Rosa Zubizaretta on Meaning-Making Social Technologies

Discussion

Rosa Zubizaretta:

"The good news from my perspective, is that we as humans have actually been developing effective ways to make meaning together, across a wide diversity of initial perspectives. However, many of the "social technologies" that make this possible are not yet widely known, and much less widely applied. Still, just as we already have technologies to generate power from the sun (and only need to invest in them to make them more widely available) we also already have powerful human and social technologies that are largely untapped.

A recent example can be seen in the 5 minute overview video of a recent participatory public policy process in Austria, in response to the current refugee crisis. Created by documentary film-maker Martin Rausch, it shows an intentionally diverse group of community members, making meaning together to develop creative and humane responses to the crisis.

What's important to note here, is that what we see in the above video is not an unusual case. The State of Vorarlberg has hosted over 35 of these ad-hoc Civic Councils to date, on different topics, using the same powerful combination of processes. Each time, the Council has consisted of an entirely different group -- yet one chosen to ensure diversity of perspectives. And each time, there has been a powerful experience of collective meaning-making among the participants.

Of course, this does not, in and of itself, solve all of our problems. The evidence that with the right support, any small, highly diverse group can reliably arrive together at powerful shared insights, is only a small step toward addressing the many global issues we are facing. However, we know from past experience that the work of a small microcosm can influence our larger society, especially when we are able to share the story widely. This is what happened in the "Canadian Experiment" that was facilitated by Roger Fisher and studied subsequently by Tom Atlee; it's also what happened in the South African Mont Fleur dialogues that were facilitated by Adam Kahane.

In the case of Vorarlberg, the format they have used repeatedly with good results could be described as an unusual variant of a "citizen's jury". A randomly-selected microcosm of the public participates in creative deliberation for 1.5 days. They are supported with an empathy-based process for collaborative meaning-making within highly diverse groups. This process goes by the name of Dynamic Facilitation, yet is significantly different from conventional facilitation approaches. This is followed by a Civic Cafe, hosted using a World Cafe format.

I have been collecting English-language news articles, reports, and book chapters about the significant experiments taking place in Vorarlberg on this webpage. (Full disclosure: my personal interest in this, is that I personally practice the Dynamic Facilitation approach, among others; I also lead workshops on it, and have written a book that is the go-to guide for this particular methodology.)

Now, after many years as a practitioner, I have returned to graduate school for doctoral studies. We need academic research on these Councils, and we also need academic theory that can help us understand more deeply how these processes work. I am particularly focusing on the links between diversity of perspectives among participants, the use of empathy within facilitation methodologies, the resulting process of collaborative meaning making, and creative outcomes for both participants and for the larger system." (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empathy-collaborative-meaning-making-co-creating-our-rosa-zubizarreta)