The A.E.I.O. of You and Me: creating

Knowledge Ecologies in Australian decolonising

contextsSymposium on

Knowledge EcologiesUWS March, 2014

Dr Susan Goff

Approach to presentation

• Context

• Case study

• Knowledge Ecology references

• A question of praxis

• Wojciechowski’s 25 laws

• The AEIO of You and Me

Context: decolonisation

“A decolonising perspective…focuses on the nation’s real history and true story, rather than compartmentalising the Aboriginal experience that may perhaps be delivered through a discriminatory dominant dialogue.” (Bennett, Green, Gilbert and Bessarab, 2013, p.61)

Invitation: reflect briefly on your orientation to this statement; what kinds of knowing come up?

Regenerative Landscapes and Social Health: a case study

“The [name of group] is a collective enterprise designed to realise the emergent capacity to improve landscape health and thus individual and societal health. It seeks to do this by investing in human capital to harness the collective knowledge in the minds and experience of aboriginal people, agriculturalists and other land managers, education institutions, the health professions, the food industries, financial institutions and others.” (Statement, 2013)

Brief account of presenter’s background and relationship with the

case study

One view of the story of emergence

Theses, theories, tools, books, conferences, farms, field days, thought, conversation, planet, people, stories, research and research methods, poems, pathways, cafes, practices, networks, spin offs, emails, notes and decisions…

Where we are up to:

“… a forum that –

Provides ways for people to critically discuss and debate issues of relevance to [named group], and that also supports formation of organic networks/partnerships/actions to take advantage of particular opportunities or address key issues as they arise.

That can bring people together to spark new ideas and collaborations, without necessarily having a strong idea of what those ideas and collaborations will be.

That goes a bit beyond some of the ideas suggested, but stops short of a formal organisation in the traditional sense.” (Core member email to the core group and generally agreed, March 3, 2014)

A current focus : should there be a regular and structured “Process Reflection” to monitor ongoing development - and if so, what form should it take?

Invitation: What are your thoughts? What kinds of knowing come up?

Knowledge Ecologies: some references

References include social, human, “natural” and knowledge ecologies: (are there differences?)

Knowledge Ecologies are cultural, made up of social, virtual and bio-physical systems; they embody attractors, and come about by creating a balance between structured and emergent, impermanent inter-relationships between all these elements (Brown, 1999; Malhotra, 1999; Goonatilake, 2006; O’Leary, 2007; Williams, Mackness and Gumtau, 2012)

What is a praxis of nurturing Knowledge Ecologies in decolonising contexts?

“Words matter. Yet abstract words alone fail to hold the complexity of ecological consciousness. It takes the creative and symbolic to hold the profound sense of coming home to our own body, peoples, and place.” (O’Neill, 2004, p.352)

Is KE “Praxis” possible?

References call on: “A warranted belief leading to action” (Brown, 1999)

• Working in and with inescapable trauma

• Heuristic research over long time scales

• Our “Self” as self governing, multi-local, participatory and indigenous (First, Second and Third Person inquiry –

Chandler and Torbert, 2003)

• Tipping points, bridges, influential, learning by doing alongside each other

• Messy, unmanageable, un-designable - but able to be nurtured

• The nature of knowledge is innately uncertain. (Brown, 1999; O’Neil, 2012; Wilding, 2012)

Going back to founding thinking: lost gems and anachronismsWojciechowski’s 25 laws governing the ecology of knowledge (1975) describe the diversities of structure and emergence that characterise a KE

Hand out: invitation - consider one law in reference to the kinds of knowing you have had today

For example:

“Law IV: the size and complexity of the problematic of knowledge is proportional to the general level of knowledge”

Laws and KE praxis in reference to the case study

Law IX: There exists an interdependence between the size of the human group, the amount of communications within the group, the spread of inter-subjectivity of the knowledge construct and the progress of knowledge

KE praxis focuses to communications that spread inter-subjectivity of the construct within the whole group; failure to do so threatens the KE’s internal structure

Our action: We are setting up a self governed common pool blog

Law VIII: The physical mastery of nature is proportional to the active, intellectual subordination to it

The group’s purpose is to transform “how we are” within landscape so that we work within “nature’s” self correcting laws as a means of significantly enhancing social health

Our action: The principles of regenerative farming have potential to underpin all the dimensions of the KE symbolically, materially and practically. Failure to do so will result in nature overwhelming us.

Law XVIII: The satisfaction with the existential system of man is inversely proportional to the capacity to change it Accept and value what is already coming about –

including but not privileging institutional relationships

KE praxis is noticing “what is”, and valuing what is coming into being is an expression of decolonisation in our subordination to “nature”. Failure to do so limits our transformation

Our action: valuing the trauma of acceptance as an essential aspect of our self governing, multi-local, participatory and Indigenous self

The A.E.I.O. of You and Me

• A possible departure from the co-dependency of colonial administration in Australia (Rowley, 1970)

• The Praxis of creating a KE by being it (Brown and Harris, 2014)

• The systemic implications (the A.E.I.O. of you and me) – becoming conscious of people in Country, Country in people

“The universe is in the self as much as the self is in the universe”

(O’Neill, 2012, p.359)

Ongoing inquiry

Axiology: Does praxis informed by Wojciechowski’s 25 Laws enable this KE to be socially valued?

Epistemology: Do the Laws enable the knowers to become conscious of their indigenous knowledge systems (and vice versa)?

Inquiry: Are KE’s interested in “Laws”? Are Laws open to hybridisation?

Ontology: What kinds of reality do the Laws make evident?

You and Me: What does our inter-subjectivity sense about any of this?

It takes the creative and symbolic to hold the profound sense of coming home to our own body, peoples, and place (O’Neil, 2012)

References:• Anonymous: “Knowledge ecologies: text eagles and crowd sourcing in the knowledge economy: the transcriptions of distributed

cognition and commerce.” On “Learning Affordances” Wikispace classroom. Retrieved 14/3/14, http://roys-discourse-typologies.blogspot.com.au/2009/02/text-eagles-and-crowd-sourcing-in.html.

• ARLASH statement, (2013) (unpublished).

• Bennett, B., Green, S., Gilbert, S. and Bessarab, D. (2013) Our voices: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Work. Palgrave MacMillan, South Yarra.

• Brown, J.S. (1999) “Sustaining the ecology of knowledge”, Leader to Leader (Spring). pp 31 – 36.

• Chandler, D. and Torbert, B. (2003) “Transforming inquiry and action‘. Action Research. 1(2), pp133-152.

• Goonatilake, S. (2006) “Knowledge as ecology”, Theory, culture and society, 23 (2-3). pp 170 – 172.

• Malhotra, Y. (1999) “Knowledge management for organizational white-waters: an ecological framework”. Knowledge Management. pp 18-21. Retrieved 14/3/14, http://community-intelligence.com/files/Malhotra%20-%20Knowledge%20Management%20for%20organisational%20white-waters.pdf.

• Massey, C. (2013) Transforming the Earth: a study in the change of agricultural mindscapes. (Abstract), ANU.

• O’Neill, E. (2012) “The place of creation: transformation, trauma and re-rooting creative praxis” in Lewis Williams, Rose Anne Roberts and Alastair MacIntosh (Eds), Radical Human Ecology: intercultural and indigenous approaches. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham.

• Rowley, C.D. (1970) The destruction of Aboriginal society: 1906 – 1985. Australian National University Press. Canberra.

• Wilding, N. (2012) “Experiments in action research and human ecology: Developing a community of practice for rural resilience pioneers” ” in Lewis Williams, Rose Anne Roberts and Alastair MacIntosh (Eds), Radical Human Ecology: intercultural and indigenous approaches. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham.

• Williams, R., Mackness, J. and Gumtau, S. (2012) “Footprints of emergence”, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 13/4. Retrieved 14/3/14, http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1267/2307.

• Wojciechowski, J. (1975) The ecology of knowledge. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.