How to do action research for transformations at a time of eco-social crisis,by Hilary S. Bradbury. Elgar,2022. Four characters in search of a book review

An unconventional and surprising book deserves an unconventional and surprising review. I found myself unable to write in the typical, omniscient, academic voice. To do so felt like doing harm to the very point of the book.

While reading, I heard four different characters – composite ones, drawn from my 20-odd years of action research practice around the world – who would absorb and react to the contents of the book quite differently. My review is therefore a brief one-act play.

Imagine four people who have, separately, just finished reading the book. Upon finishing, they are transported (like in Star Trek) to our stage. All four characters knew in advance that they would be brought to this place to discuss the book. The cast:

Gretel: Director of a comedy improv troupe and a graduate student studying gender justice;

Gaoussou: A Malian mori (“shaman”) with a Ph.D. from MIT in systems dynamics;

Dr. G: A US university assistant professor of Development Studies, seeking tenure;

Gauhar: Director of a major international philanthropy

Chorus: An offstage voice.

Light slowly comes up on an empty stage with one chair. Characters are beamed in – twinkle twinkle – and form a semi-circle around the chair. They all hold legal pads, where they have taken notes on the book.

Chorus: Welcome. Let’s start. You’ve all turned the last page of our book. What did you think? What is the book about? And let’s go one by one. Try not to interrupt.

(Silence)

Gretel: I’ll start. This quote struck me: “Tons of information exists on what ought to be done in response to our eco-social crises. But collective sleepwalking continues. A global population has been lectured but not engaged. The environmental movement, in particular, has essentially failed to move the dial despite almost complete scientific agreement on climate change.”

Gauhar: “failed to move the dial” seems hyperbolic. My work has definitely “moved the dial.” That this book implies that people like me haven’t “moved the dial” is offensive.

Gretel: I think it is meant to be not offensive, but an invitation to action researchers to consider the urgency of our times, and the need for more double and triple loop learning about our work within the social change industrial complex.

Gauhar: What does social change industrial complex mean?

Chorus: Can we just for the moment not move into dialogue and critique? It’s important that we first understand one another. Gretel, please continue.

(Uncomfortable silence.)

Gretel: I also think the book is about the importance of play. About how we need to turn the work of dismantling our oppressive and ecocidal ways of living into something that invites beauty and joy. “[T]o deepen the struggle until it is reborn as play.” It says that our eco-social crisis isn’t going to be solved unless we find new relationships amongst ourselves.

(Devouring her notes, flipping pages.)

Next, the book provides a framework. Hilary says “The ART metamodel offers not a method but an orientation” for pursuing ART. It comprises three spaces of practice. Relational space, which is about changing how academics, practitioners, and oppressed people understand each other, behave towards one another. There’s a big emphasis on relational space as “the catalyst of ART….not because it is more important (than the other spaces) but because it is so often overlooked.” Conceptual space, which is about our left brains, ideas, the theories we use, what we consider knowledge. And experimental space, which is where ARTists and their stakeholders try to nudge systems of oppression and ecological harm in better directions. And within the metamodel there are seven choicepoints which are practices that ARTists need to incorporate in their work. I think that’s all from me.

Chorus: You are a good student, Gretel! Gauhar, want to go next?

Gauhar: Sure. Like I was saying, I just don’t think the book is that valuable to the experts within my organization who deal with massive projects and large donor awards that require rigorous measurement--

Chorus: Yet, what is the book about for you? Can you explicate and not critique?

Gauhar: Gretel has it pretty much covered, although I don’t agree —

Chorus (gently): You are doing it again, Gauhar.

Let’s pause. That’s one of the book’s recommended practices for stuckness like this. Everybody take five. It helps to get us on track. You can go wherever you’d like. Feel free to do this alone, or pair up. Some of you might think about why this conversation is difficult for you. What are you bringing into this discussion that might be preventing you from listening and sharing in a way that’s useful? Others might want to go where the conversation takes you.

(Gauhar and Dr. G exit stage left, talking. Gaoussou and Gretel remain on stage. At the end of 5 minutes all characters return to stage)

Chorus: Good. Let’s continue. Gauhar? What is the book about for you?

Gauhar (sighing): Ok. There is a line “The journey of personal and sustainable development is not in moving toward a better formulation of a problem or even the solution to the problem; it is a descent down to unpack why we prevent ourselves from caring and collaborating.” Essentially, Ms. Bradbury is saying we don’t need new clever solutions or more analysis paralysis, but we need to look inside ourselves, and learn the barriers we create to knitting together different forms of knowledge. Unpacking this is at least a third of the book, and as a theme recurs throughout. The author argues that “ART upgrades knowledge creation to knowledge that creates capacity—from fix-it expert to new strategies to new social imaginaries, all grounded in empirical experiments.”

Dr. G: I’ll go. First, I found the historical threads of action research across a century of practice really helpful. Chapter five is a concise literature review connecting early AR to ART. Really brought disperse threads of the approach into relation with each other. I’m going to assign it in my class on participatory methods. Also, there’s a quote that I think is central to the whole book …. “The theory of change in ART is that microworlds proliferate.” Bradbury is arguing that rather than mount large, expensive, over-planned projects – which often fail to live up to expectations – a better approach is to launch myriad small efforts, little experiments to see what works, improve, and keep going through cycles of such learning. Learnings then slowly ripple out as participants extend their own networks organically. She writes “rather than seeking to generalize, however, the work is evolved by a next circle of stakeholders.” This idea isn’t new—it’s a reiteration of experiential action learning and PDCA cycles I already teach and which are now popular in fail fast/fail small, design thinking. But like Gretel said, the book challenges these in terms of who we are when we do this, and the superficiality of the relationships we knit with each other.

Gauhar: Dr. G, can I ask you something? Chorus, is that ok to do right now?

Chorus: I sense it is. Are you asking a question that is disguised as your opinion, or is it true inquiry?

Gauhar: It’s something I’m genuinely curious about.

Chorus: do you know the “right” answer to your question?

Gauhar: I don’t think so.

(Long silence. The Chorus is not going to help.)

Gauhar: Dr. G, Broadly speaking, I’d say the book attempts to be a roadmap for shifting the role of the academy, changing the incentives within, and very purpose of, especially professional schools. Professors like you would produce results that concretely improve social conditions rather than just analyze them. I wonder what you think of that.

Dr. G: I don’t think Bradbury fully parses the difference between knowledge of and knowledge for. Clearly, she’s arguing in favor of knowledge for. I support that. But that knowledge of, which means using the scientific method for better empirical understanding of the problem, is itself a contributor to the eco-social crisis…I just don’t think the book turns the camera back strongly enough on that claim. To be fair science has never made science its own object of inquiry.

(Long silence. Gauhar and Dr. G. eventually consult their cell phones)

Chorus: Gaoussou. You’ve been observing and listening to others carefully. Want to add anything?

(Gaoussou moves silently close to each of the others, one-by-one. As he does he talks to himself, like he is listing what each has said.)

Gaoussou: Yes, I do. But first a question: do any of you know what a mori is in Mali, my country?

(Silence)

Moris are quite misunderstood by the outside world. I am one, and I’ve also been trained in systems dynamics in the United States at MIT. We moris are called fetishers, witch doctors, shamans, charlatans. But what a good mori does is help people navigate their world, their challenges, their relations with others through the intersection of indigenous medicines, spiritual faith, psychoanalysis (our own version), political awareness, objective knowledge, and trust. Trust is the most important ingredient. You all will recall the vignette in the book in which the leader of a health systems change movement in Sweden – highly successful both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency—says the same thing about their efforts to redesign healthcare around patients. I think this book is mostly about these connections.

Look at us: when have all of us – actors like us – ever really pooled our capacities? We all stay in our silos, perhaps in the best interpretation out of respect, of not wanting to trespass. The rare times we do join together, we do so like “make believe” theater: we pretend, act, for a short period of time to be collaborating, but we have billiard ball conversations. We just knock against each other. There are many, many reasons for this. The most important is that inventing new ways to understand each other, forging new relationships, opening ourselves to vulnerability and even shame, is a very, very difficult thing to do. Especially for Western men who lead the Academy. The book offers ideas for doing this, really arguing that unless women and men do this we are not going to stave off calamitous eco-social crisis.

Gretel: Yea! You know, in improv comedy we have similar ideas of how a troupe wows an audience. No one person in a skit leads, or stars, or tells others what to do. Every participant is both carefully following what others start, and then at times starting a new arc, that others than build on. And trust. Trust? Key ingredient…but it builds through extended practice, and not a pronouncement or declaration.

Chorus: Very good. Let’s shift our conversation. What might you do to build on this book when you leave here?

Gauhar: When Dr. G and I took 5 minutes together, we talked about how we just don’t understand some practicalities of the metamodel. How much do microworlds cost? How long do they last? What concrete accountability mechanisms are appropriate? Are there mesoworlds? How do you fit such efforts into our professions? We also talked about the competencies required to be a facilitator of ART: It seems like a daunting package. Acute attention to dialogue across identity and disciplinary differences, knowledge of human psychology, intuition of stuckness and what to do about it, ability to care and love, process understanding, systems understanding, strategic thinking, how to hold a container for the initiative, relationship building, humor, humbleness, I mean, the list is longer. We don’t know people like Bradbury, or the many ARTists who tell their stories in the book.

Gretel: That’s so interesting, because as I read I thought, wow, all of the good improv artists I know have much of that but they aren’t aware of it

Gaoussou: I think you’re right, Gretel. I wonder if we all need to broaden our perspectives on who we’d look to for facilitating ART?

Gretel: It’s made me start thinking that my work – improv for social change—needs to find ways to ripple out, foster more microworlds, and also place our experience into the social change literature. Maybe in an action research journal. We’ve been pretty hermetic in the troupe. We’ve largely been working on the relationship side within the group itself, and not doing much with those we hope might take action as a result of our shows. But geez, it feels like a lot of work.

Chorus: Hilary seems to have a position on that: start now. Wherever you are is the right place to start the transformative inquiry of ART. In aggregate more ARTistry to support the necessary transition to a more ecological or life sustaining civilization. We may not have so much time.

Gaoussou: There are so many narratives by ARTists in the book, articulations of the highs and lows across scores of contexts. In my systems change consulting, I want to surface and document similar stories. After all, we make our world through stories, and we develop our relationships through them. I also want to initiate what Hilary calls “developmental friendships” which “is not to be confused with socializing. It is a partnership and a friendship that is grounded in mutual respect and caring for each other’s highest aspirations.” These have long been part of my artisanry as a mori, and I don’t know why in my global systems change work I’ve never thought of forging similar relationships.

Dr. G: I….honestly I don’t know right now. I’m actually feeling a bit overwhelmed about ART and what it means for me. Bradbury offers some novel ideas about shifting academia – community-university ART processes, Educators’ coLABoratorships, academic ARTists Academies—but I need to sit pretty hard for the moment with two quotes. (Searches for quotes and pauses). Yes, these: “individual careers built on publishing papers that few read is not a great use of clever minds and societal funds at a time of eco-social apocalypse.” She calls this “intellectual waste.” And her advice how to have academic writing be more valuable to more people….well, I just don’t know what to do with that. It’s not how my discipline’s journals are today, and I’m up for tenure next year. Need to stew on this.

Gretel: I was thinking a download of many of the books and articles Hilary refers to would be really an important step.

Chorus (carefully): Book learning is important. But do you already know enough to start ART? Probably! You can help each other as you go. But you have to want to. Here’s some inspiration as we see each other off.

(Janelle Monae’s “Turntables” video is projected to the back of the stage. Gretel dances with abandon. Gaoussou dances too, in Malian style…whatever that means. Dr. G and Gauhar observe until halfway through the song Gaoussou and Gretel take their hands and invite them to dance, which they begin to do. The video ends.)

Dr. G: What’s this empty chair all about?

Chorus: The world is on fire. It’s worth imagining that the efforts at, say, the Highlander Center for Particiaptive Action Research in Tennessee gave strength to Rosa Parks, a hidden story which this book recounts. And that ART at scale, as the Nordic countries have been doing for decades, is replicable. There are many ways to do ART. Some formalized in centers, much in below the radar experiments which we only see if published in the Action Research Journal and other places. We don’t pay attention to what this all means in aggregate cause we are still expecting the magic bullet. We’re waiting for the miracle to come. I think the book says we are the miracle. That empty chair? It is for each of you.

As you all leave our theater, I offer the “Blessing on ART” from the book:

“May this book bring light and encouragement. May it help us feel connected and energized in our practice.

“May it help us recognize our interdependence deeply enough to transform our inability to collaborate. May it help us cultivate our innate capacity for co-creativity.

“May this book remind us, when overcome with doubt, that no sincere effort is wasted.

“May this book help us know the joys of learning and friendship. And may we experience a more life sustaining work.

“Go n-eirí an bothar linn . May the path of sustainability rise to meet us.”

(The characters beam back to their everyday contexts—twinkle twinkle.)