The previous series of three posts attempted to bridge Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) with Systems Thinking, the two sections of the New Community Paradigms (NCP) wiki seen as being among the furthermost separated. Bridging NCP wiki-sections is a basic feature of the wiki, especially with the NCP wiki-map but the differences in conceptual approaches between the two are especially distant. Both were discovered in this search for new community paradigms. There is a bias towards Systems Thinking, not due to longer exposure, 2015, 2016 in earnest for ABCD and 2013 for Systems Thinking but to a natural affinity. Still learning both. The bridging of the two was done across a presumption of complexity incorporating both. Complexity, to be clear from the start, is seen as actually a good thing and necessary though all too often incoherent if not problematic.
The recent blog post, Ostrom, the Commons, and the Green New Deal continued to explore the development of concepts involving dynamic complex systems previously raised in this blog. In addition to bridging concepts, there is a desire to establish a deeper and firmer foundation through biological constructs such as Carrying Capacity and an interest shown in Ostrom's work by anthropologists.
This post questions how far ABCD relational practices and Ostrom’s polycentric governance can be extended limited by the increasing complexity inherent in larger groups or wider circles of Dunbar's Number. The reach of ABCD, and more indirectly Ostrom's polycentric governance, is arguably restricted by Dunbar's Number.
There are four layers, or "Circles of Acquaintanceship," or implicit social contracts making up Dunbar’s number scaling relatively consistently to each other. The first circle is three to five of our very closest friends. The next layer or circle is twelve (the size of a jury) to fifteen persons whose death would devastate us. Next circle is made up of fifty persons, or “the typical overnight camp size among traditional hunter-gatherers like the Australian Aboriginals or the San Bushmen of southern Africa.”
Beyond the fourth level of one hundred and fifty persons, there are still further circles with an ideal democracy set at five thousand, three hundred. Larger circles though involve even greater degrees of complexity and far less emotional attachment, especially between non-familial relationships.
Though usually in agreement or sympathy, there are a few points with which I don't see the same as Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development and faculty member of the ABCD Institute, leaning towards Dunbar’s empiricism but then I am a keeps-himself-to-himself in-his-own-head type introvert so biased in my perspective.
Cormac does not include family members (or professionals), only true associates, in his associational connections and Dunbar does with kin prioritized. He sees Dunbar’s fourth level at 150 persons as a minimum meaning most of us have a deficit of 99 persons, not including familial relationships, to make up for from our average base of 51 persons in our associational lives. He knows that Dunbar saw the fourth level of 150 as a maximum limit which I suspect few people truly reach. It is not just walking distance separating people but emotional distance as well. As the number of people in a circle increases the emotional connection between them decreases with each successive circle and there are physiologically set cognitive limits.
However, it is Cormac’s vision of community associational relationships that must be strived towards to create the needed systemic changes in the direct democracy governance of our communities which requires not only connections but diversity as well to deal with complex even wicked problems. ABCD then becomes a necessary and even a primary component of New Community Paradigms but not necessarily a sufficient one.
The question to be considered then is how Ostrom’s polycentric governance of community and the commons could help ABCD extend the network of implicit contracts and, as importantly, how ABCD could support Ostrom’s polycentric governance to develop the required trust essential to achieve the advantage of those implicit social contracts.
As has been asserted before, Asset Based Community Development seeks to help communities find solutions to community challenges upon the basis of a system of community-based associational relationships to develop community wealth or resources as opposed to economic wealth or money by a few.
Most larger geographically placed, politically defined by institutional government type communities such as cities or towns are usually composed of many diverse socially and often demographically defined place-based communities or neighborhoods of differing levels of influence.
There are other distinct types of community in addition to these that can extend beyond geographic boundaries but still not be necessarily separate. Communities, in the context of this post and ABCD, will refer to neighborhoods and smaller social-based communities. Larger entities such as cities are dealt with through their institutions.
The previous series went over questions that ABCD believes each community or anyone sincerely wishing to build better communities needs to ask. An issue for many communities then is whether they or anybody are even asking these essential questions? ABCD seeks to change this by committing to re-seeding associational life at a hyper-local level (i.e. street level). ABCD is about the strengthening of social capital or what could also be considered the Carrying Capacity within a community to save people from a life of institutionalization by creating community alternatives to the institutional (systems) world.
ABCD and Community, a Systemic Analysis pt 3 reminded us that the carrying capacity of a local community depends upon good stewardship of that community’s welfare ideally requiring the correct sequencing of nurturing at three levels. The first level is recognizing that there are things that communities do best on their own without institutional assistance. The second level is recognizing that there are things that communities can basically do themselves but with some help from outside agencies. The third level is recognizing that there are things that communities need to have done for them by outside agencies. Something institutions readily and often exclusively do.
At the third level, the system being generated likely becomes entrenched, leading to a form of top-down service delivery by command, being persistent and resilient even while failing to address the needs of its supposed beneficiaries while eroding social capital and creating high levels of dependence on external resources which are now disappearing.
Neighborhoods have experienced years of interacting with the different public and private institutional agencies which have provided services of one kind or another, under the auspices of governmentally defined agencies, but not at equal levels. Outside agencies, institutional or otherwise, ideally should seek to be in the right relationship with smaller social, demographic, cultural communities. However, it has been many of these very same agencies who have failed, are still failing, and are now looking for means to systematize their failure as a new normal.
Cormac sees this institutionalization causing further atomization or breaking up of relationships or people’s sense of community into individual elements in what I believe can be interpreted as being a system of disorganized complexity. This is not considered an oxymoron, even disorganized gas molecules can be made to react (behave) in certain ways through proper manipulation. ABCD though could also involve the atomization of a community but to the level of independent agents connecting potentially in a self-organizing fashion through a system of organized complexity as defined by Jane Jacobs, structured by Ostrom and systematized by Meadows.
Without proper investment in community building through the correct Agency interactions or better community conversations, institutional stewardship remains stuck at the third level while second level interactions can be commodified drifting towards the third level in the name of efficiencies and there is little incentive to make any extended investment. The first level carrying capacity then is relegated to fighting to retain whatever influence on to which the community may be holding on let alone endeavoring to increase its social capital.
What leverage then is afforded to local communities or even those working sincerely and earnestly in support of local communities to ensure that this is done properly? Even if attempted, providing the proportionate support that does not displace or diminish local community power is a difficult balancing act with the best of intentions. It isn't by the communities themselves, at least not initially, and it is doubtful that it is the institutional agencies so is there presumably a third sector or movement outside of these communities that are being appealed to beyond the already converted to the ABCD approach?
This post will also reveal the connection of ABCD back to the concept of the Commons and Ostrom’s work, a path already established in the blog post-ABCD, Social Networks and the Commons connecting Associational Life:
“A viable way to be collective and inclusive from the bottom up, according to Cormac and those with a similar mindset, is to work through the concept of the communal Commons to enable some type of Coalition of the Doing in determining the relationship between Capitalism and the Commons".
David Bollier, Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, starts off the article speaking of enclosures as the historical anthesis to the Commons.
“Enclosures eclipse the history and memory of the commons, rendering them invisible. The impersonal, individualistic, transaction-based ethic of the market economy becomes the new normal.”
An enclosure, as defined by Bollier, then can be seen as a form of imposed exclusion, a means of differentiating between clique or exclusive communities and colony or excluded communities.
A Commons, within an ABCD framework, can then be seen as both place-based with the resources of that place and people-based as an associational network overseeing those resource-based commons. The Social Network is both a people-based defined social system overseeing the Commons as a place-based resource so that the smallest associational successes of ABCD can not only reverberate through the entire community (system) but also give it history or legacy. It becomes a matter then, as Cormac has said, of not reforming (institutional) systems but reclaiming the Commons.
Showing posts with label direct democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label direct democracy. Show all posts
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Sunday, April 21, 2019
ABCD and Community, a Systemic Analysis pt 3
This post will continue with the development of concepts presented in the previous two posts of this series.I raised my own limitations regarding Systems Thinking and especially Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in the first post. This post has an additional limitation for this series regarding the scope of this analysis. It only deals with ABCD from a limited perspective. ABCD is far richer than what is being presented here, similar to using the Logistic Equation to explain changes in population, hopefully, useful but only a sketch.
Asset Based Community Development or ABCD seeks to define an ideal relationship between institutions, including the agencies through which policies are implemented in pursuit of their mission, and communities, particularly what has been termed colony communities or marginalized or dependent or so-called hard-to-reach (HTR) communities.
As Cormac Russell has said, the carrying capacity of a local community depends upon good stewardship of that community’s welfare ideally requiring the correct sequencing of nurturing at three levels to discover the community’s underpinning capacities and in a way that does not function to harm the social capital of the community. The result of such good stewardship in times of crisis should be sufficiency and the potential for greater abundance, not scarcity and abandonment. These three relationship levels, however, presume a benign power relationship or better between community and institution.
The first level is recognizing that there are things that communities do best on their own without institutional assistance. This requires asking though, what are the things that only residents/citizens can do in response to an issue? These should be determined regarding the strengths of the community, not its deficits.
These are the things for which a community already has the adequate inherent carrying capacity to do best on their own though this may not yet be realized. The efforts are purposefully applied by the community and should not be supplemented by purposive institutional programs. Any involved agency is hopefully facilitating these efforts to help make the efforts more efficient and helping to remove barriers not creating them. This though cannot be assumed.
The second level is recognizing that there are things that communities can basically do themselves but with some help from outside agencies. This level is beyond the carrying capacity of what a community can do solely on their own but could perhaps do with some help from an outside agency.
The carrying capacity of the community is not fully adequate to the task either because the extra needed capacity to some extent remains external or is inherent but has not been fully realized. What then are the things that residents/citizens can lead on and achieve with the support of institutions and their agencies (governmental, non-governmental, for-profit) in response to that issue? As important, can those agencies be expected to provide support to the community in doing what it can’t do for itself?
If so, those outside agencies should then ideally facilitate such activities so that the carrying capacity of the community goes as far but no further than is sustainable. Outside agencies should seek to be in the right relationship with communities and provide proportionate support that does not displace or diminish community power.
The third level is recognizing that there are things that communities need to have done for them by outside agencies. The required carrying capacity is both external and unrealizable by the community. The questions for the community then are not only what are the things that only institutions can do for us (residents/citizens) but as important, what can the community do to induce the agency to do for the community what the community can’t do for itself.
The agencies should then seek to do those things in as transparent and accountable a manner as possible but the scaling required to address the issue may be imposed on the community rather than induced by the agency.
The Nurture Development post, What We’ve Tried (in isolation) Hasn’t Worked: The Politics of Community, raised questions that need to be answered by or for a community so that the locus of control over a community’s carrying capacity is by the community, not an outside institution. The factors defining the three levels of relationships between communities and institutions can be expanded to enlarge the overall community based social carrying capacity.
The community needs to develop the extended carrying capacity or social capital to be able to determine:
The community often either does not have the carrying capacity or social capital on its own without help which is either never offered or if given can be threatened so that the institution and those who benefit maintain control. This means purposefully enhancing the inherent but yet still unrealized carrying capacity of the community to add to its needed social capital. It is difficult seeing this done through the purposive actions of an institution. A call for an institution to unilaterally remove barriers that it put in place would seem to argue against that community having sufficient carrying capacity on is own to scale to the next level.
The institutions are expected be to either move the community to a greater sense of inherent and realizable carrying capacity or to accept responsibility for external and unrealizable but still desired carrying capacity as part of its mission.
This requires a purposeful systemic change for which whether at first internally realized or unrealized is likely initiated through external carrying capacity if only as a catalyst. A required a change in the power relationship between the community and institution, an enhancement in social capital or the type of carrying capacity utilized by the community from direct and independent with the community directly doing things on its own to more indirect but controlled, things are done through an agency but the community holds greater control.
Cormac has pointed out that the power relationships of communities with outside institutional agencies have changed over time with institutions claiming that service delivery is neither sustainable nor ironically empowering. Austerity, defined by these institutions and implemented by agencies, means the communities now have fewer outside resources available so have more of the responsibility for maintaining carrying capacity, including taking over care of those who are highly service dependent, which is again a form of harvesting of that community's carrying capacity.
A question then is who specifically is the "We" whom Cormac speaks of that needs to learn from communities what they can do and care enough about to do with or without outside help. Who is the “We” that not only helps communities determine what they can do with some support, and only then helps in determining what external resources are needed but also helps in negotiating with the government institutions or enhancing the carrying capacity of the community to do such on their own?
Now I know that the answer is us, being both the enemy we have met as well as being the ones that we have been waiting for. The devil though is in the details. Direct democracy, in some form, combining both participatory democracy, emphasizing ABCD and deliberative democracy, emphasizing Systems Thinking is one potential path to needed new community paradigms.
part 1
part 2
Asset Based Community Development or ABCD seeks to define an ideal relationship between institutions, including the agencies through which policies are implemented in pursuit of their mission, and communities, particularly what has been termed colony communities or marginalized or dependent or so-called hard-to-reach (HTR) communities.
As Cormac Russell has said, the carrying capacity of a local community depends upon good stewardship of that community’s welfare ideally requiring the correct sequencing of nurturing at three levels to discover the community’s underpinning capacities and in a way that does not function to harm the social capital of the community. The result of such good stewardship in times of crisis should be sufficiency and the potential for greater abundance, not scarcity and abandonment. These three relationship levels, however, presume a benign power relationship or better between community and institution.
The first level is recognizing that there are things that communities do best on their own without institutional assistance. This requires asking though, what are the things that only residents/citizens can do in response to an issue? These should be determined regarding the strengths of the community, not its deficits.
These are the things for which a community already has the adequate inherent carrying capacity to do best on their own though this may not yet be realized. The efforts are purposefully applied by the community and should not be supplemented by purposive institutional programs. Any involved agency is hopefully facilitating these efforts to help make the efforts more efficient and helping to remove barriers not creating them. This though cannot be assumed.
The second level is recognizing that there are things that communities can basically do themselves but with some help from outside agencies. This level is beyond the carrying capacity of what a community can do solely on their own but could perhaps do with some help from an outside agency.
The carrying capacity of the community is not fully adequate to the task either because the extra needed capacity to some extent remains external or is inherent but has not been fully realized. What then are the things that residents/citizens can lead on and achieve with the support of institutions and their agencies (governmental, non-governmental, for-profit) in response to that issue? As important, can those agencies be expected to provide support to the community in doing what it can’t do for itself?
If so, those outside agencies should then ideally facilitate such activities so that the carrying capacity of the community goes as far but no further than is sustainable. Outside agencies should seek to be in the right relationship with communities and provide proportionate support that does not displace or diminish community power.
The third level is recognizing that there are things that communities need to have done for them by outside agencies. The required carrying capacity is both external and unrealizable by the community. The questions for the community then are not only what are the things that only institutions can do for us (residents/citizens) but as important, what can the community do to induce the agency to do for the community what the community can’t do for itself.
The agencies should then seek to do those things in as transparent and accountable a manner as possible but the scaling required to address the issue may be imposed on the community rather than induced by the agency.
The Nurture Development post, What We’ve Tried (in isolation) Hasn’t Worked: The Politics of Community, raised questions that need to be answered by or for a community so that the locus of control over a community’s carrying capacity is by the community, not an outside institution. The factors defining the three levels of relationships between communities and institutions can be expanded to enlarge the overall community based social carrying capacity.
The community needs to develop the extended carrying capacity or social capital to be able to determine:
- What are the things that institutions can stop doing which would create space for resident action, enlarging the community social carrying capacity?
- How agencies can create space for the community to grow in that capacity, moving from dependence to self-sufficiency and independence.
- How the agency can determine, what the agency can do to go beyond its current level of community support?
- What can institutions start offering beyond the services that they currently offer to support resident/citizen action?
The community often either does not have the carrying capacity or social capital on its own without help which is either never offered or if given can be threatened so that the institution and those who benefit maintain control. This means purposefully enhancing the inherent but yet still unrealized carrying capacity of the community to add to its needed social capital. It is difficult seeing this done through the purposive actions of an institution. A call for an institution to unilaterally remove barriers that it put in place would seem to argue against that community having sufficient carrying capacity on is own to scale to the next level.
The institutions are expected be to either move the community to a greater sense of inherent and realizable carrying capacity or to accept responsibility for external and unrealizable but still desired carrying capacity as part of its mission.
This requires a purposeful systemic change for which whether at first internally realized or unrealized is likely initiated through external carrying capacity if only as a catalyst. A required a change in the power relationship between the community and institution, an enhancement in social capital or the type of carrying capacity utilized by the community from direct and independent with the community directly doing things on its own to more indirect but controlled, things are done through an agency but the community holds greater control.
Cormac has pointed out that the power relationships of communities with outside institutional agencies have changed over time with institutions claiming that service delivery is neither sustainable nor ironically empowering. Austerity, defined by these institutions and implemented by agencies, means the communities now have fewer outside resources available so have more of the responsibility for maintaining carrying capacity, including taking over care of those who are highly service dependent, which is again a form of harvesting of that community's carrying capacity.
A question then is who specifically is the "We" whom Cormac speaks of that needs to learn from communities what they can do and care enough about to do with or without outside help. Who is the “We” that not only helps communities determine what they can do with some support, and only then helps in determining what external resources are needed but also helps in negotiating with the government institutions or enhancing the carrying capacity of the community to do such on their own?
Now I know that the answer is us, being both the enemy we have met as well as being the ones that we have been waiting for. The devil though is in the details. Direct democracy, in some form, combining both participatory democracy, emphasizing ABCD and deliberative democracy, emphasizing Systems Thinking is one potential path to needed new community paradigms.
part 1
part 2
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Revisiting Community Arts as Connector to New Community Paradigms
The last six months have been spent on Systems Practice, which was finally determined to be a potentially viable component of Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking and seen as lending credence to the Victor Havel quote:
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out,”
through additional interactions with the And? It’s All Connected and the Ecology of Systems Thinking Facebook groups.
Systems Practice was also recognized as requiring substantially involved effort yet still only being one aspect of creating new community paradigms, important even essential but not sufficient.
This post returns to the initial purpose of this effort of discovering pathways to new community paradigms by updating the New Community Paradigms Wiki which has been neglected for some time. The first revision to the wiki is the inclusion of a disclaimer concerning intention. It is a learning site that is being shared, there is no claim to authority and regarding security, there isn’t any but then it doesn’t require anyone to provide information, private or otherwise. While a disclaimer to not having any definitive answers only shared explorations may be true that is not made as explicitly.
The work on the Systems Practice series was largely interiorly focused involving introspective contemplation. The change in direction now is to a more exteriorly focused perspective, for at least a while, resulting in more ideas being gathered and added to the pathways to new community paradigms. One of the goals of this effort being to demonstrate how ideas are connected to a far greater extent and far more extensively than may be commonly realized.
A number of new resources have been made available since the last update with new connections and pathways to be explored which means potentially that new insights are possible. This means looking more outward to determine how to apply these insights.
One new area of interest that will be explored is the currently rising idea of a #GreenNewDeal. Despite being popular in circles for which I have an affinity, it is still in the exploration stages. At this point, it seems hopefully aspirational and pragmatically problematic but a good deal of time has just been spent demonstrating through Systems Practice that the pragmatically problematic can begin to be overcome. Recognizing at the same time, other pathways need to be added.
The first of these pathways to be revisited is Community Arts. A number of changes have occurred since the last update with, Art as a Path of Social Disruptive Innovation Towards New Community Paradigms. One of the organizations, Cultural Strategies Initiative, is gone but a number of new resources have been discovered.
One of the more recent is Smoke Signals Studio, the subject of a TED Talk, who believe that “a practice for truth-telling and rooted in assembly is powerful”. Some notable quotes from their talk seemed particularly relevant in perhaps providing some of the depth required to bring about something like the #GreenNewDeal.
"See, laws never change culture, but culture always changes laws."
"They understood what many of us are just now realizing -- that to get people to build the ship, you've got to get them to long for the sea; that data rarely moves people, but great art always does."
Among other resources that have been added but not previously acknowledged are What's Happening - A Blade of Grass which provides resources to artists who demonstrate artistic excellence and serve as innovative conduits for social change by fostering an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics and meaning of socially engaged art that resonates within and outside the contemporary art dialogue. One of their projects was by Chinatown Art Brigade, who dealt with gentrification in New York.
The Laundromat Project believes art, culture, and engaged imaginations can change the way people see their world, open them up to new ideas, and connect them with their neighbors providing invaluable assets in furthering community wellbeing.
A number of the new resources have to do with storytelling seen from both sides, telling and listening. Storytelling and Social Change: A Strategy Guide | Working Narrative works with communities to tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy. Their work is located at the intersection of arts, technology, and social change. Hidden Voices seeks to empower underrepresented populations to effectively tell their stories by engaging communities in dialogue and positive action to strengthen community cohesion and provides pathways for increased communication, cooperation, and respect.
“Listening to people is the foundation of community organising because it builds trust and relationships, uncovers issues and is an essential starting point for bringing people together to share stories, ideas and action.”
YOUNG LISTENERS SUPPORT PEERS WITH MENTAL WELLBEING
The site A S . I F | ART + SCIENCE IN THE FIELD works at rebuilding cross-disciplinary connections while keeping a balance between the two cultures of art and science, following their own creative paths while maintaining accuracy and critical thinking when conducting, and communicating about, science.
ArtsFwd.org has also been added, which though a creation of the EmcArts and featured in the last update, was not included in the NCP wiki through an oversight.
The mission of Imagining America | Artists & Scholars in Public Life is to publicly engage artists, designers, scholars, and community activists working toward the democratic transformation of higher education and civic life by creating democratic spaces to foster and advance publicly engaged scholarship that draws on arts, humanities, and design.
Animating Democracy places a high value on learning from and building capacity and visibility for practitioners’ work on the ground by bringing to bear Americans for the Arts’ strengths in research, policy, professional development, visibility, and advocacy specifically to advance and elevate arts for change work on field, cross-sector, and national levels. The group was also featured in the post The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 2 of 3 as advancing the role of the arts in fostering citizen participation and social change, along with Art VULUPS doing the same with geography, environmental science, land use planning, sustainability, art and creativity concepts.
Other added resources deal directly with finding and establishing artists for the community. Easle is supposed to make it easy to find and commission independent creators for a project. Street I Am - highlights street culture, street fest, busker street art, and graffiti street entertainment. Art Prof provides a unique opportunity for a global community to have equal access to a free visual arts education by removing barriers to art education that exist due to the high cost of higher education & private classes while providing easy-to-follow content for people of all ages and means. The site Dance/USA — The national service organization for professional dance looks to establishing legacy by the preservation of art form for future generations. Their Artist's Legacy Toolkit helps organize and preserve materials in ways that are practical but neither time-intensive nor expensive.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive or comprehensive list of resources, merely suggestions for possible ways to incorporate artistic thinking, along with design and systems thinking into the civic dialogue.
Community Arts is seen as a means of expressing what has been termed the Soul of a Community. The most significant change to the Community Arts wiki page is seeing it as being not only a component of Community Design but also more as a means of Advocacy By and For Community.
In regard to its place in the still being developed NCP Wiki Map on Kumu, Community Arts is a component of Places and a part of Art and Health Communities, which has been recently updated (read corrected) which in turn is related to Pathways to Healthy Communities.
Perhaps additional new pathways can be found incorporating Community Arts more deeply into Advocacy By and For Community and then extending into Community Ecology based on the concept that the community basis to address the health of the populace and community basis to address the health of the environment as in the #GreenNewDeal being the same.
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out,”
through additional interactions with the And? It’s All Connected and the Ecology of Systems Thinking Facebook groups.
Systems Practice was also recognized as requiring substantially involved effort yet still only being one aspect of creating new community paradigms, important even essential but not sufficient.
This post returns to the initial purpose of this effort of discovering pathways to new community paradigms by updating the New Community Paradigms Wiki which has been neglected for some time. The first revision to the wiki is the inclusion of a disclaimer concerning intention. It is a learning site that is being shared, there is no claim to authority and regarding security, there isn’t any but then it doesn’t require anyone to provide information, private or otherwise. While a disclaimer to not having any definitive answers only shared explorations may be true that is not made as explicitly.
The work on the Systems Practice series was largely interiorly focused involving introspective contemplation. The change in direction now is to a more exteriorly focused perspective, for at least a while, resulting in more ideas being gathered and added to the pathways to new community paradigms. One of the goals of this effort being to demonstrate how ideas are connected to a far greater extent and far more extensively than may be commonly realized.
A number of new resources have been made available since the last update with new connections and pathways to be explored which means potentially that new insights are possible. This means looking more outward to determine how to apply these insights.
One new area of interest that will be explored is the currently rising idea of a #GreenNewDeal. Despite being popular in circles for which I have an affinity, it is still in the exploration stages. At this point, it seems hopefully aspirational and pragmatically problematic but a good deal of time has just been spent demonstrating through Systems Practice that the pragmatically problematic can begin to be overcome. Recognizing at the same time, other pathways need to be added.
The first of these pathways to be revisited is Community Arts. A number of changes have occurred since the last update with, Art as a Path of Social Disruptive Innovation Towards New Community Paradigms. One of the organizations, Cultural Strategies Initiative, is gone but a number of new resources have been discovered.
One of the more recent is Smoke Signals Studio, the subject of a TED Talk, who believe that “a practice for truth-telling and rooted in assembly is powerful”. Some notable quotes from their talk seemed particularly relevant in perhaps providing some of the depth required to bring about something like the #GreenNewDeal.
"See, laws never change culture, but culture always changes laws."
"They understood what many of us are just now realizing -- that to get people to build the ship, you've got to get them to long for the sea; that data rarely moves people, but great art always does."
Among other resources that have been added but not previously acknowledged are What's Happening - A Blade of Grass which provides resources to artists who demonstrate artistic excellence and serve as innovative conduits for social change by fostering an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics and meaning of socially engaged art that resonates within and outside the contemporary art dialogue. One of their projects was by Chinatown Art Brigade, who dealt with gentrification in New York.
The Laundromat Project believes art, culture, and engaged imaginations can change the way people see their world, open them up to new ideas, and connect them with their neighbors providing invaluable assets in furthering community wellbeing.
A number of the new resources have to do with storytelling seen from both sides, telling and listening. Storytelling and Social Change: A Strategy Guide | Working Narrative works with communities to tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy. Their work is located at the intersection of arts, technology, and social change. Hidden Voices seeks to empower underrepresented populations to effectively tell their stories by engaging communities in dialogue and positive action to strengthen community cohesion and provides pathways for increased communication, cooperation, and respect.
A guide to Listening Matters | Community Organisers, while perhaps technically not arts-based organ, is by the Company of Community Organisers, the national body established to support the training and development of community organizing in England. It provides an important aspect to effectively completing a feedback loop in the creation of a community’s story about itself.
“Listening to people is the foundation of community organising because it builds trust and relationships, uncovers issues and is an essential starting point for bringing people together to share stories, ideas and action.”
YOUNG LISTENERS SUPPORT PEERS WITH MENTAL WELLBEING
The site A S . I F | ART + SCIENCE IN THE FIELD works at rebuilding cross-disciplinary connections while keeping a balance between the two cultures of art and science, following their own creative paths while maintaining accuracy and critical thinking when conducting, and communicating about, science.
ArtsFwd.org has also been added, which though a creation of the EmcArts and featured in the last update, was not included in the NCP wiki through an oversight.
The mission of Imagining America | Artists & Scholars in Public Life is to publicly engage artists, designers, scholars, and community activists working toward the democratic transformation of higher education and civic life by creating democratic spaces to foster and advance publicly engaged scholarship that draws on arts, humanities, and design.
Animating Democracy places a high value on learning from and building capacity and visibility for practitioners’ work on the ground by bringing to bear Americans for the Arts’ strengths in research, policy, professional development, visibility, and advocacy specifically to advance and elevate arts for change work on field, cross-sector, and national levels. The group was also featured in the post The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 2 of 3 as advancing the role of the arts in fostering citizen participation and social change, along with Art VULUPS doing the same with geography, environmental science, land use planning, sustainability, art and creativity concepts.
Other added resources deal directly with finding and establishing artists for the community. Easle is supposed to make it easy to find and commission independent creators for a project. Street I Am - highlights street culture, street fest, busker street art, and graffiti street entertainment. Art Prof provides a unique opportunity for a global community to have equal access to a free visual arts education by removing barriers to art education that exist due to the high cost of higher education & private classes while providing easy-to-follow content for people of all ages and means. The site Dance/USA — The national service organization for professional dance looks to establishing legacy by the preservation of art form for future generations. Their Artist's Legacy Toolkit helps organize and preserve materials in ways that are practical but neither time-intensive nor expensive.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive or comprehensive list of resources, merely suggestions for possible ways to incorporate artistic thinking, along with design and systems thinking into the civic dialogue.
Community Arts is seen as a means of expressing what has been termed the Soul of a Community. The most significant change to the Community Arts wiki page is seeing it as being not only a component of Community Design but also more as a means of Advocacy By and For Community.
In regard to its place in the still being developed NCP Wiki Map on Kumu, Community Arts is a component of Places and a part of Art and Health Communities, which has been recently updated (read corrected) which in turn is related to Pathways to Healthy Communities.
Perhaps additional new pathways can be found incorporating Community Arts more deeply into Advocacy By and For Community and then extending into Community Ecology based on the concept that the community basis to address the health of the populace and community basis to address the health of the environment as in the #GreenNewDeal being the same.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
A Systems Practice Perspective of Radicalism and a Jerusalem Vision
In the last post, the idea of more directly addressing the challenges of living with the complex, wicked challenge of Palestinian/Jewish relationships in the City of Jerusalem using a Systems Practice approach was put forward. The last post focused more on the Systems Practice methodology itself rather than any particular complex issue it was meant to address. This post will focus that methodology back on the topic of Palestinian/Jewish relations in Jerusalem with the perhaps arguably idealistic goal of finding a new Jerusalem Vision. That lens though will still be abstract and conceptual in nature looking to the underlying forces that contribute to the detrimental impacts on those living within that shared system.
The focus is also still going to be limited. Beyond the Acumen/Omidyar Group Systems Practice projects being academic exercises, they are also in their short time span inadequate in reflecting the full complexity of the system or situations arising within that system. While this can be actually true of all systems and the system models which we create to help understand them, repeating yet again, "All models are wrong, some models are useful", it is especially true in this instance as we did not include a Palestinian perspective. This has been recognized as a missing piece of the story.
Furthermore, while complications and the often stochastic nature of the real world have hampered efforts to implement any of the different Systems Practice projects in that real world, it was also true that complications and the often stochastic nature of the real world prevented the unhampered implementation of the Systems Practice methodology itself.
Even if Systems Practice is seen, at least by me, as a playbook more than a philosophy, I would assert that it is a playbook navigating non-linear processes. In the first project, I threw a wrench into the process by mapping too early though it should be noted that the process dictated by the methodology did recover. The Systems Practice process, however, has never unfolded precisely as described by the manual. Not that Systems Practice doesn't recognize this, it is not a strictly paint-by-numbers process and such detours may provide helpful insights.
The third assignment in the Acumen Systems Practice course is on Upstream Downstream SAT Analysis on different Themes. As mentioned in the last post, our individual internal maps were disaggregated and the factors making them up were collected without any of the connecting relationships unique to each then categorized as enabling or inhibiting and upstream or downstream. For the most part, our individual mental models were largely abandoned in terms of the process.
The exception was our team leader, Yoel Ben-Avraham. After going through the process of categorizing factors and applying a S.A.T. analysis to them, Yoel felt that something fundamental to our understanding was still missing, something that the Systems Practice methodology had not brought forward. A theme of Radicalism as perceived from a Jewish perspective was seen as missing. As far as I understood, Yoel created his theme first and then populate it with factors which were then categorized instead of starting with factors.
It has been recognized from the start that I and everybody else except for Yoel were outside of the story and that while Yoel and I had discussed or debated different issues having different mindsets I determined to assist him in fleshing out this perspective by mapping out his text-based analysis shown below which was more in line with assignment four. Finally, I got to map.
The Kumu systems map revealed by this link focuses on the Radicalism theme fully populated when opened. The map is formatted in such a manner that one can mouse over the listed loops, R1 through R11, making up the map to reveal their location. This approach of mapping out somebody else's differing perspective of an issue has been undertaken before. The intention is to have the process of mapping reveal how the factors could be related to each other resulting in unforeseen emergent outcomes. This depends though on honestly and correctly mapping them without bias. In this case, as with others done before, the attempt was seen as successful by the other involved party.
What might be first noticed about the mapped out version of the Assignment 3 above is that the terms Upstream Causes and Downstream Effects become somewhat moot. All of the factors have been integrated into causal loops which are linked together so every factor serves as both upstream cause and downstream effect.
The Radicalism theme, as presented, is also self-contained. As it consists of factors related, interdependently with each other for a purpose or function, Radicalism can be seen as a system in its own right. There is required neither a significant source of input from outside of the system or significant output from the system allowing for meaningful feedback permitting change. The system by the interaction of its parts is self-sustaining and resilient. It is what has been referred to as an entrenched system except that it is in conflict with its larger environment rather than being an entrenched institutionalized you-can’t-fight-city-hall type system usually considered.
With the Radicalism theme systems map, one can also start with the loop R1 Alienation, click on the "Focus on" link at the top of the narrative section and "walk around" the loop through the narrative. The loop is seen as reinforcing in a "vicious" manner or functioning to make matters worse in terms of reaching the project's Guiding Star. The factors are all seen as inhibiting and from the S.A.T. perspective as attitudinal except for Arab Educational Indoctrination which is seen as transactional. The narrative for the individual factors comes primarily from Yoel's S.A.T. analysis but interpretations were made. Indoctrination was seen as referring to the transactions between teachers and students rather than the structural aspects of an Arab educational system.
Both the factors Alienation of Palestinians and Alienation of Jews are seen as being attitudinal and as being stocks despite them being of a non-physical nature as defined by Donella Meadows. The level of alienation in either populace can increase or decrease and cannot change instantaneously.
The connections can then be considered as flows. The flow out of the stock Alienation of Palestinians into the stock Alienation of Jews raises that stock though it does not decrease the Palestinian stock, as it is raised by the outflow from Alienation of Jews stock. External factors also influence the flow into and out of the two stocks acting as catalysts to enhance the maintaining of higher stock levels. There is not a systemic means of diminishing either of the stocks or relieving pressure from the flows, which if were made to exist could be seen as being contrary to the perceived function of the theme.
Going back to the R1 Alienation narrative, if necessary by clicking on the text in the middle of the loop within the map section, one can go to the bottom of the narrative and click on "Go to: R2" and add on the second loop, R2 Economic Slowdown. While Alienation of Palestinians is not seen as the sole causal factor of an Economic Slowdown and Economic Slowdown is not seen as the sole causal factor of Palestinian Alienation, their mutual relationship is seen as being highly correlated enough to be considered causal in nature for the purposes of the map.
Repeating the process to reveal the R3 loop Destruction of Palestinian Homes. This ties directly into the R1 Alienation loop. The factor in question is seen as transactional. There is a structural factor on the Israeli side involved but it is arguably outside of the theme based Radicalism system being considered.
More loops can be added using the same process. The loop R5 (Palestinian) Religious and Secular Leadership asserts that after three causal steps, (factor - connection - factor or what Kumu terms degrees) the loop R3 Destruction of Palestinian Homes is shown actually increasing overall alienation and entrenching what could be considered detrimental policies from the Jewish perspective. Continuation of loops into pattern of persistent causality further asserts the means by which the institutionalized system of Religious and Secular Leadership maintains control without the potential for adequate input to bring about change or to provide a platform for a different perspective.
Once the theme Radicalism is fully populated by the causal loops making it up, one can return to Start Page and add either one of two additional themes or both. The two themes are Extremist Violence and Transition and Accommodation of Values. While neither of the themes contains feedback loops, not all systems have feedback loops according to Donella Meadows’ book Thinking in Systems, A Primer (page 27), both integrate seamlessly into the Radicalism theme extending it.
The Extremist Violence theme exacerbates the vicious aspects of the Radicalism theme, while the theme of Transition and Accommodation of Values is shown to be inadequate to positively change the direction of the Radicalism theme.
This will be the last post for a while on Systems Practice in general and specifically on the Jerusalem Vision project. The Systems Practice methodology has been demonstrated to be a useful contribution to Systems Thinking and Direct Democracy. However, a review of Haaretz articles revealed the deep, inherent political complications assailing any efforts toward change. The Systems Practice process on its own would not be enough. Other steps would be required by the people who live within that system to implement new community paradigms.
The focus is also still going to be limited. Beyond the Acumen/Omidyar Group Systems Practice projects being academic exercises, they are also in their short time span inadequate in reflecting the full complexity of the system or situations arising within that system. While this can be actually true of all systems and the system models which we create to help understand them, repeating yet again, "All models are wrong, some models are useful", it is especially true in this instance as we did not include a Palestinian perspective. This has been recognized as a missing piece of the story.
Furthermore, while complications and the often stochastic nature of the real world have hampered efforts to implement any of the different Systems Practice projects in that real world, it was also true that complications and the often stochastic nature of the real world prevented the unhampered implementation of the Systems Practice methodology itself.
Even if Systems Practice is seen, at least by me, as a playbook more than a philosophy, I would assert that it is a playbook navigating non-linear processes. In the first project, I threw a wrench into the process by mapping too early though it should be noted that the process dictated by the methodology did recover. The Systems Practice process, however, has never unfolded precisely as described by the manual. Not that Systems Practice doesn't recognize this, it is not a strictly paint-by-numbers process and such detours may provide helpful insights.
The third assignment in the Acumen Systems Practice course is on Upstream Downstream SAT Analysis on different Themes. As mentioned in the last post, our individual internal maps were disaggregated and the factors making them up were collected without any of the connecting relationships unique to each then categorized as enabling or inhibiting and upstream or downstream. For the most part, our individual mental models were largely abandoned in terms of the process.
The exception was our team leader, Yoel Ben-Avraham. After going through the process of categorizing factors and applying a S.A.T. analysis to them, Yoel felt that something fundamental to our understanding was still missing, something that the Systems Practice methodology had not brought forward. A theme of Radicalism as perceived from a Jewish perspective was seen as missing. As far as I understood, Yoel created his theme first and then populate it with factors which were then categorized instead of starting with factors.
It has been recognized from the start that I and everybody else except for Yoel were outside of the story and that while Yoel and I had discussed or debated different issues having different mindsets I determined to assist him in fleshing out this perspective by mapping out his text-based analysis shown below which was more in line with assignment four. Finally, I got to map.
The Kumu systems map revealed by this link focuses on the Radicalism theme fully populated when opened. The map is formatted in such a manner that one can mouse over the listed loops, R1 through R11, making up the map to reveal their location. This approach of mapping out somebody else's differing perspective of an issue has been undertaken before. The intention is to have the process of mapping reveal how the factors could be related to each other resulting in unforeseen emergent outcomes. This depends though on honestly and correctly mapping them without bias. In this case, as with others done before, the attempt was seen as successful by the other involved party.
What might be first noticed about the mapped out version of the Assignment 3 above is that the terms Upstream Causes and Downstream Effects become somewhat moot. All of the factors have been integrated into causal loops which are linked together so every factor serves as both upstream cause and downstream effect.
The Radicalism theme, as presented, is also self-contained. As it consists of factors related, interdependently with each other for a purpose or function, Radicalism can be seen as a system in its own right. There is required neither a significant source of input from outside of the system or significant output from the system allowing for meaningful feedback permitting change. The system by the interaction of its parts is self-sustaining and resilient. It is what has been referred to as an entrenched system except that it is in conflict with its larger environment rather than being an entrenched institutionalized you-can’t-fight-city-hall type system usually considered.
With the Radicalism theme systems map, one can also start with the loop R1 Alienation, click on the "Focus on" link at the top of the narrative section and "walk around" the loop through the narrative. The loop is seen as reinforcing in a "vicious" manner or functioning to make matters worse in terms of reaching the project's Guiding Star. The factors are all seen as inhibiting and from the S.A.T. perspective as attitudinal except for Arab Educational Indoctrination which is seen as transactional. The narrative for the individual factors comes primarily from Yoel's S.A.T. analysis but interpretations were made. Indoctrination was seen as referring to the transactions between teachers and students rather than the structural aspects of an Arab educational system.
Both the factors Alienation of Palestinians and Alienation of Jews are seen as being attitudinal and as being stocks despite them being of a non-physical nature as defined by Donella Meadows. The level of alienation in either populace can increase or decrease and cannot change instantaneously.
The connections can then be considered as flows. The flow out of the stock Alienation of Palestinians into the stock Alienation of Jews raises that stock though it does not decrease the Palestinian stock, as it is raised by the outflow from Alienation of Jews stock. External factors also influence the flow into and out of the two stocks acting as catalysts to enhance the maintaining of higher stock levels. There is not a systemic means of diminishing either of the stocks or relieving pressure from the flows, which if were made to exist could be seen as being contrary to the perceived function of the theme.
Going back to the R1 Alienation narrative, if necessary by clicking on the text in the middle of the loop within the map section, one can go to the bottom of the narrative and click on "Go to: R2" and add on the second loop, R2 Economic Slowdown. While Alienation of Palestinians is not seen as the sole causal factor of an Economic Slowdown and Economic Slowdown is not seen as the sole causal factor of Palestinian Alienation, their mutual relationship is seen as being highly correlated enough to be considered causal in nature for the purposes of the map.
Repeating the process to reveal the R3 loop Destruction of Palestinian Homes. This ties directly into the R1 Alienation loop. The factor in question is seen as transactional. There is a structural factor on the Israeli side involved but it is arguably outside of the theme based Radicalism system being considered.
More loops can be added using the same process. The loop R5 (Palestinian) Religious and Secular Leadership asserts that after three causal steps, (factor - connection - factor or what Kumu terms degrees) the loop R3 Destruction of Palestinian Homes is shown actually increasing overall alienation and entrenching what could be considered detrimental policies from the Jewish perspective. Continuation of loops into pattern of persistent causality further asserts the means by which the institutionalized system of Religious and Secular Leadership maintains control without the potential for adequate input to bring about change or to provide a platform for a different perspective.
Once the theme Radicalism is fully populated by the causal loops making it up, one can return to Start Page and add either one of two additional themes or both. The two themes are Extremist Violence and Transition and Accommodation of Values. While neither of the themes contains feedback loops, not all systems have feedback loops according to Donella Meadows’ book Thinking in Systems, A Primer (page 27), both integrate seamlessly into the Radicalism theme extending it.
The Extremist Violence theme exacerbates the vicious aspects of the Radicalism theme, while the theme of Transition and Accommodation of Values is shown to be inadequate to positively change the direction of the Radicalism theme.
This will be the last post for a while on Systems Practice in general and specifically on the Jerusalem Vision project. The Systems Practice methodology has been demonstrated to be a useful contribution to Systems Thinking and Direct Democracy. However, a review of Haaretz articles revealed the deep, inherent political complications assailing any efforts toward change. The Systems Practice process on its own would not be enough. Other steps would be required by the people who live within that system to implement new community paradigms.
Friday, February 8, 2019
NCP Inquiries into Systems Practice - 10th post of 3rd Project
This is the tenth blog post in a series on the Jerusalem Vision Project, which is the third Systems Practice project undertaken through the Acumen course using the Omidyar Group’s approach to pragmatically applying Systems Thinking.
The project took my rudimentary knowledge of Systems Thinking as a basis for obtaining a better understanding of Systems Practice and applied it to a complex challenge - Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem of which I admittedly knew relatively nothing.
This specific blog post is going to again review this endeavor, not of achieving better relations between Palestinians and Jews in the City of Jerusalem but in the utilization of Systems Practice to address such complex challenges. These points have been made before but across disparate posts making their assertion somewhat disjointed.
These continuing endeavors seem to have worked well in attaining a better understanding of the Systems Practice methodology having initially made a late start in properly applying the methodology the first time with an inquiry into food trucks for homeless camps but still having concerns about the process afterward nonetheless. The second time, looking at plastic pollution of the ocean in Bangkok, Thailand, gaining a better understanding and a somewhat more successful application but still having questions that remained or continued to be needed to be tested to confirm certain aspects in terms of how Systems Practice could be utilized in developing new community paradigms.
The difference then between this Systems Practice project and the previous two projects is first, a better understanding of how a Systems Practice approach works and second, instead of focusing on each project step by step this project waited until completion to get a better overall view of the process. Both to determine how the Systems Practice process unfolded and to assess how Systems Practice might be integrated with Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking.
However, endeavoring to absorb the entire process after its completion raised a number of complications particularly when attempting to communicate the worthwhileness of the effort with anyone who has had little to no experience with Systems Thinking or Systems Practice. It is not a difficult challenge to get those interested in Systems Thinking or Systems Practice to take a look at another example of the methodology to either agree with or disagree and critique. You can simply ask them, the community is especially helpful.
It is more of a challenge to get those neck deep in dealing with real-world messes to consider Systems Thinking and Systems Practice as viable approaches to finding solutions. This takes us back to the first paragraph. Any contribution I made to specific projects was not based on my first-hand knowledge of the particular challenge under consideration but my relatively better understanding of applying Systems Thinking and increasingly, a Systems Practice approach to these challenges, in cooperation with others who had committed to trying to apply the approach with their enrollment in the course.
The Jerusalem Vision Project had its own particular challenges being based on both more complicated and conflictual issues, in addition to its complex nature. Complicated and conflictual because of political and historical reasons but also somewhat internally conflictual, though collegiately so, because of distinctions between different mental models used by the project participants. The complex nature of the challenge though may not be as readily apparent because of the confusion arising from the complications and inherent conflict.
While I feel confident that those with whom I went through the three Systems Practice projects found it beneficial, this is harder to convey to those who weren't brought to such efforts for their own reasons. All the harder as both Systems Thinking and Systems Practice can be conceptually abstract when people are often anxious for so-called concrete solutions.
Systems Thinking provides a logical construction in finding solutions but is not always explicitly empirically evident. Further complicating the matter is that Systems Thinking, though it has certain foundational aspects, can be categorized by different approaches and underlying philosophies that seemingly conflict. Conceptual conflicts by Systems Thinkers, seeking a solution to be imposed, that may sometimes be made too readily the crux of the matter rather than the detrimental impacts of the challenges themselves.
This can obscure the viability of System Thinking’s fundamental principles but it isn't the primary hurdle to convincing the uninitiated to make the commitment to a Systems Thinking or more specifically a Systems Practice approach which can be substantial.
The primary hurdle is an essential change to a mental model that is linear, analytical, reductionistic to one that incorporates a perspective that is also non-linear, holistic, synthetic. The basis and need for the change and resulting implications can be easily underappreciated while the siren call to grasp at an immediate concrete solution can be addictive. The basis for this distinction and requirement for convergence is explained, more succinctly than I can, by this video from Complexity Labs.
The Acumen/Omidyar Systems Practice approach overcomes this hurdle by having its implementation be dependent upon the convergence but not explicitly so. It follows the logic of some Systems Thinkers that like Fight Club, Systems Thinking shouldn't be talked about. It does lead those who habitually follow a path by reductionistic, analytical, linear thinking so often used by command and control top-down management to the alternative of thinking defined by synthesis, holism and non-linearity without making the transition too obvious.
The Omidyar Group’s approach to Systems Practice though does not only steer most participants, whose primary experience has been following that habitual path to an alternative one but also navigating those supposedly versed in Systems Thinking away from too quickly determining a final path to a solution to whatever complex challenge is being faced. This was my error with the first Systems Practice project, to immediately begin mapping towards a solution.
While the course does present the case for synthesis and Systems Thinking in a general sense early on by examples, it instead takes participants through a number of steps that unless used and tested can seem contrary to how we usually approach such challenges even when using Systems Thinking as individuals. While their purpose may be explained with each step taken, their cumulative effect cannot be fully appreciated until more fully implemented. Until that occurs participants are encouraged by the course to have trust in the process.
What the Omidyar approach does is take the internal, and usually implicit mental maps of each of the individual participants regarding the system in which the mess or complex situation occurs and asks them to hold it in abeyance then work to first create a common goal through the Guiding Star, Near Star and Framing Question. More importantly, though, is a process of disaggregating those individual maps by collecting the factors making them up without any of the connecting relationships unique to each.
This collective set of factors is then jointly categorized as being either enabling or inhibiting and then rearranged into new collections defined by common traits or themes. This process helps not only to open up pathways to the internal mental maps of individual’s that may have been previously closed but also sets the basis for finding a set of new and collectively determined relationships. This arguably has a far stronger basis for democratic deliberations. At no point in the process so far has a systems map or map of any type been started. This took some personal adjustment.
The next steps in the Systems Practice process, upstream and downstream relationship configuration and S.A.T. (structural, attitudinal, transactional) Analysis were touched upon for the third time in recent posts. Despite having my own ideas on S.A.T analysis and its implications, I have come to appreciate its viability in contributing to the process, having been able to anchor it to basic Systems Thinking concepts such as the Systems Thinking Iceberg model and integrating it into basic Causal Loop Diagrams.
However, it needs to be admitted openly that Systems Practice does not provide a panacea. Surely no surprise on its own but it is important to be clear on why. The first goes back to the beginning of this post. I may have made an abstract, conceptual argument for the viability of Systems Practice but in the meantime, I completely abandoned the challenge it was supposed to address - Palestinian/Jewish relations in the City of Jerusalem.
The individual embedded in the system of concern, be they Palestinian or Jew, needs to be convinced of the viability of the process. That has not been accomplished except perhaps for a few individuals. To be even more honest, none of the projects undertaken so far came up with a final answer to their challenge. These were, to be fair time restricted, limited, basically academic projects taken on by groups of strangers globally separated by different time zones. In those cases were doing more was sought out, the complications and often stochastic nature of the real world hampered such efforts. On a broader and long term basis the challenge though is one of implementation and the problem is a Knowing-Doing Gap discussed in previous posts.
Despite these limitations, I have become convinced that Systems Practice can make a valuable contribution to creating new community paradigms. I recognize though that my rationale as presented will have little potential to influence those living with complex, wicked challenges without at least addressing those challenges more directly. I will attempt that in the next post.
This specific blog post is going to again review this endeavor, not of achieving better relations between Palestinians and Jews in the City of Jerusalem but in the utilization of Systems Practice to address such complex challenges. These points have been made before but across disparate posts making their assertion somewhat disjointed.
These continuing endeavors seem to have worked well in attaining a better understanding of the Systems Practice methodology having initially made a late start in properly applying the methodology the first time with an inquiry into food trucks for homeless camps but still having concerns about the process afterward nonetheless. The second time, looking at plastic pollution of the ocean in Bangkok, Thailand, gaining a better understanding and a somewhat more successful application but still having questions that remained or continued to be needed to be tested to confirm certain aspects in terms of how Systems Practice could be utilized in developing new community paradigms.
The difference then between this Systems Practice project and the previous two projects is first, a better understanding of how a Systems Practice approach works and second, instead of focusing on each project step by step this project waited until completion to get a better overall view of the process. Both to determine how the Systems Practice process unfolded and to assess how Systems Practice might be integrated with Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking.
However, endeavoring to absorb the entire process after its completion raised a number of complications particularly when attempting to communicate the worthwhileness of the effort with anyone who has had little to no experience with Systems Thinking or Systems Practice. It is not a difficult challenge to get those interested in Systems Thinking or Systems Practice to take a look at another example of the methodology to either agree with or disagree and critique. You can simply ask them, the community is especially helpful.
It is more of a challenge to get those neck deep in dealing with real-world messes to consider Systems Thinking and Systems Practice as viable approaches to finding solutions. This takes us back to the first paragraph. Any contribution I made to specific projects was not based on my first-hand knowledge of the particular challenge under consideration but my relatively better understanding of applying Systems Thinking and increasingly, a Systems Practice approach to these challenges, in cooperation with others who had committed to trying to apply the approach with their enrollment in the course.
The Jerusalem Vision Project had its own particular challenges being based on both more complicated and conflictual issues, in addition to its complex nature. Complicated and conflictual because of political and historical reasons but also somewhat internally conflictual, though collegiately so, because of distinctions between different mental models used by the project participants. The complex nature of the challenge though may not be as readily apparent because of the confusion arising from the complications and inherent conflict.
While I feel confident that those with whom I went through the three Systems Practice projects found it beneficial, this is harder to convey to those who weren't brought to such efforts for their own reasons. All the harder as both Systems Thinking and Systems Practice can be conceptually abstract when people are often anxious for so-called concrete solutions.
Systems Thinking provides a logical construction in finding solutions but is not always explicitly empirically evident. Further complicating the matter is that Systems Thinking, though it has certain foundational aspects, can be categorized by different approaches and underlying philosophies that seemingly conflict. Conceptual conflicts by Systems Thinkers, seeking a solution to be imposed, that may sometimes be made too readily the crux of the matter rather than the detrimental impacts of the challenges themselves.
This can obscure the viability of System Thinking’s fundamental principles but it isn't the primary hurdle to convincing the uninitiated to make the commitment to a Systems Thinking or more specifically a Systems Practice approach which can be substantial.
The primary hurdle is an essential change to a mental model that is linear, analytical, reductionistic to one that incorporates a perspective that is also non-linear, holistic, synthetic. The basis and need for the change and resulting implications can be easily underappreciated while the siren call to grasp at an immediate concrete solution can be addictive. The basis for this distinction and requirement for convergence is explained, more succinctly than I can, by this video from Complexity Labs.
The Acumen/Omidyar Systems Practice approach overcomes this hurdle by having its implementation be dependent upon the convergence but not explicitly so. It follows the logic of some Systems Thinkers that like Fight Club, Systems Thinking shouldn't be talked about. It does lead those who habitually follow a path by reductionistic, analytical, linear thinking so often used by command and control top-down management to the alternative of thinking defined by synthesis, holism and non-linearity without making the transition too obvious.
The Omidyar Group’s approach to Systems Practice though does not only steer most participants, whose primary experience has been following that habitual path to an alternative one but also navigating those supposedly versed in Systems Thinking away from too quickly determining a final path to a solution to whatever complex challenge is being faced. This was my error with the first Systems Practice project, to immediately begin mapping towards a solution.
While the course does present the case for synthesis and Systems Thinking in a general sense early on by examples, it instead takes participants through a number of steps that unless used and tested can seem contrary to how we usually approach such challenges even when using Systems Thinking as individuals. While their purpose may be explained with each step taken, their cumulative effect cannot be fully appreciated until more fully implemented. Until that occurs participants are encouraged by the course to have trust in the process.
What the Omidyar approach does is take the internal, and usually implicit mental maps of each of the individual participants regarding the system in which the mess or complex situation occurs and asks them to hold it in abeyance then work to first create a common goal through the Guiding Star, Near Star and Framing Question. More importantly, though, is a process of disaggregating those individual maps by collecting the factors making them up without any of the connecting relationships unique to each.
This collective set of factors is then jointly categorized as being either enabling or inhibiting and then rearranged into new collections defined by common traits or themes. This process helps not only to open up pathways to the internal mental maps of individual’s that may have been previously closed but also sets the basis for finding a set of new and collectively determined relationships. This arguably has a far stronger basis for democratic deliberations. At no point in the process so far has a systems map or map of any type been started. This took some personal adjustment.
The next steps in the Systems Practice process, upstream and downstream relationship configuration and S.A.T. (structural, attitudinal, transactional) Analysis were touched upon for the third time in recent posts. Despite having my own ideas on S.A.T analysis and its implications, I have come to appreciate its viability in contributing to the process, having been able to anchor it to basic Systems Thinking concepts such as the Systems Thinking Iceberg model and integrating it into basic Causal Loop Diagrams.
However, it needs to be admitted openly that Systems Practice does not provide a panacea. Surely no surprise on its own but it is important to be clear on why. The first goes back to the beginning of this post. I may have made an abstract, conceptual argument for the viability of Systems Practice but in the meantime, I completely abandoned the challenge it was supposed to address - Palestinian/Jewish relations in the City of Jerusalem.
The individual embedded in the system of concern, be they Palestinian or Jew, needs to be convinced of the viability of the process. That has not been accomplished except perhaps for a few individuals. To be even more honest, none of the projects undertaken so far came up with a final answer to their challenge. These were, to be fair time restricted, limited, basically academic projects taken on by groups of strangers globally separated by different time zones. In those cases were doing more was sought out, the complications and often stochastic nature of the real world hampered such efforts. On a broader and long term basis the challenge though is one of implementation and the problem is a Knowing-Doing Gap discussed in previous posts.
Despite these limitations, I have become convinced that Systems Practice can make a valuable contribution to creating new community paradigms. I recognize though that my rationale as presented will have little potential to influence those living with complex, wicked challenges without at least addressing those challenges more directly. I will attempt that in the next post.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Reaching for a New Jerusalem Vision using Systems Practice
Recently, the first blog post in a long while was posted on the third effort to use Systems Practice to address a complex issue, this time Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem. This post continues in that vein. In truth though, little will be said about the issue itself, despite recognizing that its greater awareness generates greater attraction. Instead, the focus will be on the Systems Practice approach and how it could possibly be related to direct democratic governance.
Seeking to find solutions through collaborative dialogue and deliberations, which are aspects of Systems Practice, can also be seen as components of direct democracy as opposed to more competitive forms of interaction, such as debates within more representative forms of democracy through institutions. This is not to establish that one form of democratic governance is preferable to the other. The Systems Practice approach seeks to examine the system at a level foundational to such a determination. It is not the system though that calls for the resolution of differing perspectives. It is for people themselves to make such a determination.
Before proceeding further, certain points will need to be repeated or clarified. As has been said in other efforts of this type this is not intended to be a substitute for the course. If you become interested in the process then sign up to take the course. An added piece of advice for Systems Practice, plan to take it again a second time, one time will likely not be enough. This is suspected to be true whether you sign up as an individual or start off as part of a group.
Blogging about this third project was held off until completion of the course. This creates new challenges in presenting the approach to addressing this or any complex issue. With previous projects, the proverbial elephant could be served in small portions focusing on a specific component of the process. Taken as a whole, it becomes all the more complex. It will still be served in limited portions but there is a greater awareness that there are no aspects of the system that can't be considered from multiple perspectives.
A Systems Thinking/Systems Practice approach can assist in addressing what can arguably be designated as a Wicked Problem. As has been noted before, if messes, as defined by Russell Ackoff are problems that can be thought of like Frankenstein’s monster then wicked problems are Godzilla. Wherein the potential sources of solutions can seem as complex as the wicked problem itself.
The full systems map for this project will not be presented at this point. First, this blog post or even series is not intended to provide a final answer or solution. The focus will be on the process of attempting to arrive at an answer. Primarily though because it is too complex, in at least three ways.
We are requiring people to address the complexity of the issue itself, the complexity of a Systems Thinking approach to the issue as opposed to the more generally overly used and generally taken for granted reductionist approach and the use of general unfamiliar graphically oriented means of communicating these ideas through systems mapping. If these concepts are to be widely disseminated then all three must be considered together.
I had limited knowledge of the factors involved in the issues making up the system being considered. This was made all the more apparent by working with somebody embedded, as a stakeholder, in that system. It’s important to note that additional diverse stakeholder perspectives are still needed. When dealing with systems, especially detrimental systems, recognizing the particular realities and physical manifestations are as important as the underlying conceptual system of relationships. Without this, it’s impossible to understand the story behind people’s motivations.
The tendency to default to reductionist thinking rose even with the writing of this blog post which was rewritten a number of times to continually expand the scope to a more holistic perspective. The systems map for this Systems Practice project was created largely from other text which is more linearly oriented. Reinterpreting the map back to text doesn’t merely involve retracing steps. Hopefully, there is a solid, functional relationship between the two, though not necessarily direct, allowing for a global understanding encompassing both what has been considered longitudinal and latitudinal perspectives.
Systems maps on their own can serve different purposes, to either develop understanding or to communicate understanding but, at least in my experience, not both. There is, in my view, a sizable gap between the two that must be overcome before accomplishing that. Communicating full understanding is difficult and often the solution is to simplify and omit something. My past tendency has been to concentrate more on gaining understanding, admittedly mostly my own, and less on communicating that understanding to others. Systems Practice extends this potential for understanding to a group.
There is also a danger with people, even if part of the Systems Practice process, getting the mistaken impression that maps, as presented, are complete discouraging additional input. A systems map can be seen as being more extensive and coherent in describing a system than it is actually. How extensive a map appears can be an issue in making the challenge seem overwhelming without boundaries or with endless divisions. How coherent a map appears can help give the impression that the factors are related but not necessarily how. Together they seemingly suggest containing and controlling a challenge giving a false impression of finality. The maps, as a result, aren't examined closely enough to be properly tested and require having a guide to assist with navigation to do so. This arose during the process of developing a Systems Practice project dealing with Plastic Pollution in Thailand.
The often cited Systems Thinking principle established by George Box that all models (or maps) are wrong but some are useful needs to be retained. The question of where wrong and where useful must be continually asked. Explicitly contrasting those differences helps test the system to maintain authenticity but not to become over-elaborate.
As was said in the previous post, the particular issue being considered is both complex and controversial so one’s approach could potentially leave one susceptible to a charge of white-knight-savior hubris. So let me be clear, as said previously I did not start with any expertise in the issue. Our efforts did not result in a solution to the Israeli-Jewish/Palestinian-Arab conflict. We did not come up with any solutions. That was never an expectation. What we developed was a deeper understanding of what would become to be termed factors, forces and persistent patterns of causality of the system we were addressing. There are still though potential points of controversy remaining that will arise because of positions that are taken.
This is not to suggest any intention to choose one side of an issue over another. Recognizing contrasts in perspectives can be seen as an essential component of establishing cognitive diversity. Cognitive diversity refers to the concept put forward by thinkers such as Scott Page. It's not meant as a panacea for a lack of other forms of diversity or to address any differences in the distribution of power. Cognitive diversity, particularly beyond my own, was considered to be an essential component in developing the project. The problem is when contrasts rise to the level of conflicts or coercion. Taking a more reductionist oriented approach, the opposing perspectives could be seen as different and separate competing systems.
Systems Practice approaches these contrasting perspectives, even if to the point of being confrontational, as being a single system in a state of oscillation between those contrasting perspectives. Even so, positions by necessity must be established which will by their nature not be settled and will invariably be objected to by someone.
It is not enough though to merely recognize arguments of opposing perspectives in an attempt to provide a so-called balanced view. What needs to be realized is how the different factors making up those perspectives interrelate with each other, creating causal influences beyond the point of direct cause-effect confrontation to attaining feedback so as to understand why the entrenched system despite being deleterious is maintained.
As a means of transition, another systems map, on the same issue in general, will be considered first. The map being used for the purpose of comparison and contrast is A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by David Peter Stroh in the Systems Thinker. It is arguably far more accessible and comprehensible than our Systems Practice map and purportedly comes up with a solution.
A large portion of the Systems Practice project to Create a New Vision for Jerusalem, especially for my contribution, was based on an article by Dr. David Koren, Advisor to the Mayor of Jerusalem for Arab and eastern Jerusalem affairs, "Eastern Jerusalem: End of an Intermediate Era". The next blog post will go into more detail.
.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Using Systems Practice to Help Create a New Vision for the City of Jerusalem
It has been nearly three months since my last blog post. A surprisingly lengthy hiatus but the time was spent participating in yet a third +Acumen Systems Practice course. This time the decision was made not to blog about the process of the course until it was completed. The same course has been completed two times before and although I did obtain a certificate each time I felt that I had not fully embraced the Omidyar Group approach utilized by the course. I needed to more fully test the approach and myself. This blog was created to support such efforts, not such efforts to support the blog.
The decision had been made prior to the course to become part of a team and lend support or act to provide scaffolding for the efforts of others using what prior knowledge that had been obtained of both Systems Thinking and Systems Practice.
So I took what rudimentary knowledge I have about Systems Thinking, using it as a basis for obtaining a better understanding of a particularly practical approach to applying Systems Thinking, the Omidyar Group Systems Practice, and applied it to a complex challenge of which I knew relatively nothing - Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem.
This Systems Practice project also provided the opportunity to again test ideas concerning Systems Thinking and direct democratic governance, both participatory and deliberative, and again the constraints of such an approach were demonstrated. The notion that everyone in a large group or community could be induced to participate fully in a systems thinking approach to solving a problem is one of them. Our team started off with about ten people and finished off essentially with four actively participating. Some fell off because of competing interests, others simply faded away.
It also tested the ability of a group, despite individual limitations in terms of knowledge and understanding, being able to address a complex, even wicked challenge in a meaningful manner. In this sense, the project was judged as being a success. Not in having provided a final solution but as in creating a platform that has the potential to be built upon if only as a prototype.
Enough was known to realize that this would be a very complex problem. The issue of Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem is not only complex it is also controversial. Positions will be taken that are bound to upset somebody.
What we came up with together, in the end, was the basis of a story of how many of the issues facing both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs living in the City of Jerusalem arise, are perpetuated and are made resistant to change. Defining it as a story is not a limitation. Stories are more open to connection with others. It seeks not to take one side or the other, instead, it seeks to reveal the factors, forces and persistent causal pathways that create the existing entrenched system giving a fuller sense of the obstacles and difficulties faced by those living within that system.
I did not write the story. None of us did, individually. It arose using the Omidyar Group Systems Practice methodology, which I will be going over in greater detail in future blog posts. Not only will the Omidyar Systems Practice methodology of applying Systems Thinking to an issue be looked at more closely, so will Kumu and the manner in which it worked with assisting in that process.
It recognizes that what we came up with as a team is being proposed as a model of an existing system taken from a set of particular perspectives. While those perspectives are each limited, there is an authentic voice behind this story. It is not mine.
That voice is Yoel Ben-Avraham, a semi-retired IT professional, now a Consultant & Workshop Facilitator living in Jerusalem, Israel who led the Social Impact Consulting team. The rest of the final team, a married couple, Anna B. Sabhaney and Ruda Sabhaney, was spread across the globe, sometimes in Greece or India, sometimes in London. To my mind, while the rest of us brought in unique perspectives with beneficial intentions, we were still outsiders, geographically, historically, and culturally.
One of the limitations of our systems practice mapping model, at least in my view, is that while it has an authentic voice which is necessary it is not sufficient. Other, alternative but still authentic voices need to be brought in. This, however, will likely become a difficult challenge. Not only because of the political controversy associated with the issues but the systemic issues related to the type of systems approach taken to address those issues.
Cognitive diversity was encouraged to the point that it could be with a limited number in the group. Everyone made a contribution based on their own unique experiences. Combined with the process of systemic synthesis of both the Systems Practice methodology and Kumu systems mapping program, this small number likely made reaching a consensus easier. What is far more likely is that issues raised in Michael Jackson’s System of Systems matrix will arise with larger numbers, especially those that applied to coercive or conflictual systems. Jackson used both terms in his writing. A likely controversial position taken in the project is that agents can exhibit both coercive and conflictual influences through the application of both in-use and espoused policies as suggested by Chris Argyris.
Yoel and I often served as counterpoints to each other but in a deliberative sense, not through argumentative debate. Despite my limitations regarding the relevant issues, there were no constraints felt on my part in putting forth positions on the matters under consideration. There was also little hesitation after a period of consideration in adjusting to and accepting alternative perspectives. What became the final Systems Practice map for the course was the synthesized consensus of the group.
Cognitive diversity was encouraged to the point that it could be with a limited number in the group. Everyone made a contribution based on their own unique experiences. Combined with the process of systemic synthesis of both the Systems Practice methodology and Kumu systems mapping program, this small number likely made reaching a consensus easier. What is far more likely is that issues raised in Michael Jackson’s System of Systems matrix will arise with larger numbers, especially those that applied to coercive or conflictual systems. Jackson used both terms in his writing. A likely controversial position taken in the project is that agents can exhibit both coercive and conflictual influences through the application of both in-use and espoused policies as suggested by Chris Argyris.
Yoel and I often served as counterpoints to each other but in a deliberative sense, not through argumentative debate. Despite my limitations regarding the relevant issues, there were no constraints felt on my part in putting forth positions on the matters under consideration. There was also little hesitation after a period of consideration in adjusting to and accepting alternative perspectives. What became the final Systems Practice map for the course was the synthesized consensus of the group.
The ability to take a different or contrarian position regardless of any personal limitations is a natural tendency on my part. There is also little hesitation in either arguing for my current chosen concepts with even my Systems Thinking mentors or in seeking clarification or correction from them.
What Systems Thinking provides is a means of navigation in attaining a truer course by helping to check or correct those tendencies when warranted. What Systems Practice did was to apply this to a group process and thereby provide a further check on them. Further checks yet are still warranted.
The contrasting, alternative hypotheses that Yoel and I brought were not only based on an insider perspective versus an outsider perspective or his more conservative perspective versus my more liberal perspective. What may have actually have informed the process to an even greater extent is our different systems perspectives.
Yoel based his approach to systems to a large extent on his experience as a systems analyst. This meant that we both had some familiarity with thinking about systems. A difference, besides his greater years of experience, was that my approach was more a matter of systems synthesis and greater familiarity with the Kumu systems mapping program which greatly assisted with this. Both are part of a full understanding of Systems Thinking and both were incorporated as aspects of the Systems Practice methodology.
In the next post, another article and systems map on a Systemic View of the Israeli -Palestinian Conflict will be used to compare and contrast with so as to discern other important aspects of the system defining Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem and to test assumptions that systems thinkers, including this one, can make applying more abstract conceptualizations to real-world events.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)