ISCAR2014

Dispersibility and homology of Community Empowerment

Takashi Miyazaki （ Hokkaido University)

Pauline McClenaghan(Lifestart Foundation)

Ruiko Takeda(Seisen Womens College)

Kendo Otaka(Seigakuin University)

1.Aim

• Clarifying the nature of community that enables the self-independence of its members.

←workfare policies ： individualized learning and training

which acts to deepen rather than reduce social exclusion.

　　⇒ non- exclusive learning theory

・ Learning by constructing an emancipating community

⇒transforming the habitus as a base of self

・ Two sides of social exclusion

⇒ structural side / subjective side(=Habitus)

・ Two case studies

　 supporting practice for disabled people in Japan

　 supporting practice for Traveller women and other vulnerable women in Ireland.

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2.Objects and view points

・ relationship between self and community

1)Self has been generated as a process of distinction

from others

2)Self which includes the other’s view point can make

his/her activity universal.

3) Community as a result of cooperation

4)Community as the base for self-formation

・ unit for analysis

<others – self – cooperation - community>

= generating community by cooperation with others

3.Case Studies : Mugi-no-sato• Outline

supporting movement for disabled children, youth and their families, ahead and beyond administrative system.

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Support for work

Support for severely disabled

Training for independence

Support for life

Support for development

Support for elderly people

Seven Workshops

One Workshop

Three Workshops

Four Workshops

Four Workshops

Two Workshops

Case Study one : Mugi-no-sato• Outline

amount of business : around $500 million

the number of staff : 200(including 140 part-time worker)

http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~ichibaku/muginosato_summary.html .

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Case study site : La Thel

• workshop for autism and intellectual disabled people

• Products: tofu, rice cookie, and juice• Total sales : $ 90 thousand per year• Members : 19• staff : 3 (including 2 part-time worker).

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Characteristics

1) members are taking a role of coordination on division of work, and organize cooperation voluntarily.

2) no representative or leader in their work team

autonomic management function and flat relationship,

reproduced by members themselves, not by staff.

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Distinctive changes • Member: extremely afraid of failure

← negative experience in that they had been

sanctioned at a former workshop

in this workshop, think collectively how they

should address the needs of customers.

Each member has been emancipated from the norm

they had got under exclusive situation.

・ Staff : Realized their inner and tacit authoritarianism

through the development of community of practice.

They reflected their trust on members, true one or

not, and put non-control style first.

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Events causing changes

• Events causing changes

1)Early stage, practitioners managed all work process.

Death insurance for disabled people was counted into

the low wage paid to members, they realized they had

been taking part in a discriminative social system.

2) As the members’ community came to be established,

the practitioner began to feel outside of this new

community.

-feeling of being excluded ,

-realized he hadn’t trust the community members

thoroughly.

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Logic of development towards emancipatory community

1 ） The first double-bind

practitioners were forced to change the nature of their

practice.

2 ） Creating a new community of practice as a solution to

the first double-bind :

alternative way of work, entrusted decision making

3 ） The second double-bind :

realized his oppressiveness

4) get a new tool for making a more developed community

by categorizing a practice mode 10

DWW Social Inclusion Project

• 1 of 12 Irish cross border projects funded by EU Interreg IVA administrated by Cooperation And Working Together (CAWT) - a partnership between the Health & Social Care Services in Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland & designed & implemented by Derry Well Women: NGO

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1. Travelling Women Employment Training, personal development & health programmes

2. Vulnerable Women: Older Women; New Mothers; Women Living with Domestic Violence; Women Living with a Cancer Diagnosis; Women Living with mental Ill-Health & Mothers with Disabled Children

3. Improving Health Access : Travellers, LGBT women & women living with Visual & Hearing Impairments

CAWT Region

Border region – higher than average levels of social disadvantage, poverty & health inequalities

Traveller Population

• Nomadism & strong kinship ties defining aspects of Traveller cultural identity– Geographical mobility & the ability to offer multiple marginal services basis of economic

activity; undermined by modernisation; majority now urbanised & dependent on social security system – 11% in paid employment

– Kinship/family ties reinforced by traditional pattern of arranged marriages & isolation & disconnection from settled community

• Marginalised in relation to housing, education & health – The mortality rate for traveller children 10 times higher than average– Life expectancy 20% lower– 10% of the traveller population over 40 years of age & 1% over 65– Levels of domestic violence among Travellers much higher than average– Traveller women more likely to remain in an abusive relationship

• Victims of ‘sedentarism’ - ‘a system of ideas and practices that serves to normalise & reproduce sedentary modes of existence & pathologises & represses nomadic modes of existence’.– 40% of settled population do not believe that the Traveller’s nomadic way of life is valid or

should be supported by the government. – More than 50% do not want Travellers as residents in their local area– 2/3rds of people would not willingly accept a Traveller as a work colleague

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Case Study two: Introduction

• DWW established 1989– Feminists/women’s health movement key role in challenging de-contextualised

technology driven bio-medical model of health– Critique of the medicalization of women’s lives– Concerned with reproductive matters & their impact on women’s lives– Issues arising from disproportionate family & work responsibilities, poorer access

to resources & violence against women

• Adopt an Ecosocial Model of Health– Integrate social & biological theorising with dynamic, historical ecological

perspective– Understand humans as incorporating both their material & social worlds in the

body (habitus)– Pathways of embodiment – reflect the biological expressions of social relations– Structural & intermediate determinants of health

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Three Tier Model of Engagement

14Model Aim: to enable socially excluded women to be included in planning & decision-making

Outcomes• Policy/Service Provision Outcomes:

– Significant commitments made in relation to key services e.g. older people, cancer services etc to increase provision & improve access

– Some will take time to implement & require resource investment– Other immediately implementable procedural-type commitments met

e.g. how people informed of cancer diagnosis, changes to communication & information systems to improve inclusivity & access

– Social inclusion training for professional health & social care staff re Travellers, LGBT & other non-dominant groups

– Commitments to make employment placements available to Travellers

• The evidence suggests that participation in the project was transformative & empowering for many participants

• Took on much more positive identities/ increased agency/ new health capacities/behaviours – a new ‘health literacy’

• Women from marginalised communities were able to articulate their own & others needs & argue their case to senior decision-makers – many of whom also learned & changed practice activities

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Learning Community

• Approach - strengths rather than deficit-based – drawing upon participants gender & culture repertories as resources to support learning

• Non-didactic & non-directive group sessions– Activities shaped by participants e.g. Eating Disorder Group Sessions not

focused on eating disorders or Tonicity Sessions on trauma – individuals free to share/reflect on (or not) their personal experiences– relations of equality & trust

• Diversity/multiple voices central to process– generated contradictions & tensions that promoted learning/ change

• Individuals needed to re-orientate self to enable community to function – mediation – negotiating tensions, learning ‘to read’ the context & to act in ways recognised & valued by other community members becoming someone new

• Mediation in turn shaped community new activities/practices/identities• Group facilitators/support staff provided information & knowledge resources, other

artefacts & tools to promote collective learning - ‘learning affordances’ – a process of ‘re-mediation’ (Gutiérrez 2009) drawing upon & building on participants cultural repertories e.g. using Traveller literary practices – oral traditions - as a resource rather than as a perceived limitation

• Learning & leadership distributed throughout practice community• Shared sense of inequality & exclusion growing sense of

agency as community agreed & planned actions for change 16

• Identity change not through reflection or reflexivity but developmental link between individual & community

– ‘I had noticed myself shrinking into myself, making myself invisible, remaining silent or whispering what I need to say…self-negating behaviour. The group is a circle of empathy in which I feel strong. In that space I am seen and heard, and I communicate as myself, I am very grateful for that..’

– ‘I am making things happen for the first time in my life – I am now 55’

– I feel more confident and less anxious about setting goals for myself’

– ‘I am ready to start a new journey with a great life tool box’

• Relations between tiers of activity were mediated by processes of perspective making, perspective taking & perspective shaping – involving negotiation & conflict

• The intersection between different practice communities (Tier 3) resulted in hybridisation of different perspectives - expanding identities & changing cultural practices

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４． Conclusion

1. changeable community sympathizing with the changes of participants.: “consequential transition” (K.Beach)

* “A developmental coupling encompasses aspects of both changing individuals and changing social activity”

　　 loose coupling” between individuals and community

2. “a heterogeneous community of parallel distributed units” (Y.Engeström) 　　↓

　　 “ Non determined space” (NDS) as the mediator for producing a heterogeneous and developmental community

　： sense of event and activity has not been determined

　　 everybody can create a new sense through negotiation 　 　　　

　　 required in a process of cooperating. 18

４． Conclusion3.Dispersibility

1)NDS=“Carnival”

“Carnival did liberate human consciousness and permit a new outlook, but at the same time it implied no nihilism: it had a positive character.”(M.Bakhtin. “Rablais and His World” p.274)

2) NDS is a key to reproduce dispersibility in the community of practice.

4. The role of support staff is rather“editor” than “designer”

Activities were organized by participants

Each participant can become a designer of their own life

story

４． Conclusion5. Homology in activities• The conditions of making homology

1)Reversing dominant value

Mugi : The first double-bind=consciousness-raising

significant reflection on the premise of practice and

social system

DWW:sense of exclusion experienced by the vulnerable

female participants and traveller women.

The feminist approach to health

2) Creating a new culture based on trust and collective action

Experiences in NDS =Tools for sustaining the practice of

community amid the conflict with outside communities.

　　　 ⇒ New culture in the community 20

References

• Bakhtin, Mikhail(1968) “Rablais and His World” Indiana University Press

•  Beach, King(2003) “Consequntial Transitions”, Tertu Tuomoi-Gröhn & Yrjö Engeström(ed.) Between School and Work, Pergamon

• Bourdieu, Pierre(1979=2010) “Distinction” 　 Routledge• Bourdieu, Pierre(1998) “Practical Reason” Polity• Gutiérrez, Kris et al Re-mediating Literacy: Culture, Difference and

Learning for Students from Non-dominant Communities, Review of Research in Education 2009; 33;

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