ORIGIN and BASICS
THIS IS AN EXCERPT OF EARLY IDEAS AROUND IT
ORIGIN:
My dear friend Marta Chavez, studied biology with me at the Universidad del Valle in Colombia. She has recently joined the ecovillage Atlántida -my home- as a non-resident member, planning to come here next year to build her house and raise her child. She has a MSc on sustainability issues.
She is doing her doctorate in social sciences faculty in rural development. The research revolves around the goal of CASA-RENACE -the Colombian and Latino ecovillage network- and Atlántida ecovillage itself.
Our idea was from the beginning to design a PhD pathway totally fitting with real needs of the grassroots process.
MAIN IDEA:
Explore the weaving of a network beyond the ecovillage where visions about sustainable living are woven to strengthen the movement and strengthen strategies to penetrate society "main stream". Then it has to do with ways to walk together in a diversity and multiplicity of thoughts, knowledge and cosmogonies. How to integrate ecovillages and other movements (e.g. indigenous) and organizations, having specific things to learn and offer to others.
The methodology is participatory action research and the subjects of the research can become co-researchers, this will be my formal role.
The aim is to look at the different fields of action of CASA-RENACE: assemblage, outreach, networking, and economic support, and look how these points generate a process of social learning necessary for the generation of a more resilient and sustainable enactment.
New key partner to bring in as advisor:
Professor Arjen Wals: Here are two articles of him, one he made in conjunction with a graduate student who worked in Auroville and another on social learning. He is a teacher at my university (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) and the UNESCO Chair in learning and sustainable development. This is a strategic link cooking to be driven projects and supported by a university in the "main stream" as Wageningen and start knitting future connections with the type of Gaia university teaching (e.g.) .
GOALS SPECIFICATIONS
LOOK AT:
1. Within a community, Atlántida ecovillage. Small-scale governance
It has to do with the assembly of different people living in a common place. How to put it to work in this context of diversity of ideas on how to live well -BUEN VIVIR-, the success and difficulties encountered in putting it to real life.
2. Another level is between ecovillages (Atlántida take joint with another ecovillage, as aldeafeliz or
3. CASA-last level
All different levels and in our examples we could find the basics for an assembly platform and multiplication movement would help to consolidate the incubator in its different petals: the mentoring system (in the guise of research to do on governance, network fabric and joining with other movements), the petal of education (the aspect of the research refers to the process of social learning and sustainability visions assembly) and the petal of economy (research outreach and assembly). Everything feeds.
A SECOND PARTNERSHIP WITH COLOMBIAN ACADEMY
On October 20/2012...
I had a meeting here at Atlántida Ecovillage, with 2 women: one studying a Masters in "education for diversity" and the other a PhD teacher, head of a research group at Manizales University -one of the main capitals in the country, 6 hours from here-.
The student has been around the ecovillage a couple of times and used to be high school teacher in the neighborhood. She wanted to get more involved with us and focus her project in the ecovillage.
In brief we have another Masters thesis and project to nurture the PhD and Msc experiment, with direct benefit for all stakeholders and the ecovillage.
I proposed 3 fields of inquiry -they use a methodology called collective action research-:
1. Internal Governance: bring in help for the ecovillage evolving self organization
2. Leanings from this 9 years: a structured reflection on the key learnings, hidden patterns, strengths and weaknesses of the development of the ecovillage.
3. External perception of the ecovillage and CASA in the region -Cajibio and other Caucan major players as the Nasa Cabildos or the Peasants organizations of the Macizo colombiano-
1 y 2 will be physically addressed in live meeting and workshops at the ecovillage.
First one : February 4, 5, 6 / 2013
3. We possibly include young co-researchers -local high school students- for social inquiry at the local sphere. And also we will try to bring here key organizations and social processes of Cauca -the local region, Cauca is the name of the state or province-, for an experience exchange gathering and the presentation of the ecovillage model and CASA. This will happen later.
IMPORTANCE AND EMERGENCE
The research group they are part of, it pretty big and has key relations and ongoing process with a variety of social and grassroots movements in Colombia (afro communities of the pacific, youngsters networks at city slams, indigenous communities recovering from massacres, peasants union, etc). It is a highly politicized sphere which presents an amazing opportunity to test the accountability of our proposals.
I will try to assist her directly in her research, specially making sure that the methods and issues be pertinent and of direct utility. And at the same time receiving the benefit of an ELF to deal with data collection and arrangement.
Of course there will be particular flavors, ads and emerging topics when I organize my own reports. For example on the parmaculture level of the land, and the national level of the vision councils - that I won´t allow those to be absent in my basket.
Also, I want to make it official.
So she benefits as being part of a PhD project from an European university, gets credentials for her CV and participate in 1 published paper.
And me and my friend Marta with her PhD will benefit as acknowledged and skilled team builders, research networkers and have others do some data collection for our projects.
Comments
Account deleted
23 January 2013, 18:03
[Updated: 27 January 2013, 16:13]
For Governance issues we are exploring sociocracy (the open source version of Holocracy) also known as Dynamic Governance. I'd be interested to know what you think about this - there have been several postive references to sociocracy coming out of GEN Europe and, on the strength of those plus our own thinking in Gaia U, we are working up a small partnership with the sociocracy people ...
Is anyone using Grounded Theory as an approach for analysing reflections and interviews? I'd be interested to see if there is value in using this type of approach.
Partner Tool is a (free) social network analysis tool that may have a different orientation to the Actor-Network-Theory - have you seen any comparisons?
Jorge Calero
27 January 2013, 12:02
Is it OK to keep it public so I can bring in the PhD fellow student?