Strong language

for understanding

This year, I was invited to a Portuguese Christmas. Our host included a midnight Secret Santa. Using what little knowledge we had of our intended recipients, brief acquaintance inspired a great deal of imagination and creativity, resulting in highly personalised and thoughtful gifts. It was also a form of information exchange that helped us get to know each other a little better.

Many of us have a problem with boar. I’ve been luckier in that they arrive for the yearly acorn harvest and unless I plant where there’s acorn fall, they very rarely touch anything else. One recipient, who had lost most of her saplings to boar, opened a present of a bag of edible, non-toxic pellets designed as a boar deterrent. The pellets, being extremely bitter tasting act as a kind of shock therapy and boar avoid that area again. I’d researched a lot about boar deterrents and had to console myself with the fact nothing works. We learned to live with their annual enjoyment of an acorn feast. The pellets, however, are used with success in Germany and after this gift exchange, I’m sure will be a popular import into Portugal.

Gift sharing was also knowledge sharing. Everyone also took pleasure in the delight of others, almost as if they had received the gift themselves. Unanimously, it was the favourite element of the evening.

I’m lucky to be part of a generous community and gift sharing isn’t limited to individual occasions. In many ways, yule was symbolic of a wider network of interdependent relationships with conversations which reframed our understanding of what it means to be a part of it.

This is important in both the private and public spheres. When talking about politics, different forms of discrimination, etc., discourse has become polarised (even hate-filled) and littered with jargon that has lost its meaning. Finding new ways to talk about issues that matter, like racism, creates new ways to listen. A large scale study in England and Scotland began from the position that conversations about race were stuck in such a way that the nuances of racial inequality were misunderstood, resulting in a failure to direct conversation toward solution. The researchers worked with twenty thousand people to test more than a dozen different ways to talk about racism. What would work to change the conversation from bipolar positions to more constructive, solution-oriented dialogue?

Words are powerful and the ones we use can either exacerbate or help reframe dialogue. While there is a no one size fits all approach, the researchers developed a general guide of words to avoid and language to embrace. For example, systemic and institutional racism isn’t well-understood despite how often these terms are used. However, stories about how a specific organisation has a bias towards white candidates in job applications aids understanding of the problem and redirects the conversation towards solution.

A similar phenomena, that of reframing the discourse and knowledge sharing, has been found in participatory democratic processes.

The participatory budgeting of Porto Alegre, described in the last letter, is another example of how political discourse was reframed to become a form of community gifting. When the process began in 1989, only 49% of the population of the city had basic sanitation. This increased to 85% by 1996. Rather than favour the needs of one’s own locale over more urgent needs elsewhere, participants elected to address the most severe concerns, such as access to basic sanitation and adequate housing. Direct water supply to households reached 99.5%, five times more housing units were constructed and school enrolment increased by 190%. As basic provision improved, budgetary priorities only then shifted to areas which were more attractive to middle-class citizens, like education, health and social services.

In addition to the fair share of city’s resources, the reframed public discourse enabled and motivated participation from less educated and wealthy citizens who, prior to their involvement, had been typically disengaged from the political process. Participation rates were substantially higher than traditional voter turnouts with a continued increase over the years, although the nature of who participated changed, with poorer segments of the population dropping in favour of middle class interests as basic needs were met. A more surprising element of the process was improved behaviour from political leaders (elected representatives). Brazil (like many countries) has a history of ‘clientelism’ and ‘gift exchange’ at upper political levels. With a more informed populace, civil society groups and accountability structures, opportunities for corruption were reduced.

Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre existed alongside a more traditional representative democracy and was largely dependent on will from upper level political representatives in addition to grassroots level mobilisation. While there was no transformation in local level fiscal management, it could be argued to have reformed the democratic system in way that deepened democracy, producing gains for more marginalised groups. The innovation of inclusion provided greater access, voice and more impact on the decisions usually taken by politicians. Representation reflected greater equitability. Its initial effectiveness led to what became known as a democratic or participatory turn. The Porto Alegre model spread across more than 1000 municipalities of Brazil and to other countries, including both left- and right-leaning governments. In Paris, citizenship participation was associated with an intense process of knowledge exchange creating a meaningful and constructive conversation which had not been present in the populace before. In many cases, the participatory turn grew out of top-down decision-making like in the original model, but in many social movements, like the Occupy movement, it sprang into being more spontaneously.

However, there is a danger direct participatory democracy is orchestrated by an elite which engineers outcomes, threatening empowerment and even perpetuating existing structures. This goes against the face of the intentions of participatory systems, which is to empower, include and increase political engagement among those who have been otherwise disenfranchised. Another problem is lack of continued political will. When tied to existing institutions, participatory processes are dependent upon top-down structures and the mobilisation of the citizenship in order to be effectively implemented and maintained. With a top-level power base which is subject to periodic change that will can quickly fade, as it did with the mixed fortunes of Porto Alegre’s initiative.

More spontaneous, bottom-up participatory practices, like those employed by the Occupy movement, have been written-off as having failed under the weight of opposition and perhaps lack of top-down coordination. On the other hand, it can also be viewed as “a dress rehearsal” for what followed.

What counts as success or failure? Occupy was about articulating a vision for what a more equitable future might look like and in that the conversation, as seen in Mexico City, still continues. It succeeded in reframing discourse on democracy. It gave the world a gift from which many new movements sprung and a new direction for meaning-making and potentia.

Up Next

Land ownership is a reiterative theme in some Substack newsletters which I would like to develop further. In response, next week’s post will explore the concept of Commons Thinking.

Embers

The embers of The Fiertzeside is a little different this week.

If you are active on Substack’s Notes or would like to find a way in, you are invited to participate in Postcards 2024.

Here’s how it works:

1. On Notes, add an image you’ve created (e.g. photograph) inspired by a Substack post you read. This can be anyone’s post. The point is to create the feeling of a personally sent postcard that acknowledges the impact of the post.

2. Write a kind message to the author of the post (as you might if sending a real postcard) and tag them using the @ sign so they receive a notification.

3. Also tag the people taking part in Postcards 2024. You will find a list in a dedicated post in the Community Area (this will appear shortly after this post is published). Currently taking part are:

   Alexander M Crow
   ,
   Jenna Newell Hiott
   ,
   Louise Haynes
   ,
   Renée Eli, Ph.D.
   ,
   Safar Fiertze
   ,
   Susannah Fisher
   ,
   Tara Penry
   .

4. If not already signed up to Postcards 2024, comment below to indicate your interest and express a time commitment such as “once a month, but maybe more if time allows”. I will keep this open until the end of January.

5. Postcards 2024 will run throughout the year and end on New Year’s Eve.

And on that note, I would like to wish you and yours all the best for the coming year.

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Resources:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24719938?read-now=1&seq=16

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27919218?searchText=Porto%20Alegre%20participatory%20budgeting&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPorto%2BAlegre%2Bparticipatory%2Bbudgeting&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A64139d9742e351e4f2684d2ede97fae8

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17448689.2016.1216383

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19460171.2020.1733629

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/28/meaningful-debate-racism-we-asked-20000-people

https://reframingrace.org/site/assets/files/1220/containsstronglanguagerrjuly23.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/06/occupy-wall-street-achieved-a-lot-even-if-it-may-not-feel-like-it

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/10/participatory-democracy-in-porto-alegre