back to working on the methodological issues of the book, this has been exercising much of my time in the last weeks and as yet it is not cracked but the basic issues are coming clearer.
If the process of creating sustainable community is to succeed then it needs to be compelling enough for public support - and political weight to back it - to make its way through such tests then it is likely that at some point the question of measure will arise. Knowing what effect an initiative has had is a fair enough question to raise. The difficulty is that the existing measures do not necessarily provide an adequate way of framing the transition issues.
I have been looking again at the permaculture process headings and playing with them not as a sequenced process, but as a set of possible indicators through which we might examine different aspects of the sustainable community activity - this seems to be quite productive, as one can begin at any point along the range of themes, and I think, without any obvious impediment, jump about from theme to theme and begin to construct evidence around the themes to inform and substantiate particular lines of development.
As an earlier post indicated, the themes can generate sub-questions - these are linked below
observation: what is happening here?
boundaries: what are these? why?
resources: what will we retain, what will we leave?
evaluation: where are the connections being identified? Are values and principles being attended to in our development?
maintenance: what relationships do we need to support and nurture?
implementation: what structures will enhance the system?
design: what do we / are we creating?
By gathering data against each heading / theme it is possible to get a strong sense of the whole of the initiative without resorting to the routine ways that impede connection, emotion, values and principles.
No comments:
Post a Comment