitarian projects meet. Only an economy with greater security is likely to produce political forces to limit economic growth because only a secure economy would make economic slowdown politically tolerable’ (Godrej, 2021: 19). Participatory practice for social justice will not be possible without this knowledge informing its action. Education for critical consciousness is the basis for ‘a more robust understanding of teaching and learning as central to all intellectual production’ (Hill Collins, 2013: xvi) in order to speak truth to power and dismantle the injustices that are the aim of neoliberal politics. And the tool with which to do this is intersectionality, using Freirean dialogue as the process to go deeper into critical questioning. In these ways, we reconceptualise understanding of inequality, and action becomes ever more critical.

Education for critical consciousness Freirean praxis is a form of learning based on questioning answers rather than answering questions: what Ira Shor calls ‘extraordinarily re-experiencing the ordinary’ (Shor, 1992: 122). Freire believed everyone to be capable of critically engaging in their world once their curiosity to question is unlocked. Conscientisation, the process of becoming critical, is triggered by questioning everyday reality, beginning to see the contradictions we live by and take for granted, making connections between our personal lives and the political structures that create our reality. Freire sees conscientisation as ‘the deepening of the coming of consciousness’ (Freire, 1993). By this, he means that the lies and false truths told by a dominant hegemony become so embedded inside our minds that they get in the way of thinking critically. Curiosity exposes the intersections of domination in all their complexity, and this can be taken deeper into intersectional power and therefore action by imagining a Rubik’s cube with endless interchangeable sources of inquiry into the intersecting, interlinking connections in a system of oppressions that structures society into advantage and disadvantage. Its purpose is to unleash fixed thinking, to enable people to explore the complex interrelatedness of power as a political project rather than a personal failing and to develop this knowledge into action for change. Dialogue At the heart of Freire’s process of critical consciousness is the concept of dialogue. Founded on Freirean values of mutual respect and dignity, the process begins with 248

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a relationship of equals, where the practitioner in the role of critical educator is open to learn as much as the participant, with the intention of co-creating knowledge generated from lived experience. Problematising The process starts with what Freire called problematising, using codifications which capture everyday experiences – stories, photos, poems, song, drama – questioning unlocks the curiosity of the participants. Never telling, always questioning, the educator sets the context for going deeper: What do you see? What’s going on? Who’s there? What’s happening? Who’s it affecting? How are they feeling? Eventually, the questioning turns away from the codification and the participants form their own questions, going deeper into the issue, deciding what further information they need to gather. Critical praxis Freire emphasised that this is a living praxis, a unity of theory and practice that comes together in a mutually reinforcing process of action and reflection. In other words, it is knowledge in the process of being co-created from the experience of everyday life, theory in action and action from theory coming together as a unity of praxis. It is by these means that thinking becomes critical and action become relevant. And it is in this critical way of being, this critical living praxis, that the distance between what we say and what we do shortens (Freire, 1997: 83). Collective action Freire was very clear that empowerment, much as it is needed on a personal level, does not become truly transformative until it becomes a movement for change with the intention of transforming society (Freire, in Shor and Freire, 1987). Empowerment as a personal freedom needs to connect with communities of solidarity – connecting projects, alliances, campaigns and networks into their greatest collective potential to problematise the global inequalities created by neoliberal globalisation, and to have the knowledge and the collective power to bring about change for a just and sustainable world.

Storytelling as problematising We are natural storytellers. We become the stories we tell. Stories about everyday life can light up the injustices we live by, getting us to see reality in a much more critical way. The act of taking experience out of the taken-for-granted context of daily life helps us to see it from a different perspective, one that starts us questioning the sense of what is happening. Poetry can be even more powerful. Stuart Rees (2020b: 3) talks about Shelley: ‘He implied that lessons could be 249

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learned from poetry which unmasked the past, undressed the present’; that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Try problematising reality by telling the story of a life. People relate much more to stories than they do to facts and figures. Use story to shine a light on the impact of daily situations that people face, or to make comparisons between lives, or to identify contradictions … It can be fact, fiction or a synthesis of the many stories you’ve been told in your practice. The importance is that it opens people to questioning, empathy, compassion, curiosity … For instance, in my practice I often used stories about my life, sometimes about my mother’s life, sometimes the story of my Black friend Paula, sometimes about the lives of local people past and present, sometimes the stories of lives far away, sometimes stories of the killing of people and the Earth, and without fail I have looked up to find tears, tears that identify with the story, tears of compassion that break through the dominant narrative of individualism, tears that come from that place of empathy deep inside us all. In relation to racist hate crime use the murder of Stephen Lawrence; his story is there for us all to learn from and never forget. Who is this story about? What’s happening? Who’s affected by it? Where does it happen? Why does it happen? As the questioning deepens, use story as critique: tell the story of neoliberal politics from Chapter  2, of the way that hatred and violence have become embedded in policies that divide us. As critical connections are made, contradictions are identified, and further information is sought, use story to construct a counternarrative based on what sort of society people would really like to live in: participatory ideology, one with different values, a politics of love not hate, one in which social justice is foregrounded and provides the lens for a common good. We have failed to tell a different story, one of infinite possibilities for a kinder world in which peace and social justice are the focus, a connected world based on kindness not cruelty, a story that is compelling enough for people to really believe that a different world is possible. We have a choice!

Critical connections in participatory practice For participatory practice to reach its potential for transformative change for social justice, it must pay attention to the critical links in practice that follow the process through to a transformative conclusion. Otherwise, practice interventions are piecemeal and likely to be tokenistic and placatory. Critical connection 1: education for critical consciousness Practice, decontextualised, is not rooted in the political context that is creating lived reality in local lives. Structural power reaches from outside the family, the classroom, the community, to determine the life chances of local people. More than this, a focus on single-issue sources of discrimination – ‘race’ or class 250

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or gender… – overlooks the way that power works as an intersectional project weaving interlinking oppressions in all aspects of life into a reinforcing whole. Grasping this idea means that no matter how much effort we put into tackling misogyny, xenophobia or racism as separate issues, we will not reach the roots of discrimination sufficiently to change injustice. The dominant ideology thrives on intentional discrimination, privileging the powerful at the expense of those rendered vulnerable. It is by changing our ideology – the values and ideas that are important to us – that we change our worldview, the way we see the world we want to live in. Everything about practice needs to be seen through the lens of social justice values. ‘When it comes to social justice, intersectionality demands more than simply being critical and intends turning critical analyses into critical praxis’ (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020: 239). Critical connection 2: critical praxis Critical praxis is a crucial concept for participatory practice. It captures the unity of theory and practice, that thinking is part of action as much as action is part of thinking, one building on the other in constant motion. Here, it is important to understand that this is about knowledge generated from and applied to real-life situations, it is not about theory as separate from practice but uses theories and concepts to enhance the knowledge as it deepens. Hill Collins and Bilge (2020: 190) refer to Pedagogy of the Oppressed as: a core text for intersectionality … [because] Freire rejects a class-only analysis of power relations in favour of the more robust power-laden language of the ‘oppressed’. The oppressed of Freire’s twentieth century Brazil are similar to the oppressed of today: homeless/ landless people, women, poor people, black people, sexual minorities, indigenous people, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, religious minorities, disabled people and the young. Freire’s use of the terms ‘oppression’ and ‘oppressed’ invokes intersecting inequities of class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, and citizenship. This links education for critical consciousness with intersectionality in eternal synergetic dynamic as critical praxis for social justice, making ever more critical connections with the intersections of power. Hill Collins and Bilge illuminate this idea in relation to environmental justice thinking which acknowledges that ‘actors in the more-than-human world are subjects of oppression and frequently agents of social change  … that understanding of the ways that intrahuman inequality and oppressions function and how they intersect with human-nonhuman oppressions  … (2020: 239–40). This is precisely why Godrej (2021) places such emphasis on the intersectional connections in environmental justice: climate change and loss of biodiversity are inextricably linked and cannot be solved as independent issues. And, of course, neither can be understood without 251

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reference to social justice and human behaviour, in every context, at every level. Transformative change is being called for from every direction apart from neoliberal politicians: ‘Embrace diverse visions of a good life; Reduce total consumption and waste; Unleash values and action; Reduce inequalities; Practice justice and inclusion in conservation …’ (World Wildlife Fund (2020) Living Planet Report, cited in Godrej, 2021: 18–19). Critical praxis links social justice, environmental justice, knowledge democracy and equality as the key to transformative change, and intersectionality as the flexible tool that expands our understanding and sharpens our action. Critical connection 3: collective action within and beyond communities Without critical action there is no transformative change. Together, we can change anything. This is the point at which critical consciousness, praxis and action come together in movement, reaching beyond the personal, beyond the local project, beyond the community, stretching out in coalitions, campaigns, networks, solidarity across all boundaries to become broad-based intersectional movements in global action for a fairer world based on empathy and compassion rather than violence and greed.

Participatory action research as a unity of praxis Paulo Freire’s education for critical consciousness inspired the participatory action research (PAR) movement to develop a unity of praxis, integrating ideas and action by locating knowledge in lived reality and acting on that knowledge to bring about transformative change. In other words, bridging the gap between theory and practice by dislodging knowledge from its abstract, controlling position in the academy to become the intellectual right of everyone to be in control of their own lives and to act on that knowing. This is why Freire’s critical education and PAR share the same value base and have the same principles and process. This creates an ideal model for a unitary, holistic praxis.

The PAR model Education for critical consciousness is a simple structure offering a safeguard for holding the process in place in practice, building new knowledge in action and acting from new knowledge in a cyclic dynamic which oscillates from the local project to the global movement. It is possible to enter the cycle at any stage, possible to go backwards and forwards as necessary, and possible to have multiple cycles developing alongside one another, all moving towards an interconnected global movement. Attached to each stage are reflective questions. These are ideas that should be extended in relation to each specific context.

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Figure 9.2: The PAR model

Problematise

Co-create new knowledge

Dialogue

PAR: Unity of praxis

Act

Reflect

Connect

Problematise • What are the concerns of the people? • What is the most relevant form of codification in this context to encourage questioning: – Provocation? – Story? – Poetry? – Rap? – Photography? – Drama?

Dialogue • Have you paid attention to making people feel at ease? • How are you putting values of human dignity and mutual respect into practice? • Ask questions, don’t give answers! What’s happening? Who’s involved? Why? Where? How? • Are you listening from the heart and placing your questions in the right spaces?

Reflect • • • • •

What has been learnt? What aspects of theory are useful to make sense of lived reality? What research is relevant? What statistics would help to deepen understanding of the social trends? What reports would deepen understanding of current issues?

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Connect Devise a flexible intersectional model as an analytic tool to take understanding of systemic discrimination deeper so that power relations are not overlooked and interconnecting oppressions are identified: • Is this related to ‘race’/class/gender/sexuality/‘dis’ability/culture/age? • Is there evidence of patriarchy/misogyny/White supremacy/xenophobia? • Is this connected to political values of profit/ free market/privatisation/competition/ privilege? • What is the lived experience of access to good housing/good education/good food/ good healthcare/a safe environment? • Whose knowledge matters? • Who does this society work for?

Act Personal empowerment brings confidence to act, but it is not transformative until it extends into collective action: • • • • •

How can this group link to other community groups? What campaigns can you join? Are there organised protests where you could speak truth to power? Where can you form broad-based coalitions? How can you link with broad-based global movements for change?

Co-create new knowledge • How can you capture the new understanding you have developed? • How are you going to present it to the community: – At a public meeting? – On a community noticeboard? – As a thought-provoking photographic exhibition in the community centre? – As a story? – As a play? – In music? • How can you share it more widely to add to the social justice and human rights body of knowledge?

Ideas are the basis of change – but are we asking the right questions? Questioning reconceptualises knowledge, starting from the most basic of questions from everyday life: Why are so many people sleeping in shop doorways? Who are they? Who is relying on foodbanks? Why are children going to school hungry? Which children are hungry? The process of becoming critical involves challenging dominant assumptions about whose lives matter, about whose lives 254

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are more important than others, and about who benefits most from the labours of society. The aim is to open eyes more critically to question the contradictions we live by, and to develop the curiosity and imagination to see that a better world is possible. We already have the knowledge, skills and technology to transform the world, all that is needed is the determination to regain control of our lives, and the political will to change. The knowledge democracy movement places the democratisation of knowledge at the heart of social justice and environmental justice. It is the starting point for action and change, claiming back knowledge that has been excluded, hidden or marginalised under the weight of White male supremacy by co-creating new ways of knowing as knowledge in action to challenge inequalities and organise for change. Participatory action research as critical praxis lends itself to this end. Critical inquiry deepens and widens as it reaches under the surface into the many hidden cracks and crannies that get overlooked, connecting with the intersecting oppressions that create lived reality. Intersectionality is the key to a critical praxis that magnifies a synergy for ideas and action that work on many axes, connecting politics and lived experience, critical inquiry and practice (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020). Rather than seeing people as a homogeneous undifferentiated mass of individuals, intersectionality provides a framework for explaining how categories of race, class, gender, age, and citizenship status, among others, position people differently in the world. Some groups are especially vulnerable to changes in the global economy, whereas others benefit disproportionately from them. Intersectionality brings a framework of intersecting social inequalities to economic inequality as the measure of global social inequality. (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020: 19) Intersectionality not only points a finger in the direction of a hard-to-see interlinking tapestry of subordinating power, but in doing so identifies sites of action for change built on grassroots broad-based coalition politics capable of transforming power relations on local, national and global levels. This can only be fully conceptualised once we see the way that stigma is used to dehumanise the poor of the world, anaesthetising our human need for empathy and compassion. This intersectional web of discrimination interweaves all oppressions into one extremely powerful system of subordination that has, according to the 2020 report from Oxfam’s Research Unit, doubled the number of billionaires in the past decade. Consumerism is destroying the ecological basis of life on Earth. Once we begin to understand the interlinked nature of environmental destruction and social injustice serving the privileged, we begin to see solutions that would put ‘an end to world poverty, a coherent global public-health system and an entire ecological makeover of human life, starting with a non-carbon-based energy grid’ (Swift, 2020: 26). The inhumanity of the strategic, intersectional, neoliberal project (Tyler, 2013, 2020) is so successful that it is rapidly destroying humanity and the natural world of which we are only a part. 255

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Changing love of POWER to the power of LOVE! Developments in neuroscience present the potential for a transformation of the way we relate to each other. The discovery that our brains have an empathy circuit – that we not only can, but need to relate to each other with compassion, caring, kindness, developing trusting communities that care for diversity and biodiversity, the planet and all humanity as an interrelated whole – is within our grasp as undeniable evidence that we are living according to values that harm us. This raises the authenticity of intuitive and metaphysical wisdom – women’s ways of knowing, indigenous ways of knowing and ecological ways of knowing – to challenge the futility of a dominant way of seeing the world that privileges White male supremacy and to place other truths in the mix. Lived experience is made up of a multiplicity of hegemonies producing a multiplicity of oppressions related to violence, hunger, poor education, unemployment, inadequate housing, ill health, unsafe environments  … with links to intersecting structures of discrimination that cleave through personal lives, giving some more life chances than others. Intersectionality is an infinitely flexible analytic tool that deepens knowledge by connecting the overlapping, intertwining, mutually reinforcing complexities of social inequalities, power and discrimination to create one overriding system of oppressions. Critical inquiry deepens as questioning into lived experience reaches the many murky corners that get overlooked, connecting with the overlapping oppressions that create lived reality. Intersectionality increases the synergy for ideas and action based on the interconnection of politics and lived experience, critical inquiry and practice (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2020). It offers signposts that challenge our thinking and deepen our understanding leading to more effective connected action for change built on grassroots coalition politics, knowledge capable of transforming power relations on local, national and global levels. Transformative practice is committed to radical social change for a world in which everyone is both cared for and responsible for each other and humanity’s place in the ecosystem. It acts on the belief that knowledge democracy is a catalyst for change, claiming the right to many ways of knowing beyond a dominant ideology that has subordinated indigenous wisdom, Black women’s wisdom, women’s ways of knowing, metaphysical ways of knowing and many more in its quest to dominate life from a highly scientific/pragmatic White, male perspective. We don’t have to look far to see that other ideologies lead to different outcomes. For instance, the Kogi people of northern Colombia believe that they are custodians of the Earth, that their purpose is to support the balance of harmony and creativity in the world and that plundering the Earth leads to the destruction of humanity. Or, looking towards ‘The land of happiness’, we see Finland, one of the most equitable countries with the best life chances for children and the happiest people (Dorling and Koljonen, 2020). In the words of Vandana Shiva, and her boundless intersectional mind:

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Original participation is a concept expressed by the worldview of indigenous cultures which means that their members are born into an integral world community where they speak on behalf of the fourlegged-ones, the finned-ones, the forest, the mountain, the bees, the river, and the seas. This is the reflection of a consciousness that is supremely evolved, not ‘primitive’ or ‘backward’, and it is more crucial than ever to safeguard the increasingly precarious future of the planet. Indigenous knowledge strongly situates itself in the commons of knowledge which is intricately linked to the commons of nature. (Shiva, 2020: 230, 254) Deepening critical consciousness by constantly asking critical questions and speaking truth to power, building theory in action and developing action from theory, we weave our way forwards joining together, out of the fragmented reality we have created towards a participatory world based on respect and cooperation, on love and harmony, and hope. We turn to Aiyana Rosel to conclude with her inspiring words of hope: I dug deep into my darkness, Immersed myself in the suffering of humanity, Until I became cynical, Losing hope, That the world was too broken to be healed, That kindness was too weak to overtake hatred, Until I realised that we will never wipe out pain by adding to it, The solution is in finding lightness in the chaos, In shifting our perspective, To see the beauty and kindness that still surrounds us, That every spring, no matter how hopeless it feels, The world still blossoms into life regardless, And in that remembrance I created a little bit of heaven around me, By emanating the grace of faith, Celebrating all the beauty that is here, Slowing down to notice the little miracles that are always taking place, Listening to my intuition, Opening my eyes, And tuning in to the sweet sound of birds singing, And suddenly the world didn’t seem so dark, As I saw that there is always a shimmering thread interweaving beneath, Patiently waiting for us to take off the blinkers, And really see the world and each other as we really are, As golden. Source: Unpublished poem by Aiyana Rosel, published here by permission of the author5

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Notes

Chapter 1 1

2

3

The Greek words for love are: Eros: romantic, passionate love; Philia: intimate, authentic friendship; Ludus: playful, flirtatious love; Storge: unconditional, familial love; Philautia: self-love; Pragma: committed, companionate love; Agápe: empathetic, universal love. In conversation with Brene Brown, in a podcast on 9 November 2020 (https://brenebrown. com/podcast/brene-with-aiko-bethea-on-creating-transformative-cultures/). Each chapter has a lead author, but as both authors have also worked on the book as a whole, references to chapters in the book should include both author names.

Chapter 2 1

www.neweconomics.org

Chapter 4 1 2 3

See https://participedia.net/ www.icphr.org https://knowledgedemocracy.org/

Chapter 5 1 2 3 4

Imogen Tyler, blog post, 14 March 2017, [email protected] www.carn.org www.coldwarsteve.com See, at bbc.co.uk, ‘Bob Geldof on W.B. Yeats: A fanatic mind’, last broadcast on BBC4 on 10 December 2020.

Chapter 6 1

http://ncdd.org/rc/item/category/participatory-practices/

Chapter 8 1 2

See www.freire.org www.bbc.co.uk

Chapter 9 1 2 3 4 5

See https://www.presencing.org/gaia See www.presencing.org/ weforum.org See www.unwomen.org For published poems see Liberated: Poetry in Celebration of the Feminine.

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278

Index

A Abel, J. 141, 204, 205 Abma, T. 92, 103, 149, 193 action research 133–5, 252–4 actionless thought 181, 216 Active Hope 35 Adebowale, M. 72 Adkins, L. 187 ADMI 105 Africa 118, 179 agápe love 21 agency 29, 137, 183 agro-ecology 117–18 Alexander, David 5, 140 Allen, S. 100 Allman, Paula 188, 214 All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Arts, Health and Wellbeing 100–1 Alston, Philip 54–6, 128, 129, 226–7 ancestral wisdom 78 Andrews, A. 201 Angus, J. 99 animator roles/co-facilitators 101–2, 163 Anzaldúa, Gloria 103, 187, 229 appreciative inquiry 165–6 Ark Security 206 Arnstein, S.R. 17, 148 Arruda, K. 153, 157 Arruzza, C. 243, 244, 245 arts 95–9, 134, 172 Asgill, Paula 8 Atwood, Margaret 125 austerity politics 38–9, 52–6, 101, 113, 210, 226–7 Australia 101 autonomy 137, 170, 197, 208 Avritzer, L. 115 Aynsley-Green, Al 51

B Baiocchi, G. 113 Bakhtin, M. 159–60

balance chaos-stability 87 economics 61 ecosystems 32, 82 health and well-being 33, 69, 73 values and principles 37, 60 worldviews 20 Baldwin, Christina 160–1, 162 Ballatt, J. 41, 43, 59, 63, 205, 235 Barad, K. 17, 19 Barking and Dagenham, London 116–17 Barnes, M. 102 Barnett, R. 175, 176 Barrett, R. 200, 202 Bateson, G. 14, 83, 88, 89, 169, 175 Bauwens, M. 26 Bazalgette, P. 125, 204 Be Creative Be Well 101 Beck, D.E. 89 being in the world 87 Belenky, M.F. 1, 150, 151 Beresford, P. 229, 231 Berger, J. 30 Berger, P.L. 189 Berkes, F. 73 Berry, T. 67 Bethea, Aiko 23 Beveridge Report (1942) 43–4 Bherer, L. 121 Big Society 52, 54 Bilge, S. 218–19, 224, 251, 255, 256 Bing, V. 137 bio-colonialism 237 biodiversity 37, 60, 188, 207, 228, 235, 237, 248 Bird, R.J. 80 Black cultures 179 Black feminism 47, 243 Black Lives Matter 131, 133, 206–7, 220 Black women 126–7, 132, 218, 247 Blackstock, K. 189 Blair, Tony 51–2 Blakeley, Grace 49 279

Participatory Practice Blanket Exercise 190–1 Boal, Augusto 9, 102, 210, 211 Bochner, A. 125 Bohm, D. 85, 149, 167 Bolam, B. 70 Bolsonaro, Jair 62 Booth, R. 39 Bopp, J. 74 border crossing 7, 140, 215–16 Bortoft, H. 83 Boud, D. 171 Bourdieu, Pierre 170, 182–5 Boyd, R.D. 171, 172 Boyle, D. 232 Bradbury, H. 16, 137, 144 Bray, J. 143 Brazil 111 Bregman, Rutger 14, 30, 51, 130, 231 Brexit 55, 197, 229 British welfare state 41–57 Brockbank, A. 156 Browning, R. 21 Bühler, U. 120, 121 Burke, M. 2 Burns, D. 168

C Cabannes, Y. 113 Cameron, David 52, 54 Campbell, A. 102 Canada 4, 27–8, 93, 94–5, 105, 117, 189 Canadian Institutes of Health Research 105 capacity to participate 95, 114, 115 capital (Bourdieu) 183–4 capitalism anti-capitalist feminism 244 and colonialism 245 commodification of the arts 98 dialogue 167 militarisation 245 and race 131 as root cause of social crisis 49, 51, 244 and stigma 57 see also globalisation; neoliberalism Capra, F. 32, 69, 78, 81, 82, 83, 88, 230 Carr, W. 169–70 Carson, Rachel 236 Castillo, M. 137, 138

Cave, B. 80 centralised control 93 Chambers, R. 106 chaos 81, 87 Chenoweth, Erica 198 China 28 Chinese medicine 69 Chipko movement 188 Chouinard, J.A. 174 circle-based worldviews 20, 73, 74–7 civic courage 214 civil society 50, 111, 115, 118, 180, 181, 182, 186 Clarke, L. 141, 204, 205 clientelism 112 climate crisis 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 62, 247 counterhegemony 243 epoch in world history 38 and feminism 245 global climate strike 130–1, 207 human-nature relations 71 and interconnectivity 27 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021 236–7 intersectionality 248 virtual online communities 220 Clothier, P. 200, 202 co-creation community arts 99 of the future 14, 15, 17, 28 of reality 85–7 codifications 143, 211, 249, 253 Coelho, V.S.P. 110 coercion 58, 132, 156, 186 co-evolution 33 co-facilitation roles 101–2, 163 cognition 20, 69, 83, 88, 182 Cold War Steve 143 co-learning 24, 83, 142, 212 Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) 134, 135 collaborative enterprise development 116–17 collective action 47, 95, 132–4, 137, 249, 252, 254 collective agreements 21 collective ingenuity 147 collective insurance 63 280

Index collective listening 153 collective ownership 25–6 Collective Presence 157 collective responsibility 43 collective unconscious 84 colonialism awareness of 182 Canada 4 and capitalism 245 critical reflexivity 190–1 development agencies 107 globalisation as 236 governance practices 110 human-nature relations 71 racism 218 and stigma 58 Western mindset 13, 66–7 Combahee River Collective 127 common good 42, 55, 63, 143, 197, 204, 229, 237 common sense counternarratives 130, 132 critical consciousness 198 critical questioning of 14 critical theory 181 doxa 185 Gramsci 179, 181, 201 neoliberalism 223 storytelling 57, 58 commons 25–6, 53–4, 63, 239 communicative spaces 25, 147 community community arts 95–9, 100–2 community development 7–8, 213 ‘community engagement’ 91 ecosystem thinking 79–80 emergence processes 81 regeneration and degeneration 80 storytelling 144 Compass 117 compassion 21, 128, 135, 141, 144, 158, 161, 204, 241 Compassionate Frome 205 competition 20, 44, 49, 82, 145, 213, 228–9 complex adaptive systems 81, 82, 85, 86 complex systems thinking 78, 80 conflict 158–9, 167 conscientisation 30, 96, 170, 175, 211, 213, 215, 248

consciousness, participatory 21, 83, 84–7, 132–3, 143, 171, 175 consultation 117 consumerism 9, 46, 60, 80, 89, 239 contradictions, questioning 40–1, 47 Cooke, B. 121, 231 cooperation 33, 37, 42, 63, 82–3, 144 Cooperrider, D.L. 166 COP26 220, 236 co-production projects 116–17 Cornwall, A. 17, 110 corrective feedback 81 counterhegemony 242 counternarratives 129–32, 136–7, 196, 198, 200, 224, 230–1, 243 counter-oppression 213 Cousins, J.B. 174 Covey, S.R. 169 COVID-19/pandemic 207 collectivity 43, 93 concentration of power and wealth 49 Downing St parties 229 epoch in world history 38 health inequalities 227 human-nature relations 71 interdependency 26–7, 79 kindness 241 neoliberalism 236 participatory arts 98 participatory cities 117 public sector 38–9 race 207 relationship 23 Cowan, C.C. 89 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 188 critical connections 40 critical consciousness critical reflection 181 education for critical consciousness 46, 197, 208, 220, 248–9, 250–2 Freire 132, 198, 209, 210, 211, 220–1, 240 imagination 141 participatory worldview 85, 86, 257 poetry 143 reclaiming 233 storytelling 128, 132 transformative practice 198, 207, 208 values and principles 47, 56 281

Participatory Practice critical dialogue 125 critical inquiry 18, 196, 211, 218, 255, 256 critical intervention 212 critical pedagogy 9, 31, 118, 187, 209–18 critical praxis 46, 132, 176, 214–16, 249, 251 critical reflection 169–93 critical reflexivity 92, 175–93 critical spaces 140 critical theory 30, 177–8 critical thinking 30–1, 216 crowdsourcing 26 cruelty 129, 140, 142, 143 cultural capital 183 cultural diversity 115, 171 cultural invasion 216 curiosity 132–5, 161, 196–7, 215, 231 custodians of the planet 130, 235, 256 cycle model (Rowan) 8 cycles of growth/nature 32, 73, 80, 83

D da Silva, Luis Inácio Lula 111 Dabiri, E. 131 Damasio, A. 67, 87 Danaher, G. 185 Darder, A. 156, 187, 188, 199, 210, 212, 215, 240 Darwin, Charles 37, 82 Dasgupta, Partha 227–8 Dasgupta, R. 233, 235 Davis, A. 133 Dawkins, R. 67 decentralised state 61 deep ecology 78, 85, 88 deep listening 23 defractive practice 19 degenerative communities 80 dehumanisation 38, 57, 130, 145, 152, 159, 198, 210, 216, 235 deliberative democracy 91, 109–17 Dembinska, M. 158, 160 democratic economy 61 Derbyshire, Wendy 138–9, 140 development agencies 106, 231 Dewey, J. 32, 68, 85 dialogue 147–68, 211–17, 248–9, 253 dialogue circles 158, 160–2, 163–4

dialogue groups 128, 226 dignity 21, 119–21, 141, 151, 207, 208, 212 discovery processes 17 discrimination 46, 58–9, 115, 128, 235, 251 discursive power 193 dislocation 140–1 disruptive change 82 diversity 21, 33, 71, 82, 237 see also biodiversity dominant narratives, critiquing 128–9, 144 Dorling, Danny 45, 48, 60, 63, 130, 240, 256 Doughnut Model of Economics 61, 72, 145, 228 doxa 185 Doyal, L. 13, 137, 170 dualistic mindsets 19–20, 22, 32, 67, 68, 133

E Eastern philosophy 69 eco-feminism 232, 245 ecology agro-ecology 117–18 critical theory 188 cycles of growth/nature 32, 73, 80, 83 deep ecology 78, 85, 88 ecological contract 230–1 ecological limits 61 ecological ways of thinking 78–82, 88, 232–3 and feminism 232, 245 and geography 2 participatory practice as an ecological imperative 31–3 and social justice 14 ecopedagogy 199 eco-socialism 245 ecosystems agro-ecology 117–18 balance 32, 37 cooperation, partnership and co-evolution 83 ecological ways of thinking 78–82 ecosystem thinking 117, 172, 230, 232–3 feedback loops 80–2 human flourishing 145 interdependency 26 learning ecosystems 147 282

Index and neoliberalism 9 participatory practice as an ecological imperative 32 values and principles 37 education 4–5, 179–80, 210 education for critical consciousness 46, 197, 208, 220, 248–9, 250–2 Ego to Eco 232–3 ego-based thinking 82 ego-system awareness 79 Einstein, Albert 84 Eldonians 2 electoral systems 110, 113 elitism 99, 110, 115 Ellis, C. 125 Elstub, S. 112 emancipatory action research 133–5, 136–40 embodied dialogue 151, 152 embodied participation 17 embodied social justice 19 embodied values and principles 21–3, 119–22 embodiment of knowledge 172 emergence processes 81–2 emotion 67, 69, 84, 144, 151, 171–2, 191, 211 empathy and dialogue 151 empathy in action 204–8 good ancestors 130 imagination 141 innateness of 46 listening 138, 153 neuroscience 9, 144, 201–3, 241 radical empathy 201–4, 206, 235, 241–2 storytelling 29, 133, 234 values and principles 21, 206 see also kindness endosymbiotic theory 71 energy 85, 86, 204, 241 enterprise development 116–17 environment 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 62, 247 balance with 20 and feminism 245 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021 236–7

intersectionality 248; see also climate crisis; ecosystems participatory practice in food and resource management systems 117–18 root causes of degradation 40 satyagraha 188 treated as a free good 80 environmental justice 9, 72, 188, 251, 252, 255 epistemological reflexivity 176 epistemology 66, 170, 177–8, 197, 200, 212 epoch in world history 20, 38–9, 129, 201, 224, 231 Escobar, O. 112, 114, 115 essential self 157 ethical being 28 ethical relationality 19 ethics committees 106 ethics of care 23 evaluation 174 Exercise Cygnus 39 experiential knowing 29 experts 93, 101, 103, 104 exploitation 32, 44, 54, 71, 80, 131, 141 Extinction Rebellion 130, 207

F facilitative leadership 113, 159 ‘facts’ 67 false consciousness 5, 7, 30, 56, 126, 181, 185, 210, 211 far-right movements 62, 223, 224, 242 Feather, Joan 163 feedback loops 80–2, 198 feminism 7, 31, 47, 85, 126–7, 185, 187, 218, 243–7 field (Bourdieu) 184–5 Finland 240, 256 First Nations Health Authority 76–7 flexibility 33, 82 Floyd, George 133, 206 food systems 50–1, 117–18 Forester, J. 148, 168 Forgacs, D. 181 Foucault, Michel 149, 170, 185–6, 188, 191 fragmentation 69, 101, 135, 195 frames 89, 193 Frankfurt School 177, 182, 212 283

Participatory Practice Fraser, Nancy 18, 19, 242, 246 free markets economics 13, 45, 49, 61, 72, 80, 140, 197, 228, 235 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) 235 Freire, Nita 9 Freire, Paulo action research 134 adult education 168 agápe love 21 authentic dialogue 148–9 biography 170, 208–9 conscientisation 96, 175, 211, 248 critical connections 40 critical consciousness 132, 198, 209, 210, 211, 220–1, 240 critical pedagogy 31, 97, 118, 209–18 critical theory 177 culture of silence 30, 208 dialogue 147, 151, 156, 158, 211, 214, 216–17, 248 dialogue groups 128, 141 ecopedagogy 188 education for critical consciousness 46, 197–8, 208, 220–1, 248–9 false consciousness 30 false generosity 180 full humanity 202–3, 208–9, 216 intersectionality 218–19, 246–8 Jane’s story 1–2 liberating education 209 Margaret’s story 5 naming the world 125 Nicaragua 6 oppression 29 Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed 9 Pedagogy of Indignation 188 pedagogy of love 208 Pedagogy of the Oppressed 46, 178, 210, 224, 251 popular education 193 power 132 praxis 210, 211 problematisation 143 reflection 214–15 search and re-search 137 silence 156 transformative practice 199, 208 vision 47 the word 214

Frome, Somerset 110–11, 205 Fromm, Eric 22 full humanity 202–3, 208–9, 216

G Gadgil, M. 17 GAIA Journey of Global Activation of Intention and Action 232 Gandhi, M. 28, 188 Ganuza, E. 113 Garces, M.F.E. 145 garden metaphor 15, 34 Gaventa, J. 106, 109, 183, 184, 191 generality 71, 74 generative themes 211 Gentleman, A. 59 geography 1–2, 5 Giroux, Henry 7, 58, 140, 214, 215–16 Givens, T. 206, 235, 241 Global Assembly on Knowledge Democracy 106 global financial crisis 2008 62, 244 globalisation 46, 49, 188, 228–9, 233, 236 Godrej, D. 248, 251, 252 Goldberger, N.R. 140 Goodwin, B. 90 Gough, I. 13, 137, 170 Grabov, V. 171 Gramsci, Antonio catalysts 143 coercion 132 critical education 179–80, 210 critical theory 178–81 false consciousness 30, 181 and feminism 187, 243–6 hegemony 5, 57, 179, 223, 242–3 historical bloc 224, 242 ideological persuasion 57–8, 132, 179, 186 interregnum 62 Italian 170 Margaret’s story 5 organic intellectuals 181 philosophy of praxis 181 Prison Notebooks 46, 178 traditional intellectuals 181, 214 grants processes 114–15 Graveline, Fyre Jean 27, 31, 74, 75, 77, 172

284

Index greed 39, 44, 62, 130, 201, 202, 225 Greek democracy 19, 110, 231 Green, D. 93 Greene, Maxine 140 greenwashing 92, 236 Grenfell Tower 59–60 grieving 172 ground rules/rules of engagement 21 Guatemala 105 Gunn Allen, Paula 28 Gunnlaugson, O. 153, 157 gut microbiome 69

H Habermas, Jürgen 25, 147, 149, 182, 218 habitus 183, 185 Hamilton, Marilyn 89 Hancock, T. 80 Harding, S. 19 Hare, B. 37, 64, 198, 240 Hari, J. 182 Harris, J. 149 Hart, M. 31 Hattersley Women Writers 7–8, 138–9, 213 Havel, V. 78 Hawkins, P. 175 Hayek, F. 49 head, heart and hands 3, 233 healing systems 69, 205 health and well-being 33–4, 69–70, 100–2, 161 health inequalities 227 health promotion 1–3, 69–70, 176–7 health research 103–9 Healthy Cities 2 Healy, Hazel 50 hegemony collective will 180 counterhegemony 242 dominant hegemony 7, 133, 213, 223, 235, 243 feminism for the 99% 246 Gramsci 5, 179 hegemonic bloc 242–3, 246 intersectionality 57 Margaret’s story 5 medical hegemony 69 micro-levels of society 186

rational/experimental modes of learning 175 separation-based worldviews 20 White privilege 187 Heidegger, Martin 87 Heron, John 2, 18, 32, 84 hierarchies 131, 184 Hildegard of Bingen 31, 82 Hill, Dave 188 Hill Collins, Patricia 141, 218–19, 224, 248, 251, 255, 256 historical bloc 224, 242 history, importance of 41 holistic approaches to life 3, 69 hooks, bell 31, 132, 219 Hope, A. 215 hope/hopelessness 35, 199, 210, 231, 234 Hopkins, R. 126, 234 Horkheimer, Max 191 Horton, M. 119 housing 60 Hui, A. 100 human flourishing 2, 9, 33, 37, 83, 145, 230 human rights 51, 55, 56, 223 human-nature relations 71, 73–4, 80, 87, 228 humility 138, 158, 163, 216 hunger 50–1, 118 Hurricane Katrina 58 Hustedde, R. 133 Hutchinson, Patrick 206–7 Hutton, Will 44, 63

I identity 137, 144, 156–7 ideological consent 132 ideological persuasion 57–8, 179, 186 imagination 40, 41, 132, 141–4, 172, 196, 198, 231, 234 imbalance 34 immanence 73 immigrants 24, 59, 236 implicate order 85 India 188 indigenous people Canada 94–5 food and resource management 117 holistic healing 69 285

Participatory Practice indigenous people (continued) indigenous ways of knowing 32, 73–7, 88–9, 256–7 interconnectivity 27–8 listening to 137 living the questions 31 medicine wheel 74–7 neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm 237–40 participatory arts 98 philosophy 67 reflexivity 189 seventh-generation wisdom 130, 232 individualism versus collective responsibility 60 false consciousness 211 human-nature relations 71 misconception of 53–4 neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm 237 neoliberalism 37, 45, 52, 225, 235 short-termism 130 inequality and the commons 54 COVID-19 38 health inequalities 70 and interconnectivity 27 neoliberalism 45–6, 131, 207, 235 root causes 40, 196 Thatcherism 48–9 in UK 48–9, 53, 63 information flows 33, 81, 148, 160 inner and outer arcs of attention 189 inner transformation 28–9 inner-outer world connection 28–9, 84–7 instrumentality 80 integral cities 89 integrated knowledge translation 105–6 integrity 135, 212 intelligent kindness 63, 205, 235 interactive activities 95–6 interbeing 25–8, 83 interconnectivity biodiversity 228 compassionate communities 205 cooperation, partnership and co-evolution 83 as counternarrative 198, 224 critical consciousness 211

versus dualistic thinking 68 ecological ways of thinking 78–82 hidden connections 69 indigenous ways of knowing 73–4 and kindness 63 pandemic 79 personal is political 127 thought 9 transformative practice 195 values and principles 37–8 wholeness 223–57 worldviews 19, 27, 29, 33 interdependency 10, 25–8, 32, 63, 73–4, 76, 78–82 intergenerational justice 28, 53, 130 International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research 103, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 235 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report 2021 236–7 intersectionality education for critical consciousness 251 empathy 206 Freire 218–19, 220, 246–8 global movements 233 knowledge democracy 255 neoliberalism 48, 57 oppression 189 participatory action research 254 and power 132, 188–9, 196, 242 social justice 127, 248, 251 storytelling 126–7, 133, 137, 145, 224 intuition 71, 84, 230 ‘involving people’ 91 Iqbal, Nosheen 207 Isaacs, W. 148

J Jackson, E.T. 107 Jacobs, Gaby 175, 176 Johnson, Boris 62, 197, 229 Johnstone, C. 71, 84 Jones, Owen 51 Jones, Paul 8, 134 joy 234 286

Index

K Kahane, A. 21 Kasl, E. 157 Kassam, Y. 107 Katz, B. 114, 115 Kaufer, K. 79, 84 Kemmis, Stephen 25, 30, 135, 147, 169–70, 191, 218 Kenway, J. 187 keyworkers 39 Kimmerer, Robin Wall 238, 239 kindness action research 135 compassionate energy 241 as a different lens 62–4 intelligent kindness 63, 205, 235 neuroscience 144, 202, 256 radical kindness 22, 43 as replacement for growth and profit 128 values and principles 21, 37 see also empathy King, B. 133 King, Martin Luther 46, 210 kinship 62–4 Klinge, I. 193 knowledge co-creation of 17, 25, 29, 83, 103, 134, 254 connected knowing 140 discursive power 193 discussion versus dialogue 150 diversity of knowledges 230 embodiment of knowledge 68, 172 food systems 118 honouring all ways of 21 indigenous ways of knowing 32, 73–7, 88–9, 256–7 knowledge democracy 106 from lived experience 8, 68, 197, 255 and love 216 multiple ways of knowing 21, 256 perceptual knowing 71, 84–5 pipeline model of knowledge transfer 106 and power 189 praxis 30 privileging of 189 reflection 216 relational knowledge 149 research-into-practice 71

specialisation of 68 theory-practice separation 66 Western mindset 66–73, 230–1 knowledge democracy 134, 252, 255, 256 knowledgeable narratives 70 Kolb, David 171 Koljonen, A. 240, 256 Kothari, U. 121, 186, 189, 231 Kovach, M. 73 Kravagna, Christian 95, 96 Krznaric, R. 130, 131, 201, 202, 203, 241 Kurdish people 103 Kyrgyzstan 107–9

L Labonte, Ron 163, 176 ladder of participation 17, 95 Laloux, F. 89 Lambeth, London 116–17 land, relationship with 25–6, 50, 53, 71, 74, 94, 158 landmarks 184 language 23, 26, 184 Lather, Patti 187 Lawnmowers Independent Theatre Company 102 Lawrence, Stephen 250 Lawson, N. 109 leadership 83, 113, 161, 180 learning disabilities 102 Ledwith, M. 61, 178, 189, 191, 219, 246 left wing politics 51–2 level 3 learning 175 liberating education 209, 210, 214–15 Lichty, L. 104 life expectancy 56 Linnea, Ann 160–1, 162 Lipietz, B. 113 lip-service to participatory practice 106, 113, 117, 119, 121, 195 listening 46, 125, 137–40, 153–5, 158, 161 lived experience 1970s and 1980s grassroots movements 46 critical consciousness 198 feminism 127 intersectionality 219 knowledge from 8, 68, 197, 255 living the questions 31

287

Participatory Practice lived experience (continued) and love 256 participatory health research 106 storytelling 126 living systems 79–82 see also ecosystems living the questions 30–1 local government 109–17 London 97, 116–17 Lorde, Audre 132–3, 144–5, 210 love 20–2, 80, 158, 216, 240, 241, 256 Lovelock, James 32 Ludwig, D.S. 173 Luisi, P.L. 78, 81, 82 Lukes, Stephen 191, 193 Lykes, M.B. 104, 105

M Macfadyen, Peter 110, 111 Macy, J. 35, 71, 84 magical consciousness 211, 215 Mahale, P. 27 Majumder, Navaneeta 234–5, 237 Malik, N. 136, 145 Manchester 6–7, 47, 48, 101 Mandela, Nelson 51, 52, 56, 60 Mander, J. 235 maps 89 Marmot, M. 56, 227 Marsden, D. 74 Marshall, Judi 1, 189 Martín-Baró Fund 105 Martinez, Dylan 207 Mason, Paul 58, 59, 199–200, 243 Maturana, H.R. 20, 33, 83, 88 May, T. 172, 175 May, Theresa 59 Mayo, P. 151, 179, 215 Mazzucato, M. 39 McAdams, D. 127 McDonald, John 6 McGill, I. 156 McIntosh, Peggy 190 McIntyre, A. 104 McLaren, Peter 7, 35, 170, 178, 186, 188 McMahon, Katherine 7 McNiff, J. 182 McQueen, D. 170

meaning 25, 29, 67, 84–5, 148, 153–4, 171, 234 measuring participation 17 mechanistic thinking 72 medical science 69–70 medicine wheel 74–7, 89 Melucci, A. 115 mental health 69, 100, 231–2 mental models 19 Merleau-Ponty, M. 84–5, 152 mestiza 187 micropolitics of engagement 109 Milevska, S. 99 Miller, T. 185 Milne, S. 180 mindfulness 84, 173, 202 miners’ strike 6, 48, 180–1 Misbehaviour (1970) 31 misogyny 62 Monbiot, George 54, 56, 129, 132, 200, 221 monologism 148, 159, 160 Mont Pelerin Society 9, 44–5 Montambeault, F. 158, 160 Moore, M.L. 121 Moore, R.O. 152 Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (MCHB) 24 multidimensional worldviews 66 multi-sensory media 85 Murphy, B. 85 mutual responsibility 37 Myers, J.G. 171, 172 Myss, C. 31

N Nabudere, D.W. 118 naive consciousness 211, 215 naming the world 215 Nannup, Noel 233 nascent logos 84 nation states 49 National Alliance for Arts Health and Wellbeing 100 National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation 162–3 Native Americans 3 nature human-nature relations 71–3, 80, 87, 228 288

Index interconnectivity 27–8 participants in 17 participatory practice as an ecological imperative 31–3 separateness from 68 Navarro, Z. 183, 184, 185 neoliberalism Canada 4 common sense 223 and the commons 54 control of thought 26 disconnection 51, 140, 223 dominant hegemony 198, 235 epoch in world history 38 globalisation 228–9 individualism 37 inequality 37 invention of 9, 44–6, 62, 224 ‘involving people’ 91 left wing politics 52 market forces 49, 197 militarisation 245 neoliberal paradigm vs an indigenous paradigm 237–40 oligarchs 223, 233 one of many worldviews 234 politics of disposability 58–9 problematisation of power 242 regulatory failures 59 research 104 short-termism 130 stigma 56–7, 201 values and principles 200 networks 33, 83 neuroscience 67, 136, 144–5, 201–2, 240–1, 256 New Economics Foundation (NEF) 60–1 New Labour 51–2 New Orleans floods 58 Ngomane, M. 128 NHS 38–9 Nicaragua 6–7, 47, 204, 229 novelty generation 81, 82

O objectivity 67–8, 72, 88 Occupy Movement 82, 191, 202, 220 O’Hagan, A. 111

O’Hara, M. 52, 53, 55 oligarchs 223, 233, 235 Ong, A. 87 ontology 66, 68, 73, 177–8, 197, 200, 212 open borders 130 Open Public Library 96 open space technology 165 Open University 1–2 oppression 30, 31, 127, 188, 189, 244, 246 organic intellectuals 181 Osborne, George 57 Owen, Harrison 165

P pandemic (2020–) see COVID-19/pandemic paradigm wars 233–6 participation, definition of 16–18 participatory budgeting (PB) 51, 111–16 participatory cities 116–17 participatory democracy 17, 19, 91, 109–17, 195, 229–30 participatory ideology 229–30 participatory parity 18 ‘participatory rapid appraisal’ 106, 107–8 Pascale, R. 81 past-present-future 41, 216–17 Paterson, Doug 9 patriarchy 9, 58, 69, 73, 83, 127, 133, 150, 187, 234 Paulo Freire Institute for Ecopedagogy 188, 199 Peat, E.D. 74, 86 Peck, M.S. 3 Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed 9 pedagogy of possibility 214 People’s Knowledge Editorial Collective 103 perceptual knowing 71, 84–5 performance measurement 91 Perry, B. 172, 175 personal is political 85, 126–7 Pert, C.B. 69 Pettit, J. 107 philosophy 66–7, 89, 135, 148, 181 photovoice 104, 105 phronesis 186 Phule, Savitribai 219 Picciotto, R. 174 Pirsig, R. 72 289

Participatory Practice planetary citizenship 199 Plotkin, B. 32 poetry 143–4, 172, 250 Polanyi, M. 71 political collage 143 politics of disposability 58–9 Popay, J. 70 Popple, K. 212 populism 39, 49, 62, 68, 110, 112, 140, 167 Porto Alegre, Brazil 111–12, 115 positivism 126 postcolonialism 187 postmodernism 185, 188 post-structuralism 185 Potvin, L. 170 poverty and austerity 54–6 COVID-19 207 and education 180 and human rights 51 hunger 50–1 as imbalance 34 and mental health 231–2 neoliberalism 235 as a political choice 60 and social justice 18–19 UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights 54–6, 129, 226–7 unnaturalness of 52 power Bourdieu 182–5 and the commons 54 community arts 99 concentration of 13–14, 49 and connectedness 30 corruption of 30 critical intervention 212 critical pedagogy 212 critical praxis 132 cultural capital 183 development agencies 107 dialogue 149, 159, 166–7, 168 dominant narratives, critiquing 144 in education settings 179 equalisation of 212–13 Foucault 185–6, 191 Gramsci 5 Habermas 182 and ideology 40

intersectionality 132, 188–9, 196, 218, 242 and language 184 of life force 25 from love of power to power of love 22–3, 256–7 moving from power over to power with 25, 191 multidimensional relationships 188 neoliberalism 9 participatory budgeting (PB) 114–15 ‘power-sharing’ 115–16 and praxis 210 problematisation of power 242 questioning 197 real versus empty rituals of 17 reflexivity 178 stigma 57 structural discrimination 46 symbolic capital 184 tools for critical reflection on 190–1 transformative practice 195–6 and truth 185 see also hegemony Power Cube 191 PPE (personal protective equipment) 39 praxis critical reflexivity 191 Freire 210, 211 participatory action research as a unity of praxis 252–4 philosophy of praxis 181 and phronesis 186 storytelling praxis 125–45 transformative practice 195–6 worldviews 30, 46 presencing 173 Presencing Institute 233 Prigogine, I. 81 privatisation 38–9, 63, 225 problematisation 143, 211, 214–15, 249, 253 profit motives 9, 44, 45, 62, 141, 244 Project eARTh 100 protest movements 46–7, 48, 130–1, 207, 237 ‘public’ 26 public art 95 public goods 53 public health 70, 100, 108–9 public sector 38–9, 53, 225 public shaming 56–7 290

Index Puerto Cabezas 6 Putin, Vladimir 63, 207 Pyrch, T. 137, 138

Q Quebec 158, 160 questioning 30, 40–1, 47, 163, 174, 199, 211, 212, 254–5 Quinney, R. 37, 144

R race 207 see also intersectionality racial injustice 131 racism 43, 62, 127, 133, 187, 218–19, 245, 250 radical community development 8 radical empathy 201–4, 206, 235, 241–2 Ramos, J. 26 Raworth, Kate 61, 145, 228 Reagan, Ronald 9, 45 reality, co-creation of 85–6, 106 Reason, Peter 1, 2, 8, 16, 134, 137, 144, 217 receptivity 172 reciprocity 2, 23, 25, 83, 147, 158, 239 recognition 172 reconciliation 158 redistributive justice 231–2 Rees, Stuart 140, 143, 249–50 reflection 156, 169–93, 214–15, 216–17, 253 reframing 193 refugees 5, 24, 63, 223 regeneration and degeneration 80–1, 86 reinforced feedback 81 relationship cooperation, partnership and co-evolution 82–3 ethics of care 23 everything is 74 life as network of relationships 83 living systems 79–82 medicine wheel 76 and participation 17 participatory practice as 23–5 participatory practice as relational process 23–5 relational knowledge 149 thinking participatively 74, 82–3, 90

religion 32, 71, 72–3, 184 research action research 133–5, 252–4 emancipatory action research 133–5 investigating research evidence 226–9 with not on people 134, 147 participatory health research 103–9 research-into-practice 105–6 respect 21, 119–20, 141, 151, 160, 212, 213 Riddell, D. 121 ripple effect 70 Robson, C. 133 Rodgers, D. 111 Rosel, Aiyana 257 Rowan, John 2, 8, 134 Rowbotham, S. 144 Roy, Arundhati 14 Ruddock, Ralph 8 rules of engagement 21 Russia 28

S sacred ecology 73 salutogenesis 33 Sample, I. 39 Sanders, Beth 89, 147, 150 Sandinistas 6, 47, 204, 229 satyagraha 188 Sawicki, J. 188 Sayer, A. 39, 51, 52, 53 scaling of participatory processes 121 Scharmer, C.O. 79, 84 Scharmer, O. 157 Schön, D. 175 Schumacher, E. 200 science 13, 66–73, 74 Scotland 113, 114–15, 166, 203 Scott-Samuel, A. 69 seasonal cycles 32, 73, 75 self, integration of the 87 self-care medicine wheel 76 self-critical, being 156 self-exclusion 184 selfishness 13, 46, 63, 84, 202 self-other separation 84 self-reflection 3, 83, 87, 189 Senge, P. 83, 84, 149, 163, 172–3 sensory engagement 84

291

Participatory Practice separation-based worldviews 19–20, 22, 26, 32, 33, 67–9, 71, 83, 201 sexism 43 see also intersectionality sexual harassment 104 sexuality 245 shared enterprise 26 SHARP (Sustainable Health Action Research Project) 152 Sharp, C. 166 Shaw, J. 149, 181, 216 Sheldon, J. 225 ‘shit life syndrome’ (SLS) 234 Shiva, Vandana 188, 232, 233, 256–7 Shor, Ira 212, 214, 221, 248 short-termism 130 Shotter, J. 147, 149, 152, 156 silence 30, 132–3, 137, 144–5, 155–6, 162–3, 173, 208 single-loop learning 175 Sistren 127 sites of oppression matrix 191 Skeggs, B. 187 skills building 114 Skolimowski, H. 16, 65, 66, 86 Skywoman 238 Slobodian, Q. 49 slowing the mind 140–1 ‘small’ practices 109–10 Smart, B. 186, 188 smoking 70 social capital 25, 33, 183 social class 43, 51–2, 183, 188 see also intersectionality social contract 63, 230–1 social determinants of health 33–4, 108 social justice action research 135 balance 34 British welfare state 41–2 dialogue 168 Doughnut Model of Economics 61 ecological balance 14 embodied values and principles 119–20 and environmental justice 72, 188, 252, 255 intersectionality 127, 248, 251 investigating research evidence 226–9 knowledge democracy 255 in the modern world 13

and neoliberalism 9 participatory practice as social justice in action 18–19 social contract 63 traditional intellectuals 181 transformative practice 195 values and principles 44 social media 85, 97–8, 148, 170, 237 social movements 2, 6, 31, 46, 118, 177, 196, 220, 246 social protests 46–7, 48 social settlement, new 60 socialism 52 Sotoris, P. 224 Southall Black Sisters 127 spaces for change 110 spiral dynamics 83, 89 spirituality 3, 72–3, 140–1, 173 Springett, J. 69, 105, 106, 174 stability 81, 87 stages of life 75 Standing, G. 54, 63 Steedman, C. 143–4 Stevenson, H.M. 2 stigma 48, 56–7, 63, 145, 201, 224 story dialogue tools 163–4 storytelling changing the story 129–32, 136–7 circles 161 to critique the dominant narrative 128–9 dialogue 163 empowerment of participation 18 Freirean praxis 199 imagination 40–1, 141–3 indigenous ways of knowing 74 inner and outer transformation 29 participatory health research 104 and perception 85 photovoice 104 power of 125–6, 234 as problematising 249–50 Skywoman 238 storytelling praxis 99, 125–45 as way to question 225–6 street art 97 structural discrimination 46, 115, 235 subconscious reflection 174 sub-oppression 213 subsidiary awareness 71

292

Index super-rich 9, 46, 223, 226, 235 survival of the fittest 33, 37, 82 sustainability 62, 80, 99, 117–18, 228 Sweden 117 Swift, R. 62, 207, 255 symbolic capital 183, 184 symbolic power 183 systemic injustice 28

T taken-for-granteds austerity politics 54 critical reflection 169, 176 decontextualisation of 211 dialogue 147, 156 doxa 185 storytelling praxis 128 transformative practice 201 worldviews 14, 30 talking circles 76 talking sticks 156 tapestry metaphor 34 Tarnas, R. 66 Tauli-Corpus, V. 235 Thakur, Sophia 207 Thatcher, Margaret 2, 6, 9, 45, 48–9, 62, 204, 224, 225 theatre 102, 127, 211 theory in action 47 theory of U 173 theory-practice separation 66 Thich Nhat Hanh 22 thought control 26 thoughtless action 181, 216 Thunberg, Greta 130, 207 Timmell, S. 215 TINA (there is no alternative) 38, 129, 223, 231 tokenism 17, 19, 113, 180, 195, 209, 250 tool kit temptation 93 tools, participation 91, 189 Touchton, M. 113 traditional intellectuals 181, 214 transformation participatory practice as inner and outer 28–9 transformational culture work 23 transformative intellectuals 214

transformative practice 195–221, 249, 252, 256 yoga of transformation 86–7 transparency 114 transpersonal psychology 85 tribalism 148, 158 Trickett, E.J. 70 Trotman Reid, P. 137 Trump, Donald 62, 207, 229 trust and dialogue 148, 149, 151 dialogue 160, 163, 167 and interconnectivity 27 listening 140 participatory budgeting (PB) 113, 115 participatory health research 104 participatory practice 93 as precondition for change 214 storytelling 141 worldviews 14, 25 truth 67, 134, 157, 179, 185, 234 Truth and Reconciliation 94–5, 190 Turnbull, D. 74 Tutu, Desmond 128 Tyler, Imogen 52, 53, 57, 58, 63, 133, 145, 201, 224, 255

U Ubuntu 128, 136 UK National Values Survey 141, 200, 202 UN (United Nations) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 62, 247 Global Platform for Action 247 Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights 54–6, 129, 226–7 Women’s Forum 247 unconscious 172, 174 Underhill-Sem, Y.T.R.–R.–O.–T 152 unity of praxis 46 Universal Basic Income 51, 130, 231–2 universities 68–9, 91, 104, 106 utilitarianism 71, 117

V values and principles as the bedrock of change 37–8, 41, 198, 199–201 293

Participatory Practice values and principles (continued) critical consciousness 56 critical praxis 216 different stories 235 and the Earth 238–9 embodiment of 21–3, 119–22 and ideology 229 importance of voicing 127–8 kindness and kinship as a different lens 62–4 participatory practice as embodiment of 21–3 practising participatory values 240–2 social justice 44 spirituality and consciousness 72–3 what do we care about 60–2 Varela, F.J. 20, 33, 83, 88 Varoufakis, Yanis 131 Vasileva, T. 38 Veneklasen, L. 185 Verden-Zöller, G. 20 Verdonk, P. 193 VicHealth 101 video 104, 161 Vietnamese people 203 village health committees 108–9 violence 62, 184, 198, 213, 245 virtual online communities 220, 237 virtual reality 26 voting systems 110

W Wahl, D. 19, 20, 23, 25, 33–4, 66, 80, 82, 83, 88, 89, 90 Wakeford, T. 91 walk-on-by factor 201 Wallerstein, Nina 1 Wampler, B. 113 war 52 Watson, Robert 248 wealth 49, 231 web of life 32, 61, 74, 88 Weiler, K. 187 Weiss, C. 177 ‘welfare scroungers’ 53, 55, 57, 63 welfare state 41–57, 61, 62 well-being see health and well-being

Westerman, W. 209 Western mindset 13, 17, 32, 66–73, 133, 170, 213, 219, 230–1 Wheatley, M.J. 23, 79, 209, 212 White (male) supremacy 57, 133, 178, 182, 187, 201, 206–7, 223, 255, 256 White, M. 99 White, S. 107 Whitehead, J. 182 WHO (World Health Organization) 2, 33, 108, 109 wholeness 3, 34, 74, 80, 161, 223–57 why questions 31, 190, 254 Wilber, K. 89, 90 Willats, S. 97 Wilson, M. 100 Windrush Scandal 59 winds, the four 75 Wink, J. 179 Winter, R. 28 Wohlleben, P. 241 Women Against Pit Closures 6 Woods, V. 37, 64, 198, 240 workplace democracy 131 World Bank 45, 117 World café 164–5 World Economic Forum 236 World Trade Organization (WTO) 235 World War II 41–2 worldviews circle-based worldviews 20, 73, 74–7 connecting in cooperation 234–5 dominant 65–6 indigenous ways of knowing 73–4 participatory practice as 19–21 participatory worldview 230–1 writing groups 138–9

Y Yeats, W.B. 143 yoga of transformation 86–7 Yorks, L. 157 YouTube 26

Z Zapatistas 120 Zulla, R. 25 294

“Among the growing number of books on community participation and community-engaged research, this book stands out for its accessibility to community members and practitioners alike, and its in-depth coverage of the role of dialogue and critical reflection, that are so central to this enterprise. I love this book, and recommend it to anyone who wishes to work ‘with … rather than on’ communities toward truly transformative change.” Meredith Minkler, University of California, Berkeley “An insightful guide to this non-traditional form of research rigour that values the co-creation of knowledge and transformative action.” Lisa Gibbs, University of Melbourne “Community-based action should be about transformative change, as the book’s subtitle suggests, and this deeply thoughtful work shows why – and how it can be achieved.” Gary Craig, Past President, International Association for Community Development In this second edition of a bestselling book, the authors’ unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect advances made in the past decade, the impact of neoliberalism and austerity, and the challenges of climate change and the pandemic. Bridging the divide between community development ideas and practice, over half of this innovative book comprises new content with updated features including: • reflective questions • key points highlighted throughout each chapter • a glossary of terms The authors argue that transformative practice begins with everyday stories about people’s lives and that practical theory generated from these narratives is the best way to inform both policy and practice. This long-awaited new edition will be of interest to academics and community-based practitioners working in a range of settings, including health and education. Margaret Ledwith is Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice at the University of Cumbria. Jane Springett is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Healthy Communities, School of Public Health, University of Alberta.

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