Module 2: Working in Communities

Question 1

Discuss the distinction between complicated and complex systems

Answer 1

• Think of community as a complex system
• Working with one person = only one person
• Working with two people = working with person 1, person 2 and the relationship between them
• Working with a family = working with 4 people and the relationships between them all
• Therefore hard to work in a community of up to 150 people and also their place within broader society
• Transdisciplinary idea - complex vs complicated system
  
  • Frog is more complex than a rocket
  • Complex - can’t take it apart and put it back together again
  • Can’t take a frog apart into its parts without killing it but you could take apart a rocket and rebuild another one
    
    • This changes the nature of the frog
  • Mainstream psychology - modelling people off computational systems fundamentally conceive people as complicated rather than as complex
  • Ecological model - people are seen as complex

Question 2

Discuss why values matter in complex systems

Answer 2

• Cannot stand outside the system and act on it in a way that produces a clear outcome
  ○ We can’t be objective - we are in the systems we are trying to change
  ○ Our values actions and beliefs have real consequences
  ○ The person you are matters in the way you work with community
• Values
  ○ Either desired states and goals or as ways of looking and being - things we inhabit that shape how we think, look, feel and act
  ○ Values includes; standpoints, discourses, ideological positionings, your positionality, your cultural heritage all informs your values
  ○ Values shape what we pay attention to in the world, inform the actions we take
  ○ Collectivist societies - known for expecting great sacrifices from their members for the benefit of the public good
  - Citizens can feel coerced to do things they do not like and may experience state intervention as oppressive

Question 3

Describe critical reflexivity

Answer 3

• Critical reflexivity ensures our values are malleable and can be meaningfully shaped by the environments you move within
  
  • The bridge between theory and practice - experience of the word - and intellectual understanding of marginalisation, oppression, power and privilege
    ○ Being critical of power structures and how they prevent liberation and promote oppression
• Lowest level
  ○ Descriptive: What you did or what your position is
  ○ Evaluative: Whether or not you did well
  § Thinking in terms of good or bad
  ○ Reflective: Describing your reactions and thoughts
  § Not analysing
  ○ Reflexive: skills or learnings focus
  § Look at your own values and positionality
  § More about what you know
  ○ Critically reflexive: personal/positional/values focus
  § Your values in context, privilege, positionality
  § Your understanding of power
  § How is that impacting you, and how it shows up in the interaction that you are reflecting on

Question 4

Discuss co-liberation

Answer 4

• Co-liberation - the idea of the relationship as the project
• Thinking of values as desired end states is not helpful if we lack the critical self-awareness to enact those values in context
• As people invested in liberal ideas of education, we may overestimate the ‘exchange rate’ between textbook learning and real-world change
• We need to maintain focus on co-liberation in which we see how we and the communities we work with are dynamically coupled as a system

Question 5

How a relational focus on change supports community transformation

Answer 5

• Focusing on relationships within the community allows the community to change for within the community rather than the ideas of those on the outside
  Emergent strategy
• Fundamentally underpinning the more realistic research work
• Living approach to change
• Set of principles not a method
• Living approach to change
  Small is good, small is all (the large is a reflection of the small)
  Change is constant (be like water)
  There is always enough time for the right work
  There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
  Never a failure, always a lesson
  Trust the people (if you trust the people, they become trustworthy)
  Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass - build the resilience by building the relationships
  Less prep, more presence
  What you pay attention to grows
  e.g. Participatory Action Research

Question 6

Discuss research as a form of intervention (Systemic action research)

Answer 6

Systemic action research: research as intervention
- Type of participatory action research
- Looking at broader systems rather than just the community

Question 7

Discuss research as a form of intervention (Participatory action research)

Answer 7

• Participatory action research studies, which are especially focused on co-creating real changes with participants – such as their empowerment – during the course of the study, will often have ongoing data collection, such as reflective journals or minutes from group meetings in order to capture the process of consciousness raising, action, and reflection

Question 8

Describe Appreciative inquiry

Answer 8

1. Define – What is the topic of inquiry? – It is important to define the overall focus of the inquiry (what the system wants more of). Definition is used to clarify the area of work to be considered. In spite of being the starting point of the cycle, it’s a recent addition – the 5Ds were originally the 4Ds, including discover, dream, design and destiny. Definition defines the project’s purpose, content, and what needs to be achieved. In this phase, the guiding question is, “What generative topic do we want to focus on together?”
   
   2. Discover – Appreciating the best of ‘what is’ – Discovery is based on a dialogue, as a way of finding ‘what works’. It rediscovers and remembers the organization or community’s successes, strengths and periods of excellence.
   3. Dream – Imagining ‘what could be’ – Imagining uses past achievements and successes identified in the discovery phase to imagine new possibilities and envisage a preferred future. It allows people to identify their dreams for a community or organization; having discovered ‘what is best’. They have the chance to project it into their wishes, hopes and aspirations for the future
   4. Design – Determining ‘what should be’ – Design brings together the stories from discovery with the imagination and creativity from dream. We call it bringing the ‘best of what is’ together with ‘what might be’, to create ‘what should be – the ideal’.
   5. Deliver/Destiny – Creating ‘what will be’ – The fifth stage in the 5Ds process identifies how the design is delivered, and how it’s embedded into groups, communities and organizations. In early appreciative inquiry development, it was called ‘delivery’, based on more traditional organizational development practice. The term ‘destiny’ is more prevalent now.

Question 9

Discuss big power dynamics and small power dynamics

Answer 9

• Big power dynamics - e.g. sexism, racism, major societal discourse big things that shape and structure our experiences
  Some of the main things we have to be reflexive about
• Local power dynamics
  Sometimes touch on big power dynamics but have their own flavour
  Relationships within the community
  As practitioners we need to be aware of both big and local power dynamics

Question 10

Discuss Amelioration and Transformation

Answer 10

• Ameliorative interventions: purposeful activities designed to alleviate the results of living in unjust and prejudicial societies
  ○ The original source is left unchanged but problems are added at with money
  ○ Just looking at the problems not the root causes
• Transformative interventions: Intentional processes designed to alter the conditions that lead to suffering
• We need both transformative and ameliorative interventions
  The role of community psychologists working in government
  - Some more ameliorative interventions of governments (improvements)
  ○ Drinking water is portable
  ○ Free education and literacy training

Question 11

How do we achieve benevolence and liberation using ameliorative and transformative approaches?

Answer 11

• The way we achieve benevolence is with ameliorative interventions and the way we achieve liberation is with transformative interventions

Question 12

Discuss the idea of ‘zooming in’ versus ‘zooming out’ to promote social change

Answer 12

• In order to truly produce social change, I need to look for transformative rather than ameliorative interventions
• Transformative interventions are those which fundamentally alter the rules of the game, so I need a significant amount of power to make change
• Because I need power, I cannot make much change where I am, I should seek power at all costs so I can create the changes
  Focus on transformation can lead people to seek power and delay making changes in communities and situations they find themselves in

Question 13

What does Zooming out entail?

Answer 13

○ Looking at a problems in a really big way e.g. altering policy - I need to be in a position of power to change policy
○ Zoomed out perspective often misses lots of the details
○ People need X lets give them X
○ Need to build relationships to solve problems better

Question 14

What does zooming in entail?

Answer 14

○ What happens if we take care of the community first - what changes will that lead to in society?
○ Start thinking on a small scale
○ E.g. Celine and the women about the lack of salt, then women talk to their husbands, then husbands talked to tribal leaders
○ Fractal scaling
○ Respecting the community level can lead to some significant changes
○ Zooming in Alternative to zooming out - another way of making change without seeking power or hierarchies
○ We need to trust that the small scale we are doing can fractally scale outwards to influence the bigger scale
○ Give directly funding
○ Gives them the power in their community to determine what they need first e.g. guy bought a guitar because his town needed music and the arts
○ Positive relations with their neighbours
○ No empire in the history of Indigenous Australia
Looking after the small scale rather than the whole

Question 15

Discuss Community Psychology and community work as personal, political and professional

Answer 15

• Not waiting until were professionals - this is personal work
• We are the very society we wish to criticise
  What are social interventions?
• Intentional processes designed to affect the wellbeing of the population through changes in systems, values, policies, programs, distribution of resources, power differentials and cultural norms
  ○ Intentional processes= methodically planned
• To achieve wellbeing at the personal, relational, and collective domains, we have to attend to the components above
• To alter values without altering policies and programs is ineffectual
• Social interventions can be driven by government or non government organisations
  ○ Change in government policy isn’t quick but community psychologists can influence policy direction
  ○ It is political power that hold the most potential for transformative change
• Challenging the status quo
  § When policies and practices discriminate, or fail to protect those with less power, it is time to challenge the status quo
  The role of community psychologists in social movements and non-government organisations
  ○ Social movements and social movement organisations tend to be more transformative than non-government organisations
  ○ A social movement = “an organized set of people vested in making a change in their situation pursuing a common political agenda through collective action”
  ○ Features of social movements
  ○ Social change
• Social movements promote or resist some kind of social change in order to uphold an explicit set of values
  ○ People power
• People come together to promote or resist the change
  ○ Collective action
• People undertake collective actions such as sit-ins, strikes, marches, media campaigns, protests, and others
  ○ Not all NGOs try to advance the three features of social movements