Hi Danny
 
We seem to be on a very similar path ...i am currently applying the criteria below to instigate entry level students learning in ethical & sustainable cross cultural and environmentally relevant practice. In the first part of this course the students negotiate their own group version of each of these statements to describe a proper way for them to proceed. Apologies for the brevity but i am on the move over the next few days.
 
Norm
 
Muurruun (living emotion) Engagement: 
This is about expressing and sharing the emotional dimension of learning and communicating. Are you part of the Dialogic process the class is generating, are you involved in the context, or are you opting out? Engagement is about asking "what does this mean to me? How do I feel?" It is also about responding from this place, not always seeking to say the 'right' thing, the 'intelligent' thing, but instead saying what you feel, reflecting on how the topic, the discussion, or the process is affecting you. It is about AUTHENTICALLY sharing your self and respecting others as they share themselves. Engagement is about developing and maintaining human contact rather than keeping issues, events and others at 'arm's length'. Engagement means identifying and making an effort to close the gaps, divisions and distances that appear when difficult, challenging or confronting issues are addressed.
 
Warray (tracking) Mobility: 
This concerns the ability to see movement in knowledge across contexts and time. It is about tracking ideas, where did this idea come from and what imprint has it made in various places? Why was that idea given this significance? Where are the relationships between ideas? It is also about the recognition that history is not a single linear or static series of 'facts' but a critical literature itself: created, imagined, manipulated and contested. It is about the ability to see and appreciate where knowledge comes from, whose knowledge is being spoken about, what is understood as 'knowledge', and where that knowledge is taking us. Mobility also seeks to instigate movement where understandings are seen to be static. Mobility challenges imposed, assumed, unconsidered, and concealed understandings.
 
Winanggal (deep listening) Fit: 
Having engaged and moved with the topics, the next question concerns positioning: where do I fit in relation to all this? It is about the recognition of your personal importance in the process, and about whether you accept a role in the continuum: whether you see yourself as no longer separate from the context. It is also about how ideas, assumptions, and preconceptions fit with various contexts; and how the same things re-emerge in other contexts, so that history can be recognised as a record of the shifting patterns and social reconstructions of understandings. Fit is about a deeper understanding of how all these things, and the self, are located; how sometimes things just seem to 'fit' and why some things are excluded from a social understanding. Fit is also about finding ways to position yourself as a responsible agent engaged in moving/living and meaningful contexts.
 
Dhuuluu (proper-way) Respect: 
Throughout the whole process there needs to be a demonstration of cross-cultural respect. This means allowing there to be other ways of seeing, knowing and expressing. Respect is about showing care and awareness in the way you identify, explore and assess meaning across cultural contexts, including your own. To be aware of your own cultural contexts and develop the ability to suspend the judgements based on them to allow other understandings to be brought to mind. It is a kind of openness that allows conceptions to come to mind through suspending cultural filters. It is also about relationships and responsibility and the responsibility to maintain good relations. It means to be human in the proper way for humans, a moral and ethical understanding of being in the world. 

________________________________

From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of Danny Butt
Sent: Tue 31/07/2007 8:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Colonialism -- a Carefully Delimited Response -- Quick Reply to Norm Sheehan



Dear all,

Three brief points.

1) There are many valuable threads to pick up from Norm's post but 
I'd just like to just generally affirm the value of his insights for 
the practice of design, specifically with respect to standpoints on 
knowledge/experience. If design (as distinguished from engineering) 
is characterised by its critical approach to "sufficient data" and 
engagement with the cultural/aesthetic, the assembling of evidence 
toward a solution has to be supplemented by an imaginative capacity 
which can intuit the affects which might be created in a very 
different kind of user than one is oneself. In other words, I'm 
positioning empathy and affective literacy as a critical skill. The 
debate on anthropological methods is particularly valuable for this 
reason. In anthropology there is a long tradition attempting to 
justify extractive knowledge gathering practices on the basis of 
their contribution to an abstract (and strangely disembodied) "body 
of knowledge". This justification is deployed against the claims of 
those for whom such "knowledge-gathering" practices have resulted in 
the alienation of lands and the imposition of unwanted policies 
affecting their rights to self-determination (or survival). My 
interest as an educator is be to ensure my students value experience-
centred claims from marginalised social groups seriously in 
critically assessing the real value of projects undertaken for an 
abstract "humanity". This would be central to their ability to design 
outcomes which are truly global in effectiveness. (For a similar 
reason, feminist work is crucial, but another time...)

2) The recent work on qualitative methods would move our 
understanding of the value of ethnography closer to the kind of 
affective practices we are used to in design. Here are the criteria 
Laurel Richardson uses in "Evaluating Ethnography", which have helped 
my teaching and research enormously:

"i. Substantive contribution: Does this piece contribute to our 
understanding of social-life? Does the writer demonstrate a deeply 
grounded (if embedded) human-world understanding and perspective? How 
has this perspective informed the construction of the text?

ii. Aesthetic merit: Does this piece succeed aesthetically? Does the 
use of creative analytical practices open up the text, invite 
interpretive responses? Is the text artistically shaped, satisfying, 
complex, and not boring?

iii. Reflexivity: How did the author come to write this text? How was 
the information gathered? Ethical issues How has the author's 
subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text? Is 
there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to 
make judgements about the point of view? Do authors hold themselves 
accountable to the standards of knowing and telling of the people 
they have studied?

iv. Impact: Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually? 
Generate new questions? Move me to write? Move me to try new research 
practices?Move me to action?

v. Expresses a reality: Does this text embody a fleshed out, embodied 
sense of lived-experience? Does it seem "true"-a credible account of 
a cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of the "real"?"

3) I sympathise with David's substantive questions on the nature of 
problem ownership, and offer another extended quote, this time from 
Linda Smith's Decolonising Methodologies, a book I like much more 
than Ken :). I think the questions she asks can be applied very 
helpfully outside of the indigenous context:

"In contemporary indigneous contexts there are some major research 
issues which continue to be debated quite vigorously. These can be 
summarized best by the critical questions that communities and 
indigenous activists often ask, in a variety of ways: Whose research 
is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit 
from it? Who has designed its questions and framed its scope? Who 
will carry it out? Who will write it up? How will its results be 
disseminated? While there are many resarchers who can handle such 
questions with integrity, there are many more who cannot, or who 
approach these questions with some cynicism, as if they are a test 
merely of political correctness. What may surprise many people is 
that what may appear as the "right" answer can still be judged 
incorrect. These questions are simply part of a larger set of 
judgements on criteria that a researcher cannot prepare for, such as: 
Is her spirit clear? Does he have a good heart? What other baggage 
are they carrying? Are they useful to us? Can they fix up our 
generator? Can they actually do anything?" (p9-10)

Refs:
Richardson, Laurel (2000) Evaluating Ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry 
6(2) 253-255

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies : Research 
and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: University of Otago Press,.

Regards,

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net <http://www.dannybutt.net/> 




On 31/07/2007, at 4:42 PM, Norm Sheehan wrote:

> Dear Ken and Lubomir,
>
>
>
> Dear Lubomir & Ken
>
>
> Please remember in my post I was addressing Mead's work with the 
> title:-
> Coming of age in Samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for
> Western civilization - as a value neutral scientific study this does
> seem a slightly prejudicial title even for the early 20th century?
>
> I apologise for my flippancy in referring to this work on the 
> discussion
> list - I trust that you may understand that this attitude of mine 
> arises
> from being a member of a community that has often been subject to such
> 'scientific' investigation. We share a lot of stories about the
> stupidity of anthropologists mainly to make us feel good. In this 
> regard
> I speak to the context of this study which occurred in colonized 
> space,
> a place that I know well.
>