We consistently underestimated how much we could cover in a session with a group of this size and diversity. I think a better beginning would have been to pose the question "what power do we want?" - at a personal level (power to be, power to say no, power to act, etc) leading in to thinking about how power is structured in society, and the goals for change we envisage. This would have brought out the contextual differences more acutely, and earlier clarity about goals would have helped stimulate more strategic thinking. A natural follow on would have been the Culture of Obedience section. The group/movement level would later emerge as the bridge between personal and social empowerment - I suppose!
Most participants expressed appreciation for the work on Day 2. However, what we produced were lists, containing some items that needed to be taken deeper. Above all, a list is not a structured analysis, does not bring out the patterns or suggest the tools for analysis of specific cases.
There was general appreciation that we had introduced gender day by putting gender in the context of other power-relations, such as race and class.
The Culture of Obedience part of Day 3 was also widely appreciated, although one woman told me it was just another "sharing" go-round without deepening anything or addressing difficulties. During the reporting back, there was some tension between men and women. The different methods followed by the groups meant that the women reported back a more discursive list of points, including more personal experience, while the men produced a shorter and more pointy list, having discussed the most personal elements in pairs or trios. This accentuated the difference perceived by one woman that "women feel a pressure to conform, men a pressure to perform".
The men's group had an interesting detour into whether conforming to a masculine role model should be seen as "disempowered behaviour", as in some senses it is "overempowered", taking power from women. As gender issues permeate the question of empowerment, it might have been more effective to have a gender spot at the end of each day.
The Culture of Solidarity discussion was largely seen as a diversion, and raised all-too-briefly a major theoretical approach of which some people were very suspicious.
The Culture of Resistance stories were all interesting in their own right, and suggested interesting differences from the gender perspective But there was no time at all to get into them.
At the end of Day 3, there was specific criticism of our metholodogy and a desire to get more clarity on some basic agreements around Social Empowerment.
We responded to these criticisms on Day 4, concentrating on defining the social characteristics of Social Empowerment. Some difficulty arose because Empowerment is a process but also a goal. The difference in the strategic frameworks between the Bosnian-Croatian group and the others became especially marked, as peace groups in B-H and Croatia are less oriented towards explicit goals for the whole of society or for building a movement, but rather seek to maintain a core of values at least among a minority in their societies. A major discussion cropped up about the place of Nonviolence in empowerment. One participant raised the specific point that she wanted to live in a society free from the threat of socially-sanctioned violence against any social group. This was the starting point for the barometer exercise at the beginning of Day 5: this helped keep people awake after the previous night's party, but also was quite participatory.
On Day 5, the group was asked to think in content terms but mainly reported back about process and methodology. Symptomatic of the experience in this group throughout the Triennial.
People felt that the group had stimulated a lot of ideas, which now needed digesting. I felt we had not helped get those ideas into shape. I was strongly aware that we hardly touched the question of alternative institution building and did not look at all at the transformation of social structures.
People enjoyed our "elicitative" methods to begin with, but I think to get beyond their existing limits needed to concentrate on some specific cases and to be offered some specific frames for analysis. This means more theoretical input, either that comes from the convenors and is implicit in some of the exercises, or from a resource person in the group. (Even getting participants to fill in a particular grid around power implies some theory.) Perhaps we could have had a session with three or four groups making a case study and analysing it according to a particular model - but to do that the theory behind that model (and its limits) would need to have been introduced.
Perhaps it would be good for each theme group to begin with a brief round,
offering people the opportunity (but not obliging them) to report back on
things they'd heard elsewhere in the conference that added to our discussion.
1998 WRI Triennial index page
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