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Rethinking the Aid Paradigm

One White Bit (discussion 3)

One White Bit Noun Hand Receiving Money 4902714

24th January 2024

Attendees:

Sandro Pampallona, (e.g. article) | Paula Bollini (e.g. article) | Felicity Jones | John Wood

Key themes

  • Sandro & Paula have found that, by prioritizing community connections over donor relationships, they better achieve goals of empowerment and sustainability.
  • Felicity advocated the valuing of local expertise and an equitable resource distribution.
  • John sought to validate community knowledge via an accessible framework of understanding.

Some issues arising

  1. How can we envision collaborative futures without conceiving them in unhelpful (e.g. colonialist) terms?
  2. While acknowledging that (some) funds are necessary to ensure the empowerment of most communities Sandro argued that achieving independence was more important than maximising income.
  3. Some of the required improvements could be achieved by refining our understanding of system dynamics.
  4. How can salient group dynamics be simulated in a more useful way?

Tea drinking as a performance indicator

One White Bit Noun Pouring 2490997

  1. A supposition: - outcomes can be changed by adjusting relationships.
    • John suggested that we might calibrate levels of willingness in terms of an attitude angle.
    • This acknowledges the systemic concept of feedback loops (either amplifying, or moderating trends).
    • Tea rituals differ (e.g. Chinese and Japanese ceremonies) but are more likely to be part of positive feedback loops for constructive discourse.
    • As Sandro put it: "drinking tea with others is a connector that builds itself".
    • Felicity also saw the potential for trust-building within this process.
    • John - this usually works best when meeting outcomes is agreed by all to be useful/productive/meaningful.
  2. However, Felicity observed that the speed of these processes may differ. Donors may, for example, operate at a different pace from that of communities.
    • E.g. ideas often multiply faster than they can be communicated, adopted or supported at the appropriate scale.
    • E.g. there is no hard binary distinction between giving and receiving (see entredonneurship).
    • In the case of accountability non-monetary benefits may be covert, hidden or absent.
    • Would it be helpful to make these non-monetary benefits more explicit (e.g. to relish or celebrate them)?
    • The literal (original) meaning of philanthropy implies a kind of altruism, even though the underlying aims of a given project can easily become eclipsed by the machinations of funding management.

Some possible actions

  1. IDENTIFY IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS: ask all parties to list local problems within the current system.
  2. IDENTIFY ASSETS: ask them how list what is valuable and helpful within the current system.
    • Those who wish to go further than offering a single answer might be asked to rank the steps in importance.
  3. SEEK DIFFERENCES: We tend to focus onto the differences between donors and communities.
    • E.g whereas donors may have to devote a lot of headspace to funding issues their clients live with the full immediacy and complexity of their lives (see accountability v. responsibility).
  4. SEEK COMMONALITIES: On the other hand, both parties have interests, some of which might be depicted as equivalent.
  5. IDENTIFY TACIT AIMS:
  6. LOOK FOR HIDDEN OPPORTUNITIES: e.g. using the Creative Quartets tool with any/all (donors, recipients, clients).
  7. Re-map all of the players into an inclusive network of interests.
  8. Circulate the map to all parties and discuss new possible behaviours.

Some helpful keywords

  1. LANGUAGING
    • Our previous meeting inspired the idea of auspicious conversations.
    • This idea is based, in part, on the assumption that we underestimate the extent to which our habits are shaped by the metaphors and grammars of everyday language.
    • Some linguistic theories describe language as being synonymous with the reality (i.e. world) that it reveals.
      • (e.g. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M., (1980), Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago: Chicago and London)
    • On a practical level this also suggests that we can (re)language impossibles into possibles
    • But how can different living organisms work together if they live in different worlds?
  2. RELEVATION
    • It is common to hear the word (i.e. noun) 'relevance' or the word (adjective) 'relevant' used (i.e. when something fits or is appropriate to its context).
      • (c.f. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D., (1986), Relevance; Communication and Cognition, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass.)
    • Today it is extremely rare to hear it used as a verb (e.g. "...she relevated the possibility of a hidden door").
    • However, the late physicist David Bohm described how sub-atomic particles 'relevate' one another (literally, raise one another up).
      • Bohm, D., (1980), "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, 1980
    • This concept is also helpful in thinking about the languaging processes that take place within auspicious conversations and ecosystems.
    • See also attitude angle.
  3. SYMPOIESIS
    • We invented the term sympoiesis as a practical tool for encouraging more auspicious forms of reciprocality within co-creative groups.
      • Van Nieuwenhuijze, O., & Wood, J., 2006. Synergy and Sympoiesis in the Writing of Joint Papers; anticipation with/in imagination International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, edited by Daniel M. Dubois, published by the Centre for Hyperincursive Anticipation in Ordered Systems, Liège, Belgium, Volume 10, pp. 87-102, August 2006, ISSN 1373-541 (download pdf version)
  4. BIOSEMIOTICS
    • Biosemiotics is an important post-humanist field that starts with the (phenomenological) assumption that every living organism has its own, unique, Umwelt (i.e. limited perceptible horizon of senses and view of the world).
    • This might suggest that organisms (e.g. organisations) with different Umwelten live in different worlds, and cannot, therefore communicate in a workable way.
    • However, it is likely that we can expand our Umwelten
    • It is also important to acknowledge that, at the ecological and social levels, effective communication is not confined to one-to-one conversations that refer to identical experiences.
    • In today's hi-tech world, donating to a good cause may feel like a simple, two-participant process in which individual givers approve a quantity of money to be transferred to another agency.
    • However, the original meaning of the word charity evolved from the Greek word 'agape' (ἀγάπη) that, loosely, implies a kind of love triangle that enfolds giver and receiver within the shared context of God.
  5. AFFORDANCE
    • In this regard another important factor is the idea of affordance, in that what is likely to be thinkable derives from the pragmatic opportunities that all living organisms encounter in the world around them.
  6. ATTITUDE ANGLE
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