KAWANGWARE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Consult Contextual Spin
CONSULT METHODS
CONSULT CONTEXTUAL SPIN
I was impressed, last night, with the Chief's interest
in the song "I am see a new day." This isn't very good,
but before we leave, we need a good one. I went back and tried
to get "Kawangware" in it and it went like this:
KAWANGWARE I can see a new town;
VERSE A new town, rising tall,
Kawangware, of Nairobi
'Tis a sign on behalf of all.
SOCIO- We're interested in the methodologies that occasion
rapid ECONOMIC and profound social change on the local level.
And we'll CHANGE employ those methods as they have been refined
up to the moment. It's probably occurred to you that political
change is rarely, if ever, a profound change. It, of course, sometimes
is rapid. But if you take the triangles of the social processes
that are before you, and see the three dynamics of society-economic,
political, and cultural (and, as you know, many sociologists use
the term "social" for culture; I prefer the word "culture"
you'll probably observe that profound social change is
always socioeconomic. You're not going to have in a community
profound change that is simply social, nor are you going to have
profound change that is simply economic; they must go together.
There fore, we're going to be concerned this week with socioeconomic
change. You'll probably also notice that the ordering structures
of a community take care of themselves when the social dynamic
is alive and moving into the future and when the economic is alive
and moving into the future along with it.
OPERATING VISION Now the methodologies that we're going
to begin with what we call The Operating Vision. I like the word
"the local vision" or I like better "the existing
vision," but the term "operating vision" is very
descriptive, because man is consciousness: he exists only out
of vision. For most of us as individuals, that operating or personal
vision or screen is unconscious. We do not stand at attention
before it. I do not mean to use "unconscious" in the
sense that fourfifths of us are always in the realm of the
unconscious. I use "unconscious" as a term in relation
to that which can become conscious when one brings intentionality
into being, or when one becomes a self. This Same thing is true
of a community.
PERSONAL SELFHOOD One of the most astounding things to
me in the Twentieth Century is the awareness that self hood is
a matter of standing outside of your web of relationships and
taking an attitude towards them. This is so simple that it is
hard to believe that this insight has only come into broad consciousness
in this century. The illustration that I use is that every time
I show up in awareness I am married to one lass by the name of
Lyn. That's a relationship; that's part of my temporality; that's
a part of my fate. But my marriage is not that relationship, not
by one long sight. My marriage in standing outside of that fateful
given, every time I wake up, and taking an attitude toward it-that's
my marriage. And that's where selfhood is. Now the same is true
in a community. A community has a web of relationships that define
it, but that's not the community. The community is the relationship
the community takes toward itself, or its web of relationships.
Now, what I mean by the local ant the practical vision is the
latent part of that attitude that you take toward that fate.
COMMMUNITY The second most important thing the twentieth
century has dis- SELFHOOD covered in relation to anthropology,
or the image of man, is that this awareness only takes place in
community. But I think in the years ahead we're all going to be
astounded by the consciousness that indicates what happens to
a self is what has to happen to a community; that is, to become
intentional in life is to selfconsciously take that attitude
toward your relationships. Community development begins by enabling
a community to consciously take that attitude toward its givenness.
And out of that comes the future. That's what I mean by local
vision. But few communities in the world are awake, are aware,
have selfhood in the sense I'm talking about. What we are going
to be dealing with this week is this dynamic which is held in
the local vision. Because it is latent, because it is unselfconscious,
it's like nobody in town could clearly say what that vision is,
any more than you likely court say what the vision is in the community
where you live.
WHERE TO LOOK Where do you look for it? Well, of course,
it's in the symbolism; it's embedded there. It is embedded in
the style. It is embedded in the social structure. It is embedded
in the hopes and the dreams and the fears and the anxieties of
the people. It is embedded in the architecture and in the care
of space and in the way time is underst6ood and used. You probably
have noticed that that array of buildings over there, in terms
of artful lines, is absolutely out of this world, absolutely out
of this world. That tells us something deep about Kawangware that
I suspect Kawangware does not know itself. What just a little
bit of effort would do over there is, to me, absolutely astounding.
Their hopes, dreams, vision, are what I see when I look across
there at those buildings.
FIRST STEP Today we are out to get a hold of that local
vision in order to render it into a rational model. This we will
do tomorrow in the plenary session, out of the data and the reflection
of the five teams that are going to operate today. That's the
first etep in rapid, profound, social chan~e on the local level.
UNDERLYING CONTRADICTION The second step is what we call
the Underlying Contradictions. Now we're going to talk about all
of these things separately, so I'm going to hasten thisa. We'll
come back and talk about contradictions. The important thing to
understand, first of all is that you are out to discover what
deters the actualization, the realization, the incarnation of
this local vision. What are the deterrents? What keeps it from
comiaginto being?
NOT NEGATIVE Now a contradiction is not a problem. As
a matter of fact, you're going to discover contradiction is not
a negative category; it's a creative category. Any future comes
to be by whosoever is riding on the back of the contradiction
into the future.
SUBJECTIVE IRRITATION Now, to get ahold of the contradiction,
the underlying contradiction, I believe you first of all have
to deal with the subjectlvity yourself. As you move through the
community and as you reflect, what just frustrates you, what just
irritates you? And then you have to flip that into the realm of
the objective; and then you look for obvious blocks.
NO CENTER Now a contradiction, in one sense, doesn't even
exist. What you really do is to get ahold of the outer rim of
the whirlpool or the whirlwind, the center of which is not. That
center is your contradiction. This is why you never can see a
contradiction head on; you always see it out of the corner of
your eye-because the first 486 things we say is the contradiction,
is not the contradiction. They may point to and relate to the
underlying contradiction but you haven't arrived yet. You only
spot that contradiction after you whirl these evidences that something
is deterring, in a profound sense. These are hard to finally say.
NOT GOALS The significant things is, in our day, we are
clear that the teleological approach to social change, that is
dealing with goals, never did create the future, never did occasion
social change. You could put goals up around the walls from now
on and nothing happens. In our day, we see that man always attacks
the contradiction-we do it selfconsciously now-that once
you get the contradiction to the local vision, you can thrown
the local vision in the waste basket because now you have got
that which is the one important thing in your focus relative to
occasioning social change.
PRACTICAL PROPOSALS Today we are going to be dealing with
the local vision. Tomorrow and a part of the day after that, you're
going to try to discern the primal, the underlying contradictions
to that vision and from then on we work with the contradictions.
That enables us to go to the next step which we call Practical
Proposals. The Practical ProposaI is something between a strategy
and a tactics that has to do not with resolving the contradiction,
but releasing the contradiction toward creating the future. At
this point, one has to embrace his guts and risk. Here you have
to release all the creativity that you have. You almost have to
begin wildly in terms of possible solutions. Later, you can get
your feet down on earth. What you're after is the practical, but
not necessarily possible-if you can stied such categories-immediately
seemingly possible ways to get those contradictions working on
your own side, so to speak. We will be dealing with that on Wednesday
and a part of Thursday.
TACTICAL SYSTEMS Practical proposals themselves never
accomplish anything. I might say that once you get your practical
proposals, you can throw your contradictions away and you work
with these. Only when tactical systems relative to the actualization
of those proposals are built do you begin to even move toward
that which really occasions the social change. Once you have your
tactical systems built, you then throw away your practical proposals.
We often like to say that no soldier ever died in his
goals; and no soldier ever died in his practical proposals; he
only dies in executing a tactic. When people ask me what is the
difference between you people and other community development
organizations-and they're a dime a dozen around the worldafter
I say we're a notforprofit community development outfit,
I say, secondly, that we are not concerned with planning primarily;
we are concerned with actuation and our methodologies are all
geared, not to ways of conceiving, but to the means of doing.
Our focus is upon tactics.
ACTUATING PROGRAMS Then after you get your tactical systems,
in order for these tactics to move you have to render them into
what we call actuating programs. These are crucial; but there
is a sort of gap here. You always do your tactics. The programs
organize them in such a way that those tactics can be implemented.
The actuating programs enable you to organize the local forces
that are going to do the tactics. A little bit more tangential
? but not less important is that these actuating programs allow
you to make the cost estimates of the project, and therefore,
enable the necessary funding of any kind, whether it is public
or private sector, local or from beyond the community. That is
basically the function of the programs. Now our consult will stop
here, How much of this we get into focus will depend on how we
do getting around to that point.
TIMELINED IMPLEMENTARIES The last stop in social change
is timelined implementaries. Now a consult does not need to do
this, first; in one sense it can't do it. The implementaries are
the specific tasks that the forces who are going to do the project
have to do to carry out the tactical systems day by day. This,
I think you can understand. Therefore, the actuating forces themselves
are the only people who can do the timelined implementaries. After
those of us in the consult have packed our bags and gone on, this
is the job that the local people themselves who care and are concerned
about the proJect have to do.
DYNAMICAL PROCESS A very important thing happene when
you get to this point. You are back to the local vision. By this
time the local vision has undergone radical alteration, just period.
And for a community that remains dynamics then, the job starts
all over again. When they get back around here, the local vision
will have changed; then you start all over again. And, thus, historical
time, dynamical time-if that isn't redundant happens, or
the future constantly comes to be.
WEEKLY DESIGN Today and half of tomorrow we are going
to be dealing with the operating vision; on Tuesday and Wednesday
with the contradictions; on Wednesday and Thursday with the practical
proposals, on Thursday and Friday with the tactical systems. At
that time we will see how much time we have left to move on to
the actuating programs. This is our movement during the week.
TEAN EMPHASIS The daily schedule is on the board. We will operate
as a consult as a whole and as a consult divided into five or
so teams. The emphasis has to be upon the team and, you will notice,
that most of the time you are within the team dynamic. The consult
operates toward coagulating and gestalting and rationalizing the
data and the reflection of the team 80 that you are doing one
thing and not five.
DAILY DESIGN Each morning at breakfast we will meet together
as a consult. This will be a time of breathing. After a break
we will come back and have a plenary session. The hours I have
on the board are simply rough guidelines. The teams don't need
to follow these at all. We hope that our plenaries will not take
three hours either. This, however, gives you a rough feel after
the day, divided into three periods of work, three hours apiece,
and then two hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner, including
breaks. A team will organize its own time.
FIELD WORK Today the whole time will be spent in the field
as team with tonight spent together for a work session. In the
afternoons, the teams are in the field, depending on what the
teams need to do. They may be in work sessions as they are most
evenings.
CONSULT CELEBRATION We had our opening celebration last
night. It could very well be on Saturday afternoon we might have
a celebration again. Then it Just might be good for us to have
an informal celebration on Wednesday evening. Of course the consult
is free to alter that in any way that it chooses. Some of it will
be determined on how fast we move in these steps toward rapidly
occasioning the socioeconomic development of Kawangware.