Betwixt and between-liminality in community development

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN
Is the experiential route excessive?
Ian Healy

LIMINALITY
Taken from the Latin limen, meaning threshold.
Pause for a moment: consider when you have been on the threshold of something, yet not quite there.
What about thresholds of understanding?
Some grasp but not quite fully grasping?

LIMINALITY: FURTHER EXPLORED
Notions of…..
Being in limbo.
Powerlessness versus empowerment.
Reflexivity.
Communitas- liminality/equality of shared experience as a facet of its multiple meanings.

LIMINALITY AND LEARNING
Finding yourself betwixt and between?
Making a transition between being told the theory and/or the outcome?
Being confronted by ideas and practices you are unfamiliar with?
The liminal space is the one for you?

REVISIT STAGES OF CHANGE MODEL

I’M A MEMBER OF THE RESISTANCE
I want to switch off…
I don’t want this group work…
I don’t want to draw rich pictures….
I want everything to be like it is in other subjects…….
Messiness…..queer folk; damn them!

LIMINALITY IS RISKY
‘The knowledge’ in SWK 3017 is less straightforward.
It’s troublesome; learning can somehow seem more uncomfortable.
The term nettlesome knowledge is sometimes deployed {Sibbett and Thompson, 2008 cited in Land, Meyer and Smith, 2008}.
By this they intend knowledge that stretches our thinking and makes us feel…knowledge with a sting in it.

I’M HANGING ONTO THE RESISTANCE
Fixed ideas, assumptions, prejudices.
Look out Community!
I fear change.
I fear not knowing completely.

NETTLES CAN NURTURE
Nettles have a time honoured place in traditional medicine.
Nettlesome knowledge can help heal our understanding deficit.
Or else we can conspire to be silent.
Not express doubt, not ask questions; hide.

PROCESS VERSUS OUTCOME
Why this emphasis on the process as opposed to the outcome?
Previous lecture from TC-the room became a liminal lounge?
Tim spoke of walking the space.
Not interested in the experts going in, auditing and advancing a solution.

NOTIONS OF EXCESS
To occupy this liminal space {SWK 3017} is to step outside of the purely academic {though uncertainty of meaning can be found here, too.}
Is this asking too much?
What is the real threat for you?
How/in what ways/when does it prove excessive for you? {feeding the Reflective Portfolio!}

EXCESSIVENESS
Work with these 4 understandings
Immoderationasaconsequenceofgoingbeyondsufficientorpermittedlimits
Thestateofbeingmorethanfull
Overindulgence
Morethanisneeded, desired, orrequired

EVALUATE
For now stay with these meanings in relation to the Module.
Its demands upon you.
The behaviour of the Tutors.
Their clear exercising of the liminal space.
{Feed the Reflective Portfolio}.

EXCESSIVENESS: BROADER REMIT
As individuals, communities, societies, and globally we are excessive. It’s as if we are wired to be thus.
Excessiveness as a counter intuitive notion within post industrial society.
Excitement and revulsion, as if we couldn’t last without them.
Access is the freedom to go in.
Excess as the freedom to go out………..

WHOSE EXCESS?
If, as Hobsbawm maintained, the twentieth century was the “Age of Extremes”, then the twenty first presents, to date, as the age of excess {Excess,Phillips, 2008}.
It’s almost always other people who are excessive. Yet other peoples’ excesses might reveal to us something of ourselves {Excess,Phillips}.
To talk about excess often seems to invite excessive responses in people {communities/sub communities?}-ideological and/or moral antagonisms; behavioural?

LIMITS
Who sets the limits to this excessiveness? Experts?
How do we come to know the appropriate limits?
How are such limits supported/opposed or hindered?
Are limits sustainable or else do they form temporary halts to excessive behaviour?
Do we need to limit excessiveness? Limits as inhibitors of freedom?

WHAT IF WE DON’T LIMIT EXCESS?
Individual, communal, and societal levels.
Fall out if we do not?
Can the community breathe, survive even?
Can excessiveness be negotiated with?
How do we measure it?

TOLERANCE OF OTHERS’ DEPRIVATION
“Excesses in our world are truly shocking but we adapt to them remarkably well.” {Excess, Phillips}.
There is simply no ‘room’, no time for concern with ‘external’ needs, ‘external’ deprivations.
Beck {1998. Ch.3} within each of us lies “a longing for self determination.” Contrast with “an equally important longing for shared community.”
Maybe what we need is realism, with the notion of ‘success’ as often painstaking {Ehrenreich, 2008}.

COMPARISON AS DISTRACTION?
To compare, to have that reference point is arguably positive ‘fuel’ for improvement…they’ve done it…
Can a community respond collectively so?
‘The experts’, telling us it would be ‘a good thing’, ‘the morally good thing to do’?
A heavy coating of economic imperative – maybe masked by the community as failing; it must do this..

IMPROVEMENT VERSUS CONTENTMENT
Another mantra of post industrial society is continuous improvement.
Seemingly harmless, logical, and desirable.
How do deprived communities sit within this context? The bad social pupils needing extra lessons?
Can communities step outside of the post industrial frame of reference and challengefrom their own perspective?

FINDING THE GOOD WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
The community as ‘living in the moment’ before contemplating improvement.
Do communities need to chase ‘the good life’ versus finding the good in the here and now?
Combating propaganda and incentives.
How to want what you have {Miller, 1996}. Implications for communities.

MILLER
Challenges the instinct of ‘never to be satisfied’.
Compassion-no one is worse nor better than ourselves.
Attention-living in the moment-countering the distraction of future wants.
Gratitude- as if life has blessed us; that we make this conscious to ourselves, everyday.
Translate in community context?

LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY
Materialism versus meaning in life itself.
Being thankful for what we as individuals and communities have-enlightenment/self realisation, or propaganda/oppression?
“If there is sin against life, it consists… in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” Albert Camus.
How can this meaning be made meaningful within a particular community?

A CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGICAL TAKE
“ If we are to take sustainability seriously then in a world of finite resources we surely need to live within the limits of our resources, not to expect that economic growth will rise all the time. That's just greedy.”
Taylor {1975} develops the theological understanding of ‘enough’.
Could this be what real dreams are made of?

ANOTHER WORLD?
Might ‘enough’ as a life mode be utopian?
Taylor instances the Hebrew term ‘shalom’ often understood these days as peace.
In historical context it held more a meaning of the sustainable community founded on a core belief in God, and everyday caring.
Thus the yearning for something which is not ours is understood as covetousness/greed.
Possessions as false gods? Religion as an ingredient towards sustainability?

ENOUGH BORNE OF EXCESS
Blake ‘the road of excess’-maybe a source of wisdom.
William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
‘You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.’
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-marriage-of-heaven- and-hell-excerpt/ [online]. Accessed 27 January 2009.

DERIVING MORAL COURAGE
Whose moral courage?
Whose value framework?
Where do communities discover moral courage?
Might moral courage prove to be excessive?
Questions of Leadership.

REFERENCES
Beck, U. {1998}. Democracy Without Enemies. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Ehrenreich, B. {2008} This Land is Their Land. Metropolitan Books.
Hobsbawm, E. {1996} The Age of Extremes. Vintage Books USA
Land,R. Meyer,J. and Smith, J. {2008}. Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines. Sense Publishers: Rotterdam.

Madeley, J. {2009}
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/31/face-to- faith-john-madeley [online].. Accessed 1/2/09.
Miller, T. {1996} How to Want What You Have. Avon Books
Phillips, A.The Essay {2008} Excessiveness . BBC Radio 3 September 15-19, 23.15 p.m.
Taylor, J. {1975}. Enough is Enough. Scm-Canterbury Books.

The Essay {2008} Excessiveness . BBC Radio 3 September 15-19, 23.15 p.m.
To talk about excess often seems to invite excessive responses in people.
Where do our standards come from?
How do we come to feel that someone is being excessive?
What do we feel like doing about it?

It’s almost always other people who are being excessive.
Yet other people’s excesses might reveal to us something of ourselves.
It may be that we have become excessively frightened of becoming frustrated.
By describing things as excess we tend to judge things before defining what they are.

Excess is a sign of fear of scarcity.
The adolescent….tends to meet excess with excess. Excessive boredom is met with excessive excitement.; excessive despair is cured by excessive idealism; excessive uncertainty is cured by excessive conviction.
Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves. [consider poverty in its widest sense….].

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Betwixt and between-liminality in community development

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