Revealing the Practice of a
Developmental Discipline:

Capturing the content of the Biennial has been a deceptively simple as well as an extremely challenging task. I found it fairly simple in relation to the first part of the Biennial title –  ‘claiming our place’ –  and in relation to the last part – ‘re-imagining purpose’. It was easy enough to find out what participants were thinking about their place in civil society, and the history of how they had come to that place. It was also not difficult to establish where participants were at when it came to the purpose of their development practice. It’s the middle bit of the Biennial title – ‘revealing practice’ – that has been the most difficult part for me.

My Catholic upbringing introduced me very early in life to the ‘Discipline of Benedict, of Augustin, of Theresa…’ I have known as far back as I can remember that a discipline can be very exacting. However, I have always been intrigued by the ideas behind the practice of contemplative communities. In the religious sense, a Discipline implies that the practices involved in its development are their own reward. This suggests that it might be legitimate to be engaged in a particular discipline simply because of the enjoyment it offers, and because we derive satisfaction from learning about it and adding to its body of knowledge and practices, and not just because we have a need to focus our energies on the needs of others or because the world is a terrible place and we need to fix it.  For me, the idea of ‘revealing our practice’ suggests that we need to find ways to define our discipline more precisely.

In the course of my reflections I have found myself reaching for the dictionary a lot. Here are some of the meanings it offers:

I wondered who (or what) we developmental practitioners are disciples of? Although the Biennial did not generate one coherent view on this, I did see participants reaching for more precise ways of defining the place occupied by the development sector within civil society, rather than simply conflating the two and treating them as if they are one and the same. 

I heard:

“Civil society is society.”
“The development sector is a field that engages people in civil society.”
“Development is a field – not a sector.”
“Civil society holds one sphere in social life – we offer a developmental social practice within this sphere.”

As I listened, it seemed to me that alongside this distinguishing of our place, the medium of our work was being more strongly articulated as a distinguishing feature of our practice.

People spoke of working in the ‘social’ realm as if this distinguished them from others working in the field of development. They variously stated:

“I see myself as a social practitioner.”
“We offer a practice to the field of development – a social development practice.”
“Our sector defends social values.”
“We bring social intervention processes.”
“We are practitioners working in the realm of the social, facilitating human processes.”

So it seems that we have claimed our place and we have chosen the medium with which we want to create something fruitful in this place. 

This got me thinking about ‘medium’. I normally associate the word ‘medium’ with art. The design of the Biennial strove specifically to reveal the creative process that are inherent in both the production of an artistic work and a social process intervention. Observing the Tango Group as they arched gracefully in each others’ arms, I found myself musing on discipline, the dancer and the social practitioner.

The gesture of the dancer is an expression of something within, but it is also the technical grace revealed in the visible physical movement. The many hours of stretching exercises, the long practice sessions – irrespective of whether there is a forthcoming performance – and the warm-ups before stepping on stage, are all part of what constitutes the discipline of the professional dancer.

But how do we social practitioners practise our practice? How do we keep ourselves supple, how do we warm up before we engage in our performances of social process facilitation? And what exactly is it that we are stretching and warming up?

I think it is our inner faculties.

Whereas dance is a physical, tactile medium and its movements can be plainly seen, social process facilitation works with the invisible, intangible realm of social dynamics that we don’t so much see as sense with our inner faculties – our inner sensory organs of observation, discernment and comprehension.

How does a social practitioner flex her inner faculties – how does she take them out for some exercise? Or does she only exercise them when she is facilitating?

At the Biennial I didn’t talk with anyone about how I keep my inner faculties supple. And yet I experienced us collectively stretching our inner reflective and imaginative faculties through the practice of plenary journaling. And I know those same muscles were being deliciously stretched when participants were invited to write their own poem on what they had been connected to through the Biennial. Such exercise is necessary if we regard ourselves as practitioners practising a particular discipline of social intervention. 

But we seem shy about perceiving ourselves in this light. I think the problem may be that the word ‘discipline’ is often perceived as shorthand for ‘professionalising’ – a dirty word in the field of development. Professionalism is associated with elitism and regarded as being instrumental in undervaluing and demeaning the unpaid work that voluntary community workers undertake; it also potentially divides development practitioners into those who are ‘professional’ and those who are ‘amateur’.

There’s no denying that all the Biennial participants are engaged in social processes of intervention as a paid occupation. And the Biennial did surface what developmental practitioners profess, which is that social formations are organic, living systems. And no-one would deny that when we facilitate their processes of development, we risk doing harm if we treat social formations as vehicles waiting inertly for us to drive them to predetermined destinations. Or, for that matter, if we treat them as vehicles waiting for us to conduct their passengers along to the next step of a well-worn framework, applied to all situations with a cast-iron, pre-formatted logic, never allowing for the more creative, freeing resolution that might just come if we could just hold the uncertainty, the ambiguity of working into an outcome as yet unknown, for just a moment.

Developmental practice professes that “poverty cannot be managed away by technical solutions” and that “the capacity we most need to develop is our own creativity”. Developmental practice calls us to discern both sequential logic and coherence – to work with the tension in creation, not discarding either in favour of the other.  “Developmental practice does not allow us to be subcontractors either on behalf of donors or governments or the poor”.

But, on the other hand, it might be that, in this polarised world of ours, we won’t – can’t – escape the divisive potential of calling ourselves professionals. If this is so, maybe it would be better turn aside from this debate altogether and explore instead what it means for us to practice a developmental discipline for its own sake, irrespective of whether our work is paid or unpaid, or whether we consider ourselves – or are considered by others – to be professionals or amateurs.Perhaps by approaching our work more consciously as a discipline, we may increasingly come to enjoy the art of what we do, realising that the craft involved is demanding and exacting, and that, simply by consciously practising it, engaging ourselves fully in it, we can contribute to developing and extending the craft – our practice – itself.

Imagine being engaged in a piece of work not just in order to satisfactorily implement the brief handed over by the client, or for the reward of being seen as efficient, helpful, useful, a faithful comrade, a good activist, a resourceful broker, etc. Imagine being driven simply by the inner satisfaction that the work itself brings, the inner standard of being true to our developmental practice! I know this sounds like a tall order. And it is. According to Alasdair MacIntyre (writing about practice in his book On Virtue), it is not only a tall order – it also requires an Order: in the sense of a community of practitioners who are engaged in the same pursuit, and who can provide the much-needed fellowship of support and robust challenge.

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