Introduction
This module introduces concepts and methods to act as an agent of change in your community through the design of activism interventions. It provides a general overview that can be applied to any case, always focusing on aspects related to interculturality and multilingualism. The module consists of three units: unit 1 titled ‘Defining interculturality and multilingualism from a social action perspective’, unit 2 ‘Guidelines for designing social action’ and unit 3 ‘Case study’.
This module scopes over a variety of topics serving the fundamental purpose of the BOLD project which is to promote social action from a multilingual and intercultural perspective. In particular, the first unit of this module introduces the concept of interculturality in democratic societies from a critical point of view. The second unit presents the criteria that should be taken into account to integrate interculturality and multilingualism in activist interventions. The third unit proposes a new integrative methodology for the design of actions, based on concepts described in previous sections. All units include reflection and discussion activities.
This module aims to integrate criteria of interculturality and multilingualism in the design of social action. The final result is building capacities for a new approach to social activism through the prism of intercultural praxis.
- Ana Ruiz-Sánchez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
- Manuel Alcántara-Plá (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Upon completion of this module participants will be able to:
● understand the role and the meaning of intercultural approaches in social action;
● identify the value of respectful intercultural activism for democratic societies;
● understand the complexity of defining social action in multilingual and multicultural context;
● have a basic methodological competence of intercultural social action.
The target groups of this module are fully aligned with those of the BOLD project. In particular,
● student teachers in HEIs: this module critically contributes to student teachers’ capacity in acting as a changemaker promoting respectful intercultural and multilingual activism. In a multicultural environment, bottom-up actions in parallel with educational curricula are deemed necessary for safeguarding social cohesion and strengthening democratic values in multilingual and intercultural contexts.
● associations from civil society: this module offers members of civil society a critical view over topics related to intercultural approaches, as well as different methodologies and values for their implementation in social activism.
The module consists of three units:
● Unit 1: Through an active methodology this unit presents a theoretical framework introducing a critical approach towards intercultural and multilingual social action.
● Unit 2. This unit focuses on issues related to principles for social action design from an intercultural perspective.
● Unit 3. This unit proposes a methodology for designing and evaluating social actions in a multilingual and intercultural context. Its objective is to become familiarized with the key steps of action design and to develop basic skills in identifying and designing strategies for change in intercultural social activism.
8 hours.
Various sources have been used to build this module:
- Studies and reports issued by scholars and policy makers
- Explanatory videos
- How-to guides
- Figures to enhance visualisations
Unit 1: Multilingualism and interculturalism from an activist perspective
Multilingualism and interculturalism are two basic concepts in the shaping of democratic societies. In this unit we will delve into the concept of interculturality by analyzing the relationship between language and culture. We will apply a critical approach to the different worldviews and imaginaries that underlie the concept of interculturality.
Unit 1.1. Making sense of multilingualism and interculturalism
As with the concept of multilingualism, which we have studied in modules E and _, the term interculturality has already appeared in the course. To cite just one example, in module E. Crowdfunding for multilingual and intercultural purposes, we looked at examples of campaigns promoting interculturalism and multilingualism. The term is extraordinarily common nowadays:
- intercultural cities
- intercultural competences
- intercultural training
- intercultural communication
- intercultural mediation
- intercultural design
- intercultural citizenship
- intercultural discipleship
- intercultural mind
- intercultural leadership
- intercultural management
- intercultural relations
- intercultural interactions
- intercultural politeness
- intercultural constitutionalism
- intercultural space
- …
Such a wealth of terminology confirms that, under the concept of interculturality, we can find a wide diversity of approaches. The theoretical objective of this unit is to reflect on them and to deepen our understanding of the values on which they are based. In this way we will be able to ensure that the social actions we design not only promote democratic values, but are themselves transversally intercultural and multilingual.
Such an ambivalent use of the terms intercultural and interculturality makes them empty signifiers, that is, frequent words that hide very different values and that construct their concrete meaning according to the people and contexts that use them and other terms that accompany them. This endows them with a great hermeneutic complexity that is given by different factors. The following observations will help us analyze them:
1) The use of interculturality and intercultural: We find it used as a noun – by which we mean interculturality as a concept – or as a qualifying adjective. As we have seen, it appears combined with the most diverse terms and applies value to different realities. This value can be both positive and negative and its perception resides not in the thing itself, but in the ideological value or values given to it by whoever uses it.
Activity
We present in images 1 and 2 two posters of an activity in the city of Santander (Spain) promoted by the city council. Between the two events there are 10 years.
▪ ¿ What values does this entity associate with the term “intercultural”?
▪ Do you appreciate any evolution in the concept of interculturality over the years?
▪ Are there similar experiences in your environment? Identify expressions where the term “intercultural” appears and try to explain its meaning by analyzing the accompanying terms and images.
Food for thought
The Council of Europe defines intercultural integration as “a policy framework for achieving cohesion, equality and development in culturally diverse societies”. Do you think the “intercultural fair” type of activity promotes intercultural integration?
Some key points
If we apply critical discourse analysis techniques (you can read more about this discipline here), a detailed observation of both posters allows us to appreciate the elements to which it was associated at the beginning and which have survived over the years, and those that have made the concept evolve. The starting value if we analyze the first poster is the close association of interculturality with the festive and positive. It is especially appreciated in the recurrent use of the term festival both in the poster and in the hashtags of social networks; its use is recurrent and highlighted. The city is conceived as a closed space that is open to the multiplicity of cultures and this multiplicity has as its territory the “world”, that is, the planet. Openness, diversity and the world are also positive associations. The cheerful colors of the poster confirm this.
The second poster clearly shows an evolution. It is advertising the same type of activity, but the framework has clearly changed. The adjective “intercultural” – so visible in the first one – has been relegated to the main logo. The poster retains the festive emphasis, but two associated concepts appear strongly: on the one hand, the concept of nation and, on the other, several commercial terms (such as global market, gastronomy and cocktails).
Both posters link interculturality with the concept of nation. In the first poster, the term nation appears in a very discreet way: it appeared in two of the three hashtags while the terms intercultural and culture were the most relevant. Ten years later, the same activity is preferentially defined as a marketplace of nations, clearly reflected in the image that straddles the line between flat, gated community or refugee camp. This prioritization of the term nation is problematized by associating it with the prevention of racism in the hashtag on the lower left, “que el racismo no te cale” (“don’t let racism get to you”). On the other hand, culture has been commercialized: on the right side appear the different commercial activities planned –gastronomy, cocktail bar, market, music – which are adjectivized with terms apparently similar to intercultural: international, global, world. It is interesting to note the abundance of English terms. Finally, through the slogan #sienteelmundo (#feeltheworld), culture relegates its rational part and it’s defined by emotions.
2) Intercultural and interculturality are defined by appearing together with other similar terms in a given context. In this case, the most common would be multiculturality and multiculturalism. They could also be defined by relating them to their possible opposites, for example, assimilationism. Each use has different consequences in relation to the conception of citizenship and its relation to cultures. Although they are not always used precisely, in the table in image 3 you can see the implication that each term has in relation to people’s rights.
Activity
In the previous activity we asked you to identify expressions where the term intercultural is used in your context. Some of them are related to migratory contexts. We propose the following activities:
1. Look at the top line of the table. It shows the types of rights. Identify examples for each type (for example, economic rights in the European Union would include the right to fair pay for work done or the right to strike).
2. Now look at the left column that shows the different models of migration or minority population management. Which model do you think is the most widespread in your country?
3. To which model would correspond the use of the term intercultural in the posters advertising the festivals mentioned above?
4. Reflect on language. In terms of political marketing, would calling the fair a “multicultural festival” or an “assimilationist festival” have the same effect?
Some key points
Often, the objective of this type of “fair of nations” is institutionally driven with the aim of promoting tolerance as a civic virtue in diverse environments. That would be the main reason in the case of the aforementioned city council. UNESCO defines tolerance as follows:
Tolerance consists of respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication and freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
In general, we could say that tolerance is a fairly consensual value within democratic societies. The discourse on Rights is, however, much more complex and does not always achieve the levels of consensus necessary to make possible an inclusive, cohesive, just and peaceful society. The promotion of interculturality in the municipal framework, as in the case analyzed, should entail the extension of citizenship rights regardless of culture.
– The underlying conception of culture: Each user and context has different conceptions of “culture”. These may differ significantly from an anthropological and political point of view. This fact reveals that we must critically analyze each use.
Activity
What are the terms with which you usually associate the term intercultural? Are they the same as those with which you associate it in your environment (family, community, political)?
Activity
Often intercultural is also associated in our environment with the concept of nation. Do you know where the idea of the nation as a monocultural entity comes from? Do you agree with the traditional association of a language, a culture and a nation? Do you think it works in the way of thinking of your environment?
Unit 1.2. The interplay between the concepts of nation, language, culture and interculturality
We must look at history in order to understand the association between nations, languages and cultures. We invite you to read the article by historian José Andrés Gallego , from the Spanish National Research Council, which we summarize below.
Cultural diversity is an anthropological fact present not only in the history of Humanity, but also in the history of how we perceive ourselves as human beings. As Prof. Andrés-Gallego (2004) points out, if we go back to the Roman Empire, the common Latin term for a community was gens (from genus, lineage). There was also the word natio, not so commonly used, which designated the foreign character of a person or a group. This designation had its origin in the Latin homophone term natio (birth). Both gens and natio were used, therefore, to simply designate human communities defined by their customs. With the passage of time, gens has adopted a generalist meaning (people) while natio, as we shall see, will much later adopt a very restrictive meaning as a community of customs.
In the Roman Empire they also used two different terms to designate places related to the community: civitas and patria. Civitas was the place inhabited by a human community and was defined by a legal status, that is, it designated a political reality. The word patria was also a place inhabited by a human community, but it was used when one wanted to indicate the bond of belonging. Thus, for example, a citizen of the Empire could simultaneously consider himself a patriot of his original civitas and a patriot of Rome, which was seen as the homeland of all the citizens of the Empire.
Interestingly, it was with the development of European universities in the 13th century that the term nation gained force to designate the non-local part of the faculty and student body. It was the University of Bologna who generated a rapidly spreading usage. From then on, nation came to mean, in Romance languages, the community formed by kinship: blood, paternal-filial, physical kinship, which, when constituted as a family, transmitted a specific culture. The nation thus defines an “ethnic” community, where the community of blood and that of culture are already combined.
As for the term culture, it also has its own history. We find its origin in Latin, where it meant “cultivation” and “agriculture”, and was used in a figurative sense as “action of holding court”. In 1638, Bernardo Davanzati already formulated the expression cultura civile, associating the concepts of culture and citizenship (the civitas), from which comes the preference of the Enlightenment of the 18th century for the use of civiliser and civilisation to designate the culture of an epoch.
It is interesting to note that the concept of nation as a community of kinship allowed during all these centuries an individual to be a national of different nations, depending on where and how he established his ties of belonging. An individual could feel himself to be a national of several nations because he had different degrees of kinship with one or the other. Often, the nation served to structure flexible groups according to political interests. This was the case, for example, at the Council of Constance in the 15th century, where the participants, as the universities were already doing, were divided into the French nation, the English nation, the Italian nation and the Germanic nation; it is interesting to note that the latter included Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Danes and Swedes, to cite just one example of how the term nation did not have its current meaning.
In contrast to this flexible usage, the 18th and 19th centuries saw the gradual emergence of a restrictive and exclusionary usage. The first dictionary of the French Academy (1694) defines the nation as “the group of inhabitants of a country who live under the same laws and use the same language”. In 1729, Fray Jerónimo de Feijoo already differentiates between love of country and national passion, and qualifies the first as licit and demandable, and the second as disorderly and disturbing. He also denounces with a new term, paisanismo, the habit of designating a concrete form of national passion that consisted in the vice of preferring fellow countrymen when forming government teams.
The work Essais sur le génie et le caractère des nations by François-Ignace d’Espiard de la Borde, published in 1743, advocates the existence of a national character that would be shaped by climate and history. In the second half of the 18th century, different European thinkers would expand this idea of the specific national character of each people for decades. In 1768, Justus Möser published Osnabrückische Geschichte in which he defined the nation as the ensemble of citizens gathered in a political space, indicating that it should not be conceived as a closed cultural universe, but open to the world. Emmanuel J. Sièyes, in Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? (1789), will add to the idea of community of origin and culture, and the idea that all the powers of the nation emanate from the will of the people. The nation ceases to be, therefore, something given (kinship) and molded (culture), but is subject to the evolution of the people.
German philosophers strengthened this link between nation, people and culture. Johann Gottfried Herder takes up the idea of the nation linked to blood and culture in Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774) and especially in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791). According to Herderach, each nation would have a Volksgeist, a “soul of the people”, which is expressed both in each member of the community and in the nation as such; each nation would be defined by a language, customs and a specific mission in history. Friedrich von Schlegel in Die Entwicklung der Philosophie defines the nation as a moral and cultural union, in the manner of a large family “in which numerous families and tribes are united by the unity of constitution, customs and habits, language and common interest”. Johann Gottlieb Fichte strengthens the identification between a people, a nation and a culture in his Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807-1808) where he defines the nation as “a group of men who speak the same language: who have suffered in their vocal organ the same external influences and who cultivate their language through the communications which they never cease to have with one another. Ultimately, men are formed by language, rather than language being formed by men”. The nation is therefore defined by a language, a culture and a destiny. The educational system should therefore be placed at the service of the transmission of national culture. Fichte went a step further: He also thought that not all nations were equally respectable since their value depended on the state of development of moral and cultural progress. For him, culture was also a closed entity.
This concept of nation of the philosophers of German Romanticism – the nation is an ethnic community endowed with soul, language and a necessarily political vocation – will spread throughout the world. Even though many Romantics were very cosmopolitan, history teaches us that some of these ideas, formed in a context as determined as that of the demand for German unity at the beginning of the 19th century, have structured the reality of many nations for centuries. In their most perverse version, they underlie the totalitarianisms of the 20th century and the supremacist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In contrast to those who defend this conception of culture and language as closed realities linked to national identity, there is another that promulgates the language and culture of a country as an open reality, often plural and in constant evolution. In a way, they update formulations prior to the proposals of the 19th century. There are countless historical, linguistic and cultural evidence that prove the continuous and mutual influence between cultures and languages. Not only because of constant population movements, but also because of the very nature of human beings, culture and languages. To learn more about these aspects, we invite you to take module 10 on cultural and linguistic management in border regions.
Activity
We invite you to enjoy the video presentation of the excellent exhibition held at the Museo del Prado Velazquez, Rembrandt and Vermeer. Miradas afines, which analyzes the “excessive influence that the nationalist sensibility and ideology of the 19th and 20th centuries have had on our way of understanding art”. The exhibition, carried out in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum and 15 other lenders, including the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, brought together 35 extraordinary works that show cultural creation as an open reality. Reflect: What elements cited in the video show that art transcends national borders?
Exhibition: “Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer. Miradas Afines” – YouTube (in Spanish with English subtitles)
You can see the complete material of the exhibition here: Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer. Miradas afines – Exposición – Museo Nacional del Prado (museodelprado.es) (in English and Spanish)
Some key points
As the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) pointed out, “the unity of Western painting is one of the great facts that make manifest the unity of European culture” and thus helps to deconstruct Romanticism’s deep-rooted concept of nationhood. A quick review of the history of literature strengthens the same argument: the study of the Arthurian cycle within medieval literature, the Renaissance, the impact of the Protestant Reformation(s), the Baroque sensibility, even the spread throughout Europe of German Romanticism itself, realism or the avant-garde. These are all phenomena that cannot be explained from an isolated national perspective. In accordance with the evidence of languages and cultures as entities open to the other and in continuous evolution, interculturality is by no means a meeting of closed and impermeable national cultures that come together for certain activities. A correct understanding of cultures in the 21st century requires an awareness not only of what we are, but of all that is Other in us.
Interculturality is, therefore, both a way of life and a process with a transformative approach that starts from self-knowledge and recognition of diversity, and generates conditions for dialogue and intercultural relations under equal conditions of dignity in order to achieve complementary and sustainable ways of life. It has dimensions in all areas of life, including the personal one. We invite you to explore this last dimension in the following activity.
Activity
The Romanticism concept of nation has facilitated a very stereotypical view of people, to whom the characters of the nation are often attributed.
1. Reflect: What stereotypes are common when talking about your country? Do they coincide with those that, according to your experience, define your own personal identity?
2. It is not always easy to deconstruct these images of national and personal identity. We encourage you to take a look at an advertising campaign that helps to deconstruct such stereotypes. It is called The DNA Journey and was designed by Danish advertising company &Co. and production company Bacon for Momondo. Enjoy the video .
3. Can you point out any aspect of the video that surprised or interested you?
Some key points
Cultural stereotypes are a form of categorization that, like all stereotypes, make it difficult to get to know people with their own characteristics. As human beings it is easier for us to relate to our peers and we must learn to manage diversity. Here are some management strategies.
The most common diversity management strategies are:
– Denial: Denying that the difference exists and acting as if nothing differentiates us. It may be effective in the short term, but in the medium and long term it causes conflict because it implies the invisibility of the other and the imposition of the hegemonic model.
– Polarization: Judging difference as the element that definitively separates us from the other. It directly manifests conflict.
– Minimization: Focusing on the commonality as a strategy to minimize its effects on the relationship. The risk of this strategy is that, maintained in the long term, it becomes superficial and unsustainable.
– Acceptance: To perceive the difference and try to understand its raison d’être and its consequences in the relationship. It implies a greater effort on the part of all those involved than the previous strategies. It is sustainable in the long term if combined with adaptation.
– Cession: Perceiving the difference, but intentionally giving up an essential part of its diversity to minimize the effort of understanding and adapting as well as the risk of conflict. It may be useful in the short term, but in the long term it is alienating and fuels conflict.
– Adaptation: Perceive the difference and make those necessary changes in the relationship that facilitate the common purposes taking into account the new diverse scenario. The risk is that adaptation, if it does not take complementarity into account, neglects common goals and discourages the continuation of collaboration in the medium and long term.
Activity
Identify which are most common in the educational center (school or university) and neighborhood.
An implementation of the positive cross-cultural perspective in the above strategies involves:
– Knowledge and self-knowledge: Both procedures help to overcome one’s own racism, resistances and prejudices. They promote self-esteem of one’s own identity from the knowledge, respect and esteem of the other.
– Respect: treats with dignity, practices respectful listening, seeks free recognition of the other and accepts the existence of other models of interpretation of reality different from one’s own.
– Horizontal dialogue: includes the choice of dialogue and participation in parity and recognizes that there are no unilateral truths.
– Mutual understanding: actively seeks mutual enrichment, attunement with the other and resonance in oneself of the other’s proposals; enhances the capacity for empathy, putting oneself in the other’s shoes.
– Synergy: guarantees diversity in team formation, diverse contributions and the work and contribution of each one, aware that the team is more than the simple sum of individualities.
– Complementarity: promotes the meeting of equals and diversity, and strategies that transform existing power asymmetries into mutual advantages.
Activity
Can you identify good practices in your environment to cultivate each of the above values?
Unit 1.3. Assuming interculturality in the management of teams
As we have seen, the positive management of human and cultural diversity constitutes one of the greatest democratic challenges. It is a challenge not only in relation to internal diversity – that of the country’s citizens – but also external – that of the immigrant population arriving on its territory. As we have already seen in the table in image 3, we must carefully analyze whether the use of each term is associated with the exercise of the rights it entails. We now focus on the models in that table but to extract knowledge about ways of managing teams.
Current literature describes three models for managing diverse groups, communities, organizations or companies: interculturalism, assimilationism and multiculturalism. According to the Council of Europe, interculturalism is an approach that prioritizes the “positive potential of diversity as the starting point and horizon of modern cities”. The assimilationist model prioritizes equality over respect for diversity, and multiculturalism prioritizes cultural differences while relegating cohesion with other groups.
Activity
As opposed to the assimilationist or multicultural models, an intercultural society (and therefore intercultural teams) aims to achieve equality and social cohesion by respecting, enjoying and taking advantage of diversity as an enriching factor of societies/teams. You can learn more about this concept by watching this video Module 2 – Understanding intercultural integration – Intercultural cities programme (coe.int). What elements, applied to the city, could you apply to teamwork in the areas where you live, study or work?
Bearing this in mind, we can define intercultural integration as “a policy framework for achieving cohesion, equality and development in culturally diverse societies”. This “policy framework” has its activist translation in a team management policy underpinned by the values just mentioned. Intercultural environments would therefore be those environments in which the economic, social, civil and cultural rights of all people are recognized and respected, regardless of their cultural context, with the goal of cohesive development of the community in which they are applied.
Food for thought
Applying a critical eye, however, we could affirm that cohesion, equality and development are not exclusive to democratic societies. Autocratic or totalitarian regimes are characterized precisely by cohesion and equality, so what do we call social cohesion in democratic systems? Consider the importance of interculturality in the development of social cohesion.
Unit 1.4. Rethinking social cohesion from an intercultural perspective
We can integrate intercultural and multilingual principles in our activism and in the management of our team, but how can we also promote these values within the community where we are going to intervene? Here are some social strategies that enhance intercultural social cohesion. All of them are in themselves ideal spaces for social actions from an intercultural and multilingual perspective. Try to identify these practices or similar practices in the environment where you live, study or work:
– Creation and facilitation of spaces that encourage people’s interaction and participation.
– Services and initiatives for fostering a new population, catering to all types of population, both local and foreign, focused not only on the new arrivals but also on empowering the personal and group capacities of the receiving society.
– Plural neighborhood and civil society initiatives enhanced by strategies to strengthen networking.
– Inclusive, multilingual and multimodal institutional communication strategies that guarantee the right to information for all citizens.
– A universal and free educational system that promotes intercultural coexistence, respect, equality, equity and diversity as values.
– Conflict management initiatives that, beyond the culture of judicialization, promote a restorative culture, i.e., that contemplates conflict prevention, accompaniment, approach, resolution proposals with restorative alternatives to exclusively criminal solutions, responsibility for the damage and its reparation. A treatment of the conflict that has the victim at the center of the process but also contemplates the reintegration of the offenders into the community.
– Policies for detecting, preventing and addressing discrimination, with support spaces and protocols that are clear and known to the entire community.
– Policies, spaces and dynamics that guarantee religious and convictional freedom and promote ethical values for the common good.
– Business, employment and hiring policies that are clearly intercultural.
– Public services that are transversally sensitive to the management of diversity with personnel trained in intercultural values.
Activity
Can you identify environments or situations near you that apply the intercultural perspective? Can you identify their strengths and needs for improvement? Of the latter, which would be feasible for a social action? What ideas or resources could help making them a reality?
Food for thought
Educator Rich Russo posted on his social networks on September 29, 2020 image 4 with a famous quote from activist Arthur Chan: Do you agree with it?
The Council of Europe urges that intercultural integration should not be an option in democratic societies , but a duty. Since all societies are diverse, the positive management of this diversity, in accordance with the guarantee of rights for all citizens, is an unavoidable task.
Activity
The exercise of democratic citizenship also implies the exercise of intercultural skills. In the following video Competencias básicas para una ciudadanía democrática: Competences for democratic culture from the Council of Europe you will find described some of these competences. Cite the different competences mentioned by the Council of Europe, which one(s) do you consider most relevant in your environment?
Unit 1.5. Democracy and interculturality
As the Portuguese sociologist of the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, states, democracy is a never-ending principle. Today’s societies are therefore diverse ones that are continually evolving. Both internal factors (their demographic, economic, political and cultural composition) and external factors (international relations, human mobility, global crises, etc.) contribute to this. It is therefore necessary to be aware that not only the concept of culture and national identity, but also the very concept of democracy needs to adapt to these new realities and for this it must also be thought from interculturality. Listen to his statements in the following video and answer the questions below.
Activity
What new concepts does this expert propose? What are his proposals to improve democracy? What ideas would you propose to democratize democracy from an intercultural perspective instead of a monocultural one?
Before you move on to the Unit 2, give a try to our QUIZZ of Unit 1!
Unit_2: Keys for designing with an intercultural and multilingual perspective
Basic concepts
A social action is an action or project carried out on a voluntary, non-profit basis by individuals or groups seeking to bring about a social or value change for the common good. It usually involves a confrontation with the established powers (economic, political, educational, etc.).
An activism designed from an intercultural and multilingual perspective:
- is focused on people – and not on ideas or the nation – and is part of the community where it is inserted. It must be preceded by a thorough knowledge of the reality, needs and diversity present in the community and in the people involved (see unit 3).
- must guarantee multilingual communication strategies sufficient to give a voice to all the people involved.
- combines the power of action with the transformative power of what Gadamer defines as “genuine dialogue”: “‘genuine dialogue’ has the potential to be transformative and should embrace qualities such as respect, trust, openness and freedom of expression” (Gadamer 1975). And it is capable of dealing with difficult conversations. You can read more about how to do this here.
- identifies and addresses prejudice in order to deconstruct it rather than avoid it, and trains in effective strategies to do so. Here you can read more about the strategies presented in the graphic in image 5:
Activity
Page 2208 of the recommended reading describes each of the design strategies and provides simple examples (e.g., identifying common interests in music and sharing Spotify playlists). List 10 simple examples applicable to everyday life that correspond to one or more of the strategies outlined.
People-centered activism is effective if it is designed:
- Agentivity: empowering the agentivity of each individual, making them consciously responsible for their thoughts and actions and the ability to network;
- Access: ensuring easy access to the technologies needed to bring about change;
- Action: identifying solutions that facilitate participation in the measures that lead to that change. Read more here.
Activity
Think about the strategies you have designed in the 10 examples of the previous activity: which of them meet the three principles that guarantee a people-centered activism? Should you modify any of them to make them more people-centered?
As we have seen in Unit 1, the 19th century close association between nation, language and culture can become an obstacle in the insertion of the intercultural perspective in activist activity. It is not always the use of words in the first instance that proves to be the best first step. Very often art will be the best language for activism. Artistic expression is present in all cultures, even if it varies in its forms. This allows us to speak of art as a language in its own right.
The concept of artivism brings together activism and art. For artivists, art is the language for channeling ideas that provoke social change. As Riemschneider and Grosnick (1999) point out, its origins lie in the artistic avant-gardes of the first decades of the 20th century (Dada, Futurism, Surrealism) and in their new formats: performance, happening, body art, land art, video art or conceptual art. Artivism is not conceived as an opposition that interacts with the system it confronts, but seeks alternative narratives through artistic resources such as humor, the use of irony, metaphor. Artivism uses all artistic disciplines, but works preferentially with the visual arts and in urban environments.
An important factor of artivism in relation to the intercultural and multilingual perspective is the characteristic that artivism inherits from conceptual art: what is interesting is not the value of the product itself, but the process. Artivism understands artistic expression as a language for reflection and vindication, but it places special emphasis on the lessons learned in the way the intervention is designed and executed.
Artivism is an exciting world beyond the scope of this module. If you want to get started in artivism through simple forms, we recommend Wicked Arts Assignments: Practising Creativity in Contemporary Arts Education edited by Emiel Heijnen and Melissa Bremmer. You can read some authoritative chapters here.
There are a lot of artivist initiatives that you can track down on the internet just by searching for “artivism”. As an example, we invite you to visit the Humans in the EU website. Read their presentation and find out how they have integrated a people-centered, intercultural and multilingual approach into their thinking.
Another fantastic example is Street Art Cities, an artivist initiative that organizes every year the competition for the best graffiti in the world, facilitating open participation both in the nominations and in the selection of the winner, with a wide range of themes among the formidable works awarded in its categories. You can see the awarded works in the different editions here.
Activity
We hope these examples have encouraged you to explore your environment in a different way, using art as a form of expression, vindication and memory. We propose the following activities:
- Identify artivist people or collectives in your environment. What themes do they deal with?
- As you can see, artivism is an art that is mostly expressed in the urban environment. We invite you to create a digital album photographing artivist initiatives in your city.
- Once the album has been made, what are the issues that most concern you in your environment? Do you agree with them or are there other issues that seem to you to be of higher priority?
Before you move on to the Unit 3, give a try to our QUIZZ of Unit 2!
Unit_3: Guidelines for designing intercultural and multilingual social action
This unit will guide you in designing your own activist intervention. You will learn about three methodologies that will drive your project design, and you will assess different types of actions appropriate to your objectives and the factors you need to take into account.
Methodologies for change
We propose a methodology that combines in a complementary way the best of 4 approaches: Service-Learning, Design thinking, Design for change and Moonshot thinking. All of them seek to generate solutions from a challenge. As you can see in Table 1, they differ in the number of stages and in their emphasis (some use a more creative language than others), but they offer a very rich design itinerary considered in a complementary way.
The Service-Learning methodology has a long tradition. Its advantage over other methodologies is its extraordinary capacity to be integrated into both formal and informal teaching-learning environments, given that the entire curricular aspect is perfectly integrated into its design. The fact that this methodology has already been recommended as good practice by many educational institutions and Third Sector entities facilitates its implementation in new contexts. We provide a detailed description HERE to facilitate its presentation in educational centers.
Design thinking is the most widespread methodology outside educational environments. In its formulation, in addition to pointing out five steps, it established three important keys that all subsequent methodologies have incorporated: creativity, multidisciplinarity and teamwork.
Design for change is a development of the previous one but successfully introduces the emphasis on training not only for action or the solution to a problem, but also for the transformation of what originates it. To this end, it incorporates elements of systemic change that are really interesting from an activist perspective as they seek to generate sustainable changes over time from a global and multilateral approach. You can learn more here.
The Moonshot methodology is about thinking the impossible and then creating everything necessary to make it possible. It is inspired by those ideas that at the time were understood as impossible or totally crazy and yet have not only been achieved but have brought great advances to humanity. The prototype is the idea of going to the Moon formulated by J.F. Kennedy in 1964, when there was no technology to reach it. The formulation of a clear goal made possible multiple developments that have made possible the arrival of human beings in space and all the derived technologies (with their corresponding ethical dilemmas, by the way). For our purposes, we highlight several of the most interesting features of this Moonshot methodology as activists:
- It breaks new ground: it looks for disruptive innovations, i.e. it does not go by what already exists and invites you to dream up radical solutions, however impossible they may seem;
- It thinks big: it uses exponential thinking, which invites to design exponential improvements (improvements that mean multiplying x10) and not summative improvements (improvements that mean adding +10). To learn more here.
Service Learning, Design for Change and Moonshot are all conceived as open innovation methodologies, i.e. they create synergies by combining internal knowledge and resources (already available in our team or organization) and external resources (which we will have to seek out partners). We owe the concept of open innovation to Henry Chesbrourgh, although a critical look would allow us to affirm that this idea of counting on what I have and looking for what I need has been used since the beginning of mankind. As we have seen in the previous unit, the intercultural perspective preaches that collaboration between equals and differences has generated centuries of innovation.
We invite you to reflect on the concept of systemic change. Bill Drayton stated, “Social entrepreneurs are not content to just give the fish or teach the fish, they will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.” Designing activist interventions from the concept of transformation is key if we do not want to be just firefighters putting out fires. Check out this Cuadernillo de cambio sistémico para emprendedores sociales (Systemic Change Booklet for Social Entrepreneurs) from the Ashoka Foundation.
Activity
In your opinion, which elements of each methodology do you find most interesting?
We present this comparative table of the phases proposed in each methodology. In the column labeled BOLD Methodology, you will see the approach resulting from the sum of the best of all of them.
Service-Learning | Design thinking | Design for change | Moonshot | BOLD Methodology |
Analysis | Empathize | Feel | Think | Feel and empathize |
Planning | Define | Imagine | Identify | Imagine and define |
| Design |
| Visualize | Design and visualize |
| Prototype |
| Prototype | Prototype multilaterally |
Development |
| Act | Perform | Act and document |
|
|
| Accompany | Accompany |
Evaluate | Evaluate |
|
| Evaluate multilaterally |
Celebrate |
|
|
| Celebrate |
|
|
| Measure | Measure |
|
| Share |
| Share/transfer |
|
| Evaluate |
| ReEvaluate |
Table 1. Comparison of methodologies
The best practices of each methodology allow us to design our own, which we will call BOLD Methodology:
1. Feel and empathize: Put yourselves in the “boots of the other”, involved in what you want to transform. Allow yourselves to understand and feel all the perspectives and sensitivities present. What is the reality that challenges you? Who is affected and how? What are the needs? What are the interests, motivations and conditioning factors present? Is there a starting point in you (ideas, resources, people) that can help? What does your mind say, what do your emotions say about this situation? Could we think of an intervention? Would it be a one-time intervention, in the short term, medium term or long term?
2. Imagine and define: Think not only of the action, but of the systemic change that would solve that situation: What would be a truly transformative solution? Help each other in the Moonshot way, that is, without setting any limits to your imagination. Once you have gathered the data, work on a starting definition for your solution: What, When, How, Where, For whom, Why?
3. Ideate and visualize: Visualize that solution by adding all the parameters you can think of. The visual helps to focus and concretize the ideas. Visualizing in detail what each person in the team imagines helps in the prevention of crises throughout the process .
4. Prototype multilaterally: Prototype in three stages:
- What is needed to reach that solution in 10 years? What should have happened in those 10 years?
- What should have happened in 5 years?
- What would be the goal we should have achieved in 1 year?
Once the overall objective for the first year has been set, can it be broken down into smaller goals? Can we quantify or specify how we are going to measure whether this objective has been achieved? What activities are involved? What human capabilities are needed in the team? Which ones do we have and which ones should we recruit or outsource? What resources are needed? What indicators do we set to consider the action a success or a failure? This process must be multilateral, i.e., it must consider the perspective and needs of all parties involved. It is important in this step to keep in mind that, if the experience is Service-Learning in an academic environment, in this phase the learning objectives and activities within the academic curriculum must also be designed.
5. Act and document: Get going. Execute the planned activities as planned. It is important that in addition to executing, you document the process in this phase. You can learn more about this aspect in module C “Maker culture and fab innovation”. Documenting, although tedious, is the best way to ensure that we will be able to share our action with other activists and communities in a systematic way. We will also be able to better evaluate it, replicate it and scale it up if necessary. Writing down each stage of the process also facilitates its adaptation to new contexts, and even the possibility of locating possible experts and/or mentors for the applicability and implementation of the project in other contexts.
6. Evaluate multilaterally: Evaluation is a key part because it allows identifying achievements, extracting lessons learned, reviewing errors and looking for ways to improve. It is important in this step to keep in mind that, if the experience is Service-Learning in an academic environment, in this phase it must also be evaluated as planned within the academic program. What data do we have on the success indicators set? What new indicators have emerged? Have we achieved the objective? What should we improve? What has surprised us for the better? How is the team doing?
7. Celebrate: This phase is usually scheduled at the end of the process and only as an internal team activity. The value of celebrating achievements and learning can, however, be transversal to the project. Setting spaces to celebrate small achievements will reinforce the health and cohesion of the team. Also remember to celebrate social actions, once the project is over, with all the people involved and with the community where it took place. It enhances civil society’s capacity to act.
8. Share/transfer: The transfer of good practices is a basic way to generate social change. Connecting your team’s best practice initiatives with other communities and other geographic or cultural areas will not only help you grow, but will also increase your social impact in the field of the challenge we are trying to address. Knowing the project, with its successes and mistakes, will facilitate the way for other activists. Do not forget that it is important that the documentation is open source if you want your experience to be scalable. With today’s technological translation applications, texts in many different languages can be translated, making your experience reach unimagined corners.
9. ReEvaluate: A sincere and honest listening during the transfer is at the same time the possibility to receive feedback from other activists and organizations about your own work. Do not waste them.
In addition to these stages, and although they appear as steps in the table for practical reasons, we point out two elements that are transversal to all of them:
- Accompany: Throughout the process, it is essential to strengthen people’s confidence and capacities so that they can implement their own solutions to the problems they face, appropriate to the characteristics of the context. Accompaniment is key, especially when it comes to young activists. We often tend to think that the best solution always comes from outside: we import ideas, methodologies, experts, among others, and relegate the knowledge that resides in the community itself and the people who are part of it. Do not forget to accompany each person in the team in their decisions, listening, giving feedback, asking questions, empowering, reinforcing.
- Measure: Designing the whole process by setting measurable indicators will provide you with objective data on both the evolution and the scope of the project carried out. The indicators will also provide objectivity to the resulting emotions, both positive and negative, and thus help to evaluate all the results obtained. Quantifying also helps to better design future projects, and to scale and transfer those already carried out.
Remember also that, as we have seen, documenting and celebrating should be cross-cutting processes in the different stages.
Activity
In this activity we present a case that will inspire you for your own practice: the work of Anita Soina, an internationally recognized activist with an integrated intercultural and multilingual approach. Read and listen carefully to the information in the following links and identify the most relevant elements of this project. You will find all the information here:
Key points
These are some of the key elements that you should have identified. As you will see, some are key elements that identify the project and others are key elements that give the project its originality and character:
- Activist: Anita Soina (Kenia)
- Leadership skills: bold and courageous to express the problems and provide possible solutions to these challenges to any interlocutor (their youth environment, their own community, other communities, political class, etc.).
- Community of reference: the Maasai community, where he was born in 1999 and is a resident of North Kajiado (Kenya).
- Biographical trigger: The Mara River, their childhood river, is radically reducing its flow due to deforestation, mining, poor resource management and climate change.
- Formulation of the problem motivating the action: Water security: the poor conditions of the Mara affect the community’s pastoralist livelihood system. Indicators of negative impact: lack of drinking water, loss of livestock resulting in loss of livelihoods, loss of lives, health and food insecurity, inequality in education (women are essential water carriers) and gender inequality (forced marriages to collect resources for the family), among others. Derived problems: famines and increasing violence over resources.
- Designed solution: Conservation capacity building through volunteers gaining knowledge and skills in climate management.
- Stages:
- Tree planting initiative in your community;
- Simplifying the language of water security and making it fun to know and care for (publishes The Green War);
- Agreeing to collaborate with Senator Moses Otieno Kajwang, to train Kenyan legislators and parliamentarians on environmental issues;
- Recruiting a driving group of young people from diverse social and professional backgrounds and making them aware of climate impact and turning them into “caretakers” of their environment (success indicator: they have more than 400 young people in two countries);
- Selection of reference schools in improving menstrual health and hygiene;
- Generation of learning materials for rural schools.
- Areas of impact: advocacy and awareness raising, climate education in schools and rural areas, health safety, water conservation, reforestation of forests and landscapes; they connect young people in urban areas with green spaces and attractive natural areas such as parks, reserves and protected areas.
- Own generated projects:
- SpiceWarriors Climate and Environmental Organization : Promote the climate action movement among youth and children in Kenya and Tanzania through environmental activities such as reforestation, advocacy and climate education in schools.
- The Soina Foundation: To fight educational inequality.
- Communication tools: Green Warriors TV, Eco Tours and Adventure. They give voice and amplify the testimony of children and young people who participate in the project.
- Intercultural elements:
- Dignifies a Maasai community by giving them a voice on a global issue (often documented and negotiated only in English);
- Uses linguistic mediation: low community participation often lies in communities not having access to information (due to language or cultural level);
- Facilitates that indigenous knowledge present in the communities is included in the data that informs decisions;
- Advocates for the design of contextualized climate change mitigation and adaptation measures;
- Multilingual context: Maasai, Swahili, English.
- Creativity bonus: It includes fun as a criterion, uses youthful language (Spice Warrior), joins the Climate Action Champion procedure.
- Impact: Global Youth Champion for the UN-sponsored World Sanitation and Water for All Association (SWA).
- Alliances to multiply its impact::
- Kenyan parliamentarians;
- African Climate Summit in Nairobi (Kenya);
- Secretary General of the United Nations;
- Other African leaders