This blog was written by Mieke Snijder and Brigitte Rohwerder.
On the weekend me (Mieke) and 6 other women neighbours were doing a makeover of one of the wildlife garden planters in our neighbourhood. We were tackling the St John’s Wort that had taken over the planter. St John’s Wort is a powerful medicinal plant that is used for treating depression. It is also quite an aggressive plant that can take over a garden due to its high production of seeds and its underground stems (creeping rhizomes). In our case, it was stealing light and soil from other plants that were trying to grow in the wildlife garden and thereby reducing the biodiversity in this small ecosystem. With my hands in the soil, I was reflecting on the similarities between the work we were doing in this small planter, with the large-scale work of healing and systems change.
The first reflection was about the importance of identifying and tackling the root causes that keep the system in place. With species like St John’s Wort and nettle, you can pull out the plants, but if the underground stems remain in place, new plants will grow back within a few weeks, and you will have to start over again. Similarly, if we only tackle the consequences (e.g. taking individual children out of child labour) of the underlying system dynamics (e.g. poverty, health problems), the problems will continue (e.g. new children will replace those taken out of work, or children will move back into work later). Hence the term ‘root’ causes in English. Thinking about the six conditions of systems change, we can imagine the ‘relationships & connections’, ‘power dynamics’ and ‘meaning making models’ as the roots of the system and the ‘policy’, ‘practices’ and ‘resource flows’ as the plants that we see above the ground. As long as we don’t address the meaning making models and power dynamics at play (e.g. patriarchal norms and values), policies and practices will continue to be ineffective or continue to harm.
The second reflection is about the hidden nature of the system dynamics that we are in the business of tackling. What makes removing the underground stems of St John’s Wort so tricky is simply that you cannot see them under the soil. You are blindly digging and pulling, hoping that the part that you start pulling will lead to a larger part of the root system to come out with it. When it does it is incredibly satisfactory, because you know you have tackled an important part of the problem. Though more often than not the bit of the root will snap, and you have to continue (blindly) digging for the next bit to start pulling. As individuals going through our day-to-day life, it is similarly hard to see the system dynamics that affect and harm us. And can make us start thinking that we are to blame for the challenges that we face in our lives. Using participatory methods, such as life story collection and analysis, we can surface the system dynamics that affect our lives. Once we have surfaced them we can start to find ways to tackle them and can stop digging around blindly.
The final reflection has less to do with the hardy roots, but more with the actual work of systems change and collective healing. While some of us were pulling, digging and shovelling these roots, others were pruning an existing bush, removing rubbish and starting to plant new plants in the cleared areas. This reminded me of all the different kinds of work that are needed when we talk about healing and systems change. We need people who provide individual therapy and counselling for people to work through their individual trauma (like pruning and maintaining the plants). We need people who start building new realities to give us hope of a better future (like planting new seedlings). And we need people who are keen to get their hands deep in the soil or get their shovels out to break the system dynamics. As participatory researchers at IDS we see ourselves in the last two categories, with our participatory methods as the tools at our disposal.
We live in a world that is in urgent need of healing: 70% of people will experience a traumatic event in their lifetime; on top of ongoing intergenerational trauma resulting from colonialism, family violence, state violence that affects people on a molecular level in their DNA; and a global increase in human-made and natural disasters, due to the climate and ecological crises. Social trauma (collective and cultural) are core contextual conditions within our research with marginalised people, as many experience ongoing physical, emotional and psychosocial impacts from the layered effects of stigma, systemic inequalities, conflict, gender-based violence, political oppression and protracted crisis, for instance. As researchers working on participation, inclusion and social change we focus on collective healing, or group processes, to address these social harms. Our colleagues’ recent healing justice research suggests a political and holistic orientation to collective healing is needed, which intentionally weaves together different group-healing modalities and uplifting political organising practices. We have found that collective healing processes can be most effective when contextually grounded healing practices are combined with both creative approaches and critically reflective dialogue and analysis, which participatory methods offer.
Invitation for collaborations
Now we are excited to continue this work with others, exploring the role of participatory methods and participation more broadly in fostering collective agency, embodied and emotional ways of being and epistemologies, inclusive solidarities, and reimagining and reenacting collective justice processes. This blogpost is therefore an invitation to those who are interested in joining forces with us to explore questions such as1:
- Can healing individuals in a group context lead to healing justice through transforming harmful systems? How do groups accommodate dissent and different individual healing needs? What are the conditions in which collective, familial and individual healing can take place and how can the enablers and barriers be navigated?
- How can collective healing processes, mediated through creative and performative practices, be operationalised in different contexts to strengthen different forms of activism (feminist, disability, climate etc)?
- What forms of solidarity, creativity, and resistance can help repair relationships, reframe memory, and foster joyful, rights-affirming futures? How can we foster/promote/amplify support new forms of pro-rights activism in a way that fosters creativity, kindness, solidarity and joy.
- Through co-learning with different organizations, how participatory methods can be used with the communities they work with to foster collective healing.
Finally, we are curious about how we can embed radical kindness and healing into our own research processes and ways of leading within the institute and beyond. As both IDS and the broader development field is going through a time of rapid change – how can we navigate these changes and engage with each other in a way that reduces the potential to harm, and can we emerge from this with post traumatic growth?
If you are interested in exploring these questions with us – please contact Mieke (m.snijder@ids.ac.uk) or Brigitte (b.rohwerder@ids.ac.uk).