research for action

Social and Environmental Linkages

in
Links: 
Local knowledge, Power Research, Voices of the Unheard, Follow the Money, Grassroots Public Policy Development, Self-Designed Development, Environmental Impact Remediation, The Commons, Arts of Resilience, Citizen Tribunal, Environmental Impact Mitigation, Salvage Computing, Transparency
Douglas Schuler
Version: 
1
Problem: 
The fact that the social world of trade, culture, consciousness, etc. influences the environmental world — and vice versa — is obvious to anyone who thinks about it. On the other hand, questions about what do about those linkages and where to go with them, are often omitted or undervalued in relation to considerations that focus to one world or the other. Some environmental remedies may end up hurting precarious communities [2].
 
Identifying environmental degradation and tipping points for environmental crises, clearly two important elements of environmentalism, are by themselves insufficient for addressing them. It is also the case that trying to inject technology into a situation without thinking of the linkages is likely to result in unintended consequences; work in the social world to distribute it, advocate for it, adopt it, reject it etc. must be part of the program.
Context: 

Linking social and environmental factors should be inherent in the work of the LIMITS community—and to virtually any other project concerned about social justice and/or environmentalism. This pattern should be useful, both implicitly or explicitly, whenever analyzing or designing for environmental or social amelioration.

Discussion: 
The original concept that inspired the work on this pattern was in relation to the Green New Deal. The genius—and the audacity—of the Green New Deal is that it acknowledges that environmental problems such as climate change and species disappearance and social problems such as poverty, mass incarceration, xenophobia, and war are inextricably linked. And like the original New Deal, the Green New Deal is extremely wide-ranging with respect to the magnitude of resources proposed and the breadth of its consideration, which addresses agriculture, energy, transportation, economic security, the environment, and the entire social sphere besides.
 
Unfortunately, unlike the Green New Deal, policy is often developed around a single goal, often from an efficiency point of view, and often is simply imposed on people. Thus, all countries should reduce their use of oil or coal regardless of how the burden fell and on whom. Realizing the connections between social problems and environmental issues, especially where one exacerbates the other or when reducing one reduces the other, should offer clues as to where to look for interventions.
 
Which is not to say that this will be easy. As Dobson points out, neither social justice nor environmental sustainability necessarily produces the other [6]. And, for example, if increased environmental sustainability raises the taxes or makes gas prices higher than some kind of resistance is virtually guaranteed. In fact, it's not an easy matter to convince some people that computing can have any detrimental effects on the environment, presumably because the connection is harder to see and because of portrayal as a “green industry” [5].
 
What Linkages?
Human activity, as we know, is now the main driving force behind the major changes that are now disrupting the Earth's systems. But in many ways this is just the beginning of the story. 
We need to know what types of human activities are behind these changes? How do they work and how can they be interrupted or diverted? Sabie, Salman, and Easterbrook, for example, discuss how the computer has revolutionized the field of architecture, allowing new dazzling buildings to be built, but are asking the ICT community to accept the "challenge of providing shelter, primarily housing, in existing and future scarce-resource contexts." [30]
Who are the stakeholders? They include the people who affect the changes, the people who must endure the consequences, and the people in between. What can we do with the information? For one thing, it must be recognized that people in marginalized communities are often also in environmentally compromised areas. Linking the social and the environmental means including people from these communities in any conversation or deliberation that will affect them and find an appropriate approach not as an economic rationalistic imposed "solution" but derived through an ongoing negotiating process.
 
What Does Computing Have to Do With It?
Computer scientists, researchers, and practitioners—and the people that pay them—are reshaping the world — or at least they are making the reshaping happen more quickly. The impacts of computing are linked to both the social field and the environment, sometimes through propagating ignorance on the global scale, sometimes helping us further our understanding. 
 
What damage are we enabling? What are our roles and which ones can we step into? Powering the cloud has just bypassed the airline industry in terms of carbon and other pollutants. And crypto currency mining, like actual mining, is consuming vast, increasing amounts of energy, reenacting the fairy tale through spinning bits into gold. Computing as a vast collective activity has gone beyond enabling others to cause damage in their own way to being actual, direct producers of damage. Moreover, the hardware we employ (and throw away in record numbers) is constructed using rare earth metals that are acquired under harsh conditions that degrades both human and environmental health [2]. 
 
This pattern suggests that linkages might prove themselves to be important tools. What leverage points might we identify and leverage? The more we know about this the better our chances become. It might turn out, for example, that if the miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo decided to unionize, then a demand for transparency in supply chains at the same time, might be well-warranted.
 
The relationship between the social and environmental worlds to be thoroughly considered and explicitly linked in any policy that gets developed. 
Solution: 
SEED. Linkages connect stakeholders, tools, outcomes, goals, social and environmental entities and processes. We find and identify existing linkages. But, crucially, we also invent them. The LIMITS community links computing with sustainability issues. It also helps establish new links between people.
 
Linkages is an important concept but we need to go beyond that. We need to seek out the value of knowing about linkages. How can we help identify, hypothesize, leverage, illustrate, write stories about, rewrite, rewire, or create new necessary linkages?
Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
organization
Categories: 
engagement
Themes: 
Research for Action
Themes: 
Policy
Themes: 
Social Movement
Themes: 
Theory
Verbiage for pattern card: 

Social and environmental issues are inextricably intertwined. Neither can be addressed without addressing the other. This pattern focuses on how those linkages manifest and what can be done to address both effectively and simultaneously.

Information about introductory graphic: 
Land and Sea, Todros

Citizen Assembly

in
Solution: 

A Citizens’ Assembly brings together people from all walks of life into one space, in person or online, to learn about, discuss, and deliberate on a topic, and then provide recommendations to their government and their fellow citizens.

Access to Technology

in
Pattern number within this pattern set: 
1
Group Name: 
Urban Gardening
Peter Lyle
Queensland University of Technology
Marcus Foth
Queensland University of Technology
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Queensland University of Technology
Problem: 

Gardeners can come from any background, and as such have a wide variety of access to existing technology. Access to technology refers to whether an audience has a particular gadget or service, and their ability or willingness to use it as part of gardening practice.

Context: 

This problem applies to individuals and communities, whenever the intent is to design interactive technology. The context varies depending on the available resources of a community, and the target demographic of design.

Discussion: 

When designing for a known person or group, infrastructure and access to technology may be prescribed. Typically the context must be understood in order to know what is suitable. For example Australia has a high level of smartphone market penetration, and if targeting residential gardens, there are a likelihood of highcspeed Internet access. This would allow for the use of rich media and high levels of interconnectivity.

Communities on the other hand, such as Northey Street City Farm or Permablitz Brisbane, are limited in time and money to invest in additional technology or infrastructure. In these instances it is important to understand what technology community members already use or what infrastructure is already in place, and how is it currently used. With this understanding, the ability to repurpose, or make use of technology as part of a design, will become clear. Understanding the role technology plays in the lives of gardeners, and when they have access to technology, will result in a more inclusive design (Heitlinger et al., 2013).

Solution: 

Designers need to consider: the existing infrastructure; time and money to invest in new technology; and attitudes of gardeners to different technologies, and incorporate these preferences accordingly.

Civic Intelligence Role Playing Games

in
Pattern ID: 
139
Discussion: 

 

Role Playing Games (RPGS) such a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) combine storytelling with a set of rules that determine the abilities of the players and govern the interactions between the players and their environment. Essentially, RPGs allow the players to simulate imaginary scenarios and act them out. There are many elements of RPGs that are similar to elements of Civic Intelligence (CI). The development of a CI-RPG could allow roleplaying game methods to be applied for practical social justice problem solving and team building.

At the start of a game, the players in an RPG gather together to form a team which is usually called a “party.” Then they are often presented with a mission, a quest which the party will attempt to complete. Before each game, each player develops the character they will play, and determines the Skills and Attributes they will have. This is similar to the Capabilities found in Civic Intelligence.

In D&D there are six Attributes every player’s character has: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. For each character each of these Attributes will have a number value assigned to it (randomly), which measures how much of that particular Attribute the character has. Characters also have Skills, such as Concentration or Diplomacy, which correspond to certain Attributes. For example, a character with high Dexterity who has the Use Rope Skill will be very good at that Skill. The higher the corresponding Attribute the better a character will be at a particular skill.

Different characters will have different Skills and Attributes and a party must work together and combine their capabilities to be successful. A Civic Intelligence Roleplaying Game could allow a group of civic-minded people to explore ways to improve their individual operations and cooperative interactions by simulating problems and imagining potential solutions. Where traditional RPGs often serve as escapism, a CI-RPG would seek to replicate the real world and experiment in ways that might be too difficult or dangerous to perform in real life without rehearsal.

Categories: 
engagement
Categories: 
social
Categories: 
resources
Themes: 
Research for Action
Themes: 
Community Action
Themes: 
Theory
Themes: 
Case Studies
Pattern status: 
Draft

Adapting Change

in
David Hubert
CIRAL/CIRAN
Problem: 

Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote that of all the things in the world, "change is the only constant." As time goes on, circumstances beyond controlling will occur and and communities will be required to adapt to new conditions, but the nature of some types of change and/or how rapidly the transition occurs isn't always our favor. There also usually exists a correlation between the speed with which change occurs and the amount of supporting systems disrupted by this change, most often to their detriment. Many factors and situations are beyond our individual control while the end-state of change is uncertain at best, so when we recognize the process of change beginning to occur we do what we can to influence the factors we actually can control. If it is decided that action is needed to mitigate change then the nature of that action must be determined first; as Kwama Nkrumah wrote "action without thought is empty, [and] thought without action is blind.” Great care must be taken to avoid unnecessary disruption, and a balance must be found between planning and execution, ensuring that appropriate steps are taken while ensuring they are taken before control of a given situation is lost. 

Context: 
This pattern applies to any community engaged in a decision-making process. Many issues and possible changes are not time sensitive per se, but situations can easily occur at many scales where foregone or even delayed action would be detrimental to the community. Recognizing this type of situation falls on the members of this community, but this comes with the caveats that not all situations are as time- sensitive as they may appear, and that predicted end-states and rates of transition may not reflect reality. 
Discussion: 
Wikipedia defines time as "the indefinite continued progression of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." From that, the process of change begins with the past, the staging and valuing of variables, then moving through the present by interacting with one another, then unfolding into their end-state in the future. The Hopi saw time as an environment that one moved through, like riding down a river winding through a constantly changing countryside, but thus far both science and philosophy have failed to produce a working model of time.
 
Also much like being swept down an unknown river, change is as unpredictable as it is inevitable. This vagueness makes change a very two-sided coin, offering either hope, or, more often then not, dread, for, as H.P. Lovecraft wrote, "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Numerous studies have shown that the brain operates very differently under different circumstances. Hunger, sleep deprivation and sex all affect our decision-making processes differently, but few drives cause more irrational behavior then fear. When faced with change, especially at larger scales, it can be very easy to slip into an emergency mindset, to lose sight of the bigger picture in lieu a seemingly large detail, but it is usually impossible to  truly say what changes would be good or bad for us just as we cannot accurately say what changes would be good or bad for others. This stems from the simple facts that "good" and "bad" are relative to the observer and that we cannot truly predict the range of consequences from our actions. Returning to the "time as a river" perspective, it is also important to note that it is not really a river, especially in terms of where it might take one. It seems to operate much more like a river delta: broad, steady, and filled with possibilities. 
 
However, this fear of change is not without reason. Any type of change, any adjustment of variables within a given system, inherently causes disruption among adjacent entities. Most often the scale and/or intensity of this disruption is proportional to the rate at which this change occurs, i.e. c=vt, c being the change occurring to a given system, v being the disruption of adjacent/interdependent systems, and t being the duration of time this change takes to occur. For example, if one were to dig a hole, one would have many options to achieve this end. The obvious solution would be to use a shovel, causing minimal collateral damage but taking a fair amount of time, where a diesel-powered excavator would certainly be faster but would tear up a lot of other ground. Moving further towards the extremes, an archaeologist can use brushes and trowels to carefully remove dirt over months or years, but with some artfully placed explosives you can have a hole dug in seconds. The perfectly valid concern held by those worried about change is ultimately over exactly which adjacent systems will be affected.
Solution: 

Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.Solution: Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.

Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
organization
Themes: 
Education
Themes: 
Globalism and Localism
Themes: 
Community Action
Themes: 
Case Studies
Verbiage for pattern card: 
 Determining which steps to take is just as important as actually taking them, but in a time-sensitive environment, action and thought must be carefully balanced. Communities must be able to recognize where change is occuring/will occur as well as which rates of change are favorable, which are not, and which ones can be regulated or negated.
Pattern status: 
Released

Civic Ignorance

in
Pattern ID: 
666
Pattern number within this pattern set: 
1
Social Imagination and Civic Intelligence Program
The Evergreen State College
Version: 
3
Discussion: 

We place civic ignorance at the top of our anti-patterns collection because civic ignorance is at the core of everything that human beings do to each other that is harmful.

Civic ignorance takes different forms; it is their sum total and the perfidious interaction among the various forms that creates the Agnosphere, the ubiquitous shroud that fights civic intelligence on all fronts.

It is often quite “natural” and occurs in all of us to some degree. It is most menacing in its professional varieties, when well-resourced and self-serving elites intentionally cultivate ignorance. Historically, in the United States, the tobacco companies were the most treacherous and whose campaigns can be credited with thousands if not millions of unnecessary deaths. Currently the climate change denial campaign is the most prominent and much of the intentionally spread misinformation can be traced back to a handful of dedicated billionaires.

How it Works

Civic ignorance is assured in many ways — in general, that's what we're trying to show with our project. Fixating on certain hard-and-fast "truisms" is important. Blaming the other person is important. On an individual level, not even listening to a argument that runs counter to your own is effective since that avoids any real consideration of the issue. From an institutional level, access to information and communication should be controlled by elites. The items on the public agenda should be restricted — but it should not seem like this is the case. Finally, critics of the system should be marginalized or ignored.

Evidence

Links

All of the anti-patterns are related to this!

References

Agnotology book

Verbiage for pattern card: 

Civic ignorance describes how well a group or person ignores the civic ideas, problems, or solutions of those surrounding them. The need to solve problems intelligently and taking account of all solutions is cast away in favor of the quick, the easy, and the brutal. Maybe the problem will just go away? Critics of this should be marginalized, ignored or otherwise disabled or destroyed.

Neighborhood based Community Health Workers

in
Pattern ID: 
913
Links: 

Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington

Michael O'Neill
Healthy Living Collaborative
Version: 
1
Problem: 

Fragmented systems of service delivery that are intended to deliver health, social wellbeing, and safety are in need of course correction to address severe disparities in health and welbeing that exist.  The mandate of health care reform from the Affordable Care Act is to improve care, improve population health outcomes, and lower costs. In Washington State the timeline to accomplish this is five years.

 

How can organizations that have traditionally delivered units of care shift towards providing access to wellness for a population which creates health equity, increases local capacity, and transforms payment and delivery systems?

Solution: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Verbiage for pattern card: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Pattern status: 
Draft
Pattern Sets: 
Community Health Workers as a Civic Intelligence case study
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