Does NewSSC Establish Conditions for Interactive Emergence?

(A synthesis of the participants' evaluations from the 2006 workshop)

Steve Fifield, participant-evaluator, 7/21/08

Introduction

NewSSC is meant to foster new and creative ideas by bringing people from different backgrounds together to work on their shared interests in science and social change. Good things are supposed to emerge through interactions at NewSSC. To better appreciate the nature of interactive emergence, and to get the most from our NewSSC experiences, we need tools for thinking about emergence in complex social systems.

For instance, Glenda Eoyang’s CDE model (see Facilitating Organization Change, Edwin E. Olson & Glenda H. Eoyang, 2000) can help us reflect on NewSSC and what develops from it. An assumption here is that no one can definitively control or predict emergence, but that participants can influence the path, pace, and content of what develops.

The CDE model is a way to think about the conditions for emergence in terms of three interacting factors:

• containers (C) – hold people together (and separate them),
• significant differences (D) – potentially creative tensions that can catalyze change (or block it), and
• transforming exchanges (E) – interactions that happen in containers and across differences.

In this model, appropriate containers, differences and exchanges are interdependent prerequisites for emergence. If the goal of NewSSC is to foster the emergence of new ideas and practices, then it is necessary to establish settings (containers) in which people with diverse perspectives on science and social change (differences) can have generative interactions (transforming exchanges). Sounds simple enough! But each of these factors represents webs of relationships with their own emergent dynamics. Many social systems are, as Eoyang says, massively entangled. From an evaluation perspective, the CDE model is a useful simplifying heuristic for unraveling the entanglements of NewSSC to consider how well it works and what might be done to make it better.

Participants’ End-of-Workshop Comments

We can learn something about containers, differences and exchanges from participants’ responses to the 2006 NewSSC end-of-workshop evaluation questions. On the last day of the workshop participants wrote responses to these questions:

a) What was most helpful, provocative, useful, etc during the workshop? What did you and others do that made this so positive?

b) What could be done to create more experiences like this in the workshop?

c) What were the impacts of the workshop on you and your thinking?

To see the participants’ responses to these questions, go to <http://www.stv.umb.edu/newssc06evalpart.html>.

CDE Reflections on the Participants’ Comments

Containers. Containers (e.g., rooms, activities, discourses, topics) bring people together and keep them apart. One respondent wrote that a positive aspect of the workshop was to “participate in a collective that was created from so many different experiences.” In one sense, the physical setting of the workshop was the container that created a social collective. The participants traveled from distant sites to meet at Woods Hole, in the seminar room, the dorm rooms, at the dinner table, on the beach.

When asked to describe what made the workshop a positive experience, most of the participants identified particular group activities (e.g., Forum Theater, the dialogue process, and an ecological artist’s visualization activity) that fostered generative interactions with others. The activities were containers for transforming exchanges between people with different experiences. The design and facilitation of activities-as-containers made a difference in the quality of interactions that ensued. Participants said that aspects of the workshop activities that helped productive things happen included establishing shared ground rules for respectful interactions, moving in and out of formal and informal activities, and trying out different modes of expression than are typical in academic settings. Good things happened while people were together, which raised the issue of what it would take to “succeed in keeping & developing the links and interactions that emerged during the workshop.” To continue what started in Woods Hole, we need containers that help people get together even when they are far apart.

Differences. Shared interests and understandings draw people to a container, but creative and critical thinking are most likely to come from differences. Difference is a strong theme in participants’ writings about what made the workshop a positive experience:

· I'm not sure where I'm going with this but being exposed to a field so removed from my normal frame of mind has spurred me on to try and relate to this.

· I was exposed to new ways of thinking about restoration.

· We each brought something different to the unit; we played off each other's ideas & in some cases extended them.

· The multiplicity of perspectives & positions emerging at the same time was to me the most precious outcome.

Participants’ reactions point to different kinds of difference. Among these were identities–academic, non-academic, student, professor, activist, scientist, artist. There were differences in age, life experience, nationality, and language. Differences that came through as especially provocative and generative were modes of discourse (e.g., oral story-telling, written text, performance, graphic art) and the conceptual vocabularies through which we make sense of things in different modes of discourses.

Transforming exchanges. Ultimately, what NewSSC seeks is transforming exchanges–interactions that change people and through them the larger systems entailed in understanding and participating in science and social change. Some of the transformations participants’ described happened quickly: “priceless” tips on teaching, “taking the position of another” to test the usefulness of one’s knowledge, feeling more connected than in traditional academic conferences, being pleasantly surprised at the direction of the workshop. But across many of the comments we can see participants marking the beginning of meaningful change that they believe will take more time to play out and will go in directions they cannot easily anticipate.

· The impact of the workshop won't be fully felt/appreciated for a while–rationality is not instantaneous, it'll take time to embody the concepts.

· There are some impacts that we can't see yet and there are so [many] things to think about and chew in the next days, months.

· If we succeed in keeping & developing the links and interactions that emerged during the workshop then the investment will have been worthwhile.

· Definitely worthwhile–may take some time to internalize completely & incorporate in some way.

· I hope to stay in touch with several people I met here.

This bring us back to creating containers that help NewSSC participants maintain and expand their interactions within and beyond NewSSC. The workshop fostered productive face-to-face interactions. But its success will be reflected in the ability of participants to sustain long-distance, long-term interactions more than in the immediate results of a few days in Woods Hole. Can we use the NewSSC website, Wiki, Ning (social network site), Diigo and other tools to create containers that support the exchange of different perspectives on science and social change in ways that transform us and our work?