| Development Practitioners Artists of the Invisible From the Community Development Resource Association's
Annual Report 1998/1999 |
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Opening Unfolding Emerging Disclosing Closing
"Observe how all things are continually being born of change ...
Whatever is, is in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it."
Marcus Aurelius
"You want to catch this wolf, the old man said. Maybe you want the skin
so you can get some money. Maybe you can buy some boots or something like
that. You can do that. But where is the wolf? The wolf is like the copo de
nieve.
Snowflake.
Snowflake. You can catch the snowflake but when you look in your hand you
don’t have it no more. Maybe you see this dechado. But before you can see
it it is gone. If you want to see it you have to see it on its own ground.
If you catch it you lose it. And where it goes there is no coming back from.
Not even God can bring it back"
Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing
"Nature is an open secret".
J. W. Goethe
"Life is not a problem to be solved but an experiment to be lived."
James Hollis
As consultants of the CDRA we have immersed ourselves in the facilitation and exploration of processes of change and development. Simultaneously, and as an integral part of such work, we have engaged in our own processes of development with a certain devotion and conscientiousness. In our multi-faceted roles as both those who intervene as well as those who are developed, we have tried to find a balance between detachment and activism, experience and observation, intervention and reflection. And we have attempted to share, with those who are similarly engaged in the development endeavour, some of the insights gained through a rich and varied practice.
In our last Annual Report (1997/98) we challenged conventional "development" practice, as it has played itself out within the development sector, by describing the dominant paradigms and frameworks which inform such practice. We contrasted what we termed the conventional approach with an alternative perspective which, out of our own experience, appears to offer a far more valid and viable approach to an arena fraught with ambiguity, complexity and controversy. This presentation touched a deep chord within many who have found the gap between the rhetoric and practice of development contradictory and confusing, and seemed to help many readers gain a more nuanced and subtle conceptual grasp of both their discipline and their motivation. A different "frame" was offered, one which enabled readers to view their practice in a new light. For many, this was an experience of relief.
Focusing on the development process itself as it is experienced by individuals and groups undergoing change, that Report presented an overview of conventional and alternative approaches and activities engaged in by the sector. Only very briefly did it allude to the developmental intervention as a specific and focused practice within the general ambit of (often so-called) development activity. It is our intention in this Report to move the discussion further, by looking directly at the developmental practice which is implied by an alternative conception of development. We hope, by so doing, to aid practitioners not simply in their conception and understanding of development but in their actual practice of intervening directly in the development processes of others.
At the outset, it is important to specify precisely what we believe is indicated by the term "development", so that what follows is not misunderstood. In the last few years, after decades of living with the development endeavour, the term "people-centered development" has emerged. We are not sure who originally coined the term, but it left us, to a degree, nonplussed and bemused. Surely the whole point of the development endeavour had always been people, and their development! Well, perhaps it had, but our bewilderment indicates a certain degree of naivete. For, while the ultimate goal may always have been the development of people, nevertheless the mainstream of development practice has seldom focused directly on working with people.
The mainstream of development practice, to the contrary, has concentrated on doing things to and (ideally) for people, rather than with people. It has concerned itself with political and economic analyses and interventions; with the provision of resources; with the provision of "improved" infrastructure in many arenas; with the dissemination of information; and with the influence of policy and structural change. These have all been done - at their best - on behalf of "the marginalised and dispossessed". The idea being that action on the environment - or context - within which people live constitutes development as such, as well as enables the development of people.
Underlying this approach are a number of (invisible) presuppositions which have influenced interventions. That development is linear and predictable; that we can exhaustively analyse and control our (social) environment, and thereby specify inputs which will lead directly to intended outputs, without unintended consequences. That change is rational, and that therefore understanding will lead to change. That technical, economic and political interventions towards enabling environments will lead to social development; that structural change will lead to human change. That development interventions can be short term and piecemeal, and separated from wider systemic considerations. In short, that we can intervene from the outside, as it were, and create development (and without necessarily being affected ourselves).
There is no doubt that gains have been made over the years, following this "conventional" paradigm. There is equally no doubt that much less has been achieved than is required, and that the gap between the marginalised, dispossessed and powerless, on the one hand, and the powerful and prosperous, on the other, is growing untenably and seemingly irrevocably. Our point here, however, is that such an understanding of development is clearly not "people-centered". It has, certainly, when given the benefit of the doubt, had the development of people as its intended goal, but it has focused on people’s environments, rather than on people themselves. And this is precisely what we do not intend by our use of the term development.
Our use of the term development specifically implies intervention into the development processes of people themselves, be they individuals, groups, organisations or communities. "People-centered development", therefore, is an appropriate term. It is not primarily about providing advice or (material) resources, or about organising structural and policy changes, but about working facilitatively alongside people so that they may enlarge themselves and thus gain their own capacity to exert authority over their own lives and futures. This is what we mean when we refer to development - facilitation of the growing capacity of people; the movement towards consciousness.
This (alternative) approach to development is no longer the strange and unknown beast that it once was. Increasingly, it is being recognised that conventional approaches to development are fraught with contention, and that something else is required. Increasingly, this alternative approach to development is being regarded as at least a legitimate exploration, if not yet as the obvious and necessary approach. Many, however, who are attempting to engage with this approach, or who are attempting to advocate or resource it, still operate from out of the assumptions which underpin the conventional approach. Yet a "people-centered" approach has to recognise that these assumptions do not hold.
When working facilitatively with people’s inherent development processes, we experience change as neither linear nor predictable nor short term. It is not exclusively rational nor devoid of unintended consequences, and we can neither create it nor control it. Development interventions open things up, rather than close them down.
Every intervention is an intervention into a situation, or development process, which already has its own trajectory and "logic", and every intervention is conducted within a vast systemic framework comprising many rhythms and relationships which are beyond our grasp and even beyond our immediate ken. And we are part of that framework, and therefore not really outsiders at all - our own processes of development (or the lack thereof) are an integral part of the intervention.
We must, therefore, act with sensitivity and circumspection; with respect and due caution; with the knowledge that we can attempt to guide, but never impose. Every intervention is an intervention into a complex system, and results in a change to that system, and consequently a new set of circumstances. We have to adapt to these changing circumstances, read deeply into the underlying and often opaque currents which lie beneath the surface of what is immediately observable. Develop the ability to respond to the situation as it presents itself afresh, rather than impose preconceived solutions or answers. "Response-ability" is the key note in the facilitation of "people-centered development" - the capacity to read accurately, to respond with appropriate interventions, and to deal with the ambiguity which is integral to any significant process of human change. To have the inner strength to work with open-ended process, rather than with the delivery of fixed product.
Many do indeed work in this way, but struggle with the legacy of assumptions which underpin the "conventional" approach. These form the cultural and resource context within which development practitioners work. The principles which inform a "people-centered" approach to development have not yet been thoroughly explored and understood, let alone incorporated into practice.
In our consultancy work with NGOs, with donors, with multi-national development agencies and with government bureaucracies which are beginning to engage with development, we have noted that the single most glaring weakness - or lack of organisational capacity - lies in the arena of practice. Development organisations are better able to improve teamwork and reduce internal conflict, build leadership and management competency, restructure themselves to become more efficient and streamlined, construct collaborative partnerships with other organisations, improve their information base and financial sustainability, and build sophisticated mission statements and statements of overall strategy. But the most intractable problem with which they grapple (all too often unaware) is their grasp - or lack of grasp - of on-the-ground development practice.
While there may be a general feeling for the values and principles which inform people-centered development, and a general sense of the overall direction of the endeavour, there is often little muscularity, or precision, to this feeling. We can articulate intent, but struggle to cohere into a thorough approach which can be called a discipline. This lack of a disciplined approach encourages us to learn and employ specific skills and techniques, exercises and models, which are applied piecemeal, often as once-off or as incoherent interventions, without being held together and informed by an understanding of the dynamic nature of the system which is being intervened into.
It helps to distinguish between the concepts of approach, method, and tool. An approach is a coherent and informed understanding of how change and development occurs, developed through the interplay of theory and practice; it informs and provides a frame for practice. This then may translate into various specific development methodologies - consultancy, fieldwork, grant making, training and teaching, mentoring, project management, individual counselling, organisation development, micro-enterprise development, and so on. These are different methodologies, but all, if they are developmental, are informed by a developmental approach. Within the methodologies, sometimes attached to one or the other and sometimes common across many methodologies, are specific tools and interventions - PRA, needs analysis, SWOT, ZOPP; strategic planning exercises, team building exercises, conflict resolution exercises; techniques for managing resources and people, for renewing a group's sense of mission, for building trust, for gaining understanding, for restructuring or making culture conscious; and so on and on and on. There are literally thousands of such tools.
Development practice is compromised when a reliance and focus on techniques is substituted for the discipline of a coherent approach. When they are regarded as points of departure, rather than secondary aids. Practice is also compromised when vague and general lists of principles and values are substituted for the rigour of a disciplined approach. Yet training often consists of little more than building skills in the use of tools; and strategy often focuses mainly on political manoeuvring. We are strongest at tools, weaker at understanding and adopting specific methodologies, and weakest when it comes to disciplined approach. It is our weakness in this latter arena which constitutes the Achilles Heel of people-centered development practice.
This Report is concerned with providing a basic orientation to overall approach
with respect to development practice, within which specific methodology and
the use of individual tools may be informed, understood and congruently applied.
"Death of earth, birth of water; death of water, birth of air; from air, fire; and so round again"
Heraclitus
It’s all very well to have a range of assumptions about development. That it is unpredictable and not always rational. That it is not linear but dynamic and often contradictory. That we cannot control it. That the development intervention opens things up rather than closes things down, and that therefore unexpected consequences are to be embraced rather than avoided. But the question is: how can we transform the broad ballpark of assumptions underpinning the people-centered perspective on change and development into a meticulous and disciplined approach?
To be more precise, if the development process is turbulent and unpredictable, how can we construct a formal framework which may structure and discipline the practice of development? If the nature of the work is responsive, specific to individual situations, how can it be given a generalised form and frame? How can we put limits on, a boundary around, what are essentially open-ended processes? How can we develop criteria and thus formalise and evaluate development interventions when we know that "one thing leads to another"? If we have so little control over results, how can we manage our practice, and teach others to manage theirs?
The way through is not to avoid or deny the realities of change, but to develop an approach which works with, rather than against, the natural flow of a development process. An approach which recognises the whole of the development process as the focus, rather than successful implementation of a tool, technique or project. A framing approach within which such tools are applied is necessary, yet an approach which respects the dynamic nature of the development process.
In our own practice, we find such a frame indicated by the four elements which were known to the world of antiquity, and which are deeply woven as archetypal patterns within our own psyches - fire, air, water, earth. We will use these resonant and ageless symbols to describe our approach. This description will follow a sequence, to aid understanding. In reality, each phase runs throughout the intervention, sometimes more prominent, sometimes less. (We return to this aspect in the following section.)
Fire -
the element of warmth
The manner in which the relationship between development practitioner and "client" (for want of a better term) is begun, formed and continued, is perhaps the most important aspect of the final efficacy of the development intervention. Development is about the development of people. The essential facet of a developmental relationship is human warmth and integrity.
The quality of fire is that of transformation, transmutation. Fire is the gift, bestowed upon humankind, which allows us to transform one thing into another, which enables creativity. Human warmth is the resounding note in successful development processes. Human warmth and integrity, and the trust which such warmth and integrity fosters. In situations of change, of ambiguity and uncertainty, trust in the one who is facilitating such change is fundamental. Honesty, confidentiality and openness on the part of the practitioner are vital.
More than this, the client system must be surrounded by a cocoon of warmth in which new beginnings may be gestated and given birth. It is for the practitioner to provide such warmth, to prove integrity, to generate trust. Not least, this often demonstrates a way of working with people which may be missing within the client’s world. Such warmth begins to allow change to take place beyond the specific actions and techniques of the practitioner. It breaks barriers, dissolves rigidity, and enables people to regain a sense of their own worth.
Fire is an important symbol too because it sacrifices material as it generates warmth, and sacrifice of the old is a vital aspect of change. The practitioner who does not consider the warmth of human relationship as a prerequisite for success is merely a technician, never a development facilitator.
Air -
the element of light
The client system will not be transparent to itself; if it were the assistance of a development practitioner would be unnecessary. The development process is about enlarging the client’s capacity through self-understanding. Rendering what is unconscious, conscious. The practitioner is called upon to render such transparency. We associate this step of the development process - gaining understanding - with air, which is the medium of light. The practitioner needs to probe deeply, beneath the surface, in order to bring that which is beneath the surface into the open air above. To understand, so that the client can be helped to understand. To bring light to bear on the situation, so that the client may become enlightened about itself.
Observation is the key note of this phase. Observation may take many forms - it will entail listening and seeing, questioning and analysis; but it should also go beyond, to intuiting, sensing, testing hunches, using imagination to create metaphors for the client which may be more enlightening than simple analysis. The objective is not to break the whole down into component parts, but to use observation of the parts to build a picture of the whole. It is the intangible, the invisible, the relationships between parts, the underlying connections and meaning, which are being sought. The practitioner must be looking, through the parts to the whole. Analysis is one component in the attempt to understand; creative imagination is the other, so that an insightful synthesis may emerge. The practitioner should commit every faculty to paying attention.
The power of deep listening, combined with acute and sensitive questioning in a relationship bounded by confidentiality and trust helps to bring people to greater clarity. The information and insights gained need to be processed and analysed as they are gathered, built into new understanding. Strong analytical abilities are required to deepen understanding of the client system, as well as an ability to organise the information and resultant diagnosis logically and accessibly. Strong creative abilities are required to build living pictures which people can relate to.
The outcome of a survey should not be a simple report back in which a great deal of information is conveyed without offering insight. Rather, a survey should yield for the client system new, perhaps challenging, perspectives and the possibility of seeing itself in ways which had not previously been available. The practitioner is challenged to use his or her intellect, to lift out of the situation and to see it from above, formulating a "bird’s eye perspective". In so doing, the client is challenged to begin to do the same.
Water -
the element of fluidity
This phase is focused directly on transformation. Facilitation is its keynote - facilitation of understanding and acceptance of current reality such that the client is able to own and take responsibility for its own reality as the means of moving beyond.
Developing systems function on the edge of chaos, allowing inherent order to emerge and to build ever new levels of form. A certain looseness is required. Rigidity leads to stagnation and atrophy, and cannot engender development. In this step, then, the task of the practitioner is to break down rigidity and bring the system into movement. The emphasis is on process, on flow. Water is thus the archetypal symbol of this step. Stuckness, rigidity, clinging to the old, refusing to relinquish past perceptions and hurts, inappropriate structures, procedures, cultures, strategies, ways of seeing the world - all must be loosened, opened, so that the life force of the client system may emerge in a new form.
Water is more powerful than rock, and flow must be engendered to allow new forms to emerge. Water is the image of fluidity, of process. It has been called the sense element of the earth - when water flows freely, it opens itself to myriad forces from beyond the planet, and transfers these to the living processes of the earth. It is the symbol and carrier of life.
This step of the process has two facets. These may occur in an unbroken process, for example in one workshop, or through several contacts over a long period of time. The first element is that of achieving acceptance. The survey (mentioned above) is just a starting point in the process of developing self-knowledge. The practitioner has to design reflective processes which enable the client to go further and form its own picture, and to deepen that understanding; processes which help the client form an insightful, honest picture of itself. In this process of coming to agreement on precisely what the picture is, the organisation is also beginning to accept its actual, current position. Paradoxically, it is only once this acceptance has been achieved that work can proceed to striving to change the situation.
So to the second facet, that of resolving the future. Here the practitioner assists the client through resultant change processes. This is perhaps the most difficult point of any development intervention: the change process itself, the conscious choosing of a new way of being, new aims, sometimes radically revised strategies, new ways of working and patterns of relating, new attitudes, capacities and stances towards the outside world.
The process of letting go of the old is always painful and frightening, and is regularly met with resistance; yet it is only to the extent that this can be achieved that development occurs. The picture built in the previous phase is crucial here - the more denial and illusion contained in the picture, the more likely the client is to resist change. The more disciplined and thorough the picture, the more open to letting go the client is likely to be.
Once the client begins to accept the inevitability of change, the practitioner helps the client to engage with those areas which are the underlying causes of the malfunctioning, in order to begin to "turn the ship around". This requires finding solutions and new ways of dealing, not with the most pressing symptoms, but with the deeper issues of which those symptoms are a manifestation. At this point the practitioner must bear in mind that the commitment to this decision to change will fluctuate. Part of the task is to help the client to return to its new commitment and to hold steady on its chosen path. In doing this the practitioner is beginning to focus the process and to turn it from a consideration of the past to one which is oriented towards the future. In addition to the warmth of the first step and the clarity and insight of the second, this step of facilitating ownership requires a strong emphasis on movement in the system as a whole, even as the client proceeds to work on selected aspects, and even if the process is staggered over a period of time.
Earth -
the element of structure
Earth is solid, formed, in a very literal sense, grounded. Images of foundation and bedrock emerge, of strength and structure. An image appropriate to this phase of the process, which is concerned with grounding the changes made.
While instability, transition and change are natural parts of evolving systems, and therefore although the client is challenged to maintain fluidity and not lapse into rigidity, nevertheless we cannot remain continuously in a state of chaos, upheaval and transition. A grounding, a structuring needs to take place, so that the new order which has emerged has a chance to settle, and the client can fully adopt its renewed image of itself. It must translate this image into new practices, procedures and patterns which can be managed, which lend a certain security and sense of stability. Development practice continuously oscillates between facilitating fluidity and encouraging structure. Flow must be given form; structure must be rendered fluid. The element of earth, the activity of grounding transitions into continuing and disciplined practices, is the key note of this step in the development process.
At this point it is vitally important for both the practitioner and the client to realise that the system will rapidly slip back into its old habits and patterns if the process of development intervention is not consciously and intentionally continued after this initial phase. It is after all a process, and a long term one at that. For the client itself it is a process which should have no ending, while for the practitioner the process with a particular client might only end when she or he is convinced that the client has achieved the necessary skills, capacities and ways of working which are appropriate to this new phase of its own development.
"Protecting, till the danger past, with human love"
W. B. Yeats
The approach to development practice presented in the previous section, articulated diagrammatically below, is relevant for all developmental situations. It can be applied as much within meetings and with respect to problem-solving situations as it can to long term processes. It can be applied in project design and implementation and on training courses. It can be used by leaders working on their own organisations as much as by practitioners working with others.
Yet the sequential nature in which this approach has been described is an idealised one. The reality of development practice is different from its portrayal above.
In reality, one may enter and leave the client system at various points in the framework, depending on the nature of the work and the nature of the client. One may complete only part of the whole process, yet succeed in an effective development intervention. One may find oneself engaged in different steps of the process simultaneously. One may engage in them in a different sequence, or in a number of different sequences at the same time.
At the very least, we have to recognise that all of these steps will only ever be partly completed, precisely because we are opening things up, because the client system is in a constant state of becoming, of achieving capacity, which never ends. Because every intervention will always only be partial. "Gaining understanding" (the element of light) is never complete, and will be continued throughout the relationship. As will "facilitating ownership" (the element of fluidity), and "assisting with implementation" (the element of structure). The creation of relationship is an ongoing responsibility. Everything is connected to everything else, and often we only know what we are doing when we get there.
On the other hand, it is precisely the formulation of frameworks for practice and deepening understanding, the adoption of a precise approach, which allows us to say that we are practising a particular discipline at all. That we have something specific to offer a client, that we bring a specialised coherence to situations - that others may not bring. It is the frameworks which clarify and express what we have learned. It is to the frameworks that we return, to contribute our further learning. Such frameworks are an expression of the very discipline and expertise which we claim as development practitioners.
Currently, the confused and limited understanding which the development sector has of (people-centered) development practice results in the indiscriminate use of a wide range of fragmented interventions. Clients are subjected to piecemeal and one-off interventions, often unrelated to each other. Yet all these are only the "pieces" of the discipline. It is necessary to understand the discipline as a whole, so that we may adopt a holistic and disciplined approach. So that we are able to situate our interventions with due regard for the integrity of the client’s ongoing process of development.
Developmental practice is a responsive discipline, and therefore open to the use of fragmented interventions. Precisely because it is a responsive discipline, we need to develop, not trained responses to predictable situations, but inner resources out of which we can create and apply processes and interventions which deal adequately with new and unexpected situations arising out of the future. The framework presented above describes an approach which allows practitioners to situate and locate themselves, in a disciplined way, within the turbulent environment of change.
Clearly there is a fine line between use of frameworks in service of a client’s interests and imposing models as the only contribution which a practitioner has to make. No model can tell us what exactly is happening at any point in time and therefore, no model can tell us what to do. This is an approach only, allowing one to situate oneself. Practitioners will find that they enter at different points, depending on the situation. It may become necessary to return to steps in the process while simultaneously proceeding. Success in an early phase may be enough to enable the client to continue on its own. Failure to complete a particular phase may not mean that the entire intervention has failed; much may already have been gained. Success in a particular phase does not ensure that the process will not become unstuck later. Generally, fruitful development interventions will mean a successful traverse through the entire loop of the approach - this should always remain the goal.
The reality of development practice lies in its very turbulence, unpredictability and non-linearity. This approach can act as a map with which to plot the next step of the journey or to help find the way when the process appears lost, stuck or without direction. The approach can help a practitioner to know where they are in the process - and that is the point. In order to intervene effectively, no matter where in the process, we must understand where we are fitting in, where our intervention is located, where it can go from there. The framework can be used to monitor progress, and to manage and evaluate a practitioner’s performance. But at all times, the practitioner must bear in mind that this approach is nothing more than a map. It is not a blueprint. And it is not the journey itself. This is formed together with the client - unique and not replicable - in the moment of the actual intervention process itself.
The approach can also be used as a yardstick for assessing the nature of interventions. Is an evaluator who assesses an organisation’s impact and then delivers a final report a development practitioner? Is a fieldworker who conducts a Participatory Rural Appraisal with a community and then simply suggests projects to intervening third parties acting developmentally? Is a consultant who responds to organisational distress by merely presenting management with a restructuring proposal engaged in organisation development?
While this approach may help to situate different development methodologies and specific interventions and techniques, and thus lend a certain rigour and discipline to development practice, it can never itself be applied in a technicist fashion, using an engineering mindset, or according to the assumptions underlying what was characterised as the conventional paradigm. There is simply no substitute for creativity and respect. For responsive flexibility. Without these, the very character of a development practice is reduced to caricature.
The practice of development is about human change, about human development. It is not simply about understanding, implementing projects, resolving difficulties intellectually, or planning and strategising. It is itself about change and development - people will move through their challenges, resist, avoid, face, let go. The development intervention has to enable this. One is dealing with emotions, with pain, with lack of will, with the unconscious. All this must surface. One must be prepared to hold open spaces, to work with questions rather than ready answers, to maintain the tension of ambiguity rather than close it down. One must hold spaces safe, but not be afraid to risk, to open situations up even when we are not sure what will emerge; and - most important - enable the client to risk. Hold the space! Create boundaries, call endings, but never shut things down without real resolution. Find the balance.
We must always prepare, but never plan too tightly. The situation will change as we intervene, and rigid planning may serve to protect us rather than engender development in the client. Adequate preparation develops an inner surplus out of which we can creatively meet the unexpected which comes to us out of the future, not with fixed plans or mindsets but with what we have inside us. We are our own best tool. The task is to develop a reservoir of capacity, not a repertoire of techniques.
We should be prepared to allow for confusion and chaos. Developmental interventions have to mirror client reality so that the client can face itself in reality, not as an intellectual exercise. The new will only emerge at the boundary between chaos and order, on the periphery of the possible. We must be prepared to go through the eye of the needle ourselves, for every developmental intervention will also have its effect on the practitioner. We are all implicate.
The kind of developmental practice described here, one which is essentially responsive to the development trajectories and rhythms of individual clients, demands that we are able to "read" the development processes of clients very accurately indeed, and build appropriate responses from out of such ongoing reading. Such reading and response has to do with the underlying and inherent flow of the process. Surface phenomena (facts and figures) may reveal underlying currents and connections, but in themselves they are no more than corks bobbing along on the face of deep ocean currents. It is with such currents that we are concerned. It is these which we must learn to apprehend; it is in terms of these depths that we must respond.
Such an approach demands more than an appreciation of the elements - mentioned previously - involved in a developmental practice. It demands also a new way of seeing, and a new understanding of intervention. The following pages attempt an elaboration.
" ... there is a kind of seeing that is also a kind of thinking ... :
the seeing of connections."
Ray Monk (on Wittgenstein)
A new way of seeing. Not new in itself, but new to us - or at least different from what we have been acculturated to accept as normal. It constitutes a major shift, and as such is difficult to describe and difficult to grasp.
There are two major modes of human consciousness which are complementary. One may be termed the analytic mode, the other the holistic. The analytic mode is that mode which characterises what we have referred to as "conventional" development, while the holistic mode of consciousness is more appropriate to the kind of reading necessary for an alternative, or people-centered, approach.
The analytic mode is the mode we have specialised in, the mode to which our educational system - within our technical-scientific culture - is geared almost exclusively. This mode develops in conjunction with our experience of perceiving and manipulating solid bodies. The internalisation of our experience of the closed boundaries of such bodies leads to a way of thinking which naturally emphasises distinction and separation. In the world of solid bodies, everything is external to everything else, and leads us to analytical thinking. It is also consequently sequential and analytical, proceeding from one element to another in a piecemeal fashion - the principle of mechanical causality is thus a typical way of thinking in this analytical mode of consciousness.
The principles of logic are associated with this way of thinking and seeing: that one thing is always itself and never anything else, that something cannot simultaneously be itself and not itself, and so on. These principles - derived from perceiving solid objects - are extrapolated and assumed to hold universally.
The problem is that the world with which we are concerned in human development is not the world of solid objects. We cannot "see" an organisation in this way. We can see individual people, a building, equipment, written statements of mission, strategy and organogram, the name of the organisation on its building; but we cannot "see" the organisation. (Where exactly is the organisation?) We cannot "see" a relationship between people. We cannot "see" the evolution of a relationship. We cannot "see" motivation or insecurity as we see solid objects. We cannot "see" an organisational culture, or the connection between a community's sense of outrage and the concentration of power in the hands of a small elite. We cannot "see" power, or the lack of it.
In the normal sense, we can see discrete objects, but we cannot - in the same way - "see" the connections between them, we cannot "see" the relationships between them. We can see the thing, but not the meaning of the thing. We can see the parts which go to make up the meaning, but we cannot "see" the whole, the meaning itself. We can see the marks on a page which go to make up a sentence, but we do not "see" the meaning of the sentence in the same way. Music remains incoherent noise if it is heard piecemeal; apprehension of the whole renders noise into music. The same can be said of a poem, a joke, a painting, any interaction between people.
The meaning, the gestalt, the "whole", is not a discrete object in the way that the parts which go to make it up are discrete objects. We cannot "see" them in the same way. And the whole is not just another object, and it is not simply the sum of discrete parts, or objects. We do not apprehend the whole by adding the parts together; it is apprehended directly, on its own ground. It is, in a very real sense, intangible; it is of a different order, and demands a different mode of apprehension.
The world which we are working with when we work developmentally is a world of such "intangibles". It is a world of systems, of relationships, of connections; ambiguous, shifting and changing, developing, interweaving, continually being formed and continually dying and changing into something else. In a word, dynamic. It is not a world of discrete objects but a world of relationships between objects. The objects, the parts, form the whole, the meaning contained in the relationships between the parts; but the whole, the meaning, is not another object or part. We can see a person, their gestures and actions, but we cannot "see" the character of the person which is expressed in these. Or rather, we can see character, and meaning, and relationship - common experience tells us so - we can apprehend meaning, and dynamic movement, and "the whole"; but such apprehension demands a radically different way of seeing, one which is not valued as the analytical mode is valued.
What may be termed the holistic mode of consciousness is complementary to the analytical one. It is systemic thinking. By contrast, this mode is nonlinear, simultaneous, intuitive instead of intellectual, and concerned with relationships more than with the discrete elements which are related. It is important to realise that the holistic mode of consciousness is a way of seeing, and as such it can only be experienced in its own terms. We have to learn to appreciate what it means to say that a relationship can be experienced as something real in itself (or a character, or a state of motivation, or an organisational grasp of gender).
In the analytical mode of consciousness it is the elements which are related that stand out in experience, compared with which the relationship is but a shadowy abstraction. It is regarded as unreal, a figment of imagination. But it is none of these; relationships are as real as the elements which constitute them. (Intangible does not mean unreal.) The experience and apprehension of a relationship as such is only possible through a transformation from a piecemeal way of thought to a simultaneous perception of the whole. This is an intuitive mode of understanding, a holistic appreciation of dynamic meaning, and it demands (and entails) a shift in consciousness.
This is not as complex as it seems, and in fact we do it all the time, but we do not value it. And because we do not value it, we do not cultivate it, and therefore a distinct faculty which we have access to as human beings atrophies, stagnates, and we remain incapacitated and unskilled in a very profound sense. It becomes ridiculed as unscientific, unprofessional, unaccountable; we come to believe that such a way of seeing cannot be replicated, or taught (some people have it, some don't); that it is quirky, or artistic (expressed pejoratively); that it belongs to the realm of religion, or spirituality (again expressed pejoratively).
Yet in fact it is confined to none of these critiques; these are all only the defences of the analytical mode. Meaning, relationships, the whole, remain invisible only when "seeing" is confined to the analytical mode; under these conditions, a relationship, or the character of a situation, certainly remains invisible. But we can learn to adopt the other mode, and we can thereby learn to see that which forms the very stuff of our interventions. In learning to see in this way we change nothing of what is seen, but everything changes, because we see that which was invisible to us before.
Intuition is not intangible or mysterious; it is the simultaneous perception of the whole (whereas the logical or rational mode of knowledge involves an analysis into discrete elements sequentially linked). We can learn (or relearn) to do this. As a prerequisite, we have to learn to value it, to respect it, to regard it as legitimate. There is no doubt that it incorporates the development of the imaginative faculty. We have to respect and cultivate imagination, and we have to learn to value feeling, and not simply thinking. These cannot be severed from each other, as we have learned to accomplish with frightening ease. We have to relearn to hold these two modes of apprehension simultaneously. Either one on its own becomes absurd. Together, thinking provides feeling with muscularity, while feeling provides thinking with the ability to apprehend life. Above all, we are concerned with living processes and living systems.
We have to learn to appreciate quality, and no longer assume that quantification alone will allow us to get at the essence, to perceive a system as a whole. We are afraid that "to qualify" something encourages us to judge individualistically; it raises the spectre of subjectivity. A legitimate fear. So we attempt to circumvent qualification through "number-crunching", the construction of lists and questionnaires, the quantification of discrete data which we analyse into cause and effect, the creation of (quantifiable) norms and standards. In this way we deny the possibility of developing an initially ad hoc (but ever-present) response into a legitimate faculty of perception. An illegitimate and unhelpful reaction.
At CDRA we, as practitioners, share our experiences by exposing our practices - thereby our perceptions and judgments - with each other, in a mutually collaborative but strenuously self-critical and challenging fashion. Such sharing enables us to get beyond subjectivity in the development of our organs of perception. At the same time, we reflect on ourselves and our own responses to situations in order to hone ourselves as our own best tools - we try to separate what we are seeing "out there" from our own unconscious projections, desires, inadequacies. This combination gradually allows us to "see"; it allows us to begin to read the developmental character of a situation. We take seriously that we are "artists of the invisible", but this means simply that we have to work on ourselves as organs of perception, and it is in this sense that every development practitioner represents added value in a particular situation.
Such practices are open to us all, and are not difficult to effect. This ability to see, and the techniques which develop it - for techniques and tools are important so long as they are congruent within a framing approach - are relevant for all specific development methodologies, whether we be fieldworkers, consultants, donors, trainers or leaders. And it has far-reaching implications for the way we organise ourselves, for the ways in which we take decisions, report to each other, hold each other accountable; for the substance of our practice.
It is said that an ability to draw is nothing more than an ability to see, and that we can all do it. Our own experience has proved this to be valid. Exercises which are used to develop the faculty of drawing are of immense benefit to us as development practitioners. They cultivate the ability to see afresh, without preconception. Instead of simply allowing objects to present themselves, one can begin to see actively by reversing the action of seeing through projecting it outwards towards the phenomenon, rather than simply receiving the impression passively. One can learn to plunge oneself into seeing, and so doing enables the phenomenon to reveal itself in all its diversity and in its essential character.
One can accomplish the same thing with the faculty of listening. Paying attention is an active mode, rather than passive; yet it does not consist in imposing one's own organisation onto the phenomenon, but rather in seeing it afresh, but in depth, so that the whole, the meaning, the character, reveals itself. At CDRA we regularly practise "characterisation", which is a mode of listening which has as its specific intent the apprehension of the essential quality which provides the meaning, or whole sense, of a discourse (or of a person, or situation). There are innumerable exercises which can be used; these brief descriptions cannot substitute for the experience of the activity. The point is to develop the faculty of observation to the level of a disciplined and revealing practice. The activity of observation discloses the world.
The use of metaphor, integral to the development and expression of imagination, is another major tool of observation. Incorporated into narrative, it allows character to emerge; we begin to get a real sense of relationship and connection, and how things interweave to form new phenomena; the dynamic of a situation is encouraged to express itself in this way, so that the living nature of a system is revealed and apprehended. From experience we can attest that a report which uses metaphor and narrative to reveal the meaning and dynamic of a situation is incomparably more helpful to the developing client than a list of technical recommendations based on quantified data.
In a real sense, these practices enable us to "read" a situation accurately and holistically, in its inherent dynamic evolution, rather than reduce it to the spurious linearity of mechanistic cause and effect. We build a picture of the whole, instead of breaking a living system down into discrete parts.
The "conventional" practice of development, and the assumptions on which it is based, will find this approach anathema. And while "people-centered development" should be based on other understandings, we have already noted that it regularly falls back on those subsumed under the more conventional approach. Thus we know that what has been indicated above will be difficult to accept. It plays havoc with our growing reliance on standardisation, categorisation and computerisation. Yet the shift which it entails is an integral and emergent outcome of all that has gone before - of a people-centered practice, of systemic thinking, of the dynamics of development.
The point is not to eschew the analytical mode, or its tools, but to incorporate the holistic mode into our way of seeing, and to develop the faculties for doing so. For we must be clear on one thing. The development of what has come to be called "the new science" has shown that we effect what we see by what we are looking for. The "particle" (separate and discrete, and so small that it has almost no extension), is also seen as a wave (which can extend to infinity, and be entirely penetrated by other entities) depending on what we are looking for. Thus do we effect what we see by the way that we see it, by our approach to the phenomenon. The act of observation changes what is observed. And we are part of what we observe, and thus effect both it and ourselves.
We will create what we look for, and eradicate what we do not look for. If we look only for superficiality, for efficiency, for structure, for number, for the discrete object, then we will (have already begun to) create a world which is devoid of the invisible breath of life, of wholeness and meaning. We will reduce our world to a world of inanimate things.
Observation is thus a moral act. We are implicate. We cannot assume, we cannot take for granted, that the world is the way it seems; we build it as we go, choosing the world we want by how we choose to see it. Denying the value of the holistic mode of perception reduces our world to an empty and inexplicable shell. Embracing the "invisible" allows us to work as social artists in a world which is at once mysterious and meaningful; ever present and always becoming; ever alive.
"Because inside human beings is where God learns"
Rainer Maria Rilke
Observation is one component of facilitation; intervention is the other. Side by side with a new way of seeing goes a new understanding of what we are really about when we undertake developmental interventions. Together these two aspects form the core around which a developmental practice revolves.
We have already noted that people-centered development is not about imposing solutions on, or doing things for - or on behalf of - people. It is about doing things together with people in order to increase their awareness, expand their own capacity, so that they are better able to take responsibility for their own consciously chosen future. This means guidance towards understanding the patterns and dynamics which trap us into unconscious or unhelpful ways of doing things. It means the facilitation of a growing self-understanding, so that individuals and groups are able to see themselves afresh.
"See" in this sense is to be taken in the manner of the new way of seeing indicated previously. It refers to the gaining of insight about self and world through the intuitive perception of the whole, the relationships and connections which constrain, the dynamics which may free, the characteristics which must be built on and those which must be let go of if a new way of being and working is to emerge. In short, the achievement of meaning, understanding and facility such that the client is enlarged, and renewed motivation attained. The move to a new level of development requires a transitionary period of emptiness, sacrifice and acceptance, which enables energy and movement to replace routine and stagnation, such that new endeavours may be entered into, new attitudes developed, and new faculties and skills cultivated. So that people may begin to take charge of their own future.
There are those who will ask what this has to do with the eradication of poverty, the redressing of power imbalances, the growth in numbers and extent of the marginalised and dispossessed. A people-centered approach, as described here, may seem an effete and flaccid response to the outrageous circumstances within which we work; it may even seem to constitute an avoidance of tackling the situation head on. To these we must respond that people-centered development does not take place in a vacuum; that activism is an integral companion to such intervention; but that we are describing here specifically the developmental intervention, and not the activist intervention, however appropriate this may often be.
Because (and this constitutes a further response) such critique indicates that the point of all this has been missed, and that the meaning of a people-centered alternative to the dominant development paradigm has been misunderstood. The real point is simply this: conventional development has attempted to work on the world (on externalities) in order to remedy people’s lot (poverty and dispossession, while the alternative approach of people-centered development attempts to work directly with people themselves in order that they may remedy the world. Moreover, this alternative approach to development implies that "the poor" are not the only ones in need of development, and developmental interventions. To the contrary, we are all implicate; we are all creating this world of inequality as we go, and inordinately few are really seeing what they do, or taking responsibility.
Conventionally, we attempt to measure the results of development interventions through quantification - numbers of houses or training courses delivered, numbers of women in particular positions, numbers of new jobs secured. These are all important indicators of impact, but they are indicators only, and often of peripheral importance. For the real measure of developmental impact lies in the shifts of relationship attained. Relational shifts in terms of the movement from dependence through independence to interdependence; relational shifts in terms of power dynamics both within the client and between the client and its context. These assessments can be made, and we are challenged to find new ways of making them. We can avoid such challenge only if we reduce our notion of intervention accordingly.
Such is a facilitative practice. If we approach our work as technicists, we will see technicalities. If we approach our work as social artists, we will begin to apprehend the art of social living, and become able to work with it. If we legitimate the pursuit of meaning, and do not deny or decry the invisible whole, or gestalt, which lends the parts their meaning, then we will begin to see a world filled with character and quality. If we begin to understand relationship and connection as being as real as objects and things, we will begin to appreciate the systemic nature of those with whom we work. If we move beyond the realm of matter, we will begin to apprehend the formative forces of life, and begin to work formatively, rather than mechanistically.
For, just as we can begin to learn to see in a new way, so we can begin to learn the art of facilitating processes which enable clients to come to real and deep understanding of themselves, their worlds, and the way these interact. To bring clients to the point where they can apprehend the essence, experience the truth, of their particular situation at a particular point in time. And to use such insight to move beyond. Such consciousness is the stuff of liberation, and power.
The art of facilitating such processes requires new abilities which we as development practitioners need to develop; many new capacities which we need to cultivate, not skills in which we need to be trained. One of these is patience. Development processes take time, their own time; they contain resistances, meanders; we often have to find alternative angles of approach to achieve gradual illumination. Correct timing is always important. Patience is a prerequisite. Another is that of quietness. Coming to consciousness seldom happens in the heat of action. It is a reflective activity, and a quality of stillness, of being as opposed to doing, is required. In a world which has lost its centre, where traditional certainties and values have been relativised, we have to help clients to find their own centres.
The true import of the paradigm shifts mentioned in this Report is that we must remain awake, full of interest and wonder and awe, open and vulnerable, if we are to hope to find the resilience to respond to the diverse array of situations which challenge us as development practitioners. The capacities, the faculties, we must cultivate are often regarded - within the conventional development paradigm - as being "soft skills", as opposed to the "hard skills" which are taken to be the important ones, hard skills really translating into technical skills. This creates an unfortunate impression, for it is really the so-called "soft skills" which are the most difficult to master, perhaps precisely because they are the ones which call on the whole range of faculties comprising what it means to be fully human.
How, indeed, do we become fully human? By relentlessly seeking and cherishing the humanity in others. We make of ourselves what we do unto others. If we treat people as numbers, or as categories, even when that category be labelled "the poor" , then we reduce ourselves to artifacts. If we treat others as objects or things, even where we do so for the sake of efficiency in assisting them, then we reduce ourselves to mechanical instruments. If we believe that we can guide people's destinies by analysing life circumstances and then providing specified inputs to cause predictable results, even where this is done with their interests in mind, then we reduce our own freedom accordingly. If we do not accord people responsibility, this becomes a mark of our own irresponsibility. If we do not encourage people to find meaning, and insist that only what can be counted can be weighed, then we reduce ourselves to bewildered statistics.
This is relevant for us all, whether we be fieldworkers, consultants or trainers; leaders or managers; donors or implementers of projects; government bureaucrats or policy analysts.
When we convene meetings, do we take the time to create a climate of warmth and trust? Do we painstakingly build an insightful and common picture with which we can all work, before moving on to resolution? Having achieved such resolution, do we take the time to explore what such resolution may demand of individual participants in terms of the changes neccessary in their own ways of working and being?
If we are running a training course, are we concerned primarily with what we want to get across, or do we take the trouble - and it is far more trouble - to ensure that participants' learning and development becomes the primary focus?
When we implement a project, are we concerned with opening up new possibilities and ways of being and relating amongst those with whom we work - in other words, with human and social change and enlargement - or are we in the first place concerned with ensuring that our predicted (material) outcomes are achieved? Is our real concern with development, or is it focused on efficient project management?
How do we hold people and organisations accountable? Are we simply concerned to ensure that they deliver what they have promised, or do we concentrate on what they have actually achieved, and the way in which they have achieved it? Is the successful delivery of our product more important than the actual development of our client?
What do we lose in terms of a subtle and nuanced understanding of the whole when we substitute the simplicity of questionnaires for the painstaking work of individual interviews? What do we lose in terms of uniqueness and diversity when we categorise for the efficiency of computerisation? When we standardise our requirements and our responses?
For the bureaucrat and for anyone distanced from the field, the complexity of a truly developmental practice will seem a high price to pay when confronted with the demands of facts, figures, short term accountability and efficient delivery of their specific product. But there are grave dangers when our own procedures take precedence over the actual development processes of those whom we serve. We have to introduce new ways of working; some integration of approaches is required. Simply becoming conscious of what we are really doing constitutes a major beginning and new departure. All development processes - thus our own as well - entail some form of loss, and the taking on of new responsibilities and attitudes. As with all systems, any small change which we can effect will build into ever larger circles of influence, like pebbles dropped into still water.
Our world is not yet fully formed. It is in the process of becoming. We are creating it as we go, through what we seek and how we intervene. Working facilitatively with people towards the fullest experience and expression of all of our humanity is an astounding act of co-creation. Because inside human beings is where God learns.
Bibliography
We acknowledge with gratitude and respect the invaluable assistance which we have received from the following works, some of which have been directly quoted in the preceding pages.
Bortoft, Henri. The Wholeness of Nature (New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1996)
Davids, Julian. The Nature of Genius (Audio cassette available from Jung Library, Cape Town)
Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1982)
Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein - The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage Books, 1991)
Ornstein, Robert E. The Psychology of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977)
About the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA)
The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) was established in 1987 as a non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO) to build the capacity of organisations and individuals engaged in development and social transformation. We are based in Cape Town, South Africa and work mostly in Southern and East Africa.
Email: vernon@cdra.org.za
Webpage: http://www.cdra.org.za
P.O. Box 221, Woodstock, 7915, South Africa
Telephone: -27 -21 462 3902
Fax: -27 -21 462 3918