A Collaborative and Dialogic Approach: working with communities

1. A Collaborative and Dialogic Approach: working with communities M.T.F. Rocio Chaveste Gutiérrez, Ph.D.

2. Basic Premises of a Postmodern Collaborative Philosophy • Postmodern refers to a family of concepts. The most important are: • the notion of knowledge and • language as relational and generative.

3. Basic premises… Knowledge (what we know or think we might know) • The development and transformation of knowledge is a communal process. • Knowledge and the knower are interdependent. • What we know or what we think we might know is linguistically constructed. • Knowledge is fluid.

4. Basic premises… Language (spoken and unspoken). • Language gains it meaning through its use. • Language is the primary vehicle through which we construct and make sense of our world. • Language is fluid. • What is created in language (knowledge) is multi-authored among a community of persons and relationships (in and through language); and therefore, what is created is only one of multiple perspectives, narratives and possibilities.

5. Basic premises… • Reality (the meanings that we attribute to the events, experiences and people in our lives) is socially constructed and is infinite in variety and expression. • Language and knowledge are relational and generative; and therefore, the kinds of relationships we have, influence the kinds of conversations we might have and vice versa. • These views of language and knowledge invite uncertainly.

6. What are the Implications of a Postmodern Collaborative Approach to our work with Communities ? Postmodernism offers a broad philosophical and pragmatic challenge to the modernist culture and traditions of “community work”.

7. Implications… Postmodernism invites a philosophy for conversation that includes a particular conceptualization of human beings and their behaviors that, in turn, influences collaborative relationships, a partnership endeavor.

8. Elements for working with diverse communities • Collaborative and dialogic practices • Socioconstructionist and relational approach • The communal construction of social justice

9. Collaborative and Dialogic practices Collaborative and dialogic practices invite a philosophical stance: a way of being in conversation and relationship with the people we work with, including a way of thinking about, talking with, acting with and being responsive to them.

10. Collaborative practices challenge the technical and instrumental character of psycho-social work; it challenges the notion of an expert knower on how people ought to live their lives; and it challenges the way that we use what we think we might know; and therefore, invites uncertainty.

11. It values the inclusion of multiple voices and the richness of differences. • Promotes less hierarchical and more egalitarian relationships and systems.

12. Socioconstructionist and relational approach • The communal construction of knowledge • The relational processes through which knowledge is produced, focusing on the meanings and understandings that we give to those constructions. • Knowledge is historically, culturally and linguistically situated.

13. On language • What we use to understand and make meaning about the events, experiences and people in our lives, what we use to express our “thoughts”. • Language gains its meaning through its use • It is creative rather than a representation (mirrors) of knowledge or reality. • Understanding and meaning emerge and are created and recreated in language. Refers to spoken and silent: words, signs, symbols and gestures. • Language is fluid.

14. Self, self identity and self agency • The self as developed in language and as changing based on conversation and the contexts in which conversation occurs. • Thus, self as a social process, a shift from the individual self to the relational self. • Self identity and self agency are created in language and conversation. • Identities and narratives influence, permit or limit, self description, experience, expression and agency.

15. Social Justice: traditionalapproach • A society where all members have equitable access to resources • Righting the wrongs created by a systems of inequality (structural inequalities). • Analyzes the society in terms of dominant and oppressed groups • Valuing of fairness and equity in resources, rights, and treatment for marginalized individuals and groups of people who do not share equal power in society

16. Social Justice:social constructionapproach Rather than understanding our social realities as structurallyfixed entities, we explore the dynamic relational processes of making such realities. Not to be dismissed as only as a “thing” of the past, but to understand it also as a process that we are all currently engaged in shaping and being shaped by it.

17. Collaborative/dialogicapproach to social justice • Centers the practices on communicative action • Understand the historical process of making (structural inequalities) from the client’s perspectives • Decenter structural inequalities by locating expertise with clients

18. Collaborative/dialogic approach to social justice • Avoids the potential colonization of sense-making when one adopts dominant viewpoints.   • Focus on being relationally responsive to the kind of futures we are creating. • Shifts our gaze to “power-with” our clients without being blind to the power-over the client, built into the “system” of mental health practices.

19. Social justice and power: a collaborativeperspective • Rather than take an either/or position, we are advocating for a both/and position. • Power is both constituted within the social and constituting the social • The discourses of power are themselves historically produced and socially organizer of our realities.

20. Social justice and power: a collaborative perspective • Power is not a decontextualized concept, it is generated by us as a way to understand and organize our lived experiences. • “Power is created in the moment by-moment interaction [we have] with others. A power relationship is a constructed relationship” (McNamee, 2010)

21. Social justice and power: a collaborative perspective • We not only acknowledge the institutionalized practices of racism, sexism, heteronormativity etc. but locate these institutionalized practices in communicative action within which power relationship are constructed. • These institutionalized practices originated within a communal context and are maintained in language and communities of practice

22. Social justice and power: a collaborative perspective • Calling a group minority, at-risk, and/or weaker, continues to maintain our focus on these groups as less than, rather than attending to how they are resisting and/or actively shaping and shifting the “power” discourse.   • Our language practices carry the potential to further the very discourses we want to unmake, by the way we continue to use language.

23. To keep in mind as we work with communities • Validation: Have respect for, be humble, listen to, and maintain coherence with each person and community story. • Their story take center stage: Be curious, ask questions that lead to other questions, not answers.

24. Communities as authors of their own story: Create and safeguard room for each community to develop its own views and rewrite its own stories. • Stay in sync: Work within each person and community rhythm, pacing, and timing, not yours.

25. Information: Each conversational cluster together creates knowledge that is unique and specific to their community. • Choices: Let each person and community determine what is important.

26. Intervention: Avoid the temptation of across the board diagnoses, goals, and strategies for reaching goals. Consider the uniqueness of each situation, the multiplicity of possibilities for each community, each context and each moment. • Familiar: Explore the known in a way that allows for doors to be created where there were walls.

27. Public: Make your ideas and prejudices visible; keep them open to question and change. • Try to understand: Don’t know, assume, or fill in the blanks too quickly. • Trust and believe: Try to make sense out of what appears non sense.

28. THANK YOU rchaveste@kanankil.edu.mx