Theme 6: Participatory practice as inner and outer transformation

indigenous systems, the individual is only knowable as a member of a specified community, and communities are only recognisable through their constituents. This flows through not just previous generations, but generations to come, and through nature itself. According to Paula Gunn Allen (1986: 67), another indigenous writer, this perception of co-creation actively discourages people from setting themselves up as tyrants or dictators, in other words as ‘entitled’. This, of course, is not always the case. Nonetheless, many such indigenous communities are currently regarded by numerous people as backward and needing to ‘be developed’. However, the destruction of their lifestyle and livelihood means the destruction of potential plants to obviate pests and diseases globally, as such indigenous and traditional communities actually manage 95 per cent of the world’s genetic natural resources, which in turn are important to human survival in the long term (IPBES, 2019).

Theme 6: Participatory practice as inner and outer transformation

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the outside world would also change. As man [sic] changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. (Accredited to Gandhi)

Winter (2011) argues that the transformation of political and economic institutions necessitates the transformation of individual self-awareness. Otherwise, any transformation of institutions will disintegrate into the old forms because they are a product of the motives, interpretations, feelings and aspirations of people who remain stuck in old ways of being and thinking. Thus, former communist countries, he argues, came to reflect centuries of thinking and aspirations embedded in their culture despite economic reform. In the Soviet Union, the culture continued to reflect ways of being found in Russian Tsarist history, with a single dominant dictator and a secret police agency. Despite Mao’s attempt through the Cultural Revolution to break the cycle of history in China, it did not upset cultural norms around the family which re-emerged afterwards. For real transformation to take place, we also need to address what Winter calls ‘our ethical being’ and be constantly self-reflective of our knowledge, our awareness of where it comes from and what motivates us. He argues that in order to challenge prevailing structures and processes we must understand how the nature of their operations are effectively disguised. The processes of distraction and concealment permit systemic injustice to continue or to be transmogrified into an issue involving a few individual corrupt people. Surfacing and making visible the systemic injustice requires a raising of awareness, and an awakening, at a mass level.

That inner work, in a participatory paradigm, takes place when we engage with others, not just through individual inner contemplation, because existence is interactional. Being in this world, constructing reality, creating meaning, and shaping one’s destiny are all tasks that involve participation. We become more aware (that is, we learn) through interaction with others and with the world. This generates an inner transformation that proceeds from not only an increased awareness but also a sense of agency. That sense of agency is both individual and collective. Once you engage with others, whatever their background, around common experience you feel connected on an equal level. This, in turn, gives you a sense of value and the power to act. Such experiential knowing enables individuals to connect with each other through their emotions and their embodied experiences (that is, their presence). This connection between individuals is not solely a cognitive experience but a phenomenological experience in which the mind and being are whole.

Storytelling either verbally or through art is a means through which this process can take place (see Chapter 5). In listening to and telling our stories we learn in relationship. In this way we can connect our felt experience (that is, experiential knowing) to the felt experience and the emotions of others and these are then all brought to group awareness. This enables us to gain awareness of each other’s worldviews and, in particular, our felt experiences. Through this awareness, we develop empathy for each other. As we share experiential and expressive ways of knowing with each other through imaginal forms, we start to engage in wholeperson dialogues. We grow a deep sensitivity towards how others are experiencing and conceptualising reality, and we begin to develop a shared validation of reality and co-create knowledge.

In highly populous societies, engaging in such a process has largely been neglected. One of the ironies of both charities and the welfare state is that both have emerged in societies where populations are too large and dispersed for givers and receivers to know each other. The result is that such societies face the challenge of persuading the wealthy and those just getting by that aiding the less fortunate is both their obligation and a matter of shared interest. We would argue that the solution comes through a participatory approach to raising awareness and through the consequential inner transformation, empowerment and emancipation.

As Freire argued, oppressed people can become more empowered by learning about social inequality through the process of conscientisation, encouraging others by helping them to feel confident about achieving social equality (inspiring) and finally encouraging them to take action (liberating). This has both an individual component, developing power from within, as well as a collective component, that is, working with politicised power with others to generate the power to bring about change. It can also generate resistance and recalcitrance and thus opposition to changes generated top down by others.