One of my key areas of interest in understanding organisational learning and change in Seva Mandir is the intersection of power, ideology and identity in the patterns of communicative relating that take place amongst those working here. In particular, I am interested in the way that meaning, patterns of inclusion-exclusion, intentions and actions emerge through these dynamics and reproduce or transform the patterns of interaction that constitute the organisation. Without looking at what this means at the community level, this would be a hollow exercise. Thus my inquiry is concerned with the multi-directional way that patterns of interaction (i) within Seva Mandir, (ii) at the boundary between Seva Mandir and the community and (iii) within the community (or society, more generally) reproduce and transform each other in different ways.
In this process, I am particularly concerned with what gives form to the patterns of interaction and how this formation takes place. Following Stacey’s lead, I strongly believe that it is the very patterns of interaction which either reproduce or transform themselves over time. In particular, it is the interplay of particular ‘organising themes’ – including ideology – and their intersection with power, identity, etc. that characterise these patterns which lead to the reproduction and transformation of existing patterns.
Stacey’s take on organisational learning is also worth considering here. By moving away from a systems-based model, the idea of learning as taking place at different levels or even, for that matter, as involving some kind of vertical progression or growth is abandoned. Instead, learning is equated with changes in patterns of communicative interaction. Indeed, Stacey argues that we cannot learn without changing our patterns of communicative interaction, whether in the singular (mind) or plural (group) form. The advantage with this way of thinking about learning is that it takes us away from overly abstract notions of ‘deeper’ learning and invites us to focus instead on the nature and quality of the interactions in which we are routinely involved (including our interactions with ourselves, our own internal conversations) and to understand how we can bring about significant or meaningful changes in these very interactions. Learning then takes place as we engage directly in working through these very issues of how to interact together locally in novel ways that enable new and more liberating patterns to emerge at the global level.
What do I mean by liberating patterns of interaction? A question asked to me by my supervisor. ‘Liberating patterns of interaction’, to me, is connected with the kind of notion of freedom articulated by Hayward (2001) in De-Facing Power. Hayward, redefining power as ‘the network of social boundaries to action’, argues for a political and positive notion of freedom as the only meaningful way of thinking about freedom: the freedom to participate in shaping our institutions and the norms, beliefs and practices that constitute and sustain them. Thus, for me, patterns of communicative interaction are liberating when they enable people to question and transform the institutions, norms, beliefs and practices that constitute their reality. This necessarily entails questioning and transforming the local (here and now) patterns of communicative interaction in which they routinely participate as it is through these that practices, beliefs, norms and ultimately institutions emerge. In addition to this, in order to be liberating, these patterns should enable all people to engage in this process equally as it is precisely those who are least aware of power’s effects (which may well, ironically, be those who are generally understood as being more powerful) who are, in this particular view, the least free (i.e. able to question and transform their institutions) and, therefore, the most likely to reproduce unequal power relations through their interactions with those around them.
In all this, one critical element that makes changing these patterns so elusive is that of the unconscious, and in particular the social unconscious. The idea that people are not fully conscious of how they are interacting (and how their interactive processes are being shaped by power, ideology, identity, etc.) is well known but often overlooked. People’s interactions, then, are shaped by both their conscious and unconscious processes of internal conversation (mind). The conscious part is the part that they think about as they do what they are doing. The unconscious part, if you will, is why they end up doing what they end up doing. It is also the intended and unintended consequences of what they did that they didn’t consider, the unquestioned assumptions, beliefs, etc. on the basis of which their conscious thoughts were formed. The unconscious is typically considered as something restricted to individuals, a kind of well-spring out of which unique, individual urges emerge. However, there is an alternative perspective that argues that as much as there is an individual unconscious, there is also a social unconscious.
The social unconscious, it is argued, exists because mind itself emerges through social – that is to say interactional – processes of relating. To the extent that our own mind is formed through our conscious and unconscious interactions with those around us, then our own interactions are shaped by the ’social unconscious’: the particular set of unquestioned, taken for granted, unperceived aspects of our communicative interactions that exist for a particular group of individuals constituting the social. What is problematic is the way in which the social unconscious, by its very nature, remains broadly out of reach of regular thinking and conversational processes. It effectively constitutes an invisible force which structures our thinking and our interactions and creates the impression that these very thoughts, our very own processes of interaction are what they are and that’s that. Indeed, in causing the nature of our patterns of interaction to be taken for granted, the social unconscious is integral to our understanding of our own identity, our position in society, and therefore the complex pattern of power relations in which we are entangled (that produce or transform us and that we, in turn, reproduce or transform). This, in turn, shapes and is shaped by (reproduces or transforms) what we believe we can and can’t, should and shouldn’t do, regardless of the feelings of anxiety that may arise within us as a result of the interactional processes we are caught up in.
But what is all this in aid of? Are we simply trapped within the limits prescribed by a social unconscious that we must remain, forever, unaware of? I do not believe that this is the case. Rather, I believe that the social unconscious is something we can come to know, and indeed must if we take the idea of cultivating liberating patterns of interaction seriously. It requires that you and I take our participation in patterns of communicative interaction seriously by gradually exploring and questioning that which is taken for granted (the ‘mundane’ and the ‘normal’), by politicising it, by inquiring into and reflecting on it, by seeking to actually change it through intentional modifications in our own behaviour. And if all we get is a deeper understanding of the paradoxes that we face as we go about doing what we do, a deeper sensitivity to the ways that power and identity, patterns of inclusion and exclusion, shape the way meaning is created for those around us and therefore the way that they must feel, the intentions that they form and the way they end up participating in patterns of interaction with ourselves and others, won’t that make us more able to transform ’stuck’ patterns of interaction, enabling ourselves and those with whom we interact to change in the process, and thereby participate more effectively in the co-creation of more liberating patterns of interaction?