Antioppressive practice: practice frameworks for work with oppressed groups

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Anti-oppressive practice practice frameworks for
work with oppressed groups

• Lecturer Erin Wilson
• Email EWilson_at_scopevic.org.au

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Todays lecture

• What is oppression?
• How can CD workers act in order to overcome it?
• A community development framework
• A method of community development work.
• To start, some personal context...

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How might we define oppression?

• What have oppression and meaning making got to do
  with each other?

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OppressionThe knowledge claims of modernity,
based on a dogmatic belief in one universal
Truth, have been instrumental in silencing,
erasing or marginalising the diverse voices,
needs and practices of the Other. (Leonard, 1999
vi)

• ...What does this mean?

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Oppression via

• A limited set of knowledges are validated
  excluding those of minority groups
• alternate ways of knowing and acting are
  belittled and denied
• members of alternate cultures and knowledge
  groups are forced to adopt the dominant knowledge
  system which dictates what is to be known and how
  it is to be known
• Epistemic oppression
• Wilson, 2005

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On the ground this means.

• problems and solutions are defined within
  dominant theories and viewpoints
• experts outside of the immediate context of
  experience are charged with classifying and
  solving social issues
• the interpretations or meanings of those
  experiencing the problems are marginalised or
  delegitimated
• the legitimated social welfare arena of the
  dominant system focuses on ideas of participation
  in but not control over knowledge around social
  issues Wilson, 2005

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Oppression

• what the elites of today want is for the
  people not to think.
• (Freire, 1972 102)
• we have been in various ways silenced, deprived
  of the authority to speak
• (Smith, 1990 1)

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What does empowerment mean if we focus on the
need to overcome this kind of oppression?
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Agency

• Is the ability/ power to produce knowledge or
  make meaning and act on this basis
• But the meanings we make and the actions we take
  need to fit with social justice goals (ie. need
  to overcome rather than reinforce disadvantage
  and oppression).
• Wilson, 2005.

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How can we (and others) make meaning (ie. produce
knowledge) that is not oppressive?

• The CD job is to work with others to foster their
  ability to express their views, think, analyse
  and take actions, BUT so that they engage with
  their responsibility to not oppress others

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The ethics of meaning makingMeaning making or
knowledge production as counter-oppressive

• exploring multiple and different meanings
• acknowledging the partial nature of all
  knowings
• validating the locatedness of meaning making
• utilising a critical and reflexive attitude
  that evaluates the oppressive potential of
  meanings
  Wilson, 2005

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How do we make meaning based on these
characteristics?What process can we use?
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Transformative dialogue

• Dialogue is, at its simplest, the process
  through which we engage with many meanings and
  make our own meaning, either as individuals or as
  groups
• Transformative dialogue can be seen as
• a meeting place
• an encounter
• an interaction
• a process of exposure and expansion
• an attitude of openness and movement
• Wilson, 2005.

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Steps of transformative dialogue

• 1. Recognise the other person as a separate and
  different individual, turn toward the other.
• 2. Explore, encounter, experience from the
  standpoint of the other.
• 3. Move between views and hold in tension
  multiple understandings and positions
• 4. Enact the meaning by doing - living towards
  (Buber, 1947)
• and work to foster these approaches in others.
  Wilson, 2005

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The process

• We cant make meaning, judgements, analyses,
  decisions based on a single view of the world -
  the potential for oppression here is high.
• We need to seek out different views, bring people
  together to experience different ways of
  understanding.
• We are changed through exposure to different ways
  of seeing something
• We need to find ways to act justly that reflect
  these views.

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Building liberatory communities

• How do we build communities that are not
  oppressive?
• By affirming and encountering difference
• Engaging with different ideas and learning to
  understand the context from which they have grown
• Dialoguing about these
• Applying the ethics of meaning making to how we
  make sense of our world and choose our actions
• Seeking to foster relationships that are able to
  encounter, exchange and critique ideas
• Bringing forward the views of many into our
  actions together
  Wilson, 2005

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If we take this view of overcoming oppression...
How does this affect our understanding of
community development?
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A community development model
Relationship
CD
Organisation
Justice
Aboriginal Community Management and Development
Program, 1998.
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Relationship

• If we arent connected to the people were
  fighting for theres an emptiness, a coldness at
  the centre. Its the same coldness thats at the
  heart of prejudice - the coldness of separation.
• (Fran Peavey quoted in Penter and Sullivan,
  1993 95).

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Relationship

• Relationships undermined by capitalist society,
  emphasis on individual
• CD sees relationships as core building blocks of
  community
• Relationships help us understand new ways of
  thinking
• Need to foster, maintain and extend relationships
  and encounters
• Relationship as social capital
• Use relationship as an analytical tool to map
  weaknesses and strengths of community web
• Wilson, 2005

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Organisation

• When you counter injustice effectively, you
  organize together.
• (Kuyek, 1990 148)

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Organisation

• The power of the group
• Need to bring people together into participative,
  collaborative and counter-oppressive association
  with each other
• These associations are the core collectives for
  action in community development whether action is
  lobbying, service delivery, community management,
  research, advocacy etc
• Wilson, 2005.

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Organisation

• Purposes of organisation in CD
• mobilising people to act
• means of increasing social capital
• model for alternative forms of social, political,
  economic, cultural organisation and social
  relations
• a location for alternative discourse development
  and dissemination

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Justice

• Effective action is measured by the benefit it
  has to the poorest of the poor.
• (Kelly Sewell, 1988 36)

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Justice

• Work to overcome unjust and oppressive
• Structures (social, political, cultural,
  economic)
• Discourses (including beliefs and knowledges)
• Relations (social relations, interpersonal and
  structural relationships)
• Practices (within or outside the group/community)
• Wilson, 2005

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A community development model
Relationship
CD
Organisation
Justice
Must have all three elements to be CD - use this
model to evaluate our work.
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Example Pilbara Social Justice Forums

• Relationship
• bring people together for 2 days/nights to hear
  different experiences
• build alliances across communities

• Organisation
• Organised actions to take as a collective
• More influential with govt when representing many
  communities
• Forum organisation needed to model non oppressive
  practices

• Justice
• focus on issues that cause disadvantage
• identify shared solutions

CD
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What does this mean we do as community
development workers?How do we work?What might
be the key ingredients of our practice?
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A community development method framework - 7
elements
Relationship
Basing Placing Relating Exchanging Doing Building
Reflecting
Organisation
Justice
Wilson, 2005
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A CD method framework - cycles or steps

• Basing
• Placing
• Relating
• Exchanging
• Doing
• Building
• Reflecting
• Wilson, 2005

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Basing
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Placing
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Relating
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Exchanging
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Doing
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Building
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Reflecting
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References

• Aboriginal Community Management and Development
  Program (1998). 2nd year semester 1, 1998, course
  material. Perth Centre for Aboriginal Studies
  ,Curtin University of Technology.
• Buber, M. (1947). Between man and man. London
  Collins.
• Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed.
  London Penguin.
• Kelly, A. Sewell, S. (1988). With head, heart
  and hands Dimensions of community building.
  Brisbane Boolarong.
• Kuyek, J. (1990). Fighting for hope organizing
  to realize our dreams. Montreal Black Rose
  Books.
• Leonard, P. (1999). Introduction. In B, Pease
  J. Fook (Eds.). Transforming social work
  practicepostmodern critical perspectives. NSW
  Allen and Unwin.
• Penter, C. Sullivan, H. (1993). Managing for
  socially just change - illusion or reality a
  dialogue on experiences of community management.
  In Power, politics and performance. Community
  management in the 90s. Conference Papers, Vol 1.

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References continued

• Smith, D. (1990a). Texts, facts and femininity.
  Exploring the relations of ruling. London
  Routledge
• Wilson, E. (2005).Community in diversityreinventi
  ng liberatory practice. Doctoral thesis, Perth
  UWA.