Thought Experiment Posed by a Member of the Club

Imagine, you are an expert on colours. You know all there is to know about colours. The wavelengths, the interactions, the gradient. Yet you are colourblind and can only see black and white. One day you wake up, to see that magically you can see colours. Did you learn something new?

Points Raised at the Reading Club

While minutes were not taken, this a brief summary of some of the points made.

Giving Back:

• What exactly is the value that research should provide, as some would argue that making it more difficult to do research, by constraining it so heavily is necessarily bad, as it precludes accumulation of knowledge
  • In the social sciences there is much to be done
• Example here is made with fundamental research in natural sciences and its lack of apparent value
  • counter-point here is that social sciences can never do this type fundamental research for humans, that is done by philosophy (maybe arguably medical psychology, depends on your metaphysics)
• Another point here is that accumulation of knowledge is not net positive, if it is heavily biased in the first place
  • The academic production co-produces the system which upholds it

Role of the Researcher:

• Once we accept the premise of Fals-Borda, what remains of the researcher
• Don't they become superfluous in a way
• Why have theory at all? This point is not well justified in the paper

Strong Marxist Background of the theory:

• Given the theoretical background, in turn it could seem that Fals-Borda is himself patronizing the citizens OR assuming that there is only one correct way to proceed in their situation (the marxist way)
• Counter-point here that it is not really that much about the marxist substance, but about the way new knowledge is created, where this point does not hold necessarily

Transferability:

• Realistically how can one operate with the PAR framework, if they are working in Switzerland and studying Europe
• Does it not preclude meaningful sharing of methods and knowledge between contexts where it does not fit so well?
• Or is this point of view just a result of European exceptionalism?

Far Right:

• A point is raised about the study of far-right/fascist communities, what would PAR imply vis-a-vis engagement with them?
• One qualification is that Fals-Borda wrote about the study and empowerment of marginalized communities, which in the case of the far-right is not so clear
  • However to an extent they are a marginalized community, both economically and politically (the latter of course being good, the former bad presumably)
• While to co-production of knowledge might look different, it seems that still a different approach could be taken to study the far-right based on PAR
  • In the end might be more productive then ad absurdum finding different miniscule correlative causes of the far-right (i.e. closing pubs or riding on a bike)

Questions about suitability:

• A clear implication of the debate is reflection on who you are and what right do you have to speak authoritatively about the state of others

Notes from the Reading

Concept of Double History

It is a 'double history' because it is written in two styles or languages which run simultaneously on opposite pages: one for the non-initiated reader, presented in literary form; and the other for cadres' training, presented in conceptual and theoretical terms, being a sociological interpretation of the literary text.

• This is absolutely crucial -> ensure popular comprehension

People's Power

In this connection, people's power may be defined as the capacity of the grass-roots groups, which are exploited socially and economically,

AIMS

• 1) to enable the oppressed groups and classes to acquire sufficient creative and transforming leverage as expressed in specific projects, acts and struggles; and
• 2) to produce and develop socio-political thought processes with which popular bases can identify.

It is obvious that these aims go beyond the academic traditions which have emphasised value neutrality and a positivist objectivity as prerequisites for 'serious science'.

• it would induce a reorientation in teleological terms that would lead into more integrated academic and popular, or common-sensical, knowledges so that a new type of 'revolutionary science' (in Kuhnian terms) becomes a real possibility, not only a felt necessity.

Establishment of People's Power in Fieldwork and Adult Education:

1. How to interact and organise for such purposes
2. How to recognise oneself and to learn in such context

How to Organise for Such Purposes

Developmentalist discourse:

The developmentalist discourse, as is well known (Foucault's thesis of the archaeology of knowledge can help us in this respect), involves dealing with the concepts of poverty, technology, capital, growth, values, and so forth, as defined from the standpoint of rich, developed countries (where in fact the concept of development was first proposed), a discourse organised into a coherent intellectual whole for the purpose of rationalising and defending the worldwide dominance of those rich and powerful societies.

Participatory Discourse:

initiated in the Third World - quite probably as an endogenous dialectical response to the actions of the developed world - postulates an organisation and structure of knowledge in such a way that the dominated, underdeveloped societies articulate their own socio-political position on the basis of their own values and capacities and act accordingly to achieve their liberation from the oppressive and exploitative forms of domination imposed by opulent (capitalist) foreign powers and local consular elites and thus create a more satisfactory life for everyone.

Participation and organisation:

This combination of experience and commitment allows us to decide for whom such knowledge is intended: the base groups themselves.

-> Resolving tension between internal and external animators:

• Since these elements of knowledge result from different class conformations and rationalities (one Cartesian and academic, the other experiential and practical) a dialectical tension is created between them which can be resolved only through practical commitment, that is, through praxis
  • Therefore academic knowledge plus popular knowledge and wisdom may give as a result a total scientific knowledge of a revolutionary nature (and perhaps another paradigm) which destroys the previous unjust class monopoloy.

From subject/object to subject/subject

-> transformation of attitude in research

hus to participate means to break up voluntarily and through experience the asymmetrical relationship of submission and dependence implicit in the subject/object binomial. Such is its authentic essence.

Example: From Nicaragua

• the animators insisted that the peasants should analyse their own patterns of dependency, authoritarianism and paternalism inherited from the traditional exploitation systems of the past which continued to flourish there despite the revolution of 19 July 1979.
• 'If people from other places had come to do it, the investigation would have failed because there are persons here who believe that most outsiders come just to steal', the Commission rightly concluded.
  • Exactly!

Alternative Versions of participation:

• Samuel Huntington's limited definition of it as 'acts affecting governmental decision-making' (Huntington and Nelson 1976).
  • Of course, this is not participation at all according to PAR standards (since it is not the government which is the final referent, but the peoples themselves), a fact which is recognised by critical political scientists such as Seligson and Booth (1979) and Gran (1983), who admit the real-life complexities of the participatory process.
  • Interestingly this links very well to research on deliberative democracy today

To persist at every level and over the long term is therefore an integral ingredient of PAR, and of the endogenous lesson of the organisation of the popular bases.

-> From this Assembly there emerged the first sure indications that it would be possible to establish a regional political movement which would be set within an autochthonous cultural reality.

• Not sure why the region should be the referential point?

From the Regional to National, From the periphery to the center:

It is significant that in Colombia this process has led to the organisation of a movement rather than a political party as such, and that the procedure adopted has been from the bases upwards and from the periphery towards the centre, rather than the contrary, as has usually been the case with traditional parties, including those of the left.

Techniques for Knowledge and Power

It starts with the thesis that science is not a fetish with a life of its own or something which has an absolute value.

• As amply demonstrated, science is a cultural product with specific human purposes and implicitly carries those class biases and values which scientists hold as a group.

It is possible to concieve an alternative way to think about science:

• For this reason it is theoretically possible to conceive of alternative ways of science, such as a people's science to exist as an endogenous process.
  • The knowledge thus acquired, properly systematised, would serve the interests of the exploited classes.
  • This people's science would converge with the so-called 'universal science' of academe to the point where a totalising paradigm would be created which would incorporate the newly acquired systematised knowledge.

It becomes necessary to eliminate also the relationship governing the production of knowledge:

production which tends to give ideological support to injustice, oppression and the destructive forces which characterise the modern world

-> Begins with the question: Why is there poverty?

Qualitative rather than Quantitative:

• As has been done in practice, such a participatory task gives precedence to qualitative rather than quantitative analysis, without losing sight of the importance of explanatory scientific schemas of cause-and-effect.
• As a rule we have followed Pascal's dictum, 'The heart has its reasons which the reason does not at all perceive',
• Able to think with the heart

Useful Techniques:

1. Collective Research
   • This is the systematic use of information collected and systematised on a group basis, as a source of data and objective knowledge of facts resulting from meetings, socio-dramas, public assemblies, committees, fact-finding trips, etc.
   • The combination of study and practice, when done in this collective and dialogical way, implies the idea of a service to the community.
2. Critical Recovery of history
   • This is an effort to discover selectively, through collective memory, those elements of the past which proved useful in the defence of the interests of exploited classes, and which proved useful and which may be applied to the present struggles to increase awareness.
   • They were indeed real men who knew how to value their freedom! By comparison, the present situation of town life was hateful and incomprehensible.
     • History thus gained a new meaning from these new glimpses of truth and power,
     • All this systematic research activity carried out in collaboration with the local people - with data columns, the recovery of popular figures and heroes, ideological projections, imputations, and personifications - took place outside academic institutions
3. Valuing and applying folk culture
   • In order to mobilise the masses, this technique is based upon the recognition of essential or core values among the peoples in each region
   • It had managed to give voice to the soul of the people. -> this is a nice phrasing, however not sure about it
   • Story-telling refuses to die because, if it did, the peasant people would die with it.
   • This is rather similar to Sarr - Afrotopia, the argument about using the local culture
4. Production an diffusion of new knowledge
   • Although PAR strives to end the monopoly of the written word (which as a rule is an elitist phenomenon), it incorporates various styles and procedures for systematising new data and knowledge according to the level of political conscience and ability for understanding written, oral or visual messages by the base groups and public in general.
   • Four levels of communication:
     • Nevertheless the actual need for articulating abstract theory and concepts is still retained for level four.
   • Other efficient forms of communication based on a 'total' or intentional language include the use of image, sound, painting, gestures, mime, photographs, radio programmes, popular theatre, video-tapes, audio-visual material, poetry, music, puppets and exhibitions.
   • his systematic devolution of knowledge complies with Gramsci's objective of transforming 'common' sense into 'good' sense or critical knowledge ('revolutionary science' as a new paradigm) which would be the sum of experiential and theoretical knowledge.
   • avoiding the airs of arrogance and the technical jargon that spring from usual academic and political practices, including ideological elements from the current (and increasingly discredited) developmentalist discourse.