Month: April 2012

I feel like at least ten years have been condensed into this last one. Amazingly enough, I have five or ten more grey hairs than I did last year at this time.  I must have learned a lot!

One thing in particular that has really changed my life has been working with people who think and operate very differently from me.  I remember early on this year a friend asked me how I was liking my job working with other student leaders at UBC.  I gave her a blank stare, and replied that I was ‘learning a lot’…code for thisisreallyhardandIdon’tlikeit!!! More questions revealed that one reason it was so challenging was that no one on my team thought like I did! Months and months went by, and though I recognized that my ideas were different, I could not understand why despite our best intentions, we were having such a hard time seeing things the same way, and functioning as a team! It felt more like we were in a three legged race gone wrong-people pulled in different directions but forced to work together. 

One day, frustrated, tired, and still totally oblivious to what was really going on, I went out with my team for a drink after our day.  Feeling guarded and misunderstood, I was totally unprepared for the beautiful thing that was about to occur.  As we began to talk and be honest about our experiences, I heard my team-mates in a new way, and realized that we had been totally set up! Each of us sees life, work, and communication in a very different way, and each of us brings a unique piece to the table. In fact, we were chosen not for our similarities, but for our differences! For a long time, we struggled to put those pieces together, but in that moment, a lightbulb went on for me as I realized that not only do they see and think differently from me, but I see differently from them, and just as I was frustrated with feeling misunderstood, they were challenged by not being able to understand me! As we talked, hope began to chase away the shadows in my mind, and I saw that it was in fact our incredible differences that created the potential for excellence. I saw that I needed to learn to see through a different perspective and communicate to understand, not to be understood.

 This experience for me has been more meaningful and helpful than anything else I have learned, for it was really a microcosm of the world in which we live, and how really, we are each using our own lens to see and interpret the world, but that lens cannot be assumed to be universal.  I am learning that it is in that space, that un-interpreted, un-communicated grey zone that most great ideas fall to the ground.

Furthermore, as I saw how unique each person really was in their approach, I started to see the potential for interdisciplinary, intercultural teams to go deeper, wider, and farther than we can go as individuals.  I started to see the world in a new lens, to see the incredible complexities differently, and to realize that we so desperatly need one another to piece together the whole picture.

Offer up your piece, no matter how small or big it is!

Two years ago, I arrived at UBC with a dream in mind.  Young, determined, and full of unspoken assumptions, I came thinking that I knew what to expect. In fact, until I sat down to verbalize these dreams in my five year plan (very good idea!), I didn’t quite realize that what was in my head and what was in my heart were quite different!  As I began to write, the evidence of a paradigm shift spilled onto the page.  Once so confident in my role in the world, I had now started to see very differently, to see the unseen histories, power structures, and ways of relating that have shaped our world today.  I saw that mostly, Ihad tended to interpret the rest of the world through a lens created by second hand stories about people I have never met.  The stories of ‘the poor’ in our world that are told by the rich, creating a form of ‘poverty knowledge’ that is vastly different from reality. 

My definition of ‘the poor’ began to be challenged as I delved further into this story, and began to see that those with little material wealth in this world may be far more rich in the truest things of life than those whose lives are characterized by comfort and financial wealth. This year especially, I have seen my own poverty in a new way; a total paradox between material goods and internal poverty.

This desire to leave my own comforts, leave the familiarity of this culture and hemisphere in order to hear the real stories of others, and see life through a new lens became an urgency as I reflected on the very reason for which I had come to UBC in the first place; to study Nutrition and Maternal Health in an international context, unto becoming skilled enough to serve those in need in what I had once thought of as ‘poor countries’.  Everything about this has now been turned upside down and put on pause: why?  Because I am not willing to become another ‘development expert’ who is unable to see through the eyes of the other, (those they are trying to ‘develop’) and stand together with them as equals. Furthermore, the assumption that others are in need of ‘development’ is a construct of politics and power, and may not be true at all!  I realized that I too have heard a single story (Adichie); both of development, and of nations deemed to be in need of such a thing.

I feel like we as a world are actually on the brink of a massive shift in how we see and understand others around the world; too much has been built on false stories, partial stories, and un-truth.  

One year ago, I set in my heart to begin a new journey this May.  A journey of discovery, of learning to see and hear differently, of listening to stories, of leaving my own context and becoming ‘the other’ to someone else.  One year ago, I did not know how this would materialize.  Today, I just finished packing one blue backpack that holds almost all of my worldly possessions. One backpack that will travel along with me to Uganda in just a few short days.  One backpack that will be filled with a new story.

I am going on a journey of learning to see. to hear. to smell. to touch. to taste.

I am going to reclaim my senses and shake off the dust of an upside down world in search of an upsidedown kingdom where the first are last, and the last are first.

The Danger of A Single Story, Chimamanda Adichie.  Ted Global 2009, Filmed July 2009, Posted October 2000. http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

The Following is an excerpt taken from my own writing, submitted for Sociology of Development and Globalization, submitted February 13, 2012 (SOCI 301, highly recommend it!!!)

It was amazing for me to study the history and context of “development”, and start to see how and why the world is the way that it is, and realize just how meaningful our words are!  One very interesting reading for this class was a short text taken from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, (Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J. , 1995), called ‘The Discourse of Development’.  It is upon this text that I expand. 

Enjoy!

“What does it mean to argue that development should be understood as a discourse?”

 Amartya Sen describes public discussion as a vehicle for social change. Something happens, something is created as ideas are formed into sentences that are then pronounced, agreed upon, and disseminated. Perhaps the reason for this is due to the reality that everything that is translated into the natural, tangible world begins in thought form, is fortified as it is spoken, and is ignited into reality as perceptions and mindsets are molded in response. Conversation is the process of naming and un-naming, (Freire, Paolo) of speaking realities into existence, and of forecasting futures. When someone whose words hold weight says something, they are in essence creating a new reality in the dimension of the unseen and bringing it into the physical realm where its implications are tasted, touched, and felt by the people whom it affects. Development as a discourse is a particular way of understanding the world in which we live, and the powers that shape it. This paradigm considers the power of a word, which is the embodiment of a thought, the expression of a belief, and the action of a value. A discourse brings abstract ideas and concepts into an arrangement that can then be translated into an action, or series of actions. A discourse is a process of identifying values and establishing connections that shape perceptions, which then shape actions. Arturo Escobar refers to discourse as the process through which social reality comes into being, the articulation of knowledge and power, of the visible and the expressible,(Escobar, p. 84) and discusses the way in which words create space (p. 85) that guarantee a certain response. I doubt that Escobar is referring to physical space; rather, he is describing an unseen reality that houses our words. Words express values; and when those words are spoken with power, a reality and way of relating is established. Everything exists in relationship, the premises for engagement within are critical.

  “A report that is issued by an expert has the potential to shape a reality for many, for it creates a premise upon which a response is justified. This report is an example of the ways in which a discourse creates a context for ‘development’”

Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom

Friere, Paolo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed Escobar,

Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World

” On the woof and warp of reality, tangled though it may be, new
cloth is being woven from threads of many radically different
colors…The process is anything but spectacular and it mostly
happens at the local level, where across the world a thousand
and one new forces are emerging. They emerge from the bottom
up and the inside out….they shoulder the task of reconceiving
democracy. Nourishing it with popular participation and reviving
the battered traditions of tolerance, mutual assistance and
communion with nature”….(p. 321)
“Living wherever, living however, living whenever, each person
contains many possible persons. Every day, the ruling system
places our worst characteristics at center stage, condemning
our best to languish behind the backdrop. The system of power
is not in the least eternal. We may be badly made, but we’re not
finished, and it’s the adventure of changing reality and changing
ourselves that makes our blip in the history of the universe
worthwhile…” (p. 329)
Eduardo Galeano (2000)
Upside down: A primer for the looking-glass world
15

  An excerpt taken from Sociology 301, Development and Globalization

This year I took a sociology course that really changed my life, and the way that I see and understand the world.  In starting to explore the historical context for inequity in the world, I saw that words and thoughts have been powerful instruments in creating realities.  These are some thoughts I recorded for a blog post for sociology: The context is about ‘development’ being at a crossroads where its definition and implications change.

Written by Lana McGuire

 Why does it appear that development is at a crossroads?

….the process of transformation is something that happens through relationship, over time, across cultures, values, and different perspectives. The term “development” should really be dismantled, and replaced with a stark admission that we as humans should not attempt to position ourselves above another. Rather, our greatest strength in walking towards a more whole, healthy, and free humanity is to serve one another in love, and to dismantle systems of oppression.

I think that one factor that has brought us to this turbid ebb and flow of change in the understanding and implementation of development is crisis; looming and present. There is an increasingly steady influx of problems that are not solvable using one dimension alone. Furthmore, the former framework for development has been a huge contributor to many of these problems.  Conflicts, environmental mysteries and enigmas, political tensions, and the increasing urgency of chronic poverty, disease, and inequity have brought us to a place in which critical reflection and a renewed framework for engagement are vital. Furthermore, I believe that we have come to recognize that the whole of a person is far more complex than one discipline alone, and to hope to see true change in the nations, we must learn to collaborate. The fact that we have come to a place of incredible sophistication in the realm of technology and information, yet the state of our humanity is worse than ever on many levels is an unavoidable indication that something has been missing in the past approach to development, and that to recover that which is lost requires that we embrace new modalities and lenses through which we see the situation.

In conclusion, a crossroads is both a terrifying and exhilarating place to be. It is a place in which the ability to humbly admit our ineptness and seek to discover truth and beauty amidst chaos and ashes is present, for we are no longer under the illusion that we have the answer.