Elizabeth Whitmore,Maureen G. Wilson and Avery Calhoun (eds). Activism that Works

Elizabeth Whitmore, Maureen G. Wilson and Avery Calhoun (eds). Activism that Works. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2011. 192 pp. ISBN: 9781552664117 (pbk).

Whitmore, Wilson, Avery, and their collaborators present the outcomes of a project involving eight diverse organizations in Canada that used appreciative inquiry (AI) to build and identify successful activism (the advocacy of change for greater justice, sustainability and peace in the world). The organizations range from local participants in national campaigning (Oxfam Canada) to locally focused organizations seeking the widest possible participation through linked community narratives (Storeytellers’ Foundation). The project was strongly value driven, seeking out justice through direct challenges to what the authors describe as ‘market fundamentalism’ (neo-liberalism). It invites us to consider the merits of AI as an approach to evaluation, the socio-political analysis on which the project is based and, less directly, the implications for social work.

Whitmore has long been associated with advocacy for and with peoples of the third world and with participative evaluation. Her distinction between practical and transformative evaluation (Cousins and Whitmore, 1998) and her shared interest with Wilson in social justice and globalization (Whitmore and Wilson, 2000) are the basis for their engagement with AI. AI is a story based form of participative action research (PAR) in which collaborators build knowledge. The narratives are constructed during a continuous process of inquiry and change that is sustained through stages (discovery, dream, design and destiny) in success stories that are disentangled from failure in the dream stage. The authors argue that the collective reflection that is integral to AI ‘captures nuances, emotions and energy that can be missed by other data collection strategies’ (p. 23). Success is judged subjectively by activists and includes satisfaction in the action itself, its impact on opponents and its wider acknowledgement. For example the Calgary Raging Grannies felt they were successful ‘simply [through] the look on the faces of the people in the audience’ or ‘the discomfort on the face of a certain Alderman’ (p. 73), and when they were acknowledged, ‘… I saw the Grannies and I’m glad you are doing this’ (p. 68). They had fun from doing ‘… what isn’t expected from older women’, ‘not [being] accountable to anyone except ourselves’ (p. 71) and ‘persevering in presenting our point of view and opinions’ (p. 69). The Grannies measured success in different ways; through media coverage or a changed political stance but also through the impact of singing their songs to familiar tunes. This might seem wildly romantic and impractical but all the groups communicated their messages in distinct ways revealing themselves in and to their communities without any of the spin of party politics. In this particular context AI is a fitting methodology and the editors suggest using the Cynefin framework to clarify understanding in different contexts.

The socio-political context for making the link between activism in advanced capitalist nations, Canada in this instance, and developing nations is neo-liberal globalization. Among others the editors cite Karl Polanyi to dispute the doctrinaire view that markets are natural and beyond policy influence, Freire’s liberationist popular education as a basis for successful activist challenge, and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and the dominant class to identify and define sources of power (chapter 1). These are unfashionable concepts in the post-ideological world that is associated with globalism among neo-liberals. However, in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 they have varying resonance depending on particular cultural perspectives. In the UK we have returned to the grim reality of Thatcherite certainty in the market (TINA – there is no alternative) within the consultative state that has developed over two decades. To manage public perceptions in the face of injustice, politicians appropriate and channel popular sentiment and social identities. The response to bankers’ enormous bonus payments is to present them as individual abuses and misjudgements within the sector but outwith any imperfections in the working of the economic and social system. The UK government has also presented its market driven health reforms in terms of empowerment and has shamelessly adopted the collectivist motto of intellectually disabled self advocates, nothing about us without us, in making its case since it came to power in 2010 (Lansley, 2010).

The reversion to TINA is an outcome of the institutions of neo-liberalism labelling the economic problems that followed 2008 as a debt crisis that can only be dealt with through widespread recourse to austerity. This approach comes with a cost particularly to the weakest and poorest in society, who have become victims of doubt in governments’ intentions and abilities. This view is particularly prominent in the United States – though not necessarily in government – where many citizens indiscriminately regard the disadvantaged as individuals weakened by state mollycoddling that has made them burdens on others (Robinson, 2012). In the UK a similar diminution in social solidarity and humanistic impulses is evident in the return of the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor in everyday life and in public policy (Kellner, 2012). State social work cannot escape the zeitgeist but the volume raises interesting questions about and for social work. Much of the content targets capitalist globalization relating to issues under discussion at the World Social Forum. However, Adachi and Sigurdson’s story about the Alberta College of Social Work’s (ACSW) campaign for the mandatory registration of social workers (2003) challenges social workers to act on their values. The authors argue that success gave social workers power and the ability to influence change collectively in a way that they could not individually. In the UK the impact of registration since 2005 has been confined to the enforcement of standards and consultation, and has not been a catalyst for the emergence of the profession’s voice. The ACSW argues that it has become a platform for ‘doing the right thing’ in the Gandhian sense and working with others it has organized high profile progressive advocacy on behalf of the profession and its service users (No More Service Cuts; Raising Income Support Rate; Closing the Disparity Gaps). This is the authors’ challenge to all social workers in face of ‘TINA’ government.