Empatía y Etnografía: Origen del Cambio Social Efectivo

Empatía y Etnografía: Origen del Cambio Social Efectivo

Hola a todos!

Acá les escribo con las instrucciones para la segunda parte del ejercicio sobre etnografía y empatía como fuentes de innovación social.

Uds ya tienen un mapa de problemas, dinámicas, tendencias sobre la comunidad que escogieron. Este se construyó a punta de observaciones individuales, discusiones grupales, entrevistas informales, y otras fuentes. Qué ganas de verlos todos! Ahora, tras identificar varias problemáticas, les pido el favor de que se enfoquen en una. La más urgente. O la que más les preocupa a ustedes o a la comunidad observada.

Pensamiento Divergente

Una de las habilidades más necesarias para liderar procesos de cambio social, es la de pensar lateralmente, es decir, atreverse a pensar diferente, desde perspectivas no exploradas ni obvias. El método del pensamiento divergente consiste en generar muchas ideas creativas al explorar varias soluciones a un mismo problema.

ACTIVIDAD: Por favor pensar como mínimo 10 posibles soluciones al problema en que decidieron enfocarse. (Ojo: Naturalmente, algunas de estas ideas de solución pueden ser descabelladas. Produzcan todo tipo de ideas, y entre más creativas, mejor. Mínimo 10).

Análisis Convergente

Cuando ya hayan pensado 10 posibles soluciones al problema en cuestión, traten de crear al menos 3 criterios según los cuales clasificar sus soluciones. Ejemplos de criterios: Tiempo de implementación -Cuanto tiempo toma implementarla (mucho o poco)?-, Precio –cuánto cuesta implementarla?-, Tipo de actores que se necesitan para implementarlas. Cualquier tipo de criterio chicos, pero al menos 3 que les ayuden a clasificar la mayoría de las soluciones que han pensado.

Pensando en eso, en los criterios que caracterizan a sus soluciones, piensen cual de sus soluciones cumple mas criterios positivos, y vayan decantando sus ideas hasta escoger solamente UNA solución, que puede ser una combinación de elementos de varias de las soluciones planteadas.  

La Solución

De la solución propuesta, por favor presentar las siguientes 3 cosas:

-        Un plan de prototipo (es decir, algo así como un paso a paso de cómo la implementarían)

-     Un análisis de recursos (qué tipo de recursos necesitan para implementarla? No se enfoquen solamente en recursos financieros)

-        Un análisis de redes (a qué tipo de redes van a tratar de acceder para jalonar y adelantar su solución?)

Presentaciones:

Cada grupo va a tener máximo 30 minutos pero esto debe dar espacio a que los jurados hagan preguntas. La presentación debe incluir detalles de sus observaciones, el mapa de problemas, evidencia del pensamiento divergente y del análisis convergente, hasta llegar a una solución. La presentación además debe cubrir los tres aspectos de su solución: el paso a paso o plan de prototipo, el análisis de recursos y el análisis de redes. Las presentaciones no tienen ningún formato pre-establecido, así que también por ese lado pueden innovar.

Criterio de selección:

El jurado clasificara los grupos de acuerdo a los siguientes criterios, que deben ser observables de sus presentaciones:

-       

   Rigor en la observación

- Originalidad en la presentación de los mapas de problemas/dinámicas

- Evidencia del pensamiento divergente y del análisis convergente

- La solución propuesta: qué tan viable es y cuál es su capacidad de crear impacto?

- Prototipo, análisis de recursos y análisis de redes

Buena suerte chicos!!!

PS. Las presentaciones se llevarán a cabo el sábado 28 de Marzo, el mismo día que termina nuestro curso. Ese día además aprenderemos de últimas tendencias en economía colaborativa. Les propongo que cada uno traiga una o dos cosas que no usan hace más de 6 meses: ropa en buen estado, accesorios, libros. Así hacemos una despedida con Swapping, eventos de consumo solidario. Anímense! Ya verán las lecciones que nos llevamos! Un abrazo fuerte a todos!

Maria Isabel Irurita

Miirurita@icesi.edu.co

@mariairurita

Innovation in and by the community: Ethnographies from within the box.

Abstract of the paper I am co-writing with David Floyd for the 2012 International Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC 2012)
Conference stream: Towards a critical understanding of social entrepreneurship

Innovation in and by the community: ethnographies from within the box

Innovation is a concept that permeates through industries, sectors and disciplines. It is the pinnacle of professional achievement (whether you are a singer, a teacher or an experienced manager) and private, public and social economy organisations’ ambitions. Innovation textbooks have said it all when suggesting that as a society we now live under the ‘innovation imperative’ or the ‘innovation hegemony’. For organisations, failure to be innovative – or, at least, perceived as such - is equivalent to a prolonged and painful death.

Despite the fact that innovation is often quoted as an inherent characteristic of social enterprises, coupled with the recent upsurge of interest in the wider phenomenon known as social innovation, there is little in the way of systematic research focusing on the distinct patterns, drivers and inhibitors of innovation or the processes that lead to it within the third sector.

This paper starts by exploring the meaning of innovation in the context of social entrepreneurship and by suggesting an innovation typology based on examples from within the social economy in the UK. The paper then expands on one particular type of innovation encountered empirically by the authors, community-led, where a distinct community has conceived, developed and implemented an effective solution to an acute social problem.

For the purpose of this paper, analysing the trajectory of and the mechanisms used by four community innovations (or community-led innovations), the word community has been used as a descriptive category with multiple aspects. The four accounts, ethnographic in nature and based in London, correspond to an ethnic community (based on the example of a Latin American social enterprise), a geographical community (based on the recent developments of a community anchor based in North East London), a community of interest (based on a socially enterprising initiative developed for and by people with mental health difficulties) and a community of practice (based on the explosion of practitioner-led social enterprise conferences, un-conferences, informal networks, professional associations and virtual platforms).

The transformative initiatives discussed draw on pragmatic creativity grounded in experience to improve lives despite the restraining systems in which they are embedded. Most operate at a local level, using and generating social capital. They do not conform to the rhetoric or to the replicable model of social innovation presented by some foundations and business schools, and face an uncertain future. In exploring their examples, this paper highlights the value of looking inside the box, utilising local know-how, maximising available resources and exploiting small windows of opportunity to achieve social change. It seeks to rescue social innovation as an activity for communities of people responding to need, rather than the preserve of outside specialists pursuing innovation for its own sake.

Sustainable ways

It is terribly embarrassing that this blog was meant to record my empirical and intellectual developments, my fieldwork, my baby steps in the promising fields of social enterprise and social innovation and my reflections, yet the last entry dates from some months ago. In a sense, those readers that know that completing this PhD is an irrevocable personal test and a key element of a wider family and societal masterplan, should be reassured that I have been extremely busy. A friend told me once that maintaining a good blog is the surest way of failing a PhD or distracting your attention from other core tasks...While I know many exceptions, I am rather proud of having little time for blogging.

I have been delivering training in London and surrounding areas for the support agencies that I respect the most on business and financial planning for social enterprises. This experience has been bitter sweet. The sessions usually run smoothly aided by practical activities, templates, best practice examples, warnings and ice breakers. It is sweet that training is one of the things that I do best. However, it is bittering to notice that most trainees are not anywhere near taking control of their organisations' destinies through a business plan. Business planning is just an illusion when an organisation is facing life-threatening income reductions and staff redundancies and when the day to day pressures of keeping afloat deter people from thinking strategically.

I have also been preparing an entire training module on social enterprise and innovation which I'll be delivering for a week in Vietnam during May. I've been trying to put together a coherent picture of the social economy around the world drawing on the best examples from Latin America, Africa, Asia, USA and the UK in a way that makes sense for government officials, NGO workers and entrepreneurs.

I am still working trying to provide some strategic and mundane support for two fantastic, bottom up social businesses in London. One is a community-led nursery operating in a very deprived ward of Lambeth and the other is an entertainment agency led by young people. You wouldn't believe the clarity of purpose that moves these two initiatives. And you wouldn't believe either that they are preaching and practising social enterprise without really speaking its fancy language or being connected to any of the 'key stakeholders' that make up England's pretty elaborated support and network infrastructure.

PhD wise, I have been interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs with mind blowing ideas for social change, with a good track record of developing and scaling sustainable social businesses and more importantly, with a good sense of humour that helps them to continue. I am also observing and participating from the formation of some extraordinary initiatives to democratise knowledge, led by the more innovative practitioners in the field (seriously, I will be writing about it once they are not confidential).

And finally, I have also been networking through a series of coordinated events. Networking (only one letter away from not working) has now become a routinised activity that only interests me if it helps me secure support for the causes that I believe in or for the organisations that I work for. I am meeting a great lot of smiley and energetic people but I am trying to harness the power and experience of only a few. I feel fortunate, overwhelmed and grateful with those that share their experiences and knowledge with me and it would be great if more people had access to the spontaneous conversations that I am having.

I am going back to Colombia. I don't know when and certainly I haven't started thinking about the how. But I am going back. I therefore need to take the learning with me. The examples, the ideas that can somehow be replicated or transposed. I will also be inviting some of the great people that I have met to spend some time there doing research, teaching, developing fledging SEs from the bottom up, rethinking and improving my country, my sunny city. I do not take this task lightly and I am working hard on developing my tribe selectively.

I read somewhere that the world needs both social and conventional entrepreneurship. But one type is sustainable and the other isn't. The argument and the future are clear for me.

On rhythm, music, theatre, poetry etc

A couple of weeks ago I learned an important lesson, hopefully for good. When working with clients, you should respect their rhythm and avoid imposing objectives and workplans that do not respond to their own dynamics. Ultimately, there's no point in having a good business plan or a perfect marketing or sustainability strategy if you don't have the skills to implement them. I had concluded this before, but sometimes I find myself learning the same things again and again, without noticing the unlearning that takes place in between.

The Latin American Youth Forum is a group that manages to congregate, with certain religiosity, more than 35 young Latin americans living in London on a weekly or more frequent basis. Their parents, with no exception, are in low-skilled jobs. Half of the youngsters are already cleaning offices or accompanying their parents to work. But they always make some time to come to the meetings. They text each other, share their facebook profiles, they flirt and they socialise. And in between, a beautiful, charismatic young Colombian manages to slip art workshops, coordinate critical thinking seminars, design and carry out consultation meetings and plan fundraising events.

I cannot describe very clearly the strenght that I get from this group every time that I, on a voluntary basis, help them bring to life a business idea they've been developing, an entertainment enterprise. Perhaps is the fact that they are all friends that makes me feel so warm. Perhaps is the fact that this experience combines well some of my passions, namely, social entrepreneurship, ethnography and performing arts. Perhaps is the fact that I identify with young Colombians living in London and that I get excited everytime that I see them opening new windows. Or maybe, after all, is the fact that the enterprise came to us, instead of us looking for it.

This force got me frantic, and I started putting a bit too much pressure on them to take certain decisions and to give certain steps. I needed a website in order to secure them a contract with a relatively big fish. The website took longer than expected, and I was fuming.
Until they finally told me: 'Is not that we are not working. Is not that we won't do it. We will, but following our rhythm. Please be patient'. They even said please.

The lessons that always marked me the most, were thaught with love. Everyone lives, walks, feels and dances at a different rhythm, and for an advisor, understanding and being able to get the best of your client's rhythm is critical. The website is finally here. It is not perfect, but a bit of my heart is in it: http: www.layf.org.uk

Now that it is here, please let your contracts come our way.

This PhD will soon start to take shape, at my own rhythm. In the meantime, I am having fun, am trying to help as many people as possible, am working on the ground and I am having very interesting conversations with enlightened thinkers, innovators and friends. Juan, Martin, Brian, David, Annemarie, Andy, Laura...you make this hell almost perfect.

If Maria must wonder...

If a boy must wonder,
let him recall
not the lightening grace of falcons,
the dizzying aeronautics, Darwin's finch,
the voyage of ancients
who saw farther, whose charts and sails
and bubbly telescopic minds
brought ashore hope
to lift
a charioting god to the moon
but how
even a rogue dream of stars
once birthed the possibility of flight.

(Leon Yuchin Lau)

Barefoot and connected

Yes, it sounds easy to say that I will be researching processes of innovation within the social economy. As long as you believe that the social economy is a distinct place and that innovation does occur in it, it is relatively straightforward.

The topic gets a bit more complicated when you look at the vast literature on innovation and you realise that everything, from drivers to barriers and ways of overcoming them, has been well studied in both the private and the public sectors, but not here, in this middle, hybrid space that I, following Ash Amin, Bridge and others, call the social economy. Or when you encounter the definitional confussion sorrounding SEs...(some of my colleagues and friends have discussed it brilliantly!!!:
http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/social-entrepreneurship/death-by-definitions

Everything gets blurry or brighter (up to you!) when you open up another window of opportunity and decide to explore the impact of networks and relationships in the innovation process.

Social capital, networks, innovation, social innovation, peer learning, social economy, community enterprises..can my research topics/key themes be more appealing or interesting? I am feeling quite positive right now.

But going back to my original research questions.. I will try to understand the processes by which social enterprises innovate, the mechanisms, the critical incidents...My research question is a how question...

You might be wondering how, precisely, will I do this.

Well, mainly, through an ethnographic study. I will be observing innovative community enterprises in their daily functions for a sustained period of time. By collaborating with some, volunteering at others and interviewing a handful of CEOs, I hope to be able to observe/learn the subtleties of the innovation process, the nuances, its details.

Concomitantly I'll continue to work as a freelance SE advisor with some amazing community enterprises. One of them lacks all the relevant networks to get off the ground despite their amazing resilience and cohesion. The other one is way beyond my comfort zone, which I find very exciting. I usually gain very valuable knowledge from my clients.

Finally, I will have drinks once a month with fellow advisors, entrepreneurs and supporters to gauge their views under the influence of alcohol. I will be piggybacking somebody else's good idea.

I am barefoot as you can see. I have nothing but way too much theoretical information and doubts about where to start. But I am also well connected. To give you some examples: I have personal acquantainces working in all the key/relevant organisations within the social economy infrastructure, including CSR departments within conventional companies. They will probably tell me one or two things about their organisations or point me in the direction of good case studies. I give advice to programmes and social enteprises that are able to stand on their feet with dignity. I deliver training for some of the established support providers. I have worked (and therefore still have good connections) in the fields of women, migrants and housing. I have been recently invited to join two very innovative consultancy firms and I am in touch with the more progressive thinkers.

Something good must come out of this. Or at least that's what I want to believe on the 27th of December, listening to Led Zepellin while everybody else sleeps .

Processes of innovation within the social economy, or utopia

I thought that my blog could be another way of recording the coming 12 months, when I am expected to collect all sorts of interesting data. So I'll try to stick to that pupose. One feels tempted, however, to just moan and write about other less specific things, such as budget cuts, the real nature of community engagement or the claimed efficiency of certain right-wing led democracies. The activism of the social coolness (laid-backism, bacaneria in Spanish) as my friend calls it.

I have finally decided what the research question that will guide my fieldwork will be. How do social enterprises contribute to different types of innovation? This question can be understood in both a narrow and a broader sense. Narrowly, it refers to the innovations that take place (emerge? spark?) within organisations, be it products, processes, services, paradigms, positions, user-led, funding-led etc innovations. In a broader sense, it refers to the claim that social enterprises play very important roles within more encompassing processes of social innovation.

The literature review conducted this far refers contantly to the need to build the evidence base around the processes, the how, the mechanisms that facilitate or hinder innovation. I hope to be able to capture the diversity of innovations that can be found within the social economy, as similar processes have been well studied and documented in both the private and the public sectors. Although struggling not to be biased, I already know that I will find stillborn innovations, silent, invisible, intangible contributions to solve social problems, incremental and radical new ideas that lead to social change, major transformations and brilliant examples of how everyday actions can help to improve people's lives. The fieldwork conducted this far suggests that innovation means different things in different contexts, and that trying to operationalise the concept is like hitting a hard wall.

Aimed to be a critical examination of those pervasive claims about the innovativeness of the social enterprise sector/movement/whatever, I am secretly dreaming with challenging my own disbelief through an ethnographic study.

I, in essence, mistrust the portrayal of social enterprises as ideal vehicles to regenerate communities and revitalise economic activity. While some of them do it, on a contextualised, local scale most of the time, the majority of SEs that I know are indeed struggling to function, to break even, let alone to grow, reach scale, think about their impact or innovate. But I shall not let my previous experience be the only screen through which I see this task. I shall forget that out of the 21 SEs that I have advised closely, only 4 are trading in open, competitive markets. I shall remind myself that, historically, economic activity has been socially embedded.

Theories of change

Sun is shining...the weather is sweet...Make you want to move your dancing feet

To the rescue, here I am....

This is what I was listening this morning while getting ready to meet my friend, a very committed community development worker that deserves her own blogspot (to come). Sun was shining indeed. There was nothing special about our plan. We were going to have lunch together in a nice ethnic restaurant inside Brixton Market. Then we were going to head towards a young people's project that she co-founded some time ago. The group meets regularly, but their main activities take place on Saturdays most of times. The core group comprises nearly 40 youngsters, 15 of which belong to the steering group that meets every week. Well publicised activities and special events attract something between 60-80 itinerant members. They all keep coming even if they don't manage to participate as often from other more regular activities. These numbers are impressive, as any youth worker can confirm. The young people have started to consider developing a social enterprise as a result of a very organic learning process in which they have developed some artistic skills and more impressively, they have started to generate income. That story will also be featured separately.

Anyway, nothing special in going on a Saturday afternoon to have lunch in an ethnic restaurant, I thought. Except for the fact that the restaurant's owner has a picture of her with Prince Charles. She is wearing her apron in the picture. At first I thought it was a joke. But then they told me that Prince Charles is the Patron of Brixton Market. I still need to double check that fact. But being the Patron or not, he went there and hugged the chef, if that category applies. She cooks there, but she also owns the place, takes decisions and manages financial affairs. Her sons work there as waiters. It is an ethnic, family business.

Brixton market has hit the headlines a lot recently. There has been controversies around the decision to sell some of the covered arcades to private developers, who were, obviously, thinking about 'redeveloping' the area (that is, building a residential tower block and a PRIVATE park, above a new market building). The following summary was extracted from the Wikipedia entry:

"In January 2009 London and Associated Properties employed communications company Four Communication to undertake a survey of local opinion. Concerns were raised on the Brixton Community website Urban 75 that the survey was one sided, only available in English.Friends of Brixton Market, traders and residents ran a successful campaign against the proposals^[4].The Friends' proposal for Listing was strongly supported by the Twentieth Century Society. In April 2010 the Secretary of State of the Department of Culture (DCMS) announced that the government had overturned its previous decision not award heritage protection to these three arcades and declared all three Grade II listed buildings. They were listed by virtue of their cultural importance and contribution to the social and economic history of Brixton, particularly since the 1950s as one of the principle hearts of the Afro-Caribbean community in London, as well as for their architectural importance since such arcades, once more common, are now rare."

If you are still reading, you will notice that one of the reasons for overtuning the redevelopment is the fact that the market is considered of cultural importance particularly in relation to the history of the Afro-Caribbean Community.

Well...

I am sad to announce that even if the opening of a new starbucks has been delayed temporarily with the obstruction of the 'new market building' project, change has already taken place.

Right in front of the ethnic restaurant, there was a Rasta trader of music, clothes and artefacts who shut down his business two weeks ago. He could not keep up with the increased rent. Delve a little more, and you will notice the many new boutiques that have opened. Venture to go into one of the new cafes selling fussion food and snacks, and you will see that most of the people inside are reading the Guardian.

I have nothing against Guardian readers (like me), except the fact that I hate feeling so comfortable amongst them. The new coffee shop that claims to sell the best coffee in London, probably does.
But Brixton, dear friends, was never a white middle class market. Brixton, as my partner couldn't help but saying, is the new Borough Market. I give it 6 months for someone to start selling overpriced olives in there. The wikipedia entry also says that 'the market sells a wide range of foods and goods but is best known for its African and Caribbean produce, which reflect the diverse community of Brixton and surrounding areas of Lambeth'. It is precisely that, the diverse community of Brixton and surrounding areas of Lambeth which is endangered with this process, that I prefer not to name. Which side is Prince Charles on, I have no clue.

I am very white and very middle class. I know that most of the new traders might have been attracted to the area for its diversity. But how can they not distroy it? How can we, as human beings, like something and end up imposing something completely different on it?

When is change desirable? How can change happen even if it has been officially hindered?
Is cultural loss the inexorable price of change?

Change for what?

By the time I left, sun was not shining anymore. Seriously.