WAYS
OF KNOWING, CULTURE, COMMUNICATION AND THE PEDAGOGIES OF THE FUTURE
This essay focuses on how cultures are embedded in diverse
ways of knowing and how individuals teach (formal, action research,
spiritual) and learn the world (action, science, technique or
gnosis) differently.
We
present case studies or stories of teaching and learning futures and
futures generations.
These
stories tell the fundamental difficulties we face in teaching and
learning across civilisation, profession, worldview, and pedagogical
style.
We offer a
futures method, causal layered analysis, as one way to enter
different knowing spaces.
The
educational challenge ahead of us is to pass on the rich diversity
of culture and ways of knowing to future generations.
Skenarios or Scenarios: authority and participation
"Skenarios," he said!
"Not scenarios."
I stayed standing, slightly stunned but not totally in shock.
Earlier the same participant had challenged my use of the word,
"eutopia," questioning how someone from a non-European
tradition could dare "speak" Latin (actually Greek).
"Skenarios," I asked?
"It is an Italian word," he said forcefully.
This was a point of decision for me. Should I (Sohail
Inayatullah) continue our agreement among the faculty to listen to
each cultural perspective, honour their worldview, and softly look
for agreement? I had
this found model, based on action research and entered into the
World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) lexicon by secretary-general
Tony Stevenson, quite attractive.1
It placed the burden of learning on the student, with the
direction of the workshop (or class) constantly changing based on
their intellectual and emotional needs.
The traditional hierarchical division between faculty and
student also tended to disappear as by the end of the workshop all
became fellow travellers learning from each other.
The underlying view of education in this model is that
knowledge resides in each one of us, it is to be brought out. We are
not empty vessels that need to be filled by pedantic lecturers;
rather, the lecturer is facilitator, helping the participant,
student, uncover her or himself.
Mastery of the self and the environment which creates the
self is more important than the storing of particular information
within our brains about self and environment.
In my initial experience of this method of teaching at the
1992 WFSF/UNESCO futures course in Bangkok, Thailand, I was
convinced it would not work.
I
was more accustomed to the role of the professor as
expert--knowledgeable of the entire literature, all the various
theories, and confident in his expertise.
While the course began that way, on the fourth day, Tony
Stevenson turned the course over to the students in anticipation of
making them full-fledged participants, owners of the course.
He had asked me that night before if this was a good idea. I
had responded that Asians, who comprised the majority of students,
would be unwilling to enter such a process. They would stay silent,
preferring traditional hierarchical authority and knowledge
structures.
Moreover it
might even be rude to act in this way since it would break the
barrier between student and lecturer. Stevenson said he would try
anyway.
As Tony Stevenson gave the course to them, there was stunned
silence. No sounds, no hands raised. The tension kept rising.
Finally, one person, an Australian naturally, raised her hand and
the discussion began. Within a half hour, the remaining three days
of the course had been filled with workshops, participant-led
seminars, and night meetings. The result was an explosion of
creativity, largely possible because Stevenson was patient, not
letting the silence disturb the pregnant pedagogy.
Strong Theory versus Participatory Process
This was a turning point in my view
of education moving from a position that strong theory mattered more
than participatory process, to one where both should be in balance
with each other. While I had always believed in workshops after
lectures so as to flesh out what the content meant to each person, I
was not used to the conceptual shift of having students transform
into course directors, into letting them define the process and
create their own pedagogical structures.
However, the Italian student at the Andorra course mentioned
at the start of this essay, did not appreciate these gestures of
equality, of participation.
He,
and his fellow graduate students at the Gregorian University in
Rome, believed that the Professor and student were inextricably
linked by history, by the tradition of classical philosophy where
learning occurred through a Socratic dialogue between Master and
Student (or Professor and student), and by the belief that truth
sprang outward from Europe.
Naturally
they refused to acknowledge our role as Professors, since we were
not European nor did we appropriately act the role of learned
persons.
For instance, we wore symbols that suggested a relaxed
atmosphere of learning, loose shirts rather than suit and tie. For
them, if they were to learn, that is, situate themselves in "studentness"
we had to situate ourselves in "professorness." Our
refusal to dialogue at that subtle level convinced them that we were
pretenders, and that only their own futurist Professor was worthy of
their respect.
Consequently
when she finished her day session at the course, they proceeded to
read her book while others lectured. The first indication that they
existed within the larger shared knowledge space we were intent on
creating came when one Italian student contested my use of the term
"eutopia." The second indication was when my pronunciation
of scenarios was disputed.
My decision as to how I should respond when
"scenarios" was replaced with "skenarios" was
not an attempt to refute that there are many ways of knowing, of
spelling, of reading the real; in fact, this was exactly what they
were finding problematic:
"I call them scenarios," I said loudly. "We
use scenarios in a different way, in a critical way."2
He stayed quiet and within minutes he, as well as his fellow
Italians, began to participate in all general discussions as well as
small group sessions.
The
books of their Italian professor ceased to be the signs used to show
their defiance. They had accepted that authority could reside in
different spaces, and thus, paradoxically by choosing to exert my
authority, my closed definition of the future, I had allowed the
future to become open, the future as a shared space had been
created.
By challenging the participant, by being authoritative,
learning was thus made possible.
If I and others had stayed in a dialogue mode, the course for
many of the participants would have ended there. They wanted some
authority to set the boundaries, the guidelines, as well as contour
the field: to define what is conventional and what is outside of the
paradigm. They did not want an entirely open structure, at least not
at the beginning of the meeting.
The lesson was that dialogue as a method only works in
certain conditions, that educational techniques require active
sensitivity on part of the "educator" even as he or she
attempts to undo this category as well.
Participation and authority have their own appropriate
levels, the skill is to know when to use which.
This requires cultural sensitivity and cultural
insensitivity: knowing when to respect boundaries and when to push
boundaries.
Silence and Creativity:
Henry Kariel, postmodernist and
Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political
Science, University of Hawaii, once entered a classroom, sat down in
his appointed chair and remained silent. Students asked him to speak
but he refused. They asked him why he was silent, but again he
stared back without expression. His silence led to anger by the
students, believing Kariel too lazy to teach. But through each
comment he stayed mute, allowing the theories of conspiracy,
innuendo, attempts to ascribe intention to him, to ascribe intention
to each other, to the university in general, to continue unabated.
By the end of the forty five minute class, all were engaged in
active dialogue on the nature of pedagogy: on who is allowed to
speak, who is silenced by education, what discourses create the
category of talker/listener; lecturer/student; and knower/ignorant.
They had begun to notice that learning resided in them.
However, Kariel's method, while provocative, certainly cannot
be used in every cultural site. In
modern
Pakistan or India, students would have just left the building, for
example. But this for Kariel would have been an appropriate response
as well, it would have made clear that students attended lectures to
gain particular technical information from the professor and not to
engage in a practice of mutual learning.
However, in
traditional
Pakistan or India, Kariel's approach would have been seen as a Sufi
or Tantric practice, as a way to disturb conventional
understandings, to call into question the path of learning, to
contest who is
pir/guru
and who is disciple. Modernity (with capitalism monetizing the
economy), however, has transformed that type of learning to a more
technical, skill based approach, where the end result is merely the
passing of a national test so that
a job can be attained.
The tension in futures course described in Andorra raises the
question of how to teach the future in conditions when the future is
not uniform and where there are many stages of history present or
many cultures simultaneously active.
This is even made more complicated by the nature of teaching
the future.
Futures Studies in Search of a Doxa:
In traditional disciplines, even as
postmodernity undoes defining and organising narratives, there is a
doxa--certain classic accepted texts that must be read--that must be
adhered to. Futures
studies, in general, and futures generations research, in
particular, does not have these boundaries yet. It is
transdisciplinarian, in search of an interpretive community, its
knowledge base just being defined3,
who the futurists are still in contention.
Is futures studies a science or an appendage to strategic
planning? Should future studies be technical, concerned with
forecasting or cultural, concerned with recovering the future from
the instrumental rationality of modernity?
Or is futures studies primarily a movement, an attempt to
keep futures pluralistic, to keep the future open, less concerned
with academic treatises and more with social action?
Or should future studies be specific in its orientation as in
future generations research, which seeks to sustain and transform
social conditions for the rights of future generations (humans,
animals, plants, as well as metaphors, or cultural lore)? While
there have been many attempts to map the field, the field still
remains contentious with no hegemonic paradigm defining it. This
makes teaching the future difficult.
It is made more so in that "the future", nebulous
as it is, is culture bound. Finally, those who actively participate
in teaching the future exist in global space, as futures studies is
one of the few global disciplines, living and flourishing outside of
conventional national and international boundaries of State and
knowledge. The how of teaching the future then forces one into many
academic, cultural, and historical frameworks.
This is enriching for practitioners and problematic, since
all certainties are undone by the varieties of frames that create
and process what it is that is taught and learned.
Language, Metaphors and Learning
"But who would want to live in
a metaphor of the future in which the future was entirely
open," said the Pakistani participant in response to the vision
of the future as the metaphor of an expansive ocean.
"The metaphor of an expansive ocean has no
direction," said a women in
burqua sitting in the back
of the room.
I had given the students of this futures workshop held in
Islamabad, Pakistan in of March of 19954,
the classic four metaphors of the future. The first was the dice,
representing randomness; the second was the fork in the road,
representing choice; the third was river rapids spotted with rocks
on every side, representing danger and opportunity; and the last was
the expansive ocean representing total choice, unbounded
opportunities.
Earlier in a UNESCO/WFSF sponsored workshop on the futures of
education held in Suva, Fiji in 1993, the Pacific islanders had
argued that none of these metaphors at all represented their
traditions, even the aquatic ones.
They gave two alternative ones. The first was a coconut tree.
One had to work hard to climb up the tree, but at the top were ample
rewards. This was clearly the influence of Protestant Christianity
on the Islands, it seemed to me. The second was of sitting on the
passenger seat in car driven by a man with a blindfold. This of
course represented the Island's interaction with modern Western
capitalism, a perception that they were not in control of their
destiny.
In contrast to these outer metaphors, an Indian participant
at the second WFSF Bangkok Asia-Pacific futures course in 1993
suggested the onion as a more appropriate metaphor.
Reality, in this view, has many layers. Our task as humans is
to peel away the layers, discovering new levels of reality, until
all is pealed away, and the empty infinity of the
atman is
revealed to us.
A
Filipino participant suggested a less spiritual metaphor, the
coconut. The coconut was hard on the outside (in response to the
cruelty of the world) but soft on the inside (our inner tender
spiritual selves). The coconut also has many uses: it can be eaten,
its juice drunk and its husk used and recycled for a variety of
agricultural and industrial purposes. It was a metaphor for all
seasons, all futures, if you will.
These and other examples made it clear to me that our
language, our metaphors of the future, are culture bound. To merely
use the classical model as in many future educational books: dice,
road, river and ocean, is severely limited.
At a 1994 futures visioning workshop in Penang, Malaysia5
these limitations were further exposed.
The dice, while adequately representing randomness, misses
entirely the role of the transcendental as a type of super-agency.
The river, while appearing to represent choice, does not capture the
importance of the group or larger community Asian societies are
often embedded in when they make decisions. The ocean, while
representing unbounded possibilities misses the role of history and
deep social structures, of fate and power. While the image of the
river rapids with its dangerous submerged rocks represents well the
need for information and swift decision making so as to avoid
dangers and take advantage of opportunities, but it does not provide
metaphorical entry for guidance from others: leadership, family, or
God.
Surprisingly, the metaphor that did emerge from discussion
there with Malay Muslims was the "snakes and ladders"
game, that is, life's ups and downs are based on chance, and when
one goes up, one should be ready to fall at any moment. While
appearing to be fatalistic, the resolution of this metaphor of the
future was faith in Allah, as the deeper reality on which one must
rest one's self on.
Creating Metaphors:
Earlier, at the 1995 Pakistan
course, I asked the Pakistani woman wearing the burqua which
metaphor she then preferred. There was silence. While it was easy to
deconstruct the metaphors of others, this group had a more difficult
time creating their own metaphors.
Visual space was not an easy entry point. This was not a
surprise to me as Islam heavily emphasises the logical and rational
dimension of individuals, in contrast to Pacific Islanders, who are
rich in their ability to offer visual metaphors.
However, both workshops in Islamic nations--Malaysia and
Pakistan--while perhaps not visually rich were rich in telling
stories in metaphors, in folk stories. The equivalence of these
different ways of knowing is articulated by Paul Wildman in appendix
A, where it is argued that the first is left-brain structure,
literal oriented and the second is right-brain pattern and symbolic
oriented. Both are ways to given meaning to reality, with quite
different social results.
While teaching futures in a culturally homogenous group there
appears to be few cultural difficulties, in fact, it to is a
challenge since individuals themselves know the world differently.
For example, using the Myers-Briggs paradigm, we know that some
individuals are intuitive, some are rational; some are internal and
some are external. Using the astrological paradigm, individuals
perceive the world differently depending on their sun and rising
sign as well as the stars in their career, love and mission houses.
This astrological factor, while far richer than most modern
psychological paradigms, is stronger as an influencing variable,
when individuals believe in the astrological discourse.
Personality and astrological types are further complicated by
basic ways of knowing and the cultural styles alluded to above. This
essay now moves from my experiences in teaching the future to mine
and Paul Wildman's6
attempt to develop models to capture some of these differences.
Wildman is as concerned with the social action that results
from teaching and learning as he is with the process of education
itself. Moreover while
my frame is often academic, Wildman is concerned with organisations.
His question is how do individuals learn in organisations and how
can we transform organisations to make them more future conscious,
more participatory, and thus more chaotic (in the sense of
disordered order, having structure and openness simultaneously)?
In exploring systems of praxis/social action as well as in
various forms of pedagogy, we have found that the influence of what
may be called the "background frame of reference,"
mindscape, or paradigm7
is of significant importance in determining the sorts of and style
of pedagogy as well as resultant social actions involved and their
effectiveness. Of
particular importance are, we believe, the mindscapes of those who
have designed the particular system, as well as the relationship
between mindscape and culture. They directly influence the way we
see and relate to the world and in turn lead to further actions that
build towards particular futures and can offer reflections that can
lead to theory development. The
next section of the paper then reports on Wildman's work and on our
joint research in applying it to the futures field. While the
earlier section focused more on workshops, the "classroom"
setting if you will, Wildman is more concerned with pedagogy in
organisations as well as the broader issue of how organisations
themselves learn.
Knowledge Clusters--Control or Development?
By framing knowing within certain
clusters of what can be known, it is hoped that practitioners
undertaking university and organisational education will more
readily be able to reference and value their particular mental
paradigm, their piece of the jigsaw puzzle, as well as consider them
in the design of overall decision making processes. This is then a
call for clean epistemological accounting, while it is impossible to
speak from a neutral space, it is possible to speak for a position
of confession (even as that too is bounded by frames outside our
knowing ability).
On one hand this sort of academic pre digestion of knowledge
into byte sized clusters can be seen as part of a "control
curriculum" contract with the silent Professor Kariel, as
discussed earlier.
Alternatively
a "development curriculum" approach can be used where a
question to be addressed is developed primarily by the student,
knowledge is not pre- organised digested, and the student goes on a
voyage of discovery and critical inquiry, only then clustering the
knowledge in ways to develop her understanding of how to respond to
the initial question.
The central focus, as developed above, is well said by the
following words of Gabner: "The ways we reflect on things and
relate to each other are rooted in our ability to compose images,
produce messages and use complex symbol systems.
A change in that process transforms the nature of known
affairs."8
Issues of social action and praxis are a crucial part of
effective theory building about the future, particularly how we
envision future generations and how we research and teach the
future. However they
often remain largely unacknowledged processes.
Analysis and Synthesis
Indeed my (Paul Wildman) research
and involvement in social action and community development has shown
that a particular, that is to say, modern, Western thinking style or
mental paradigm tends to emerge as critical in influencing the sorts
of action outcomes. However,
I have found that this paradigm excludes others and makes praxis and
social action often impossible, change agents feeling paralysed,
cynical of the failure prior and likely into the future.
This is a largely a result of the Western frame: the Western
"scientific" type of mind. This predominant thinking style
is based on analysis where facts and figures predominate and has
come to be called "the mind of the ratio," that is, analysis.
Many other cultures however have thinking styles that
incorporate either ways of thinking, for instance myth9
and metaphor. These
have generated successful societies and economies which have lasted
millennia. Myth, while giving meaning, allows reality to more easily
negotiated, allowing for a universal of humanity, but as well for
differences in language, history, that is cultural expression.
This second thinking style may be called "the mind of
the symbol" it is synthetic
and in particular relates to many Asian cultures, for example,
Japan, India (and in the Pacific Island example used earlier), and
in various historical periods in every culture.
In particular, differences emerge in thinking styles between
broadly definable Asian and Eurocentric cultures (for example,
Nipponic, Teutonic, Indic, Islamic, Sinic and Anglo-Saxon).10
This then echoes the work of Tony Judge, who is concerned
with how metaphors can create change processes and ossify
organisations. If we use analysis we will rarely be able to create
new guiding metaphors that can capture the richness of our
differences, of our disharmonies. Indeed, as Judge has recently
argued, the task in organisations and in teaching environments
should not be the search for a common philosophy, general agreement,
but to harmonise our differences, to allow our fundamental
disagreements to help solve problems, instead of attempting to
recreate a primordial unity.11
But
this is difficult to do since, in using learning processes, we
consciously and unconsciously use our "maps of the world,"
ie our mental paradigms or mindscapes, to help make the world real
for us.12
These mindscapes take on meaning on the one hand by helping
us understand "facts and figures" and thereby navigate
through the world, and on the other by linking us to as it were a
broader culturally relevant symbolic view of the world.
In this way the mind of the symbol and the mind of the ratio
can work together.
Indeed
it emerged that for some authors these links can be such that the
role of myth can be equated with that of general theory in empirical
science, as for example in the works of Reason and Hawkins.13
For example, there is an equivalence between theory and myth;
paradigm and archetype; typology and saga; case study and story; and
themes and metaphor. One comes from a rationalist Western world
focused on analysis, the other from a more historical, indigenous
synthetic world, where the world is grasped in its entirety, and not
reduced. This
equivalence is important to note in that it allows both perspectives
to valued (using the language of the former) and valued (using the
language of the latter). This
is illustrated in Appendix A.
Futures studies and futures generations research, of course,
is far more sensitive to the role of myth and symbols, it is that
which often creates the future at the most deepest level, which
inspires us to continue, to act so as to ensure that these myths and
metaphors will remain alive and thus contribute to the cultural
landscape of future generations.
But this has not been the total story of futures studies,
much of it has been focused on predicting the future and using these
predictions to create a more stable technocratic, rationally
controlled world, the Iron cage of bureaucratic rationality, if you
will.
However, most
current futures research is an attempt to escape this straitjacket,
using the future to rethink the present and to create refuges of
thought, not contaminated by modernity.
Of course the best futures studies would ideally bring in all
these different perspectives, being able to move in predictive,
cultural and critical frames all the time touching on theory, data
and values, to be sensitive to the different ways we learn from each
other and know the world.
However, whiles myth building is central to most futuring, in
most instrumental modes it is obviously lacking. Often rationalist,
literalist and dichotomous (either-or, black-white, right-wrong,
good-evil etc.) thinking predominates.
There seems to be little room for myth or magic in this world
of empirical science, other than as flickering image on a TV screen,14
video games or virtual reality.
The economic strategic significance is multiplied and the
deeper significance is lost. Even,
or shall we say, especially at the level of science, most scientific
research is concentrated on hard science with its test tubes and
computers15,
even though leading edge research institutes such as the Sante Fe
Institute believe that chaos and complexity theory lead us
eventually back to metaphor.
Paradigms and Cultural Knowledge Frames
While certainly an overused word,
it is important to go back to its definition: a paradigm may be
understood as, "a collective way of seeing the world and
includes the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques,
shared by members of a given community." 16
Time and time again in our experience, we have found people
wanting us to supply the questions for which there are ready made
answers. For instance
every problem/question looks like a hammer when all you have is a
nail.17
Participants, and indeed people generally, seem to have great
difficulty thinking outside the box ie. outside their paradigm.
These four aspects are how ones paradigm affects:
¥
Ones actions, in the world
¥
How one names ie. categorises the world,
¥
how one contextualises ones life in the world ie. how one is
in the world
¥
Ones world view.
And we would add between the third
and fourth
¥
How one understands the world
Given this definition what actually comprises a paradigm and
what are the similar issues that are addressed differently in
different paradigms? Passfield18,
Bawden and Macadam19
as well as others have identified some four characteristics of a
paradigm. These characteristics, not in any order of importance, are
outlined in the following Table 1:20
TABLE
1 MENTAL PARADIGM
CHARACTERISTICS
Source: Wildman, 1993.
Paradigms are not only personal or social lenses that we use
to shape the world, they are also paradigms of how we think.
Maruyama has identified four such mindscapes, paradigms or
collective ways of thinking: these are hierarchical,
individualistic, network and synergistic.
Further Galtung identifies four broad intellectual styles
that represent these mindscapes: teutonic, gallic, saxonic, and
nipponic that "generally" relate to these ways of thinking
in the order presented here.
In
addition, Inayatullah has written about the Indic and Islamic and
knowledge frames.
Please
note, however, these linkages are indicative only and are not meant
in any judgmental or empirical manner.
We can see how the individualistic is related to the Saxonic;
the hierarchical to the Teutonic; and network to the Nipponic. The
synergy mindscape can occur in any culture, in any approach once
other mindscapes are under threat. Synergy or bifurcation allows a
new level of learning, a extra paradigmatic process to develop. What
this model alerts is to is that different civilisations construct
not what they learn and how they do differently but the framework,
the organisational technology in which this is done.
At one level, while it is important to be sensitive to the
knowledge style of a particular culture, this does not mean all
knowledge styles are the same. Indeed, in differing conditions some
are clearly superior to others, given various criteria. For example,
top-down hierarchical Western approaches may not be able to perform
economically as well in a complex and fundamentally uncertain post
industrial environment compared to a synergistic (Nipponic) one that
emphasises lateral connections and consensus. Witness the emergence
of the Asian tiger economics over the past 10 years compared to the
rather lacklustre performance of many Western economies.
In the case of pure research however where the power of
sequential analysis, deduction and original (and often
individualistic) is crucial, the Western mindscape may well
out-perform the Eastern. For
instance on a per capita basis America has been awarded many times
more the number of Noble prizes than Japan. The cost of consensus is
difference, of misunderstandings, that can thereby produce novelty,
as Peter Allen and other complexity theorists have argued.21
However, the rise of East Asia is also based on the relatively low
military expenditures and substantial social and educational
expenditures. The
former as a result of historical reasons, WW 11, and the latter
based on the Confucian emphasis on learning and knowledge.
Indic and Islamic Knowledge Frames
The Indic mindscape has dimensions
that blend Eastern and Western knowledge styles.
It is hierarchical, with knowledge from above (the guru or
god and most recently the civil servant technocrat) and it is
individualistic (in that eupsychia is far more important than
eutopia). It is
certainly not horizontal (witness the caste system), however social
action is collective, even though reality is cyclical, all
collectivities rise and fall, and thus, the importance of individual
enlightenment. In this sense, the future in the Indian context
becomes much more individual based, not in the commercial sense of
individual advancement but in the sense that a utopia will be based
on individual transcendence (going so far to argue that if one
person becomes enlightened, his/her future generations will also
gain spiritual salvation through that action).
Social structure is a far more difficult idea to get across
in the Indian framework, except for the fossilised idea of caste.
In contrast, the Islamic mindscape is far more collective,
indeed the Prophet's mission was to create a civilisation of unity,
under Allah. The basis of this civilisation was to be text,
developed through
ilm. In this sense, Islamic civilisation is
hyper-rational. Rationality focused on the text creates a society of
interpreters, less concerned with creating new forms of knowledge,
especially as civilisation declined. However, unlike Western science
where values are divorced from theory and data, Islamic science has
always attempted to keep the larger civilisation values of unity,
trusteeship, submission to Allah as central to the project, even if
during the last six hundred years of decline, imitation and reaction
to the near West, rather than creation have been the norm.
Colonialism has added a dramatic dimension to both knowledge
styles, with truth only so if someone from the West says it, or
someone in a position of State power: the Chief Minister or a
Professor. Folk wisdom has increasingly been removed, with schooling
formalising bureaucratic and national knowledge. Rote learning has
become the norm, indeed, the requirement of nation-building.
Teaching the future becomes far more challenging in these two
contexts. In the Indic, because future generations are personalised
and in the Islamic because authority is centralised. However, since
the collective is so central in Islamic thought, the idea of future
generations fits perfectly into the cosmology, far more than Western
traditions.
Place and Spirit
Moving to East Asia, interestingly
one of the principal differences between East and West according to
Maruyama,22
is the "spirit of place."
For the Japanese, each locality has a "mononoke"
which relates to that place's "uniqueness" is quite "spiritlike,"
undifferentiated and undefined.
Later it is distilled and condensed into the rocks,
creatures, and other lifeforms specific to that place. This is
similar to the "spirit of place" of many indigenous
cultures for example the Australian Aboriginal23
"sacred sites," literally meaning a conjoined spiritual
and physical place. At
these sites the mind of the ancestors, their thought processes,
their dreams are manifest in the present.
In this way spirit and place, that is, mind and matter or
subject and object are interrelated. Consequently, for the Japanese,
through mononoke there is little opposition between mind and matter.
This allows for things such as co-existing alternatives, paradox,
multiple meanings, and even deliberate incompleteness. Importantly
rather than focusing on components themselves, the eastern view
seeks a relationship or pattern between the components. This
approach leads, for instance, to a focus on relationship rather than
on individuals, as well as harmonisation of heterogeneity
(diversity) rather than centralising conformity through some sort of
homogenised master plan.
Maruyama,24
in an interesting aside, suggests the apparent lack of energy in the
West for small-is-beautiful (including such things as organisational
design, community economic development and its unfortunate
concentration on macroeconomic theory) may be the inability of the
West's hierarchical paradigm to incorporate synergistic systems
based on local small scale myths and stories. This reinforces the
point that the West may be at its epistemological nadir, having lost
its mononoke, no longer able to dance or dream, and afraid of its
myths.
In contrast, the Indic system is able to deal with
contradictions, indeed, revels in many ways of knowing, many systems
of logic. The task is not to convert but to uncover the "hindu"
or the "atman" in each person.
While ideally this would lead to a more negotiable style of
teaching in both the Nipponic and Indic system, the demands of
modernity, of nation-building have created systems where respect for
elders, where hierarchy of knowledge if far more important. Still
the strength of both these approaches is that truth is layered: not
right or wrong, but with many levels. Some levels focus on the
physical, some on the unconscious of the mental, others on the
collective unconscious and still some on the spiritual.
But there is an important difference between place for the
aborigine and for the Japanese. For the Japanese, place is
ritualised and miniaturised and indeed culturally commodified: the
tea garden might exist in a shopping mall, only to remind of history
and spirit, but it is still shopping that we must do, it is still
the self that must be consumed. The dream is a western capitalism
that is better than the West, not an alternative rendering of value,
money, of economy as is expressed in the sacredness of space for the
Aborigine. For the indigenous, for the yogi, space is a refuge, a
sacred place that brings on another time.
In this sense teaching the future, particularly teaching
about future generations needs to be space sensitive. Where courses
are held, how buildings are designed, are not trivial matters of
detail but grander matters of feeling at "home" in a
foreign world.
Courses
or learning experiences must then be able to look at how space and
culture is distributed, and how spaces create a different view of
the future.
Applying Mindscapes
Thus, our ways of knowing,
paradigms, mindscapes all force us to be more sensitive to:
different ways of thinking; how different cultural backgrounds can
influence this and most importantly; our own mindscape and to value
differing mindscapes.
What then is needed is that practitioners of the future first
uncover their own paradigm, their own cultural background.
Based on this, considerable synthesis is possible.
For instance, synthesis between thinking and doing, between
mind and matter, between subject and object and between for instance
mindscape and social action.
This
raises possibilities for contributions to methodological development
through praxis and action-oriented systems such as Action Research
which embrace thinking and doing while simultaneously acknowledging
the harmony between mind and matter.
Such synthesis however does not yet seem to be appearing in
mainstream university courses or organisations in general.
If anything it seems that greater and greater levels of
detached analysis are emerging.
While futures studies continues to grow, its focus on
transdisciplinarian ways of learning and teaching still is
threatening to traditional academic departments and knowledge
frames. The search for rigor is also often the call for the
elimination
of
difference. Certainly this seems the case in our predominantly
"saxonic" culture as well as in consensus and hierarchical
cultures. It is only in an environment of synergy, perhaps the
action learning approach, that differences become used to create new
levels of understanding.
We have sought to demonstrate that an important influence on
the way we are now, and the way we will be in the future, is the way
we think ie our mindscapes. Those committed to developing positive
futures through praxis and social action can, we believe enhance
their effectiveness by respecting these ways of thinking and in
particular their own way of thinking.
So we can be made aware of how our piece of the jigsaw puzzle
can help make the big picture.
One method that is exemplary in this regard is causal layered
analysis. However, as argued above in the case of participatory
(action) learning, all methods have their appropriate uses. The
challenge is to be eclectic in the use of various methods, not in
the epistemic frameworks they both create and are created by.
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)
Causal layered analysis attempts to
explore the different levels of an issue or problem bringing the
many discourses that create the real.
Causal layered analysis asserts that how you frame a problem
changes the policy solution and the actors responsible for creating
transformation. Borrowing
from the work of Rick Slaughter6,
we argue that futures studies should be seen at many holistical
levels and not just at any one particular level.
The
first level is the
litany
(trends, problems, often exaggerated, often used for political
purposes) usually presented by the news media. For example, it could
be declining enrolments in an educational institute.
Events, issues and trends are not connected and appear
discontinuous. The result is often either a feeling of helplessness
(what can I do?) or apathy (nothing can be done!) or projected
action (why don't they do something about it?).
The
second level is concerned with
social
causes, including economic, cultural, political factors (and
short term historical).
It
is usually articulated by policy institutes and published as op-ed
pieces or in not-quite academic journals.
It could be in the enrolment example, that faculty are too
busy doing research, that there is a job boom and students prefer to
work rather than sit in institutions. It also could be that the pool
of students has declined. The solutions that result from this level
of analysis are often those that call for more funding, for more
research.
If one is
fortunate then the precipitating action is sometimes analysed.
At this stage, taking a critical view one could explore how
different discourses (the economic, the social, the cultural) do
more than cause the issue but constitute it, that the discourse we
use to understand is complicit in our framing of the issue.
This adds a horizontal dimension to our layered analysis.
The
third level is deeper concerned with structure and
the
discourse/cosmology
that supports and legitimates it.
The task is to find deeper social, linguistic, cultural
structures that are actor-invariant, such as centre-periphery
relations and the anarchic inter-state system.
At this level, it could be that conventional education no
longer fits the job market or that conventional education no longer
fits students' experience of the world that they might get from
community associations or high-tech TV.
The solution that emerges from this level of analysis is to
rethink the values and the structure of the educational institution,
to revision it. One could at this level, develop a horizontal
discursive dimension investigating how different paradigms or
worldview (and related ways of knowing) would frame the problem or
issue. How would a pre-modern world approach the issue of teaching
and learning (learning in communities, through more spiritual
approaches that revive the ideas of initiation into meaning and
culture systems that current educational institutes lack--merely an
application form suffices, for example)? How might a post-modern?
(perhaps focused on distant learning?)
The
fourth layer of analysis is at the level of
metaphor
and myth.
These are
the deep stories, the collective archetypes, the unconscious
dimensions of the problem or the paradoxes.
In the case of the issue of education, it is, does schooling
free us or is it merely social control? Should education still be
based on the Newtonian Fordist model of the factory or is education
about transcendence, the return to mission, the re-enchantment of
the world.
At this
level, the challenge is to elicit the root myth or metaphor that
supported the foundation of a particular litany of issues.
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) asks us to go beyond
conventional framings of issues.
For instance normal academic analysis tends to stay in the
second layer with occasional forays into the third, seldom
privileging the fourth layer (myth and metaphor).
CLA however, does not privilege a particular level.
Moving up and down layers we can integrate analysis and
synthesis, and horizontally we can integrate discourses, ways of
knowing and worldviews, thereby increasing the richness of the
analysis.
In addition,
what often results are differences that can be easily captured in
alternative scenarios; each scenario in itself, to some extent, can
represent a different way of knowing.
Five Ways of Knowing (at least!)
It may be useful at this point to
integrate the above points by distinguishing between different ways
of knowing or learning and to translate these into different types
of strategies for organisations seeking to become learning ones.
These ways of learning are respectively doing, knowing, being,
seeing and relating.
There are numerous cognitive models that attempt to map how
humans know. Based on the work of Paul Wildman and Sohail
Inayatullah, five are offered.
Often in learning situations, there is confusion because
individuals exist in different knowing paradigms. (They were
introduced in Table 1 and are explicated in Appendix B):
¥
The itch to do (techne):
How to fix a car - the practical knowledge I use to do things
- practical knowledge - knowledge or skills for doing.
Broadly similar to the litany level in causal layered
analysis (CLA). Futures
in this area are basically about techniques and practical projects
with a short term horizon.
¥
The itch to know (scientia): How the bits and pieces of a
car work - the propositions that I use to explain my world -
propositional or scientific knowledge - knowledge for knowledge's
sake. Broadly similar
to the social causes level in CLA.
Futures in this area are basically about facts and figures
projected (via mathematical models) into the future
¥ The
itch to be (praxis): What I actually do with my car - the way I
am as I live my life through these changing times - experiential
knowledge - knowledge for being. To transform social conditions.
Broadly similar to the cosmology level in CLA.
Futures in this area are
about different ways of being
and often are seen as utopian.
¥
The itch to see (gnosis): What I understand about life
from having my car - the ability I can develop to understand
symbolically with my heart and my head ie insight-metaphoric
knowledge - knowledge for seeing or intuiting ie to think with one's
heart and feel with one's head.
Broadly similar to the myth level in CLA.
Futures in this area are about divination ie astrology, rune
stones, mediation and insight etc.
¥
The itch to relate (relatio): How I relate to others by
having my car - the way we learn to relate, communicate with other
selves, other life forms and the surrounding universe (engaged
organisation/community). It is knowing through belonging, through
open systems. Futures
in this area are about generating meaning through relating to one
another and the surrounding universe.
The
first three are considered exoteric or rational whereas the last two
are more esoteric.
The balance between these five 'types' of knowing/learning as
presented in following table and the strategies that are used to
present them to students are the subject of strong debate within
learning organisations throughout the world.
TABLE 2
COMPARING PARADIGMS, CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS AND WAYS OF
LEARNING
Source: Wildman and Inayatullah,
1995.
In WFSF courses, I (Sohail Inayatullah) have found that some
students have no patience for theory--they want to get on with, to
discover the bottom line, to transform the world. Other students
find both technical and theoretical information of very little
value. They are there to learn about themselves and others; they are
in search of a moment of
satori.
Trying to balance various learning needs through a mixture of
formal lectures, small groups, and informal "free" time is
also problematic as some find lectures too pedantic, others find
small groups too revealing and fuzzy (garbage in: garbage out), and
still others, find free time too chaotic, believing it to be "a
waste of time." Transferring ownership to students themselves
thus is one of the brilliant contributions of participatory action
learning. That is, let those who are there to learn design their own
pedagogical structure.
In terms of the discourse of future generations, this means
that we have to find ways to include future generations, themselves,
in present decision making, they should not be an external party,
rather they (or their concerns) should be part of the process of
designing the future. The struggle, as articulated above, is how to
let others own and participate in the future when conceptions of
"ownership", "participation", and
"future" are different.
The general trend, however, has been that as theoretical
knowledge has continued to expand, more and more theory has been
incorporated into "curricula,", usually at the expense of
"practica."
In
this way learning has become increasingly theoretical (concerned
with scientia, for instance at Universities) and focused on external
reality which increasingly engages the students in learning by
displaying (externally and expertly defined) competencies through
things such as Competency Based Training.
Here, the students' experiences are largely irrelevant to the
curricula.
For us this
represents humanity's struggle to ignore the internal subjective
world and may well explain why we know more about the moon than the
oceans.
At the same time, the practical is framed in overly
localistic and value-free terms, unaware of different cultures and
individuals constitute what it means to be realistic.
Inappropriate pedagogy effectively disengages the student
from the 'internal' journey of immersion in the mystery of self,
that is to say, the student's life is of is not of significance to
the curricula.
This
disengagement has often resulted in the emergence of technical
institutes.
Clearly
futures studies has attempted to solve this problem, mixing theory
with values and visions. But this resolution should remain
particularly with future generations research: it must be committed
to both how individuals see their world and give meaning to it, as
well as external content which can inspire, help them rethink their
values.
In all this, we believe that by linking thinking and doing as
traditional Universities and Vocational Education do, without
reference to inner seeing, ie insight, the vital link between praxis
and gnosis has tended to get lost.
Unfortunately, so much of today's pre-programmed 'skill
development' seems inimical to these unfolding, creative organic,
developmental and intuitive ways of learning that, we believe, are
crucial to meet the challenges of a post-industrial age. In this
teaching the future must be holistic, seeing the future as a
process, not a particular technique, a bag of skills, that must be
imparted to the uninitiated (although certainly, skill learning is
one dimension of this).
We
thus need to understand the paradigms that we are in and be willing
to exist in different knowing spaces.
Among these ways of knowing is the future, not as way of
predicting, but in itself as a way of being: futuring if you will.
Conclusion
We maintain that individuals
seeking to create a positive future will need to apply the
creativity of all those involved in their pedagogical environment.
Teaching situations must include their students as part of
their course (and this means being authoritative at times as well,
as with the skenarios story). In
turn this will mean recognising and incorporating all four ways of
learning (especially praxis and gnosis) within this futuring
process. This is going
a step beyond action learning in that process itself is seen to be
historically and culturally specific, more over, the politics of
process are often left unscathed, participation becomes the unfilled
rhetoric at one level; and at another there is inappropriate
participation, when nested hierarchies are needed that account for
the vertical differences between persons and organisations.
Fortunately, there are individuals and organisations that
want to focus on the future,
not
merely to gain expert opinion on opportunities and dangers, but to
transform their ways of knowing to be more future focused.
Doing this, as we have argued, requires more sensitivity
towards our respective mindscapes, their resultant ways of knowing
and implications for our futures than we have ever had before.
Future generations require no less from us.
