Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces 3031458052, 9783031458057

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Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces

Edited by Melanie Walker · Alejandra Boni Diana Velasco

Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces

Melanie Walker  •  Alejandra Boni Diana Velasco Editors

Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces

Editors Melanie Walker University of the Free State Bloemfontein, South Africa Diana Velasco INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia) Valéncia, Spain

Alejandra Boni INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia) Valencia, Valéncia, Spain University of the Free State Bloemfontein, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-031-45805-7    ISBN 978-3-031-45806-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Maram_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgements

This book began as a conversation at the IDEA conference in Medellín in July 2022 between Melanie and Diana who were both at the conference and Sandra who joined virtually as she was unable to attend in person due to Covid. Melanie had been working with the notion of repair and reparative futures and was keen on a book which explored this, together with learning. From this conversation emerged our draft proposal and potential chapter contributors whose work could speak to repair, futures and transformative learning. Further work was done in person at Valencia in May 2023 and again in Bloemfontein in July 2023 when all three of us were able to meet up again. This is thus truly a book which spans many places both in its conceptualisation and development and the range of spaces from which the contributors come. The enthusiastic response to our proposal from Alice Green at Palgrave and the anonymous reviewers gave us the go-ahead for this very enjoyable project which we hope speaks to not only the elusiveness of justice in our world, but also to how we can act constructively to make better futures, with hope, dignity, and equality for all. Melanie wishes to acknowledge funding she received against her research chair from the National Research Foundation in South Africa (grant number 86540). We were able to draw on this for assistance with copy and language editing, for which we thank Elmarie Viljoen-Massyn for her usual meticulous work. In addition, Melanie is, as always, grateful to the University of the Free State (UFS) and to Lochner Marais and the Centre for Development Support for the space and opportunity for the human development and higher education early career research group to v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

flourish. It is undoubtedly so much better now that we can meet regularly in person, as well as organise hybrid and online events. To her ‘family’ in the Human Development and Capability Association, to her UFS students and postdoctoral researchers past and present, she is grateful for the ideas, the warmth, and the challenges over many years. To Ian, again, for his unwavering support and, of course, Brodie who is now on his second book with Melanie and is unrivalled in his enthusiasm and joy for life. Alejandra wants to acknowledge the different conversations and exchange of ideas both in the human development and capability community and in the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) team. This book represents an attempt to establish a dialogue between all that she has learned while joining both communities and doing participatory engagements in different parts of the world trying to promote a fairer and better world. Also, she would like to thank both of her co-editors with whom she has shared this dialogue for many years. And, without doubt, deeper gratitude goes to Begoña and Isis for being her family unit and allowing her to imagine a great future together. Diana extends her heartfelt gratitude to Melanie and Alejandra for their kind invitation to be part of this vibrant project. Their wealth of expertise, sharp insights, and profound understanding gained from years of fostering transformative learning spaces and envisioning reparative futures have been truly inspiring and immensely valuable to her academic and personal growth. She would also like to express her deepest appreciation to the TIPC and Deep Transitions Team for providing her the opportunity to expand her capabilities and flourish in this significant stage of her professional career. Their commitment to critical thinking, reflexive practice, and the pursuit of epistemic justice through transdisciplinary approaches has been instrumental in guiding her contributions to this book. Lastly, Diana is incredibly grateful to her family for their unwavering encouragement and support throughout the countless hours of work invested in this endeavour.

Contents

1 Reparative  Futures Through Transformative Learning Spaces: An Intersectional Approach for Decolonised and Sustainable Human Development  1 Melanie Walker, Alejandra Boni, and Diana Velasco 2 Post-Truth,  Difficult Knowledge, and Reparative Futures: Nurturing Affective Solidarity for Transformative Learning Spaces 25 Michalinos Zembylas 3 Youth  Voices on Social Justice: Doing Repair Work in a South African Higher Education Space 45 Melanie Walker 4 Epistemic  Resilience: Articulating Struggles and Dreams from the Co-production of Knowledge from Below Between Universities and Community Researchers 69 Monique Leivas Vargas and Álvaro Fernández-Baldor

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5 Towards  an Ubuntu and Capabilities-Based Conceptualisation of Sustainable Educational Futures in the South African University: Perspectives from Student Activists 89 C. Martinez-Vargas, M. Mathebula, F. Mkwananzi, B. Kibona, T. Malatji, T. Mahlatsi, P. Mmula, N. Khoza, S. Nkosi, B. Ndimba, B. Oamen, A. Buthelezi, M. Maubane, Y. Ngwabeni, and S. Dlamini 6 Fostering  a Reparative International Development Cooperation System: Transformative Learning in a Master’s Degree in Development Cooperation111 Carlos Delgado-Caro, Carola Calabuig-Tormo, and Marta Maicas-Pérez 7 The  Latin-American Hub of Transformative Innovation: A Collaborative Space Promoting Collective Learning Towards More Just and Sustainable Futures137 Paloma Bernal-Hernández and Martha Liliana Marín 8 Imaging  and Realising Futures in Catalonia: Shared Agendas for Just Sustainability Transitions163 Diana Velasco, Míriam Acebillo-Baqué, Alejandra Boni, and Tatiana Fernández 9 Peacebuilding  as Democratic Political Education: A Project from Archive to Repertoire189 Stephen L. Esquith and Weloré Tamboura 10 Reparative  Threads that Open Up Futures: The Experience of Sexual and Gender Diversity in Honduras217 Fernando Altamira, Esther Canarias, Ricardo Fernández, and Nelsy Elizabeth Sandoval

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11 Philosophical  Inquiry and the Childness of Communities: Connective Capabilities for Flourishing Education239 Marina Santi and Elisabetta Ghedin 12 Transformative  Learning Spaces and Capabilities for Reimagined and Reparative Futures in Multiple Systems263 Alejandra Boni, Melanie Walker, and Diana Velasco Index277

Notes on Contributors

Míriam Acebillo-Baqué  is a postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Government and Public Policy, Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. Fernando Altamira  facilitates participatory processes of good organisational living at INCYDE (Iniciativas de Cooperación y Desarrollo), in Spain. He is also a lecturer, advisor, and researcher on sexual and gender diversity in the development cooperation sector, from a feminist and intersectional perspective. Paloma  Bernal-Hernández  is a research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) University of Sussex, UK, for the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC), UK, in charge of policy engagement and knowledge transfer. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy Studies from SPRU. Alejandra  Boni is a full professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and deputy director of INGENIO Research Institute (CSIC-UPV). She is also extraordinary professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and the editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. A.  Buthelezi  is an LLB student at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

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Carola Calabuig-Tormo  is a professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and academic director for the master’s degree in development cooperation. She holds a doctorate in industrial engineering from the UPV. Her research interests include sustainability, higher education, education for global citizenship, social innovation, and transformative cooperation. Esther Canarias  holds a degree in law and a master’s degree in international cooperation. She works on processes of change and of organisational good living in INCYDE, Spain, from feminist, systemic, and non-violent communication perspectives. Carlos  Delgado-Caro  is a PhD student in Local Development and International Cooperation at the INGENIO institute (CSIC-UPV), Spain. His research focuses on transformative learning processes, informal settings, higher education, social education, and energy transitions. S.  Dlamini  is an undergraduate student in political governance and transformation at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Stephen  L.  Esquith  is Professor of Political Theory and Ethics in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities and the Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University. Tatiana  Fernández  is head of economic strategy at the Secretariat of Economic Affairs and European Funds of the Catalan government. She has more than 20 years of experience in regional public administration and more than 10 years of experience in smart specialisation strategies. Álvaro  Fernández-Baldor  is an associate professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València and a researcher at the INGENIO institute. His research focuses on the social impact of technology. Elisabetta Ghedin  holds a PhD in Educational Sciences and is Associate Professor of Didactics and Inclusive Education at University of Padova, Italy. Her research includes training on co-teaching practice, accessibility, and promotion of well-­being in learning environments. N.  Khoza is an LLB student at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

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B. Kibona  is programme manager for the Training, Grants and Fellowship Programme at CODESRIA.  She holds a PhD in Development Studies (Higher Education and Human Development) from the University of the Free State, South Africa, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at UFS. Monique Leivas Vargas  is a sociologist with a PhD in Local Development and International Cooperation and a researcher at the INGENIO institute (CSIC-­Universitat Politècnica de València). T. Mahlatsi  holds an LLB from the University of the Free State, South Africa, and is enrolled for a master’s of laws specialising in mercantile law (labour). Marta Maicas-Pérez  is a postdoctoral researcher at the INGENIO institute, Spain, with a PhD in Local Development and International Cooperation. T. Malatji  is an anarchist organiser in Bloemfontein, South Africa, managing an arts community centre. Martha Liliana Marín  holds an MSc in Sustainable Development from the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK, and is an expert in innovation for social and environmental transformation. Since 2020, she has worked designing practical methodologies for transformative initiatives developed within the Latin American and Caribbean Hub of Transformative Innovation. C. Martinez-Vargas  is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work is focused on the politics of knowledge and knowledge inequalities embedded in higher education practices and ontologies, especially focusing on participatory research and the capability approach. Until recently she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of the Free State and is now at Lancaster University, UK. M. Mathebula  is an associate professor in the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Her research interests lie in the relationship between processes of higher education, development, and human flourishing and in storytelling methods for inclusive knowledge making in Global South contexts. M.  Maubane  is an LLB student at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

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F.  Mkwananzi  is a senior researcher in the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She has a particular interest in participatory arts-based and storytelling methods in her research with marginalised groups in southern Africa. P. Mmula  is a final-year LLB student at the University of the Free State, South Africa. B.  Ndimba  is a bachelor’s student in arts, specialising in history and business management, at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Y.  Ngwabeni  is a politics student at the University of the Free State, South Africa. S.  Nkosi  is a governance and political transformation student at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is the chairperson of the Pan-African Students Association. B.  Oamen is an LLB student at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Ricardo Fernández  is a graduate in political science and sociology. He holds a diploma in public health and postgraduate degrees in development cooperation and community health. Since 2014 he has been supporting sexual and gender diversity collectives in Honduras. Nelsy  Elizabeth  Sandoval  is a sociology graduate, a member of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Working Group on Borders, Regionalisation and Globalisation, and a feminist activist for the rights of women and LGTBIQ+ people in Honduras. Marina Santi  holds a PhD in Educational Sciences and is Full Professor of Didactics and Inclusive Education at University of Padova, Italy. Her research deals with teaching in dialogical contexts, philosophy for children, inclusive education, and improvisation. Weloré  Tamboura  holds a PhD in Information and Communication Sciences from the Université Grenoble Alpes, France (2016). Since October 2018 she has been a lecturer at Institute for Technology at the University of Letters and Human Sciences of Bamako (ULSHB), Mali. Diana Velasco  is experimentation lead at the Deep Transitions Lab, an interdisciplinary research project that seeks to understand how the unsustainable systems our societies are built on emerged and how they can be

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remade. She is also research fellow at the INGENIO Research institute (CSIC-UPV), Spain, and holds a PhD in Innovation Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Melanie  Walker  holds the South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development at the University of the Free State, South Africa. She is president of the Human Development and Capability Association. Michalinos Zembylas  is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus and an honorary professor at the Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, in the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 11.1

Fig. 12.1

Conceptual framing. (Source: Authors) 3 Reparative knowledge-making. (Source: Author) 59 Reparative learning—intersecting episteme (knowledge produced) and process (knowledge-making). (Source: Author) 65 Ubuntu-based institutional capabilities for sustainable higher education (HE) futures. (Source: Authors) 104 Capability approach. (Source: Authors, based on Robeyns, 2005)119 Qualitative methodology. (Source: Authors) 123 Learning outcomes. (Source: Authors) 123 Timeline of HUBLAyCTIP’s engagement activities. (Source: Authors)147 GToC of the Anaa Witsukj initiative. (Source: IBERO team (Available at: https://urosario.edu.co/hub-­innovacion-­ transformativa/experimentos-­miembros)) 151 SToC of Anaa Witsukj initiative. (Source: IBERO team (Available at: https://urosario.edu.co/hub-­innovacion-­ transformativa/experimentos-­miembros)) 154 Methodology to develop Shared Agendas. (Authors’ elaboration)169 The threads that weave the güipil. (Source: Own elaboration) 223 Actors involved. (Source: Own elaboration) 227 Connective capabilities and education for enhancing community flourishing. (Source: Adapted from Biggeri and Santi (2012: 381), Fig. 2: Evolving capabilities and education for enhancing children’s flourishing) 251 Interrelating themes. (Source: Authors) 273 xvii

List of Photos

Photo 9.1 Photo 9.2

Original fabric art for Ben Sigili/Faire la Paix/Building Peace by Chris Worland. (Source: Photo taken by Chris Worland) Image of Salif from Camp de Kati after his father has returned to their home safely in Kati at the time of the Aguelhoc battle in Mali, 2012, based upon original fabric art by Chris Worland. (Source: Photo taken by Chris Worland)

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Participants (pseudonyms, as requested) Process plan Story titles Coding of interviewed community researchers (CRs) Coding of interviewed academic researchers (ARs) Outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions of the Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran SA Outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions of the Bages SA

51 53 55 76 77 175 178

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CHAPTER 1

Reparative Futures Through Transformative Learning Spaces: An Intersectional Approach for Decolonised and Sustainable Human Development Melanie Walker, Alejandra Boni, and Diana Velasco

Our book draws on an international cohort of authors, working on diverse projects in different education spaces and contexts, towards sustainable, decolonising human development for more just futures. The book is shaped by innovatively integrating sustainable human development with reparative futures (Sriprakash et al., 2020) and with transformative learning spaces as niche sites of change. We further pay attention to decolonisation, given claims that development and sustainable development do not consider M. Walker (*) University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] A. Boni INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia), Valéncia, Spain University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_1

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histories of colonialism or racism, and should be decolonised. In particular, we focus on transformative learning which takes us forward beyond critiques of what is wrong and unjust in education to dealing with the ‘so what can be done?’ question. We include attention to participatory processes, and we look at both formal and informal learning spaces and networks. In different ways the chapters take up the challenge and work through actions to imagine, to hope, and to bring into being a world which can be otherwise. Hope is important in framing our efforts in that it can encourage ‘the development of praxis that overcomes any despair’ (Zembylas, 2007: ix). It means living and acting out and anticipating in education spaces, however imperfectly, Bloch’s (1995) ‘not-yet-become,’ by imagining future possibilities, yet facing up to the reality in which we live. We tackle three intersecting ideas that conceptually inform the book and which we elaborate in the chapter: repair and futures (and, allied to repair, dignity and recognition capabilities), transformative decolonised learning, and the formation of combined capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000). These ideas, working together, potentially advance sustainable human development, which advocates, ‘expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on creating fair opportunities and choices for all people’ (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2015). Human development places concerns for human dignity centre stage, but also the environment. Thus, the 2020 Human Development Report (UNDP, 2020) argued for ‘a just transformation that expands human freedoms while easing planetary pressures.’ The human development challenge is then to ‘redress both social and planetary imbalances,’ to promote human flourishing within the flourishing of all ecosystems. Agency is foregrounded—choosing differently to address current social and planetary imbalances—as are our values regarding what it means to live a good life, taking account of people and planet. Education in many different spaces can play a meaningful role in fostering a discourse of critique and possibility; forming values of solidarity, equality, and sustainability; and developing knowledges that support social change and environmental stewardship. On the other hand, education can have reproductive effects, sustaining inequalities and privileges for some D. Velasco INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de Valéncia), Valéncia, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

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Fig. 1.1  Conceptual framing. (Source: Authors)

Repair and futures

Combined capabilities

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Transformative dialogic decolonised learning

Sustainable human development

so that we need to better understand people’s experiences in and of education, whether formal or informal, and which practices and processes support or get in the way of transformative effects. To this end we find it helpful to clarify what we understand by social justice, namely creating a ‘more equitable, respectful and just society for everyone’ (Zajda et  al., 2006: 13), including from one generation to the next moving into the future. Transformation in education and learning that aims for social justice would then be concerned with equity, fairness, dignity, addressing historical injustices, and increasing access and participation in education and advancing participatory forms of democracy. Keeping this in mind, we now elaborate a tri-dimensional, intersectional framework, which is incomplete (i.e., not perfectly just, see Sen, 2009) but which can be applied practically for more just practices in education spaces. Figure 1.1 illustrates the main elements of our approach.

Repair and Future Pathways Our first dimension addressing past injustices in imagining and doing transformation is that of repair and ‘repair praxis’ dedicated to ‘transformative justice’ (Aslam, 2023: 4). Elizabeth Spelman (2002) conceptualises repair as a fundamentally human endeavour; we are, she says, homo reparans. The human being ‘is a repairing animal. Repair is ubiquitous. Something we engage in every day and in almost every dimension of our lives’ (2002: 1). Repair would not be necessary ‘if things never broke, never frayed, never splintered or fell to pieces’ (2002: 5). We repair broken objects, we mend clothing, we renovate buildings and houses, we seek to heal and fix bodies,

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to patch up relationships, and so on. We ‘repair, restore, rehabilitate, renovate, reconcile, redeem, heal, fix and mend’ (2002: 4). We try ‘to reweave … the social fabric’ (2002: 2). Spelman argues that repair activities all aim for some kind of continuity with the past in fixing what is broken. She suggests that our aim is always to return to something we had earlier, even though it will not be exactly the same; we try ‘to pick up some thread from the past’ (e.g., recovering indigenous knowledge and cosmologies as part of the variety of a world archive). However, like bricoleurs, says Spelman (2002: 4), we ‘collect and make use of pieces of the past but do not try to return them to an earlier function.’ Importantly, when we make judgements about what to repair, we ‘disclose … what we do and do not value about ourselves and the people and things around us’ (2002: 8). Thus, we would not seek to repair our planet unless it were valuable to us in many ways, or to repair racism harms if we did not think them a terrible scar on society. At the same time, we need to make judgements about what is reparable and what is irreparable. Thus, indigenous cultures are fluid and dynamic rather than being frozen in past time, so we would not seek to restore them to some precolonial condition, while, in some cases there is no desirable past to which we want to return (such as apartheid or colonialism), even if we may want to repair the broken relationships generated by destructive histories. Therefore, we need to be willing to say when something is beyond repair. Spelman (2002: 45) further links repair to an ethics of care which she explains as ‘the embeddedness and specificity of moral agents in relationships with others.’ We are in ‘breakable relation’ (2002: 48) to each other and with the planet, which requires thinking more generally about how we ought to live and act together. There is necessarily both fragility and robustness in our efforts at repairing past injustices so that our community or society can move hopefully into the future. Spelman (2002: 51) further argues that repair ‘is at the very heart of justice.’ We would extend the idea beyond humans to include the planet, in which we are all embedded, when we ask who and what has been harmed. We then seek to repair relationships with all living beings and their rights to dignity, concern, and respect. We need to engage in ‘reparative activities’ (2002: 65) for which Spelman suggests three forms: (1) bricolage, like Willie who works to get old SAAB cars running again rather than restoring them to what they were previously; (2) Fred, whose aim is to restore vintage motorcycles as close as possible to the original state; or (3) Louise, whose work as an art restorer involves invisible ‘mending’ so that the repair cannot be seen and the restoration is as close as possible to the original. In all cases, Spelman explains that, to undo past damage

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(colonialism, racism, and more), our repair actions have to do something about what is broken and why and how it has been broken so that repair is interventionist, seeking to change something as much as to restore it. In Spelman’s examples, there is something worthwhile and material that is the focus of the repair actions. Structures and damaged human relationships may be more complicated. While we may wish to preserve some continuities with the past, even if damaged or decayed, we will also want to erase others that do us no good. Thus, in seeking to repair the past we do not try to make it as it was, but instead to remake something more equal, more just, more decent. Repair work may seem mundane, it may be slow, it may lack drama, and yet it requires us to think about where and how and whom we have failed, to recognise our own imperfections and that of our society, to take seriously the task of repair and mobilising our capacity for mending as ‘repairing animals’ (2002: 139). Aslam (2023) offers a political interpretation of repair, which takes account of power and domination, as well as relationality, much more explicitly than Spelman, drawing particularly on recent abolitionist praxis in the US. There are overlaps with Spelman’s concern with the everyday in his attention to lived experiences, but he adds the significance of political actions. He argues that we need to ‘make ready’ for new forms of political life (whatever these may be in the context), ‘decentralized, ground-up and improvisational’ (Aslam, 2023: 4). Such actions may have varied timelines, short term or lengthier, where structures need to be dismantled, but this flexible approach ensures that reform is not rejected out of hand for failing to fix structures in the here and now. The role of education spaces is apparent in contributing to making ready and to repair; it could be a space which ‘addresses the harms felt by individuals as well as creating norms and institutions that represent alternatives’ (Aslam, 2023: 16), a space for a process of learning to be and to become together and to produce transformational agency. Through education we might learn to imagine a different way in which the world could be, shaping individual and collective meaning, action, and change at the local, national, and global levels, against the structural oppressions that may limit the scope of the imagination, reducing a sense of possibility. Hence the need for both repair and imaginative educational work. Spelman (2002) similarly points out that a lot of repair work requires our creativity, in putting back together the broken connections among people. But we can visibly mend in ways which reveal history rather than attempt invisible mending which tries to hide that history, to expose rather than bury the evidence. Moreover, Spelman sets limits to the creativity of repair—it is

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not about creating original objects or about maintenance, but involves what we have endured and yet finding a way to continue our lives’ existence in the aftermath of historical damage. While not drawing on Spelman (2002), nonetheless, the concept of ‘reparative futures’ in education generated by Sriprakash et al. (2020) is helpful and offers a normative account focused on education. Sriprakash and her colleagues make the case for learning with the past and from experiences of material, affective, and social oppressions as a methodology to construct reparative futures which are humanising, inclusive, sustainable, and more just, and where past injustices are no longer replicated but repaired or mended. They propose that reparative futures signal a commitment to identify and recognise the injustices visited on, and experienced by, individuals and communities in the past. The concept understands that these past injustices, even when they appear to be distant in time or over, will continue to endure in people’s lives in material and affective ways unless, and until, they are consciously and carefully addressed. Such injustices might include racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and environmental injustices, among others, and the continuing importance of attention to history in our reparative efforts and actions. We are reminded of Fanon (1961: 210) who wrote of the ‘perverted logic’ of the colonisers who turn ‘to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.’ Reparative futures, say Sriprakash et al. (2020), have implications for learning as a generative basis for knowledge and shaping learning spaces so that these are critical and reflective, changing understandings and worldviews. Participatory learning processes would value the lives of ordinary people in ways that celebrate their knowledge, agency, resilience, and hopes in building different futures. Collective learning, historical thinking, and ethical listening and dialogue would all feature aimed at transforming the world, instead of adapting to an unethical past/present/ future and mobilising the transformative power of ‘being’ through education and solidarity. Collectively imagined futures would ground emergent transformations and learning and reparative agency. Reparative futures and such learning are then contributions to sustainable human development and well-being. We further think it important to connect repair and learning processes to human dignity. Our concern with human dignity says something ‘about the worth, stature or value of a human being’ (Sulmasy, 2013: 938). Sulmasy (2013: 938) conceptualises ‘inflorescent dignity,’ that is, ‘the worth or value of a process that is conducive to human excellence’; ‘the

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value that comes from flowering or flourishing.’ People who are flourishing as human beings are ‘living lives that are consistent with and expressive of the intrinsic dignity of the human’ (2013: 938). Nussbaum (2000: 79) similarly notes the importance of being ‘a dignified free being who shapes his or her life in cooperation and reciprocity with others, rather than being passively shaped or pushed around.’ Thus, educational processes should honour the dignity of participants and enable them to flourish. We can link a lack of dignity in the past (and hence of the need of repair work and transformative forms of learning) to demands in the present and to the type of society we want in the future. In turn, this requires practices of recognition where people are valued, respected, and acknowledged socially and epistemically as having equal worth. Because our identity is shaped relationally, feelings of self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem are formed (or reduced) if we are positively recognised for who we are. Charles Taylor (1994: 26) thus sees recognition as ‘a vital human need’ such that misrecognition ‘can inflict a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred.’ Similarly, Miranda Fricker (2007) notes that epistemic exclusions in education spaces cut deep, reducing dignity and epistemic agency, for example, under conditions of colonialism and racism and their persistence into current times wherein people’s epistemic contributions are discounted. As Nussbaum (2000: 74) notes, without supportive social uptake conditions (including material conditions such as income), dignity ‘is like a promissory note whose claims have not been met.’ The implications of dignity and recognition in educational spaces and for learning are clear. External conditions will influence learning spaces and may constrain or enable what is possible. On the other hand, education processes are not over-determined and can operate as spaces of resistance to dominant assumptions about who we are and can become. There is some autonomy to act and work differently so that the people we work with pedagogically in classrooms or on projects and networks are seen ‘as whole human beings with complex lives and experiences’ (hooks, 1994: 15). It is possible for transformative learning to foster dignity, recognition, and repair, having a firm foothold in contextual and situated histories. If this is constrained or simply not possible, then we need to think about how to make this more possible in a process aligned to repair that Ira Shor (in Shor & Freire, 1987: 187) describes as ‘denouncing the present and announcing the future.’

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What Form of Learning Might Enable Repair, Dignity, and Recognition? What might such learning look like in which dignity, recognition, and repair are taken up? We find the concept of ‘social learning’ helpful (see Reed et  al., 2010). While acknowledging that all learning is social and relational, something called ‘social learning’ must: (1) demonstrate that a change in understanding has taken place in the individuals involved; (2) demonstrate that this change goes beyond the individual and becomes situated within wider social units or communities of practice; and (3) occur through social interactions and processes between actors within a social network. (Reed et al., 2010)

Thus, social learning as understood here seeks to go beyond individual change to engage a wider community and networks. It would encompass ethical and relational solidarity and seek to transform oppressive conditions (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al., 2022). We think, however, that individual change and individual capability formation are not to be discounted under conditions where wider community engagement may not be possible. As bell hooks (1994: 12) reminds us with regard to universities, ‘[t]he classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy’ with potential for enabling transgressions, that is, ‘a movement against and beyond boundaries’ so that education becomes the ‘practice of freedom.’ Even under challenging conditions, hooks (1994: 202) argues that what she calls ‘engaged pedagogy,’ in which critical thinking is learned, encompasses a pedagogical praxis of ‘radical openness,’ of reflection and action. Similarly, Freire (1970: 64) conceptualises human beings as unfinished and incomplete, hence ‘in the process of becoming,’ necessitating ‘that education be an ongoing activity’ both of acquiring knowledge and of producing knowledge. At issue is that we can occupy pedagogical and learning spaces where conversations can start and hopefully develop against a world which is unjust and unequal without seeking completeness or complete justice. Individual shifts are anyway foundational to social learning (Reed et al., 2010). Even so, Reed et al. (2010: 4) explain that, if changed understanding in individuals ‘leads to a change in understanding at a sufficiently broad scale through social interaction, then we would consider this to be social learning.’ For example, this might happen among the participants in

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a participatory project who, together, come to understand through their collective reflection a social challenge differently, such as gender-based violence. In turn, however, the small group’s learning must diffuse to others in their communities through social interactions and other media. Social learning aligns with Mezirow’s (2012) transformative learning, which is aimed at developing individual critical awareness and understanding of the world based on reflexive interpretation of people’s lived experiences in order to guide future action. Participants are encouraged to critically evaluate their own deeply held assumptions so that learning, and hence meaning-making, in the world involves ‘a shift in the tectonic plates of one’s assumptive clusters’ (Brookfield, 2000: 139). Mezirow explains: Transformation theory’s focus is on how we learn to negotiate and act on our own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings rather than those we have uncritically assimilated from others – to gain greater control over our lives as socially responsible, clear-thinking decision makers. As such, it has particular relevance for learning in contemporary societies that share democratic values. (Mezirow, 2012: 76)

Transformative learning enables learners’ awareness of their own perspectives and assumptions of how they learn, and therefore the values, beliefs, and suppositions that underpin that learning. These include socioeconomic structures, ideologies, canons, and unexamined premises which have been uncritically assimilated, to which people conform, and which restrict their agency in solving problems (Mezirow, 2012). The emphasis is on intersubjective learning, although, for Mezirow, the choice of action lies with the individual. Reflection is crucial, understood as the process of critically evaluating both the content and process of our own premises, taking into account and assessing the perspectives of others, and revising the frames of reference by which we come to understand our worlds. In their uptake of social learning theory, Lotz-Sisitka et  al. (2015) adopt what they describe as a ‘transformative, transgressive’ approach to pedagogy. The suitability and relevance of what they call ‘T-learning’ lies in: the assumption that the normative direction towards, in general terms, a more caring, considerate, mindful, social and empathic world, requires for most people, cultures, organizations, companies, and societies, a deeper shift in reference points, worldviews and underlying values, metaphors and,

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indeed, ways of being in the world. Such a shift needs to occur both at the deeply intertwined levels of the individual (agency) and of the larger world (structure). (Macintyre et al., 2020: 3–4)

Transgressive learning is by implication transformative, shifting worldviews, ideologies, and values, and empowering agency actions. While learning shapes individual attitudes and behaviour, the intention here is also that individual action should be able to scale up to societal level. Thus, the challenge for transformative learning is to find ways ‘to extend learning into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways’ (Kulundu-Bolus et  al., 2020: 113, emphasis in original). If we want to effectively confront the challenges of inequality and injustice and bring about change, this requires us to be ‘doing better things differently … rather than doing what we do better’ (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015: 73). Such an approach requires that we confront neoliberalism, which pitches individuals in competition against others and creates conditions which reduce connectedness and care, while advancing forms of commodification, patriarchy, racism, and social injustices. All of these need to be transgressed for transformations to emerge. For Lotz-Sisitka et al. (2020) transformative, transgressive learning includes the pursuit of epistemic justice, solidarity building, meaning-making, critique, disruption, creating empathy, and reclaiming knowledge(s) and cultures lost (among other features of such learning). Such claims sit well with the Common Worlds Research Collective (2020) paper on learning to become with the world, where learning towards the future is understood as requiring a shift from learning about the world in order to act on it, to learning to become with the world where human and planetary sustainability are deeply intertwined. Such learning requires recognising and valuing the multiplicity of ways of knowing and being and diverse ontologies, and the world beyond the human as we co-construct worlds that are ‘livable for all’ (Common Worlds Research Collective, 2020: 6). Transformative and transgressive pedagogies and learning are then committed to education cultures which support the empowerment of the marginalised, including through perspective transformation of those with privilege, whether historical, economic, cultural, or social. Further critical pedagogies of the sort envisaged by Lotz-Sisitka et al. (2015) and Freire (1970) contest the taken-for-granted relationship between education and society, challenging claims that education provides equal opportunities

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and access for all. For Freire (1970), learning and pedagogy should be characterised by dialogue and empowerment to form a critical social consciousness. This is relational and solidary because dialogue requires communication in order to critique power relations and produce conscientisation, enabling people ‘to understand how their own experience of oppression, e.g. race, class, gender, and so on, is linked to a total structure and to redefine their aspirations accordingly’ (Allman, 2009: 423). Ira Shor explains this dialogic pedagogy as a method ‘for freedom and against domination’ (Shor & Freire, 1987: 97). It requires a transformed relation to knowledge and which and whose knowledges. It is, potentially, a ‘critical, revolutionary practice’ (Allman, 2009: 424). Freire (1970: 47) explains that transformation involves being liberated from oppressive structures, transforming structures as people become ‘beings for themselves.’ Crucially, the critical consciousness which is developed through participation and voice should lead to actions in the world ‘by people as transformers of that world’ (1970: 72) against domination and towards future possibility. Ideas of critical consciousness, power, freedom, and resistance to oppression are central to Freire’s complex critical pedagogy and enrich our understanding of transformative learning at the individual and social levels. Crucially, because dialogue is a regenerative, continuous, and living process in which we also shift and change, it is necessarily historical and reparative, hence historical. It is not a method but a way of coming to know, of knowing, and of being under collective conditions. As Freire (1970: 72) explains: ‘Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.’ Moreover, as Freire made clear, if structural arrangements do not allow dialogue, then we must work to change structures (what in the capability approach would be conversion factors).

Decolonisation Because of its radical openness, its emphasis on critical reflexivity, on dialogue, and on transgressing boundaries, transformative learning should, in our view, include concerns with the politics of knowledge and, in particular, the decolonisation of knowledge and pedagogies. These are long-­ standing debates. For example, Nkrumah pointed to neocolonialism in post-independence Ghana and the continued relations of economic

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dependency on and with the former coloniser (Tikly et  al., 2020), and more recently in the light of the Washington and post-Washington consensus a new imperialism (Tikly et al., 2020). We focus specifically on epistemic (learning) relations and how critical consciousness may be malformed without what Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018) and others have called epistemic decolonisation which challenges the dominance and assumed universalism of Western knowledge. Colonialism, as Jansen and Walters (2022: 2) attest, ‘casts a long shadow over all educational institutions,’ distorting the human relationships needed for transformative and dialogic learning and epistemic decolonisation. As the late political activist, Steve Biko (1978: 49), wrote in the 1970s, ‘the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.’ These are serious injustices. We would add, over knowledge and project partnerships or networks, as well as the unevenness of what Ndlovu-­ Gatsheni (2018) describes as the epistemic line and on which side knowledge producers fall—Global South or Global North (also see Walker & Martinez-Vargas, 2022). As Dados and Connell (2012: 13) remind us, the idea of the Global South ‘references an entire history of colonialism, neocolonialism and differential economic and social change.’ Stein and Andreotti (2016: 226) add that the Global North is understood to be ‘at the top of global hierarchy of humanity with the rest of the world trailing behind.’ However, as we engage in dialogue and repair together, if we are aiming for transformative and transgressive learning, each person should have a legitimate right to be included epistemically—to make meaning and be able to contribute to the common pool of knowledge. Epistemic decolonisation understands that knowledge is socially constructed, and asks why knowledge is constructed the way it is, whose knowledge counts and why, and whose knowledge is marginalised such that some knowledge has greater power and legitimacy. Jansen and Walters (2022: 4) remind us that knowledge is ‘actively produced through social processes that involve human actors. Those who produce knowledge are those with the social power to lend legitimacy to knowledge,’ so that ‘even a cursory review of history will reveal that some people’s knowledge matters more than others.’ Uneven economic transactions historically came to be mirrored in uneven intellectual transactions, they argue. The problem is not the Western epistemic system, which is as valid as other epistemic traditions, but its historical roots and imposition due to the claim that it offers a universal way of understanding reality and generating knowledge (Soldatenko,

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2015). In postcolonial contexts, colonial influences are still felt ‘in the unequal distribution of ideas, resources and expertise’ (Jansen & Walters, 2022: 5), and in the marginalisation of indigenous knowledge. Any transformative learning process needs to be aware of and take account of what such lingering colonial influences may be, whom they affect, and what can be done pedagogically. As we have made clear, agency actions can challenge and even transform structures and relationships in the direction of more inclusive knowledge relations and partnerships.

Combined Capabilities Our final dimension is that of combined capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000). We understand capabilities (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000) as a generative framework for thinking about repair (repairing, dignifying, recognitional capabilities) and transformative learning (learning to be critical, learning to transgress boundaries). We understand capabilities as foundational to sustainable human development and the well-being of human and non-­ human animals (see Holland, 2009), and, indeed, for moving us into the future. Capabilities are the substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life that a person values as a good life. ‘Substantive’ means that the opportunities offered to become or do something are real rather than formal or written in policy—for example, the opportunity and freedom to engage in social learning. When freedoms or opportunities are substantive, genuine choices can be made among more than one valuable option. Capabilities which are exercised or achieved are called functionings, that is, what people actually manage to do (doings) or to be (beings). Achieving a functioning (e.g., being part of a learning network) requires both internal capability (e.g., ability, aspirations, and determination) and supportive conditions. Internal capability and social uptake conditions are combined capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000). As Sen (1999) emphasises, social, environmental, and historical ‘conversion factors’ shape what it is possible for us to achieve. He is concerned that we need to create appropriate social arrangements to develop people’s freedoms to choose and to identify opportunities and obstacles in need of removal, as well as enablers. Education in this reading ought to make available resources and put in place environmental, social, and institutional conditions that enable learners to form their critical consciousness and other capabilities. Thus, Claassen (2018: 54) comments that only combined capabilities ‘are full capabilities, providing us with effective freedom, with the real

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opportunities to do or be something’ and hence crucial for just learning arrangements. The capability approach incorporates, but goes beyond, a human capital approach to learning and learning achievements. It provides ‘the opportunity to move from an income-based perspective [of development] to account for the constitutive plurality of human life’ (Chiappero-­ Martinetti, 2000: 207). It offers an open normative framework for the design of education policies and learning proposals for social change in society (Robeyns, 2005). Ultimately, it provides a far-reaching and comprehensive framework that places individuals, their freedom, and their well-being at the centre of analysis; allows for the multiplicity of factors influencing human development; and is flexible enough to be applied across contexts, topics, and disciplines. Transformative learning in this approach would be intrinsic to sustainable human development and to human flourishing. For sustainable human development and necessary processes of repair and learning, people would need wide and deep capability sets developed through transformative learning processes. Learning thus has a key role to play in enlarging the space of the possible through praxis, which we understand as a synthesis of theory and practice in which each informs the other, nourishing rather than reducing people’s capabilities to be and to do and their agency for change. Transformative learning spaces potentially addresses past/continuing oppressions: both epistemic (i.e., who is acknowledged as a credible and legitimate knower and teller contributing to the common pool of knowledge resources) and dialogic conditions of reparation (i.e., for lives of freedoms and well-being). As Sriprakash et al. (2020) explain, an education for reparative futures would be alive to the structures of power that animate social life, and which have produced deeply uneven opportunities for individuals and communities, yet not neglecting the emergent possibilities of agency. Transformative learning involves critical reflection and critical review which can lead to a transformation of our understandings of the past, present, and future possibilities. Our world view is changed the more we learn, and that helps us grasp new concepts and ideas and form new aspirations individually, collectively, and relationally, and over time, hence historical. But transformative learning is also individual and social; it is about knowledge and skills and the judgement needed to bring these together (learning how to learn); it may be intrinsic or instrumental and often both;

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transformative learning fosters personal growth, solidarity, and social responsibility, enriching individuals and societies. The lives of ordinary people are celebrated, their knowledge, agency, resilience, and hopes in building different futures. In this way the capabilities and functionings in Sen’s (1999) approach that people value can be expanded and expressed and sustainable human development advanced. Reparative futures, transformative and decolonised learning, and combined capabilities could be the bedrock of a pedagogy that is well described by Tikly et al. (2020) in relation to their research and development programme, ‘Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures.’ They propose a pedagogy that is: Relational (allowing for caring for and connecting with people, places, other species, etc.), critical (allowing for critique and questioning), actional (allowing for agency and creating change), ethical (opening up spaces for ethical considerations and moral dilemmas and political (confrontational, transgressive and disruptive of routines, systems and structures when deemed appropriate). (Tikly et al., 2020: 5)

To this, we would add a pedagogy that is aspirational and anticipatory in imagining futures and more just practices, yet always incomplete and open. Across the book we present different pathways to repair, restore, and reconcile. They are not totally comprehensive but, as Sen (2009) argues, real-world justice is imperfect. We aim practically for this, given the massive challenges societies face with regard to addressing both social equalities and environmental degradation, for example, and the ongoing struggle against neoliberal ideology and the individualisation of social problems. It is hard to see how justice can be achieved if we must wait on all the requisite repairs to be achieved. If we follow Sen’s lead this does not prevent us from working towards repairing what is broken or damaged in our societies, or to expect only the smooth running of democracies. Nor do we necessarily seek continuities with an unjust past; rather, we want to repair injustices and, in doing so, make something that is different and new.

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Introducing the Chapters Which Follow The chapters which follow now present diverse examples of how transformative learning spaces and repair can be conceptualised and addressed using participatory methods and with different players. There are examples in the higher education domain in South Africa and Spain, where university students from different backgrounds and histories express their voices to overcome past injustices and oppression and figuring out a different higher education and development cooperation (Chaps. 3, 5, and 6). In Melanie Walker’s Chap. 3, she outlines the meaning of reparative futures, before explaining relevant capabilitarian ideas. The conceptual frames are taken up in relation to the digital stories-as-practice produced by youth participants in a participatory research project in the space of higher education in South Africa and the possibility of inclusive decolonising education. The argument is made not only for re-centring African knowledge, but also for dismantling broader historical colonial oppressions that persist into the present. In particular, Walker proposes that reparative futures require expanding and expressing human capabilities and functionings and the opportunity to live flourishing lives. In Chap. 5 Carmen Martinez-Vargas and colleagues build on student activists’ aspirations for a Pan-African decolonial and sustainable university, building on literature that makes a case for understanding the collective experience of blackness and consciousness and drawing on the capability approach. They seek ways of undoing the damage done by colonial epistemic structures and ontologies that perpetuate European memory as the basis for defining valued ways of being (and learning) in Africa. The methodological and empirical discussion is based on a year-long participatory action research project involving a team of 12 student activists/ co-researchers at a historically white university in South Africa. They discuss what the research team perceives as the central unfreedoms maintained and perpetuated by current university structures and cultures, including challenges regarding funding, management, and administration, as well as problems evident at the ethical and self level. They present the Ubuntu-Based Institutional Capabilities list which highlights the institutional capabilities that ought to be enhanced and promoted for sustainable educational futures. In Chap. 6 Carlos Delgado-Caro and his colleagues look at the structure of their own master’s programme in development cooperation to address how such programmes might produce public good values oriented

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to decolonised and inclusive development cooperation education. The master’s degree in development cooperation at Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) looks to train practitioners who can think and reflect on their practice to promote an international development cooperation system which not only recognises the injustices of the past but tries to repair them. In the chapter, they analyse how an action-learning methodology and an internship abroad period stimulate students to experience a transformative learning process. After finishing the master’s degree, students are able to change their vision of the international development cooperation system to be more oriented, as professionals, towards reparative futures. There are, as well, examples of reparative pedagogical practices that allow people to deal with conflict, post-truth, and racism (Chap. 2). In Michalinos Zembylas’s chapter he explores the idea that, to create reparative futures, we need to engage with difficult knowledge that challenges, both affectively and epistemologically, our ways of being and living in the world. The chapter takes on the case of post-truth claims about race and racism as forms of difficult knowledge in educational settings, arguing that educators need to develop pedagogical resources that deal with post-truth as difficult knowledge in ways that recognise and seek to repair ongoing histories of racial violence, oppression, and domination. A pedagogical framework grounded in fostering affective solidarity might reinvent reparative relations with others (especially those who are victims of racism), thus creating new avenues of knowledge making beyond the narrow epistemic framing of post-truth claims. In Chap. 9 Stephen Esquith and Weloré Tamboura examine the challenges of living with conflict and yet trying to build peace. The arts and humanities have become integral components of the theory and practice of transitional justice, they argue. At the same time, critics of even this expanded view of transitional justice are finding it incomplete, at best, to meet the challenges facing a widening range of countries, rich and poor, who are striving to reckon with past injustices and prevent future mass violence. This chapter describes the development of an archive of peacebuilding practices at the national and local levels in the West African country of Mali. From this archive has come a repertoire of picture books, political simulations, and video animations for democratic political education. The goal of this project of peacebuilding as democratic political education is to prompt and inform local dialogues as one path to peace and democracy in Mali and elsewhere.

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Marina Santi and Elisabetta Ghedin (Chap. 11) take a different angle on transformative learning by looking at establishing philosophical dialogues with children to be able to imagine engaging futures in Italy. The Philosophy for Children curriculum (P4C) is presented as a pedagogical and didactic proposal capable of re-conceptualising the constructs of problem-solving and collaboration. In P4C, community of inquiry is intended not as a setting for cooperative group research, but as an authentic experience of participation in an investigation community. Such an experience can rethink citizenship education by concentrating on the value and power of connective agency and the ability to imagine a different and possible future. The pedagogical implications are significant because this means that we should be aiming to align academic education not with what society is, but with what it could or should be and towards collective good-becoming. Philosophy for Children can be considered as an opportunity to work towards the educational and political goal of creating flourishing communities, and a capability for wondering at the world. Further, the book presents cases where transformative learning spaces have generated more just narratives with communities specially affected by multiple oppressions. One is the LGTBIQ+ community in Honduras, a narco-state, where dying is easier than living. Fernando Altamira Basterretxea and colleagues (Chap. 10) argue that the dominant model of development (neoliberal, ethnocentric, and heteronormative) feeds on bodies and lives. Among the groups that are pushed into the abyss are LGTBIQ+ people. The authors, however, show how cracks can open, allowing alternative strategies that help hope and a future to emerge. These experiences do not emerge in isolation, but are woven together by three main threads. The first thread is building trust and a strong liaison between UDIMUF (Unidad de Desarrollo Integral para la mujer y la familia), from Honduras, and Medicusmundi Bizkaia and INCYDE, from the Basque country. The second thread is the training courses carried out at CURLA (Centro Universitario Regional del Litoral Atlántico in Honduras). The third thread is the research carried out in the Honduran region of Atlántida on the access to primary healthcare for LGTBIQ+ people. Together, these threads point to the importance of inclusive and collective processes of social transformation. Then, in Chap. 4, a network of Colombian activists reframes the idea of human security. Monique Leivas Vargas and Álvaro Fernández-Baldor describe the urgency of moving towards a people-centred approach to security, relying on the human development paradigm, which questions

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security approaches focused on the protection of the territorial borders of the nation-state, on police control and repression, and on weapons and war, to rather understand human security as a concern for life and human dignity. In their chapter, they explore the contributions of the Network of Community Researchers (NCR) to human security in the city of Medellín in Columbia. The NCR is an experience of co-production of knowledge from below between community researchers and academics promoted by the University of Antioquia, Colombia. Medellín is one of the most unequal cities in Latin America and is internationally known for the armed conflict surrounding drug trafficking. However, it also stands out for its extensive organisational and community networking in favour of peace and the defence of the human rights of all the people who live on the slopes of the city. From this perspective, the NCR plays a fundamental role in articulating transformative learning spaces, struggles, and dreams, and achieving a future of peace and a more just, inclusive, and sustainable city. Finally, there are two examples that speak to a new audience that is trying to build new narratives and futures on transformative innovation. Here, the issue is how participatory methodologies can be meaningful in building a more equitable and sustainable future through a different approach to policy innovation. The book presents two singular examples in Colombia (Chap. 7) and Catalonia (Chap. 8). In Chap. 7, Paloma Bernal-Hernández and Martha Liliana Marín consider the Latin American region, known as one of the most unequal regions in the world due to the unbalanced distribution of resources. Countries in this region share a history of colonialism, and therefore, injustice, racism, and exclusion of vulnerable and minority groups. A commonality among these countries is the multiple efforts of the local communities to construct collective spaces for collaboration towards the formulation of more inclusive and sustainable alternatives. However, development programmes aimed at the progress of these local minorities are formulated, developed, implemented, and evaluated by ‘experts’ regardless of the views, experiences, and demands of these communities, including Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policies that focused on growth of economic output and employment. As an alternative futures-frame, STI policy for transformative change is seen as an opportunity to open up inclusive and bottom-up creative processes focused on solving societal, economic, and environmental challenges. All layers of society and sectors must be included, especially those who have been historically excluded from development, and their perspectives, opinions, and assumptions considered in STI policy discussions and decisions.

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With this inspiration, the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium was created, and under this umbrella the Latin American and Caribbean Hub of Transformative Innovation was conceived in 2018 as a community of practice and experimentation on transformative innovation policy. This chapter analyses how the Hub supports the implementation of transformative methodologies that can be meaningful for building more equitable and sustainable futures. They focus particularly on the Mexican initiative ‘Anaa Witsukj, a commitment to transformational change’ and the learning experiences of the Mexican Universidad Iberoamericana, whose work is clearly designed towards reducing injustices against farming communities and small-scale producers in an area with a strong indigenous presence. The initiative is an important effort to transform the socioeconomic conditions of lemon producers and their families by enhancing their agency, through which they are able to change their present and shape their futures. In Chap. 8 Diana Velasco and colleagues argue that a reparative and transformative approach to integral sustainability is a good way forward for dealing with complex systemic global challenges. They have historical knowledge and practices as a critical base for imagining co-produced and reparative futures through regional Shared Agendas in Catalonia. Such Agendas enable a participatory approach to specific needs and problems (usually related to Sustainable Developmental Goals [SDGs]) in the territory encouraging experimentation to understand, learn, and create adaptive action pathways from a dynamic and holistic perspective. The chapter presents two examples of these Agendas: the BioHub CAT (part of the Agenda of Lleida, Pyrenees, and Aran) which focuses on bioeconomy, and the Bages Agenda, which looks at the health system. In both cases, there is a core group of actors articulating the Shared Agenda in their territories, the Catalan central government, and a group of researchers. Chapter 8 describes the formative evaluation approach to transformation developed. It was based on the co-construction of flexible transformative theories of change and monitoring, evaluation, and learning plans. In the last section of the paper, the authors discuss how the Shared Agendas methodology and the two particular case studies took a normative account of systems transformations—an account that, although consciously and deliberatively, calls for the inclusion of a broad spectrum of social actors that are affected and that affect the transition processes. We conclude in Chap. 12 by drawing on Freire (1970), who explains well the learning challenge and the learning possibility we have in mind

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across the chapters if we want to advance more equitable, respectful, decolonised, and just societies for everyone. Freire (1970: 73) compares education which works to integrate people into the system as it is with education as ‘the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.’ It is this latter approach to learning and its reparative possibilities that we explore in this book. In this, we align ourselves with Sen’s (2009) approach to non-ideal justice where we seek imperfectly to act in ways which will produce more rather less justice where perfection is simply not possible and should not stop us from acting towards change.

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hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Jansen, J., & Walters, C. (2022). The decolonization of knowledge. Cambridge University Press. Kulundu-Bolus, I., McGarry, D., & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (2020). Learning, living and leading into transgression  – A reflection on decolonial praxis in a neoliberal world. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 36, 111–130. https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/197539 Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E. J., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction. Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.07.018 Macintyre, T., Tassone, V., & Wals, A. (2020). Capturing transgressive learning in communities spiraling towards sustainability. Sustainability, 12(12), 4873. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12124873 Mezirow, J. (2012). Learning to think like an adult: Core concepts of transformation theory. In E. W. Taylor & P. Cranton (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research and practice (pp. 73–95). Jossey-Bass. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2018). Epistemic freedom in Africa. Routledge. Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and human development. Cambridge University Press. Reed, M. S., Evely, A. C., Cundill, G., Fazey, I., Glass, J., Laing, A., Newig, J., Parrish, B., Prell, C., Raymond, C., & Stringer, L. C. (2010). What is social learning? Ecology and Society, 15(4) http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol15/iss4/resp1/. Accessed 15 July 2022 Robeyns, I. (2005). The capability approach: A theoretical survey. Journal of Human Development, 6(1), 93–114. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Knopf. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Allen Lane. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation. Dialogues on transforming education. Bergin and Garvey. Soldatenko, G. (2015). A contribution toward the decolonization of philosophy: Asserting the coloniality of power in the study of non-western philosophical traditions. Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 7(2), 138–156. Spelman, E. (2002). Repair. Beacon Press. Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Ramos-Pinto, P. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000374045.locale=en. Accessed 1 Oct 2021. Stein, S., & Andreotti, V. (2016). Cash, competition or charity: International students and the global imaginary. Higher Education, 72(2), 225–239.

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Sulmasy, D. (2013). The varieties of human dignity: A logical and conceptual analysis. Medical Health Care and Philosophy, 16, 937–944. Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. In A.  Gutmann (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (pp. 25–73). Princeton University Press. Tikly, L., Batra, P., Duporge, V., Facer, K., Herring, E., Lotz-Sisitka, H., McGrath, S., Mitchell, R., Sprague, T., & Wals, A. (2020). Transforming education for sustainable futures. Foundations paper (2.0). TESF. https://doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.4279935 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2015). What is human development? https://hdr.undp.org/content/what-­human-­development. Accessed 7 Mar 2022. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2020). Human Development Report 2020: The next frontier: Human development and the Anthropocene. . Walker, M., & Martinez-Vargas, C. (2022). Epistemic governance and the colonial epistemic structure: Towards epistemic humility and transformed South-North relations. Critical Studies in Education, 63(5), 556–572. Zajda, J., Majhanovich, S., & Rust, V. (2006). Introduction: Education and social justice. International Review of Education, 52(1), 9–22. Zembylas, M. (2007). Five pedagogies, a thousand possibilities. Sense Publishers.

CHAPTER 2

Post-Truth, Difficult Knowledge, and Reparative Futures: Nurturing Affective Solidarity for Transformative Learning Spaces Michalinos Zembylas

Introduction The point of departure for this chapter is that, in order to create reparative futures (Sriprakash et al., 2020; Hall, 2018)—futures that recognise and seek to repair historical injustices—it is inevitable to engage with difficult knowledge (Britzman, 1998, 2000, 2013; Britzman & Pitt, 2004; Pitt & Britzman, 2003). Difficult knowledge, according to Deborah Britzman’s landmark work over the years, is knowledge that challenges, both affectively and epistemologically, our ways of being and living in the world. In particular, this chapter takes on the case of ‘post-truth’ (Mejia et al., 2018; Waisbord, 2018)—a term that has become a buzzword in recent years, reflecting the disruption of rationality and objectivity by emotion and

M. Zembylas (*) Open University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_2

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personal belief—and discusses how post-truth claims about race and racism constitute forms of difficult knowledge in educational settings. To this end, this chapter contributes to conversations regarding reparative futures by suggesting that nurturing ‘affective solidarity’ (Hemmings, 2012) constitutes a crucial component of reparative pedagogies, that is, pedagogies that create transformative learning spaces which seek to repair historical injustices. In particular, this chapter takes on post-truth as a form of difficult knowledge and argues that educators would do well to diversify their pedagogical tools of addressing post-truth claims by exploring how fostering affective solidarity can create reparative relations with others (especially those who are victims of racism). Reparative pedagogies that nurture affective solidarity have the potential to create new avenues of affective knowledge making beyond the narrow epistemic framing of post-­ truth claims. In other words, the challenge of post-truth is not going to be resolved by simply ‘correcting’ the epistemological basis of knowledge— for example, through offering more critical thinking or more media literacy. This would amount to an intellectualisation of post-truth (Nelson, 2019) and the undermining of its affective grounding (Zembylas, 2020). Rather, educators need to develop reparative pedagogies that not only handle the variable experience of pain that emerges from post-truth as difficult knowledge, but also invent affirmative ways of living with others that revitalise affective solidarity. Affective solidarity is a mode of engagement that starts from the feeling of affective dissonance that exists in the spaces between personal and public spheres (Hemmings, 2012). Affective dissonance provides the impetus for finding common ground to struggle together and change the world in ways that benefit everyone. Drawing on the conceptual frames of difficult knowledge and affective solidarity, then, this chapter examines the pedagogical implications for reparative futures. In particular, I explore what affective solidarity may offer to reparative pedagogies that could be valuable in this particular post-truth moment, and I argue that, if we are to consider new ways of confronting the challenges of post-truth in the classroom, then facts-based approaches alone will be inadequate. To make this argument, this chapter is organised as follows. First, I examine the meaning of post-truth, focusing particularly on the emotional comfort it offers to those who buy into post-truth claims. Also, I analyse how interrogating post-truth constitutes a form of difficult knowledge— both for those to whom post-truth offers comfort and for those to whom post-truth claims are manifestations of racism. Secondly, I bring these

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ideas into conversation with the literature on reparative futures, focusing specifically on the notion of reparative pedagogies. Finally, I discuss what it means to nurture affective solidarity in educational settings and how doing so constitutes a manifestation of reparative pedagogies that confronts some of the challenges of post-truth claims about race and racism.

Post-Truth as Difficult Knowledge The concept of ‘post-truth’ is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). Post-truth has received large attention in the aftermath of Brexit and the US presidential elections in 2016, becoming a buzzword that reflects the disruption of rationality, objectivity and the value of facts (Ball, 2017; d’Ancona, 2017; Davis, 2017). The term also entails a new style of communication replete with blatant and outrageous lies, half-truths and the deliberate distortion and dissemination of misinformation facilitated by the digital revolution (Waisbord, 2018). Hence, what really marks the post-truth era, according to Crilley (2018), is not an actual shift in politics from an age of reason to an age of emotion, but rather a realisation that emotions and affects do matter. If we are to understand post-truth phenomena, then, our analysis should pay attention to emotions and affects. This chapter does not define emotions and affects as psychological or individual entities ‘inside’ the body, but rather as situated in social, cultural, moral and political conditions in which they are entangled with power relations (Berlant, 2011; Cvetkovich, 2012; Massumi, 2015; Schaefer, 2019). In other words, the embodied experience of individuals cannot be viewed apart from the collective political affective conditions. Affect is not only experienced individually (registered as emotion and feeling that can be expressed in language), but is also circulated socially and politically. These ideas help us understand the affective grounding of post-­ truth, and especially how the relationship between emotion and politics has become front and centre over the last decade (Boler & Davis, 2018). For example, post-truth has been rather pronounced in the political rhetoric of Donald Trump. He had repeatedly made numerous false claims throughout his political campaign and during his presidency—about crime, refugees, immigrants, black people, Mexicans, racism, etc.—that constitute prime examples of post-truth, for instance, crime is out of control; the immigrants are taking ‘our’ jobs; refugees and asylum seekers are

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terrorists; Mexicans are rapists; and so on. Through his frequent Twittered emotional appeals, one could identify the affective force of Trump’s messages as he tried to create his own truth and forge alliances among his supporters by drawing a clear divide between those who were with him and those who were against him (Krasmann, 2019). Trump’s right-wing populism, as Peters and Protevi (2017) emphasise, is a good example of the power of emotions in opening up new affective capacities and potentialities in the bodies of his supporters and bringing them together, as his supporters feel empowered that they are finally able to live a different future. Hence, by critiquing post-truth claims as merely a problem of epistemology that needs to be fixed, post-truth criticism fails to recognise how affects and emotions matter in circulating certain ‘truths’ that reproduce social and political evils such as racism, sexism and xenophobia (Zembylas, 2020). In particular, by situating epistemology as the problem: post-truth critics have inadvertently and uncritically re-centered whiteness; that is, post-truth critics tend to presume a universal (white) subject as the victim of disinformation, when it is people of color who have the most to lose and the least to gain from this truth-telling machine. Failing to recognize the racial fidelity that makes post-truth rhetoric compelling to some audiences and not others will result in the continued misdiagnosis of the ideological problem: offering information literacy to help audiences distinguish ‘good’ fact from ‘bad’ fact, but nonetheless leaving the racial politics of those (post)factual deployments intact. (Mejia et al., 2018: 114–115)

In other words, post-truth offers emotional comfort to those who buy into its claims, while ignoring the pain that is caused to others (e.g., people of colour). Given the persistence of racist, sexist and nationalist ideologies, it is not surprising that an approach which focuses merely on epistemology is not sufficient or effective. For example, the denial of racism by Donald Trump1 as a moment of post-truth is a manifestation of ‘difficult knowledge’ for those who suffer the unrelenting and ongoing consequences of racism—a phenomenon that transcends an individual’s acceptance or rejection of evidence whether they hold racist views. The pedagogical challenge for educators is: How can post-truth claims—that 1  ‘I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,’ as Trump said in the summer of 2019 in response to a reporter’s question if he was bothered that ‘more and more people’ were calling him racist.

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enter educational settings either from ‘outside’ or from ‘inside’—be dealt with strategically and productively? The notion of difficult knowledge signifies both representations of social trauma in curriculum and the learner’s encounters with them in pedagogy (Britzman, 1998, 2000, 2013; Britzman & Pitt, 2004; Pitt & Britzman, 2003). As Britzman (1998) explained when she first proposed the concept, what is ‘difficult’ about knowledge is that learning puts the self in question because learning becomes entangled in the vicissitudes of suffering and trauma. Learning, then, involves trauma, as much as education in general becomes the terrain of emotions that form and are formed by difficult knowledge (Pitt & Britzman, 2003). Britzman (2000) is particularly concerned with the question of how to make trauma pedagogical; as she points out, difficult knowledge ‘requires educators to think carefully about their own theories of learning and how the stuff of such difficult knowledge becomes pedagogical’ (1998: 117). Britzman’s (2000) concerns are how pedagogical encounters with trauma can offer hope and reparation instead of despair and the memorialisation of loss. Garrett (2017: 19) emphasises that ‘difficult knowledge is a walk toward the ways in which the tumult [of society] can make one feel diminished, worried, guilty, sad.’ That is, difficult knowledge is inextricably linked with the affective and emotional capacity of one’s place in society and the world. In making the link with difficult knowledge emerging from addressing issues of race and racism, Jarvie and Burke point out that: the difficult knowledge of something like racism is confronted through the question, ‘Am I racist?’ (or, ‘Are you?’), a question which in its very asking renders us vulnerable and destabilizes the closely held knowledge—for some—that we are indeed, of course, without a doubt, not racist. Difficult knowledge emerges and becomes useful when we unfix ourselves from our certainties about ourselves and our world; that is, it becomes difficult only when it disturbs the certainties that protect us from potentially undesirable or traumatic knowledge. (Jarvie & Burke, 2019: 229–230)

Importantly, then, knowledge becomes difficult the moment that our affective certainties are challenged; these ‘affective troubles’ are not the same for everyone and they are not experienced in the same manner by all of us. For instance, for Trump’s supporters, post-truth claims may be experienced as affective investments to whiteness and white superiority. In this case, whiteness constitutes a powerful affective ideology that governs

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their public and political perceptions regarding a range of topics from immigration and crime to racism and race relations (Mejia et al., 2018). For others, post-truth claims such as the ones made by Trump on immigration, crime and race relations would amount to nothing less than blunt racist views. If no amount of ‘evidence’—understood here as rational and reliable forms of knowledge, that is, facts that facilitate deliberation— makes a difference (Jarvie & Burke, 2019), because ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’ are perceived in different ways, then one wonders whether there is any productive possibility for engaging with post-truth in the classroom (Horsthemke, 2017). In other words, students or educators who buy into post-truths, fake news and ‘alternative facts’ will not abandon their beliefs by factual information; they will resist modes of reasoning and evidence that threaten their identities. This helps us realise that heavy affective investment in certain ideologies (e.g., whiteness) makes it all the more clear that, ‘although epistemological approaches that emphasize media literacy [or, critical thinking] have their place in combating contemporary racism, we need to understand that the post-truth has long operated as racism by alternative means’ (Mejia et al., 2018: 121). Hence, as Mejia et al. (2018: 121) conclude, ‘racism is not the symptom of the post-truth. Rather, the post-truth is the symptom of racism; a racism for which truth claims are no longer an adequate source.’ Similarly, failing to see how affective investment in whiteness by those who buy into post-truths may also be experienced as difficult knowledge— albeit of a different kind—when their ways of living and being are not recognised or they are rejected, risks perpetuating whiteness by not engaging politically and pedagogically with the affective burden carried by these people. In her book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Hochschild (2016) discusses how and why white people in the American South (Tea Party Republican supporters) experience anger, bitterness and resentment towards people of colour, immigrants and refugees. This group of white people feel they have been left behind because people of colour, immigrants and refugees cut the line and get support by the federal government which does not seem to care much. ‘People think we’re not good people if we don’t feel sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees,’ one Tea Party supporter tells Hochschild, ‘[b]ut I am a good person and I don’t feel sorry for them’ (2016: 227, original emphasis). Hochschild’s analysis enriches our conceptualisation of post-truth as difficult knowledge, because it shows the necessity of delving deeper into the ways that

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social and political realities are differentially experienced and felt in people’s everyday lives (Boler & Davis, 2018). If some white people experience liberal views about marginalised others as their difficult knowledge, perhaps pedagogical projects dealing with post-truth claims might be less interested in the dissemination of ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ than in the invention of ways of living and being better in this world with others (see also Garrett, 2017). This challenge is deeply ethical and political; thus, what needs to be explored is how affective truths are formulated and entangled with underlying socio-economic structures that keep some social groups in the margins. This problem cannot be solved by education, of course. However, an important pedagogical question that can be addressed by educators at the micro-political level of the classroom and the school or university community is: How might educators create conditions for reparative futures? This is discussed in the next part of the chapter.

Reparative Futures and Reparative Pedagogies Inspired by the ‘reparative turn’ in the social sciences and humanities in recent years (e.g., Bhabha et al., 2021; Hall, 2018; Táíwò, 2022), a growing body of scholarship engages with the notions of ‘reparations’ and ‘repair’ in relation to justice, future and education. Sriprakash et al. (2020) conceptualise the idea of ‘reparative futures’ as futures that recognise and seek to repair injustices through providing transformative learning spaces which re-imagine just futures for education. The concept of the future as reparative highlights the potential for transforming existing systems (e.g., education) of domination and oppression of various forms into ‘future-­ facing’ institutions and norms that reformulate the unjust relations of the past. An education for reparative futures, according to Sriprakash et al., entails critical practices for imagining and building these reparative futures such as: cultivating spaces to remember, create, explore and discuss injustices; fostering an ethics of listening and dialogue capable of generating new perspectives; seeking to understand the histories, voices, and experiences that have been silenced or erased through assimilative forms of education; and grappling with the irresolvable difficulties of redemptive thought. (Sriprakash et al., 2020: 3)

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In other words, these practices are characterised by cultivating pedagogical and relational modes of repair in talking about the past, present and future. Hence, these practices are crucial for engaging with difficult knowledge in ways that move away from closure, redemption or reconciliation (Sriprakash, 2022). Importantly, then, ‘repair’ does not assume that there is something that needs to be ‘recovered’ or ‘fixed.’ Instead, repair refers to practices through which new norms, relations and institutions are created. As Sriprakash et al. explain further: Education for reparative futures would seek to understand the entangled histories of people who have been differently positioned by systems of racial and colonial domination and would see this understanding as essential for building the kinds of solidarity a future without racism requires … Reparative futures requires recognising that we are all differently marked by historical processes; that we all have capacities for affect and cognition and that dialogue – however challenging and difficult – is a starting point for all educational relationships that are self-consciously orientated toward material justice. (Sriprakash et al., 2020: 9)

Importantly, Sriprakash (2022) points out that reparations come in different forms such as material (e.g., the restitution of resources, the redistribution of opportunities) and educational (e.g., pedagogic, epistemic and relational). She writes that, ‘Reparative futures of education would seek to create new political economies for education which refuse to carry into tomorrow the logics of dehumanization and exploitation that have been at the foundation of the institutionalization of education’ (Sriprakash, 2022: 7). At the heart of educational reparative redress, then, is the kind of pedagogies that would foster dialogue and imagine new social possibilities, despite the difficult knowledge involved in the process. In other words, what kinds of pedagogies would facilitate reparative modes of address? I would argue that ‘reparative pedagogies’ can take many different forms which are central to just futures of education (Sriprakash, 2022; Zembylas, 2017). Each of these forms enables different political, affective and conceptual affordances of reparative futures in education. This chapter theorises reparative pedagogies and its affordances by using as a point of departure Sedgwick’s (2003) foundational work on ‘reparative reading.’ Sedgwick (2003) proposed the term ‘reparative reading’ to denote a critical practice of reading in psychoanalysis that begins from a position of psychic damage (the ‘depressive position’) and that bears the possibility of

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a ‘reparative position’ that picks up the fragments to construct a sustainable life. Importantly, what Sedgwick calls a reparative position is not merely a critical practice of ‘making visible … the hidden traces of oppression and persecution’ (2003: 141), but rather it is affectively driven and ‘undertakes a different range of affects, ambitions, and risks’ (2003: 150). Thus, a critical mode is necessary but not sufficient, because it requires new vocabularies and connections at the affective level (Berlant, 2011; Cvetkovich, 2012). As Cvetkovich (2012) emphasises, the reparative position creates space for new practices beyond those that have been critiqued as melodramatic or sentimental; it critiques liberal forms of affect and takes on the vocabularies of tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism as connected to certain affects that are inadequate to, or too conveniently packaged for, the difficult legacies of historical trauma, loss and suffering. The term ‘reparation’ has entered curriculum and pedagogy theory through the work of educational scholars of historical remembrance, curriculum, postcolonial studies and psychoanalysis (e.g., see Britzman, 2000; Simon, 2005, 2011; Tarc, 2011, 2013; Todd, 2003). For example, Britzman (2000: 33–35) discusses how pedagogical encounters with trauma can offer hope and reparation, rather than being stuck in despair, and the work of memorialising loss. She is concerned with how the curriculum can be organised in a way that does not provide closure but possibilities to repair traumatic experiences instead. Simon (2005) uses the notion of reparation in his work on historical remembrance to discuss the ethical demands to respond to unimaginable experiences of trauma and loss (see also Todd, 2003). Kelly (2004) builds on Britzman’s work, emphasising that reparative teaching—namely, teaching across social and cultural differences within each particular setting—is essential to avoid colonial positions in the classroom. Also, Tarc (2011: 350) discusses ‘the intrapersonal and inter-political dynamics of psychical and social reparation,’ advancing the idea of what she calls ‘reparative curriculum.’ As Tarc (2011: 369) writes, a reparative curriculum ‘offers students and scholars a pedagogical mourning space, a space of collective work where we might grieve violence-stricken thinking, knowledge, and human history.’ My argument is that critical pedagogical projects can be enriched by the conceptualisation of the reparative as a pedagogical tool to combating essentialism and identity categories, particularly in relation to encouraging educators and students to be open to a reparative stance. Reparative pedagogies are essentially critical pedagogies that reconceptualise reparation as both psychical and sociopolitical work of interpreting traumatic histories

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and seeking just responses through affective practices such as love, hope and solidarity (see also Zembylas, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2022a, b). Reparative pedagogies enable the enactment of affects such as solidarity, hope and love to formulate reparative actions in everyday forms of oppression and injustice. To elaborate on this potential, I focus on two aspects that show clearer how reparative pedagogies can contribute to critical education. First, an important aspect of reparative pedagogies is their emphasis on the acceptance of the other’s singularity as a point of departure to engage students in empathy and solidarity with others. The discourse of empathy and solidarity, for example, restores a sense of otherness because it develops new affective attachments that extend ethical responsibility, care and justice; this discourse focuses on the ways that ethical responsibility, care and justice form new affective communities. Reparative pedagogies, therefore, can be seen as escaping the many binary categories imposed by the nation-state and its educational apparatuses: good/bad, friend/enemy, oppressor/oppressed. Reparative pedagogies leave behind these categories by refusing to affirm the emotional ideologies that invest in these binaries; instead, reparative pedagogies expose the singular wounds and asymmetrical traumas of the other and make space for love, hope and new affective connections. Thus, reparative pedagogies encourage new understandings of ‘community’ and ‘identity’ that could work emotionally as more inclusive and that would go beyond binary categorisations of belonging. Reparative pedagogies as ethical-political practices in the classroom become an affective force that could or would work to enact new virtues, attitudes and values of ‘belonging’ in non-binary terms. This reparative ethics and politics avoid harm, not because one cannot harm the other, but because new and particular sequences of affective relationality refuse to harm the other (Yanay & Lifshitz-Oron, 2008). Reparative pedagogies, then, enable the creation of new spaces of political subjectification that nurture the invention of new relationalities. Secondly, reparative pedagogies problematise the normative ethics and politics of affect/emotion in educational settings, pointing to the need to challenge how discourses and practices are embodied in the day-to-day routines of life in schools and universities. Students and educators bring different emotional histories with them, and these histories are embedded in broader sociopolitical forces, needs and interests. Reparative pedagogies interrogate these emotional histories and offer alternatives on how pedagogies based on solidarity, empathy and love may interrupt policies and

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practices that exclude and dehumanise others. Such pedagogies include the development not only of a mode of critique that comprehends the potential contribution of affective economies of solidarity, but also of modes of being and feeling (e.g., revolutionary feelings) that enact solidarity in all aspects of students’ and educators’ everyday lives. The above two aspects emphasise that reparative pedagogies can make a unique contribution to critical pedagogies by reminding us that loss and suffering are not the end, but rather the entryway for responding productively with practices that encourage affinity, affection, tolerance and friendship. What we can best learn from reparative pedagogies is, perhaps, that loss and suffering might indeed find some repair in the end (Tarc, 2011) through everyday pedagogies that neither avoid suffering nor fetishise it. For example, encouraging students to examine reparative acts (e.g., at the political, social and interpersonal levels) and even experiment with such acts in their own everyday lives, if they wish to do so, will offer a much needed action orientation and a reparative perspective in pedagogy (Zembylas, 2016). It is, therefore, important to recognise that, without a reckoning with the more ‘difficult’ aspects of human behaviour (e.g., hatred or resentment of others), reparative pedagogies are difficult to materialise and might border on idealisation; therefore, future work needs to grapple with how this form of pedagogy materialises in the world with others. In the last part of the chapter, I take on the notion of affective solidarity to discuss how it can serve as a form of reparative pedagogies, while also recognising the complexities and potential risks of this task.

Nurturing Affective Solidarity as a Form of Reparative Pedagogies Hemmings (2012: 149) conceptualises ‘affective dissonance’ as an experience that is at the heart of feminist political activity, namely the dissonance ‘between an embodied sense of self’ and the self that women ‘are expected to be in social terms’; ‘between the experience of ourselves over time and the experience of possibilities and limits to how we may act or be.’ This conflict between embodied experience and the discursive knowledge available to an individual is what Hemmings calls the ‘onto-epistemological gap,’ that is, the dissonance between being and knowing that is triggered

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when one’s embodied sense of self does not coincide with the socially constructed version of the self available to that individual (Lakämper, 2017). As Hemmings further suggests, affective dissonance can be processed in different ways by individuals. In one case, it may be suppressed, while in another case it can produce something that ‘may be harnessed to foster advantages,’ demanding change in intersubjective relations; thus affective dissonance ‘might become a sense of injustice and then a desire to rectify that’ (2012: 157). As she outlines the political potentiality of affective dissonance: [I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently. Feeling that something is amiss in how one is recognized, feeling an ill fit in social descriptions, feeling undervalued, feeling that same sense in considering others; all these feelings can produce a politicized impetus to change that foregrounds the relationship between ontology and epistemology precisely because of the experience of their dissonance. (Hemmings, 2012: 150, added emphasis)

Hemmings highlights the strong entanglement between ‘knowing’ and ‘feeling’ and reiterates a central idea discussed in this chapter, namely that knowing (i.e., epistemology) is not enough to change things—that is, it is not enough to challenge post-truths on an epistemological basis. This idea is extremely useful for a deeper understanding of the differential experiences of difficult knowledge—for example, both those individuals who buy into post-truth claims because they offer emotional comfort and certainty and those who find post-truth claims false, offensive and racist. It may be argued that, in both cases, individual experiences do not match the affective expectations generated and reiterated by other members of the public. Both groups feel a discrepancy between their own experience of being in the world and the expectations and identities available through prevailing discourses. For some, affective dissonance can be processed as an affective investment to the comfort offered by white supremacy; for others, this dissonance may be harnessed politically to foster change, which is precisely what is happening, for example, with the Black Lives Matter movement. The pedagogical question that concerns me is: How do we move from affective dissonance to a productive engagement with the differential difficult knowledge of post-truth that is less interested in facts, identities and ‘truths’ and more attuned to fostering affective connections with others that build reparative futures? This is why I find Hemmings’ (2012)

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concept of ‘affective solidarity’ useful. The conceptualisation of a politically significant affective dissonance that can generate affective solidarity through the recognition of differential experiences of post-truth as difficult knowledge is critical to the argument that I am making concerning how educators may foster affective connections with others. Affective dissonance can provide a common ground that allows for solidarity regardless of identity politics and fixity to ‘truths’ (Lakämper, 2017). Drawing from feminist political theory that explores how women can express solidarity despite the differences in the kind of oppression they experience (national, racial, ethnic, socio-economic, etc.), I similarly suggest the need for a concept of solidarity in pedagogical theory that allows those who feel marginalised for different reasons to derive their sense of living in the world not from the commitment to identity or a truth-regime, but from an affective investment in the conversation with others who struggle in similar, yet also different, ways to create reparative futures. Generally speaking, solidarity is an expression of collective caring, a standing with others based upon the recognition of some common experience (Markham, 2019). It might be exclusionary (e.g., it is confined to those of the same kinship group and values/beliefs) or inclusionary (e.g., it includes anyone who is suffering). Also, it varies in manifestations and motivations (e.g., it can be expressed at the macro level or as individual/ group action in response to an injustice or oppression) (Lynch & Kalaitzake, 2020). For Hemmings (2012: 148), who builds on feminist thinking, affective solidarity ‘draws on a broader range of affects – rage, frustration and the desire for connection – as necessary for a sustainable feminist politics of transformation, but that does not root these in identity or other group characteristics.’ Hemmings’ point of departure is the affective dissonance that exists in the spaces between personal and public spheres. These affects become a productive basis for solidarity, ‘not based in a shared identity or on a presumption about how the other feels, but on also feeling the desire for transformation out of the experience of discomfort, and against the odds’ (Hemmings, 2012: 158). Importantly, then, affective solidarity is not grounded in shared experiences or identities, but rather in communication about difference/diversity that asks individuals to ‘stand with’ (TallBear, 2014) others and bring change that will benefit everyone (Dean, 1996; Scholz, 2008). It is fundamental that the other is recognised in their difference, ‘yet understand this difference as part of the very basis of what it means to be one of “us”’ (Dean, 1996: 39), a fellow human being who dreams of being included

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rather than excluded in the world. As Scholz (2008: 226), for example, suggests, ‘solidarity does not ask formerly privileged to experience the victimization or suppression of others; it does ask committed individuals to stand alongside of these others, who similarly commit, to bring about social change.’ Affective solidarity, then, goes beyond the desire to engender empathy, which is critiqued because it may lead to sentimental attachment to the other, rather than a genuine engagement with their concerns (Hemmings, 2012). As Johnson explains further, affective solidarity: might generate empathy and compassion, but what is relevant is not simply the level of understanding or the appropriateness of the emotional reaction, but also the commitment to action … such as the desire to reduce suffering and help others. (Johnson, 2020: 189)

In other words, even if those who reject post-truth cannot identify with the experiences, beliefs or values of those who embrace it, they can still identify with their experience of affective dissonance and difficult knowledge; that is, they feel the discrepancy between their experience of being in the world and the discourses and practices available to them. This is an experience marginalised students coming from different backgrounds might share, regardless of the affective ideologies available to them, and the social and political conditions of their existence that interfere with the experience of their marginalisation as ‘real.’ Affective solidarity between these different individuals and groups might emerge from a pedagogical process which, ‘while not oblivious to difference, is not rooted in particular aspects of identity or investments in group belonging’ (Lakämper, 2017: 134). The basis of recognition of each other is not the affective attachment to a post-truth claim or a refuting argument, but the common, yet differential, experience of dissonance and difficult knowledge that constitutes the basis for a better living in the world. By embarking on a pedagogical project of fostering solidarity, educators—at least at the micro level of their classrooms—can retrieve experiences of post-truth as difficult knowledge from the realm of their students and work towards building affective connections that imagine reparative futures for all. The aim of suggesting affective solidarity as a form of reparative pedagogies, therefore, is that thinking through such an approach in dealing with difficult knowledge moves away from the assumption that there is a uniform experience of affective dissonance among those who engage with post-truth in the classroom. While there are certainly similarities, there are

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also important differences that require sensitive and strategic interventions that do not risk perpetuating further normalisation of racism. My concern is how to invent reparative pedagogies that begin from the experiences of post-truth as difficult knowledge without generalising these experiences as shared by all students or as the basis of transcendence of difference. I have been drawn to the concept of affective solidarity and feminist thinking, precisely because of their prioritisation of affective dissonance as the basis of interventions that pay attention to the role of affect and emotion as key for the potential of change and repair. The goal of such reparative pedagogies is not to make students feel the right way about the other—as if there is a right way to be an anti-racist (Kendi, 2019). Feeling ‘indifferent, irritated, sentimental, piteous or self-­ righteous’ (Markham, 2019: 476) about the other who suffers from racism, for example, ‘could well be compatible with a long-term relation of solidarity with them’; this sort of affective relation is not going to change from one day to another. Solidarity, suggests Markham, cannot be abstracted from the affective experience of everyday life—in the classroom, the school/university, the family, the community. There is, however, potential in fostering affective solidarity to challenge post-truth as difficult knowledge and as a symptom of racism when educators create learning spaces for a non-destructive and non-identity-based consciousness of the other. ‘To the question of what this would look like in practice,’ writes Markham, ‘the strongest answer starts with a negative: not a catalogue of whether individuals in a particular setting respond to’ (2019: 478, original emphasis) stories of post-truth phenomena or racism with a particular set of emotions or ‘truths.’ The reason why not, argues Markham (2019: 478), is because intersubjective recognition on which affective solidarity is grounded ‘is not clinched in critical encounters but the spaces in between.’ The following pedagogical questions are worthwhile to keep exploring: What kind of affective solidarity persists in learning spaces when each student eventually ‘withdraws into the background noise of everyday life’ (Markham, 2019: 478) and has to live with their own difficult knowledge? How can this sort of affective solidarity be reparative?

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that moving beyond an epistemological approach and fostering affective solidarity might be a worthwhile reparative pedagogy to consider for handling post-truth as difficult knowledge.

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Hemmings (2012) positions embodied knowledge at the heart of affective solidarity, and following her lead, I take this solidarity as a point of departure that provides the ethical, political and pedagogical moment and rupture required for transformational change (Vachhani & Pullen, 2019) in order to create reparative futures. Needless to say, didacticism will not work productively in efforts to challenge post-truth in pedagogy. It is no good ‘telling’ people they should simply abandon their post-truth claims and then assume this is an effective way of combating racism. Contrary to those who position fake news and the post-truth as an epistemological problem that can be solved with media literacy, critical thinking and moral education, I believe that post-truth as a symptom of racism and a form of difficult knowledge for some white people can be productively addressed through fostering affective solidarity as a pedagogical strategy. Although affective solidarity cannot change the world, it demonstrates that some pedagogical strategies, such as fostering affective solidarity, have the potential to, at least, disrupt the taken-for-granted means through which post-truth and racism manifest and become normalised. My analysis presents several implications for future scholarship on post-­ truth, difficult knowledge and reparative education. First, it highlights the limitations of epistemological approaches to post-truth and difficult knowledge that fail to pay attention to the ontological and especially the affective complexities in combating racism. Thus, affect as a relational unfolding within socio-historical and political settings is a crucial element of fostering affective solidarity. Hence, transformation cannot be considered apart from the affective relations that get moulded within learning spaces (e.g., the classroom). An educator who pays attention to the role of affect in handling post-truth as difficult knowledge starts from asking what kinds of feeling in students’ everyday life afford solidarity and designs learning spaces that enable such possibilities. As I have previously suggested, we need pedagogical approaches which understand the complexities of affective ideologies that operate in post-truth regimes and the consequences they produce (Zembylas, 2020). In line with recent research in education (e.g., Dernikos et al., 2020), my analysis suggests that affect can be treated as a worthy object of social and political inquiry and transformation. A second implication of this analysis focuses on the role of educators in handling difficult knowledge and emphasises that there has to be a systematic investigation of the different ways in which post-truth is experienced

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as difficult knowledge as well as how different manifestations of affective solidarity can be evoked in the classroom as a possible ‘response’ to posttruth as difficult knowledge. A pedagogical strategy of fostering affective solidarity cannot be demanded in discrete encounters but should be embedded in a general posture or bearing towards the world, in ways of being that students find themselves thrown into (cf. Markham, 2019). Importantly, fostering affective solidarity in the classroom involves a combination of institutional transformations and body trainings that redefine educators’ practices and discourses (Zembylas, 2020). Rather than claiming that fostering affective solidarity is an affective ‘solution’ to complex structural, political and economic problems such as racism, such pedagogical approach would need to interrogate what individual and collective affects and emotions might tell educators and students about the affective ideologies of contemporary post-truth politics and how they might operate in the service of racism and whiteness. In the current political climate, epistemological evidence alone does not seem to be a particularly good or effective way to convince people of anything except that they are already right, even when they are wrong (Garrett, 2017). Hence, it is troubling to handle the pedagogical challenge of post-truth as (merely) a problem of epistemology, instead of (also) a problem of affective ideology. From this perspective, it does not mean that epistemological approaches that emphasise media literacy and critical thinking are not useful; it just means that educators need to also understand how post-truth operates affectively in ways that are entangled with structures of racism in the society (Zembylas, 2020). This idea implies that reparative pedagogies that aspire to address post-truth claims about issues of race and racism as forms of difficult knowledge have to rethink their priorities and strategies. Contrary to beliefs that post-truth can be countered through epistemological means, this chapter supports recent arguments in several disciplines (Krasmann, 2019; Mejia et al., 2018) that what is needed is an affective rupture with the ways post-truths are experienced as difficult knowledge by different people. For this reason, affective solidarity is offered in this analysis as a complement to existing scholarship on difficult knowledge and reparative futures, and as a pedagogical strategy that can address the (differential) affective dissonance emerging in encounters with post-truth claims. My purpose has been to explore new ways of reclaiming epistemological evidence as a convincing way of knowing that might resist racism and seek to repair historical injustices by suggesting more attention to the

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transformative power of affect and emotion. It is precisely through various forms of reparative education, which recognise the affective power of these injustices, that solidarity for creating something different can be fostered.

References Ball, J. (2017). Post-truth: How bullshit conquered the world. Biteback. Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Bhabha, J., Matache, M., & Elkins, C. (2021). Time for reparations: A global perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press. Boler, M., & Davis, E. (2018). The affective politics of the ‘post-truth’ era: Feeling rules and networked subjectivity. Emotion, Space and Society, 27, 75–85. Britzman, D.  P. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. State University of New York Press. Britzman, D.  P. (2000). If the story cannot end: Deferred action, ambivalence, and difficult knowledge. In R.  I. Simon, S.  Rosenberg, & C.  Eppert (Eds.), Between hope and despair: The pedagogical encounter of historical remembrance (pp. 27–57). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Britzman, D.  P. (2013). Between psychoanalysis and pedagogy: Scenes of rapprochement and alienation. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 95–117. Britzman, D. P., & Pitt, A. (2004). Pedagogy and clinical knowledge: Some psychoanalytic observations on losing and refinding significance. JAC, 24(2), 353–374. Crilley, R. (2018). International relations in the age of ‘post-truth’ politics. International Affairs, 94(2), 417–425. Cvetkovich, C. (2012). Depression: A public feeling. Duke University Press. d’Ancona, M. (2017). Post-truth: The new war on truth and how to fight back. Ebury Press. Davis, E. (2017). Why we have reached peak bullshit and what we can do about it. Little, Brown. Dean, J. (1996). Solidarity of strangers: Feminism after identity politics. University of California Press. Dernikos, B., Lesko, N., McCall, S. D., & Niccolini, A. (Eds.). (2020). Mapping the affective turn in education: Theory, research, pedagogy. Routledge. Garrett, H. J. (2017). Learning to be in the world with others: Difficult knowledge and social studies education. Peter Lang. Hall, C. (2018). Doing reparatory history: Bringing ‘race’ and slavery home. Race & Class, 60(1), 3–21. Hemmings, C. (2012). Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation. Feminist Theory, 13(2), 147–161.

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Hochschild, A. (2016). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. New Press. Horsthemke, K. (2017). ‘#FactsMustFall’?  – Education in a post-truth, post-­ truthful world. Ethics and Education, 12(3), 273–288. Jarvie, S., & Burke, K. J. (2019). Intellectual humility and the difficult knowledge of theology. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 16(3), 224–241. Johnson, C. (2020). Responsibility, affective solidarity and transnational maternal feminism. Feminist Theory, 21(2), 175–198. Kelly, U. A. (2004). The place of reparation: Love, loss, ambivalence, and Teaching. In D. Liston & J. Garrison (Eds.), Teaching, learning, and loving: Reclaimin in educational practice (pp. 153–167). New York: Routledge Falmer. Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. One World. Krasmann, S. (2019). Secrecy and the force of truth: Countering post-truth regimes. Cultural Studies, 33(4), 690–710. Lakämper, J. (2017). Affective dissonance, neoliberal postfeminism and the foreclosure of solidarity. Feminist Theory, 18(2), 119–135. Lynch, M., & Kalaitzake, M. (2020). Affective and calculative solidarity: The impact of individualism and neoliberal capitalism. European Journal of Social Theory, 23(2), 238–257. Markham, T. (2019). Affective solidarity and mediated distant suffering: In defence of mere feltness. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(4), 467–480. Massumi, B. (2015). Politics of affect. Polity Press. Mejia, R., Beckermann, K., & Sullivan, C. (2018). White lies: A racial history of the (post)truth. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15(2), 109–126. Nelson, P. M. (2019). (Dis)orderly potential: Ways forward in ‘post-truth’ social studies. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 34(3), 76–90. Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.). Oxford dictionaries word of the year 2016. https:// languages.oup.com/word-­of-­the-­year/2016/. Accessed 4 Aug 2023. Peters, C.  H., & Protevi, J. (2017). Affective ideology and Trump’s popularity. Unpublished paper. http://www.protevi.com/john/TrumpAffect.pdf. Accessed 4 Aug 2023. Pitt, A., & Britzman, D. P. (2003). Speculations on qualities of difficult knowledge in teaching and learning: An experiment in psychoanalytic research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6), 755–776. Schaefer, D. (2019). The evolution of affect theory: The humanities, the sciences, and the study of power. Cambridge University Press. Scholz, S. (2008). Political solidarity. The Pennsylvania State University Press. Sedgwick, E. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press. Simon, R. I. (2005). The touch of the past: Remembrance, learning, ethics. Palgrave.

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Simon, R.  I. (2011). A shock to thought: Curatorial judgment and the public exhibition of ‘difficult knowledge’. Memory Studies, 4(4), 432–449. Sriprakash, A. (2022). Reparations: Theorizing just futures in education (pp. 1–14). Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. https://doi.org/10.108 0/01596306.2022.2144141 Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Ramos-Pinto, P. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000374045.locale=en. Accessed 4 Aug 2023. Táíwò, O. (2022). Reconsidering reparations. Philosophy of race. Oxford University Press. TallBear, K. (2014). Standing with and speaking as faith: A feminist-indigenous approach to inquiry. Journal of Research Practice, 10(2), Article N17. http:// jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/405/371. Accessed 22 Mar 2023. Tarc, A. M. (2011). Reparative curriculum. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(3), 350–372. Tarc, A. M. (2013). ‘I just have to tell you’: Pedagogical encounters into the emotional terrain of learning. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(3), 383–402. Todd, S. (2003). Learning from the other: Levinas, psychoanalysis and ethical possibilities in education. State University of New York Press. Vachhani, S., & Pullen, A. (2019). Ethics, politics and feminist organizing: Writing feminist infrapolitics and affective solidarity into everyday sexism. Human Relations, 72(1), 23–47. Waisbord, S. (2018). The elective affinity between post-truth communication and populist politics. Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 17–34. Yanay, N., & Lifshitz-Oron, R. (2008). From consensual reconciliation to a discourse of friendship. Social Identities, 14(2), 275–292. Zembylas, M. (2014). Theorizing ‘difficult knowledge’ in the aftermath of the ‘affective turn’: Implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(3), 390–412. Zembylas, M. (2016). Toward a critical-sentimental orientation in human rights education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(11), 1151–1167. Zembylas, M. (2017). Love as ethico-political practice: Inventing reparative pedagogies of aimance in ‘disjointed’ times. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 14(1), 23–38. Zembylas, M. (2020). The affective grounding of the post-truth: Pedagogical risks and transformative possibilities in countering post-truth claims. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 28(1), 77–92. Zembylas, M. (2022a). Affective and biopolitical dimensions of hope: From critical hope to anti-colonial hope in pedagogy. Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 19(1), 28–48. Zembylas, M. (2022b). Post-truth as difficult knowledge: Fostering affective solidarity in anti-racist education. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 30(3), 295–310.

CHAPTER 3

Youth Voices on Social Justice: Doing Repair Work in a South African Higher Education Space Melanie Walker

Introduction This chapter explores how core values in the South African Constitution of freedom, equality and human dignity can be understood as ‘reparative’ values, values which matter in shaping a better society which seeks to repair the colonial and apartheid past. More specifically, it looks at how these values can underpin and shape relationships in a higher education space by respecting and advancing human potential, community and mobilising agency using participatory storytelling. Such storytelling shows that ordinary people living everyday lives have agency and have always been present and active as historical agents, even in the face of constraining structures.

M. Walker (*) University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_3

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South Africa might be a post-conflict society, but is still far from being conflict free. Past injustices of colonialism, patriarchy and apartheid have continued into the present and the future, not least in a country described by the World Bank (2022) as the most unequal in the world. As Ferreira (2016: 1248) proposes, South Africa is a country ‘in the throes of reinventing itself politically and socially,’ making the present moment opportune to understand social changes and new subjectivities. Education then needs to explore ways to ‘enlarge the space of the possible,’ she writes, rather than only ‘replicate the existing possible.’ The chapter draws from the experience of working alongside 12 graduate students at one university on a participatory digital storytelling project over a year in 2020, both face to face and then online after the COVID-19 lockdown. The project aimed to explore what might be possible in implementing Constitutional values for imagining futures. The chapter first outlines the meaning of reparative futures before explaining relevant capabilitarian ideas. The conceptual frames are taken up in relation to the digital stories produced by participants. The paper is located in the space of higher education in South Africa and the possibility of an inclusive decolonising education future (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018), weaving together a conceptual framing of ‘reparative futures’ (Sriprakash et al., 2020) characterised by freedom, equality and dignity. Decolonising is understood as an ongoing process of dismantling a Eurocentric epistemic canon for its negative impact on black and indigenous knowledge systems, arguing rather for re-centring African knowledge (Mbembe, 2016), and also for dismantling broader historical colonial oppressions that persist into the present. I propose that reparative futures require expanding to include forming and expressing human capabilities and functionings (Sen, 2009) and the opportunity to live flourishing lives that matter to people. The storytelling process involved continuous reflexivity on the part of all participants to integrate personal development, understanding social justice individually and collectively, and possible collective actions for change. This process of praxis in and through the storytelling project was iterative, moving between practice and theory; praxis is then a synthesis of theory and practice in which each informs the other (Freire, 1985). The praxis exploration in the chapter has three elements. Firstly, the participants’ stories constitute a ground-up curriculum (i.e., the content of the project or more usually the content aspect of taught course), an archive of stories, effectively a collection of what we can call historical documents

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providing information about this group of people. Secondly, these stories are heard and valued in and through a deliberative and critical pedagogical process. And, thirdly, storytelling, connection and learning are enabled by the associational life of the group, reimagining their own futures and understanding social justice critically. In this way, a ‘repairing human-ness’ is developed for transforming our society, a mode of being human, of actively reclaiming what it means to be human with and through each other, restoring ethical and caring relational connections (Gobodo-­ Madikizela, 2016).

Conceptual Framing The paper draws on the generative conceptualisation of reparative futures by Sriprakash et al. (2020), who make the case for learning with the past and from experiences of material, affective and social oppressions as a methodology to construct reparative futures. They propose that critical practices of historical thinking can offer a vital starting point for critiquing and reformulating the interrelations of past, present and future. Here, I acknowledge the importance of reconciliation in a post-conflict society but place this alongside the values of equality, freedom and human dignity. The education system, notably, was not included in Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) institutional hearings. Reparative futures assume that, in a society scarred by colonialism and apartheid, to build a post-­ conflict society and move towards a more just future—one in which the harms of the past and present are no longer replicated but repaired—it is necessary to understand what, why and how these past injustices occurred. In this way, we might produce a ‘repairing human-ness’ which is active, collective and agentic beyond and against the material and affective grip of apartheid and colonialism. This important practice of repair, according to Spelman (2002), is something we engage in every day, whether repairing objects or relationships in the face of decay or unravelling. Spelman (2002: 5) explains: ‘To repair is to acknowledge and respond to the fracturability of the world in which we live in,’ to look to the past, as she explains, but in our case to look to the future which is different, more socially just, more dignified, more equal, more free. Sriprakash et al. (2020) make the case for both the importance of historical knowledge in futures-thinking and expanding what counts as this historical knowledge: digital stories, oral histories, personal storytelling

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and the like, which have in common the potential to foster reparative futures. A different kind of archive is then generated, not repositories of inert data or historical facts, but modes of representation for people and groups, and thus sites that can support collective engagement; futures are produced together. As Dlamini (2009: 109) explains, ‘we need both the past and the future to come to terms with [and repair] the present and to effect the work of political imagination that is the prerequisite for the creation of the new world.’ Reparative storytelling aims to capture the complexity and plurality of lives. Dlamini cites the late and popular South African singer, Brenda Fassie, who sang in one of her songs: ‘You can never confirm a person. People are always this, that and more. They are never just one thing.’ Similarly, Adichie (2009) explains in her TED talk that: Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. … When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise. (Adichie, 2009)

Dlamini (2009: 111), based on his own experiences of growing up poor in the black township of Kathlehong during apartheid, affirms that, even in hard times, ‘people do not lose their sense of being,’ and ‘[t]here is always more to life than the suffering individuals are subjected to at any given time,’ notwithstanding the serious problems and challenges of township life then and now. The context, structural and material conditions that shape our lives are ‘not all there is to human life’ (Dlamini, 2009: 113). The point is that lives should not be reduced to singular narratives. Producing small slices of personal histories of the everyday lives of ordinary people then enriches how we understand the past beyond a homogenising narrative. Moreover, we need to know better what is in need of repair for moving forward. Sriprakash et  al. (2020) thus explain that the concept of reparative futures can be a generative basis for knowledge and transformative learning; it signals a commitment to identify and recognise past injustices experienced by individuals and communities. They argue for the potential role of education in addressing past/continuing oppressions: both epistemic (who is acknowledged as a credible and legitimate knower and teller, contributing to the common pool of knowledge resources, see Fricker, 2007)

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and dialogic conditions of reparation (for lives of value and well-being) (Sen, 2009). They explain that an education for reparative futures would be alive to the structures of power that animate social life, and which have produced deeply uneven opportunities for individuals and communities, yet not neglecting the emergent possibilities of agency on the part of both individuals and communities. Such an education would take into account and value the lives of ordinary people, in ways that celebrated their knowledge, everyday agency, resilience, hopes and fears. They highlight the importance of collective learning and historical thinking, of ethical listening and dialogue that produces enlarged understandings and practices and of reciprocal relationships. Importantly, the RSA Constitution (1996) has, among other purposes, set out in the Preamble ‘to improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person.’ All human beings should be treated with equal dignity, equal respect and equal value; each of us in South Africa should take this Constitutional commitment seriously and not see it as something we can opt out of. Education processes should realise and honour Constitutional values in and through education; this is the axiological dimension of storytelling as an education process. The idea of reparative futures requires that we develop the capabilities and functionings (Sen, 2009) of students in the higher education space to be able both to have the opportunities and be able to actualise their actions towards dignity, equality and freedom. Capabilities are the opportunities or freedoms which a person has reason to value (Sen, 2009), while functionings are achievements or outcomes chosen from a capability set. Both are shaped by context, history, and social and personal factors, which Sen (2009) calls ‘conversion factors.’ Both capabilities and functionings matter in repair work because we cannot ‘remain indifferent to the struggles of individuals who have to try to exercise these capabilities in a hostile environment’; we then remain attentive to ‘the goal of functioning … and keep it always in view’ (Nussbaum, 1998: 322). We would also need to ask about how we enable people’s agency to understand, choose and act towards such a future. Higher education opportunities and practices are potentially key spaces for the formation and self-formation of capabilities, aspirations and constitutional values, which can contribute to reparative futures in meaningful and engaged ways by critical and creative agents.

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Methodology and Methods Ethical approval and funding for the study were obtained from the University of the Free State (UFS) and the National Reseach Foundation (NRF). The ‘Youth Voices on Social Justice’ project adopted a participatory storytelling approach: firstly, an individual digital story (DST), and secondly, a group process using participatory video (PV). In this chapter, I do not discuss participatory research or focus on the methodology but note the critical questions about ‘the participatory turn’ in development practice which can obscure relations of power (Martinez-Vargas et  al., 2022). In the Youth Voices project participation involved enabling hidden everyday stories and voices in supportive spaces in which the participants analysed their own stories and took part as central agents to decide findings (including mapping social justice) and dissemination strategies. The aim was to be more oriented to transformative education processes, relationships and flourishing, producing decolonising knowledge with and by, rather than about or on. The participatory research intervention was thus understood as a way of potentially transforming individuals, groups and communities through raising critical consciousness, promoting social change, introducing political and social issues to deliberation and contributing to epistemic freedoms (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). The participatory storytelling was thus capabilities and functionings based. The DST process was originally developed in the US (Lambert, 2013). The process is usually intensely personal and can be quite emotional. Stories are produced with support from the facilitators, but, in this case and importantly, also from other group members, so that each story is both individual and an act of co-creation. Lambert’s work and that of StoryCenter are grounded explicitly in social justice values, linked to the work of Paulo Freire. Thus, DST is a process of building critical consciousness of reflecting on power and enhancing personal and social agency with regard to injustice and oppression (Lambert, 2013). The process itself comprises a facilitated activity during which participants create their own first-person stories (around 3 min long), beginning with a story circle in which people share their stories—in our case on any aspect of social justice or injustice in their own lives. These are then developed as a written script of around 300 words, a voice-over recorded, a storyboard produced and then images added before everything is woven together and music added. In the project, the last day was dedicated to presenting the videos and

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reflecting about the process of generating their own digital story. The second group of digital storytelling took place online. There were 12 volunteers for the research, all graduate students (see Table 3.1) at the UFS, due to their more flexible study schedules. They worked with us, two experienced researchers (one a professor and one a research fellow) who had been involved in a number of participatory projects with students. The challenge was to dismantle power in a very hierarchically arranged university in order to create an epistemic community of knowers, listeners and knowledge-makers characterised by dialogue, trust and respectful relations. Further, we had to address the added community-making challenge of doing digital storytelling online. Participants were recruited through snowballing, in which the initial group members were contacted, who, in turn, contacted others. An information and first-contact workshop was arranged in late February 2020, where all interested participants had the chance to get to know one another and the two project facilitators, and find out about the project, the tools used and the process as a whole. In this workshop, the main aim was to provide a complete overview of the work that we would develop together in the coming months, allowing the volunteers to make conscious choices about their involvement. Twenty-three postgraduate students attended and took part in different reflective activities about social in/justice and what this meant for them (such as the Privilege Walk in which each person takes a position and moves according to a set of questions about privilege, Table 3.1  Participants (pseudonyms, as requested) Name

Degree subject

Gender

‘Race’

Bongani Tilly Hlengiwe Sekela Tafadzwa Katleho Kamohelo Johan Ayanda Mandla Lawatle Letsatsi

Geology Anthropology Urban Planning Human Rights Commerce Industrial Psychology Biological Sciences Biological Sciences Human Rights English Education Politics

M F F F F F M M F M F F

Black Mixed Black Black (Zambian) Black (Zimbabwean) Black Black White Black Black Black (Lesotho) Black

Source: Author

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and the individual mapping of social justice across society, education and self, followed by a collective discussion). We also watched and discussed examples of digital stories and participatory videos. As a result, six volunteers offered to participate in the first group to start in March 2020, while another six volunteered for the second group that was planned to start in May 2020. The first was a face-to-face group and the second was an online group after the COVID-19 lockdown came into force on 27 March 2020. Five main phases shaped the process, in which phases 1 and 2 were repeated with the two different groups, and phases 3, 4 and 5 were carried out with both groups. Across all the phases we worked to embed the values of dignity, equality and freedom and to foster valuable capabilities and functionings. We provide a table of the full spectrum of activities in Table 3.2 so that the digital storytelling can be situated in the project as a whole. Once phases 1 and 2 were completed for both groups, we went ahead with our collective analysis phase. This took place in the second half of August 2020 in an intense Monday-to-Friday week, meeting online every morning and working individually or as a group during the afternoons. In this period, students watched all 12 digital stories and the two participatory videos and reflected on guiding questions. After individual presentations, this shifted to a group discussion and curation into a final graphic to represent what social injustices meant to them and how their experiences and visions were connected one to another. The final result was uploaded to the project website with text that the participants wrote, together with all our resources and the videos. After completing this phase, we were ready to talk about dissemination strategies in a one-day meeting after the group had discussed possibilities among themselves. They divided the action plan into four working groups. One group was in charge of organising, preparing and implementing a youth-led webinar. The second group was oriented to social media and they organised and implemented a live event on Instagram with a local influencer to talk about the project and how youth can be part of shaping a better future. The third group wanted to contact local and regional radios, but this was not possible due to mobility restrictions linked to COVID-19 and other demands on people’s time. Finally, the group discussed a final event, an international webinar held in May 2021, as the official concluding date of the project, although relationships have continued after the project and the WhatsApp group remains ‘live.’

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Table 3.2  Process plan Phase

Main activity

Phase 0 Pre-workshop

Phase 1 Digital storytelling

Group involved

Implemented

Outcomes planned

22 Interested volunteers Group 1 (March 2020) Group 2 (May 2020)

Face to face 1 full-day workshop Face to face 2 weeks 5 workshops Online 2 weeks 7 workshops Face to face 2 weeks 5 workshops Online 3 weeks 6 workshops

Lists of volunteers (G1 and G2) 6 digital stories

Analysis document (social justice map) Dissemination: Webinars, media

Phase 2 Participatory video (not discussed in this paper—1 video on lack of student consultation on COVID-­19 university actions and one on gender-based violence) Phase 3 Collective analysis

Group 1 (March 2020) Group 2 (July 2020)

Groups 1 and 2 (July 2020)

Online 1 week 5 workshops

Phase 4 Dissemination plan

Groups 1 and 2 (August 2020) Groups 1 and 2 (August 2020 to March 2021)

Online 1 week 1 workshop

Phase 5 Action plan implementation

Online Over 8 months 5 activities (plus informal meetings and communication)

6 digital stories

1 participatory video 1 participatory video

Youth audience national webinar (30 people) Instagram event Website Local radio intervention International webinar (90 people)

Source: Author

Intersecting Elements for Reparative Praxis: Archive (Curriculum), Pedagogy and Relationships We draw across the stories and on the reflective audio-recorded voices of the storytellers in group discussions and individual reflective interviews to explore a reparative praxis which connects theory and practice in action spaces. As bell hooks reminds us:

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When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. … Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. It fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end. (hooks, 1994: 74)

A Curriculum Archive The story scripts—‘little histories’—constitute a reparative archive of knowledge scripts about social in/justices; they are a kind of informal curriculum that is not formally planned or taught but part of the ethos, knowledge and practices of the project. We cannot construct reparative praxis without attention to the historical attempted epistemic erasure in South Africa of Blackness/indigeneity (Kumalo, 2020), or the need to value orality as a legitimate source of producing knowledge (Kumalo, 2020) or recognising agential power. In their own way, each of the digital stories is a personal and structural history embedding the individual in the family and social relationships and structures which shape capabilities formation and aspirations (see Table 3.3 for the story titles). The stories constitute the onto-epistemological dimension of the project and our own ‘ecology of knowledges’ (de Sousa Santos, 2014). All the stories constitute the depth of this curriculum archive. S tories About Gendered Power Hlengiwe’s story, A Shadow of a Woman, is a history of being raised by a mother who appeared unloving: ‘She was just so angry and would always explode in anger on us [her two daughters] using very explicit and harsh words.’ As she looked back, Hlengiwe realised that her mother’s life in a patriarchal household and culture had stripped her of her voice and respect, including from her children. Now a young adult, Hlengiwe is remaking her own life differently, doing graduate studies and running a small NGO. In Amandla, Katleho tells the story of being pregnant and not married and being treated like a commodity (i.e., something with monetary value) when it suited the father of her child to re-enter her life. Katleho had no

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Table 3.3  Story titles Participant Digital story title

Mode: face to face/online

Broad theme

Bongani Hlengiwe

Ubudoda [masculinity] A Shadow of a Woman

FtF FtF

Tilly Sekela Tafadzwa Katleho

Hair Untangled Chigwilizano [alliances] My Father, My Life Amandla [power]

FtF FtF FtF FtF

Ayanda Letsatsi

Awakening Courageous Choice

Online Online

Lawatle Kamohelo Mandla

Hard Work and Hope Mother Resolute Coming to Know Education as It Really Is Being Me

Online Online Online

Gender (masculinity) Gender (and family/ mother) Racism Gender (and family/sisters) Gender (and father/family) Gender (and single parenthood/family) Gender (and work) Education and a changed life The struggle for education Gender (and mother) Education and privilege

Online

Social media pressure

Johan Source: Author

say in her father being paid what is culturally known as inhlawulo (damages) ‘as a form of compensation’ by the father of Katleho’s daughter. Having her daughter mobilised her own agency to break patriarchal effects, ‘I found my purpose, my voice and she reintroduced me to me.’ She named her daughter Amandla (power) because ‘you gave me strength and I know that you are going to conquer this world.’ In Mother Resolute, Kamohelo’s story details the history of his mother, badly treated by his father who brought home a second wife, and was then let down by her own parents but determined to do the best she could for her three children: ‘My father abused her almost every day, with words and blows, until she had had enough’ and left. His mother became depressed and ill and died after losing her youngest child. But with the memory of his mother close at hand, Jeremiah is now a promising young scientist, ‘From my courageous and strong mother I take my fighting spirit. I had a hero mother.’ From his mother he learned ‘to be a man who cares for others.’ Awakening by Ayanda is about her own growing personal awareness of gender inequalities and finding her own agency to be and do otherwise. Repetitions of the phrase, ‘This is what I learnt,’ reinforce the power of

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her learning that ‘[g]ender inequality follows women from the bassinet to school, to university, to the streets, to the workplace.’ Ayanda writes: We need to own our voices. I will not be tone policed. I will not apologize for wanting to be respected. We will hold our ground. I will hold my ground. Once our sexual harassers have to explain why their inappropriate jokes are simply not funny, they will stop laughing.

Bongani’s story, Ubudoda (masculinity, manhood), is an exploration of his own history and experiences of heteronormative masculinity and its toxic effects for boys growing up in patriarchal cultures, with set views on what it means to act ‘like a man,’ reducing Bongani’s dignity because he does not want to conform to these standards: ‘Stand up, there is no [neighbour]hood for sissies.’ Until he reaches a point of living his own truth: [W]e tell men not to cry and act manly. Then we complain about sons who are ticking time bombs. How is that good enough? How is that good for our society? I can make a change. My difference is change. This is the way that I am going to be a man. Be me. Be authentic.

In Chigwilizano (alliances), Sekela tells her story of justice and hope in a family where all the sisters help each other and pull each other up. This is how Sekela learned what feminism looks like: My first recollection of feminism was from the smartest and most resilient women I know. The women in my family. Growing up in Zambia, a country thick with culture and wrapped in tradition, free-thinking did not come easy to most. Not so for the women in my life. So this is what feminism looks like to me. It’s Sisterhood. Selflessness. Solidarity. It is choosing feminism against cultural norms.

Finally, Tafadzwa in My Father, My Life tells us about her father who, unusually in rural and patriarchal Zimbabwe, was determined that his daughter would have opportunities, despite opposition from her mother and other relatives: ‘I grew up in Chitungwiza in Zimbabwe, here society says for a girl child the only way out of poverty is marriage and education was a priority for the male child. My father was different.’

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 Story About Racism A In Tilly’s story, Hair Untangled, she recounts her battles with her hair in the face of West-centric stereotypes of beauty: ‘[Y]ou have too much hair, it’s so thick, it’s hard to get the comb through. Like it was my fault,’ unlike ‘Becky with the good hair.’ Tilly tells us about ‘sitting in my room burning my scalp and ears until I heard the sound of wet hair sizzling and the pungent smell of burnt hair oils as the hair straightener worked to remove my “Black” heritage.’ Tilly acknowledges her ongoing struggle to reclaim her dignity, ‘to untangle the mess of a constructed colonial identity that forces me to beat down and straighten my existence to fit in.’ S tories About the Power of Education In Courageous Choice, Letsatsi tells the story of her hard family life and rejection by her mother and her absent father leaving her in a dark and sad place, ‘all those thousands of homeworks I did, alone, with difficulties.’ However, through determination and education she chose: knowledge that would not only change my life for the better but also make me a better person towards others. I chose education that teaches courage and hope. … I chose to build educational foundations as I am the first generation in my family to go to university.

Similarly, in Hard Work and Hope, Lawatle repeats the phrase, ‘I am a teacher,’ as she reflects on struggles with her life living with a family not her own, expected to do all the domestic chores in return for her keep, as a result always late for school, doing her homework late at night by candlelight, longing for an education of her own, to become a teacher. In Mandla’s story, Coming to Know Education as It Really Is, we hear how he learned about the disadvantage in the student protest in 2015 and 2016. Coming from a middle-class background he was at first puzzled and angry by student protestors disrupting university classes: [S]tudent protests were now widespread, tires set alight, and graffiti used to rename buildings. Students sang struggle songs. Some choked as tear gas penetrated eyes and noses. Some fell and others limped away, injured by the rubber bullets fired by police. I was so puzzled at first by all this. Why this strident demand for fees-free higher education? Had all students not had the

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same opportunities and advantages as I had? What had I missed? What did I not know? This was a turning point for me.

He comes to see that, ‘being in a space of higher education means, now, to use my own education as a powerful tool to contribute in some way to change.’  Story About Not Fitting In A Finally, Johan tells a story of Being Me, about struggling to fit in in the face of relentless media images of what a young person should be and do, and how they should behave. Despite coming from a loving and comfortable family materially, he grew distant from his family and sunk into depression, even contemplating suicide: ‘I convinced myself there is no-one that can help me. I was at a breaking point.’ Yet he made it through, and remade his life with the support of friends, ‘[p]eople who shared their experiences, who told me their pain, helped me to open up. Through their support and non-judgmental understanding, I began to understand, it is OK. It is OK if you find life difficult.’ There is a strong emphasis on families across most of the stories, working for some as an enabling conversion factor, and for others as constraining. The themes of patriarchy and struggles against oppressive gendered norms are strong. Even when Letsatsi and Lawatle are telling their stories of education they are also stories about gendered relations which see girls and mothers in particular ways. Only one of the stories explicitly addresses racism. When we discussed this in the group there were two responses. One was that most of them wanted to talk about families as the original spaces of social justice or injustice and, as Bongani put it, ‘we don’t know racism at home.’ The second points to the possible limitations of a storytelling process with a majority of black participants led by two white facilitators. Participants spoke carefully about the difficulty of raising issues of racism with white facilitators who they assumed might be offended in some way even where trust had been carefully built, raising the possibility that other stories might be told under different conditions of facilitation. It further points to why we need reparative futures; so much of the past haunts our present and must be repaired for better futures. At the same time, racism emerged prominently in the analytical discussions about social justice based on the stories and the collective production of a complex web of social injustice issues (see Fig. 3.1).

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Fig. 3.1  Reparative knowledge-making. (Source: Author)

A Reparative Pedagogy It is very difficult practically to disentangle the substance of the story texts both written and produced as a digital story (the content and archive), the storytelling pedagogy and the relationships in the group; they necessarily intersect. I understand the pedagogy as a relational space in which we sought to establish a shared ethical intuition grounded in Ubuntu values and practices of humanness, caring, sharing, respect and compassion (Tutu, 1999). Ubuntu honours relationships of sharing and caring: ‘a person is a person through other people,’ that is, it entails necessarily respectful interactions between individuals, which render us human and more ‘excellent’ (Tutu, 1999). As Tutu explains: When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu, u nobuntu’; ‘Hey, so-and-so has Ubuntu’. Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. … I am human because I belong, I participate, I share’. A person … is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished … or treated as if they are less than they are. (Tutu, 1999: 31)

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Pedagogy is necessarily relational, and both pedagogy and associated relationships in turn are grounded in the storytelling process (making the archive). Broadly, the project pedagogy was characterised by an intersection of talking and thinking critically, deliberation and reflection. Practices included collective learning, historical thinking, ethical listening, dialogue, reciprocal relationships and co-creation of social in/justice storied knowledge. Respect, dignity and concern for the well-being of others were integral to pedagogical relationships and a relational ethics and cosmovision. It was important that participants felt able to explore their own stories and their discomforts in relation to social injustices in their own lives and to respond to those of others in relations of solidarity, vulnerability, mutual trust, reflexive dialogue, caring, solidarity and ‘co-creation’ of stories. As Sekela explained in her reflective interview in October 2020 with Bertha Kibona, a then post-doctoral fellow, participants took on the mantle of ‘interactive’ knowledge producers and owners of the stories told. They worked together ‘to produce something this good.’ Emotions, empathy and vulnerability suffused the storytelling processes. As one participant storyteller commented to another in the group: ‘It’s a very uncomfortable space; I understand. It’s also like meeting yourself for the first time. So take time with it.’ In a further discussion, the same person remarked that she had learned ‘to take a step back and put myself in other people’s shoes. What if I were them, how would I feel?’ Many of the participants had never shared these stories with anyone else and the process provided them with space to not only explore difficult histories, but also acknowledge the contributions of others to their success. In the reflective interviews, Tafadzwa commented on valuing being able publicly to recognise her father’s role in her life. Until then, ‘I only knew in my heart what my father did for me.’ For Bongani, telling his story was ‘so peaceful and I feel lighter by that.’ Lawatle explained that her story helped her see that ‘there’s a lot of transition in my life. … I passed through the valleys and the mountains, I’m in a different place now.’ Ayanda remarked that the storytelling ‘allowed for a lot of healing … we see how far we’ve come.’ Helping others was then important too. Kamohelo said he had developed the confidence ‘to own his background’ and to inspire others. ‘It’s a short story,’ he said, ‘but it contains a heavy message that can help others.’ They learned from each other epistemically—to see their own stories in new ways in the collaborative discussions of rough story cuts. ‘You guys

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are seeing what I’m not seeing,’ as Sekela said, ‘you gracefully allowed yourself to walk in my story, so thank you.’ For this to happen, establishing relations of trust in a group who not only did not know us, but did not know each other until then, was crucial; we all had to act as trustworthy and responsible caretakers of the stories of others and not exploit vulnerability. Such vulnerability, as Misztal (2011) explains, is grounded in the human condition of relationships with and dependence on others; it requires taking risks (in telling your deeply personal and intimate story). It also requires intersubjective acknowledgement of each story and recognition and affirmation by others because ‘[w]e are all vulnerable because we are dependent on others for our self-­ realization, thus for the development of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem’ (Misztal, 2011: 365) and for creating bonds of enduring solidarity. We observed a process of creating, learning, reflecting, micro-level transforming, sharing, caring and repairing in conditions of equality and dignity. Bongani commented that: ‘We could authentically be ourselves. Unapologetic. Tell your story in the most honest way without the fear of being judged.’

Emergent Capabilities From the participants’ accounts in reflective discussions, in collective analysis sessions where we looked at all the stories together and in final interviews, I have identified clusters of valued and intersecting capabilities that advance freedom and that draw on equality and dignity values for what matters. Capabilities of humanising, epistemic freedoms and repair (all of which include learning and transforming) were fostered and emerged through the participatory storytelling process. Here I look at the reflections of Hlengiwe to illustrate these capabilities extrapolated from her reflective interview (but which are also evident in the praxis recounted above). On the space to make and receive epistemic contributions which were legitimate, credible and valued, she said, ‘The project wasn’t something that was given to us, we made the project. It accommodated us and our different values and our different views on how we see social injustice. So we made it what it happened to be.’ The digital story, ‘ended up being yours … we were able to own the story, that it’s yours … and you learn from other’s social injustices … each one of us brought something to the table … an environment that enabled us to

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speak.’ She explained in her October 2020 interview how epistemic agency was fostered: [T]he project process was very enabling and very safe for one to open up … in quite a special way, we actually spoke about what we view as social injustices that have happened to us. So, I felt kind of free for the first time.

Hlengiwe explained that the two facilitators created this safe environment: ‘I don’t know how they did it. But they just did. So that different people that are not socials [do not know each other], you meet new people, and you are able to interact at a deep level.’ Nonetheless, each person retained ownership of their own story, ‘we were able to own the story, it’s yours.’ Student voices in knowledge-making are of concern because, in our context, they are excluded in the hierarchical policy and deliberative university spaces, which requires permission and adherence to top-down procedures in which students have barely any part. Student voices can contribute to the archive we need for making reparative futures, especially an archive of black lives and criss-crossing national boundaries, against xenophobia or narrow nationalisms that prevent a Pan-African future (i.e., relating to all people of African birth or descent). Instead, our pedagogy sought to be democratic in a way that ‘has its foundation in the freedom of others’ (Shor & Freire, 1987: 91) so that participants become critical subjects in the act of knowing. Ubuntu capabilities were evident throughout the process. Participatory storytelling unfolding slowly in collaborative and caring spaces was central. In addition, participants were learning from each other, listening and responding to stories, commenting on scripts and offering feedback on rough story cuts. The collective dimension was strong throughout. Ubuntu values and practices and humanising (Ubuntu) capabilities were threaded through the process because of what participants brought to the story table. They were carriers of a humanising Ubuntu capability in this public higher education space. Repairing capabilities came to the fore strongly in Hlengiwe’s story and intersect deeply with humanising and epistemic (telling this story) capabilities. In her story, Hlengiwe, as we also saw earlier, explored the trauma inflicted by patriarchal norms on both her mother and the family; Hlengiwe herself becomes part of the oppressive family practices:

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I have seen and experienced the dire consequences of imposed patriarchal practices on her marriage producing her anger and oppression. We watched her human dignity being taken away from her. Her self-esteem faded away until she became invisible in her own house, a shadow. Her views did not matter nor her feelings. I thought she was weak.

It is not only about her mother, but also about the gendered legacies and reproduction which occurred at home and which Hlengiwe carries with her and needs to repair. ‘I started seeing my mother in me, in the relationship [with her boyfriend]. I understood her pain, why she stayed with my father because she wanted us to have the opportunity for an education.’ Understanding herself as a carrier of her mother’s pain was part of a process to break the intergenerational gendered chain; carrying the humiliation of her mother was not an option. She needed to recognise herself as a dignified equal woman who can produce a different future grounded in understanding her own past and present actions. As Hlengiwe explained, with regard to repairing capabilities: [A]ll of us, where we were when we started [Youth Voices] is not where we are currently. We are moving past that and the social injustices that we have all experienced and we are moving ahead. But not trying to ignore that there was something wrong. So, I think it aligns with what one desires to be and that is also to be free from certain pain and being able to know that once you get an opportunity, you will be actually to go back and make a difference in somebody else’s life. … [You are] more equipped.

Hlengiwe explained in the final reflective interview that there was ‘a pain that was within and there was no part for me to actually take it out.’ The pain was leaving her stuck, ‘it was just blurring a lot of things.’ She moved from fear to confronting and ‘seeing it for what it is … and rising above it.’ Hlengiwe described how before the project she did not see her mother’s strength; she ‘just saw pain.’ Seeing and understanding this humanises both Hlengiwe and her mother. Sharing her own story enabled ‘healing’ and repair: I’ve just tried to hide … knowing it’s [my story] out there, gave me an opportunity to reflect on what’s happening and just to review things in a different way. It showed me that there has to be progress also in my life. … I still have an opportunity, my mother’s still here and moving forward how can I make a difference in her life too.

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In a reflective discussion in March 2020, she explained that ‘it makes you think and appreciate your mother … not knowing what they have to go through to give us a better life.’ She understood that her mother had lost her voice. But repair in our context must also involve making a difference in the lives of others. Armed with this new self-knowledge, ‘you are able to help someone who is maybe in the same shoes’ and specifically to contribute to community outreach concerning gender-based violence, volunteering for non-profits and so on. Hlengiwe identifies a process of reparative learning, that is, learning from what was, what is and how to change things moving reparatively into the future. Such practices produce spaces where individuals can act and deliberate and bring their ‘beginnings’ into the world (Arendt, 1998) or, in capabilities language, develop reparative capabilities and functionings. As Hlengiwe put it, ‘you are walking differently.’ The curriculum comprises not only the stories and the dialogue about social justice that these stories explore, but also a body of stories contributing to a historical archive of everyday and ordinary black lives. The pedagogy of the project sought to reshape unjust education relations in the university setting, with participants at the centre of producing the archive and the substantive multidimensional understanding of social justice as it appeared in their own lives and the collective discussions. They were the primary epistemic agents and acknowledged as such. Relationships across the project were fertile in that they enabled capabilities and critical agency about social injustices in people’s own lives, as well as recognition of moments and relationships of social justice in the lives of others and in society in ways they had not always considered before. As the stories and reflections show, we are, as humans, both equal and distinct, able to understand each other, but each of us with a unique biography and diverse perspectives. We have the capacity to respectfully recognise the humanity in each person and their potential for critical agency and to empathise with stories about social justice different from our own. Such actions require human sociality, including deep concern for the lives of others, concerns which can be nurtured through education, in this case, participatory storytelling. The point is that becoming and being do not occur in isolation; we become who we are through our lives with others, ‘in sheer human togetherness’ (Arendt, 1998: 180). In this shared space, each person ‘appears’ or ‘discloses’ who they are through speaking, relating their own perspectives to those expressed by others, acting in concert, with each making a unique contribution to their collective effort.

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Fig. 3.2  Reparative learning—intersecting episteme (knowledge produced) and process (knowledge-making). (Source: Author)

Knowledge about social justice (episteme): Participant stories, analysis and mapping

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A socially just process: Participant actions and reflections

Taken together we have 12 rich and moving slices of everyday youth histories which, in different ways, recount stories of dignity and indignity, of justice and injustice, and of agency and capabilities and functionings to reimagine and remake futures. In this way, the episteme (the archive of social justice stories and the collective analysis and substantive mapping of social justice) and the process were closely connected (Fig. 3.2), thereby making and imagining reparative futures.

Conclusion In our experience, enabling spaces for participatory storytelling—in this case on social in/justice experiences—and supporting university students to tell their own and listen to the stories of others, played a critical role in helping the group to revisit their past histories and identify how they had each moved into a more hopeful future, even as they stand in the complex present in which constitutional ideals are imperfectly realised for the majority of ordinary South Africans. The exploration was creative, collaborative, compelling and capabilities-enhancing; storytelling was a generative practice. Hlengiwe felt that the micro-level storying matters politically for advancing social justice: I saw the mismatch as to how society is trying to solve its own challenges but they are looking at it from a macro point of view, policies and all that. Whereas I thought whilst I was looking at everybody’s stories and looking

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at what was happening in society from a micro point of view, change could be started there because we are young here … there is so much power in each of our stories and there’s so many people that relate to it or are living this too.

Similarly, they explored a world through stories, ‘where everybody feels represented or like they belong.’ She has learned about how connected struggles are for social justice—‘it’s a web’—and this informs her activism going forward. As epistemic agents working together they produced a fairer (not necessarily perfect) epistemic space and community. Nobody harboured unrealistic expectations that this space and that their actions would eliminate injustices, but they did develop tools, knowledge and voices to work against unfairness. All exhibited agency in their lives, as ordinary people, in ways that celebrated their knowledge, agency, resilience, hopes and fears. These stories represent, in our view, not an overturning of South African higher education as it is, which is a longer and larger project altogether, but decolonial fissures that let in dignity, equality and freedom. The cracks are of course not the solution to higher education as it is, but the possibility; spaces where Constitutional values can be made real and reparative futures imagined. Moreover, universities are social institutions produced by society and sustained by society. From what the participants themselves say, changes in universities may or can influence changes in society, including structures of coloniality (patriarchy, racism) and knowledge. The challenge, then, is how higher education can mobilise and develop reparative, futures-directed learning: transformative (empowering) and also transgressive (disrupting dominant norms and assumptions about who makes legitimate knowledge). The broad point is the need to be reflexive about universities as a site for imaginative reconstruction, which is relational, critical and experimental and which requires us to look at transforming how we live as university communities. As Greene (1988: 90) writes, we need ‘new beginnings in transactions with the world,’ in ways that ‘transcend the deficiencies to transform,’ opening windows to what ought to be. This means, in our context, advancing values of equality, freedom and dignity and the full flourishing of young people in higher education spaces.

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Acknowledgements  My thanks to all the participants in the Youth Voices project, to Carmen Martinez-Vargas who co-facilitated the whole storytelling process, to Bertha Kibona for conducting reflective interviews, to Diana Velasco for her careful editorial comments and very warm thanks to Stephen Esquith for his feedback at the IDEA conference in Colombia, July 2022.

References Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story. https://www.ted.com/talks/ chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en. Accessed 15 Mar 2020. Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. (1996). de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge. Dlamini, J. (2009). Native nostalgia. Jacana. Ferreira, A. (2016). ‘A sort of black and white past and present thing’: High school students’ subject positions on South Africa’s recent past. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(6), 1247–1261. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. Bergin and Garvey. Gobodo-Madikizela, P. (2016). What does it mean to be human in the aftermath of mass trauma and violence? Towards the horizon of an ethics of care. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 36(2), 43–61. Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. Teachers College Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Kumalo, S. (2020). Resurrecting the Black archive through the decolonisation of philosophy in South Africa. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 5(1–2), 19–36. Lambert, F. (2013). Digital story telling (4th ed.). Routledge. Martinez-Vargas, C., Walker, M., Cin, M., & Boni, A. (2022). A capabilitarian participatory paradigm: Methods, methodologies and cosmological issues and possibilities. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 23(1), 8–29. Mbembe, A.  J. (2016). Decolonizing the university: New directions. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), 29–45. Misztal, B. (2011). The challenges of vulnerability. In search of strategies for a less vulnerable social life. Routledge. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2018). Epistemic freedom in Africa. Routledge. Nussbaum, M. (1998). Cultivating humanity. Harvard University Press. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Allen Lane.

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Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. Greenwood Publishing. Spelman, E. (2002). Repair. The impulse to restore in a fragile world. Beacon Press. Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Ramos-Pinto, P. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. Doubleday. World Bank. (2022). Inequality in Southern Africa: An assessment of the Southern African Customs Union. World Bank.

CHAPTER 4

Epistemic Resilience: Articulating Struggles and Dreams from the Co-production of Knowledge from Below Between Universities and Community Researchers Monique Leivas Vargas and Álvaro Fernández-Baldor

Introduction Given the different social and environmental crises that we face globally, the concept of resilience has emerged strongly in recent years. From a historical perspective, resilience arises from the natural sciences as ‘the capacity of a material or system to return to equilibrium after a displacement’ (Norris et al., 2008: 127). However, this concept has been reinterpreted by the social sciences from different angles. From a community perspective, Ntontis et  al. (2019) and Norris et  al. (2008) understand resilience as the adaptation of individuals and communities after a disturbance or adversity. However, there is no consensus among scientists and decision-makers about how to translate resilience into public policies.

M. Leivas Vargas • Á. Fernández-Baldor (*) Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_4

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Currently, the European Union defines resilience as the ‘ability not only to withstand and cope with challenges but also to undergo transitions, in a sustainable, fair, and democratic manner’ (European Commission [EC], 2023). Instead, some authors warn about the risk of treating resilience in a broad and empty, top-down manner, with a lack of indicators or measurement methods, as an antidote and a countermeasure to poverty, inequalities and vulnerability (Ntontis et al., 2019; Bohle et al., 1994). In this chapter we explore resilience from an epistemic perspective, understanding that people not only have capacities to adapt, but are also agents of change and producers of knowledge for social and environmental transformation (Leivas et al., 2022). To this end, we will delve into the experience of the Network of Community Researchers (hereinafter NCR), promoted by the Human Security Observatory (HSO) of the University of Antioquia, in Medellín, Colombia. Medellín is one of the most unequal cities in Latin America, reaching a Gini index of 0.52 in 2020 (Medellín Cómo Vamos, 2021). This inequality is associated with higher levels of crime and violence, increasing insecurity in the city. According to some authors who are working with communities living in the midst of chronic violence and crime, security policies and practices in Latin America continue to be dominated by counterproductive militarised responses that have failed to address violence and crime (Pearce & Abello Colak, 2021; Abello Colak & Pearce, 2009). For Rincón (2018), citizen security policies are understood as the set of measures implemented to deal with the different types of violence and conflict processes that occur in urban contexts. At present, we are witnessing the emergence of a citizen movement which, under the hashtag #esaseguridadnomerepresenta (that security doesn’t represent me), demands from the president of Colombia (2022–2026) the changes he promised in the electoral campaign regarding security policies. These changes were aimed at moving from a militarised citizen security approach based on police control and repression towards a human security approach ‘based on equality, the protection of the national sovereignty, citizen security, care of life and nature’ (Petro, 2023). To challenge these punitive approaches to security, Pearce and Abello Colak (2021: 1370) argue that ‘communities living with these realities need to develop their own understanding of security.’ For these authors, participatory action research practices based on the co-production of knowledge from below make it possible to humanise security. These methodological approaches invite us to recover the theoretical legacy of Paulo

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Freire to rethink resilience from an epistemic perspective. From his approach, people and communities are not only able to adapt to changes, but also to transform the present and think about a different future from below. In this sense, Freire (2014: 117) already highlighted that adaptive approaches do not give room to ‘utopia, that is, for the dream, for the option, for the decision, for waiting in the fight, the only one in which there is hope.’ Freire (2014) argues the importance of the dream for political subjects, and that utopia is waiting for a collective future in struggle and from hope. From these perspectives, this chapter aims to answer the following research question: Is epistemic resilience a bottom-up approach to contributing knowledge from below to a reparative future? To this end, in the following section, we delve into the different perspectives on community resilience and draw on previous work based on Freire’s contributions to approach the concept of epistemic resilience. Subsequently, we explore the methodological strategy used and the NCR case study. Next, we analyse the contributions of the NCR with regard to human security as an experience of epistemic resilience that allows the articulation of collective struggles and dreams to achieve a more just and sustainable future. Finally, we present the main conclusions of the research.

From Community Resilience to Epistemic Resilience Despite the recent and overwhelming emergence of different perspectives around the concept of resilience, we find two points in common from the social sciences. The first point is related to the roots of the concept that emerges from the physical and mathematical sciences, highlighting the importance of conceptualising resilience as an adaptation response and not as a stability action in the face of a disaster situation. In this sense, Norris et al. (2008: 144) stress that resilience is a ‘process that leads to adaptation, not to a result, not to stability.’ On the other hand, the second point is related to the need to understand resilience as a process and not as a result (Norris et al., 2008). Ntontis et al. (2019) argue that resilience cannot be understood as the result of public policies from above, but must be understood and operationalised as a process that includes mechanisms and instruments for citizen participation. For the authors, it is urgent to avoid discourses and policies that use ‘resilience to explain resilience itself’ (2019: 11), which they call ‘circularity of resilience,’ a practice widely used in the actions and design of public policies against disasters.

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From a community perspective of resilience, there are different approaches in the literature. For authors such as Pfefferbaum et al. (2005), Coles and Buckle (2004) and Ganor and Ben-Lavy (2003) community resilience is the set of skills, capacities and knowledge of the members of a community to adapt to a disaster situation. For Norris et al. (2008: 127) community resilience emerges from ‘four primary sets of adaptive capacities—Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence—that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness.’ On the other hand, Kruse et  al. (2017) expand this notion of community resilience by adding the learning and actions taken internally by communities, as well as other external factors that can influence resilience, such as disaster policies or the socio-­economic and environmental context itself. Some authors emphasise that public policies cannot be generated top-­ down to build resilience when a disaster occurs, but that it has to be a process in which the community is involved. In this sense, Furedi (2008) highlights that resilience cannot be taught from top-down technocratic approaches and refers to the risk of these approaches when they limit local initiatives and not involve communities. According to Ntontis et al. (2019: 10), the recognition of the behavioural and psychological capacity of the population to act ‘paves the way for collaboration between agencies and communities in a horizontal rather than top down manner.’ In this line, some authors indicate that people gather in groups and self-organise during disasters with a bottom-up approach (Clarke, 2002; Drury et  al., 2009, 2015; Williams & Drury, 2010). Brown and Kulig (1996/97: 43) point out that ‘[p]eople in communities are resilient together. … For us, community resiliency refers to the capacity of community members to engage in projects.’ In this chapter, we explore the case of the NCR made up of community and university researchers who fight for the defence of human rights and the transformation of the city of Medellín from the co-production of knowledge from below. This methodological approach is aligned with the principles and practices of popular education proposed by the Brazilian pedagogue, Paulo Freire. Also, it contributes to operationalising and humanising the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) approach to human security (Pearce & Abello Colak, 2021). These authors propose human security from below as:

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an attempt to increase the capacity of communities and local level actors to articulate their demands for better security provision based on agreed norms and under democratic principles in which security must be at the heart of all struggles for equitable development and social justice. (Abello Colak & Pearce, 2009: 11)

In this sense, the NCR suggests an alternative theoretical-­methodological proposal to the hegemonic perspective of citizen security used by the municipal administration in the city of Medellín. In previous work, Leivas et al. (2022) evidenced the NCR as a case of hermeneutic insurrection. According to Medina (2017: 48), the hermeneutic insurrection represents ‘[f]orms of disobedience and rebellion against the norms and expressive/ interpretative expectations to pave the way towards a new hermeneutic order.’ In order to move towards a fairer hermeneutic order, Leivas et al. (2020) propose four capabilities for epistemic liberation that can be expanded in knowledge co-production processes and analyse them in the case of NCR (Leivas et  al., 2022). The analysis shows the expansion of four capabilities for epistemic liberation: the capability to be recognised as producers of valid knowledge; the capability to do through communicative openness; the capability to learn from the collective knowledge; and the capability to transform through collective action (Leivas et al., 2022). These capabilities are inspired by Freire’s Pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) and the capability approach proposed by Amartya Sen (1979, 1999). In this chapter, the previous findings of Leivas et al. (2022) will help us to approach epistemic resilience as a way of contributing knowledge to move towards the construction of a reparative collective future—a future that not only recognises and seeks to repair historical injustices (Sriprakash et al., 2020; Hall, 2018), but also leads to utopia and hope through struggle and collective action. In this sense, Freire defines the concept of utopia as the tension between the unfair and unequal present and the future to be built collectively: [T]here is no true utopia outside of the tension between the denunciation of a present that is becoming increasingly intolerable and the announcement of a future to be created, to be built politically, aesthetically and ethically by all, women and men. … Utopia implies denunciation and announcement, but it does not allow the tension between the two to end around the production of the previously announced future and now a new present. The new dream experience is established to the same extent that history does not immobilise, does not die. On the contrary, continue. (Freire, 2014: 116–117)

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According to Freire (2014), utopia and the collective dream are the possibilities of change for the political subjects who aim to transform the world. Therefore, we understand that these collective spaces generate political learning that offers the opportunity to engage collectively with the struggles and dreams to move towards a reparative future. Based on the different contributions explored in this section, we propose a first approximation to the concept of epistemic resilience, understood as a commitment to transformation through participation in processes of knowledge co-production from below. These processes allow communities not only to become aware of the adaptation to multiple situations of inequality, oppression and historical violation, but also to generate collective knowledge for social and environmental transformation to dream and co-create a more just and sustainable future. In this sense, the NCR case study, presented below, will allow us to contrast and expand this definition of epistemic resilience.

A Qualitative Approach to the Case of NCR Intending to contrast and expand the theoretical definition of epistemic resilience, in this section we propose a qualitative approach to the case study of the NCR. This methodological strategy is based on a review of the literature on resilience, a documentary analysis about the NCR and the discourse analysis on the interviews carried out in 2018 within the framework of a research project funded by the Universitat Politècnica de València (Technical University of Valencia), Spain. To delve into the methodology used in the previous research, see Leivas et al. (2022). Next, we describe the case study of the NCR. The NCR is a network of community researchers (hereinafter CRs) and academic researchers (hereinafter ARs) promoted by the Human Security Observatory of Medellín (HSO), attached to the Institute of Regional Studies of the Universidad de Antioquia (University of Antioquia), Colombia. The CRs are activists, community leaders and human rights defenders from different social collectives (women, Afro-descendants and victims of the conflict) who participate in the NCR.  The CRs are characterised, on the one hand, by developing leadership in the communities and community organisations, representing these groups in the different participation spaces. On the other hand, they improve their practices through the dialogical process established with the academy. The ARs are students and teaching staff who participate in the network.

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The NCR emerged in 2016 from the project, ‘Network of community researchers: Knowledge, empowerment and mobilisation around human security,’ which has had as its precedent an itinerant seminar held in 2013 (Zuluaga et al., 2017: 6). The main objective of the NCR is to ‘co-­produce knowledge and promote processes that make human security possible for all’ (Zuluaga et al., 2017: 4). This project enabled spaces and processes for the co-production of knowledge between the university and community organisations that contributed to advancing the human security approach from below (Abello Colak et  al., 2014). This approach is theoretically based on the definition coined by the United Nations Programme for Human Development (UNDP, 1994). According to the UNDP, human security means that people can exercise opportunities for human development safely and freely, having relative confidence that these opportunities will not disappear in the future. This approach emphasises that people must be able to take care of themselves: [E]veryone must have the opportunity to satisfy their most essential needs and earn a living. This will free them and help ensure that they can make a full contribution to development, to their own development and that of their community, their country and the world. (UNDP, 1994: 27)

In a previous work, Leivas et al. (2022) show from the CR discourses that the NCR expands the definition of human security proposed by the UNDP, by proposing an approach that is people-centred, universal, comprehensive and interdependent. According to the authors, the co-­ production of interpretive materials from such an approach can contribute to generating alternative references with regard to different ways of understanding development and security, in addition to making visible the importance of the role of CRs as contributors to the transformation of the territories they inhabit. At a methodological level, the human security from below proposed by the NCR is supported by the facilitation of training sessions and context analysis from the dialogue of knowledge between the academy and the communities. The dialogue of knowledge according to the NCR: is a methodology in which different types of knowledge are interrelated with the intention of recognising and understanding each other. Dialogue implies the recognition of the other as a different subject, with diverse knowledges

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and positions, based on the promotion of freedom and autonomy. (Zuluaga et al., 2017: 6)

In total, eight interviews were conducted in the fieldwork: three with ARs linked to the HSO and five in-depth interviews with CRs participating in the NCR (four women and one man). These interviews were conducted during a research stay at the University of Antioquia. This three-month stay provided the opportunity to carry out the participant observation technique in the meetings and gatherings of the NCR, in addition to knowing first-hand the realities that community researchers experience on the slopes of Medellín. The results are presented from the discourse analysis of the people interviewed. To protect the security of these people and territories, the results of the interviews will be encoded with the initials CR (see Table  4.1) or AR (see Table  4.2), referring to community researchers or academic researchers, respectively, accompanied by a number indicating the order in which the interviews were conducted. In the next section, we analyse the contributions of the NCR regarding human security from below as an experience of epistemic resilience of ARs and CRs.

Articulating Struggles and Dreams In this section we explore, in an inductive way, the responses of the people interviewed, seeking to illustrate the contributions of the NCR to epistemic resilience. The first evidence that emerges from the NCR is that it is an experience of epistemic resilience that is produced through a process of co-production of knowledge from below. The experience of the NCR makes it possible to articulate the struggles and dreams of CRs and ARs to transform strategies and public policies on security in the city of Medellín. Table 4.1  Coding of interviewed community researchers (CRs) Code

Gender

District (Comuna)

CR1 CR2 CR3 CR4 CR5

Female Male Female Female Female

2 6 8 8 8

Source: Authors

Social collective

Role in the community

Women Afro-descendants Victims Victims Victims

Community leader Human rights activist Community leader Community leader Community leader

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Table 4.2  Coding of interviewed academic researchers (ARs) Code

Gender

Position

AR1

Female

AR2 AR3

Male Female

Staff and principal investigator of the project Research staff Research staff

Source: Authors

This process of co-production of knowledge rests on pillars such as trust, mutual support, the dialogue of knowledge and the participatory methodologies used in the NCR: [T]here we are contributing to a construction and understanding of knowledge. Because we are doing it slowly. We are not governed by a project, we do not have to pass a report, no! Things are happening slowly from what each one does from their territory and there we are creating this level of trust, we are creating this space where we meet. (CR3)

The quote above shows how this process of co-production of knowledge and these relationships of trust are not the result of a research project but of experiences in the territories CRs inhabit and of their participation in the NCR from its inception. One of the ARs highlights that the NCR is a process that aims to ‘nourish and strengthen organisational processes’ (AR1) created to influence public policies and generate an alternative security agenda to citizen security. AR3 emphasises that the theoretical and methodological contributions of the NCR make it possible to politically strengthen the discourses of community leaders and organisations ‘to confront each other in city councils or in different strategies or ways of demanding rights towards an institution that was not a guarantor of them’ (AR3). Based on these testimonies, we can observe the coincidences with the definitions of community resilience found in the literature, which understand it as an adaptation process and not as the result of a public policy or the response of a community to a situation of stress or environmental disaster. The second evidence of the epistemic resilience of the NCR is related to the adaptation of CRs to participatory spaces promoted by the municipality where the discourse of citizen security predominates. The CRs not only adapt to these participatory spaces, but also transform them. The

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CRs use the theoretical and methodological contributions developed in the NCR to occupy these spaces and influence, educate and raise awareness about the urgency of moving towards a more comprehensive and multidimensional perspective of security in the city of Medellín. In other words, the CRs formally adapt to the spaces offered by the municipality to disseminate the human security approach from below. For example, for CR3, human security is: being able to have peace of mind without my nose falling off, without my house overflowing, with my children with something to eat and not being kidnapped or raped. I believe that when we talk about human security, we are talking about this human being who deserves to be in complete peace of mind. (CR3)

From their discourse, we observe that, in their conception of security, they integrate other dimensions that are not contemplated in the citizen security approach, such as security against environmental disasters, security from a gender perspective or food security. As we can see, this occupation of participatory spaces could be understood as adaptive behaviour. However, it shows that they not only adapt to political strategies promoted from above, but also use these spaces to make complaints and political advocacy to transform the notion of security and move towards a focus on human security from a dialogical relationship. CR5’s response clarifies the arguments used to differentiate both approaches: ‘[Security] is not only having police officers around every corner but having food security, social and economic security, health security, security around the family, which is the main thing.’ On the other hand, AR1 highlights the importance of broadening the scope of security from an individual perspective towards collective and community co-responsibility: It’s not just me looking to protect myself, to the detriment of your being unprotected … it’s not just my safety, but how I protect myself with you. But to protect myself with you, I have to care about you, I have to recognise you as someone that I can also do something with. … The logic of insurance, of security cameras, what they do is put us in a situation of risk that individualises us, that distances us, that distances us from the other, the other becomes a threat. Not someone who is just as defenceless as me. (AR1)

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This is also evident in CR5’s discourse that, in addition to highlighting the community dimension of security, it establishes connections between the local and the global: ‘[I]t is like me to provide security to others. … At a personal level and at the level of humanity and the community’ (CR5). This series of evidence on the approach to human security—which integrates other dimensions, broadens the scope and establishes connections between the local and the global—illustrates how NCR is not only formally adapting to co-produce knowledge, but also transforming the approach itself. This transformation is theoretical, as it proposes a conceptualisation that goes beyond the definition proposed by UNDP, but also methodological, for proposing a strategy of co-production of knowledge from below, more horizontal, participatory and from the dialogue of knowledges between the communities and the university. Therefore, the participation of the CRs in the spaces promoted by the municipality could be understood simply as an adaptation strategy. However, they use these spaces to transform the concept of security in Medellín. From this understanding of epistemic resilience, the CRs are capable of not only adapting to the ways of producing knowledge that the municipality proposes with its participation instruments, but also of seeking to transform them through denunciation and political advocacy. From the two pieces of evidence raised, we can sustain a third piece of evidence related to transformation. The NCR experience aims to generate transformations from three perspectives: transforming the security approach in the city of Medellín, transforming the relations of community leaders with the university and transforming the territories they inhabit. The transformation of the security approach has already been addressed previously (second evidence). With regard to transforming the relations between community leaders and the university, the participation of the CRs in the NCR processes contributed to their claiming recognition of their work as subjects that produce knowledge in their territories and not only as ‘links’ between the university and the community: No, we must not consider ourselves, nor must we allow ourselves to be seen as these ‘links.’ That is where the concept of community researcher arises. Oh well, if the academy has its researchers, the community has its researchers too. And we investigate 24 hours. The academic investigates in a project or in an investigative process. We inhabit the territory 24 hours a day. (CR3)

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This testimony sheds light on the role of the CRs in the territories and together with the social groups they represent. In addition, this claim as a CR means that they are no longer treated as objects of study in research projects but are recognised as active subjects in the different processes of co-production of knowledge from below in which they participate inside and outside the network. This long-term and continuous participation in the NCR contributes to not only being recognised by the university as CRs, but this recognition is also transferred internally in the communities, as well as in spaces promoted by the municipality. Regarding the transformation of the territories, CR3 highlights that the role of the CRs is to be ‘that contributor to the transformation of a society’ (CR3). Furthermore, AR2 emphasises that CRs not only act individually but also seek to involve other people and groups: [A] leader is thinking about how to generate transformations. And they are thinking about these transformations from their individuality, as a citizen who is outraged, concerned and feels that this must be transformed. But, let’s say, they call on collectives or others who are going to help them bring about this transformation. (AR2)

This discourse allows us to affirm that epistemic resilience is produced from a series of actions that are promoted at a collective level and that aim to achieve transformation. This transformation is understood by CR3 as a long-term process: The transformation will not be in a month, in days, nor will we see it. But who is going to see it? This little boy who is growing up, my son, my grandson, and those who are to come. I do highlight it from this space [the participatory spaces in the NCR]. Each one of the leaders, even if it is in this little bunch, are doing things for transformation. (CR3)

From the previous testimony, it is clear that their current struggles and dreams are to achieve a better future for the next generations, evidencing the role of CRs as agents of change and social transformation in their territories. This is made explicit by CR3 itself with the following statement: So, oh well, if I stay still, my daughter won’t be able to have this opportunity because, in the end, we are a pebble on the road that we are bothering, bothering, and if I stay still it would be one less pebble. (CR3)

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However, from their responses, we can observe that this agency itself can contribute to increasing the exposure to risks and violence that they suffer due to the fact of being community leaders in these territories. This is the case of CR3, who, based on the interview, shares her situation of forced displacement to another slope due to threats and intimidation against her and her family. The denunciation and advocacy CRs carry out against the violations of human rights by the municipality and the security forces, as well as by the armed groups and drug traffickers that seek to control the slopes of Medellín, increase the violence and intimidation that CRs suffer in these spaces (for some examples, see Leivas et  al., 2022). Despite this violence and intimidation, the CRs continue to participate in the spaces of the municipality, in community organisations and in the NCR itself, seeking the transformation of their territories. The fourth piece of evidence is related to the capabilities that are expanded in the NCR and that contribute to getting closer to the concept of epistemic resilience. Forming and being part of the NCR contributes to the CRs being able to provide themselves with the collective knowledge, tools and practices to channel better their struggles at the community and organisational levels. According to AR3, the approach proposed by the NCR ‘is structured and strengthened from the academic point of view but allows for its application and realisation at the practical and community level’ (AR3). In this sense, CR3 stresses the importance of knowledge exchange and dialogue with ARs to share this knowledge and practices with people and community organisations: I have had the opportunity to share different scenarios from the academic point of view and I have convinced myself of the importance, even if we do not have a professional title, we have a title that is the university of the street. But we have to strengthen that degree with truly academic knowledge. Because then it is there where I collect the productive and beneficial aspects of an academic or a professional person. And I will be able to refute any type of argument. For me, this dialogue that I have been holding with the academy has been very, very, beneficial. Because I have convinced myself of the importance of empirical knowledge that life has historically placed on me, and how we combine it with academic knowledge. (CR3)

As evidenced, CR3 not only transforms and co-produces knowledge together with the ARs, but also appropriates academic knowledge to strengthen community discourses and disseminate them inside and in

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other participatory spaces. From this perspective, we understand that participation in the NCR spaces offers the opportunity to share political learning and transform it into collective learning that is produced from the articulation between the struggles and dreams of the transformation of the different CRs regarding the approach of citizen security. In this sense, CR3 emphasises that the diversity of practices and struggles of the CRs is what motivated them to be part of the NCR: So that was what pushed me a lot, a lot, to work in a network. Why? Because it would not only be the voice, let’s say, of the victims focused on the issue of human security. Rather, we are going to talk about the issue of human security from women, from young people, from children. … History is showing us that peace is not built with war and weapons. That this is an issue and this issue is to continue betting on social processes. (CR3)

Therefore, while implementing and building from practice an alternative narrative of human security, the diversity and multitude of experiences of community leaders are included. This is confirmed by the testimony of CR4: ‘Depending on the role of each leader, for example, there are leaders of the environment, leaders of the victims, and the role is the same: learn and replicate what has been learned.’ The same CR4 highlights that the lessons learned from participation in the NCR are related to human rights, disasters, victims, displaced persons, etc. In this way, it stands out that participation in the NCR offers the opportunity to: not only learn and replicate but also see what else we are going to manage and coordinate the group, what do you think? Because it’s not just me, me, I’m going to do it, but it’s also let’s coordinate and start looking at doing more together. (CR4)

In short, participation in the NCR contributes to the CRs learning from the collective, from other experiences, knowledge and practices. This learning from others and with others allows for weaving individual dreams and transforming them into collective dreams and utopias. In this sense, AR3 argues that the main challenge of the NCR is to: look at how to weave these particularities and those common issues with common strategies that, for this reason, we must continue to meet. … So how to find ourselves from the desire without budget … to build and to know and let’s say to weave what is the collective desire. (AR3)

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As AR3 emphasises, it is urgent to articulate and weave the collective struggles and dreams of the CRs, even without a budget assigned to a project. In this sense, she considers that the NCR should be a process self-­ managed by the CRs, independent of the economic resources promoted by the university, whose objective should be to fight and dream for a collective future that is reparative and that pursues human security in the city of Medellín.

Epistemic Resilience for Collective Utopia Epistemic resilience provides a category to be further explored in community resilience studies. Currently, the literature emphasises that community resilience is a process of adaptation and not a result of a public policy or the response of a community to a situation of stress or environmental disaster. On the other hand, although the literature mentions community knowledge, information and skills, communities are not recognised as producers of valuable knowledge for social and environmental transformation. However, we understand that this knowledge offers the opportunity for the communities themselves to transform the present and think about a different future from below. Based on the case study of the NCR, we find different types of collective learning that occur in the participation spaces promoted by the network which enable the dialogue of knowledges between academics and community leaders. These spaces make it possible to share the different struggles and practices from different spheres of political advocacy (children, women, Afro-descendants, etc.). In this way, collective learning is transformed into political learning that, returning to Freire, makes it possible to articulate dreams and utopias to move towards a reparative future—a future where security is focused on people as subjects who produce knowledge and who are recognised as agents of change and transformation. We argue that our approach to epistemic resilience offers elements for analysing other community experiences and their contributions to social and environmental transformation. In this chapter, we provided evidence that this transformation takes place from three perspectives. The first is transforming the relationships that are established between the communities and the university by recognising the people of the communities as knowledge-producing subjects. The second is redefining the concept of human security towards a comprehensive, multidimensional and people-centred approach, with a

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bottom-up, co-production methodological proposal. The final perspective is recognising the transforming role of community researchers in the territories they inhabit. However, this study also has limitations. The first is related to the fact that it is a case study focused on security policies in Colombia. Therefore, particular results related to security policies cannot be extrapolated to other contexts; yet, the knowledge co-production practices of the NCR provide new insights about the concept of epistemic resilience and about questioning how knowledge is mostly generated from academia. The second limitation has to do with the inductive-qualitative approach, since the fieldwork was carried out in 2018 and the questions asked in the interviews did not contemplate epistemic resilience. To overcome this limitation, a categorisation of what we understand by epistemic resilience has been carried out and, based on the testimonies, the discourses have been analysed to extract related evidence. Nevertheless, we believe that the testimonies offer powerful elements to illuminate the concept of epistemic resilience that we propose in this chapter. This approach to epistemic resilience allows us to rethink current knowledge co-production practices to achieve a reparative future that takes into account the different collective utopias. This paradigm shift poses a challenge for contemporary universities. On the one hand, they are called upon to understand the role of communities not as objects—avoiding academic extractivism—but as knowledge-producing subjects. On the other hand, they are invited to open up to new forms and methodological practices of co-production of knowledge from below that place the dreams and collective utopias of the communities at the centre. It is not simply a question of using participatory methodologies, but facilitating the research process to be emancipatory for the people and communities that participate. Therefore, this approach requires rethinking all stages of the research process, focusing decision-making and research questions on the struggles and dreams that pursue a more just and sustainable reparative future.

References Abello Colak, A.  A., & Pearce, J. (2009). ‘Security from below’ in contexts of chronic violence. IDS Bulletin, 40, 11–19. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1759-­5436.2009.00017.x Abello Colak, A., Hernández, C. B. E., Quintero, R. D. E., Gómez, R. H. C., Marín, S.  J. A., Montoya, C.  K., & Jiménez, L. (2014). Nuestras voces sobre

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Leivas, M., Fernández-Baldor, A., Maicas-Pérez, M., & Calabuig-Tormo, C. (2020). A Freirean approach to epistemic justice: Contributions of action learning to capabilities for epistemic liberation. In M. Walker & A. Boni (Eds.), Participatory research, capabilities and epistemic justice (pp. 89–114). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­56197-­0_4 Leivas, M., Boni, A., & Zuluaga, L. M. (2022). Capabilities for epistemic liberation: The case of hermeneutical insurrection of the network of community researchers in Medellin, Colombia. Journal of Global Ethics. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/17449626.2022.2079707 Medellín Cómo Vamos. (2021). Informe de Calidad de Vida de Medellín 2016–2019. Pobreza y Equidad. https://www.medellincomovamos.org/system/files/2023-­06/docuprivados/MCV%20ICV%202021.pdf. Accessed 19 Mar 2023. Medina, J. (2017). Varieties of hermeneutical injustice. In I. J. Kidd, J. Medina, & G. Pohlhaus (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice (pp. 41–52). Routledge. Norris, F.  H., Stevens, S.  P., Pfefferbaum, B., Wyche, K.  F., & Pfefferbaum, R.  L. (2008). Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41, 127–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-­007-­9156-­6 Ntontis, E., Drury, J., Amlôt, R., Rubin, G. J., & Williams, R. (2019). Community resilience and flooding in UK guidance: A critical review of concepts, definitions, and their implications. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 27(1), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-­5973.12223 Pearce, J., & Abello Colak, A. (2021). Humanizing security through action-­ oriented research in Latin America. Development and Change, 52, 1370–1395. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12689 Petro, G. (2023, March 7). Por una seguridad humana que se mida en vidas. https://gustavopetro.co/seguridad/. Accessed 15 Feb 2023. Pfefferbaum, B., Reissman, D., Pfefferbaum, R., Klomp, R., & Gurwitch, R. (2005). Building resilience to mass trauma events. In L. Doll, S. Bonzo, J. Mercy, & D.  Sleet (Eds.), Handbook on injury and violence prevention interventions (pp. 347–358). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Rincón, A. (2018). Abordajes teóricos sobre la relación entre seguridad ciudadana y violencia urbana en Colombia: Una lectura crítica. URVIO Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Seguridad, 22, 86–100. https://doi. org/10.17141/urvio.22.2018.3149 Sen, A. (1979). Sobre la desigualdad económica. Editorial Crítica. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford University Press. Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Ramos-Pinto, P. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education report.

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CHAPTER 5

Towards an Ubuntu and Capabilities-Based Conceptualisation of Sustainable Educational Futures in the South African University: Perspectives from Student Activists C. Martinez-Vargas, M. Mathebula, F. Mkwananzi, B. Kibona, T. Malatji, T. Mahlatsi, P. Mmula, N. Khoza, S. Nkosi, B. Ndimba, B. Oamen, A. Buthelezi, M. Maubane, Y. Ngwabeni, and S. Dlamini

C. Martinez-Vargas (*) Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK M. Mathebula • F. Mkwananzi • T. Malatji • T. Mahlatsi • P. Mmula • N. Khoza • S. Nkosi • B. Ndimba • B. Oamen • A. Buthelezi • M. Maubane • Y. Ngwabeni • S. Dlamini University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] B. Kibona CODESRIA, Dakar, Senegal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_5

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Introduction Building on student activists’ aspirations for a decolonial and sustainable university, this chapter focuses on the process and outcomes of exploring and negotiating the diverse worldviews and valued capabilities needed to conceptualise and achieve these aspirations. By so doing, the chapter builds on literature that makes a case for a ‘Pan-African approach to the contestation of institutional racism through an understanding of the collective experience of blackness and a consciousness of the impact of racism in contemporary historically white spaces’ (Kessi et al., 2021: 103). The chapter draws from the literature that theorises ways of undoing the damage done by colonial epistemic structures (Walker & Martinez-Vargas, 2022) and ontologies that perpetuate European memory as the basis for defining valued ways of being (and learning) in Africa (wa Thiong’o, 2004). The chapter moves away from prevalent Eurocentric and technocratic discourses that have articulated and dictated what sustainability in higher education should look like. These discourses are perpetuated in ways that have, for a long time, relativised and undermined African students’ perspectives and, more particularly, the views of African student activists. This, in our view, is a political and moral issue in current university systems in South Africa and beyond, possibly limiting the potential of universities to start bottom-up conversations with local stakeholder communities to conceptualise alternative views to educational systems and progress towards building more sustainable educational futures. The chapter thus moves towards an Afrocentric discourse on the future of higher education. We begin the discussion by situating the concept of sustainability in debates about the role of higher education in society. Thereafter we describe how our thinking is informed by the capability approach (Sen, 1999), which we apply alongside post-colonial and decolonial literature (Mbembe, 2021; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Fanon, 2008) to construct our conceptual framework. The methodological and empirical discussion that follows is based on a year-long participatory project involving a team of 12 student activists/co-researchers at a historically white university in South Africa. The process explored how a ‘sustainable university community’ could be conceptualised and what it might look like if rooted in our local cosmovisions and aspirations for the future of higher education in Africa. We then present what the research team understand and perceive as the central unfreedoms maintained and perpetuated by current university

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structures and cultures. The unfreedoms identified are not new for those familiar with the colonial history and context of South African higher education (Badat, 1999). They resonate with the findings of recent studies on university inequalities and their connection to colonial legacies in the country. We categorise the unfreedoms as operating across four levels (resource, structural, institutional and individual), which are connected in a complex network that mostly locks capabilities, rather than enabling them, although allowing for some agentic negotiations. This diagnosis allowed the team to identify major issues and situate our aspirations towards sustainable educational futures in an alternative view. Moreover, we aim to articulate these aspirations using a more expansive vocabulary rooted in our own cosmovisions—one that foregrounds capabilities, relationality, moral and intellectual reasoning, as well as community-building, as imperative to achieving sustainability in higher education. Having research team members from diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds (Eswatini, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Spain—all working or studying in South Africa) helped us guard against articulating aspirations that are ‘undercut by a narrowly nationalistic and re-racialising conceptualisation of the struggle to decolonise higher education’ (Majee & Ress, 2020: 476). This set the path for an aspirational basis in which to substantiate the capabilities necessary to promote a different university for the future. We conclude by presenting the ‘Ubuntu-Based Institutional Capabilities’ list which comprises nine central capabilities conceptualised by the research team during the participatory project. These institutional capabilities represent the freedoms that universities ought to protect for a more sustainable and decolonial university. The nine capabilities are: (1) unity capability, (2) humanising capability, (3) people-centredness capability, (4) transformational capability, (5) spatial freedom capability, (6) supportive academic capability, (7) accessibility capability, (8) inclusive learning capability and (9) healing and reparations capability. In different ways, these capabilities speak to and encourage principles and practices that inform post-colonial African ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s, such as humanism, Ujamaa, Pan-Africanism and African socialism (Mbongoma, 2018; Nyerere, 1962). We do not see these capabilities as final; instead, we see this list as an interconnected network of needs and unfreedoms presented in a capability framework that could be a starting point for policy discussions. This framework situates university students and, in this case, black student activists’ views at the centre of

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conceptualising and contributing to future higher education projects in ways that are more decolonial and sensitive to the dimensions of sustainability that are most important to them.

Sustainability in Higher Education: A Brief Contextualisation The Brundtland report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (1983) states that sustainability has three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. However, the relationship between these dimensions is often invisibilised due to literature focusing mainly on the environmental and economic sustainability of our institutions (Hudler et al., 2021). As Hudler et al. (2021) explain, an intersectional approach is essential for understanding the complexity of creating a future that ‘preserves’ the needs of future generations while ‘promoting’ the well-being of current ones (Hudler et al., 2021). In particular, international agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are identified as key promoters of the sustainable development agenda. It is not surprising, then, how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are being operationalised and pursued by universities around the world, not only having a lobbying task, but also a role as promoters to transform dynamics within the private sector and with other stakeholders to achieve particular SDGs and targets (Global Sustainable Development Report, 2019). This has led to sustainability becoming an important paradigm in the complex systems of universities (de la Harpe & Thomas, 2009; Karatzoglou, 2013; Ramos et al., 2015). During the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005–2014, education and learning were promoted as the basis for a more sustainable world, to embed sustainable development into all learning spheres, reorienting education and development initiatives that showcase the special role and contribution of education in pursuit of sustainable development (Tilbury & Mula, 2009). Whereas many Global North institutions demonstrated relevant interest in the DESD, the conceptual vagueness of sustainable development (Mebratu, 1998) and the diversity of responses to ESD did not engage all higher education policymakers or practitioners in the setting of this agenda (Lozano, 2013). This is not surprising, given that, when one zooms in on different

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understandings of sustainability in higher education beyond the 2030 agenda, something that seems obvious and easy to understand becomes complex and contested depending on each institution’s particular context and circumstances. As Leal Filho (2010) attests, ‘the principles of sustainable development are not universally understood’ even if global consensus can be reached. It is paramount, as Gomez-Trujillo (2021) reminds us, to practise the hermeneutics of suspicion (reading against the grain) and to consider that, in many cases, ‘the internationalisation process and the implementation of sustainability practices are manifestations of colonialism … which are not adjusted to their [our] local realities.’ This means there is room to think about sustainability not simply in terms of achieving balance across the three dimensions (social, environmental and economic), but to see it as a fluid concept that has been instrumental in promoting the idea that it is important for higher education institutions to develop socially, economically and environmentally conscious citizens. However, we know that the malleability of the concept means that it can be distorted by university administrators and public relations experts who redefine sustainability in order to ‘promote a carefully crafted public image that sanitises and obfuscates the very problems social sustainability initiatives seek to confront’ (Hudler et  al., 2021: 84). This can lead to various window-dressing exercises that make universities outwardly look ‘greener’ while they inwardly function in ways that are socially and economically (but also epistemically) unsustainable. A crucial aspect in ESD literature is the role that university students (in our case, activist students) play in shaping sustainability debates in the institutions to which they belong. Students are not at all the centre of these debates but rather are at the periphery as receivers of sustainability imperatives. In ESD literature in the higher education space, we see this in studies that explore integrating sustainable development into university curricula. For example, Lozano and Young (2013) focus on the teaching of sustainability as a concept and assess how well students understand the extent to which their decisions and actions affect the environment and society, aiming to increase consciousness in the student body. In contrast, Aznar Minguet et al. (2011) focus on the challenges lecturers experience when they try to implement changes in their curriculum, by introducing the concept of sustainability. Similarly, Junyent and Ciurana (2008) analyse how to train professionals who are critical about sustainability issues. What we learn from this literature is that, while it is important to prepare

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students as critical thinkers and critical citizens, it is equally important to understand their own perspectives on the meaning of sustainability, given the diverse worldviews and knowledges they bring and carry as members of educational communities. Overlooking student activist views on the sustainability agenda is, indeed, surprising considering the significant contribution that they have made to important debates in the last years, such as the #FeesMustFall protests which highlighted aspects of social and economic sustainability in South African higher education (Mathebula & Calitz, 2018). Another example is the attention activists like Greta Thunberg have brought to discussions on climate change mitigation and environmental sustainability. In this line, Bencze et al. (2012) remind us how important it is to foster and maintain activism on campuses as a tool for social change. However, as warned by Jacoby (2017), the challenge here is not to understand these activist students as just identifiers of the problem (as important as this might be), but as problem solvers who create what she refers to as ‘brave spaces’: where we can best help students as they deal with feelings of anger at the injustices they see and the negative reactions they may receive from administrators and parents. It is in an atmosphere of trust where we can encourage students to persevere in spite of their frustration with the glacial pace of change. It is here where we can support students who feel helpless in the face of pervasive injustices and guilt that they cannot do enough. (Jacoby, 2017: 6)

Therefore, we see student activism as critical to bringing knowledge from below, rooted in resistance against hegemonic and dehumanising forces, and as a contribution to engage in old debates with new perspectives and visions about sustainable educational futures. This view is particularly important where students’ discontent and ‘criminalisation’ of student activism by university managers are recurring issues on South African university campuses (Xaba, 2017). Thus, in this chapter, we focus on two questions that we explored in our participatory project with 12 student activists/co-researchers at a South African university: (1) What is a sustainable university community according to student activists? and (2) Which capabilities and functionings are considered by these students as necessary to promote a more sustainable university community?

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We were interested in harnessing student activists’ knowledge and experiences to bring these into conversations which can inspire new imaginings for a more sustainable university. The participatory process, which yielded (among other things) individually produced digital stories and collectively produced participatory videos, shows what can be achieved when students are provided with a platform and tools to articulate aspirations for educational futures in their own terms and frames. We thus agree with decolonial and post-colonial scholars in paying attention to the geopolitics of Global North aspirations and the need to contextualise sustainability discourses through activists’ voices and experiences.

The Capability Approach and African Perspectives: Our Theoretical Basis To inform our decolonial epistemological and normative perspective, we worked towards a nuanced conceptual framework rooted in the ideas promoted in the African moral philosophy of Ubuntu and shaped by the capability approach. We prioritised the South African context and aligned our perspective with frameworks that might be better able to understand not only the complexities of where we are situated, but also the diversity brought in by the range of places our research team comes from. Our decolonial positionality guides us towards a relational ontological starting point, where we draw assumptions about the colonial power imbalances in our world (Mbembe, 2021) and in educational contexts (Dejaeghere, 2020). We do not presume that this positionality is final, nor do we essentialise the idea of Northern versus Southern or Eurocentric versus Afrocentric epistemes. But we understand that African worldviews and knowledges are marginalised. And we understand that African higher education institutions do not play an even game regarding knowledge production and the setting of global agendas, nor in their own determination. They have to negotiate local and global tensions and priorities in creative ways that allow moving towards what might not be the perfect solution, but often the less damaging way forward (Walker & Martinez-­ Vargas, 2022). Equally, at the agentic level, we do not assume that every African/black student or student activist shares the same concerns, or is constrained at the same level or by the same forces. Instead, we see them as being in constant negotiations, whether dealing with internal struggles in their

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unique institutional contexts (e.g., tribalism within universities), oppressive external structures (e.g., racist institutional cultures) or personal/ embodied identity issues (e.g., identity transitions and self-identifications) (Mahmood, 2011 Kirman & Teschl, 2006). As such, we try not to essentialise a fixed African identity. For this reason, reflections on the meaning of being black and on ways to negotiate ‘blackness’ and ‘Africanness’ in a historically white institution were important to us. Drawing on the work of Hungwe and Mkhize (2022: 138), we agreed that coming from Africa gives some shared lived experiences that inform a constructive worldview, cultural identity and daily practices which form our values, beliefs and aspirations for the future of universities on the continent, based on contextual circumstances. This follows our experiences in the South African higher education context and the tensions of functioning in a racially shaped context (Paul, 2009). For these reasons, the African moral philosophy of Ubuntu and the political ideology that underpins Pan-Africanism and humanism are starting points of aspirations to react against structures of oppression, at the same time as there is a desire to belong in the global economy and defend our economic freedoms in a system that might diminish our own internal identifications (Werbner, 2015). Therefore, given these complexities, our aim is not only to explain an intersectional and complex view of sustainability, but also to articulate an evaluative framework that helps us understand our positionality’s shortcomings and its associated aspirations. For this, we use the capability approach as conceptualised by Amartya Sen (1999, 2009) and developed by other scholars in the field (Dejaeghere, 2020; Kirman & Teschl, 2006; Nussbaum, 2011; Robeyns, 2017). The approach allows us to capture the messiness of student activists’ ethical, political and practical worldviews and aspirations of a sustainable higher education system, capturing fluidity and negotiations in their identities, aspirations and praxis. First, we use capabilities to refer to ‘real freedoms’ or effective opportunities available for a specific community or individual, together with functionings such as ‘achieved outcomes’ or realised capabilities (Sen, 1999). In this case, choices and freedoms to choose are central to the determination of oppression, as they are determined by what we call conversion factors enabling or disabling opportunities (Drydyk, 2021). Moreover, choices are mediated by personal and social influences that simultaneously influence aspirations for the future.

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In combining both positionalities (African orientations, the capability approach from a relational ontology which is aligned with ideas of Ubuntu), we are cognisant of the many critiques of the capability approach with regard to its limitations to consider sufficiently collectives, historical accounts of inequalities and the perpetuation of individualism (Hoffmann & Metz, 2017; O’Hearn, 2009). However, we believe that placing the capability approach in an African and relational ontological perspective minimises the acritical and blind ethical point of reference of the approach, as will be shown in our analysis (Dejaeghere, 2020). That is, students’ capabilities are not separate from those of their institutions and local communities and we ought to pay attention to their relations more than to themselves as isolated elements. This is corroborated by Stewart and Deneulin (2002) who say that it is important that we acknowledge the role of ‘structures of living together’ as enabling or constraining forces. In other words, it is about assessing valued capabilities and understanding enabling structures of living together that are intrinsically and instrumentally valuable to promote local well-being, in this case paying attention to the constant negotiations and conditions between students and their institutions. Therefore, we use the capability approach as an epistemological ground to assess students’ opportunities, using our theoretical positionality (relational ontology) to give sense to the role these structures of living together have to shape enabling or constraining spaces (often simultaneously), which makes explicit our ethical standpoint and moral imperatives towards sustainable educational futures.

Research Design and Methodology We situate the research under a participatory paradigm (Heron & Reason, 1997) to reshape research positionalities between researchers and participants in order to foster epistemic freedoms (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). We worked continuously over 12 months with 12 activists from different student organisations at the institution where we work and live. We worked to solidify these relations of mutual learning, respect and collective agency as guiding principles. However, we were conscious of the impossibility of completely removing power imbalances within the team. Hence, we established a partnership with the leaders and members of these different student organisations and formed a dynamic (although imperfect)

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transdisciplinary and diverse research team, where all project participants were considered co-researchers. Methodologically, the project drew on principles from community-­ based participatory research, participatory action research and indigenous research as much as possible from inception to the end of the project (Ninomiya & Pollock, 2017; Vaughn et al., 2017). This, for us, did not mean a perfect operationalisation but rather a more equal negotiation with many unforeseen challenges along the way. Thus, instead of assigning a particular name to our research design, we focused on applying participatory principles in organic and intuitive ways, as Martinez-Vargas (2022) argues. It was a commitment to continuous negotiations of the project with our partners/allies and the preservation of the ongoing deliberative space and sharing responsibilities as subjects and objects of the study simultaneously (Kemmis et al., 2013). Our research project was divided into six phases that were subjected to modifications during the project. These were: • Phase 0: Pre-implementation, co-design and baselines • Phase 1: Negotiation and take-off • Phase 2: Internal exploration and first discussion cycle • Phase 3: Articulation of ecology of knowledges • Phase 4: Story production • Phase 5: Dissemination and action plan • Phase 6: Final engagement and collective evaluation Our first steps were addressing what we referred to as the internal research questions through workshops (individual reflections, group discussions and debate) to develop our individual digital stories and the collective participatory videos. Various analysis procedures were employed at different stages of the project. For example, to analyse the transcripts from the workshop discussions, we applied a combination of reflexive thematic analysis alongside the capability approach as a conceptual map. This process was collective and iterative. As project investigators, we reviewed the transcripts first and then presented our analysis to the student co-­ researchers for their input at workshops. We then edited what we presented to them during the workshops, based on their feedback, questions and suggestions. If co-editing was not possible during the workshops, we consolidated transcripts that captured responses to the internal research questions and sent the first drafts to the whole group to ask for

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contributions or edits after the workshop. All drafting of responses to the various research questions was done on a shared online document that was open for editing to everyone on the team during the duration of the project. For the digital stories and participatory video, we were able to facilitate joint reflections and group discussions on the themes, narratives and key arguments. We achieved this through a step-by-step procedure of watching the drafts videos together, and having discussions in between the revisions and editing process, and then watching the final videos together, which again was followed by a discussion. These discussions were also recorded and transcribed. We began the reflexive thematic analysis procedure working across all transcripts (43 in total) in December 2022 using a collaborative online platform to expand our findings. As mentioned earlier, for the purposes of this chapter, we focus on just two internal research questions from the project, namely to (1) unpack what a sustainable university community is according to the student activists we worked with, and (2) identify the capabilities and functionings that are necessary to promote such a sustainable university community.

From Educational Unfreedoms to a Definition of Universities as Sustainable Communities Before exploring the definition of a sustainable university community as conceptualised by the research team, we would like to start by discussing unfreedoms which limit the potential of a sustainable university or what student activists called an ‘Ubuntu-oriented’ institution, as identified through the different participatory workshops. We identified four connected categories or levels of unfreedom: • Resource unfreedoms (lack of/limited or maldistribution of resources) • Structural unfreedoms (systemic racism within and beyond the university) • Institutional unfreedoms (morally/ethically questionable values and predispositions, leading to inequitable institutional outcomes in our university) • Individual-level unfreedoms (limited opportunities to embody a sense of belonging)

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Working from these unfreedoms, we discussed how they could be overcome. In imagining the opposite—a sustainable university community that enables freedoms across these levels—the students placed Ubuntu and ‘Ukuphilisana’ (to heal each other; to live with each other) at the centre of discussions. They highlighted the centrality of values that gives primacy not only to humanising practices, as imperfectly practised within their families and communities to overcome extreme colonial and apartheid legacies, but also new local constraints aiming to impact inner and outer representations of well-being. Thus, they defined their ‘sustainable/ Ubuntu university community’ as follows: This is a university that generally processes and produces results that meet the values of humanity and society while making the best use of resources at their disposal (Ubuntu Governance). The processes of an Ubuntu-centered university would include equitable access to university (without discrimination on the grounds of race, disability, gender, or socio-economic background). This would mean equitable access to knowledge, university facilities and resources. This university should have an ongoing transformation towards bettering humanity (Ubuntu) in which issues on diversity, solidarity, inclusion, social justice and UNITY are constantly negotiated. In other words, the university should be flexible, agile, and versatile in terms of how it responds to issues related to fees, governance and management, teaching and learning, as well as the support it provides to students and staff.

At a surface level, this definition is similar to what can be found on university websites and statements against inequalities on their campuses. However, we think the operationalisation of these goals and values is different to how universities currently operationalise their objectives. This is because the students’ view is fundamentally based on the African moral philosophy of Ubuntu, as opposed to being strongly informed by neoliberal values and Western morality. In Ubuntu, morality is relational in the sense that the only way to develop one’s humanness is to relate to others in constructive ways. This, equally, implies that one can only become a dignified person through developing other persons, which means one cannot realise their moral self or moral goodness in isolation from or in conflict or competition with others (Metz & Gaie, 2010). According to Ubuntu, our deepest moral obligation is to become more fully human, and achieving this necessitates entering more sincerely into community with others instead of exploiting or being unjust towards them (Metz & Gaie, 2010; Le Grange, 2012). The African morality espoused in Ubuntu

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differs from Western moral philosophy and praxis in that it defines positive relationship with others in communal terms (Metz & Gaie, 2010). We know that common themes in Western moral philosophy include respecting individual human rights grounded on consent, political participation or maximising general welfare, whereas the ideal way to relate to others, according to Ubuntu, is to seek out community with them (Metz & Gaie, 2010). Therefore, the humanness referred to in Ubuntu finds expression in communal contexts (while not eschewing the person, see Molefe, 2016) rather than in contexts where individualism is most valued. For example, the individualism valued in universities leans towards Western and neoliberal values that are often at odds with the ideas of Ubuntu (Le Grange, 2012; Venter, 2004). That is, the emphasis on individual excellence commonly praised and rewarded in academia encourages a competitive stance that pushes students to see each other as opponents in the process of learning and acquiring a degree, instead of viewing each other as learning partners who belong and make valuable contributions to the same community. We also know that black students, particularly those from low socio-­ economic backgrounds in South Africa, value and practise Ubuntu, and that they benefit from doing so with regard to learning and developing a sense of belonging and a healthy sense of ‘self’ in university (Walker et al., 2022). The student activists we worked with are aware of this, which is why they envision and propose an Ubuntu framework as a guiding path–as a moral imperative for promoting the idea of learning in community. For them, this idea of a cooperative learning community goes against the individualism and competitiveness, as well as the economically driven nature, of current universities.

Sustainable Higher Education Futures: Ubuntu-­Based Institutional Capabilities Working with this broad definition of a sustainable/Ubuntu university community, the team narrowed down particular capabilities which should be considered a necessary guide to institutions. Similar to Nussey et  al. (2022: 102), we propose what can be considered ‘university capabilities’ which embed ‘the choices, abilities and opportunities universities have to advance a particular set of outcomes.’ These university capabilities, thus, highlight the importance of ‘resources, systems, relationships, values and

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organizational culture’ to promote these sustainable educational futures in a different kind of praxis, differentiated to individualist worldviews. The team identified nine central university capabilities: 1. Unity capability: Being a multi-epistemic, multicultural, multiracial, multilingual institution 2. Humanising capability: Respecting every member of the community and preserving and maintaining the dignity of its community, promoting tolerance and acceptance 3. People-centredness capability: Appreciating human diversity, especially with regard to a not-for-profit-centred institution 4. Transformational capability: An institution that is fluid, moves along quickly and evolves with societal needs, especially at the local level 5. Spatial freedom capability: Making every member of the community feel as belonging in the space; making sure you feel part of the institution, feel safe and have a safe space to be an activist; promoting a sense of being at home in the institution 6. Supportive academic capability: Providing adequate learning support for every student 7. Accessibility capability: Promoting equal and reasonable fees for all (i.e., many students can afford fees); being able to access ‘free and adequate’ resources like facilities (e.g., sport), spaces, information, knowledge, technological resources, academic resources; being able to make use of the institutional resources efficiently 8. Inclusive learning capability: Being able to learn about our interests and indigenous knowledge; being able to choose your mode of teaching and learning given the particular needs of students (blended, online or physical); being able to adapt to diverse learning from students (i.e., students with disabilities or different learning needs) 9. Healing and reparations capability: Being able to critically understand the historical/contemporary inequalities that the institution and local communities have sustained and maintained; providing spaces to heal and develop reparation measures, not only at the physical, intellectual or academic levels but also at emotional and spiritual levels. We see these capabilities (freedoms) interacting in different ways and as a response to the various unfreedoms described earlier. We cluster the nine capabilities in relation to where they fit into four levels or categories of unfreedoms, namely, resource, structural, institutional and individual. In

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doing so, we map a capabilities framework which is interconnected at the meta and micro levels, with both levels (inner and outer) interacting to create sustainable uptake conditions for students to function in university spaces, both individually and collectively in a relational ontology. The first cluster is a trio of capabilities that we classify as resource-­ dependent, in that they are the most reliant on and determined by having access to material resources—both monetary and epistemic—which are distributed unequally, in part due to colonial and neoliberal legacies that keep social and epistemic injustices in place. We thus see (6) supportive academic, (7) accessibility and (8) inclusive learning as corresponding with resource unfreedoms. The second cluster is a quartet of capabilities we classify as norm-­ dependent, as they speak to institutional values, moral imperatives and the normative predispositions that need to be in place to challenge universities to be agile in responding to change, particularly in relation to aligning with Ubuntu values. We thus see the (1) unity, (2) humanising, (3) people-­ centredness and (4) transformational capabilities as corresponding with institutional unfreedoms. The final cluster of two capabilities are grouped as structure-­dependent, as they are capabilities that students described as most directly affected by systemic racism which not only affects black students’ sense of belonging within universities, or the extent to which they feel supported, but also disregards the historical and contemporary inequalities that universities maintain. We thus see (5) spatial freedom capability and (9) healing and reparations capability as corresponding with structural unfreedoms (Fig. 5.1). The clustering is not neat, or fixed, but none of the capabilities can be realised without the norm-dependent and resource-dependent capabilities interacting with the structure-dependent capabilities in order to unlock the individual-level unfreedom of enacting lasting change in how knowledge is acquired and shared in universities and how their sense of ‘self’ and identity is confirmed and aligned in a relational ontology between structure and agency. Therefore, sustainability for educational futures in South Africa, and as seen by these students, pertains greatly to connecting institutions’ resources and implicit normative frameworks with local communities’ ways of living, being and fighting inequalities, through Ubuntu-based predispositions at the structural and agentic levels. It has to do with the analysis of the real capabilities that universities can offer as enabling

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INSTITUTIONAL MORAL IMPERATIVES

LOCAL VALUES

HE ASPIRATIONS

ECONOMIC FACILITIES

RESOURCES

Responsibility transfer

AVAILABLE RESOURCES Uni. EF

STUDENTS CAPABILITIES SPACE

Gov. EF

UNIVERSITY CAPABILITIES SPACE

-Unity capability -Humanising capability -People-centredness capability -Transformational capability

ACHIEVED FUNCTIONINGS

AVAILABLE CAPABILITIES Choice -Supportive academic capability -Accessibility capability -Inclusive learning capability

-Spatial freedom capability -Healing and reparations capability

Fig. 5.1  Ubuntu-based institutional capabilities for sustainable higher education (HE) futures. (Source: Authors)

‘structures of living together’ in deprived and post-colonial contexts such as in South Africa and their interaction with who students are and who they aspire to be through education. This does not imply a paternalistic view of the university, but rather a responsible, accountable and solidary positionality negotiating the structural power that the institution holds as a key actor within these communities. Importantly, the invisibility of these students’ positionality in regard to environmental concerns is noteworthy. Even though this aspect was not central to our discussions, only one student was involved in permaculture communities and was concerned with environmental challenges; it is indeed part of the bigger picture. We believe student activists have good reasons to give some urgency and moral concerns about the primary well-­ being of other community members, given the instrumental role of these architectonic capabilities in determining other freedoms. It is not surprising for those on the ground to prioritise key needs regarding access and the constant negation of educational freedoms when universities have the power to interfere and prompt the expansion of future economic freedoms (Walker, 2006). That is why we see environmental sustainability as a latent absence obscured by the urgency of palliating the economic and social dimensions of sustainability in the university context.

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Conclusion Despite its complexities, sustainability has become imperative for higher education institutions around the world. In this chapter, we have focused on two main aspects: exploring the unfreedoms identified by student activists and their definition of a sustainable educational university, and exploring this definition into a series of capabilities necessary to promote this kind of institution. The findings highlight several issues. First, it corroborates Hudler et  al.’s (2021: 81) argument about the lack of deep engagement with social sustainability issues as hampering the advancement of other sustainability dimensions. Secondly, this will address issues on ‘equity in the structures … systems, and relationships that support healthy and safe communities to improve the quality of life for all members.’ It is about prioritising ‘universal accessibility, employment opportunities and the availability of social support systems’ (Hudler et al., 2021: 81). Protecting these fundamental freedoms as accessibility and transformational capabilities for the university community, will establish adequate grounds to achieve further functionings and enhance capabilities that are situated at other levels and, at the moment, obstructed by colonial, apartheid and neoliberal legacies and frameworks. Thirdly, while activist students might have been seen as aggressive, relentless or irrational in the South African context, we believe conversations are needed as they are important actors connected to the immediate needs of our university community. They are intrinsic supporters of a sustainable education, as Bencze et al. (2012) assert. South African universities ought to rethink their role in criminalising the grassroots movement within their campuses, jeopardising social and economic sustainability debates. We believe that establishing and reinforcing long-term relationships of trust and collaboration as allies and not as rivals are critical. Both institutions and students want to advance local well-being and sustainability even if they support divergent ‘structures of living together’ that benefit different collectives and achieve dissimilar aims. Displaying honestly implicit assumptions and recognising the shortcomings of both positionalities (a purely Ubuntu-driven community from students’ perspectives and often too economically driven imperatives supported by the institution) are part of the entanglement that needs to be critically, openly and honestly analysed from both sides. The ultimate aim is to protect their local communities and institutions from further pervasive deprivation and to reshape their future sustainable agreements.

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To conclude, this analysis and discussion cannot be seen in isolation or unconnected from larger sustainability debates, as we have tried to present in this chapter. In Mbembe’s terms, we can see this analysis as a ‘particular fold, or twist, in the undulating fabric of the universe,’ but this is part of a ‘set of continuous topological folds of the whole [which] need to be connected, elastic and in continuous stretching and even distortion, because they are never final’ (Mbembe, 2021: 89). In this ongoing and fluid process, we hope to have contributed to enhancing the possibility of an uncertain, yet dialogic, view of a more sustainable future for higher education in Africa.

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CHAPTER 6

Fostering a Reparative International Development Cooperation System: Transformative Learning in a Master’s Degree in Development Cooperation Carlos Delgado-Caro, Carola Calabuig-Tormo, and Marta Maicas-Pérez

Introduction The international development cooperation system includes a set of actors, policies, agendas, instruments, and actions that have had, since its formation in the mid-twentieth century, an interest in eradicating poverty and inequality in the world through targeted financial flows aimed at promoting ‘development.’ These aspirations, which arise from the community of donor countries with the greatest relative wealth at the time and driven by diverse interests (Gulrajani & Calleja, 2021), have projected an idea of justice anchored in humanism with a universalist vocation from the perspective and viewpoint of the West (Sriprakash et al., 2020).

C. Delgado-Caro (*) • C. Calabuig-Tormo • M. Maicas-Pérez INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), València, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_6

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In this chapter, we explore the potential to foster an alternative view of development, more inclusive, using the case of the master’s degree in development cooperation of the Universitat Politècnica de València (MDC-UPV) in Spain. We examine two educational proposals: action learning (AL) and external internships (EI). The relationship between transformative and restorative learning due to the expansion of capabilities in the students of the MDC-UPV can be a first step to inclusive forms of development. Mezirow’s theory (1990, 1997, 2003, 2006) can find in the capability approach (Sen, 1999, 2009; Nussbaum, 2001) a proposal to re-evaluate the results of these learning processes and expand their impact. Thus, the experience produces ‘some stability’ to ‘survive disorientation,’ as Lange (2004: 122) claims, and allows future development cooperation professionals to imagine and create a restorative future in this field (Sriprakash, 2022). We first present the current landscape of the development cooperation system and the MDC-UPV. In the next section, we describe the theoretical framework built for this case with the elements that link reparative futures, the capability approach, and transformative learning. It is followed by a section describing the pedagogical proposals (AL and EI) and the methodology. Then, the learning outcomes, the expanded capabilities, and their effect as restorative learning are discussed. Finally, the main conclusions are provided.

The Development Cooperation System Given the absence of voice and participation, the cooperation system has evolved over the last 70  years towards greater consideration, at least in rhetoric, of the ‘recipients’ of aid in policy dialogue and concrete actions. The aid effectiveness agenda has contributed to this by attempting to overcome the numerous malfunctions identified in the system: the atomisation of interventions, lack of partner leadership, lack of aid predictability, questionable impact, the existence of donor interests, etc. (Eyben, 2015; Riddell, 2014; Unceta Satrustegui et al., 2021). Although these attempts have resolved some shortcomings, they have avoided issues that we consider essential from a truly transformative social and environmental justice approach. One of the main criticisms is the managerialist and technocratic approach that permeates the guidelines and actions (Shutt, 2015). These criticisms highlight the absence of a political approach in the cooperation system, essential to fight the root causes that

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generate exclusion, poverty, and inequality. The 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as guidelines approved by the international community are criticised for overlooking issues such as redistribution of power (Spangenberg, 2017). From this perspective, top-down projects and policies and system managerialism (among other elements) have deliberately denied the existence of various forms of domination in the past, such as colonialism and racism, in pursuit of a vision and understanding of development that, in turn, consciously or unconsciously, continues to reproduce them. As Sriprakash et  al. (2020: 4) point out, the policies, projects, and practices of the aid system have been based on intellectual theories with an imperialist and racialised teleological matrix based on a partial understanding of the world that has understood that change and evolution should be inspired by European modernity. The system has also been questioned for decades due to the incoherence of implementing development cooperation policies that correct or solve the problems. Some authors point out that the same countries and societies of the Global North are producing the situation they want to solve with their modus operandi within the framework of a dominant capitalist and developmentalist model (Belda-Miquel et  al., 2019). We are talking about models of production and consumption that generate exclusion, dispossession, plundering, violation of rights, pollution, environmental damage, reinforcement of patriarchal, racist and xenophobic structures, etc. These criticisms, connected to the previous ones, are ultimately intended to highlight the ontological source of the issue: the notion of progress from an anthropocentric viewpoint. Its form of expansion has been the multiple labels of the concept of development and the capitalist model for the economy (Recio Andreu, 2021). As Recio Andreu expressed, capitalist societies have a foundational history of colonialism and accumulation that is inevitably present in international development cooperation. In this sense, and based on a strong critique, terms such as ‘anti-­ cooperation’ (Llistar Bosch, 2009) or ‘post-development cooperation’ have been proposed, which move from understanding the cooperation system as useless and counterproductive to deconstructing the imaginary and unlearning the traditional North–South and unsustainable ways of understanding cooperation in line with proposals of a de-growth nature (Marcellesi, 2012). Concerning what we want to present in this chapter, to put it in dialogue with a concrete experience developed in higher education, we would

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agree with all the criticisms that identify the predominant apolitical character of the traditional development cooperation system (Carothers & de Gramont, 2013). We agree with the views that recognise the existence of multiple power relations and oppressions resulting from the Western supremacy that has dominated (and continues to dominate) this system. However, we believe that it is not enough only to recognise these injustices (social, environmental, epistemological), rather we need to move towards a truly reparative international development cooperation system that repairs in an exercise of true healing. This would involve changes in discourses and practices of a multi-level, transdisciplinary, and multi-actor nature, especially including the educational and pedagogical dimension, as proposed by Sriprakash et al. (2020).

The UPV Master’s Degree in Development Cooperation The MDC-UPV is an official two-year master’s degree offered by the Universitat Politècnica de València since 2010. In this way, it has a previous trajectory of more than a decade of training in the field. Over all these years, it has been characterised by applying a critical vision of the orthodox cooperation system. Its contents, structure, and methodologies are based on environmental and social justice ideals and innovative teaching-­learning methodologies. The MDC-UPV is aimed at people from different backgrounds and geographical origins who wish to focus their field of work or academic discipline on development cooperation and human and sustainable development processes. In this sense, the student body is characterised by its intergenerational, cultural, and multidisciplinary diversity (Leivas et al., 2019), although the teaching staff is not. It should be noted that its gestation and evolution over the years have resulted from participatory reflections involving not only the teaching staff but also the students themselves and organisations in the sector (Boni Aristizábal et al., 2017). Some of its fundamental pillars are participation, the local–global vision, the critical vision with a will to transform, and the care approach. As Delgado et al. (2022) describe, during the first year, students learn and reflect on global inequalities, discuss orthodox development theories, learn about approaches such as the capability approach, and understand the development cooperation system and its controversies. In the second

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part of the first year, students learn approaches, methodologies, and techniques for research, project management, and planning development processes. During this semester, AL takes place, moving the classrooms to the neighbourhood during the last weeks of the semester. In the second year, students carry out their internships (international or local) and complete their thesis. The MDC-UPV aims to contribute to the development of practitioners who are capable of being agents of change in their environment and at an international level. This transformative approach is based on reflective practice (Eyben, 2014) and the so-called critical practice (Pellicer-Sifres et al., 2015), especially in the non-formal and informal learning spaces. Furthermore, beyond providing specialised training in the management of development cooperation projects (in which it is valued for its particular expertise), the MDC-UPV is recognised for its critical approach to the notion of development and the international cooperation system, highlighting the root causes of injustice and inequality. Over time, the MDC-­ UPV has progressively incorporated a decolonial perspective, together with a strong sustainability perspective, a sense of social and environmental justice, and a rights-based approach, among other elements. In this way, the MDC-UPV confronts many tensions, given the managerialist and bureaucratised context in which it is inserted, both at the university level and with regard to Valencian cooperation (Belda-Miguel et  al., 2019). There are also internal tensions due to the different conceptual frameworks that exist, both in the teaching staff and in the students (Boni Aristizábal et al., 2017). Regarding the authors of this chapter, Carlos Delgado and Marta Maicas have themselves been students on the MDC-UPV, as well as teacher collaborators, and in the case of Marta, assisting with the work in the technical secretariat. Carola Calabuig has been a teacher at MDC-­ UPV since its inception and has been its academic director since 2016. We would like to highlight the authors’ relationship with the MDC-UPV and the development cooperation sector in the Valencian and Spanish territory to make visible their involvement. What is expressed in this analysis cannot deny the subjectivity, possible biases, and emotional involvement inherent to the study. However, this relationship also shows the involvement and commitment of the authors to take a self-critical look, recognise the starting points, unlearn where necessary, and rethink the contents and pedagogical approaches of the MDC-UPV from a transformative approach.

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Theoretical Framework Reparative Futures The concept of reparation has been widely discussed. Many scholars and activists have written extensively about reparation in various fields, including history, law, sociology, and political science. Reparation refers to making amends for harm or damage caused to someone or a group of people, restoring justice and addressing historical injustices and inequalities. The aim of reparations is to acknowledge and address past harms, promote reconciliation and healing, and prevent future injustices. However, while reparation might be seen as backwards looking in its attention to past and present injustice, it is also approached as a reconstructive future-facing agenda (Táíwò, 2022  in Sriprakash, 2022). Indeed, reparations trouble the idea that we have to go on as we have (Sriprakash, 2022). The term ‘reparative futures’ is especially relevant in the context of social justice and equity. It implies that, instead of simply trying to prevent or remedy existing problems, efforts should be made to create a future that addresses the root causes of problems and promotes justice and equity. Various feminist, queer, and postcolonial historiographic projects have sought to return and rethink elided subjectivities, histories, and possibilities for our understanding of the past (Chambers-Letson, 2006). In the UNESCO report, Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education (2021), it was established that cooperation and solidarity are crucial axes that will shape education in the future. The report outlines the principles of pedagogies based on cooperation and solidarity, which must be rooted in non-discrimination, respect for diversity, and reparative justice. These pedagogies should be participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intercultural in order to promote lifelong learning. Sriprakash et al. (2020: 2) suggest that reparative futures can be a ‘generative basis for knowledge and learning not only in formal educational institutions, but in community organisations, workplaces and in all sites of cultural exchange.’ They highlight the need to acknowledge and seek justice for enduring racial and colonial histories. They argue for the importance of historical thinking in shaping future-oriented policies in education and propose that critical practices of historical thinking and anti-racist education are foundational to imagining and realising just futures. Sriprakash (2022) points out that reparation is a yet under-researched

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orientation to justice in education. Following the work of critical theorists and transitional justice scholars, she stated that reparative futures of education ‘should approach reparations as a broader political agenda for collective justice’ (2022: 6). She explores the material, epistemic, and pedagogic approaches to reparations in education. To do so, she has proposed the articulation of reparative pedagogies concerning material and epistemic reparation. Reparative pedagogies refer to teaching approaches that aim to acknowledge and address the wounds, injuries, and suffering experienced by individuals or groups while recognising the historical context of violence, oppression, and social injustice (Zembylas, 2017). These pedagogies strive to avoid the pitfall of sentimentalism and instead provide a framework for healing and meaningful transformation. Sriprakash et  al. (2019) point out that international development, together with education, continues to fail to substantively engage with the production and effects of racial domination across its domains of research, policy, and practice. They suggest that racism is often ignored or erased in teaching and research in favour of technocratic approaches to development, which not only overlook the sector’s historical connections to systems of racial domination but also perpetuate unequal outcomes along racial lines. In addition, they argue that the dominant discourse of contemporary educational development, framed as the ‘global learning crisis,’ operates as a racial project by legitimising and reinforcing certain responses to the crisis. Finally, we highlight the non-neutrality of education and development which can reproduce various systems of domination, as pointed to by intersectional studies, including racism, patriarchy, classism, and colonialism. Understanding that these systems are co-constitutive, it is crucial to recognise and address them by approaching reparations as a broader political agenda for collective justice in education and human development. In conclusion, the concept of reparative futures is essential in shaping a just and equitable future. Efforts should be made to acknowledge and address past and present injustices, promote healing and reconciliation, and prevent future injustices. This requires a participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intercultural approach to education that is grounded in non-discrimination, respect for diversity, and reparative justice. Reparative pedagogies play a crucial role in this approach, aiming to acknowledge and address wounds, injuries, and suffering while recognising the historical context of violence, oppression, and social injustice.

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Capability Approach for Human Development The capability approach (Nussbaum, 2001; Sen, 2009) is a normative framework introduced by the economist, Amartya Sen, and expanded by the philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. From a multi-dimensional perspective, it can help to conceptualise human well-being, justice, and development. It has mainly been used in fields such as development, economic analysis, social policy, and political philosophy, but it is versatile for using in other areas, such as education (Boni Aristizábal et  al., 2010; Leivas et  al., 2020; Mtawa & Nkhoma, 2020; Walker, 2012, 2019; Walker & Unterhalter, 2007); policy (Bonvin & Orton, 2009; Laruffa, 2020); and sustainability (Kronlid & Lotz-Sisitka, 2014; Pelenc & Ballet, 2015). Thus, its application goes from philosophical and theoretical contributions to practical applications in empirical cases (Robeyns, 2005). The central concept of the approach is capabilities, understood as ‘what people are capable of doing or being in an effective way’ and what, ‘upon reflection, they value’ (Robeyns, 2005: 94). Nussbaum (2001: 33) affirms that ‘justice takes priority in social reflection.’ Within this definition is the essence of the meaning of capabilities and the way they arose. First, it must be something that the person is capable of doing or being effectively; that is, the capacity to do or be must be able to be completed with an action or state in the context to which the person belongs (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2001). Furthermore, it must be something upon which the person has reflected. This reflection requires that people have been able to dedicate time to think about it both individually and collectively through democratic dialogue (Sen, 2009). This implies that adaptive preferences (yearnings, desires, preferences from conformity, and boredom) cannot be considered capabilities. After the reflection, it must be something that the person values as something positive for her or others, but without causing harm or injury (Sen, 1999). Capabilities are, therefore, the real opportunities to do or to be what a person or group values: the freedom of well-being. Capabilities are converted into functionings when they are accomplished as achieved well-being. In this way, both are the ends of well-­ being, differentiating them from the means used to achieve them, even if the distinction can be diffuse (Robeyns, 2005). Finally, the capability approach emphasises conversion factors as the elements that facilitate or hinder the transformation from means to ends, so it understands capabilities contextually (Sen, 1999). Agency completes the framework as the dynamic concept referring to the actions needed to obtain means, unblock conversion factors, and foster capabilities and functionings (Fig. 6.1).

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Fig. 6.1  Capability approach. (Source: Authors, based on Robeyns, 2005)

Transformative and Restorative Learning The theory of transformative learning has its roots in adult learning literature. Freire’s emancipatory education and individualistic approaches have been a key influence. In the early 1990s, Jack Mezirow integrated elements of constructivist, humanist, and critical social theory into transformative learning theory. In this theory, learning is a continuous process of meaning-making—intentional, incidental, or assimilative—influenced and fed by previous beliefs, context, communication, and decisions. For Mezirow (2012), learning involves interpreting and deciding the meaning we attribute to lived experiences, in a cultural context, through a language (in a broad sense) and being involved in a rational and emotional process. This process is transformative when it is focused on changing ‘our acquired frames of reference to make them more inclusive, judicious, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective, so that they can generate beliefs and opinions that are more truthful or justified to guide action’ (Mezirow, 2012: 76). Frames of reference are the mental structures from which we give lived experiences meaning, and conscious or unconscious, they are (re)formed based on cultural paradigms and intersubjective influences received throughout life. They are responsible for different interpretations of reality in different dimensions (social, ethical, epistemic, philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic) (Cranton & Taylor, 2012).

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A key element for transformative learning is prior learning, representing the background, previous experiences, predisposition, and expectations regarding transformative learning. However, there is not an extensive literature that goes deeply into how people’s culture and mindsets condition the experience of a transformative learning process (Taylor & Snyder, 2012), although there are some exceptions (Maher & Tetreault, 1994; Cranton, 2000). The importance of developing a critical awareness of one’s expectations is a necessary condition for starting a transformative learning process, with prior learning as the basis on which frames of reference are built (Mezirow, 2012). Also, a critical reflection on one’s own expectations is required and Mezirow proposed a first step, which he called the disorienting dilemma. This concept, as a trigger, has traditionally been linked to traumatic experiences (Magro & Polyzoi, 2009; Merriam & Ntseane, 2008), but it can also arise from pleasurable emotional experiences (Tisdell, 2008). Thus, the disorienting dilemma is subjective and contextual and can happen individually or collectively. Dilemmas can take place spontaneously, but in an educational context, they have pedagogical potential. The educator can design favourable situations for them, although previously generating a safe and trusting environment with and among students (Taylor & Elias, 2012). The exposition to a dilemma does not necessarily have the same effect on every student (Taylor, 2000), nor does it have to be applicable in all contexts (Ntseane, 2012). The educator must balance between the advantages of breaking with frames of reference and the potential harm produced by the cognitive dissonance provoked (Johnson-Bailey, 2012). Some pedagogical strategies with this potential are cross-cultural experiences that arise in internships abroad, where cultural shock and a rethinking of one’s views and values may take place (Kasworm & Bowles, 2012). Finally, the idea of restorative learning and ‘how restorative and transformative learning together constitute an important pedagogy for sustainability education that can revitalise citizen action’ (Lange, 2004: 122) is proposed in sustainability education. As noted earlier, Lange (2004) argues that a measure of stability is needed to cope with disorientation. Thus, after the disorienting process, Lange (2004: 122) claims in her work that stability ‘aided a deeper transformation that went beyond individual understandings and lifestyle to socially responsible involvement in the community as active citizens.’ Lange and Solarz (2017) link restorative learning with ideas such as radical relatability, the moral self, and solidarity. First, they argue that the experience of radical relatedness allows going

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beyond epistemological change (how we think about the world) to ontological change (how we are in the world). In addition, the relationship and dialogue with others become a mechanism for building (and restoring) the moral self after the internal ethical and moral conflict that can provoke a disorienting dilemma with others. Finally, they emphasise that restoring values from restorative relationships favours the critique of the dominant culture and promotes the basis for solidarity flourishing. In this transformative and restorative approach, the educational aim of the MDC-UPV is framed, especially through active methodologies such as AL and EI.

Methodology As we explained, these two pedagogical proposals constitute the case studies to be analysed. AL methodology is part of the first-year, second-­ semester module, Development Processes. During two or three weeks, MDC-UPV students go to a neighbourhood in the city of Valencia to live a professional experience in a real context close to the university and, in the last editions, some residents come to the classroom with the students weeks before. Students contact and collaborate with local entities and the theoretical and methodological topics studied during the first year are put into practice. This praxis encourages reflection and critical thinking. As part of the educational innovation proposal of the MDC-UPV, Leivas et al. (2020) describe AL and propose how it contributes to expanding capabilities for epistemic liberation. With its sources in the work of Mike Pedler (Pedler et al., 2012 in Leivas et al., 2020), AL is an action-­ oriented approach to research and learning, so it is conceived as a philosophy of doing rather than a set of techniques or practices. In this way, AL is the learning process of trying to solve complex problems in a specific reality. AL shares with action research the cyclical vision of the learning process in which experimentation, reflection, and learning feed back into each other throughout the process. In the case of MDC-UPV, there is a critical vision of AL (Rigg & Trehan, 2012 in Leivas et al., 2020). AL is based on provoking practical learning from action and for action, but the critical component implies an ethical, moral, and social justification that must be considered in both the means and the ends of AL. Thus, reflection must occur both at the participants’ individual level and as a group in the teams formed during the process.

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In the case study, three editions of the AL are included. Two experiences were in the Benicalap neighbourhood (2017 and 2018) and one was in the Na Rovella neighbourhood (2019) with 21, 21, and 18 students enrolled, respectively. The educators’ team, together with the organisations, designed and planned the identification of problems in each neighbourhood to be able to offer a proposal that is oriented not only to the students but also to the needs of the organisations and the neighbourhood. Three internal MDC-UPV publications (Teachers’ notebooks) that collected the teams’ AL processes in the neighbourhoods formed part of the research work of some MDC-UPV teachers in educational innovation. For this chapter, data were collected from 15 interviews among students, and various academic materials were analysed as individual reflections and logbooks from the students. The other pedagogical initiative, EI, is part of the curriculum with 10 or 20 credits (250 or 500 hours of dedication depending on the modality) during the second year of the MDC-UPV. Most students travel to other countries and join a local development entity, although some may decide to join an organisation at the local level in Valencia. The aim is to complement the theory and practice of the first year, promoting student reflection through involvement in a real development process. Works such as Sanza’s (2021) allow us to understand these internships as an educational space outside the classroom that provides a more critical view of development processes. This experience enables students to learn and practise complexity in development processes, involves them in the political and asymmetrical nature of the power relations, and fosters learning about the collective, values, self-criticism, and the cooperation system’s unequal logic. Drawing on data from different sources (Fig. 6.2), the next section presents the learning outcomes of these processes and the expansion of capabilities for restorative learning.

Capabilities for Restorative Learning Transformative Learning: Conditions, Process, and Outcomes After the AL and EI, students recognise that some learnings are reinforced or resignified, although they also recognised them from other pedagogical moments. What these learning experiences have in common is that they are valued by students with their focus on their professional future in development cooperation. They are categorised into four blocks (Fig. 6.3):

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Fig. 6.2  Qualitative methodology. (Source: Authors)

Fig. 6.3  Learning outcomes. (Source: Authors)

(1) contents of the master’s degree, (2) skills and competencies, (3) reality and context, and (4) experience. The first refers to theoretical knowledge and its application in practice, as well as tools and methodologies. The second comprises cross-cutting elements that complement both the professional and personal lives

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concerning their future as practitioners. They cover problem solving, generating innovative responses to new challenges, teamwork, time management, and communication skills. With the third block, students acquire a broader and more holistic vision of their environment that helps them to apply the previous learning more consciously and contextually through critical thinking, values and ethics, and their role as future professionals. Finally, the last block refers to the student’s reflection on their own learning process, as they identify a ‘meta-learning’ due to the AL and the EI. Learning in processes such as AL or EI, where emotions, feelings, and expectations about people are a part, is conditioned by how students experience them and how they can use the learning outcomes in the future as practitioners. As a first condition, the relationships established by the students, both among themselves and with the teaching staff, may have an influence that can block or enhance the value students give to these experiences. The contrast between the next two testimonies about participation during the MDC-UPV is particularly striking: (1) ‘We began to lose the spirit of dialogue; it was a moment when we noticed that many people began to keep quiet. That was because of the violent reactions. It was better not to interact. And this began to reduce communication’ (MDC-­ UPV student—2018 edition); and (2) ‘Also, in the master you feel very confident to speak and give your opinion, which is also useful when facing a group you don’t know’ (MDC-UPV student—2019 edition). However, the reality of the cooperation system that they experience in the EI and in subsequent professional experiences can help them re-­ evaluate the positive value that they may have given to the MDC-UPV learnings, as expressed by the following student: I saw the reality that existed when you go out and face the sector, the real working life. And then, working too. … And I don’t know if they don’t prepare us or we weren’t given so much information about the negative and what it can be like in real life or simply because I was so “in love,” I hadn’t noticed those details. (MDC-UPV student—2017 edition)

In addition, it is noted that there is previous learning from past experiences (both outside and inside the MDC-UPV) which defines the students’ expectations regarding AL and EI. Hence, the MDC-UPV seeks to generate participatory spaces in the first year to make their expectations realistic. One student expressed her feelings as follows: ‘I loved it because everything I thought, everything I had inside, I can now sustain with

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knowledge. What I already felt it should be, it was like supporting with knowledge, with evidence’ (MDC-UPV student—2017 edition). Even if these spaces may overwhelm some students (e.g., too much teamwork, in-depth discussions), combining them with the students’ background with regard to values and ethics allows them to identify more deeply with the approach of restorative development cooperation. This approach is promoted by the MDC-UPV through spaces and situations, especially in the informal context, with the potential to generate disorienting dilemmas in students. In this sense, two dilemma situations have been identified in the students: (1) when they face the alternative approaches and values from the MDC-UPV, and (2) when they experience how to apply these approaches in the cooperation system. The first one is positively valued as it encourages critical thinking and values in line with another type of development professional. As the following student stated: [I]t has really changed my whole way of understanding the world and seeing it. And it’s a bit hard sometimes because it generates a lot of dilemmas or a lot of personal questioning, but for me it’s something that everyone should go through. (MDC-UPV student—2019 edition)

But this positive assessment was also contrasted later since they were aware that, in the cooperation sector, the restorative approach of the MDC-UPV is not the hegemonic one. Some students felt an impact as in the testimony of the following student: In the organisations they are in a circle where funding is more important, bureaucracy is more important, and certain behaviours are more important that do not correspond to what we are taught in the master. It’s very nice because it makes you aware of what is important. It’s very nice because it gives you a critical conscience, but it’s a kick in the mouth. (MDC-UPV student—2017 edition)

In any case, not all dilemma situations are generated during the MDC-­ UPV, but the students themselves are able to experience them through the interactions they have with other people such as students, teaching staff, staff of the organisations they join, and all kinds of people they meet during these processes. At this point, the students considered both the prior learning and the disorienting dilemmas when reflecting on the AL and EI. The reflection

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reinforced the value that this learning has for them. This implies that they reflected on the contents of the MDC-UPV both for its instrumental value—‘I found the process itself very gratifying because what it helped me most was to ground and better understand the concepts that had been taught throughout the master and to give meaning to that theory’ (MDC-­ UPV student—2018 edition)—and for the intrinsic value—‘It goes beyond theoretical knowledge, but becomes a question of ethics, morals, critical thinking. And that is already taken forever’ (MDC-UPV student—2017 edition). Moreover, this reflection was complemented by the value of this learning on a personal and professional level in relation to self-confidence as well as the ability to make decisions and to give a purpose to their next actions once they finish the master’s degree. Finally, for many students, the biggest impact was how they had changed their own perspectives on what it means to work in the field of development cooperation, especially in relation to the importance of interactions with other actors and the uncertainty associated with these processes. Finally, many of the lessons learned have been implemented, either during the MDC-UPV or in subsequent experiences. Thanks to this, some students recognised that, during their professional stage, they can generate other types of development processes that put in value traditionally silenced voices, creating spaces for reflection and critical analysis of the context that leads to these situations. However, as this student stated, this is not always easy: I remember that it was emphasised that when we went to work in other countries we had to unlearn, we had to get rid of everything that we carry as Westerners: it is very difficult. I try, but it is very difficult. (MDC-UPV student—2017 edition)

The dilemma between the reality of the labour market forces them to balance the MDC-UPV restorative vision and what the hegemonic cooperation system demands from development professionals, normally more oriented towards project management. Capabilities In this section we discuss the capabilities that are expanded due to the learnings, focusing on the value that students give to them concerning

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their future as cooperation professionals and the change that it represents in their understanding of reality and the context of development processes. Based on the learning from the previous section and its transformative potential, the MDC-UPV was identified by the students as a training space where critical thinking is promoted, and it was also valued as something necessary for a cooperation professional. They highlighted the importance of incorporating an ethical and moral dimension to theoretical knowledge, which prevailed in their future actions. Sometimes this influence was unique, as the previous education of many of them was not linked to social issues. Even so, many of them pointed out that starting to doubt certain frames of reference regarding the cooperation system can generate a certain idealism about the transformative potential of cooperation. The development of critical thinking capabilities through AL and EI is fundamental, although it is framed within the general approach of the MDC-­ UPV and is complemented by other training spaces. An MDC-UPV student in the 2017 group explained: Yes, from the master, there is a lot of other learning that goes beyond the AL.  I wouldn’t sum up the whole master experience in that two-week period, because I think the master is so much more. It is a lot more of critical thinking, a lot more reflection on many issues.

Another from 2018 commented that: On a personal level, the master gives you a basis in care matters. You rethink many things in life that you had not considered in other master’s degrees, it gives you a critical view of the world, which if I had not taken the master I might not have had.

In addition, there was a direct involvement of the teaching staff who participate in these processes in developing this capability, as well as the spaces for reflection and debate that take place during the MDC-­ UPV.  Incorporating critical approaches and views beyond a hegemonic Eurocentric logic allows students to imagine their professional future in cooperation, taking into account dimensions such as the colonial past. Even so, either in internships or in subsequent professional experiences, many were disillusioned when they came into direct contact with the reality of current cooperation, generating frustration. A 2017 student told us that:

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But also, sometimes being so critical brings certain problems because you can’t adapt yourself to any organisation or job. Because there is always this question: why don’t we see it this way? And then sometimes that can also create problems for you to be able to follow your own path, and then you often end up opening your own path towards what you consider to be the right one.

While a 2018 student added that: ‘It has helped me to increase my critical side. And this has been a big problem, because in the end you don’t agree with anything, you’re always angry. It’s like … Shit! Everything is wrong!’ In any case, the critical approach of the MDC-UPV recognises the colonial past of the cooperation system and the Western humanist vision in the foundation of the human development concept. Through the AL and the EI, it encourages students to try in their professional practice not to reproduce the system’s injustices but to change the rules of the game. Eurocentric development categories are challenged by criticising their colonialist and racist character (Sriprakash et al., 2020). According to Bonwell and Eison (1991), a pedagogy that encourages active learning emphasises that learners explore new attitudes and values. Therefore, contact with people in organisations is another element that predisposes to the disorienting dilemma—both in AL and in EI—so that different and more open worldviews are known. These visions provoke a reformulation of values in life and professional ethics about various aspects such as the sustainability of the planet, their work vocation, solidarity, inequality, masculinity, social and political participation, and work ethics. A 2017 student put it this way: Each individual person has their own values, ideas, and way of understanding the world, and I think that bringing all that together from different people is always going to be more powerful. That union of thinking, different visions, is something that we learn from each other.

From the 2019 group, one said that: The master itself has given me tools to understand—okay, I know it sounds very clichéd but—life in general. And I think it can be applied to any field. Especially the way of working. It’s a commitment to other values, to ethics behind the work that I think is useful for any kind of company.

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Students who have already had experience in cooperation find dissonance between what they have learned in the MDC-UPV and their professional experience in an organisation. The lack of values in the day-to-day work of companies and non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs) endangers students’ ethical awareness in the future. In a system that prioritises project management over the quality of the process itself, students are forced to focus on this area to get a better job. A 2019 student explained: It is a balance. When you finish the master, you have a holistic post-­ development vision of social reality. But some time later, you have to look for a job and pay back what I borrowed to do this master’s degree, and the discourse changes … It’s not that now I’ve become the most capitalist, the principles are there, but the form changes when it comes to looking for a job.

Finally, another relevant aspect is the new knowledge that students acquire thanks to living an experience outside the classroom in real contexts. In the case of AL, the contact with the reality of a neighbourhood in Valencia allows them to get to know their local context (in the case of national students) and to recognise the historical injustices of traditionally excluded urban areas. In the case of EI, the local context they discover refers to a global reality influenced by colonial history. As a 2019 student commented: ‘The relationship we established with such different people is what has marked me the most. To realise that people with very different profiles and contexts or ages and interests can generate such a powerful relationship and find common ground.’ Another from the same group added: For me, it has been a challenge. Before talking about or taking things you don’t like for granted, go out and learn from other worlds and contexts. In that sense, the master itself has pushed me to live this totally changing experience in my life.

Transformative and Restorative Learning: Towards Repairing the International Development Cooperation System The learning acquired and the capabilities expanded through the AL and EI let the students be involved in the process of contact with the professional and personal reality similar to that which they will experience when

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they work in a real context. This contact, which has been added to the situations of joint discussion and reflection they engage in during the rest of the year, is what has allowed them to analyse and evaluate their own frames of reference and to confront their contradictions (Lange, 2012). The alternative system of cooperation offered by the MDC-UPV, more just, more inclusive, decolonial, feminist, anti-racist, etc., allows students not only to deal with their experiences in the AL and EI with critical reflection but also to act, even if it is emotionally demanding. The acquired capabilities of critical thinking, ethics and values, and context are the basis of restorative learning that enables students to imagine and think about a different system of cooperation in which they are agents of change, both personally and professionally (Lange, 2009). Despite all of the above and the mechanisms and spaces of possibility that the MDC-UPV provides to foster transformative and restorative learning, we identified some challenges in reinforcing the MDC-UPV’s potential. On the one hand, a greater incorporation of other epistemologies from the Global South would be advisable to confront the hegemonic Western theoretical approaches, even the more critical ones. On the other hand, from an intercultural approach, we should make more visible in the classroom and informal contexts the views of minorities and excluded people as non-expert knowledge that can establish an equal dialogue with academic knowledge. In addition, we should enhance the voices of the MDC-UPV’s students who might experience their own marginalisation and exclusion experiences due to racism, xenophobia, or violence that attacks diversity. Recognising these situations as part of coexistence can encourage critical reflection, respect, and empathy. From a pedagogical perspective, MDC-UPV’s teachers should be more aware of their role in provoking transformative and restorative learning through promoting reflection and accompanying—even emotionally— when dilemmas and contradictions destabilise students in order to reduce the risk of paralysis. The case studies have shown that students’ internal struggles affect formative and professional experiences; however, the role of the teacher as an accompanying person has not been sufficiently explored. Teachers on the programme can be relevant agents throughout the formative stage in the AL, EI, and formal learning moments. Finally, based on transformative and restorative learning outcomes, MDC-UPV’s teachers and management staff can continue questioning the contents, values, and pedagogical methods used.

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Conclusion The MDC-UPV is a learning space that allows its students to acquire learning and expand their professional capabilities thanks to its pedagogical proposals, specifically the AL and EI. After the first year of teaching, these two methodologies allow students to consolidate the main concepts of the MDC-UPV, to promote professional and personal skills and competencies, to increase their knowledge of professional realities and the contexts in which they work, and to value the experience of development processes as learning spaces. In this way, after finishing the MDC-UPV, students enter the field of development cooperation with a landscape view between the hegemonic vision of cooperation dominated by project management, and a vision that proposes a reparative system, in which the colonial past, as well as other injustices, are taken into account. The balance between the two views allows them to change their frame of reference of the international development cooperation system so that they might be more oriented, as professionals, towards reparative futures. Owing to the AL and EI, the MDC-UPV is able to ground its approach towards producing a restorative cooperation system, one which considers colonial and racist history so that students can experience a transformative and restorative learning process. It is precisely the combination of theory and practice that enhances the learning and capabilities that students develop during the MDC-UPV. If the first year of the master’s degree can be an approximation to the initial and potential epistemological change necessary for a transformative learning process, the two methodologies analysed in this chapter reinforce it. Moreover, thanks to the relationships that develop during these experiences with others, an ontological change becomes possible, which, in turn, enables students to situate themselves in the world of cooperation with a more restorative approach. The combination of formal and informal learning is responsible for the deep impact of learning and expanded capabilities for students. Through interaction and reflection between theoretical concepts and practical application, the processes help them to see themselves as agents of change in the cooperation sector. In this sense, the MDC-UPV, and specifically the use of active learning methodologies and practices, is a case of transformative and restorative education in higher education thanks to the multi-­ dimensional real-context spaces it offers to its students and the relationships they generate. As Lange (2012) asks us: ‘As educators who provide conditions for transformative learning, what kind of reality are we giving birth to through our efforts?’

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Through this case, we believe that transformative learning in higher education can play a key role in shaping the kind of professionals we will have in the future. Putting teachers and students, as adult learners, in relation to other people in their reality can increase the possibilities for transformative learning and bring an opportunity to build restorative learning ‘that addresses the contradictions of this historical moment that we enact every day’ (Lange, 2012: 209). With practitioners aware of these contradictions and able to face them, we can start to build a new reparative development cooperation system.

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CHAPTER 7

The Latin-American Hub of Transformative Innovation: A Collaborative Space Promoting Collective Learning Towards More Just and Sustainable Futures Paloma Bernal-Hernández and Martha Liliana Marín

Introduction Latin America is a historical space of rich diversity with regard to race, culture, and geography, but it is also known as one of the most unequal regions in the world. Countries in this region share a history of colonialism and, therefore, injustice, racism, and exclusion of vulnerable and minority groups (peasants, rural women, indigenous communities, and so on) (Hoffman & Centeno, 2003). Another commonality among these countries is the multiple efforts of local communities to construct collaborative spaces towards building a more inclusive and sustainable future. Yet, despite the community efforts in Latin America, ‘experts’ have discussed, formulated, and developed Science, Technology, and Innovation

P. Bernal-Hernández (*) • M. L. Marín Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_7

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(STI) programmes without listening to the voices of minority groups, nor considering their views, expectations, and needs. To challenge this dominant trend, the Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) framework was created to explicitly target important societal demands and needs, as well as environmental sustainability, and aim at building pathways of sustainable transitions. The inclusion of all actors and communities, particularly civil society and those excluded from the development of STI policy, is a central principle of this framework. This framework was the inspiration for forming the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC)1 and, as part of this global knowledge platform, the Latin-American and Caribbean Hub of Transformative Innovation Policy (HUBLAyCTIP). We consider both TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP to be collaborative spaces of co-creation where researchers, policymakers, and practitioners put into practice transformative methodologies, and mutually learn and carry out processes of deep reflection towards building paths of transformative change that are more inclusive and sustainable than the past and existing pathways. We make visible the connection of this innovation frame with futures-thinking literature and approaches. This chapter analyses the way that the HUBLAyCTIP, as a collaborative and learning space, supports the implementation of transformative methodologies that can be meaningful for building more equitable and sustainable futures. We focus on the initiative ‘Anaa Witsukj, a commitment to transformational change’ (Bueno et al., 2023) and the learning experiences of the Universidad Iberoamericana team (hereafter IBERO team), whose work is designed towards reducing injustices against farming communities and small-scale producers in an area with a strong indigenous presence. The initiative is an important effort to transform the socioeconomic conditions of lemon producers and their families by enhancing their agency through which they are able to change their present and shape their futures. The chapter is structured in five sections including this introduction. Section ‘Reflecting on Pasts, Presents and Transformative Futures Through TIP and TIPC Methodologies’ presents the TIPC methodology and explains how this facilitates the learning from past and present towards creating pathways of sustainable futures. We present the emergent learnings from the application of this methodology at the HUBLAyCTIP,  https://www.tipconsortium.net/

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taking into account the particularities of this collaborative space in section ‘Enabling Futures Creation Through Collective Learning in the HUBLAyCTIP’. Section ‘Fighting Injustice and Inequality with Transformation Practices in the Mexican Agricultural Context’ delves into the experimental initiative developed by the IBERO team in Mexico based on the development of their initiative. We conclude with some reflections about how collective spaces for the application of the TIP framework can help to build and nurture inclusive, reparative, and just futures. It should be noted that this chapter reflects the authors’ own views and not the voices of the HUBLAyCTIP members, teams, or coordinating team.

Reflecting on Pasts, Presents, and Transformative Futures Through TIP and TIPC Methodologies Building Sustainable and Inclusive Futures in TIP The TIP framework was proposed by Schot and Steinmueller (2018) as an alternative STI policy approach to dominant frameworks that focus on economic growth but do not address social and environmental problems directly. Contrary to these frameworks, the TIP approach emphasises the need to open up inclusive and bottom-up creative processes towards solving societal, economic, and environmental challenges. TIP focuses on exploring and creating pathways that account for solutions leading to sustainable futures. The consideration of alternative pathways of development, that is, directionality (Schot & Steinmueller, 2018), is a key aspect in this approach. It deserves attention and discussion because it involves the creation of multiple futures rather than one single projection. In the futures-thinking literature, facilitating the transformation of unsustainable past scenarios that still remain today requires more than individual creativity and imagination beyond subjectivism and idealism (Beckert, 2016). In the TIP approach, the different visions of a sustainable future are connected to concrete trajectories of actions coming from different actors who are not always recognised in the formulation of STI policy, as these options are not often considered feasible or desirable. However, the inclusion of various actors in the formulation of these scenarios is essential in the TIP approach. As Schot et al. (2018: 1563) argue, ‘the process of system innovation (embodying invention, innovation and

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diffusion) involves multiple actors in negotiating alternative pathways that have the potential to achieve system change’. Therefore, TIP advocates for a more inclusive STI policy that allows the participation and empowerment of various sectors and actors usually excluded from public policy development (e.g., producers, civil society, users, consumers, policymakers, and marginalised communities). By recognising multiple directions and the agency of different actors, the TIP approach recognises the different viewpoints and understandings of these actors about socially desirable scenarios. In this way, we can say that there is a ‘pluralisation of the future’ (Zeitlyn, 2015) and, by including those who have been historically marginalised due to reasons of gender, ethnicity, and power in the process of building futures, TIP aims to achieve sustainable and just trajectories. This aligns with Appadurai (2013: 267) who asserts that futures building must be seen as a ‘full-scale debate’ and a social need ‘not only restricted to the sphere of high science, policy experts, or other elites that promote a society of “futures-makers”’. Owing to the importance of active participation in the STI discussion towards transitions, collaborative spaces become necessary for sharing and listening to multiple experiences, perspectives, and knowledge traditions, often competing, coming from different audiences. As Sriprakash et  al. (2020) argue, these types of spaces allow for opportunities to recognise, debate, and critique global issues and to make available new resources to actors for interpreting (individual and group) histories, co-produce futures, and collectively learn from each other’s experiences. Ultimately, building new futures requires new knowledge (Appadurai, 2013). We can say that the TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP are examples of these collaborative spaces. TIPC is a global knowledge infrastructure created to redirect the narrative of STI policy, build demonstrators through experiments that support and enrich the TIP framework, and generate a network of multiple actors working on transformative perspectives through co-­ production. In its effort to generate a network of actors working from transformative perspectives globally, TIPC supported the creation of Hubs in different world regions, including the HUBLAyCTIP.  The Hub is a community of practice2 aimed at implementing experimentation processes on TIP and, in this way, contributing to the sustainable development of 2  Hislop (2013: 157) defines ‘communities of practice’ as ‘a group of people who have a particular activity in common, and as a consequence have some common knowledge, a sense of community identity, and some element of overlapping values’.

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the Latin-American region. Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners work hand in hand in both TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP to: (1) put into action TIP principles, guidelines, and methodologies; (2) listen, discuss, reflect, and mutually learn from the implementation of experimental policy methodologies and formative evaluation; and (3) co-produce sustainable trajectories for transformative change on individual and group perceptions of the past or history and assumptions of the present.3 Learning, but especially deep learning—that is, reflection processes on worldviews, assumptions, values, beliefs, and behaviours in the understanding of environmental and social problems and their solutions—is an essential part of the TIP approach (Schot et al., 2019) without which it is difficult for transformative change in the future to occur. The creation of sustainable futures implies transformational learning from which it is possible to design and reshape narratives, create projections of the future, and enhance new lifestyles (Juri et al., 2021). Learning can involve not only individuals but also relational aspects, collective participatory processes (Dillenbourg, 1999) and social dynamics, which we understand here as collective learning. Following Juri et al. (2021), these dynamics allow co-­ creation of ideas for changing present conditions towards a ‘better world’. They argue that transformational change implies a high level of inclusivity. Thus, collective spaces enhancing transformation must include all layers of society and sectors, especially those who have been historically excluded from development. In both TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP, individual and, mostly, collective learning were key processes that led to co-production of methodologies and experimental work with policymakers and practitioners. These outcomes were the basis for co-creating new and alternative development pathways. TIPC Methodology and Formative Evaluation The methodologies and evaluation processes that researchers developed in the different learning spaces at TIPC helped to foster discussion on historical and current problems, as well as the formulation of transformative futures of change. Key aspects of the TIPC methodology, adapted by the HUBLAyCTIP due to the particularities of the initiatives in the Latin-­ American region, include: (1) selection and definition of the experiment(s) 3  This is in line with what Zeitlyn (2015) refers to as pluralising when talking about past, present, and future.

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and creation of theories of change (ToCs), (2) integration of transformative outcomes to specific theories of change towards transformative futures, and (3) monitoring, evaluation and learning. Each of these aspects is discussed below. S election and Definition of the Experiment(s) and Creation of Theories of Change The experiment in TIP embraces a notion beyond the idea of a traditional project. It is an initiative that considers transformative framework features, such as: addressing a social challenge, creating activities that promote transformative niches (protected spaces for experimentation and development of radical innovations, rules, and configurations), aiming to transform a sociotechnical system,4 generating constant reflection, and including a great variety of actors, knowledge, and perspectives (Ramirez et al., n.d.; Ghosh et al., 2021). The resulting systemic change can cause some instability and disruption of regimes (a set of dominant rules and routines that enable and constrain activities within communities and define the way sociotechnical systems work) (Geels, 2002). To understand the sociotechnical context of the TIP experiments and give these experiments a transformative direction, TIPC researchers propose the need for developing ToCs. The ToC is a strategic planning route that enhances collaborative thinking and action towards change including past, present, and future visions of specific social, economic, and environmental challenges (van Es et  al., 2015). Although it is not possible to predict the future, we consider that ToCs in TIP are a type of creative narrative where researchers/innovators draw possible paths based upon a history review and global conditions of the present (Appadurai, 2013: 8). For the development of experiments and initiatives with transformative potential, TIPC researchers formulated a generic theory of change (GToC) and a specific theory of change (SToC). The GToC of an initiative represents the complex interactions between the regime and the niche, as well as external pressures or deep structural trends, whereas the GToC gives the contextual frame to transformative initiatives (Mollas-Gallart et  al., 4  According to Geels and Schot (2007), a sociotechnical system is the configuration of technologies (products, infrastructures) and institutions (regulations, cultural symbols, markets) that fulfil basic functions of society and determine the orientation and behaviour of forms of production, use, and consumption, for example, the provision of energy, transport, food, water, health, housing, and communications.

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2020). The SToC establishes the specific change and the activities in initiatives that will support the transformation of the selected sociotechnical system; therefore, it needs to be consistent with the GToC. The aforementioned ToC provides ‘the logic of how the inputs invested in a policy are expected to lead to a set of outputs and relevant outcomes’ (Mollas-Gallart et al., 2020: 434). We argue that developing ToCs is an analytical exercise about reassessing past and present STI policy decisions and actions (when depicting GToCs) with the aim of formulating future pathways or reshaping initiatives towards desired scenarios (when developing SToCs). GToCs enable innovators to recognise and open up their understanding about the specific impacts of multiple pasts and presents and, in this way, to reflect differently about futures. The construction of an SToC also requires reimagining different paths involving creativity, acceptance of uncertainty, and sharing of expectations. I ntegration of Transformative Outcomes into Specific Theories of Change Towards Transformative Futures Developing an SToC is fundamental for actors and teams to formulate different future pathways. But to give a transformative direction to these pathways and, in this way, support more inclusive, sustainable, and just changes in organisations and rules, TIPC researchers proposed a series of transformative outcomes that actors can use to shape their initiatives into experiments with transformative potential. Transformative outcomes are defined as signs and guidelines of progress with regard to the transformation for the evaluation of experiments and initiatives (Ghosh et al., 2021).5 The integration of transformative outcomes into the activities and outcomes of the SToC is an essential part of the actors and teams’ work at both TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP.  onitoring, Evaluation, and Learning M According to Mollas-Gallart et  al. (2020), monitoring, evaluation, and learning constitute a formative process of evaluation that allows the 5  Ghosh et al. (2021) defined 12 transformative outcomes that can help in the processes of (1) building and nurturing niches, (2) expanding and mainstreaming niches, and (3) opening up and unlocking regimes. These outcomes are: shielding; learning; networking; navigating expectations; upscaling; replicating; circulating; institutionalising; de-aligning; unlearning and deep learning in regimes; strengthening regime-niche interactions; and changing perceptions of landscape pressures.

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tracking of changes at the system level and proposes strategies to achieve the desired transformation. This involves constant learning and reflection, collaborative and inclusive evaluation, and monitoring of SToCs and their commitment to transformative change through the achievement of transformative outcomes. The application and adaptation of the TIPC methodology by the HUBLAyCTIP members have supported the development of the Hub as a collaborative and learning space in which experimental teams openly reflect and discuss social inequalities occurring within their initiatives. Besides the use of the TIPC methodology, other tools such as ‘learning narratives’6 and engagement spaces promoted by the HUBLAyCTIP have allowed participation and fostered the dialogue between different communities such as practitioners, policymakers, and grassroots organisations to help imagine alternative futures scenarios. As collective learning is essential in sustainable futures building, we will discuss in detail the experience of the HUBLAyCTIP in the next section.

Enabling Futures Creation Through Collective Learning in the HUBLAyCTIP The path of the HUBLAyCTIP was carved out in 2018 with the production of the Green Book7 (S. Chalela, Personal Communication, March 15, 2023). This policy document was developed by the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Minciencias), the University of Sussex in the UK, and researchers in Latin-American bottom-up organisations and aimed at contributing to the solution of the major social, economic, and environmental challenges in Colombia. Such work involved a participatory exercise and was the first open discussion in the Latin-­ American region on the need to create and promote future pathways through the use of a framework that steered policy innovation activities towards addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in both the country and the region (Olaya, 2023). In 2020, ten organisations from Colombia, Mexico, and Chile founded the HUBLAyCTIP, namely: 6   More information on narratives at: https://tipresourcelab.net/wp-content/ uploads/2023/03/Tool_Building-and-monitoring-a-TIP-narrative.pdf 7  Available at: https://www.tipconsortium.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ GreenBook2030_25sept-002.pdf

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• Higher education institutions: Universidad del Rosario and Alianza EFI (Economía formal e Inclusiva), Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano (ITM), Universidad del Valle and Universidad de Los Andes, from Colombia; Universidad Iberoamericana from Mexico; and Universidad de Talca, from Chile; • A science and technology centre: Centro de Ciencia y Tecnología de Antioquia (CTA); and • Governmental institutions: Instituto Nacional de Cancerología (INC), and Minciencias, from Colombia. As an anchor of TIP methodology in the Latin-American region and a ‘gathering space’ for transformative innovation initiatives, the HUBLAyCTIP held expectations on disseminating and facilitating the learning and understanding of the TIP framework, as well as bringing it into practice towards deep transformations in the region (S. Chalela, personal communication, March 15, 2023). Each of the institutions ratified their commitment to the HUB’s learning process by: (1) formulating initiatives with transformative potential at a local scale, and (2) acquiring membership through a financial contribution. These initiatives shared motivations, such as the reduction of extreme poverty and the recovery of lost biodiversity, that register as main concerns and are therefore drivers of structural change in the region (CEPAL, 2019; WWF, 2022). In addition to these, we can say that the informal economy, rural/urban conflict and violence, social-based enterprises, bottom-­up and/or subsistence-driven innovation, internal forced displacement, and both technical and indigenous knowledge were specific conditions of the innovation context of the Global South (Wakunuma et al., 2021)—applicable to the Latin-American context—that also motivated the formulation of the HUBLAyCTIP members’ initiatives. Our experience told us that the intentions of the HUBLAyCTIP members were to foresee changes in sociotechnical systems to enable better scenarios, different from past and present conditions. For instance, the initiative of the Universidad de Talca proposed a new and more inclusive form of governance in water management for Chilean small-scale farmers, compared to the present model of agriculture in Chile. Another example is the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología (National Cancer Institute), which aims to implement an inclusive-decisions process for cancer treatments by including the visions and experiences of patients and caregivers

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in spaces that traditionally prioritise the contributions to innovation of professionals’ rationality only. (See all initiatives of the HUBLAyCTIP in Bernal Hernández et al., 2021.) Each of these initiatives followed the TIPC experimentation process (Schot et  al., 2017) that the Hub’s coordinating team tailored for its members to facilitate the design, execution, and evaluation of initiatives envisioning systemic change in the Latin-American region. TIP Learning Journey Handbook developed by the HUBLAyCTIP8 provides three experimentation pillars: • Using bottom-up tools that involve and support actors-innovators developing alternatives with systemic potential; • Valuing different points of view especially for those traditionally marginalised communities; and • Considering different sustainable pathways and piloting them to reflect on alternatives, demonstrative cases, and prototypes. All three pillars are illustrated in the Hub’s ToCs experiments (Bernal Hernández et  al., 2021) and have a strong emphasis on inclusiveness, learning, and directionality. As we mentioned in the previous section, these are not only part of the TIP foundations but also key elements in the process of futures building that we identified in the works of future-­ thinking scholars such as Appadurai (2013), Zeitlyn (2015), Beckert (2016), and Sriprakash et al. (2020). Furthermore, the collaborative space boosted by the HUBLAyCTIP promoted inclusiveness and diverse interactions across different actors by means of the experiments. We relate these as efforts of collective learnings—this refers to ‘a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together’ (Dillenbourg, 1999: 1) which are essential to shape ideas of future states and boost actions in place towards achieving the imagined futures (Beckert, 2016; Juri et al., 2021). Building Blocks of Collective Learning It is possible to evidence different learning processes of the HUBLAyCTIP after three years of development. The coordinating team—alongside 8  Available at: https://urosario.edu.co/sites/default/files/2023-02/ruta-de-aprendizaje-­ a-la-politica-de-innovacion-transformativa.pdf

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members—carried out a variety of engagement activities from 2020 to 2023 (see Fig. 7.1) to allow reflections, learning, and knowledge sharing within and across the Hub teams in collective spaces such as internal workshops, conferences, and meetings. We consider that learnings in this space opened opportunities for questioning processes of past and present injustices and construction of promising futures (Sriprakash et al., 2020). The first year (2020–2021) of the HUBLAyCTIP focused on going deeper into the TIPC methodology through training and mentoring sessions led by the coordinating team and addressed to its members and their teams (see Fig. 7.1). These sessions encouraged reflection about past conditions that have shaped current sociotechnical systems and reflections and knowledge that followed the design of GToCs and SToCs for each initiative. The knowledge produced within these initiatives could be crucial in collective spaces pursuing the creation of alternative paths for present unsustainable conditions. In the second year (2021–2022), the noteworthy engagement activity from the timeline (Fig.  7.1) with regard to collective learning was the World Café. This space allowed for the emergence of plural discourses on specific transformative outcomes that were central for transformation of

Fig. 7.1  Timeline of HUBLAyCTIP’s engagement activities. (Source: Authors)

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three initiatives and were seen through the lens of their leading teams. This session took the transformational learning process to another level by encouraging reflections about commonalities and particularities of transformative features shared by most of the initiatives. Albeit working under the same conceptual framework, we observed there were different perceptions, visions, and ways to approach these transformative outcomes, recognising that even when experiments share similar future horizons, there exists a multiplicity of pasts (Sriprakash et  al., 2020) that will vary the directionalities of change. As facilitators of mentoring sessions undertaken during the first and second years, we acknowledge the relevance of actively engaging in co-­ creation processes rather than focusing on clarifying TIP concepts. This is important because foreseeing paths for ‘a better life’ relies on activities and actions beyond only transferring knowledge (Beckert, 2016; Appadurai, 2013; Juri, 2021). By working together, we nurtured the collaboration space, where questions on an initiative’s particularities, views on its transformation features, and assumptions on future states were aligned. Furthermore, by learning-sharing two or more team experiments in the same online space, we identified the dynamics of mutual learning and interpretations. According to Juri et al. (2021: 5–6), temporary collaboration spaces are seen in Latin-American transitions as platforms that foster synergies among diverse actors. In this sense, the regional events and the on-site HUBLAyCTIP conference in Colombia were important spaces for disseminating initiatives, exchanging the ongoing learnings of the teams with a broader audience across the Latin-American region, and sharing reflections about different visions. Nevertheless, the nature of these spaces may limit new knowledge production (Juri et al., 2021) and, therefore, deep reflection exercises on the future paths imagined. We highlight then the relevance of a ‘learning narratives’ tool, promoted by the coordinating team of the HUBLAyCTIP and created within teams in the experimentation process. After executing some of the SToC activities and interacting with key actors, a common aspect across Hub’s initiatives was the reformulation of initial assumptions, in response to unexpected events and new observations. Through the use of this tool, teams were able to register new knowledge related with sociotechnical imaginaries and horizons of change, as well as important reflections on present and past dynamics across initiatives’ participants. In fact, some HUBLAyCTIP narratives show the different comprehensions that

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initiative teams (as researchers) and local communities had about central sustainability concepts, and whose understanding was taken for granted in past innovation activities. In other cases, new concepts emerged that were not considered during the construction of the SToC.  For instance, the Universidad of Talca team’s narrative (in Bernal-Hernández, 2023) affirmed: ‘For the first workshop, we included actors that were carrying out alternative practices in agricultural crops. This way, we found ourselves with the paradigm of “regeneration”.’ We observed from HUBLAyCTIP members’ experience that, particularly in SToCs, the exercise of futures thinking towards the formulation of sustainable scenarios was a complex exercise. As a part of both the Alianza EFI team and coordinating team, S. Chalela argued that, even after the flexibility of ToCs that TIPC promotes, grounding expectations on future projections was a great challenge within and among teams (personal communication, February 23, 2023). We consider the learning narratives to be a powerful tool, which teams in the Hub used not only to reflect but also to monitor and adapt their initiatives to redefine new directionalities and courses of action based on team learnings, specifically by changing their assumptions and registering new observations. This change in directionality will also be shown further on in the case study in the next section. It has been also clear from the different initiatives in the HUBLAyCTIP that the TIPC methodology needs to be contextualised and, therefore, adaptive for the Global South, including the Latin-American region (Akon-Yamga et al., 2021; Casal et al., 2020; Ramirez, 2023). This was supported by C. Bueno who affirmed that the experiments and processes from Africa and Latin America were necessary to ‘nurture’ the complexity of the TIPC model that has been theorised and framed mainly in the Global North. From the different initiatives and their experiences, we learnt that collective learning is key in the resilience process and futures of communities that have been faced injustice and unequal conditions since historical times. One interesting initiative within the HUBLAyCTIP is the one lead by the IBERO team. The initiative is a clear example of the team’s effort to increase the level of inclusiveness and the diversity of visions as a sign of progress with regard to TIP and creation of futures. In the next section, we describe this case in depth, as well as its process in establishing a transformational change from a futures-building perspective.

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Fighting Injustice and Inequality with Transformation Practices in the Mexican Agricultural Context The initiative ‘Anaa Witsukj, a commitment to transformational change’ (hereafter the Anaa Witsukj initiative) is a project developed by the IBERO team within the HUBLAyCTIP in which collaborative and multiple learnings are taking place towards the transformation of traditional and unsustainable rules, routines, and practices (Bueno et  al., 2023). By being aligned with the TIP framework to formulate and reflect on the desirable and transformative directionalities, the community in the Mexican region of Oaxaca is working together with the IBERO team in a co-creation and collaborative learning process towards: (1) reducing injustices against indigenous and farming communities, (2) supporting the agency of these actors in an area with strong indigenous presence, and (3) supporting the processes of sustainable production that includes traditional and local practices. The Past and Present of the Anaa Witsukj Initiative Through Transformative Innovation Methodology La Sierra de Guajará (Oaxaca region in Mexico), where the Anaa Witsukj initiative is being developed, is a traditional Mexican agricultural region inhabited by a heterogeneous community of different cultures who are engaged in different agricultural activities (livestock, coffee, lemon, maize). Bueno et  al. (2023) state that the area hosts a great variety of indigenous groups, who are also farmers, living in serious poverty. Despite their difficult conditions, these groups still work under community and collective principles. However, traditional and ancestral dynamics of these producing communities have long since been hampered by a non-­free market with low regulation, high presence of brokers dealing in favour of big private distributors, and limitations in technical and management knowledge that increase the exclusion of minorities in agricultural activities, for example, women and indigenous communities (Bueno et al., 2023). According to Carmen Bueno, IBERO team leader, the implementation of the initiative is justified on the systematic marginalisation that indigenous communities experience in La Sierra de Guajará, which still reflects colonial legacies. In this region, important governmental resources have not been given to the community, and neither long-term projects nor

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development policies have been implemented to bring about real change in the area; on the contrary, short-term, paternalistic projects are common. Bueno asserts that ‘the current history is a clientelist model promoted by the government where resources are distributed individually as subsidies’ (personal communication, March 17, 2023). Anaa Witsukj is aimed at transforming the lemon value chain in La Sierra de Guajará through an inclusive model that provides actors within the lemon production system with better economic, social, and just conditions that also consider environmental sustainability. The implementation of organic and collective practices towards supporting the inclusion of marginalised populations and the reduction of inequalities in the region are key aspects of the initiative formulation. During the first phase of the project, the IBERO team framed the current context of the initiative under a systemic vision by applying both the TIPC and HUBLAyCTIP methodologies. According to the team leader, the formulation of the GToC (see Fig. 7.2) was crucial as it helped the team to develop an integral and transformative perspective of the agricultural sociotechnical system regarding lemon production in Mexico. In this way, the team was able to understand the pieces and the whole, as well as

Fig. 7.2  GToC of the Anaa Witsukj initiative. (Source: IBERO team (Available at: https://urosario.edu.co/hub-­innovacion-­transformativa/ experimentos-­miembros))

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to trace and delve into the complex relationships among the different actors and institutions in the system. As central aspects, the GToC shows the social and economic exclusion of the indigenous population and the application of non-sustainable agricultural practices (Fig. 7.2). The agro-industrial regime is characterised by actors with great power; specifically, large hoarders and intermediaries that buy the product from smallholders, exploit the regional labour force and do not offer fair prices for the product. The development of agricultural smallholders is limited by research, technological, financial, and informational barriers. During the analysis of the GToC, the IBERO team detected some clear challenges towards the transformation of the agricultural sociotechnical system, in which the initiative is framed, such as: • Part of the inclusion process is to remove barriers so that these communities can develop—according to their identity—cosmovision, organisation, and participation; • Promoting governance based on autonomy and self-government as an alternative regional development model proves to be difficult; and • There is a need to rethink rules and norms at the regime level that have historically imposed barriers and made resilient practices invisible.  naa Witsukj Initiative Fostering a More Inclusive Future A for Indigenous Communities The model that the IBERO team is implementing in the Anaa Witsukj initiative is aimed at making producers active participants of the system from the beginning of the process, thus driving the change they want to bring about. In this way, the team expects the community to be able to build the future at their own pace, according to their vision and perspectives—fair and dignified negotiation, high solidarity rationale, and defence of their roots and identity—contrary to the vision and patterns of the traditional market model in Mexico, that is, high-quality lemon production and marketing to the United States. As the team leader asserts, ‘they [indigenous communities] have a vision of social, transgenerational and collective awareness that we [modern society] don’t have’ (C. Bueno, personal communication, March 17, 2023).

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Diego Orozco, key researcher of the IBERO team, explained the initiative in three stages of development resulting from the experimentation process (personal communication, May 17, 2023): 1. Collective deliberation of the initiative with ten groups of producers—first promoters of the change—and team IBERO framed by improvements on education, community-based autonomy, security, peace, and welfare. Such discussions led to formulate actions based on productivity for economic development only. But findings related with injustices on lemon purchase prices by private buyers took reflections in the direction of establishing a social and solidarity-­ based enterprise, co-created with allies and the community; 2. Co-development of an investment model that allowed the participation of external actors, some of them already developing projects in the area, but without a clear directionality of change. Team IBERO created a legal frame to legitimise the social and solidarity-based enterprise through building a lemon-packing plant; 3. Implementation of collective learning activities open to all producers of the area, on ecology, organic agriculture, ancestral knowledge, and agro-ecology, bringing around 50 groups of producers to the initiative. Currently, the IBERO team is expecting to reach more than 200 producers by sharing the Anaa Witsukj initiative. According to the team leader, the formulation of ToCs was central aspects to reflect on a more transformative future and take action at the present time. By executing SToCs: the future is permeating the present, which is why it is important to include the future in a vision of change. Why [in our work] did we only discuss past and present, but we didn’t include this imaginary future as a necessary vision to act on today? (C. Bueno, personal communication, March 17, 2023)

Through the integration of the transformative outcomes to the SToC of the initiative during the first stage, the team redirected their project from having a strong emphasis on productive efficiency and improvement of economic conditions to a more transformative, regional, and territorial change. Inclusiveness of producers, horizontal networks and new governance, and supporting producers in this transformation were the central aspects of the SToC (Fig. 7.3).

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Fig. 7.3 SToC of Anaa Witsukj initiative. (Source: IBERO team (Available at: https://urosario.edu.co/hub-­innovacion-­transformativa/ experimentos-­miembros))

Figure 7.3 shows three main regimen actors that are participating in the initiative. The IBERO team is one of these actors, which is mainly in charge of coordinating and providing managerial support to the community to make sure that the project addresses transformation objectives. In addition, and more importantly, this team is an intermediary between the community of producers and regimen actors such as commercialisation companies, investors, and the Tabasco Company, which are responsible for the transfer of technical knowledge. Later, after initiating the project, actors who are considered as part of the niche, started to play important roles in the implementation of the initiative, albeit not reflected in Fig.  7.3. The local church (Diócesis de Tehuantepec) protects the community from the current conditions of violence and supports the initiative’s social goals. The team also incorporated features from a development model and the participative tools that the church is implementing in the area. Another actor that supports the social goals of the project and works to protect the community from social insecurity is Oxfam. This international non-governmental organisation provided economic sources for the start­up of the project and gave the initiative more external visibility, legitimacy, and formality in the eyes of outside stakeholders. Owing to the multiplicity of actors, there are diverse motivations and future visions of what they want to obtain from the project in the long term. From his experience, D. Orozco observed that, through the stages of the project, producers’ motivations are not homogeneous due to their

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different levels of understandings regarding the expected results and impacts which the initiative aims for. Some producers seem to view the project as a way to achieve short-term economic benefits through the building of a lemon-packing plant. Another group of producers considers the project as more than just gaining an economic benefit, but as a way of ending their dependency on market intermediaries and institutions that provide financial assistance and technical resources for production but with poor long-term impacts. By being part of the initiative, these producers also want to leave an alternative livelihood for future generations (personal communication, May 17, 2023). On their part, the investors expect financial returns, while Oxfam watches for the fulfilment of human rights, the care for the environment, and the achievement of fiscal and social justice. Aligned with this last organisation, the Diócesis de Tehuantepec hopes for the social empowerment of these communities (personal communication, May 17, 2023). As a result of the very different motivations and worldviews of the parties involved in the initiative, bringing them together was a difficult task that could have led to clashes of interests and, possibly, the breakdown of the alliance. In order to avoid these tensions, the IBERO team plays a fundamental role as a broker between the different actors by understanding the motivations of each stakeholder, working with them unilaterally and facilitating the alignment of these interests. Orozco asserts: [W]e are dealing with each of these actors according to their practice. Little by little they will be giving space for mutual recognition and understanding. We expect that, in the future, there will be more organic and less artificial alignment of interests and visions. (personal communication, May 17, 2023)

During the reflection process, the IBERO team realised that historical tensions, regarding land tenure, and weak community bonds existed at the time of the execution of the SToC. These tensions were not taken into account when the team formulated the transformative pathways of the initiative, which was centred on the construction and operation of a packing company. According to the narrative of the team: [a]lthough it is a desirable system that gives autonomy to native communities and farmers, in many ways it does not respond to the current context … In terms of expectations, this introduces greater complexity and forces us to rethink the specific theory of change, as it sheds light on vulnerabilities in

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land ownership and possible adjustments in the platform for association and investment. It exposes the weaknesses of communal property and the need of searching privately owned land, and the partial reorientation of the investment, along with a slight delay in the launch of the packing plant. (IBERO team narrative in Bernal-Hernández, 2023)

The IBERO team’s vision of the future changed when they realised that a new governance needed to be introduced into the initiative: A governance that really gives agency to the producers so that it is their project and not the project of someone who comes from outside with resources and knowledge and tries to do something but does not generate capacities, agency, or autonomy. (C.  Bueno, personal communication, March 17, 2023)

The team understood that improving the agency of indigenous communities is essential in a transformative future that the initiative projected, but difficult in practice. Orozco asserted that the team’s vision is to provide the necessary organisational and methodological tools to empower the lemon producers in La Sierra de Guajará so they can make their own decisions, strengthen their autonomy, and, in turn, become the future leaders of the initiative. At the time of writing this chapter, some of the producers did not have the technical expertise to make specific decisions. According to Orozco, working towards a future in which lemon producers have more agency and autonomy needs to be a gradual process. To this effect, the IBERO team has progressively transferred managerial and organisational responsibilities and cultivated all the necessary capacities to producers so they do not need the assistance of external actors; at the same time, these producers are acquiring necessary knowledge and skills to control all the processes within the project. Despite the prejudice in the area from people who question the capabilities and knowledge of indigenous communities to manage and even export lemons to the US, the IBERO team hopes to cultivate all the necessary capacities and capabilities for the project development without producers depending on the support of the regime actors. Orozco recognises that there exist local capabilities in the area to drive the initiative to success: Although these communities are rural and peasant producers, there are also engineers, accountants, administrators, electricians, mechanics and everything else, but due to lack of opportunities in the area they move to larger

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cities, even to the United States. But all the people that are being hired in the project, absolutely all of them are from there [the initiative’s area of influence]. (personal communication, May 17, 2023)

Another emergent reflection is on the significance of building networks and, more importantly, creating horizontal linkages with other actors. In this case, the team proposed a multi-stakeholder model rather than a hierarchical one, where producers are active partners who contribute with their labour force and own land for production. From our point of view, two aspects make the Anaa Witsukj initiative an alternative that opens a collective space for the construction of an alternative and transformative future: (1) the recognition of multiple visions, motivations, and knowledge, specifically the perspective of indigenous farmers, and (2) the intermediary role of the researchers at the IBERO team who guide the initiative by considering the different interests within the project. This future may be characterised by being inclusive, changing the governance in the agricultural sociotechnical system, and supporting the negotiation of multiple interests towards transforming local dynamics, reconfiguring parts of the system, and, consequently, achieving deep regional change.

Further Reflections In this chapter, we analysed how the transformative innovation policy framework and the related methodologies, as well as the collective spaces such as TIPC and the HUBLAyCTIP, can help in the understanding of multiple views about pasts and presents, and how this, in turn, contributes to improving futures building. We argued that directionality, inclusion, and learning are relevant principles of the TIP framework that become evident when actors share multiple visions and construct different transformative futures in collaborative spaces. Based on the work and experience of the HUBLAyCTIP, it is possible to point out that this space promotes the understanding of TIP and, alongside with TIPC, reinforces the potential of collective learning towards fostering transformations. The initiatives at the HUBLAyCTIP are an extended application of the TIP framework at a regional level that share a common desire to explore injustices and to enable trajectories that have been co-produced. We noticed that substantial reflections towards development occurred when collective activities took place within initiatives.

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Indeed, engagement activities under a collaborative perspective facilitate all types of learnings and resources for research teams to produce new knowledge (Bleischwitz et al., 2004). In these collaborative spaces, the use of ToCs and the learning narratives tool, designed by the HUBLAyCTIP, help Hub members to share commonalities and learn from their context and process of future construction. The ToCs represent the identification of past and present injustices, and some assumptions regarding future paths. The narratives show what innovation actors want to achieve and capture key reflections that help to reshape futures visions, like other Latin-American co-evolutionary processes in transformations that use ‘experience-telling’ methods (Juri et al., 2021). When reviewing the Anaa Witsukj initiative, we were able to identify two important aspects related to the process of futures building. First, the initiative gives a high priority to the participation of multiple actors, especially to those whose voices have been traditionally silenced, and gives them an active role in the production of future trajectories. This is connected to the main initiative’s directionality, which is framed under the conception of giving agency to those vulnerable communities. Second, significance is placed on fostering opportunities through aligning interests, sharing experiences, and reflecting collectively towards enhancing agency and enabling futures thinking within marginalised communities. Overall, collaborative spaces—promoted by the HUBLAyCTIP—are crucial in the innovation development for transformation framework. These spaces enable discussions, reflections, and shared experiences in order to build analytical projections of the futures as alternative pathways to the unsustainable pasts and presents of the region. Indeed, this is aligned with the idea of the need of co-production processes for people to learn about multiple stories and pasts towards more ‘reparative futures’ (Sriprakash et al., 2020). Although this chapter falls short on discussing the potential impact of those futures formulated in the collaborative spaces promoted by the Hub, we believe that working towards ‘reparative trajectories’ is a relevant subject that warrants further study to boost just transitions in the Latin-American region. Acknowledgments  We would like to thank Salim Chalela (HUBLAyCTIP administrative coordinator and researcher in the Alianza EFI team), Carmen Bueno, and Diego Orozco for sharing their experiences regarding their work in the HUBLAyCTIP with us. We also would like to thank the HUBLAyCTIP

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c­ oordinating team, of which we were a part at the time of publication, and to all HUBLAyCTIP members and allies for their work and whose learning process was highly valuable for us and allowed us to draw conclusions that will hopefully contribute towards a better transformative future in the Latin-American region.

References Akon-Yamga, G., Daniels, C. U., Quaye, W., Ting, B. M., & Asante, A. A. (2021). Transformative innovation policy approach to e-waste management in Ghana: Perspectives of actors on transformative changes. Science and Public Policy, 48(3), 387–397. Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as a cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 54(4), 651–673. Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined futures: Fictional expectations fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics and capitalist dynamics. Harvard University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjnrvrw Bernal Hernández, P. (2023). Building and monitoring a TIP narrative. https:// tipresourcelab.net/resource/tool-­building-­and-­monitoring-­a-­tip-­narrative/. Accessed 27 Apr 2023. Bernal Hernández, P., Rios, D., Marín, M., & Ramirez, M. (2021). TIP learning journey handbook in the Latin American and Caribbean HUB (Spanish). https://urosario.edu.co/sites/default/files/2023-­02/ruta-­de-­aprendizaje-­a-­ la-­politica-­de-­innovacion-­transformativa.pdf. Accessed 24 Mar 2023. Bleischwitz, R., Latsch, M., & Snorre, K. (2004). Sustainable development and collective learning: Theory and a European case study. Bruges European Economic Policy (BEEP) Briefing 7/2004. [Policy Paper]. Bueno, C., Orozco, D., & Betanzos, A. (2023). Anaa Witsukj: Una apuesta a un cambio transformador. In M. Ramirez (Ed.), Abriendo paso a políticas y prácticas de innovación transformativa en América Latina (pp.  313–344). Tirant Lo Blanche. Casal, M.  L., Kumar, S., Ghosh, B., Palavicino, C.  A., & Kerklingh, A. (2020). Transformative outcomes in the Global South workshop (Workshop report). Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC). https://tipresourcelab.net/resource/transformative-­o utcomes-­i n-­t he-­ global-­south-­workshop-­report-­2/ Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). (2019). Panorama Social de América Latina, 2019 (LC/PUB.2019/22-P/Re v.1). Dillenbourg, P. (1999). What do you mean by collaborative learning? In P.  Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and computational approaches (pp. 1–19). Elsevier.

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Geels, F.  W. (2002). Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: A multi-level perspective and a case-study. Research Policy, 31(8), 1257–1274. Geels, F. W., & Schot, J. (2007). Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways. Research Policy, 36(3), 399–417. Ghosh, B., Kivimaa, P., Ramirez, M., Schot, J., & Torrens, J. (2021). Transformative outcomes: Assessing and reorienting experimentation with transformative innovation policy. Science and Public Policy, 48(5), 739–756. https://doi. org/10.1093/scipol/scab045 Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. Hoffman, K., & Centeno, M. A. (2003). The lopsided continent: Inequality in Latin America. Annual Review of Sociology, 29(1), 363–390. Juri, S., Zurbriggen, C., Bosch Gómez, S., & Ortega Pallanez, M. (2021). Transition design in Latin America: Enabling collective learning and change. Frontiers in Sociology, 6, 725053. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.725053 Mollas-Gallart, J., Boni, A., Schot, J., & Giachi, S. (2020). A formative approach to the evaluation of Transformative Innovation Policy. TIPC Working Paper, TIPCWP 2020–01. http://www.tipconsortium.net/publication/a-­formative-­ approach-­to-­the-­evaluation-­of-­transformative-­innovation-­policy/. Accessed 22 Feb 2023. Olaya, A. (2023). Evolución y tensiones en la política de ciencia, tecnología e innovación en Colombia: El Camino Del Libro Verde 2030. In M. Ramirez (Ed.), Abriendo paso a políticas y prácticas de innovación transformativa en América Latina (pp. 77–103). Tirant Lo Blanche. Ramirez, M. (2023). Abriendo Paso a Políticas y Prácticas de Innovación Transformativa en América Latina. Tirant Lo Blanche. Ramirez, M., Boni, A., & Velasco, D. (n.d.). Concept note on experimentation in Transformative Innovation Policy (English version). https://tipresourcelab. net/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2022/09/C2-­S 1-­R C3-­C oncept-­n ote-­o n-­ experimentation-­in-­TIP-­English-­version.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2023. Schot, J., & Steinmueller, W. E. (2018). Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change. Research Policy, 47(9), 1554–1567. Schot, J., Daniels, C., Torrens, J., & Bloomfield, G. (2017). Developing a shared understanding of transformative innovation policy. TIPC Research Brief. Schot, J., Boni, A., Ramirez, M., & Steward, F. (2018). Addressing SDGs through Transformative Innovation Policy. TIPC Research Briefing, 2018-01. Schot, J., Kivimaa, P., & Torrens, J. (2019). Transforming experimentation. Experimental policy engagement and their transformative outcomes. TIPC Research Report.

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Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Pinto, P. R. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. van Es, M., Guijt, I., & Vogel, I. (2015). Theory of change thinking in practice: A stepwise approach. Hivos. Wakunuma, K., Castro, F. D., Jiya, T., Inigo, E. A., Blok, V., & Bryce, V. (2021). Reconceptualising responsible research and innovation from a global south perspective. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 8(2), 267–291. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). (2022). Living Planet Report 2022  – Building a nature-positive society. In R. E. A. Almond, M. Grooten, D. Juffe Bignoli, & T. Petersen (Eds.). WWF. Zeitlyn, D. (2015). Looking forward, looking back. History and Anthropology, 26(4), 381–407.

CHAPTER 8

Imaging and Realising Futures in Catalonia: Shared Agendas for Just Sustainability Transitions Diana Velasco, Míriam Acebillo-Baqué, Alejandra Boni, and Tatiana Fernández

Introduction Reparation is a keyword for current and future possible worlds. Situated and contextual challenges are ever pressing while, at the same time, current shocks and macro trends such as migration, racism, pandemics,

D. Velasco (*) INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), València, Spain M. Acebillo-Baqué Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain A. Boni INGENIO (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), València, Spain University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_8

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climate change and wars are pushing humanity to take action towards systems change (Johnstone & Schot, 2022). Approaching such prominent planetary challenges requires new ways of conceptualising and making policies that are built upon the acknowledgement that there are no single,  ready-­made  and simple solutions to fix complex problems. That is how we come to the notion of innovation policy and its critical role in enabling transitions to desirable reparative futures. To delve into this issue, we focus on an expression of innovation policy that seeks the transition to a green, resilient and just socioeconomic model that is being developed in Catalonia, in the context of EU policy frameworks. ‘Research and innovation for smart specialisation’ is a European Commission strategy that launches structural funds1 for country members to respond to identified priorities by developing a shared vision of challenges and solutions using research and innovation capacities. Catalonia has developed its strategy, the Research and Innovation Strategy for the Smart Specialisation of Catalonia (RIS3CAT), by advancing Shared Agendas (SA). By this, we mean the collective and organised action of actors convened around a common challenge (usually related to the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs). These SAs seek to adhere to a comprehensive design based on these principles (Fernández & Romagosa, 2020): 1. follow a holistic and dynamic approach to complex problems, which implies multi-stakeholder, multi-sector, multi-scale cooperation and knowledge generation; 2. focus on long-term changes seeking a sustained impact over time; 3. promote experimentation that is oriented towards learning; 4. follow an agile and effective adaptation to changes in the environment with its effects, developments and unexpected failures; 5. follow a systemic approach to the challenges; 1  Place-based funds directed to support key national/regional priorities, challenges and development of knowledge-based solutions based on smart, sustainable and inclusive innovation (Foray et al., 2012).

T. Fernández Secretariat for Economic Affairs and European Funds, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

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6. design a contextual governance model that includes both territorial actors who contribute to the generation of the problems encountered, as well as their solutions; and 7. develop alternatives that can be replicated or scaled, based on an articulated demand for solutions to recurring problems in the territory. We argue that, besides its focus on transitioning to more sustainable models, the process of imagining and realising futures through the SAs can also repair injustices experienced by individuals and communities in the past (Sriprakash et  al., 2020). Although the SAs do not include within their methodology a thorough examination of the past, they deal with profound and historical ecological and social divides resulting in the environment’s degradation, inequality and fragmentation (Scharmer, 2018). Hence, the chapter seeks to answer how, and to what extent, this specific type of innovation policy fostered by a regional government can lead to reparative futures. The chapter unfolds in five sections, starting with the introduction. Secondly, the theoretical framework is discussed, including the concept and implications of the SAs as a particular expression of innovation policy and the notion of reparative futures. Then, the methodology to design, implement and evaluate SAs, as well as two SAs as case studies, are set out, followed by a discussion on the extent to which the SAs enable the co-­ creation of sustainable and restorative futures from the present and towards systems change. The chapter concludes with the main insights drawn from the case studies, presenting further research avenues inspired by our study.

Innovation for Transformation and Reparation: The Catalan Shared Agendas Humanity is running through the apex of a multitude of crises caused by its ‘progress’ and ‘success’. A will to dominate nature has brought us to the Anthropocene, a human-made geological era that is breaking the resilience of natural systems, along with producing prominent societal turmoil (Bai et al., 2016). In these times, the word ‘transition’ seems central. Specifically, ‘sustainability transitions’ refer to long-term and complex processes that require multiple changes in the systems that supply social functions such as food, mobility, energy or health or sociotechnical systems (Geels, 2004). Innovation is at the centre of these transitions. Not only technological innovations but also, and most importantly, social innovations, or new forms of interactions and participation of broader social groups co-­ producing knowledge, contextual solutions, cooperation and governance

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schemes (Kleverbeck et  al., 2019). Enabling innovation to respond to shared challenges and meeting the SDGs require decisive government intervention acting as a facilitator to foster lasting solutions and prevent short-term fixes. Yet, traditional innovation policy has fallen short of this purpose, which is why scholars, practitioners and policymakers are experimenting with what is called transformative innovation, or innovation to transform sociotechnical systems towards sustainability transitions. A Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) framework is emerging (Schot & Steinmueller, 2018), which has been concurrently developing its theoretical bases and practical implications. The Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) has been a cornerstone in this purpose, given its action-research approach developed among innovation agencies from five countries of the Global South and North (Colombia, South Africa, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and researchers concentrated in three research centres. Through experimental policy engagements, the consortium has built methodologies to design, implement and evaluate policies that drive environmental and social transformation. The TIPC approach to TIP follows six principles to design, implement and evaluate initiatives (Schepers & Steinmueller, 2019). The first is directionality (1), which includes the deliberate ex-ante considerations of the effect of innovations on both society and the environment, inviting us to explore and develop diverse solutions that should respond to a societal goal (2). The innovation policy’s purpose is to enable, encourage, support and shield initiatives that have the potential to deliver solutions to grand societal challenges. Since these challenges require action at different levels and are complex in their nature, the policy should have a view on systems-level impact (3), recognising that single interventions will not be sufficient and generate effects in different parts of the systems. As systemic change requires changes in people’s behaviours, routines and visions, learning and reflexivity (4) should be encouraged and be central in the different policy development stages. To achieve the previous principles, inclusiveness (5) is essential. Traditional post-policy engagements or socialisations of the policy and its results do not gain society commitment and appropriation. Therefore, from the definition of the challenges to the policy design, there should be mechanisms to guarantee the engagement and empowerment of those directly affected. Lastly, inclusiveness brings differences in opinions, postures and ways of doing between different stakeholders. Thus, the policy design should consider and invite conflict that leads to further conversion into action (6), connecting with the directionality principle of experimenting with different solutions.

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We present in this chapter the SAs as a concrete expression of this type of innovation policy. The SAs have adopted the formative evaluation approach developed within TIPC (Molas-Gallart et  al., 2021) in which theories of change (ToCs) or the hypotheses that people and organisations have about the way changes happen (van Es et  al., 2015) are used as a guiding frame to reflect, design, implement and evaluate the creation of desirable and reparative futures. The explicit ToC of transformative innovation guides policies towards the identification, nurturing, empowerment and scaling of alternative practices. These practices come from bottom-up networks of knowledge producers that develop diverse solutions (called ‘niches’ in this literature) at the margin of dominant unsustainable and unfair  practices in the systems (called ‘regimes’ in this literature) to respond to their needs and challenges. An example of such networks is agroecological consumer markets that produce, commercialise and develop different meanings to food, challenging the traditional delocalisation of products consumed in wholesale supermarkets. These networks of users and producers learn and improve their practices, pressuring—with the intention to replace—the dominant routines. Policies should  identify and  support strong niches with the intention of changing socio-technical systems that are, in any case, pressured by global trends such as climate change, and shocks such as pandemics (Geels, 2002). The SAs guide their strategies following this generic ToC, co-­ developing shared visions of local challenges, connecting alternative practices, providing funding and learning spaces to foster their empowerment and agency and linking these niches to powerful actors in the dominant systems that want to support the transition. The SAs define and create concrete strategies to achieve desirable futures expressed in explicit ToCs. These theories are aligned with the RIS3CAT’s aim of realising a greener, more resilient and fairer socioeconomic model supported by digitalisation. Developing a shared future vision in harmony with holistic well-being in life requires learning from the past, sensing the emerging community energy to act now and bringing forth the emergent collectively desired future (Scharmer, 2018). In other words, it requires being fully conscious of the condensed spectrum of possibilities shaped by the struggles, contestations, aspirations and collective imagination of the actors embedded in the territory. It is a bottom-up process that requires time to converge to a desirable future along with the visions on how to realise them.

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This vision is complementary to the realisation of reparative futures, which demands a historical account of knowledges, practices, traumas and shocks that are present and embodied in multiple pasts and that must be recognised so the imagined futures do not reproduce past injustices. Such futures can only be co-produced by learning about multiple pasts and enabling spaces for letting people tell and engage with different stories (Sriprakash et al., 2020). Only then can a complete realisation of a desirable transition fully emerge and account for the singularities, complexity and uncertainty embedded in a shared relational space.

Methodology to Set and Deploy Share Agendas: Two Case Studies This section describes a methodological path developed from mid-2021 to 2022 with two nascent SAs from two provinces in Catalonia. The methodology is based on the development of the RIS3CAT and a TIP formative evaluation approach. It is important to highlight that the methodology keeps evolving from the learning process that harvests feedback from different contexts, means and needs. This means that there can be changes in the methodological pathways depending on future developments. The principles and theoretical bases are constant, but the design process can vary. Each of the steps contains various types of methods developed according to the progress and specific needs of each SA, such as individual and collective reflection sessions about the process; sense-making workshops with a mixture of conceptual training and its applicability to the contextual cases; and cross-learning sessions among members of the agendas. An overview of the methodology can be seen in Fig. 8.1.

Towards a Transformative Theory of Change The first phase is related to a sense-making process, where actors involved in the process recognise one another, share conceptual and methodological bases and expose their expectations, fears, assumptions and urgency to act. This is an extremely delicate moment where potential actors engage and build trust, and natural leadership emerges. We call this stage preparing the base for collective action. A second stage within this phase is related to defining the scope of the SA interventions. The first step is the definition of a guiding star, or the

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Fig. 8.1  Methodology to develop Shared Agendas. (Authors’ elaboration)

long-term vision framed as the desired future system, followed by a near star, which represents the five- to ten-year goal that is framed as distant, but accountable to the SA action progress. This is a way to define the impact expected from the intervention. Varied methods can be used here, but a systemic representation of the forces that prevent and allow the realisation of the stars has proved to be a powerful tool to identify leverage points to navigate towards the desired shared vision. Through this stage, participants put together their individual and collective expertise to build a deep understanding of the systems that the SA is intending to transform. The map presents the main collective narrative, the dominant practices that maintain stability and the opportunities to produce positive change with the least amount of effort (Fernández et al., 2023). Systems thinking provides tools to unveil the relationship between problems and their causes; take ownership of the problems and generate consciousness of the need to change behaviours; avoid quick fixes that produce further unintended consequences; take a close look at the relationships between the system parts; and coordinate actions with a specific directionality as the way to produce large systems change (Peter Stroh, 2015). In this sense, systems mapping enables not only a broad view of the current situation but also the opportunities to achieve a shared vision; therefore, it provides the heuristics and tools to imagine desirable futures. The maps are created by the agents involved in the change process, so they

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represent the actual situation seen from different perspectives. They are not a theoretical or conceptual account of how things should be; instead, they unveil the diverse narratives related to the common stars and in this way support a collective sense-making process of past and present forces that are crucial to shape the desired future. The second phase encompasses two stages: a transformative ToC definition, and a monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) plan. Theories of Change for TIP, and therefore for SA, are flexible since they represent change pathways for complex problems that do not have a known set of possible solutions and are based on learning through experimentation. They depict the desirable future. The ToC becomes a tool to monitor the trajectories of change, their underlying assumptions, and the progress towards the specified changes, which are expected to influence the scope of the desired impact (the guiding and near stars we want to reach). In this way, the ToC specifies the expected relationship between structure (inputs), results, scope (changes in the short and medium term), impacts (the ambition of systemic change beyond the control of a particular intervention), the process that connects them and the assumptions that influence their evaluation. The level on which the ToC is defined influences the level of detail of the activities and results. The formative nature of the evaluation implies that, from the intervention design and throughout each of the steps described in this section, participants are reflecting and assessing their learning progress and intervention effectiveness. Hence, the evaluation aims to improve the definition and implementation of an intervention, occurs in real time and requires reflexivity processes integrated into the routines of the participants. The ambition of this type of evaluation is to promote second-order learning, or that which—through interactions, production and appropriation of knowledge—leads to questioning beliefs, visions and perspectives that contribute to the change process (Argyris & Schön, 1978). For this reason, it requires the development of new internal evaluation capacities among the participants and the funding agencies. This evaluation does not conflict with summative evaluation schemes—or those directed to assess the effectiveness of the intervention at different moments of the implementation. On the contrary, it provides a layer of constant reflection that contributes to its development. Monitoring and learning are present from the moment the teams come together to reflect on their visions and hypotheses for change and do not come to an end with the completion of the project or programme when it

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feeds into a higher level. The evaluation strategy is explicitly written and agreed upon by the participants in a MEL plan. The plan is based on the ToC and includes: • Description of the SA: This encompasses the purpose of the agenda, in what context it is developed and who the main participants are. • Description of the ToC: This includes an infographic of the ToC (if it is available) and a written description of the ToC. • Definition of roles, responsibilities and resources: It should be specified who, ideally with regard to roles within the team and not individuals, will be in charge of directing, coordinating and reporting the results of the evaluation process, explicitly stating the commitments and resources needed regarding time and tools (i.e., software, legal agreements, travel expenses, etc.). • Reflection on the changes in knowledge, attitudes and interactions: This section aims to: (1) promote learning and reflexivity to maintain the link between the expected transformation or impact and the concrete actions and trajectories followed in the ToC, and record the learning journey during the life of the intervention; (2) record and track changes in participants’ attitudes, interactions and knowledge; (3) record changes in individual routines and roles, and changes within the group as a result of their interaction. At both levels, there can be learning about how to manage systemic barriers. • Follow-up indicators: The indicators respond to the ToC in its outcomes and outputs mainly. They can be quantitative and qualitative. Each indicator should include, at least, the data sources, the methods to collect the data, who is collecting the data and the periodicity to measure the indicator. There must be a database with complete information on all the measured indicators. • Revisions to the ToC: As a result of the monitoring of the ToC, updates to the ToC must be recorded. The changes and the sources should be listed and explained. The MEL plan is a departure and ending point for the whole process. It includes the explicit SA agreement on the desired future, the change pathways to advance towards it, the learning and monitoring strategy and the continuous check-through indicators on the contribution of the outcomes to the near and guiding stars.

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The ToC and MEL are the guiding and evaluation tools for the development, validation and rollout of the SA. The ToC deployment involves acting on the strategies, developing prototypes and demonstrators, and reflecting along the monitoring process, adjusting and learning in each one of the iterations. We will explore the advances of the whole cycle in the two SAs. These SAs are still in the deployment process and are starting to produce outputs that serve as prototypes and future demonstrators for other SAs within and beyond Catalonia.

Two Shared Agendas, Two Provinces, Two Different Sociotechnical Systems Transformations In this section, we focus on the process developed with two SAs: Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran; and Bages (Bages Valley). In both cases, there is a core group of actors articulating the SA in their territories, the Catalan central government and a group of researchers. The core group is in charge of developing the phases described in the previous section. In both cases, the methodological strategy was replicated to produce a transformative ToC and a MEL plan for each agenda (see Fig. 8.1). Furthermore, a research project was conducted by Ingenio—an academic partner of TIPC in Spain and part of the core teams of both SAs—to observe the role that public administration, universities and technological centres play in developing SAs. In addition to acquiring information through participant observation and interactions, Ingenio collected and generated data in different formats, such as primary documents related to the SAs (e.g., a meeting diary), and co-produced documents along with the core groups. The whole process followed an action-research cycle, which is based on open and dynamic design and evaluation processes including planning, action, observation and reflection (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006). The process also included cross-learning spaces between SAs. Such spaces have three main objectives: (1) from a methodological point of view, to reflect on the process carried out by the different SAs; (2) to present preliminary results of the research on the role of administrations, universities and technology centres participating in the process; and (3) to co-create strategies to navigate shared challenges. These spaces were fertile to expose individual and collective discussions on power imbalances, justice and democratic deliberation. Through collective conversations, participants from the SAs reflected on what is desirable, who defines it and

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how it might be expressed. The research project also included 23 semi-­ structured interviews with key stakeholders participating in the SAs. The main objective of the interviews was to understand the role played by these actors and their organisations, as well as their understanding of innovation and transformation. Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran The province of Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran includes the six counties of the area of the Ponent: Segrià, Noguera, Urgell, Pla d’Urgell, Garrigues and Segarra in Catalonia. It has a continental Mediterranean climate with good water availability, making it the largest agricultural area in Catalonia. The dominant landscape is the result of an intensive agricultural activity that has transformed the landscape into two very distinct types of territory: on the one hand, a dryland landscape, often sloping, with crops of olive trees, almond trees and cereals, and, on the other, an irrigated landscape, with fodder fields, summer cereals and fruit trees. It is, in general, a very rural territory, with an economic model based on the extraction and commercialisation of raw materials, and with little capacity to generate attractive jobs for the young population (Botargues Girón et al., 2020). The Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran SA seeks the development of a just circular bioeconomy model that generates distributed socioeconomic and environmental value chains that promote the well-being and prosperity of the territory. The SA intends to capture the potential economic, social and environmental value of the bioeconomy. The BioHub CAT is a specific intervention undertaken within the SA that aims to create a production model based on the recovery of residual organic matter, manure and other products, for these to become a resource instead of a problem. This implies a change in the visualisation of the challenge, going from managing to valuing resources. The process of defining the challenge and creating the SA has articulated open and collaborative innovation processes involving different types of actors in the transformation pathways, taking collective ownership instead of fragmenting action into separate groups. Through participatory methods, different stakeholders—including provincial authorities, farmers, and cattle associations, research centres, technology transfer intermediaries and the rural association of the Catalan provinces—developed the Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran ToC together. The core team, consisting of the leader of the process, affiliated with the Lleida provincial government, a

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technical advisor of the Lleida province, the leader of the SA at the Catalan government level and four researchers from Ingenio developed and facilitated the methodological stages. The process was developed in two co-­ creation workshops, two core team feedback sessions and three collective learning spaces with members of different SAs. The workshops were designed by the core team and included participants such as the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA), the Association of Rural Initiatives of Catalonia (ARCA) and Agrifood Local Action Groups, among others. The ToC was developed during the first co-creation workshop. A diverse set of over 20 actors designed together a joint future vision: ‘Develop a just circular bioeconomy model that generates distributed socioeconomic and environmental value chains that promote the wellbeing and prosperity of the territory’. From that joint vision, the group defined outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions, which can be seen in Table 8.1. Based on the ToC, the core team developed a MEL plan with indicators as a reference to monitor the transformation pathways. The second co-­ creation workshop was dedicated to identifying inquiry areas, or critical outcomes, outputs or assumptions for which change signs and indicators are needed to monitor the implementation process. At the moment, the team is engaging with broader civil organisations, farmers’ associations, firms and investors to create a biorefinery to process organic waste, strengthen local production and consumption, migrate to agroecological practices and, in general, apply the principles of the circular bioeconomy. It is expected to assemble different alternative practices (prototypes) into demonstrators to show that it is possible to activate a sustainability transition in a specific territory during 2023–2024. Bages The Bages province consists of 30 municipalities of which Manresa is the capital. The population ageing index is above the Catalan average with a very high index of elderly dependence. Two factors in the region have brought together different actors into an SA. The first is the population-­ ageing incidence of chronic diseases, especially age-dependent ones. Manresa has the highest rate of ageing in all Catalan cities. The second factor is linked to the drivers leading the economic development of the region. Over the years, the Bages province has developed a strong health

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Table 8.1  Outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions of the Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran SA Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

The local economic issue promotes a bioeconomy focused on the development of the territory.

Primary sector agents were trained and empowered about the possibilities of the bioeconomy. There are new market alliances which develop new business models based on the bioeconomy. Collaborative and experimental projects are funded with European funds, calls for proposals and territorial agreements. There are new forms of The Office for the participatory, multi-actor Transformation has and multi-level governance resources and coordinates that promote a just the main areas of territorial bioeconomy intervention of the SA. model. Procedures and methodologies have been created that favour the territorial bioeconomy. There are new practices that favour the development of new business models and the articulation of new value chains linked to the agri-food and forestry sectors.

Collaborative and experimental projects are funded with European funds, calls for proposals and territorial agreements. Primary sector agents are trained and empowered about the possibilities of the bioeconomy. Procedures and methodologies have been created that favour the territorial bioeconomy. Knowledge has been generated through the Endogenous Resources Observatory (guides, methodologies, good practices etc.)

Assumptions The training facilitates unlearning and empowerment (peer learning, sample cases).

The governance model of the Shared Agenda is consolidated and gives opportunities to a diversity of actors to create and strengthen networks. The procedures and methodologies lower risks and uncertainties and facilitate other actors adopting new practices. Willingness is needed on the part of the knowledge generation sector, business and government, for the governance model to be productive. Relationships of trust are generated so that working together for responsible innovation is easier.

(continued)

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Table 8.1 (continued) Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

Assumptions

Universities and research centres promote responsible and transformative innovation.

Knowledge has been generated through the Endogenous Resources Observatory (guides, methodologies, good practices etc.).

The local community is committed to the bioeconomy, requests its products and contributes to its development.

Administrations promote the bioeconomy development through public procurement of innovation in line with responsible and transformative innovation. Citizenship is sensitised and informed about the territorial bioeconomy model.

There is a narrative of the relational meaning of the territory that enables responsible innovation. There is systematised and robust information that supports the transformative proposals. Experimentation in policy triggers regulatory changes. If there is a public procurement of innovation, the demand is increased (i.e. with the public purchase, the niche is strengthened: if the demand/market is triggered, the supply is encouraged). Through the awareness of citizenship, changes can be generated in the demand of bioeconomy products.

and social assistance sector with a vital and creative footprint of innovation and research. It is the second in economic importance and impact, only behind the trade sector. The combination of these two factors has led to the creation of an SA focused on health and social innovation to respond to the needs and problems generated regarding the elderly, their associated chronic diseases, their carers and their families (Gironès García et al., 2020). The process of building the SA’s ToC and its MEL plan took a similar approach to the one with the BioHub CAT. The process was developed in two co-creation workshops, five core team feedback sessions and three collective learning spaces with members of different SAs. The core team was composed of three members of the Research Office of the Fundación Universitaria del Bages, two researchers from the Sant Josep Clinical Hospital of the Althaia Foundation in Manresa and four researchers from Ingenio. Together the core group convened actors from patients’ associations, small and midsize enterprises, the chamber of commerce,

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technological centres, entrepreneurs, health professionals and local governments to co-create their ToC and MEL. In the first co-creation workshop, the participants defined their desirable future as the following: 1. The quality of life has been improved for dependent people who live with chronic disease and for the people who take care of them. 2. An ecosystem has been created of actors who collaboratively develop effective responses to the problems and needs of dependency and chronicity and who contribute to the economic development of the territory. The Bages ToC outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions can be seen in Table 8.2. Currently, the Bages SA core group is building partnerships with municipal governments, strengthening bonds with chambers of commerce, patient associations, research and innovation centres, and searching for investors. The MEL plan related to the ToC has been developed with the inclusion of contextual indicators. However, the deployment of the strategies and coordination among the actors in the SA has evolved at a slower pace due to changes in leadership in the core group and a lack of financial resources to move forward in the expected transformation pathways.

Desirable and Reparative Futures Fostered Through the Shared Agendas Sustainability transitions as a research area have expanded rapidly during the 2010s decade, providing theoretical and practical guidance mainly on how to confront environmental problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and resource depletion. The focus is on the transformation of sociotechnical systems, specifically the following factors: (1) the co-­ evolution of their multiple dimensions (knowledge, technology, markets, industry structures, cultural meanings, and policies and governance); (2) the study and integration of multiple actors with different agency levels; (3) the relation between the stability of unsustainable practices within the systems and the forces of change that have the potential to mobilise a desirable transition; (4) a long-term perspective on how transitions occur (pre-development, take-off, acceleration and stabilisation); (5) an

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Table 8.2  Outcomes, intermediate outcomes and assumptions of the Bages SA Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

Assumptions

People who live with dependency and chronicity, and their closest caring environment, are part of the approach and creation of solutions to their main problems and needs.

A health and social observatory has been created in the territory, with relevant and accessible information, such as research, news, interviews, activities, indicators, products and services. Citizens participate actively in research and transfer projects to respond to problems and needs of dependency and chronicity (advisory advice, assessment, identification of problems and needs, research, analysis). New entrepreneurship projects have been generated with impact on people’s health.

The observatory facilitates the search for information related to the health and social sphere for all quadruple helix actors. The development of a legal framework, that facilitates data sharing, respecting the right to privacy and the protection of personal data, facilitates the search for solutions to the problems of people with dependency and chronicity. Carers have valuable information that should be shared to connect better with the health and social system and with people who live with dependency and chronicity. By having more information about the health and social system, trust is generated in the caring environment and chronically dependent people. (continued)

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Table 8.2 (continued) Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

Assumptions

Citizens are empowered by taking ownership of the problems and needs of dependency and chronicity, and actively participate in the solutions.

A health and social observatory has been created in the territory, with relevant and accessible information, such as research, news, interviews, activities, indicators, products and services. A health and social data laboratory has been created in the territory, which allows continuous analysis of data to propose new solutions for products and services. There are research and knowledge transfer projects with a significant presence of citizens at all levels (advisory boards, evaluation, identification, research, analysis). Citizens participate actively in research and transfer projects to respond to problems and needs of dependency and chronicity (advisory advice, assessment, identification of problems and needs, research, analysis).

The creation of the data laboratory will allow the generation of knowledge and new solutions (products and services) to health and social challenges. New technologies facilitate the transformation of current health and social models. Thanks to the application of citizen science methodologies, the active participation of citizens is encouraged, who propose and develop products and services for dependency and chronicity. People with dependence and chronicity and their environment are aware that their participation will be useful and will reap benefits; therefore, they will want to participate in health and social projects, as well as in the use of new technologies applied to this sector. (continued)

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Table 8.2 (continued) Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

The institutions of the territory involved in the shared agenda collaborate to tackle the problems and needs of people with dependence and chronicity.

A health and social data laboratory has been created in the territory, which allows continuous analysis of data to propose new solutions for products and services. New knowledge and work in the field of transformative research and innovation have generated new projects. They capture more resources to develop innovative solutions to the challenges of the territory.

Assumptions

Commitment and trust are generated to foster common interests around shared challenges. Formal and informal relationships are created between the institutions of the shared agenda, both general and related to specific developments, which foster a co-creative culture and create spaces for collaboration. New entrepreneurship projects Industrial doctorates will have been generated with a social facilitate knowledge impact and on people’s health. transfer to companies and research centres. The creation of a knowledge Hub will allow the detection, improvement and implementation of solutions to the challenges of personalised health and social care. There will be good acceptance from health professionals to the implementation of the new models of personalised care. Sponsors are identified to support collaboration processes between the institutions of the shared agenda. (continued)

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Table 8.2 (continued) Transformative outcome

Intermediate outcome

Assumptions

There is an agile and efficient methodology that helps develop new products and services that generate new business initiatives.

A health and social data laboratory has been created in the territory, which allows continuous analysis of data to propose new solutions for products and services. Citizens participate actively in research and transfer projects to respond to problems and needs of dependency and chronicity (advisory advice, assessment, identification of problems and needs, research, analysis). New knowledge and work in the field of transformative research and innovation have generated new projects. They capture more resources to develop innovative solutions to the challenges of the territory. New entrepreneurship projects have been generated with a social impact and on people’s health.

There will be sustained funding to deploy the action plan (beyond the Catalan government funds). The methodologies to support the creation of new products and services will be useful and sufficient. There will be an increase in business sensitivity to promoting health and social initiatives. The entrepreneurship platform will facilitate the development of new health and social projects and provide solutions to problems related to dependency and chronicity. Business angels and other investors will incorporate aspects of social responsibility into their evaluation scales, in addition to the business valuation criteria.

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acceptance of the uncertainty of a future which demands to have an openended stand to multiple promising innovations and, therefore, change pathways; and (6) a normative directionality focused on the public good which requires environmental regulations, standards, incentives and policies (Köhler et al., 2019). While we recognise the normative directionality of sustainability transitions, and therefore of TIP, it has become clear that ‘attention to ethical aspects of transitions has been relatively limited’ (Köhler et al., 2019: 16), accounting mainly for distributional, procedural and recognition justice in the energy system (Sovacool & Dworkin, 2015). Even in the energy system, where justice and ethical aspects have been studied the most, the power imbalances and replication of injustices remain when the futures are pushed mainly from the Global North. These efforts are characterised by a singular notion of development, imprinted in the idea of ‘leaving no one behind’—as if there is an unstoppable progress trajectory. In addition, dominant technological fixes are applied that do not account for the disparities that demand differentiated solutions, while a lack of ethical principles to generate such transitions is evident (Jasanoff, 2018). Hence, we advocate and call to develop further the framework of what a just transition means in terms of people’s well-being by accentuating the social dimension in the situated regional transitions, in line with the core human development values (Velasco et al., 2021). This standing point is fundamental to the definition of what is desirable and, therefore, in the design of transition pathways. To move towards a just future, one in which the harms of the past and present are no longer replicated but repaired, it is necessary to understand what, why and how these past injustices occurred. The idea of reparative futures signals a commitment to identify and recognise the injustices visited on, and experienced by, individuals and communities in the past. It understands that these past injustices, even when they appear to be distant in time or “over”, will continue to endure in people’s lives in material and affective ways unless, and until, they are consciously and carefully addressed. (Sriprakash et al., 2020: 2)

We see how the SAs methodology and our particular case studies take a normative stance towards systems transformations. Although this account consciously and deliberatively calls for the inclusion of a broad spectrum of social actors who are affected and who, in turn, effect the transition

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processes, it still lacks clearer conceptual and practical implications for the ethical direction of the change pathways. The sense-making, change trajectories design, development, validation and rollout of the SAs can be strengthened by providing reparative spaces that are conducive to the emergence and expansion of collective and individual imagination. We believe that further experimentation is required to nurture the current methodology with participatory methods that enable participants to be fully present and allow active listening and speaking; in other words, spaces that enhance the consciousness level of the past and present to co-produce desirable futures (Scharmer, 2018) in the form of SAs. We believe that a way to move forward could be twofold. First, ways should be introduced in which SA actors develop individually and collectively capacities and skills for active listening and being present in order to aid alternative practices to emerge. This could involve working on strategies used in alternative pedagogies such as non-violent communication, reparative circles, conflict transformation and theatre of the oppressed. Secondly, we need to account for the utopian character of the co-­ production of such futures that disrupt the predominant systems configurations rooted in the potentialities of the present and identify weak linkages, ruptures and leverage points. This is something that is already being developed through the systems mapping methods, but which can include an additional layer that enquires about the ethical dimensions of the analysis. Ultimately, we might strengthen a disciplined imagination beyond what is feasible and probable with a clear account of justice (Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2022). The notion of justice in the Lleida, Pyrenees and Aran SA in the development of a circular bioeconomy model can be strengthened by considering and acknowledging the agricultural transformation of the region and its linkages to historical knowledges and practices that have replicated and reproduced power imbalances, gender exclusion, social degradation of the farming practice (e.g., concerning migration) or a vision of farming as an outdated trade. Also, traditional practices can be considered which have been undermined across the agricultural transition in these past decades, such as the cooperativism and collectivisation and management of the commons. This can be done by creating spaces where the symbolic attachments of the past and present practices are explored, contributing towards the ambition of creating transformative ToCs. For the Bages SA, where the envisioned collective action of a robust ecosystem of actors aligns towards providing a better quality of life for

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ageing people with chronicity and dependency and their carers, the notion of reparation is critical. The position and view of elders within society and their contribution to the present and future generations can open dialogues where preconceptions, visions and assumptions are unveiled and transformed. Education towards disease prevention and mental and physical health for patients, carers and families are at the base of the health and social care systems transformation.An education for reparative futures takes seriously “our knowledge of the past as a source of present and future action” and it accepts that humans have symbolic attachments to “the past” that are located far from a register of historical events or empirical facts. (Sriprakash et al., 2020: 9) To fully unleash the transformative potential of empowering people who live with dependency and chronicity, several factors seem to be essential, namely their closest caring environment, citizens and the organisations of the province taking part in the agenda, and the design of spaces with competing and contesting visions of the past, present and future, where multiple pasts are recognised, and injustices unveiled. The SAs are already an innovative expression of a desirable futures envisioning and realisation that could be further developed by enriching their theoretical and methodological bases with other frameworks such as human development and the notion of reparative futures. We have pointed out that the account of justice in sustainability transitions is underdeveloped and presents gaps on the how, and the extent to which, the normative direction of the transformation pathways has a holistic understanding of social well-being in harmony with environmental preservation. Continuing to develop alternatives through specific examples, such as the ones presented in this chapter, is an attempt to contribute to this purpose.

Conclusions In this chapter, we explored how a specific manifestation of Transformative Innovation Policies, the Shared Agendas in Catalonia, is contributing to the development of the theoretical frame of what a sustainability transition entails, as well as to the practice of the core concepts in specific methodological tools. Envisioning just and sustainable futures crosses dimensions related to time (past, present, future); positionality, responsibility and accountability represented by contested values and visions from different groups; and consciousness of the complexity and uncertainty of transformation, which requires keeping an open approach to the future (cannot be

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predicted, there are multiple pathways to reach multiple futures). The main questions regarding the ethical base of the desirable futures, who the creators of these futures are, and who will benefit from them must be deliberatively included. Central to the TIP evolving frame should be futures that do not reproduce past injustices but take into account the rebound effects of the selection of pathways. We presented two unique case studies. We analysed the process of designing and developing shared regional agendas and co-producing a plan for learning and monitoring following a particular formative evaluation. In this way, we could explore the complexities of creating generative spaces where transformation unfolds. Although the methodology followed the TIP principles and took a conscious and deep participatory approach, we found that the process can be enhanced and strengthened by explicitly including methods to question power imbalances, injustices and reparation. The SAs will keep evolving; moreover, their design and implementation will surely vary according to the specific context and challenges faced. This, far from being negative, is welcome and encouraged. We want to close this chapter by pointing out two further research and practice avenues. First, sustainability transitions in general, and TIP in particular, can gain substance in their normative principles by including justice frameworks such as the human capabilities approach (Deneulin, 2014; Sen, 1999; Velasco et al., 2021). Questioning what is considered transformative through the lens of the human development and capability approach would add to the directionality principle. Furthermore, this exploration could be an avenue through which the interrelation of TIP with just transitions dialogues can be strengthen. Secondly, the individual skills of participants, facilitators and leadership seem to be critical to the success of the SA formation and implementation process; therefore, more research in this respect would be extremely useful.

References Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning. Addison-Wesley. Bai, X., van der Leeuw, S., O’Brien, K., Berkhout, F., Biermann, F., Brondizio, E.  S., Cudennec, C., Dearing, J., Duraiappah, A., Glaser, M., Revkin, A., Steffen, W., & Syvitski, J. (2016). Plausible and desirable futures in the Anthropocene: A new research agenda. Global Environmental Change, 39, 351–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.09.017 Botargues Girón, T., Falguera, V., & González, E. (2020). Biolab Ponent.

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Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J. (2017). From design thinking to systems change. How to Invest in Innovation for Social Impact. RSA Action and Research Centre. Deneulin, S. (2014). Wellbeing, justice and development ethics. Routledge. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315867090 Fernández, T., & Romagosa, M. (2020). Articulating shared agendas for sustainability and social change. A contribution from the territory to the EU debate on transitions to sustainability (No. 8; ‘RIS3CAT Monitoring’ Collection). http://catalunya2020.gencat.cat/web/.content/00_catalunya2020/ Documents/angles/fitxers/shared-­agendas.pdf Fernández, T., Marinelli, E., Martín-Pardo, M., & Romagosa, M. (2023). Guidelines for designing shared agendas (No. 20; RIS3CAT Monitoring Collection). Government of Catalonia. https://fonseuropeus.gencat.cat/ web/.content/ris3cat/documents/angles/20-­guia-­agendes-­compartides-­ ris3cat-­2030-­en.pdf Foray, D., Goddard, J., Beldarrain, X. G., Landabaso, M., McCann, P., Morgan, K., Nauwelaers, C., & Ortega-Argilés, R. (2012). Guide to research and innovation strategies for smart specialisations. Geels, F.  W. (2002). Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: A multi-level perspective and a case-study. Research Policy, 31(8–9), 1257–1274. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-­7333(02)00062-­8 Geels, F. W. (2004). From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems: Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory. Research Policy, 33(6–7), 897–920. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. respol.2004.01.015 Gironès García, X., Ayala Marquez, B., & Sort García, L. (2020). Agenda compartida del Bages. Innovació en els àmbits de la salut i social per a persones amb dependència i cronicitat. Gümüsay, A. A., & Reinecke, J. (2022). Researching for desirable futures: From real utopias to imagining alternatives. Journal of Management Studies, 59(1), 236–242. Jasanoff, S. (2018). Just transitions: A humble approach to global energy futures. Energy Research & Social Science, 35, 11–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. erss.2017.11.025 Johnstone, P., & Schot, J. (2022). The effect of shocks on sustainability transitions. Deep Transitions Working Paper Series, 1–18. Kleverbeck, M., Krlev, G., Mildenberger, G., Strambach, S., Thurmann, J.-F., Terstriep, J., & Wloka, L. (2019). Indicators for measuring social innovation. Atlas of Social Innovation, 2, 98–101. Köhler, J., Geels, F.  W., Kern, F., Markard, J., Onsongo, E., Wieczorek, A., Alkemade, F., Avelino, F., Bergek, A., & Boons, F. (2019). An agenda for sus-

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tainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 31, 1–32. Molas-Gallart, J., Boni, A., Giachi, S., & Schot, J. (2021). A formative approach to the evaluation of transformative innovation policies. Research Evaluation. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvab016 Peter Stroh, D. (2015). Systems thinking for social change. A practical guide to solving complex problems, avoiding unintended consequences, and achieving lasting results. Chelsea Green Publishing. Scharmer, O. (2018). The essentials of theory U: Core principles and applications. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Schepers, S., & Steinmueller, E. (2019). A transformative innovation learning journey. University of Sussex. https://www.tipconsortium.net/wp-­content/ uploads/2019/07/Learning-­Journey-­Guide-­Book-­FINAL-­14-­May-­003.pdf Schot, J., & Steinmueller, W. E. (2018). Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change. Research Policy, 47(9), 1554–1567. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford University Press. Sovacool, B. K., & Dworkin, M. H. (2015). Energy justice: Conceptual insights and practical applications. Applied Energy, 142, 435–444. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.01.002 Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Pinto, P. R. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. van Es, M., Guijt, I., & Vogel, I. (2015). Theory of change thinking in practice. A stepwise approach. Hivos. Velasco, D., Boni, A., Delgado, C., & Rojas-Forero, G. D. (2021). Exploring the role of a Colombian university to promote just transitions. An analysis from the human development and the regional transition pathways to sustainability. Sustainability, 13(11), 6014. Whitehead, J., & McNiff, J. (2006). Action research: Living theory. Sage.

CHAPTER 9

Peacebuilding as Democratic Political Education: A Project from Archive to Repertoire Stephen L. Esquith and Weloré Tamboura

Introduction Advocates of transitional justice no longer believe that it is simply a matter of listening to the testimony of victims of atrocities in open hearings, compensating some for their losses, and prosecuting the most unrepentant wrongdoers in national courts and international tribunals while granting limited amnesty to others. They recognise that these historical injustices are more entrenched, widespread, and harder to repair (de Greiff, 2020; Gready & Robins, 2019). Retribution, recognition, and reparations can address the consequences of genocide, human rights violations, and mass

S. L. Esquith (*) Michigan State University, Ann Arbor, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] W. Tamboura Institute for Technology, University of Letters and Human Sciences of Bamako (ULSHB), Bamako, Mali © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_9

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violence and can express hope for greater future ‘accountability and reciprocity’ (Walker, 2015: 219). However, they are not politically sufficient to prevent their recurrence. While some have called for transformative, not transitional, justice in order to emphasise the importance of moving beyond the limits of existing war crimes tribunals and truth commissions, there are good reasons for thinking in terms of reparative justice. This notion of repair is not limited to simply putting things back together again the way they were. It requires creativity and new ways of seeing what the road ahead will require of us (Spelman, 2002). Kelly summarises the forward-looking purpose of reparative justice this way: Socially responsible persons aim to counteract the possibility of injustice. Responsible membership in a collective agent is not best gauged by a shared sense of pride and celebrated values but by a cautious thinking ahead to how things might go wrong. This requires critical analysis that acknowledges past wrongs and grapples with the political and social dynamics that made them possible. The historical record of the social institutions in which we participate, willingly and even unwillingly, influence our responsibility as members of groups. Our critical grasp of these influences may open action possibilities that would not otherwise have been available to us. This is especially true when critical appreciation of the dynamics of injustice is public and shared. Then critical scrutiny can be joined with a collective commitment to taking responsibility for social injustice. (Kelly, 2011: 209)

To meet this political challenge, the arts and humanities must play a more radical role than they have heretofore (Ramirez-Barat, 2014; Boesten & Scanlon, 2021). That is, they should serve as catalysts for transforming the constitution and distribution of political power from the ground up through democratic political education (Wolin, 1994; Esquith, 2023). However, in this capacity as vehicles for democratic political education, the arts and humanities are not without their own limitations and dangers (Baum, 2015). The dual challenge for this project  – one might call it the participatory action research (PAR) question – is to identify the ways in which the arts and humanities can contribute to a more just and democratic future in the wake of genocide, human rights violations, and mass violence and to ‘cautiously think ahead to how things might go wrong’ in the process in order to ‘open

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up action possibilities that would not otherwise have been available to us’. (Kelly, 2011: 209)

Democratic political education may not be the only path to transformative justice and a future in which collective reparative obligations are recognised and met. It is the one that we have begun to map out from a three-tiered archive of peacebuilding practices to a repertoire for democratic political education (Taylor, 2003). In this chapter, we present the initial steps we have taken towards a reparative future in which the causes of genocide, human rights violations, and mass violence can be recognised and reckoned with democratically through an ‘everyday’ form of peacebuilding (Mac Ginty, 2021).

The Project After each witness before the Malian Commission Vérité, Justice et Réconciliation (CVJR) beginning in 2019 publicly told their story of the violence they and their families have endured, often over the long term, the President of the Commission, Ousmane Oumarou Sidibé, asked them what they thought should be done. Their testimony has been painfully honest and has left their audiences speechless. Some witnesses called for punishment for those responsible, while others expressed forgiveness. Some asked for material reparations for their children in the form of schooling, while others requested employment for themselves. Several spoke of the need for a more united and inclusive Mali with equal rights for all Malians. One witness, Ibrahim Ag Mohammed, a member of one of the Tuareg communities in the northern city of Gao, described himself in French as a victim of arbitrary arrest and detention by the Malian Army. He concluded his testimony with these words: First, the message that I address mainly to representatives of the State, to the bearers of laws, is that they show discernment, impartiality, neutrality, and justice for all the citizens of Mali. That they do this without any discrimination against ethnicities and races so that all citizens recognize themselves in the state, in the institutions of the Republic. And I take advantage of this platform to launch a request to politicians, leaders, and chiefs, to really organize round tables so that this situation never happens again (emphasis added). (CVJR public hearing, December 8, 2019, Bamako, Mali)

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This project of democratic political education stresses the prevention of violence in everyday life through political dialogue, not only the exposure of individual atrocities on a national stage (Mac Ginty, 2021). It is this need for prevention that has motivated our work and, at the same time, makes it difficult to assess. We hope that by reenacting these complex stories, we can point beyond empathy for the victims and resentment towards the perpetrators to a place where peacebuilding and democratic political education come together in a series of virtual and actual ‘round tables.’ Our efforts have been inspired by testimony before the CVJR and the many other stories we have listened to in classrooms, on playing fields, and at small village meetings. From this archive, we have assembled a repertoire of educational initiatives at the local and university levels, using the arts broadly understood: storytelling, visual art, performance art, and multi-media art. In one sense, we are a small group of Malian teachers, students, community activists, artists, and public officials who are working with faculty and students from the US.  We have worked together since 2004 on a variety of development ethics and peace education projects. But in another sense, we are community members who have participated in these projects, and many of us have endured the violence that we hope to address creatively through democratic political education. Together, we have done this by raising questions at town meetings about accountability, by negotiating simulated peace accords in school classrooms and assemblies, and by exploring new forms of democratic dialogue online and in person. Our hybrid peacebuilding social practice operates on three interconnected levels: • At the national level, we worked with the CVJR to interpret and disseminate video animations based on public testimonies given before the Commission during the last two years. • At an intermediate level, we worked with students from the Malian University Institute for Technology (IUT), the Michigan State University Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH), and Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO) to produce these video animations in local languages to introduce a new community engagement practice into public education. • At the local level, we worked with Malian community organisations to produce and use picture books, interactive games, and video animations to prompt democratic peacebuilding dialogues that will

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empower the youth to take greater ownership of peacebuilding in their communities. The dynamics of peacebuilding as democratic political education are cyclical. They begin with an inventory of what other scholars have called everyday peace indicators (EPI), for example, open schools, small and affordable land holdings, functioning local marketplaces, and the availability of clean water and medical care (Firchow, 2018; Autesserre, 2021). This is followed by an analysis of the operations and constitution of power that undermine everyday peace, and lastly, the retelling and reenactment of stories based upon this inventory and analysis to engage participants in dialogue on the means of prevention. This cycle generates new questions about what counts as everyday peace, the causes for its absence, and the pre-conditions for transformation—questions that lead to a new round of inventory, analysis, and reenactment. This is what democratic political education looks like on the ground. Through ‘transformative,’ not merely ‘instrumental’ and ‘transactional’ forms of collaboration in Mali, our team of artists, teachers, students, and local community activists working with a variety of public and private organisations (Culbertson, 2020) have begun to cultivate the skills of ‘problem-solving, empathy, creativity, adaptability, and resilience’ needed to build such a shared understanding of the dynamics of power from the bottom up (Winthrop, 2016; Bleck, 2015). In a very modest sense, the result has been the formation of a demos of ordinary citizens and professionals who are generating new forms of political power to contest the inequality and exploitation at the root of mass violence (Wolin, 1994; Esquith, 2023). We are not alone in turning to the arts and humanities for this purpose. A hybrid peacebuilding process as democratic political education is the subject of a wider conversation on Mali among scholars, writers, and artists (Hale, 1998; Hoffman, 2000; Durán, 2007; Hanebrink & Smith, 2013; Ensor, 2013) whose goal is also an education in the constitution and distribution of political power and the building of everyday peace. Our work is consistent with, not duplicative of theirs. However, like other humanitarian development and assistance projects, there is a danger that inequalities and hierarchies will arise within our own peacebuilding practice (Fassin, 2010). And as a humanitarian hybrid programme, there is the risk of top-down state-centrism (Mac Ginty & Firchow, 2016; Richmond, 2014).

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Why Mali Many countries are arguably more capable of embracing a transformative notion of democratic political education than Mali is today. Not long ago, Mali was praised for its democratic promise in West Africa (Wing, 2008, 2013). This is no longer the case. The 2023 Freedom House report on Mali is categorical and has been for the last two years: Mali may have been ‘partly free’ before, but today, its citizens are ‘not free’ to participate in politics and civil society. Malians are caught between the stubborn legacies of a colonial past, a global political economy that has left them impoverished, the harsh effects of climate change, an unelected corrupt government, recurrent violent inter-ethnic conflicts, and attacks from terrorists and armed government forces (International Federation for Human Rights, 2018). As marginal as sub-Saharan West Africa may seem to those who think of themselves as operating at the centre of geopolitical power, recent experience reminds us that we are connected, not just through the exploitation of natural resources but through forced human migration, infectious disease, illegal trafficking, climate change, and political violence. Under these dire circumstances, military efforts to contain violence within this region of the Sahel, while maintaining access to its wealth, have only escalated the violence (OECD, 2021). However, even though the prognosis for peace and democracy in Mali has been negative since 2012 (Hickendorff, 2019; Ibrahim & Zapata, 2018), instead of retreating from these challenges, the majority of Malians still believe that there is a path to a more peaceful democratic future (Coulibaly et al., 2020). In the wake of the coup d’état of 2012–2013, some observers hoped that griottes and griots from the traditional caste of praise singers and musicians in Mali could resolve violent conflicts diplomatically (Hoffman, 2017). It was not that simple, but the main idea—that mediation depends upon more than a ceasefire and well-armed peacekeepers—still has strong popular support. While confidence in the 2015 peace agreement and the 2020 provisional government has waned (Devermont & Harris, 2020), many Malians continue to prefer democracy over one-party and military rule (Thera, 2020). In the remaining part of this chapter, we present stories of Malians who have acted on this belief and have adopted a strategy inspired by the griottes/griot tradition. These are not stories of pathetic victims or

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extraordinary heroes. They are stories of what Diana Tietjens Meyers has called ‘burdened agency’: Individual agency is burdened when choices and actions are placed under systemic constraints that are incompatible with the dignity of persons – that is, when options are structured by unrealized or violated human rights. Although all of these victims are at the mercy of powers that inflict or threaten to inflict needless and terrible suffering on them, their responses to their predicaments are heterogeneous. Passivity and supererogation are not typical. To varying degrees, victims strategize to relieve their own suffering and to help others. To varying degrees, they yield to dread and despondency. This holds true of pathetic victims and heroic victims alike. All are wronged by virtue of the illegitimate encumbrances that are imposed on their ability to choose and act. Thus, burdened agency unites pathetic and heroic victims under a common liability. (Meyers, 2013)

This is a complex notion that Meyers (2016: 58–62) develops as an alternative to the ‘innocence criteria’ that she argues victims, both pathetic and extraordinary, are thought to meet. But ‘burdened agency’ can also apply, for different reasons, to bystanders, collaborators, and even perpetrators, not just victims. Their human rights have not been violated, but their ability to make choices should be seen in the context of encumbrances and constraints that explain but do not justify their actions. Retold, relived, and critically reenacted, the stories are assets for peacebuilding as democratic political education. Instead of reinforcing a binary distinction between victims and perpetrators—which leaves most people watching from the sidelines, hoping either for harsh punishments or their own vindication and the exoneration of others—these new narratives include active bystanders and allies alongside real victims, beneficiaries, and perpetrators. In this way, a space and a language are created for democratic political education that makes everyday hybrid peacebuilding possible. Political education in this sense combines reparative justice for victims and transformative justice for a wider range of complicit bystanders and implicated beneficiaries unable to recognise their responsibilities. In a cautious step-by-step procession, they learn to retell their stories as overlapping and potentially empowering narratives in which the dynamics of power can be visualised (Esquith, 2010; Rothberg, 2019; Robbins, 2017).

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Democratic Political Education and the Arts One major challenge facing hybrid peacebuilding that aspires to be democratic is its orientation towards the state and other official political institutions. In other words, will it be top-down? Many artists have worked with and within official transitional justice institutions in other countries to underscore the legacies of past injustice (Rush & Simic, 2014). The traditional performing arts (i.e., dance, theatre, music, puppetry, film) were the first to recognise the need for an aesthetic dimension in peacebuilding, possibly because of the performative nature of tribunals and truth commissions (Cohen et al., 2011). They created spaces in civil society in which to contest the limitations of state and state-centred institutions. Visual artists (e.g., painters, photographers, fabric artists, and sculptors) more recently have aligned their work closely and sometimes within these official institutions (Garnsey, 2019). In many of these cases, visual and performing artists have embraced an explicitly political agenda. According to Garnsey: the sentiment, agency, encounters, and spaces created by visual art [broadly defined] open up new political possibilities which empower and support transitional justice. Art positions seeing, speaking, listening, and creating as important actions in transitional justice. Art enables individual and collective identities to be imagined, tried out, challenged, and created. Art is a radical form of political participation in times of transition (emphasis added). (Garnsey, 2020: 205)

The artistic practices we work with are themselves a blend of visual and performance arts. In order to achieve the radical participation Garnsey calls for, however, we have been careful to keep state power at arm’s length: • Our picture books were sketched and then transformed into one-­ page fabric art scenes before being photographed and compiled as reproducible picture books. Co-written by Malian students and teachers, they then have served as scripts for classroom and community performances. One of these stories was then transformed into a video animation to scale out the project through a wider community network. • The cooperative political simulations (i.e., peace games) have been played on maps created by the participants and populated by clay and

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cardboard figures they have made from conflict scenarios they have written which reflect their experience. Within these simulations, the participants issue policy statements, make public proclamations, and conduct inter-ethnic and interstate negotiations until they have reached a mutually beneficial settlement. • Other video animations inspired by the public testimony given before the CVJR have been used in local communities and schools have been designed to prompt discussions of reconciliation, reparations, and prevention. We have chosen these art forms for several reasons related to the limitations and the assets of the Malian context in which we work. They are about issues that are of everyday concern to local communities. They do not depend upon the unreliable energy system in Mali any more than they rely on direct government funding. Even the video animations using the SAWBO platform can be shared and used without direct internet access in a manner that allows for small group discussion. The artistic practices we have chosen are both low-tech and low-cost in a country that has few resources to fund major artistic installations or performances for large audiences. On the positive side, these picture books, cooperative simulation games, and video animations weave together local textile patterns and traditional modes of negotiation. They do not adorn the halls of power or mimic legal hearings.

Reenactment and Dialogue Reenactment can take many forms, from dramatisations to more stylised and symbolic retellings (Esquith, 2010). The stories and their reenactments that we have focused on in Mali shine a critical light on the causes and effects of mass atrocities and structural violence, amplify the voices of those who have suffered from these injustices, and identify their implications for individual and shared responsibility. They help participants distinguish between ‘exploitable political inequality’ and its economic, social, and environmental consequences (Ackerly, 2018). The reenactments we have designed to distinguish between causes and consequences have included political simulations, picture books, performing arts, and visual arts, as well as the SAWBO video animations. The stories are inspired by the actual experiences of Malians who have worked

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with us to tell their own stories and reenact the stories of others to prompt local community dialogues. To repeat, the goal of the dialogues has been to open discussions about the everyday impacts of armed violence on communities in conflict, not to prescribe solutions, to cast blame, to identify helpless victims, to honour extraordinary heroes, or to exonerate or convict alleged perpetrators. In other words, democratic political education strives to help those whose agency is burdened to one degree or another to find the words to make sense of their own experience that also resonates with others and gradually connects these disputes and grievances to the underlying problem of inequality in political power. We believe that this is a path to preventing future occurrences of mass violence. Our first reenactments in Mali were a set of picture books written with the teachers and students of the Ciwara School in Mali in consultation with RCAH visiting artist Chris Worland. They were inspired by the obstacles that young girls face who want to attend school (Le Défi), the suffering experienced by families when one of their members has been engaged in armed violence (Camp de Kati), and the obstacles that young people face searching for employment in their village and larger cities (Sekola). Each of these stories addresses the competing pressures that individuals, families, and communities face in Mali today. What will it take for young girls to be successful in school and life beyond formal equal opportunity? What exactly does traumatic stress mean for all members of a family, and how should it be addressed? What are the obligations of young people to their friends, neighbours, and strangers when they themselves are poor (Esquith, 2019)? At the same time that the teachers and students wrote these picture books, they created a political simulation, the Mali Peace Game, in which students and teachers at the Ciwara School recreated a space in which the conflicts analogous to the ones in Mali then could be reenacted. The game board, modelled on the work of John Hunter (2014), was a three-­ dimensional space divided into four regions, all part of an imagined Greater Mali. Each region was named after an historical figure who fought for Malian independence and self-government. Each region had a team of leaders who participated in public life and negotiations with leaders from other regions as conflicts and controversies came to a head over environmental disasters, immigration, education, ethnic conflicts, and corruption issues.

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Each play of the game was conducted by the students themselves as they analysed the issue and the crisis, made plans to negotiate settlements that could avoid violence, and then determined for themselves what had been achieved and what was still a live issue. Their impulse was, of course, to declare peace as quickly as possible, as it was when reading the picture books. The challenge for their teachers, who served as facilitators, was to explain how some issues may still be unresolved. As the game evolved, the students took on the identities of individual persons, not just role occupants (e.g., Prime Minister, Mineworker Union President). Some of these individuals were older versions of the young people in the picture books, with complex biographies that cut across the political boundaries in the game. In this way, the game became more realistic as students had to navigate competing family, occupational, village, and national loyalties and their own personal values and commitments. A fourth picture book, Ben Sigili/Faire la Paix/Building Peace was written with Ciwara School students and teachers on the subject of displaced persons and reconciliation for use in their classrooms. The characters are personified by a chicken, a bean, and a worm, composed of colourful fabrics, and written in Bamanankan (the most commonly spoken local language in Mali), French, and English. See Photo 9.1. International non-governmental organisations such as the International Sports Alliance working in local communities also used this picture book

Photo 9.1  Original fabric art for Ben Sigili/ Faire la Paix/Building Peace by Chris Worland. (Source: Photo taken by Chris Worland)

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for literacy training and as a script for public theatre performances by young participants (https://youtu.be/uv9v8DyLSk8). Our goal has been to combine archival material that was given to us by the CVJR and new texts and objects we have created with a repertoire of in-person and online scenarios to empower an emergent demos. This kind of creative work has been done elsewhere before. It is not easy and runs a serious risk of replicating colonialism. With this in mind, we created a video animation in collaboration with SAWBO animators of the story and posted it on the SAWBO website for wider distribution (https://sawbo-­ animations.org/745). It was this technique using the Internet and video animation that attracted the attention of the President of the CVJR in 2018 who, consequently, proposed a partnership between RCAH and the CVJR. This led to the next set of stories written collaboratively by university faculty and students at IUT and RCAH and by SAWBO animators for video animation. These stories deal with the living conditions of persons displaced by armed violence, the impact of kidnapping by armed groups, the choices made by young people when recruited to serve as soldiers in state and non-state armed groups, and the nature of civilian collaboration with occupying forces. The story of the kidnapping of a Malian healthcare worker, Enlèvement/Jagoyaminɛli, is a modification of one actual testimony before the CVJR (https://sawbo-­animations.org/1618). The challenge, as noted above, is to determine whether this technology, ostensibly ‘without borders,’ avoids the problems of inequality and hierarchy that Fassin (2010) has argued are inherent in the work of similar attempts to transcend borders. According to Fassin (2010), the work of Doctors Without Borders or MSF (2020) encounters three kinds of political problems as it attempts to treat all persons equally. First, because of scarce resources, MSF unavoidably must choose among the many needing medical assistance. Not all can be treated equally well at the same time. Secondly, while MSF staff put themselves at great risk to rescue victims of mass violence, non-MSF support staff can be at an even greater personal risk. For example, if kidnapped, MSF staff will be held for ransom and eventually returned, but non-MSF personnel can be executed summarily since there is less of a chance that a ransom will be paid to free them. Finally, in telling the stories of victims, MSF privileges a medical narrative with trauma at its centre, and this may not be the story that the victims themselves would tell.

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MSF has been active in Mali, responding to the effects that violence and displacement have had on civilian populations, especially women and children, and, most recently, the impact of Covid-19. All three of Fassin’s dilemmas are relevant in the Malian context where (1) healthcare is sorely needed but impossible to distribute equally, (2) kidnapping for ransom occurs, and (3) the CVJR is now telling the stories of victims. Regarding storytelling, Fassin argues that instead of in-depth biographies of the life of a victim, MSF stories are ‘clinical vignettes.’ For example, ‘a rebel adolescent becomes a child wetting his bed at night, and a man arrested and beaten by enemy soldiers appears as a catatonic patient affected by seizures.’ Their attempt to remain neutral (between Palestinians and Israelis in this particular case) has led the MSF storyteller ‘to underline the psychological dimension of the experience, leaving aside the historical and political dimensions often so important for the population enduring war … Victims hardly speak; they have spokespeople. They are not political subjects but moral objects’ (Fassin, 2010: 254). The above raises many questions with regard to our case. What kind of story have we told about the kidnapped Malian healthcare worker, Awa, in Enlèvement/Jagoyaminɛli? Can our effort to remain neutral in this ‘scientific animation without borders’ be used throughout Mali and the Sahel, or is political neutrality itself a bias that favours the status quo? Has Awa’s family identity been ignored? Have the terrorists been caricatured? Will these questions be raised legitimately in the ensuing dialogues about the video, if the goal is to encourage critical reflection on the operations of power, not just tell a clinical vignette about trauma? The phenomenon of trauma in such cases is a difficult one. Initial reactions by many viewers of this video animation focused on Awa’s symptoms of traumatisation upon her return and the apparent failure of the male village elders and the CVJR to address them. The legitimacy of the kidnappers’ needs for medical help and any suspicion that Awa might have promised them information about the village to gain her release rarely, if ever, were raised. Her initial abandonment upon returning to the village was explained in focus groups with regard to the collective trauma of the village rather than a failure of collective political responsibility. Distinguishing between individual psychological trauma, collective trauma, and historical trauma is particularly challenging. According to Fassin and Rechtman (2009), the tendency today is to collectivise and historicise trauma but render the judgments made in assessing their unequal treatment invisible by cloaking them in the language of individual

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psychological trauma. That does not mean that individual psychological trauma does not occur, but that the ‘empire of trauma’ in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder has made it more difficult to discern any underlying unequal political power (Fassin & Rechtman, 2009). Artists and writers have addressed the phenomenon of psychological trauma in poorer countries that have gone through violent conflicts, for example, South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have done this to represent the testimony of victims that otherwise seem unrepresentable and as a form of therapy, not only for victims but, according to some commentators, for the benefit of the spectators as well. Art contributes to testimonies and commemorations through an empathic understanding between victim, artist and spectators … The individual artist’s expression of the atrocity and traumatic experience therefore enables the spectators to subjectively and collectively remember, commemorate and take responsibility for the future. (Bisschoff & van de Peer, 2013: 14)

While this may occur, our experience is that it does not go far enough. Individual spectators may be moved to feel empathy for traumatised individual victims whose testimony is dramatised or embodied in a work of art or a story. They may even be moved to contribute to healing the victim’s trauma and thereby heal themselves in some sense. However, this kind of reparative justice does not address the injustices rooted in inequality in political power that are so routine and woven into everyday life that they become invisible to all but those who suffer most from them. Edmondson (2018) tries to make these patterns of power more visible. She argues, following Fassin and Rechtman, that trauma has become a commodity in the hands of some African artists who have willing partners among humanitarian aid organisations who believe that it is good for business. The Congolese crisis is perceived through the lens of sexual violence, Rwanda is equated with the 1994 genocide, and northern Uganda is understood in terms of abducted children … I found that the tropes coming out of East and Central Africa were repeatable to the point of banality. Empire insists on consistent and simplistic narratives with clear-cut definitions of victim and perpetrator, sweeping aside nuance and northern Ugandans, Tutsi victims, and raped Congolese women. (Edmondson, 2018: 5–6)

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These commodified theatrical reenactments have had little to do with the improvement of the everyday lives of victims and survivors. There are exceptions, Edmondson (2020) admits, but the dominant impact of these theatrical reenactments is to reinforce the ‘economic and geopolitical privileges’ of a narrow elite of artists and scholars (Edmondson, 2018: 7) and support illegitimate autocratic states (2018: 19–20). This kind of exploitation and obfuscation of political power is what Ackerly (2018: 71–203) calls ‘injustice itself.’ As we have worked with Malian partners to disseminate stories based on CVJR testimony and the everyday experiences of teachers, students, and other informants, we have been careful to avoid these binary tropes. The next section describes how archived stories have become reenactments in which the complexities of the stories are preserved.

Archives and Repertoires Consider the testimony of 27-year-old Maimouna Mohamed from Timbuktu, who appeared publicly before the CVJR with her daughter to tell the story of the summary execution of her husband. Her story prompted more discussion among our students and community members than any other story they heard. Their reactions reveal both the need for peacebuilding as democratic political education if future armed violence is to be prevented and the difficulty of connecting the consequences of violence to their deeper causes. It also raises questions about the relationship between archival material such as this testimony and what we are doing in the repertoire we are creating. The story begins with the witness retelling in Arabic how she and her children were forced to flee to Niger from their home in Timbuktu after the coup d’état in 2013 because of the threat of violence from armed non-­ state groups. Her husband stayed behind to protect their home but was arrested by the Malian army when he tried to intervene to defend a terrorist suspect they had detained. He was one of 40 prisoners executed and buried in a mass grave by the army. When the witness returned to Timbuktu to find out why her husband was not responding to her efforts to contact him, she was unable to accept the news of his death until she was provided with strong evidence by a relative of her husband’s execution. The evidence included his shoes, which she recognised. She described the effect that this had had on her to the Commission.

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Every morning when he went out, these are those shoes he wore. So, I kept those shoes on and got into crying non-stop. I looked like I had gone crazy. And sometimes I would take the shoes off and put them on my child, telling him it was his father. The poor little one, he is innocent, he didn’t know his father. I didn’t think his dad was dead, I thought the worst they were going to tell me was that my husband is injured or ill. I couldn’t believe it.

When our IUT and RCAH students were asked what part of her testimony they would emphasise through reenactment, they did not choose the brutal summary execution but rather ‘those shoes he wore’ and the role that they played in her subsequent life. Several even suggested that a memorial to the 40 adults summarily executed should take the form of a large sculpture representing the shoes and that this could serve as a symbolic form of collective reparations. This, they argued, more than a direct payment to the victim to support her and her children’s education (which she requested), would be an effective prompt for public discussion and a reminder of the dangers that military rule poses. Similar stories came from other survivors of other massacres by non-state as well as state armed forces about objects left behind (e.g., a motorcycle, a favourite chair or couch, a piece of clothing) which families retained but could not use in the same way they had been used before. In her closing remarks to the Commission, Maimouna Mohamed underscored the need for communal repair: I have a feeling like I’m not even in this world anymore. Looks like only my outer body is present in this country. I no longer recognize this Mali, when Mali was Mali, when we were children. What we know is that people loved each other and had fun between them. People helped each other, people lived together in town and on the dunes. But currently, this is no longer true in Timbuktu. The people of Timbuktu are afraid, nobody goes out, all the world is in our houses. (emphasis added)

One danger here, of course, is a romanticisation of community, and the students recognised this. But they also agreed that fear can divide people and isolate them in their private worlds when it is fear of armed violence and political powerlessness. In this conversation and others, it became clear that the line between the project’s team and the participants in the focus groups and community participants was not a barrier to understanding. Several Malian students and members of the project’s team had endured similar experiences at the hands of state and non-state armed forces.

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The project faced another related danger: manipulating the archive and putting words in Maimouna Mohamed’s mouth to achieve a form of restorative justice through symbolic collective reparations that she did not ask for herself. To avoid this, instead of just asserting that communal repair is the most important thing for her and Timbuktu, this topic must be the subject of local democratic dialogue. A video animation based on her archival testimony cannot beg this question. It must be left open and discussed alongside other forms of prevention. Any reenactment must be a prompt for democratic dialogue and political education, not a substitute for it. This raises the general question of how the archive is being represented through the repertoire of performances (i.e., video animations, fictional picture books, poems, skits, and scenarios). One approach is to think of the archive of witness depositions, public testimony, and televised and video broadcasts as a fixed set of material objects that can be used selectively and creatively to tell a new fictional story that will forge a new national identity (Krog, 2000). This is risky and understandably invites charges of plagiarism, manipulation, and at worst, neocolonialism (Highman, 2015). Another approach is to recognise that the archive is not an integrated and coherent body of testimony, but ‘shards,’ as Miller (2015) has called the testimony before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), of partially reconstructed memories. These shards can and should be represented realistically by an equally disjointed and disrupted repertoire that will ‘stay true to the voices of the many survivors’ (Miller, 2015; Phillips-Hutton, 2018). This kind of archival realism and repertoire representation can still strive to forge a new national identity while remaining aware of the ethical minefields that postcolonial artistic reenactments must traverse (Cole, 2010). This is why, as Venter (2021: 315) has noted, ‘working with victim testimonies demands a level of fidelity to one’s sources not ordinarily required of creative endeavours.’ Our project’s approach is closer to the latter. As suggested in the discussion of the testimony of Maimouma Mohamed above, the archive serves a source of inspiration, but the stories and other artistic representations of them are not attributed to any single witness, survivor, or perpetrator. This is how the testimony should be interpreted of another victim, Diahara Djénépo, a healthcare worker kidnapped by an armed non-state group, whose story resembles in part the story of Awa in the video animation Enlèvement/Jagoyaminɛl.

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Have these sources been exploited even more than they would have been, if words had been overtly manipulated or changed? The questions that Cole has posed for Miller could also be asked of us: Did the sampling of archived testimony border on exploitation? Should victims be compensated financially for the use of their voices and stories? Must perpetrators also be compensated? Was it appropriate for a white composer to take ownership of this particular part of South Africa’s history? (Cole, 2010: 151–152)

These questions were prompted by the reactions of participants in a performance workshop for Miller’s multi-media Rewind. Miller responded by asking the victims, survivors, and perpetrators he ‘sampled’ in the song for their permission, which they seem to have given him. But, according to Venter, this did not alter the fact that his cantata is structured around the South African TRC’s goal of reconciliation. There are yet other creative decisions Miller took that intimate the strong presence of an ethic of reconciliation as it had been practised by the TRC. Like the TRC, the cantata seeks to dramatise inclusivity, recollecting the evils of apartheid but, crucially, without seeking to offend perpetrators and beneficiaries … The cantata, the composer further explains, is meant for everyone, for ‘South Africans of all races as well as citizens of the world’, and refrains from ‘any strong political statements’, once more echoing the TRC’s policy of political neutrality. (Venter, 2021: 317)

The goal of our project was to identify a common set of experiences in the state archive (e.g., kidnapping, collaboration, forced marriages) out of which an open-ended story can be told. Some but not all members of the project have had such experiences, as have the community members in our focus groups and dialogues. Out of this process, hopefully, have come stories with the ring of truth. That is, stories that remind viewers and listeners of their own difficult choices and their own burdened agency. The archive has been interpreted, not for dramatic effect, but so that it remains open and engaging. In the video animation Enlèvement/Jagoyaminɛli when Awa returned to her village after her kidnapping, all the doors of the village were shut, and she was denied her old job in the health clinic. She became so fearful that she was no longer confident that she knew what had happened to her or why. The viewer is intentionally left wondering at the end of that video

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animation what the elders of the village will do to repair this harm and allay her fears. They have the political power to act, but it is not clear whether the decision-making process will be inclusive. They are also left wondering where she will go and what she will do with no job and no community support. Will she become a suspect like Maimouna Mohamed’s husband? Will she become a displaced person in her own home? Or, will she be forced to flee to a larger city with no job? A public monument to the victims of armed violence can prompt discussion of the sources of this politically debilitating fear, as well as its potential consequences. A symbol such as ‘those shoes’ has the potential to be a comfort to one family but a vehicle that mobilises the demos to retell this story and others when it is needed. Will this prevent future armed violence? Will it heal the suffering? That can hardly be guaranteed. But such a story organised around symbols like this can be a catalyst for placing more searching questions about power at the centre of a process of peacebuilding as democratic political education. In 2015, the project encountered the power of artefacts, such as the shoes mentioned above, before collaboration with the CVJR had begun. At that time, we worked with teachers and students from the Ciwara School and university students preparing to be high school teachers at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENSup) in Bamako. We interviewed family survivors of soldiers killed in the northern town of Aguelhoc in 2012 to learn how they perceived the 2015 peace accords and whether the peace accords had brought peace to their everyday lives after the loss of their family members and the coup d’état in 2012. The battle of Aguelhoc (described by some Malians as a massacre) took place in January 2012 between the Malian Army garrisoned at the base there and the Tuareg rebels and self-described Islamist insurgents who started the attack. The summary execution of Army soldiers taken prisoner was one of the triggers of the coup d’état that began with an assault on the Presidential Palace in Bamako, 15 km from the military base in Kati, where many of the families of the soldiers executed in Aguelhoc lived. The military families blamed the Malian government for failing to provide the soldiers stationed in Aguelhoc with the necessary means to repel the attack, and some claimed, among other things, that a corrupt military leadership had been siphoning money from the military budget for themselves instead of equipping government troops. The full political context and the ensuing events leading to international military intervention are complex. A group of academics from the

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Global North wrote what they called a ‘contemporary history’ which summarised some of the many threads of the story as seen from their collective outsider perspective (Lecocq et al., 2013). In contrast, the story in this project is told from a local insider’s point of view. For example, one of the interviews conducted in 2015 was with a family that had lost their father/ husband in the battle of Aguelhoc. They had no sympathy for the deposed President, but they were also angered with the coup leaders who ordered them to leave their home on the military base in Kati because no living member of their family was in the Army any longer. (This eviction order was either rescinded or they ignored it.) In the interview with the family, who were still distraught, they presented the deceased father’s prized motorcycle. It was no longer being used. The interview team then presented the content of their interview at a town meeting led by the teachers and ENSup students that included families from the military base in Kati. After the town meeting, the team sketched a story inspired by their interviews and feedback at the town meeting. In their story, the mother and son listen to reports of the battle in Aguelhoc, afraid that the father of the family, Amadou, would be harmed. The son, Salif, recalls being taken to school by his father on the back of the father’s motorcycle. Even after Amadou’s return, the son no longer wants to ride on the back of the motorcycle and cannot bring himself to wear the new pair of soccer shorts given to him by his father. Photo 9.2 depicts this story. On the page (Photo 9.2), Salif wonders (in Bamanankan, French, and English) about the effects the war has had on his father: ‘I do not recognise him. Now no more games, no words, always silence. How long will this last?’ Head in hands, Salif seems despondent, but he is not speechless the way his father is. He is questioning what has happened and implicitly why. In the conversations with Ciwara students about Camp de Kati, the teachers asked what Salif’s despondent body language tells us about his thoughts and his feelings. Is he a casualty of his father’s post-traumatic stress, or is he puzzling over the causes as well as the consequences of the war for his family? Or both? Salif asks himself what the consequences will be. To understand them fully, the teachers can ask whether Salif also has to understand their political causes as well as their medical causes. The artefacts—motorcycle and soccer shorts—represent his emotionally laden memory of his father before the battle. They can become prompts for a dialogue in which Salif imagines himself as a change agent, not a clinical case study.

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Photo 9.2  Image of Salif from Camp de Kati after his father has returned to their home safely in Kati at the time of the Aguelhoc battle in Mali, 2012, based upon original fabric art by Chris Worland. (Source: Photo taken by Chris Worland)

Neither Maimouna’s shoes nor Salif’s soccer shorts is a substitute for a careful understanding of the root causes of armed violence. But as part of a repertoire of agent-centred stories, they give readers and listeners something to hold on to—something of their own—to begin a dialogue about causes and emotional as well as material consequences under difficult circumstances.

Conclusion Peacebuilding as democratic political education can give participants more control over their lives in wartime through a repertoire such as the one described in this chapter. However, whether the stories are reenacted in schools, retold in local community spaces, or disseminated more widely online as a video animation, it can have a boomerang effect. Cole describes this unintended consequence from a bottom-up perspective: The big ethical question that this range of representations raises is whether those who give testimony in public formats before truth commissions fully realize what putting their words into circulation in the public domain means—whether they understand that testimony given at a public hearing

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can then be manipulated, reproduced, and interpreted in so many ways? (Cole, 2014: 425)

For this reason, Cole advocates for a greater recursive relationship between the arts, scholars of the arts, and the communities they seek to represent and serve. She opens her most recent book with a self-critical reflection on the need to hold academic institutions more accountable for the benefits and privileges that they have received because of settler colonialism (Cole, 2020: ix). Injustice does not leave only a legacy that must be acknowledged. It has, what Cole calls, an ‘afterlife.’ Failing to acknowledge, apologise for, and redress injustice fuels this afterlife. It keeps injustice alive in the present to continue to do damage in the future. Like Cole and many other academics in the Global North, this project, in conjunction with a North American land-grant university, has only recently acknowledged where our land came from and the unequal distribution of benefits that have accrued from it. Very little has been done to redress this historical injustice to date, transform attitudes towards the land, or repair the damages done. Will there be an afterlife of injustice from this peacebuilding project in Mali? Will the Malian partners on the project look back on this project as a structure used by its foreign sponsors without their full consent? Will the archived records of the current repertoire—the video animations, picture books, and democratic dialogues—be viewed as something built by these partners but controlled from the Global North? Or will the partners and participants view them as living memorials in which they can engage to build a new set of institutions in their own name? To avoid these injustices, Enlèvement/Jagoyaminɛli does not strive to evoke empathy for an innocent victim and anger towards the perpetrators of violence. It strives to raise questions about the constitution and distribution of political power so that Cole’s ‘big ethical question’ does not come back to haunt us. Some of these questions are: • What roles should marginalised groups in civil society, especially women, play in the deliberative process, starting at the village level? • What are the political responsibilities of bystanders and allies such as Awa’s assistant, Fanta? • Should former members of violent state and non-state groups become part of this deliberative process in which the forms of reparations can be decided?

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• Can the contributors and beneficiaries of structural and armed violence own land or hold office in their village, or have they sacrificed these privileges? Working with, but not for, the CVJR, the project amplified less audible voices and sought to remain accountable to them. This required moving back and forth between theory and practice—what ‘grounded normative theorists’ have called a ‘recursive’ relationship between theory and practice—to revise assumptions and listen again to the responses to reenactments (Ackerly et al., 2021). The composition of Camp de Kati as an artefact and its subsequent use in repertoire also illustrate this recursive relationship. The questions this reenactment implicitly raises are not follow-up questions to be posed to children reading this picture book. They are questions that might be raised after it has been read, performed, or interpreted in poetry, prose, or song with an inter-generational audience. For example: • What are the obligations of parents to their children and the rights of children during times of armed violence? • How can youth play an active participatory role in peacebuilding as democratic political education when the choice is between this and illegal trafficking that can help them support themselves and their families? • What is the relationship between play and the political education of youth during and after times of armed violence? By orienting themselves around peacebuilding as democratic political education, participants in this project can focus on a point on the horizon beyond transitional justice as it currently exists, mindful of the limitations and dangers they are bound to encounter. In the process, they may gain a clearer working knowledge of the relationship between democracy and power, which is, after all, the root meaning of democracy (Keane, 2009: 55–62). Acknowledgements  The peacebuilding project was made possible with support from the Michigan State University Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, the Michigan State University Alliance for African Partnership, the Institut pour l’Education Populaire, Kati, Mali, and the Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako, Mali. We are particularly indebted to Moussodjie Dembélé,

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Boubacar Garango, Boubacar Sy, Yoby Guindo, Laya Ouologuem, Debbie Fredo, Maria Diarra, Chris Worland, Barry Pittendrigh, and Julia Bello-Bravo for their suggestions, support, and collaboration at various stages throughout this process. We are also very grateful to Eric Gorham, Joan Tronto, Gordon Stewart, Carolyn Loeb, and Eric Aronoff for suggestions and comments on earlier drafts.

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Garnsey, E. (2020). The justice of visual art: Creative state-building in times of political transition. Cambridge University Press. Gready, P., & Robins, S. (Eds.). (2019). From transitional to transformative justice. Cambridge University Press. Hale, T.  A. (1998). Griots and griottes: Masters of words and music. Indiana University Press. Hanebrink, J. R., & Smith, A. J. (2013). The art of peace in northern Uganda. African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, 3(2), 195–218. Hickendorff, A. (2019). Civil society white book on peace and security in Mali (2019): English summary. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). https://www.sipri.org/publications/2019/other-­publications/civil-­ society-­white-­book-­peace-­and-­security-­mali-­2019-­english-­summary. Accessed 10 Aug 2023. Highman, K. (2015). Forging a new South Africa: Plagiarism, ventriloquism and the ‘black voice’ in Antjie Krog’s country of my skull. Journal of Southern African Studies, 41(1), 187–206. Hoffman, B. G. (2000). Griots at war: Conflict, conciliation, and caste in Mande. Indiana University Press. Hoffman, B. G. (2017). The roles of the griot in the future of Mali: A twenty-first-­ century institutionalization of a thirteenth-century traditional institution. African Studies Review, 60(1), 101–122. Hunter, J. (2014). World peace and other 4th grade achievements. . Ibrahim, I. Y., & Zapata, M. (2018). Regions at risk: Preventing mass atrocities in Mali. Early Warning country report. Simon-Skodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Museum. https://earlywarningproject. ushmm.org/reports/regions-­a t-­r isk-­p reventing-­m ass-­a trocities-­i n-­m ali. Accessed 10 Aug 2023. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). (2018). Central Mali: Populations caught between terrorism and counterterrorism. No.727a. FIDH. https://www.fidh.org/en/region/Africa/mali/central-­mali-­populations-­ caught-­between-­terrorism-­and-­anti-­terrorism. Accessed 10 Aug 2023. Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. W.W. Norton & Co. Kelly, E.  J. (2011). Reparative justice. In T.  Isaacs & R.  Vernon (Eds.), Accountability for collective wrongdoing. Cambridge University Press. Krog, A. (2000). Country of my skull: Guilt, sorrow, and the limits of forgiveness in the new South Africa. Three Rivers Press. Lecocq, B., Mann, G., Whitehouse, B., Badi, D., Pelckmans, L., Belalimat, N., Hall, B., & Lacher, W. (2013). One hippopotamus and eight blind analysts: A multivocal analysis of the 2012 political crisis in the divided Republic of Mali. Review of African Political Economy, 40(137), 343–357. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/03056244.2013.799063

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CHAPTER 10

Reparative Threads that Open Up Futures: The Experience of Sexual and Gender Diversity in Honduras Fernando Altamira, Esther Canarias, Ricardo Fernández, and Nelsy Elizabeth Sandoval

The Dominant Model: A Triad of Three Inseparable Heads A critical look at what is happening in the local and global contexts reveals a shared dominant model of development that takes specific form in each context. This model is a triad of three heads—one neoliberal, one ethnocentric and the other heteronormative (Altamira, 2016)—that are impossible to separate and that intersect and merge, generating particular

F. Altamira (*) • E. Canarias INCYDE (Iniciativas de Cooperación y Desarrollo), Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; e.canarias@ iniciativasdecooperacionydesarrollo.com © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_10

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oppressions. Privileges related to social class, race and cisheterosexuality1 determine which lives are worth living (Butler, 2002) and which ones are not even worth mourning. Individuals and communities, worldwide, see their rights violated and are pushed to the margins (Hernández, 2018; Bauman, 2018). The dominant model dictates a norm, certain ways of being, of living, of dying, of interacting, of desiring. However, in opposition to this model, there are collective experiences of resistance, which are systematically repressed by the model itself. Yet, in spite of the instruments of repression it uses, there are people all over the world who are organising themselves and imagining alternatives: feminist organisations, organisations of racialised people, indigenous peoples, LGTBIQ+ people (lesbian, gay, trans, bisex, intersex, queer and more2), collectives for the right to land, universal health and education, against evictions, and the right to decent housing—countless experiences that unite in their social struggles for the dignity of individuals and peoples. Sexual and gender diversity does not escape this dominant model, and LGTBIQ+ people experience its mechanisms of oppression in various ways. Behind these acronyms are diverse people who, depending on the local context, experience certain privileges and oppressions. There are countries where being gay or lesbian is permitted, as long as they conform to the norm (white people, of financial means, with a specific gender 1  Cisheterosexuality is part of the dominant ideological system that asserts that the only bodies and lives that matter are those of heterosexual, cis men and women with the same gender expression that corresponds to each (male with male gender expression, female with female gender expression). This ideological system is equipped with mechanisms of control that generate oppression of those who do not conform to this cisheterosexuality: trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, queer, gender fluid, non-binary, non-normative gender expression, etc. 2  This is the term used by the authors of this chapter. Other terms, such as LGTBI or LGTTBI, for example, are the initialisms used by other authors in the works referenced.

R. Fernández medicusmundi Bizkaia, Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain e-mail: [email protected] N. E. Sandoval medicusmundi Bizkaia, La Ceiba, Honduras e-mail: [email protected]

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expression). However, there are other LGTBIQ+ people whose very existence is a challenge to that norm: the racialised, the impoverished, those whose gender expression is different from that which is deemed acceptable by the model: trans, intersex, queer, gender fluid, non-binary, and so on. Despite the legislative advances that are taking place around the world in support of the rights of LGTBIQ+ people (Mendos, 2019), violent situations continue to be experienced. In this regard, it is important to highlight that sexual and gender diversity is illegal in 71 countries and punishable by death in 13 of them. Furthermore, in Europe, which would appear to be a paradigm of democracy, 79% of transgender people have experienced verbal, sexual or physical harassment (Serrano & Ríos, 2019). Yet cracks are opening up in the dominant model. In contrast to normative gays and lesbians, who seek to form part of the dominant model, there are experiences that could be called sexual and gender dissidents (Alonso, 2020), who desire and organise themselves to bring about structural changes that, together with other struggles (such as anti-capitalist and anti-racist movements), work day by day for other models that place life and alternative, reparative futures at their centre.

And in Honduras … What Is Happening? In Honduras, as in the rest of the continent, one of the ways in which the dominant model with its three heads manifests itself is through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), as a formula for promoting development (Robinson, 2016). These agreements have set out economic as well as cultural and social proposals, dramatically expanding the dominant, global model at the local level. Honduras is a country with a low average income, in which around 63% of the population lives in poverty (Pan American Health Organization – World Health Organisation [PAHO-WHO], 2016), ranking 137th in Human Development Index (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2022), with one of the highest homicide rates in the world and where violence against LGTBIQ+ people is particularly prevalent (Human Rights Watch, 2017). It is one of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where inequality is highest (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo [AECID], n.d.). A critical moment for Honduras came on 28 June 2009, when the most recent coup d’état in the country’s history was carried out against then President Manuel Zelaya. After the coup, the government imposed

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proposals aimed at development and economic growth, through extractivist projects in mining and hydrocarbons, together with agribusiness and unrestricted livestock farming and fishing (González, 2022). Although these policies have had an impact on the lives of the entire population, some groups have been particularly affected, such as the defenders of human rights, who continue to suffer attacks in a country with severe rights violations. The same is true for communities in rural areas, as well as for indigenous and black people, who have the highest rates of poverty (AECID, n.d.). Furthermore, between 2009 and 2020, there were 373 violent deaths of LGTTBI people recorded in Honduras. Of these, 211 were gay, 43 were lesbian and 118 were transgender, including a missing transgender woman who was a sex worker (Red lésbica Cattrachas, 2021). It can be argued that the violence experienced by LGTBI people is encouraged by the state itself (Sorto, 2021), the media and religious fundamentalism (Red lésbica Cattrachas, 2020). In 2021, we conducted a study (Altamira & Canarias, 2021a) on primary healthcare for LGTBIQ+ people in Honduras, described in more detail below. From among the many contributions made, a few words by the participants can be used to illustrate the situation described above. One LGTBIQ+ organisation pointed out, ‘We live in a country that is generally very unsafe, not just for LGTBI people, although they are the most vulnerable. We [sexual and gender diversity people] are harassed, both by civilians and by the police themselves’ (Altamira & Canarias, 2021a: 35). One organisation working in the field of healthcare stated, ‘The rates of violence in our country are quite high. Some [LGTBIQ+ people] leave the country, looking for new hope in life. We are all at risk of someone coming along on a motorbike and [deliberately] killing us’ (2021a: 36). One LGTBIQ+ person spoke bluntly when they responded, ‘Most of all, bear in mind that we are a narco-state’ (2021a: 58). And yet, in the face of this dark situation, there are experiences of life that are pushing forward. There are individuals and organisations who, in a variety of settings, are working to make a different country a real possibility. In June 2009, the military ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from the country. He had been implementing social, political and economic changes that threatened the privileges of the Honduran oligarchies. This coup d’état was followed by thousands of human rights violations against the entire population, which were denounced by several international organisations. As a result of the coup, Roberto Micheletti was appointed president, followed by three subsequent presidents, who

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had to confront social uprisings that were hitherto unprecedented in Honduras. In fact, as a means of tackling the situation, social and grassroots organisations, including some LGTBIQ+ groups, formed the platform Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP), as part of the political party Libertad y Refundación, which is currently in power under the first female president of Honduras. These experiences of resistance find support through Non-Normative Transformative Cooperation (NNTC), which plays a crucial role in these processes of change that can open up reparative futures. As Sasha Rodríguez, trans leader of the Organización Pro Unión Ceibeña (OPROUCE), indicates in an interview: Our main allies are the flexible donors who do not impose so much protocol, because they believe in our proposals and help us to tackle the obstacles. Other allies are feminist organisations, with whom we have forged links and who stand with us, saying, ‘We’re here to support the LGTBIQ+ community.’ (Rodríguez, 2023)

Non-Normative Transformative Cooperation (NNTC) It is essential to briefly outline the approach adopted for the experiences we present in this chapter. There are some models of cooperation which, far from supporting processes of social transformation, reinforce the dominant model, thereby converting it into forms of interference and neocolonialism which, based on paternalism, export global forms of apparent democracy and modernisation. These models reinforce the imaginary of a Global North that has to ‘save’ the Global South from its primitivism (Seguer, 2013) and anti-democratic practices. A significant part of the cooperation that is carried out therefore has difficulties in adapting to the challenges and in creating transformative alternatives. Funding agencies, as well as non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs), review the instruments and forms with which they design projects, but always from a technical standpoint. Very few of them deeply reflect on their approaches or practices in order to make the necessary changes to carry out new cooperation processes that can put an end to the asymmetries between the Global North and South (Martínez, 2021). However, other forms of emancipatory cooperation (Fernández et al., 2014), or Transformative International Cooperation (Belda-Miquel et al.,

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2016), are emerging, guiding the multi-dimensional NNTC proposal, outlined below (Altamira & Boni, 2020): • It focuses on projects that bring about specific changes, which, in turn, have an impact on the triad of the dominant model. • It is carried out through horizontal relationships and trust between the individuals and organisations involved. • The role of social and grassroots movements such as the indigenous, feminist, LGTBIQ+ and environmental movements, among others, is fundamental. • It reveals the links between the local and the global, drawing on the reality of each specific context to generate structural and global changes. • Medium- and long-term processes are proposed, going beyond the logic of one-off projects. • The instruments that are implemented are aimed at serving the processes, with special attention to the people involved, the methodological approach, as well as the changes that are sought in the various contexts. • Education for Social Transformation (Agencia Vasca de Cooperación para el Desarrollo [AVCD], 2017) is carried out both in countries of the Global North and the Global South. In this way, the binomial between Development Education and Development Cooperation is overcome. • It takes into account the subjectivities, feelings, lived experiences and desires of the people and groups involved (Butler, 2020; Horvat, 2016; Stryker, 2017). • Sexual and gender diversity is incorporated, overcoming the dominant cisheteronormative vision. • Intersectionality (López, 2008; hooks, 2021) as an approach helps to better identify oppressions and agency capacities. Although it is based on a recognition of the diverse identities of individuals, it proposes the intersection of multiple struggles as a means of generating alternative changes to the dominant model (Alonso, 2020; Collins & Bilge, 2018). The NNTC proposal is not a destination to reach; rather, it is the compass that can guide new experiences, new attempts at social transformation. It is also vital to be able to compare the specific projects carried out

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and to assess whether these practices are consistent with the NNTC.  It allows us, ultimately, to shed some light on what we do and who we are and whether we can open up new reparative futures for humanity, for each and every one of us.

The Cracks that Open Up: An LGTBIQ+ Experience in Honduras, by Means of a Güipil3 Since time immemorial, the Mayan women of Central America have been weaving güipiles, which are the loose-fitting blouses that they wear. These textiles, richly embroidered with numerous different threads, are striking in that they appear to be merely colourful fabrics. Nonetheless, they contain hidden stories, because through such forms they recount essential elements of their lives and the lives of their communities. Each thread intersects with several others and it is impossible to know where one begins and another ends. The experience we present of resistance to the dominant model, through an NNTC, is like a güipil, painstakingly and tenderly woven— with three threads (see Fig. 10.1), which are not the only ones, since there

Thread 1: The ORGANISATIONS involved in the process

Thread 2: The TRAINING carried out at the university in Honduras

Thread 3: The RESEARCH carried out on primary healthcare and LGTBIQ+ people in the region of Atlánda (Honduras)

Fig. 10.1  The threads that weave the güipil. (Source: Own elaboration)

3

 https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textiles_mayas

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are surely many more. They have the value of being real, of having been realised in a situated place, in a particular context, such as the region of Atlántida (Honduras). Thread 1: The Organisations Involved The NGDO Medicusmundi Bizkaia4 has been carrying out cooperation projects in Honduras for years. Among the organisations with which it collaborates is that of the Unidad de Desarrollo Integral para la Mujer y la Familia (UDIMUF).5 This Honduran organisation was founded in 2006 and works from a feminist perspective, providing psychological and legal support to women, adolescents and girls who have suffered from male violence. In addition, they work to empower and strengthen women’s leadership and capacities so that they can enjoy their rights in practice. They carry out their activities (in research, social mobilisation and political advocacy, education, and legal and psychological support for victims of male violence) from a gender, sexual diversity, and human rights perspective. In this endeavour, UDIMUF also supports the organisation OPROUCE,6 which has been defending the human rights of trans women and the LGTBI community since 1999. Among its lines of action are the right to comprehensive healthcare, decent work, equal treatment, as well as addressing gender-based violence and transfemicides. When UDIMUF asked Medicusmundi Bizkaia for support in working with OPROUCE, the NGDO had a complete lack of knowledge about issues related to sexual and gender diversity. Although they had extensive experience in incorporating a gender perspective in their cooperation work, they had never considered working with the LGTBIQ+ community. Therefore, in 2017, the coordinator of the Medicusmundi Bizkaia cooperation area contacted Iniciativas de Cooperación y Desarrollo (INCYDE)7 for advice on how to approach sexual and gender diversity in their project. INCYDE for its part is a social initiative consultancy cooperative which, since 2000, has been providing training and consultancy services to promote organisational good living through various methods: strategic reflections, systematisation of experiences, and research. In addition, one of its lines of intervention concerns sexual and gender diversity in development  https://medicusmundibizkaia.org/  http://udimufhn.org/ 6  https://oprouce.org/ 7  https://www.iniciativasdecooperacionydesarrollo.com/ 4 5

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processes. The methodological frameworks within which it carries out its work such as popular education, all include a clear commitment to the participation of the individuals and groups involved in the processes. With the advice of INCYDE, Medicusmundi Bizkaia has established a process with a participatory methodology that contributes to overcoming North–South asymmetries typical of cooperation projects, with the intention of collectively constructing a process of social transformation. These asymmetries are reflected, among other ways, in the following embedded assumptions: 1. NGDOs from the Global North are only the financiers of the projects, and those from the Global South are the ones who implement them. 2. NGDOs in the Global North closely monitor the work being done, suspecting organisations in the Global South of misusing funds. 3. NGDOs in the Global North have the capacity to have a mediumand a long-term strategy, while organisations in the Global South act in response to emergencies. 4. NGDOs in the Global North help those in the Global South to carry out better organised work. 5. NGDOs from the Global North have a greater capacity to analyse contexts than organisations from the Global South. 6. NGDOs from the Global North identify new topics to be addressed in projects, while organisations from the Global South stick to familiar topics. While the dominant cooperation model is based on the logic of competition between organisations and mistrust of organisations in the Global South, collaborative relationships, in contrast, represent a major step forward and are of the utmost importance for advancing NNTC. It is important to remember that Medicusmundi Bizkaia is an organisation that focuses its cooperation projects in the field of health, with a community perspective consistent with the social determinants of health (SDH) (WHO, 2011).8 Although, for this NGDO, social participation is 8  ‘The social determinants of health (SDH) are the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life’ (WHO, 2011: 45). As the WHO indicates, the SDH are organised into structural factors (socioeconomic and political context, social position, gender, race, access to education and employment) and intermediary ones (material circumstances, biological factors, psychosocial factors and habits or lifestyles).

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present in the majority of public policies implemented by states and international organisations, they highlight the fact that practical strategies that enable changes that would contribute to fairer and more equitable societies are not implemented. Medicusmundi Bizkaia considers that social participation is instrumentalised by public health systems, using it to compensate for their existing shortcomings. In the case of Honduras, citizens in general, and LGTBIQ+ collectives in particular, offer socio-health functions to ensure a basic level of health and well-being, a responsibility that the state fails to fulfil. The privatisation of healthcare forms part of the policies that have been implemented; only those who have economic resources have access, effectively excluding the vast majority of the country’s population. The low amount of investment in the public sector has left the public healthcare system extremely weak. For Medicusmundi Bizkaia, social participation in health is oriented towards the transformation of the system and societies, seeing it is a driver of change with the strategic objective of achieving fair and inclusive health systems (Fernández, 2018). In addition to the relationships and links that have been forged between these two organisations over the years, Medicusmundi Bizkaia has capitalised on the possibilities offered by being an agent of cooperation to bring about institutional interaction in the region of Atlántida (Honduras) so that they can incorporate sexual and gender diversity into their political agendas. These advances are opening up spaces for dialogue and joint work between cooperation actors, the Municipality of La Ceiba (Atlántida), the Ministry of Health, civil society organisations, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras—Centro Universitario Regional del Litoral Atlántico (CURLA). A specific outcome of this first thread was the publication Alma, Corazón y Vida9 (Altamira & Canarias, 2021b), which outlines the necessary changes, both immediate and strategic, to carry out a sexual and gender diversity strategy in Honduras, organised into five categories: the changes necessary in (1) legal frameworks and public bodies; (2) the field of education; (3) the relationships and links between social organisations; (4) companies and private entities; and (5) the media.

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In order to identify these changes, a programme of workshops was organised involving various agents: university professors, the municipality, social organisations (including women from the feminist movement and transgender women’s groups) and cooperation organisations. The approach used in these workshops was consistent with the participatory methodology described above. The starting point for the project was the situational experience, lived experiences, and desires for change of the diverse participants, who creatively demonstrated their ability to work together and identify possible and desirable futures for Honduras. As an outcome, Alma, Corazón y Vida (Altamira & Canarias, 2021b) is a resource that provides guidance for work on sexual and gender diversity in Honduras and is the result of the diverse knowledges of each organisation. The collective construction entails the recognition of transgender women as political subjects, on a horizontal level with the other participating actors (depicted in Fig. 10.2), generating new hopes and alliances. Thread 2: Training at the University As part of this process, Medicusmundi Bizkaia together with the organisation UDIMUF identified the need to involve the university (CURLA) as an important space for advocacy. This university is renowned for its studies in agricultural engineering and nursing. These represent two polar opposites, since, in Honduras, the former corresponds to the male gender mandate, while the latter corresponds to the female one. Raising sexual and gender diversity as an issue to be addressed in this context has been a major challenge that has made it possible, as we explain below, to open up cracks in this very pronounced model of the cisheteronormative university. The contents of the training courses were designed jointly by Medicusmundi Bizkaia, UDIMUF, CURLA lecturers and INCYDE. As stated earlier, this collaboration is fundamental to establish a horizontal

Medicusmundi Bizkaia

UDIMUF

OPROUCE

INCYDE

Municipality of La Ceiba

Secretary of Health

Fig. 10.2  Actors involved. (Source: Own elaboration)

Social organisaons

UNAH CURLA

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relationship between the organisations in Honduras and those in the Basque Country in Spain, as well as to offer training that is both situated and does not produce an ethnocentric vision of sexual and gender diversity. We emphasise the political dimension of LGTBIQ+ subjects and provide specific tools for addressing the incorporation of sexual and gender diversity in the various work areas of the participants. Once again, diverse knowledge is brought into dialogue, in which all those involved unlearn and learn through participatory methodologies, where the participants’ existing prejudices and knowledge are taken as a starting point, and new knowledge is developed. The students play an active part in this teaching-­ learning process, while the teachers share their experience in a horizontal relationship. During the academic years in which this training is offered, students from a variety of profiles take part: university teaching staff, health staff, staff from the public prosecutor’s office, educational staff, young people from social organisations, and students from the university. These people end their training by receiving academic recognition from CURLA and have new ideas on how to address LGTBIQ+ issues in their environments. The following issues are addressed in the training sessions: • Sexual and gender diversity, and its relationship with the dominant model; • LGTBIQ+ people as active subjects of social transformation through their organisations; • Key texts on international agreements on the protection of human rights and gender-based violence; • The violence that LGTBIQ+ people experience in each specific context (at university, in the health sector, in the public prosecutor’s office, etc.); • The difficulties they may encounter in their fields of work or advocacy; and • Possible strategies that can be implemented based on specific cases and situations. In addition, the training courses have an impact within the university itself. On the one hand, there is a symbolic impact, as CURLA is a recognised and prestigious actor in Honduran society that is moving forward and taking steps to challenge the heteronormative. On the other hand, there are practical impacts. First, it opens up the possibility of making

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sexual and gender diversity visible, incorporating it into the research processes that are carried out, as well as in the students’ academic records and data. Secondly, it makes LGTBIQ+ people visible on campus, whereas before, the cisheterosexuality of the student body and university staff was taken as a given. The presence of LGTBIQ+ teachers, who have themselves previously experienced widespread rejection, is beginning to be accepted. This is also thanks to the courage of some teachers who are daring to come out publicly at CURLA, something that was previously unthinkable. It allows both students and faculty staff to speak publicly about sexual and gender diversity and to organise themselves. The presence of transgender people in classrooms contrasts with the views of teachers who, prior to this process, would not have imagined this to be a reality in their classes. Thread 3: Research on Primary Healthcare and LGTBIQ+ People By conversing, collaborating and dreaming, the third and final thread of this güipil we are weaving begins to take shape. This is how we have arrived at the need to delve deeper into the reality of LGTBIQ+ people when they approach primary healthcare services in the region of Atlántida (Honduras). The fruit of this work is the research project ‘Construyendo un modelo no normativo y feminista de la salud: Informe Honduras’10 (Altamira & Canarias, 2021a), which was promoted by Medicusmundi Bizkaia together with UDIMUF and conducted by INCYDE. In our view, when a research project is proposed with a participatory methodology, it is important to take into account who will ask the first questions that will orient the project and how. For this reason, a team was organised to lead the process, made up of people from Honduras and the Basque Country, which allowed for a situated approach. The starting point was based on two premises: first, that the research incorporates LGTBIQ+ voices (from each of the different initials, from their specific realities); secondly, that the intersectionality perspective is present at all times, taking into account cultural and class diversity in addition to sexual and gender diversity. The two premises are reflected both in the research questions and in the profiles of the participants. Alongside LGTBIQ+ people and organisations, there was participation from healthcare professionals, political and technical decision-makers from the healthcare  Building a non-normative, feminist model of health: Honduras Report.

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administration and social organisations in the field of health who support these processes. However, the intersectionality approach has shown the difficulty of involving transgender people, as well as islanders, in the process (Altamira & Canarias, 2021a: 30). We have not been able to involve more people with this profile in the research, perhaps because they live in situations of extreme vulnerability and require further efforts to generate processes that increase trust. Further, the research required the procedures that had originally been designed to be reoriented, as they were affected by the restrictions of Covid-19 lockdowns and could not be carried out in person. For this reason, the entire process was conducted online and involved the following phases: (1) an initial survey, (2) group workshops, and (3) one-to-one interviews. The publication resulting from this research is an instrument that, in addition to making visible the reality experienced by LGTBIQ+ people in primary healthcare services in the region of Atlántida, serves to create political advocacy and propose concrete changes for the Honduran authorities.

Transformative Changes in Honduras and the Basque Country … Opening Up Futures Up to this point, an account has been given of the background, the groups involved, as well as the experience carried out, which are woven together like a güipil. The following are some of the changes, or advances, that have been brought about for organisations in Honduras and the Basque Country—transformative changes that open up new futures, both possible and desirable. Further, when NNTC is implemented, the transformative changes are not solely generated in the Global South; they also pose challenges for the organisations from the Global North that are involved. These changes go hand in hand, entailing both unlearning and new learning. The local–global dimension implies overcoming the unidirectional vision of cooperation, through which Medicusmundi Bizkaia ceases to be a financier and UDIMUF and OPROUCE are no longer simply the beneficiaries of economic funds. To confront the dominant model of the triad, it has been necessary to become aware of the fact that the oppressions and challenges are both common and global, where the strengths, experiences

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and strategies to be implemented can be collective and shared among the organisations involved, both in the Global North and South. It is important to emphasise that the relations between the organisations involved are carefully cultivated and based on trust, seeking horizontality and mutual learning, where each one has a defined and complementary role. It should also be noted that, while these links are extremely enriching, they are not exempt from conflicts, which we learn to manage by working together. Thanks to the incorporation of this local–global dimension, we have identified that sexual and gender diversity is present in the processes of local realities, but it corresponds to a global reality. In this way, the transfer of will and opportunities from Honduras to the Basque Country and vice versa is enhanced. For example, in Atlántida, the participation of civil society in monitoring the responsibility and commitments of the government and public institutions through social observation is noteworthy. In the Basque Country, the role of a strong public health system (although not free of shortcomings) stands out against that of a debilitated (one could say non-existent) system such as that found in Honduras. However, in both contexts, and to varying degrees, there is a trend towards privatisation of this public service. Both realities open up new possibilities that help to strengthen universal public health: on the one hand, citizen participation; and on the other, the need for resources and infrastructures. In addition, the incorporation of sexual and gender diversity in public health systems—in a way that is consistent with the social determinants of health—implies overcoming the dominant biomedical vision. This, in turn, means counting on social participation and incorporating other possibilities such as being trans or inter and going beyond surgical interventions performed on bodies as the sole possibility. Following this process, observing the threads that have been woven, awareness is raised of the importance of incorporating sexual and gender diversity into the processes of organisational culture (e.g., in the values, operating models and internal organisation consistent with sexual and gender diversity), which leads the participating organisations to equip themselves with the necessary capacities to continue with advocacy, training, and research actions. The situation is not without significant challenges. In Honduras, LGTBIQ+ organisations in general, and OPROUCE in particular, are living, as previously mentioned, in a context of extreme violence: with murders and disappearances on a daily basis, with a low life expectancy, and with the need to flee the country because of the persecution they have

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experienced. This reality leads to a weakening of the organisations, with fragile leadership and actions directed at urgent situations due to the systematic violation of human rights. OPROUCE has been faced with the need to address urgent security situations of its members, as opposed to more strategic proposals. At the same time, the process proposed by the Medicusmundi Bizkaia has promoted the need to look beyond this, to have a strategic view and strengthen OPROUCE’s collective capacities as political subjects. Through this joint work, OPROUCE now recognises the importance of these other proposals, overcoming its initial reluctance. As a result, major advances have been made. For example, the participation of this organisation in activities related to the feminist movement, such as the demonstration on 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) as a strategic advancement, or raising the rainbow flag in the municipality of La Ceiba, which would have been unthinkable ten years ago, as an immediate advancement, although one that is both symbolic and important. These examples are just a few of the advances that are being made, but which illustrate how LGTBIQ+ organisations are being recognised by other social organisations as political subjects to be taken into account in social transformation processes, as well as the recognition of trans women by the feminist movement. The advances that are being achieved through the efforts of Honduran organisations are also being fostered by the involvement of cooperation organisations, as is the case of Medicusmundi Bizkaia, which incorporates sexual and gender diversity into the processes it supports. For Medicusmundi Bizkaia, its experience with sexual and gender diversity in Honduras has meant that it also needs to incorporate sexual and gender diversity into both its organisational culture and cooperation strategy. This shows an openness to the incorporation of elements, contents, visions and individuals that had hitherto not been taken into account. The experience of Honduran organisations influences the changes they are incorporating, as they see it as an organisational mandate and a responsibility to break down existing divides and inequalities without fear of opening up to new challenges as they arise. Based on the practices conducted in conjunction with these Honduran organisations, Medicusmundi Bizkaia sees the need for an internal reflection regarding the conception of sexual and gender diversity within its organisation. It seeks to give meaning to future practices and to take it into account at the organisational level. The result of this reflection is the

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document Medicusmundi Bizkaia y la Diversidad sexual y de género11 (Medicusmundi Bizkaia & INCYDE, Iniciativas de Cooperación y Desarrollo, 2022) in which the authors explain how they view the dominant model as a triad; the value of addressing sexual and gender diversity from a rights and social justice approach; the relationship between sexual and gender diversity and the social determinants of health; the link between feminisms and sexual and gender diversity; the approach from the local– global dimension; and finally, the need to intersect the struggles of LGTBIQ+ collectives with other social movements. In addition, they identify the lines for improvement that should be incorporated in the coming years with regard to supporting LGTBIQ+ processes.

The Futures that This Experience Opens Up When we look at the past, at the stories and accounts shared, we see so many lives that have been shattered by structural violence in Honduras. And yet, these steps taken, this experience that we present, open up to us possible and transformative futures with dignified lives for LGTBIQ+ people. Over time, based on the dialogues held with UDIMUF and OPROUCE, Medicusmundi Bizkaia, together with INCYDE, have advanced key elements that help to repair existing injustices and the pain experienced. They also provide guidance for new sexual and gender diversity initiatives that can be carried out in Honduras. We are convinced that, in addition to supporting LGTBIQ+ collectives through specific projects, sexual and gender diversity is a perspective that can be incorporated into all projects that are carried out, regardless of the subject matter they deal with. Moreover, sexual and gender diversity is not exclusive to LGTBIQ+ organisations; rather, it is essential to incorporate it into all organisations. For this reason, the three organisations involved in this process need to develop a forward-looking strategy in which they incorporate sexual and gender diversity into both their specific actions and their organisational culture. Although progress has been made in this regard, it is essential that everyone involved in the organisations takes responsibility for what the incorporation of this perspective consists of and what it entails. We have identified three lines of intervention that are complementary and foster each other: training, research and advocacy. With regard to  Medicusmundi Bizkaia and Sexual and Gender Diversity.

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training, we highlight the importance of giving it a political meaning so that the interventions that are carried out, in addition to being focused on the rights of LGTBIQ+ people, address sexual and gender diversity from the perspective of having an impact on the dominant triad model using an intersectional approach. Regarding research, we recognise its transformative power when it is carried out with a participatory methodology in which the subjects involved take ownership of the process. The research conducted has made it possible to identify a new line of interest to be explored in greater depth in the future: the care being offered by Comprehensive Care Services (CCS) to LGTBIQ+ people.12 With regard to political advocacy, we stress the importance of continuing to involve public institutions, both in Honduras and in the Basque Country, in a shared and context-specific manner in the actions that are carried out. NGDOs are privileged, recognised agents who, as interlocutors, can play a fundamental role in influencing public policies and also in generating links between public institutions. In order to bring about the intersectionality of struggles, networks and engagements between diverse actors and collectives are required to generate alternatives to the dominant model—and in the case of Honduras, alternatives to the established narco-state. These three threads illustrate the relationships established between a feminist organisation and an LGTBIQ+ organisation in Honduras, an NGDO and a consultancy cooperative in the Basque Country, and a university in Honduras, as well as the involvement of some state structures. It is important to make the alliances generated sustainable, recognising the differences that exist and have the capacity to build complementary relationships on the basis of these differences. Furthermore, it is a challenge to continue working to involve trans, inter, bisex, queer, gender-fluid and non-binary people in these processes, as well as the cultural diversities of Honduras (e.g., islanders, Lenca and Garifuna people). Their participation cannot be merely incidental. As already mentioned, the context of structural violence in Honduras, and particularly towards LGTBIQ+ people and organisations (Morondo & Blanco, 2018), leads many people to leave the country or to adopt a low public profile in order not to put themselves at risk. This situation, which decapitalises LGTBIQ+ organisations, requires special attention when it comes to addressing sexual and gender diversity. These collectives, far from being fragile and fickle, demonstrate an extraordinary and  Research is currently ongoing.

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admirable strength, although, like all other social movements and organisations, they are continuously under construction. It is therefore essential to put an end to the hegemonic discourse that LGTBIQ+ collectives are so weak that collaboration with them is impossible. In a country in which several churches express hate speech towards LGTBIQ+ people, churches deeply rooted in the culture of a significant part of the population, it is also necessary to elaborate a new language, new discourses and new narratives in accordance with a secular state. Nevertheless, it is also important to incorporate people’s beliefs into the NNTC process, which enables hate speech made under the umbrella of Christianity to be dismantled through forms of dialogue that show that being Christian is not incompatible with the lives of LGTBIQ+ people. This dimension also forms part of intersectionality. In our view, new possibilities, filled with hope, are opening up under the current Honduran government, led by a woman president and supported by many social and grassroots organisations, including LGTBIQ+ organisations. Despite the difficulties that may arise, it is essential to count on the current progressive government to bring about the necessary structural and long-lasting changes. Medicusmundi Bizkaia has been making progress. Following its initial support for transgender women, it has identified new possibilities and the need to make contact with other groups. Therefore, together with OPROUCE, UDIMUF and INCYDE, it is weaving new links and identifying other LGTBIQ+ organisations to include, such as Somos Centro para el Desarrollo y la Cooperación LGBTI (CDC),13 Movimiento Diversidad en Resistencia (MDR)14 and Colectiva Casiopea.15 These contacts and alliances are helping to overcome the typical forms of competition and mistrust between the organisations themselves, opening up new possibilities. The NNTC proposes, precisely, the need to put an end to the instrumentalising logics that treat the organisations and groups involved as mere resources for the success of a project. It implies opening up to the logics of political subjects who, together, create new futures. Therefore, those organisations that have more experience are inspiring and giving hope to the new ones that are beginning to organise  https://somoscdc.hn/  https://www.facebook.com/Movimiento.Diversidad.en.Resistencia/ 15  https://www.facebook.com/Colectiva-Casiopea-304670796911148/?ref=page_ internal 13 14

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themselves, helping to empower them—while the younger organisations contribute with renewed enthusiasm and new ideas for transformation. Together, the journey becomes more bearable and their fight more powerful. All these issues, and many others that may arise along the way, represent a future that looks to the past and that understands the past, what can be repaired and what is beyond repair. They are the result of lived experience and much hard work. They advance reparative futures that, with enthusiasm and creativity, imagine alternatives to the dominant model of the triad. In opposition to this model of death and exclusion, there are already transformative practices in Honduras, in the Basque Country and all over the planet, which show us that life is making headway. These are futures that can repair the wounds and pain, because together—every single one of us—we make it possible for something better to emerge. This güipil is an example—a fabric in which we tell of what we have done in the past, which is also then our tomorrow.

References Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). (n.d.). Marco de Asociación España-Honduras 2020–2023. Agencia Vasca de Cooperación para el Desarrollo (AVCD). (2017). (H)abian Estrategia de Educación para la Transformación Social. http://www.elankidetza.euskadi.eus/x63-­content7/es/contenidos/informacion/inf_habian/ es_def/index.shtml. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Alonso, W. (2020). De la diversidad sexual y de género (lgbti), a las disidencias sexuales, de género y corporales. Tránsitos necesarios e ineludibles. Controversia, 215, 201–234. https://doi.org/10.54118/controver.vi215.1213 Altamira, F. (2016). Bailando con el deseo. Algunas claves para incorporar la diversidad sexual y de género en las ONGD. Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/94730. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Altamira, F., & Boni, A. (2020, May 20). Estaban y no los veíamos: la cooperación transformadora no normativa, la que incorpora la diversidad sexual y de género [Presentación comunicación]. V Congreso Internacional de Estudios del Desarrollo, Bilbao, Estado Español. https://vcied.org/downloads/V-­CIED-­ LibroActas-­AktenLiburua-­ConferenceProceedings.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Altamira, F., & Canarias, E. (2021a). Construyendo un modelo no normativo y feminista de la salud: Informe Honduras. In F. Altamira, E. Canarias, L. Mujika, G. Villar, & I. Egino (Eds.), Cruzando miradas entre Honduras y Euskadi. Un análisis de la atención primaria en salud desde la Diversidad sexual y de género

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(pp. 11–113). Medicusmundi Bizkaia. https://medicusmundibizkaia.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2022/02/Cruzando-­miradas-­entre-­Honduras-­y-­Euskadi. pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Altamira, F., & Canarias, E. (2021b). Alma, corazón y vida. ¿Qué cambios son necesarios para llevar a cabo una estrategia de Diversidad sexual y de género en Honduras? Medicusmundi Bizkaia. https://medicusmundibizkaia.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2021/09/Alma-­c orazon-­y -­v ida-­C AST-­D EF_web.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Bauman, Z. (2018). Amor líquido. Acerca de la fragilidad de los vínculos humanos. Fondo de Cultura Económica de España. Belda-Miquel, S., Boni, A., & Sañudo, M. F. (2016). Informal learning for citizenship building in shared struggles for rights: Cases of political solidarity between Colombian and Spanish organizations. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 27(1), 249–272. https:// digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/132108/1/informal_learning.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Butler, J. (2002). Cuerpos que importan. Sobre los límites materiales y discursivos del ‘sexo’. Paidós. Butler, J. (2020). Sin miedo. Formas de resistencia a la violencia de hoy. Taurus. Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2018). Intersectionality. Polity Press. Fernández, R. (2018). La participación social, clave para la mejora en la prestación de servicios públicos de salud de calidad y con calidez para las mujeres: El caso de la Reforma del Sistema de Salud de El Salvador. Unpublished practical study. Graduate in Public Health, Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud de Castilla y León. Fernández, G., Piris, S., & Ramiro, P. (2014). Alianzas sociales para una cooperación internacional emancipadora. In I.  Martínez & M.  L. Gil (Coord.), Anuario 2013. Hacia 2015: Visiones del Desarrollo en disputa (pp.  95–103). Editorial 2015 y más. González, J. (2022). La vida en juego – Bizitza Jokoan. Derechos humanos y de la naturaleza violentados. Mugarik Gabe. Hernández, J. (2018, December 10). Los derechos humanos ‘desde abajo’: Un espacio en disputa. El Salto Diario. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/derechos-­ humanos/desde-­abajo-­espacio-­disputa. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. hooks, b. (2021). Enseñar a transgredir. La educación como práctica de la libertad. Capitán Swing. Horvat, S. (2016). La radicalidad del amor. Katakrak. Human Rights Watch. (2017). Honduras: Events of 2017 (Sexual orientation and gender identity). https://www.hrw.org/world-­report/2018/country-­ chapters/honduras#e81181. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. López, S. (2008). El laberinto queer. La identidad en tiempos de neoliberalismo. Egales.

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Martínez, I. (2021). Nuevos horizontes para la cooperación internacional. Una mirada a la cooperación descentralizada a través del caso vasco. Tirant lo Blanch. Medicusmundi Bizkaia & INCYDE, Iniciativas de Cooperación y Desarrollo. (2022). Medicusmundi Bizkaia y la Diversidad sexual y de género. Medicusmundi Bizkaia. Mendos, L. R. (2019). Homofobia de Estado 2019: Actualización del Panorama Global de la Legislación. ILGA. https://ilga.org/downloads/ILGA_World_ Homofobia_de_Estado_Actualizacion_Panorama_global_Legislacion_diciembre_2019.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Morondo, D., & Blanco, M. D. (2018). Estudio sobre la situación de las personas LGTBI del Norte de Centroamérica con necesidades de protección internacional en Guatemala y México. AECID. Pan American Health Organization-World Health Organization (PAHO-WHO). (2016). Estrategia de cooperación de país de la OPS-OMS Honduras 2017–2021. PAHO-WHO. Red lésbica Cattrachas. (2020, Julio). Comité de Derechos Humanos (CCPR). Informe alternativo de avance a recomendaciones en DDHH del sector LGBTI – Honduras (julio 2020) https://ccprcentre.org/files/documents/INT_ CCPR_NGS_HND_43633_E.docx. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Red lésbica Cattrachas. (2021). Informe sobre muertes violentas de personas LGTTBI.  Cattrachas 2009–2020. https://www.cattrachas.org/_files/ugd/ b262b8_ded083f6fdbf4483a56016a77b3efb8b.pdf?index=true. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Robinson, W. I. (2016). América Latina y el capitalismo global. Siglo XXI. Rodríguez, S. (2023). Personal communication, 17 Jan. 2023. Seguer, L. (2013). De la normatividad queer en la construcción de la nación a la resistencia política queer: Un debate en la relación Israel-Palestina. Universitas Humanística, 78, 261–280. http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/unih/n78/ n78a12.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Serrano, J. F., & Ríos, O. (2019). Introduction to the special issue: Challenges of LGBT research in the 21st century. International Sociology, 34(4), 371–381. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0268580919856490 Sorto, A.  E. (Coord.). (2021). Informe de observación electoral especializada LGTBI. Elecciones primarias. Honduras 2021. Somos CDC. Stryker, S. (2017). Historia de lo trans. Continta Me Tienes. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2022). Human development report 2021/2022: Uncertain times, unsettled lives. Shaping our future in a transforming world. PNUD. World Health Organisation (WHO). (2011). Cerrando la brecha: La política de acción sobre los determinantes sociales de la salud. Documento de trabajo. WHO.

CHAPTER 11

Philosophical Inquiry and the Childness of Communities: Connective Capabilities for Flourishing Education Marina Santi and Elisabetta Ghedin

Introduction Plagued by economic, war-driven and social crises, the entire planet is facing the risk of extinction, paradoxically at a time in human history where the highest levels of knowledge are at our disposal. From a political point of view, this issue is a complex global challenge that pretends to address the connective interdependence between the quality of personal and social well-­being, perceived in the present time, with the goodness of human becoming, imagined for the next, reparative, future. In fact, the world has become a site of intervention, a profoundly significant theatre of human action and education as a future-oriented activity that shapes how children and youth prepare for and relate to what is to come. This indicates a change of priorities in social politics and public policies. Several studies

M. Santi (*) • E. Ghedin University of Padova, Padova, Italy e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_11

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(Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Beamish & McLeod, 2014; Griffin et  al., 2012; Lambert, 2015; Alden Rivers et  al., 2015) show that promoting well-being/well-becoming of all means transforming the understanding of the formal and informal ways in which people connect with one another in present spaces and in future times. The connection between education and building reparative futures is widely assumed, in the claiming that political commitments must arise to establish ‘schools for the future,’ allocating resources for education ‘in preparation for the future,’ and equipping young individuals for an ‘unfolding world.’ The notions of future and aspirations to improve it play a significant role in shaping educational cultures, politics, and practices, influencing our understanding of education’s purpose, ground, and perspectives (Sriprakash et al., 2020). In this framework, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is presented as a valuable pedagogical proposal towards educating for reparative futures. Since it is a practice that promotes a community of inquiry (CoI) as the methodological core of the educational curriculum and approach, connecting the capability of children who are educated for complex thinking (Santi & Oliverio, 2012). This is proposed as a shape/space of collective, distributed and situated capabilities. In this chapter we argue that an education for reparative futures embeds the value of P4C as a pedagogical approach to develop capable agents enhancing critical, creative, and caring thinking dimensions. It aims to expand children’s connective capabilities, empowering their agency and enabling them to envision alternative futures and make life choices. Such an education is defined by its imaginative potential rather than by the constraints of predeterminate or delegated outcomes; it aims to build relationships with the well-becoming of individuals and modes of collaborative interpretations and connective organisation towards reparative features. Education, from this perspective, becomes a crucial site for the encounter and dialogue with the history of all, interlacing with different experiences of this history and a moment of experimentation with new connections, values, and desires without the guarantee of transcendent futures. Based on these premises, the chapter aims to explore the capabilities of well-being towards reparative futures through P4C as an opportunity to promote the well-becoming for all, based on a connective complex-­ thinking education. The first part will highlight the construct of well-­ becoming, seeking to relate it to connective opportunities towards possible and sustainable futures. The second part will illustrate P4C and propose a complex framework of well-becoming based on the connective capabilities

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fostered by the P4C environment. The outline proposed here is a heuristic, a draft vocabulary for discussing how we are thinking about reparative futures in education, within the framework of a connective ethos as a qualitative measure of a community’s well-becoming. It invites us to think about the roles of becoming well together within the world, and the connections between histories of all. It is a starting point for a complex thinking that cares with responsibility for the stories in which the dimensions of connective capabilities help in the building of human flourishing.

Well-Becoming in the Landscape of Community: A Quest for Connection Social sciences have begun to rethink the prominence of the human in our accounts of the world by exploring that category less as an individualised and adult essence and more as a diachronic process of intersubjective becoming (Mathews & Izquierdo, 2010). The human as a process, crucially, is never undertaken alone. Covid-19 has shown that even a global event such as a pandemic need to be contextualised in a complex connection of interacting socio-cultural and economics components to be understood and faced, transformed into a ‘syndemic.’1 Human well-being is not a state which can be caused or compromised by a series of discrete factors, but rather a process of becoming with, operating through interactions with others, including also non-human others. And this has to do with something we call human flourishing as a main aspiration of human becoming (Edwards, 2022). Among the many interpretations of human flourishing that we find in different academic fields2 we can claim that human flourishing is both the optimal continuing development of human beings’ potential and living well as human beings. Flourishing is conditional on the contribution and participation of individuals and requires enabling environments, both regarding accessible contexts and involving communities constantly 1  The notion of syndemic was introduced in the 1990s by Singer Merrill (2009) to study a synergistic epidemic in the medical field, highlighting the disruptive effects and consequences of the simultaneous interference of two or more pandemics across the different global dimensions of life processes and health contexts. Disease concentration, disease interaction, and their underlying social forces are the core concepts considered. 2  For a review of the different interpretations in academic disciplines view Duraiappah et al. (2022). This dimension is analysed via different interpretations: philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology/neurosciences, economics, ecology and ecosystems.

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engaging people in processes of becoming, driven by a continuous balance of our capacity for self/other-consciousness and self/other-reflection and expectations (Duraiappah et  al., 2022). The well-becoming process of individuals and/in communities lies in the widespread human judging of past experiences and the envisioning of future possibilities. Also, such becoming is an integral aspect of our interaction with our systems environment and of the enacting of our agency as a community. These dynamic views of human beings suggest that, even as we assess our own or someone else’s state of being at a given time, there is a dynamic element in that being, namely the potential of the system to develop and be attentive towards certain ways. If humans are social (communal) beings with a need for social connections (human need) and generally do not voluntarily choose social isolation (van der Veen & Wolbert, 2014), that implies a social influence in exclusion, marginalisation, and privation of futures for many categories of people, children included, despite their natural imaginative richness. Our choice of focus, the communal dimension of human well-­ becoming, has a theoretical ground from which follows the epistemological and methodological choice of referring to community as the unit of analysis of its promotion and evaluation. That implies moving from the emphasis on individual quality of being to the collective generativity of becoming. Most references to the term ‘well-becoming’ appear in research regarding children’s development. For example, in contrast to the immediacy of well-being, well-becoming describes a future/possible focus (Ben-Arieh & Frønes, 2011). The extent of expectations is connected to the number of opportunities for sharing meanings and values people have in the community. According to the socio-constructivist perspective, humans as a biological species are defined in terms of their cultural participation (Rogoff, 2003) and use of co-constructed semiotic meaning and knowledge (Vygotsky, 1930). Every life is tasked with bringing other lives into being and with sustaining them for however long it takes for the latter, in turn, to engender of further life. The continuity of the life process is therefore not individual but social, and emerges ‘from undergoing’ (Ingold, 2014, 2018). Regarding education and learning, it is necessary to overcome the narrow vision of utilitarianism and economism to integrate the multiple dimensions of human existence. In the framework of the capability approach, the focus on education is not functional to increasing human capital and instead highlights the importance of investing in human

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development by nurturing collective empowerment within flourishing communities, starting when and where it begins: in childhood. This is an open, flexible and plastic approach to human growth that promotes lifelong education in all its dimensions. An approach that offers to everyone as a community the opportunity to realise their potential to build a sustainable future for other communities and to live a dignified life. This humanistic approach affects the definition of learning content and pedagogical choices, as well as the role of teachers and other educators (Common Worlds Research Collective, 2020). It is proposed to learn becoming one with the world, caring for it and supporting its care. In which education plays a central role not only in future survival, as stated in the UNESCO Working Paper (2020), Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival, but in giving children the right to imagine their possible reparative futures.

A Map of Connective Capabilities for Flourishing Education The common thread that runs through this chapter is connection. The connectivity that inspires us is that which characterises natural life, even before human cognition, induced by different ways of ‘intentionality’ and ‘attentionality,’ which inform the ability to remember and transform at the same time, to interact with the context and continuously re-establish an order, to replicate itself differently (Rizzotti, 1996). Sen (1999) wrote about the achievement of development, claiming that it is entirely dependent on the people’s agency within relevant empirical connections. In particular, he suggests looking at the mutually reinforcing connections between freedoms of different kinds. It is because of these interconnections that sustainable agency emerges as a major engine of development. Indeed, these empirical connections reinforce valuational priorities. In writing about instrumental freedoms Sen affirms that they directly enhance the capabilities of people, but they also supplement one another and can furthermore reinforce one another. So, these connections are mutually inter–intra dependent, influencing each other, and cultivating profound linkages with one another. Connectivity emerges as a conceptual amplification of the notion of capability itself. The focus of the 2019 Conference of Human Development and Capability Approach Association was Connecting Capabilities, while

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the founder Amartya Sen ten years earlier at Harvard3 had expressed himself with a ‘yes, yes, but …’ regarding the link between connectivity and freedom, recognizing connectivity as a capability able to increase people’s substantial freedom, enlarging the opportunities for access to what they consider useful or necessary to be and do what is worth for them. Certainly, increasing the space of individual freedoms produces complex interactions between personal aspirations and mutual limitations in terms of coexistence, but connection among subjective freedoms generates the space for the understanding of their meaning in terms of the glue of human community. Connective capabilities have intrinsic characteristics of collective capabilities, but unlike the latter, they are imbued with caring thinking towards oneself, others, and the world around us. Collective capabilities have a strong relationship with collective actions and are related to social and innovative changes (Shariff, 2018), while connective capabilities focus on recognizing oneself as a polyphony of voices and caring for the well-being and well-becoming of all. As Sen notes in his speech of 2009, the challenge of connective complexity—inevitably generated by the liberation of personal and collective self-determination—does not diminish by reducing or limiting the number of opportunities of connection available in the larger scale and can never be avoided without compromising the growth of freedom itself inhibiting social agency and the building of communities. Connection thus means activation of ‘external’ and ‘collective’ capabilities (Bellanca & Biggeri, 2010; Pelenc et al., 2013), capable of operating indirectly, but significantly, on the agency of individuals as communities to increase deliberative opportunities and broaden the chances for choice and social empowerment. Education is one of the main facilitators (WHO, 2007) of these connective capabilities; through education, children are offered the connective opportunity to enlarge their space of activity and participation and to express their agency. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. It unfolds through the narratives of personal encounters throughout time. It is contextual, embodied, and enhanced by 3  The meeting held in 2009 at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society was entitled Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection?; in the panel the invited speakers discussed connectivity as one of the main transformative changes that occurred in the first decade of the new millennium, starting from the question: Does the ‘connection revolution’ would have favoured the improvement of people’s quality of life and the growth of individual and collective freedom of communities?

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the simultaneous existence of every unique detail. A liberating perspective that could guide us towards a more complete and fulfilling human existence. In the educational context, an orientation to reparative futures allows us to stay within the context or at least attempt to provide answers on how to achieve an educational proposal that encompasses the cognitive and emotional elements that characterise it, by learning not just to know the contexts in which we live more, but to know them in a different way towards being ecological (Bateson, 1979). Timothy Ingold (2018) proposes an ecological perspective that could be translated into an educational one. Which assumes that nobody learns to act in isolation, but through involvement in a world in which sociality is the fundamental quality of relationships. In fact, there is a negative aspect in building a world of people who act individually, as is the case of standard education and settings where being dependent becomes a sign of weakness and incapacity. It is the difference between a participation in which only one part learns (adapting to the other) and a participation that transforms the perspective of all those who take part and leads to a shared perspective by repairing past injustice (Young, 1990). So, connections are the conditions for perceiving the healing of the future world emergence (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) as a way of thinking based on relationship rather than separation. By recognising this pattern, we can better understand impediments to reparative futures and take steps to promote connected development (Siegel, 2012). There can be no variation without co-participation in a shared social environment. It is in the correspondence with others—in answering to them, not in the receipt of what is handed down—that each of us come into our own as a person with a singular and recognisable voice. The educational community is held together through variation, not similarity. The community is the space not just for living together but literally for giving together (from cum, meaning ‘together,’ plus munus, meaning ‘gift’). An habitat in which everyone has something to give precisely because they have nothing in common, and in which generous coexistence overcomes the essentialist regression to a primordial identity. Having something in common—like humanity itself—is not a baseline but an aspiration, not given from the start, but a task that calls for communal effort. This effort asks everyone to contribute with their actions to the conditions of common life from which new transformative variations will arise and that represent a constant evolutive tension towards the well-­ being and becoming of the system.

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P4C is proposed here as a suitable pedagogical approach, able to form capable agents and to enhance critical, creative and caring dimensions of thinking in terms of basic functionings which allow the personal set of capabilities of each child in the CoI to be enlarged. The purpose is to empower subjective and collective agency and provide the opportunity to imagine alternative futures and choose what life to live in a community.

Philosophy for Children: Connecting Complex Thinking in the Community of Inquiry P4C is an educational movement developed in the 1970s to foster democratic citizenship in children and youth by educating Complex Thinking (Lipman, 2003) and involving students in philosophising as a dialogical activity within a CoI. The P4C proposes an idea/ideal of citizens as complex thinkers. Firstly, aware of their own assumptions and implications, as well as of the reasons and evidence in which the conclusions are based (critical component), and, secondly, capable of imagining new ways of seeing and connecting the experiential elements (creative component). Moreover, the affective, emotional, motivational dimensions of thinking (caring component) are involved during the practice of reasoning, argumentation, and reflection on authentic problems. The development of logical reasoning skills, of imagination, and awareness of one’s own feelings and feelings of others is at the basis of the capacity of ‘good judgment’ and the core aim of the P4C educational proposal (Biggeri & Santi, 2012). The inquiry activity, focused on discussion but sustained also by reasoning exercises, takes place in a circle with the teacher/facilitator intervening to push the thinking to a deeper level while aspiring to allow the discussion to follow the emerging interests of the community. Matthew Lipman is credited with starting the P4C in the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) at Montclair State University in the US.  Lipman’s method involves reading stories, stimulating narrative to children, and encouraging them to come up with philosophical questions to be shared in a common agenda. The P4C Curriculum is now well known, not only in the US where it was promoted in public schools to foster ‘complex thinking,’ a three-­ dimensional way of thinking that consists of three equally interrelated transactional components: critical, creative, and caring (Lipman, 1998).

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The development of logical reasoning skills (critical thinking), imagination (creative thinking) and awareness of one’s own and others’ feelings and values (caring thinking) supports judgment as a collective process of co-constructing reasoning (Lipman, 2003). A guided experience of ‘inquiry dialogue’ (Santi, 2007) encourages connections among complexity of the thinking dimensions, the different perspectives, and the diverse nuances of children’s imagination, confronting, interpreting, and walking a problem, a question, a possible path collectively. The didactical materials created over 20  years by Lipman and Ann Sharp—philosophical novels and manuals for facilitators—were soon translated in many languages and successfully adapted to different cultural and educational contexts. After half a century, coming in the second millennium with its new challenges and quick transformations, the P4C still represents an outstanding and visionary proposal, which should be operationalised not only for its educational potentials, but for its political implications with regard to social flourishing. As Nussbaum recognised and highlighted in Not for Profit (2010), P4C would be considered a solid educational stance and concrete teaching environment in which children and youth practise and foster the main thinking and reasoning capabilities they need for embodied freedom, by choosing the better way to live their life together. This means being able to invent alternative worlds to be free as communities. The pedagogical implications are significant because they indicate that we should be aiming to align academic education not with what society is (and pretends to be), but with what it could or should be. Going beyond the logic of ‘competences’ (Lozano et al., 2012; Santi, 2019) needed to increase the excellence of human capital and to nurture the conditional capabilities to flourish as a human community. P4C is presented here as a form of connective capability which engages communities to collaboratively build their own futures, nurturing a childlike imagination. Seen through the lens of CA, the P4C practice would be considered as evolving capabilities (Ballet et  al., 2011; Biggeri & Santi, 2012; Liebel, 2014), which provide a real opportunity to rethink citizenship education in and out of the school, through the experience of the ‘democracy of thinking’ (Lipman, 2003). Going beyond the traditional conceptions of democracy education, the opportunity of collective thinking through philosophical inquiry emphasises the pedagogical value of distributed understanding and the power of connective agency of the community as a key dimension of future engaged citizenship.

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Within the frame of the capability approach, P4C can be considered as an opportunity to work towards the educational and political goal of creating flourishing communities of inquiry in which people would share doubts, explore alternatives, and should freely choose their own ways of being and doing in the future within a common understanding of their value. This constitutes the collective capability to aspire, which children embody in their life by wondering—and wandering—at the world. P4C, as an experience of ‘guided (dis)orientation’ (Barreneche & Santi, 2022) valorises the transformative power of philosophising in a shared community commitment. The dialogic-argumentative method encourages students to use the tools and approach of research so that they can evaluate evidence, identify inconsistencies, draw valid conclusions, construct hypotheses, and use criteria to realise the possibilities of the objective with respect to value and facts. These means of inquiry help to persevere in a self-correcting exploration of issues deemed important and problematic for students (Lipman, 1998), engaging them into inventive and hopeful thinking (Dombayci et al., 2011). It entails awareness of so-called existential questions related to life, death and reality, and other philosophical issues that lie behind every discourse on the human future. Within CoI, children are encouraged to connect skills and perspectives, values and feelings towards common questions and problems, promoting the social dimension of thinking and judging. In the process of the CoI, deliberation, distinction, inference and hypothesising is developed by using and recognising criteria, seeking clarification, and considering the ideas, values, and moral judgments of others (di Masi & Santi, 2016). To this regard, the transformation of the classroom into a CoI will format the P4C practice from a socio-constructivist conception of thinking, considering dialogue as a joint activity. Through the practice of philosophical dialogue students think together, co-construct new meanings, and find alternative solutions. In this community, research coincides with problematising the world, arising from the wonder of it and addressing philosophical issues, raising doubts and suspecting certainties, preferring the education of collective question posing to the training of collaborative problem solving (Santi, 2019). According to Lipman (1998), the communitarian philosophical inquiry as a social matrix generates a variety of social and cognitive relations, showing complexity as an inner component of thinking. From this perspective, community is understood as both a systemic and social structure, which is the basis for the emergence and development of complex

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cognitive processes involving critical, creative, and caring thinking (Striano, 2011). Beginning with the dimension of caring (Lipman, 1995), this type of thinking introduces a new dimension that involves how we perform, participate, build, and contribute in relation with others. It is this thinking that reveals our ideals, as well as what is thought as valuable, what we are willing to fight and suffer for (Sharp, 2014). In this frame, the community engages and unfolds to the extent of relationships and interrelationships built on the recognition and respect of a cultural, ideological, religious, or social reference with which group members identify and which represents their reason for being. There is a collective recognition of diversity and difference as a resource and as an enrichment of perspectives (Vadeboncoeur et al., 2015). Students rely on one another’s ideas and follow arguments where they lead. They help one another draw inferences from what has been said and identify one another’s assumptions (Mohr Lone, 2011). From the dimension of critical thinking, communities generate relationships of engagement in a process of continuous construction, validation, and rivalry of shared meanings and sensibilities. Together, they involve a particular path of research as ‘the exploratory and cognitive activity of a community nature, grounded in a communicative, operational, symbolic, evaluative, and unequivocally social basis’ (Santi, 2006: 93). Within the practical logic of this community, they can confront uncertainty and perform transparent, logical reasoning and criticism. Furthermore, the social dimension of community has the function of presenting the views of all participants in the joint research. Reasoning together and being open to changing views and priorities set by community members are essential. This is why there is a certain renunciation of the individual dimension of thinking to enter the collective one, which will become everyone’s and no-one’s answers in the knowledge process that puts in the centre not only logical procedures, but also the growth of other community members (Kohan & Waksman, 2000). In its creative dimension, the dynamic between person–person and persons–community is both the expression of the mutual/reciprocal exchange, going beyond the frame of conflict management and opposition aiming to the construction of new structural, expressive and cognitive forms that allow the emergence of thoughts capable of behaving, integrating, making qualitative leaps, overcoming and transcending. The core of the philosophical practice is based on question implementation rather than answer refinement. That changes the roles and

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enrolment of the community members: the intensity of connection is activated by wondering instead of extinction by responding, as is usually the case in a regular classroom. The methodological device of inquiry is intrinsically supported by the philosophical contents: in philosophy no evidence is taken as granted and gives way to doubts and curiosity. The ‘errant’ movement in the landscape of possibilities qualifies philosophy as a ‘school of freedom’ (UNESCO, 2007), as antidote both to notionism and dogmatism, as forms of connection dis-capability (Bellanca et  al., 2011). There is also a consensus on ‘epistemological modesty’ as a recognition that all members of the community—including the teacher—are imperfect and therefore have ways of thinking that may end up being disproved (Mohr Lone, 2011). As noted elsewhere, to be a facilitator of philosophical dialogue, the main teacher’s needs to take a stance of ignorance, and to be able to invent and improvise (Kohan et al., 2017; Zorzi & Santi, 2020). In this sense, the CoI ushers in a particularly relevant social dimension within the P4C practice. It is not just about thinking and understanding, it is not just about finding an answer, it is not just about personal reasoning; it is about being together, listening to others, looking for questions and finding ways to face the problem at hand (Cassidy, 2012). In P4C practice the meanings and uses of contextual systems are expanded by using them within the various possible contexts, because contexts are not meant to be used once, and each new interaction has a new network of meanings. Thus, this complex thinking leads to the construction, deconstruction, and continuous creation of alternative worldviews through a creative process that gains value from the critical contextuality in which it is expressed. Understanding as well that the process by which choices are made is even more important than the choices themselves (Biggeri & Santi, 2012). This means that it is important to internalise freedom of choice for the life-design by living an experience of inquiry life-design that involves a collective path of uncertainty, confusion, and further research. Encouraging students to think philosophically in the classroom can certainly help them appreciate the wide variety of perspectives from which the world can be viewed (Mohr Lone & Burroughs, 2016). Leaving behind the main solution of problems, to engage with possible worlds and life perspectives, the experience and practice of a CoI could transform a disorienting process into a community commitment (Barreneche & Santi, 2022). Evolving the capabilities from an individual to collective dimension, it offers a concrete and effective educational space in which children can distribute the weight of dis-orientation, to be flourished in

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community. The context of collective inquiry shows its potential in increasing and enriching the connective capability of a community not just referring to level or grade, but intensity. As regards the P4C as a way/path to engage connective capabilities, a reframe of the figure proposed by Biggeri and Santi (2012) to show the evolving capabilities to enhance children’s flourishing would be useful here as depicted in Fig. 11.1.

The Connective Ethos in the CoI: A Measure of Intensity of Flourishing Education The collective performance of complex thinking in a CoI operationalises the multi-dimensionality of what we call the connective ethos of P4C. In Fig. 11.1 the main dimensions are identified and labelled as accessibility, participation, transformativity, and generativity. These would be pedagogically empowered during the educational processes to maintain the intentional connectivity and to guarantee the spontaneous and genuine adhesion to the ongoing process. An accessible, participative, transformative and generative environment becomes flourishing in educational spaces to enhance the experiences of well-being and well-becoming towards the promotion of human flourishing. We argued that P4C would increase the quality and multiply the quantity of connective capability through an ecology of participation. This can

Contexts of community enhancement Facilitators/ Barriers

Forms of standard education

DimenContexts sions of of standard standard education educa-

Forms of flourishing education

Contexts of flourishing education

Complex thinking: Critical, creative, caring

Community of Inquiry (CoI)

tion

CONNECTIVE CAPABILITES (Con-C t) INTENSITY OF COMMUNITY AGENCY (I t) Realms: Conscientisation Conciliation Collaboration Appreciation Sympathy Impromptu

EXTERNAL CAPABILITIES Products and technology; natural/social environments; support and attitudes; services, systems and policies

AVAILABLE INFORMATION on Facilitators/Barriers

Achievementbased learning

Learning Human environ- capital ment/ classCapacity room Contents Skills Compete nces

Focus on Knowledge

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Human development Performance Participation Accessibility Generativity Transformati vity

Contexts of community flourishing Facilitators/ Barriers COLLECTIVE CAPABILITIES Collective choices Commitment Deliberations Social empowerment

SHARED VALUES AND MEANINGS on Facilitators/Barriers

CONNECTIVE CAPABILITIES (Con-C t+1) INTENSITY OF COMMUNITY AGENCY (I t+n) Realms: Conscientisation Conciliation Collaboration Appreciation Sympathy Impromptu

Fig. 11.1  Connective capabilities and education for enhancing community flourishing. (Source: Adapted from Biggeri and Santi (2012: 381), Fig. 2: Evolving capabilities and education for enhancing children’s flourishing)

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enable greater scope for individuals to be educational actors; create a greater role for sociality and for the mutual constitution of action and meaning within curriculum assemblages; and draw attention to co-­creation as an embodied, embedded and relational practice of curriculum making. P4C can be envisaged as an ongoing, dynamic and emergent formation which, via the particular ecology of participation at hand, might foster conditions for well-being, care and interconnectedness. In Fig. 11.1, ‘performance’ as an emerging joint activity from the flourishing context of CoI is the core methodological and contextual key of P4C, offered as an alternative to ‘capacity,’ which is instead at the core of the standard education. Considerations on accessibility as openness, involvement, and continuous change with a maintenance of connections are significant. Within these considerations are the diverse manifestations of human peculiarities intended as a polyphony of uniqueness that comes to the fore in the differences that characterise us as human beings. This implies a quality school that allows us to live the multiplicity that, even if it cannot be achieved, ‘must always be in the making’ (Sandercock, 1998: 161). It is, therefore, a process of humanisation that involves respect, participation, and coexistence. What we need to do is to study forms of education/pedagogy of/ for accessibility, which open up the possibility of transforming contexts, expanding spaces and times (opportunities for connections), and then rediscovering our structure (opportunities for personalisation) in a plastic way. In this case, it is the plasticity of the educational/psychological space and time. It is linked to a process that, first, should passionately drive us towards generativity of futures as the construction of humanising aspirations of individual and collective well-becoming, and, secondly, could foster healthy and positive connections with all other environments. The key concept of generativity, in terms of what we call generative imagination, may take the shape of inventing possibilities in the moment, maintaining a connection with the past and the future and offering that which has been created to the community. Generative imagin-action is an other-regarding desire to invest one’s substance in forms of life and work that will outlive the self, improvising alternatives with others. Generativity is intended as the processes and capacities that help people see old things in new ways (Gergen, 1978; Schön, 1979). It is ideally reinforced by a belief in the goodness or worthwhileness of the human enterprise and is expressed by a concern for and commitment to future generations. It includes, but is not limited to, productivity and creativity (Snow, 2015).

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Generativity would be defined as creating the conditions for creativity to be reproduced (Santi et  al., 2022) and the orientation in which people closely connect with others through time (Sahlins, 2013). One of the crucial aspects of effective pedagogy is providing learners with the necessary confidence to tackle complex, uncertain and constantly evolving global situations. Teaching and learning approaches based on future thinking can help learners understand diverse viewpoints and aspirations regarding the future, envision alternative scenarios, challenge existing social practices that impede desirable outcomes, involve stakeholders, and plan strategies for positive change (Tilbury, 2011; Tilbury & Wortman, 2004). This approach diverges from problem-solving methods that focus on visible or emerging challenges and instead emphasises imaginative processes, exploring implicit beliefs and assumptions, and utilising envisioning activities as a foundation for coherent action that aligns with desired objectives. The concept of transformative capabilities in education goes beyond the traditional emphasis on knowledge and understanding to include more engaged approaches to learning. This view of capabilities is not limited to the acquisition of abilities, but emphasises their deployment in both familiar and unfamiliar situations. By prioritising transformative capabilities, learners are equipped with the necessary tools to navigate a rapidly changing world and respond creatively and effectively to new challenges. According to West (2018), an inner psychological space, when combined with a transformational social space, provides people with the opportunity to think and feel about themselves in new, life-enhancing and critically aware ways. These spaces facilitate a journey towards wholeness or flourishing for both students and faculty (Dirkx & Mezirow, 2006). They offer more than just the delivery of content; they serve as an open platform for deeper engagement with the self and the world. This permits the creation of an educational perspective beyond solely on knowledge and understanding, but towards agency and competence. Thus using pedagogies guided by engaged, whole-person and transformative approaches to learning. In such contexts, students can slow down and reflect on whether the acquisition of technical skills and abstract knowledge supports their individual flourishing in all the domains. They can then explore how their own flourishing contributes to community well-being and the vitality and sustainability of all life. Regardless of the technique or strategy employed, such open spaces are characterised by a spirit of freedom,

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creativity and growth aimed at realising all domains of complete well-becoming.

The Connective Ethos of P4C: The Realms of Educating for Reparative Futures The connective capabilities (Con-C) emerge as a flourishing of the CoI and are the concrete side of the connective ethos of P4C and its realms. In this space, all have opportunities to be recognised and to explore, debate and critique. Furthermore, these connective networks can offer possibilities for reparative remembering and imagination because they make available to individuals and groups new resources for interpreting individual life stories and group histories and the intention to work through them (Sriprakash, 2022). In this last part of the chapter, the contribution of the connective ethos to a qualitative assessment of education for reparative futures is pointed out, focusing on the six realms proposed in Fig. 11.1 above, which function as units of value of the process promoted. Drawing inspiration from Ibrahim’s 3C-model (Ibrahim, 2017) and the principles of Appreciative Inquiry (Whitney & Cooperrider, 1998), it is assumed that good connective networks interrelate these six realms: (1) conscientisation (Freire, 1972) that encourages partners to think critically about their histories and realities and nurtures their ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai, 2004) for better lives; (2) conciliation that blends individual and collective interests rendering them mutually reinforcing rather than conflicting; (3) collaboration which is crucial for challenging the existing unequal power relations among these partners; (4) appreciation that gives value to what works well through positive communication; (5) sympathy, as an emotional response, which could be an approach to for motivate tensions towards others and providing the affective and motivational base for human development; and (6) impromptu which is the disposition to improvise, saying ‘yes’ to the present occasions, transformed into possible opportunities of being and doing and challenging collective functionings out of the comfort zone (Santi & Zorzi, 2016). All these realms are active in the P4C ethos to populate the CoI with the kind of Con-C which are engaged in a collective commitment towards educating for reparative futures for all. Conscientisation seems to be a process proper to philosophy, which starts with the articulation of individual

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values, aspirations, and well-being/well-becoming goals. In P4C terms and in a CoI context, it corresponds to the educational strength towards teaching and learning the abilities to achieve these goals. It emphasises the role of the process articulating these norms and cognitive frames to induce positive connective disposition to changes, fostering personal and communal traits such as self-confidence, open-mindedness, imagination and courage. And at the same time, dealing with biographical and cultural aspects in personal histories and a willingness to improve their lives. The capacity to aspire is also crucial for the conscientization process and is a component in the inquiry process itself as it is distributed in the community, reducing the costs of developing a culture of aspirations by collectively envisioning their future and their capacity to shape this future (Appadurai, 2004). Aspirations arguably constitute the kernels or precursors of many important capabilities which support human flourishing. Group aspirations enable change to occur where individuals alone would falter. And finally, (re)claiming a rich conceptualisation of aspiration may help to inform efforts aimed at the development of socially just societies where all individuals are able to flourish and identify images of a connected desirable future (hopes and dreams for their connective opportunities). Conciliation is at the core of the dialogical practice in a CoI. It means that connecting capabilities are crucial insofar community members are. Because by acting individually, they are mostly unable to address the existing structural inequalities and social problems in their respective communities (Seyfang & Smith, 2007). That is why CoI would be a good context in which to experience how people could and should act collectively and in a connected way, jointly determine their priorities, and then write the most essential elements for a provocative proposition to rethink a common future. Collaboration is a key realm of connectivity, which is constantly activated in P4C to create a fruitful context for thinking together in the CoI as an educational time/place for challenging the existing unequal power relations among and between people. The collaboration is a marker of the connective ethos and capability and needs to be based on transparency and mutual accountability to avoid co-optation. Appreciation is activated in the CoI as a procedural and ethical condition of the listening to other points of view and the possible rebuttals in arguments. It refers to what can be defined as affect or mood that promotes processes towards the valorisation of their connections. To

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‘appreciate’ means to highlight giving value to what is precious to us, especially that which is immediately perceivable, using a lexicon consisting of positive words, empowering the transformative use of language. Sympathy is viewed as an other-oriented moral emotion fostering altruism, but in philosophical terms it means being able to take the other’s view and vision. The functional basis of this sympathetic conversion will turn out to be the imagination. Sympathy arouses ideas in the recipient that are transformed into impressions—though this time impressions of reflection—through the influence of the ideas. And that is crucial in inquiring for the future. Impromptu is the realm which informs our understanding of the evolution of the CoI, considered as connective performance as emerge in between the space/time of what is already given and what is expected to happen. It introduces the value of responsibility in the ethos of connectivity, as it is taken in the moment, opening to the risk of invention. The impromptu moves and sustains the improvisation of philosophical dialogue, in which ideas, process and rules are (dis)connected, questioned and (de)constructed to create the unforeseen. The CoI becomes ‘the site of cultivation’ of flourishing deliberation, in which listening difference and sense of play circulate in the process of making collaborative decisions in real time (Scott, 2007). The complex thinking performance provides a space for improvisers to learn and develop not only new techniques, but most of all ‘socio-cultural skills and interpersonal relationships’ (Woods, 2022: 2). Impromptu is a realm for successful and fruitful connectivity: regardless of whether it is ever achieved (or even achievable), it emphasises the relationships that are the barometer of the well-being—and the well-­ becoming—of the community. There is an ethos in the impromptu connectivity which is grounded in the mutable space of the mutual recognition/ agreement, which jazz idiomatically calls swing and groove (Santi, 2017); it is for this reason that collective improvisation is not merely a metaphorical model of social practice, but also social practice itself (Scott, 2007), as a community of philosophical inquiry aims to be (Zorzi & Santi, 2023).

Provisional Conclusions Connective capabilities would assure the shapes, the contexts and the dimensions of flourishing education evolve with the required intensity. This change leads us from simply receiving information to achieving modest project goals, to renewing our reference schemes, being open to and

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capable of interpreting changing reality without passively enduring it. The goal then changes and shifts from being repeaters of actions and practices recommended by experts to being generators of new information, creative organisers, and skilled modifiers of our own environment. We can try to refer in this case to the experience that Dewey (1934) defined as ‘intensified vitality,’ that is, the fact that life develops in an environment, not only in it, but because of it, and interacting with it. The aspects/objects of the world will enter the landscape, shaping it and being shaped by it. And it is precisely in the relational climate that is created around perceptual experiences that the aesthetic tuning with the world takes shape, on which our likes and dislikes will depend. It can therefore be affirmed that the aesthetic experience is decisive not only for the future definition of the identity of the system, but also for making possible the human flourishing of the system and individuals. Understanding it as a tension towards what self-validates, what expands one’s humanity, what is good for oneself as a human being, and therefore, also a practice of care for others. Thus, a particular environment (rich in positive eco-factors) becomes important for the cultivation of such thinking, where there is an intentionality at the base. We can say that in this direction, in the spirit of ancient philosophical practice (Hadot, 1995), it becomes important to try to orient ourselves towards ‘existential pedagogical exercises.’ These are exercises of complex thinking, as P4C proposes, considered therefore as a practice, an activity, a work on oneself starting from the valorisation of what is working while experimenting as part of our experience. They are called pedagogical because they include thought, imagination, sensitivity, will, and the existential because they are endowed with an existential value that concerns our way of living, our way of being in the world and our connections with the past, present, and future—an orientation that requires a transformation and metamorphosis. On the level of educational practice, it means working towards individual and collective reflective exercises. This is the pedagogical habitus that can represent the design of a co-constructed path with the conviction that it is necessary to originate a change that leaves negative visions in the background and allows what is positive in us to flourish. The community of philosophical inquiry, thus, would become a flourishing space and time for the ‘intensify experience’ of public reason as connective capability (Kelly, 2012) to allow something new to be born as important as practices of visioning, imagination, and collective agency attentive to the immanence of both pasts and futures in the present.

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CHAPTER 12

Transformative Learning Spaces and Capabilities for Reimagined and Reparative Futures in Multiple Systems Alejandra Boni, Melanie Walker, and Diana Velasco

This book presents a remarkable compilation of learning practices and methodologies to construct reparative futures which are humanising, inclusive, sustainable, and more just, and where past injustices are no longer replicated but repaired or mended. The main players who populate those spaces are of a noteworthy diversity: community researchers, student activists, artists, policymakers and practitioners, and defenders of the A. Boni (*) Ingenio (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), Valencia, Spain University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] M. Walker University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] D. Velasco Ingenio (CSIC-Universitat Politècnica de València), Valencia, Spain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4_12

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LGTBIQ+ community, among many others. They all provide vivid examples of how building reparative futures is a collective task that should be promoted from several flanks. These actors are operating at local, national, and international levels, in different geographies in African, European, and Latin American countries. This book shows examples of reparative learning spaces in South Africa, Mali, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, and Spain. In all these contexts, we can find different kinds of oppression. The LGTBIQ+ people in Honduras or the community activists in Medellín (Colombia) are suffering violations of human rights, while the African students in Mali and South Africa confront the injustices of colonialism and patriarchy. But, building different futures is also important for Mexican farmers, Catalan and Basque practitioners, as well as for Global North university students wanting to contribute to a better world, more sustainable and fair. As the different chapters show, a reparative future implies transforming different systems: education, food, health, innovation, or development aid. The present context, crossed by economic and military conflict, as well as social and ecological crises, requires new ways of conceptualising and making policies and practices to move towards a just future, one in which the harms of the past and present are no longer replicated. Transformative learning spaces can contribute to building reparative futures. As stated in the introductory chapter, education in many different spaces can play a meaningful role in fostering a discourse of critique and possibility; forming values of solidarity, equality, and sustainability; and developing knowledge that supports social change and environmental stewardship. As the chapters of this book show, transformative learning spaces can be built in the formal curriculum (as in a master’s degree in development cooperation in Valencia, Spain, presented in Chap. 6), but also in informal and experiential spaces driven by art (the Malian experience in Chap. 9) or digital storytelling (the South African experience described in Chap. 3). Transformative learning can also be fostered in spaces outside the educational realm, such as Science, Technology and Innovation policy (with examples in Latin America and Catalonia described in Chaps. 7 and 8). Importantly, what all these transformative learning spaces have in common is the use of participatory methodologies and deliberation tools that create more horizontal relations, dismantling power hierarchies to create an epistemic community of knowers, listeners, and knowledge-makers characterised by dialogue, trust, and respectful relations.

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In this concluding chapter, we present key characteristics of the different transformative learning spaces that emerge in the book and of some central capabilities that are expanded in those spaces. As we have pointed out in the introductory chapter, capabilities are foundational to sustainable human development and the well-being of human and non-human animals and, indeed, for moving us into the future. We conclude by reflecting on the alternative futures portrayed in the book as examples of a fairer, more equitable, and decolonised world.

Transformative Learning Spaces Sriprakash et al. (2020) make the case for learning with the past and from experiences of material, affective, and social oppressions as a methodology to construct reparative futures. Chapter 3 by Melanie Walker offers an interesting example of how a participatory research project based on digital storytelling involves continuous reflexivity on the part of all participants to integrate personal development, understanding social justice individually and collectively, and possible collective actions for change. Following an iterative Freirean praxis (Freire, 1985), participants moved from theory to practice, building a digital archive of ‘little’ histories. These constitute a reparative archive of knowledge scripts about social in/justices; they are a kind of informal curriculum, which is not formally planned or taught, but part of the ethos, knowledge, care for each other, and democratic practices of the project. Another example of a transformative learning space, even under harsh and seemingly impossible conflict conditions, is depicted in Chap. 9 by Stephen Esquith and Weloré Tamboura. They discuss the importance of the arts and humanities in contributing to a more just and democratic future in the wake of genocide, human rights violations, and mass violence. In a participatory research project conducted in Mali they have assembled a repertoire of educational initiatives at the local and university levels using the arts broadly understood: storytelling, visual art, performance art, and multi-media art. The archive has been shared at the national and local levels, involving university students, artists, and community organisations. Moving to Latin America, the book presents two relevant examples of transformative learning spaces based on participatory research. The first one is the Network of Community Researchers, promoted by the Human Security Observatory of the University of Antioquia, in Medellín,

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Colombia, and described by Monique Leivas Vargas and Álvaro Fernández-­ Baldor (Chap. 4). Through several interactions between community leaders and researchers (based, as above, on a Freirean praxis), the Network was able to co-produce a different understanding of human security, based on their own needs, aspirations, and hopes. Key to this learning process has been transforming the relationships that are established between the communities and the university by recognising the people of the communities as knowledge-producing subjects. The second Latin American example is described by Fernando Altamira Basterretxea, Esther Canarias Fernández-Cavada, Ricardo Fernández Quintana, and Nelsy Elizabeth Sandoval Díaz (Chap. 10). They propose to enact transformative learning spaces through participatory research on primary healthcare and LGTBIQ+ people in Honduras. This research has incorporated LGTBIQ+ voices (from each of the different initials, from their specific realities) and an intersectionality perspective, considering cultural and class diversity in addition to sexual and gender diversity. According to the authors, the publication resulting from this research is an instrument that, in addition to making visible the reality experienced by LGTBIQ+ people in primary healthcare services in the Honduran region of Atlántida, serves to create political advocacy and propose concrete changes for the Honduran authorities. The last Latin American example by Paloma Bernal-Hernández and Martha Liliana Marin (Chap. 7) describes the Latin American and Caribbean Hub of Transformative Innovation Policy, a collaborative and learning space that supports the implementation of transformative methodologies that can be meaningful for building more equitable and sustainable futures. In this Hub, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners work hand in hand to listen, reflect, and mutually learn from the implementation of experimental policy methodologies. Among them, the authors stress how, using theories of change, participants were able to develop creative narratives where researchers and practitioners draw possible paths based upon both a history review and global conditions of the present (Appadurai, 2013). The transformative potential of theories of change is described in a particular example in Mexico. Here, a group of researchers from the Mexican Iberoamerican University worked together with local farming communities to reflect and support sustainable production that includes traditional and local practices. A similar methodology has been applied in Catalonia, in a process named Shared Agendas. In their Chap. 8, Diana Velasco, Míriam

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Acebillo-­ Baqué, Alejandra Boni, and Tatiana Fernández describe the methodology to define and create two Catalan Shared Agendas: one in the bioeconomy field and another one in the health domain. These Agendas define and create concrete strategies to achieve desirable futures expressed in explicit theories of change which aim for a greener, more resilient and fair socioeconomic model supported by digitalisation. It is a bottom-up process that requires time to converge to a desirable future along with the visions on how to realise them. In both examples presented in Chaps. 7 and 8, the authors remark on the importance of deep learning, a reflection process on worldviews, assumptions, values, beliefs, and behaviours in the understanding of environmental and social problems and their solutions (Schot et al., 2019). The two cases highlight the relevance of social learning (Reed et al., 2010) for reparative futures. As we pointed out in the introductory chapter, social learning (1) demonstrates that a change in understanding has taken place in the individuals involved; (2) reveals that this change goes beyond the individual and becomes situated within wider social units or communities of practice; and (3) occurs through social interactions and processes between actors within a social network (Reed et  al., 2010: 1). Thus, social learning as understood here seeks to go beyond individual change to engage a wider community and networks. Chapter 6 describes a learning space rooted in transformative learning theory. Carlos Delgado-Caro, Carola Calabuig-Tormo, and Marta Maicas-­ Pérez present two learning spaces in a master’s curriculum on development cooperation: the action learning methodology that brings the students to local neighbourhoods, and the international internship. Based on Mezirow’s (2012) transformative learning proposal, they show how the master’s students challenge their frames of reference (mental structures from which we give lived experiences meaning) to make them more inclusive, judicious, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they can nurture a more truthful or justified worldview to guide action (Mezirow, 2012: 76). According to the authors, the combination of formal (the action learning space) and informal learning (the internship) is responsible for the deep impact of learning for students. Through interaction and reflection between theoretical concepts and practical application, the two learning processes enable the students to see themselves as agents of change in the development cooperation sector. Finally, the book presents two chapters that develop pedagogical proposals to foster reparative futures. First, Michalinos Zembylas (Chap. 2) argues that, to create reparative futures, it is inevitable to engage with

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difficult knowledge. Difficult knowledge, according to Deborah Britzman’s (1998, 2000, 2013) landmark work, is the knowledge that challenges, both affectively and epistemologically, our ways of being and living in the world. Post-truth is presented here as an example of difficult knowledge; contrary to beliefs that post-truth can be countered through epistemological means, Zembylas proposes an affective rupture with the ways posttruths are experienced as difficult knowledge by different people. For this reason, affective solidarity is offered in this analysis as a complement to existing scholarship on difficult knowledge and reparative futures, and as a pedagogical strategy that can address the (differential) affective dissonance emerging in encounters with post-truth claims. The second pedagogical proposal, Philosophy for Children, is described in Chap. 11 by Marina Santi and Elisabetta Ghedin. This approach envisions citizens as complex thinkers who are conscious of their own assumptions and the consequences they entail, while also being mindful of the reasoning and evidence that underpin their conclusions (critical component). Furthermore, it empowers them to envision innovative ways of perceiving and interlinking the elements of their experiences (creative component). Moreover, the affective, emotional, and motivational dimensions of thinking (caring component) are involved during the practice of reasoning, argumentation, and reflection on authentic problems. The development of logical reasoning skills, imagination, and awareness of one’s feelings and feelings of others is at the basis of the capacity of ‘good judgment,’ and the core aims of the Philosophy for Children educational proposal (Biggeri & Santi, 2012).

Capabilities for Reparative Futures Some chapters present a detailed account of the capabilities needed for a reparative future. The most comprehensive account is described in Chap. 5 by a group of authors from the Centre for Development Support of the University of the Free State in South Africa. The 16 authors, a mix of students and researchers doing participatory action research together, have developed a list of capabilities based on the Ubuntu philosophy: (1) unity capability, (2) humanising capability, (3) people-centeredness capability, (4) transformational capability, (5) spatial freedom capability, (6) supportive academic capability, (7) accessibility capability, (8) inclusive learning capability, and (9) healing and reparations.

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Among these capabilities, there is a trio of capabilities (6, 7, and 8) that they classify as resource dependent, in that they are the most reliant on and determined by having access to material resources—both monetary and epistemic—which are distributed unequally in part due to colonial and neoliberal legacies that keep social and epistemic injustices in place. The second cluster is a quartet of capabilities they classify as norm dependent, as they speak to institutional values, moral imperatives, and the normative predispositions that need to be in place to challenge universities to be agile in responding to change, particularly in relation to aligning with Ubuntu values (1, 2, 3, and 4). The final cluster of two capabilities (5 and 9) is grouped as structure dependent, as they are capabilities that students described as most directly affected by systemic racism which not only affects black students’ sense of belonging within universities, or the extent to which they feel supported, but also disregards the historical and contemporary inequalities that universities sustain. With a similar perspective, but focusing on individual capabilities, Melanie Walker (Chap. 3) discusses how Ubuntu capabilities can unfold through the digital storytelling process. Collaborative and caring spaces were central. Through the process, participants were learning from one another, listening, and responding to stories, commenting on scripts, and offering feedback on rough story cuts. The collective dimension was a strong throughout. Ubuntu values and practices and humanising (Ubuntu) capabilities were threaded through the process because of what participants brought to the story table. They were carriers of a humanising Ubuntu capability in this public higher education space. Chapter 4 by Leivas and Fernández-Baldor highlights how participating in the Network of Community Researchers in Medellín, Colombia, expands the epistemic capabilities of community leaders. Being part of the network has contributed to being able to provide themselves with the collective knowledge, tools, and practices to better channel their struggles at the community and organisational levels. This epistemic capability reinforces the epistemic resilience of community leaders, understood as the knowledge production needed to move towards the construction of a reparative collective future: a future that not only recognises and seeks to repair historical injustices, but also leads to utopia and hope through struggle and collective action. Lastly, Chap. 11 by Santi and Ghedin develops the idea of connective capabilities. Connectivity emerges as a conceptual amplification of the

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notion of capability in itself. Connective capabilities have intrinsic characteristics of collective capabilities but, unlike the latter, they are intrinsically imbued with caring thinking towards oneself, others, and the world around us. Collective capabilities have a strong relationship with collective actions and are related to social and innovative changes (Shariff, 2018), while connective capabilities focus on recognising oneself as a polyphony of voices and caring for the well-being and well-becoming of all. Connective capabilities are the ones that permit promoting the well-becoming of all. The well-becoming process of individuals and/in communities lies in the widespread human judging of past experiences and the envisioning of future possibilities. Also, such becoming is an integral aspect of our interaction with our systems environment and of the enacting of our agency as a community.

Reimagined and Reparative Futures All chapters depict futures in multiple systems; higher education is one of the most pictured, although new imaginaries for innovation or development aid are also proposed. Starting from the university field, the collective Chap. 5 (with students and researchers from the University of the Free State) disputes the hegemonic imaginary of sustainability in higher education institutions which has been dictated by prevalent Eurocentric and technocratic discourses. As described in the previous section, they propose a decolonised vision of higher education based on Ubuntu capabilities. In Chap. 3, Walker recalls the values of the South African Constitution (1996) to reimagine the ambitions of higher education. All human beings should be treated with equal dignity and equal respect. Therefore, education processes should realise and honour constitutional values in and through education; this is the axiological dimension of storytelling as an education process. Chapter 11 by Santi and Ghedin imagines a future for education in which children are offered the connective opportunity to enlarge their space of activity and participation and to express their agency. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. It unfolds through the narratives of personal encounters throughout time. It is contextual, embodied, and enhanced by the simultaneous existence of every unique detail—a liberating perspective that could guide us towards a more

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complete and fulfilling human existence. So, connections are the conditions for perceiving the healing of the future world emergence (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) as a mode of thought based on relationship rather than separation. By recognising this pattern, we can better understand impediments to reparative futures and take steps towards promoting connected development (Siegel, 2012). Having in common—like humanity itself—is not a baseline but an aspiration, not given from the start, but a task that calls for communal effort. In addition, Zembylas in Chap. 2 takes solidarity as a point of departure that provides the ethical, political, and pedagogical moment and rupture required for transformational change (Vachhani & Pullen, 2019) to create reparative futures. Contrary to those who position fake news and post-­ truth as an epistemological problem that can be solved with media literacy, critical thinking, and moral education, Zembylas believes that post-truth as a symptom of racism and a form of difficult knowledge for some white people can be productively addressed through fostering affective solidarity as a pedagogical strategy. Although affective solidarity cannot change the world, it demonstrates that some pedagogical strategies have the potential to, at least, disrupt the taken-for-granted means through which post-truth and racism manifest and become normalised. In Chap. 9, Esquith and Tamboura contest the idea of transitional justice and propose to think in terms of reparative justice. This notion of repair is not limited to simply putting things back together again the way they were. It requires creativity and new ways of seeing what the road ahead will require of us (Spelman, 2002). Reparative justice means going beyond the limits of existing war crimes tribunals and truth commissions. As their chapter shows, arts and humanities could serve as catalysts for transforming the constitution and distribution of political power from the ground up through democratic political education. Chapters 6 and 10 depict reparative futures for the development cooperation system. In Chap. 10, Fernando Basterretxea and colleagues alert us to the prevalent model of development that has three heads: one neoliberal, one ethnocentric, and the other heteronormative (Altamira, 2016). Three heads that are impossible to separate; they intersect and merge, generating particular oppressions. The dominant model dictates a norm, certain ways of being, of living, of dying, of interacting, of desiring. However, in opposition to this model, there are collective experiences of resistance, which are systematically repressed by the model itself: feminist

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organisations; organisations of racialised people, indigenous peoples; LGTBIQ+ people collectives for the right to land, for universal health and education, against evictions and for the right to decent housing—countless experiences that unite together in their social struggles for the dignity of individuals and peoples. These experiences of resistance find support through Non-Normative Transformative Cooperation, which plays a crucial role in opening up reparative futures. The chapter provides an example of Non-Normative Transformative Cooperation between a feminist organisation and an LGTBIQ+ organisation in Honduras, a Basque non-­ governmental organisation, a consultancy cooperative in the Basque Country, and a university in Honduras, as well as the involvement of some state structures. In Chap. 6, Carlos Delgado and colleagues point out that the dominant discourse of contemporary educational development, framed as the ‘global learning crisis,’ operates as a racial project by legitimising and reinforcing certain responses to the crisis. Similarly, they highlight the non-neutrality of education and development which can reproduce various systems of domination, as pointed to by intersectional studies, including racism, patriarchy, classism, and colonialism. They argue that a master’s degree in development cooperation can offer an alternative view to the system of cooperation, more just, more inclusive, decolonial, feminist, and anti-­ racist. This perspective allows students to deal with their experiences in the programme not only with critical reflection, but also by giving them the possibility of acting, even if it is emotionally demanding. The acquired capabilities of critical thinking, ethics and values, and context are the basis of restorative learning that enables students to imagine and think about a different system of cooperation in which they are agents of change, both personally and professionally (Lange, 2012). Finally, Chap. 8 portrays a different future based on the idea of just transitions. Velasco and colleagues argue that sustainability transitions refer to long-term and complex processes that require multiple changes in the systems that supply social functions such as food, mobility, energy or health, or sociotechnical systems (Geels, 2011). But, they advocate and call to develop further the framework of what a just transition means with regard to people’s well-being by accentuating the social dimension in the situated regional transitions, in line with the core human development values (Velasco et al., 2021). This standpoint is fundamental to the definition of what is desirable and, therefore, in the design of transition pathways. To move towards a just future, one in which the harms of the past

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Fig. 12.1  Interrelating themes. (Source: Authors)

and present are no longer replicated but repaired, it is necessary to understand what, why, and how these past injustices occurred. The two examples based in Catalonia illustrate what a just transition could look like. Figure 12.1 illustrates the interrelation of various chapters with regard to geographic levels, the agents driving reparation through transformative learning spaces, and their perspectives and initiatives aimed at shaping just and desirable futures. Taken together then, the chapters in this book offer a way of thinking about how we change the present in the light of the past to build futures which are equal and sustainable. This is a formidable task in the world as it is and it may be that conditions of possibility in many places allow only for reform actions rather than transformations which challenge and dismantle structures of inequality. Nonetheless, in acting for change, even with all the limits we may face, we can produce alternative, emergent ‘repair narratives’ and practices of hope towards non-ideal justice in our messy and complex world. As environmental activist, George Monbiot (2017: 6) writes, ‘When we have no stories that describe the present and guide the future, hope evaporates. Political failure is, in essence, a failure of imagination.’

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References Altamira, F. (2016). Bailando con el deseo. Algunas claves para incorporar la diversidad sexual y de género en las ONGD. Universidad Politècnica de Valèencia. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/94730. Accessed 23 Apr 2023. Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as a cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 54(4), 651–673. Biggeri, M., & Santi, M. (2012). The missing dimensions of children’s well-being and well-becoming in education systems: Capabilities and philosophy for children. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 13(3), 373–395. Britzman, D.  P. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. State University of New York Press. Britzman, D.  P. (2000). If the story cannot end: Deferred action, ambivalence, and difficult knowledge. In R.  I. Simon, S.  Rosenberg, & C.  Eppert (Eds.), Between hope and despair: The pedagogical encounter of historical remembrance (pp. 27–57). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Britzman, D.  P. (2013). Between psychoanalysis and pedagogy: Scenes of rapprochement and alienation. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 95–117. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. L. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. Bergin and Garvey. Geels, F.  W. (2011). The multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions: Responses to seven criticisms. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 1(1), 24–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2011.02.002 Lange, E. (2012). Transforming transformative learning through sustainability and the new science. In E. Taylor & P. Cranton (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research and practice (pp. 195–211). Jossey-Bass. Mezirow, J. (2012). Learning to think like an adult: Core concepts of transformation theory. In E. Taylor & P. Cranton (Eds.), The handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research and practice (pp. 73–95). Jossey-Bass. Monbiot, G. (2017). Out of the wreckage: A new politics for an age of crisis. Verso. Reed, M. S., Evely, A., Cundill, C. G., Fazey, I., Glass, J., Laing, A., Newig, J., Parrish, B., Prell, C., Raymond, C., & Stringer, L. C. (2010). What is social learning? Ecology and Society, 15(4): r1. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol15/iss4/resp1/. Accessed 12 July 2023. Schot, J., Kivimaa, P., & Torrens, J. (2019). Transforming experimentation. Experimental policy engagement and their transformative outcomes. TIPC Research Report. Shariff, R. (2018). How capabilities can emerge in a social moment. In F. Comim, S.  Fennell, & P.  B. Anand (Eds.), New frontiers of the capability approach (pp. 153–176). Cambridge University Press.

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Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. Spelman, E.  V. (2002). Repair: The impulse to restore in a fragile world. Beacon Press. Sriprakash, A., Nally, D., Myers, K., & Pinto, P. R. (2020). Learning with the past: Racism, education and reparative futures. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education Report. Vachhani, S., & Pullen, A. (2019). Ethics, politics and feminist organizing: Writing feminist infrapolitics and affective solidarity into everyday sexism. Human Relations, 72(1), 23–47. Velasco, D., Boni, A., Delgado, C., & Rojas-Forero, G. D. (2021). Exploring the role of a Colombian university to promote just transitions. An analysis from the human development and the regional transition pathways to sustainability. Sustainability, 13(11), 6014.

Index1

A Action learning (AL), 17, 112, 115, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127–131, 267 Affective solidarity, 17, 25–42, 268, 271 Africa, 16, 90, 96, 106, 149 Agents of change, 70, 80, 83, 115, 130, 131, 267, 272 Archive, 4, 17, 46, 48, 53–62, 64, 65, 189–211, 265 Arts, arts-based methods, 4, 17, 190, 192, 193, 196–197, 199, 202, 209, 210, 264, 265, 271 Aspirations, 11, 13, 14, 16, 49, 54, 90, 91, 95, 96, 111, 167, 240, 241, 244, 245, 252, 253, 255, 266, 271

B Basque Country, 18, 228–234, 236, 272 C Capability/capabilities, 2, 8, 13–16, 18, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 61–65, 73, 81, 90–106, 112, 118, 121–131, 156, 185, 239–257, 263–273 Capability approach, 11, 14, 16, 73, 90, 95–98, 112, 114, 118, 185, 242, 248 Catalonia, 19, 20, 163–185, 264, 266, 273 Children, 18, 54, 55, 78, 82, 83, 191, 201–204, 211, 239, 240, 242–244, 246–248, 250, 251, 270

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Walker et al. (eds.), Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45806-4

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INDEX

Collective action, 46, 73, 168, 183, 244, 265, 269, 270 Colombia, 19, 70, 74, 84, 144, 145, 148, 166, 264, 266, 269 Community, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 18–20, 31, 34, 39, 45, 48–51, 64, 66, 69–84, 90, 94, 96, 97, 99–105, 111, 113, 116, 120, 137, 138, 140, 140n2, 142, 144, 146, 149, 150, 152–158, 165, 167, 182, 191–193, 196–199, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 210, 218, 220, 221, 223–225, 239–257, 264–267, 269, 270 Connective capabilities, 239–257, 269, 270 Critical thinking, 8, 26, 30, 40, 41, 121, 124–127, 130, 247, 249, 271, 272 Curriculum, 29, 33, 46, 53–61, 64, 93, 122, 240, 252, 264, 265, 267 D Decolonial, decolonisation, 1, 11–13, 16, 66, 90–92, 95, 115, 130, 272 Development, 1, 2, 14–19, 35, 46, 50, 61, 73, 75, 92, 93, 111–132, 138–142, 144, 146, 151–154, 156–158, 164, 164n1, 166, 168, 170, 172–174, 177, 182–184, 192, 193, 217, 219, 220, 224, 241–243, 245–248, 255, 264, 265, 267, 268, 270–272 Digital, 16, 27, 46, 47, 50–52, 54, 59, 61, 95, 98, 99, 264, 265, 269 Dignity, 2–4, 6–11, 19, 45–49, 52, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 195, 218, 270, 272

E Education, 1, 29, 46, 72, 92, 116, 153, 184, 218, 239, 264 Epistemic decolonisation, 12 Epistemic resilience, 69–84, 269 Evaluation, 20, 98, 141–144, 146, 167, 168, 170–172, 185, 242 F Functionings, 13, 15, 16, 46, 49, 50, 52, 65, 94, 96, 99, 105, 118, 193, 246, 254 G Gender, 11, 55, 78, 100, 140, 183, 217–236, 266 H Higher education, 16, 45–66, 90–96, 104–106, 113, 131, 132, 145, 269, 270 Historical knowledge, history, 2, 4–7, 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 31–34, 47–49, 54–56, 60, 65, 73, 82, 91, 113, 116, 129, 131, 137, 140–142, 151, 183, 206, 208, 219, 239–241, 254, 255, 265, 266 Honduras, 18, 217–236, 264, 266, 272 Hope, 2, 6, 15, 18, 29, 33, 34, 49, 56, 57, 66, 71, 73, 106, 155, 156, 190, 192, 220, 227, 235, 255, 266, 269, 273 Human development, 1–21, 75, 117, 118, 128, 182, 184, 185, 242–243, 254, 265, 272 Humanising, 6, 61, 62, 72, 91, 100, 102, 103, 252, 268, 269

 INDEX 

I International cooperation, 115 Internships, 17, 115, 120, 122, 127, 267 Intersectionality, 222, 229, 230, 234, 235, 266 J Just transitions, 158, 182, 185, 272, 273 K Knowledge, difficult knowledge, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10–17, 19, 25–42, 46–50, 54, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65, 66, 69–84, 94, 95, 98, 100, 102, 103, 116, 123, 125–127, 129–131, 138, 140, 140n2, 142, 145, 147, 148, 150, 153, 156–158, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 177, 184, 211, 224, 227, 228, 239, 242, 249, 253, 264, 265, 267–269, 271 L Latin America, 19, 70, 137, 149, 219, 264, 265 Learning, 2, 29, 47, 72, 112, 138, 164, 230, 242, 264 LGTBIQ+, 18, 218–235, 264, 266, 272 M Mali, 17, 191, 193–195, 197–199, 201, 204, 209, 210, 264, 265

279

N Norms, normative, normalizing, heteronormative, 5, 6, 9, 14, 18, 20, 31, 32, 34, 56, 62, 66, 73, 95, 103, 118, 152, 182, 184, 185, 211, 217–219, 228, 255, 269, 271 O Oppressions, 5, 6, 11, 14, 16–18, 31, 33, 34, 37, 46–48, 50, 63, 74, 96, 114, 117, 218, 218n1, 222, 230, 264, 265, 271 P Participation, 3, 11, 18, 50, 71, 74, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 112, 114, 124, 128, 140, 144, 152, 153, 158, 165, 196, 225, 226, 229, 231, 232, 234, 241, 242, 244, 245, 251, 252, 270 Participatory research, 16, 50, 98, 265, 266 Pedagogy, pedagogies, 8, 9, 11, 15, 29, 33, 35, 39, 40, 53–62, 64, 120, 128, 252, 253 Philosophy for Children (P4C), 18, 240, 241, 246–252, 254–257, 268 Post-truth, 17, 25–42, 268, 271 Power, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 18, 27, 28, 42, 49–51, 54–58, 66, 95, 97, 104, 113, 114, 122, 140, 152, 172, 182, 183, 185, 190, 193–198, 201–203, 207, 210, 211, 221, 234, 247, 248, 254, 255, 264, 271

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INDEX

R Racism, 2, 4–7, 10, 17, 19, 26–30, 32, 39–41, 57, 58, 66, 90, 99, 103, 113, 117, 130, 137, 163, 269, 271, 272 Recognition, 2, 7–11, 37–39, 61, 64, 72, 75, 79, 80, 155, 157, 182, 189, 222, 227, 228, 232, 249, 250, 256 Reparative futures, 1–21, 25–42, 46–49, 58, 62, 65, 66, 71, 74, 83, 84, 112, 116–117, 131, 158, 164, 165, 168, 177–184, 191, 219, 221, 223, 236, 239–241, 243, 245, 254–256, 263–273 Reparative justice, 116, 190, 195, 202, 271 Reparative pedagogies, 26, 27, 31–39, 41, 59–61, 117 Reparative storytelling, 48 Researchers, 19, 20, 51, 69–84, 97, 138, 141–144, 149, 153, 157, 166, 172, 174, 176, 266, 270 Resources, material resources, 13, 14, 17, 19, 32, 48, 52, 83, 91, 99–103, 140, 150, 151, 155, 156, 158, 171, 173, 177, 194, 197, 200, 226, 227, 231, 235, 240, 249, 268, 269 S Schooling, schools, 31, 34, 39, 56, 57, 191–193, 197, 198, 207–209, 240, 246, 247, 252 Security, 18, 19, 70–73, 75–79, 81–84, 153, 232, 266 Sexual and gender diversity, 217–236, 266 Social innovation, 165, 176

Social justice, 3, 45–66, 73, 100, 114, 116, 155, 233, 265 Solidarity, 2, 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 25–42, 56, 60, 61, 100, 116, 120, 121, 128, 152, 264, 268, 271 South Africa, 16, 46, 49, 54, 90, 91, 101, 103, 104, 166, 202, 206, 264, 268 Storytelling, 45–52, 58–62, 64, 65, 192, 201, 264, 265, 269, 270 Sustainability, 2, 10, 20, 90–96, 103–106, 115, 118, 120, 128, 138, 149, 151, 163–185, 253, 264, 270, 272 Systems, 12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 31, 32, 46, 47, 69, 90, 92, 96, 101, 105, 111–132, 139, 140, 142–145, 142n4, 147, 151, 152, 155, 157, 164–167, 169, 172–177, 182–184, 197, 218n1, 225n8, 226, 231, 242, 245, 250, 257, 263–273 T Theory of change (ToC), 142, 143, 167–174, 176, 177 Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP), 20, 138–146, 148–150, 157, 166, 168, 170, 182, 184, 185 Transformative learning, 1–21, 25–42, 48, 111–132, 263–273 U Ubuntu, 59, 62, 90–106, 268–270 Unfreedoms, 16, 90, 91, 99–103, 105 University, 16, 31, 46, 72, 115, 192, 227, 264

 INDEX 

V Values, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18, 27, 34, 37, 38, 45–47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 59, 61, 62, 66, 96, 99–101, 103, 118, 120–122, 124–126, 128–131, 140n2, 141, 151, 173, 174, 182, 184, 190, 199, 224, 231, 233, 240, 242, 247, 248, 250, 254–257, 264, 267, 269, 270, 272

281

W Wellbeing, 6, 13, 14, 49, 60, 92, 97, 100, 104, 105, 118, 167, 173, 174, 182, 184, 226, 239–242, 244, 245, 251–253, 255, 256, 265, 270, 272 Workshops, 51, 98, 99, 147, 149, 168, 174, 176, 177, 206, 227, 230