3. What we have marked
• Your ability to • NOT
– Listen – What you think, but that
– Observe you think, hard
– Read – What you say, but how
– Think you say it, clearly
– Collate – What you conclude, but
how you defend your
– Discern own conclusions
– Write
– Substantiate
4. Observations
• Strong introduction
• Golden thread/garden
path
• Reading the references
• Interacting with the
literature
• Evidencing your
evidence
5. Some problems are so complex that
you have to be highly intelligent and
well informed just to be undecided
about them.”
Laurence J. Peter, an educationalist
6. This module is a ‘wicked’ module
• Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, in a 1973 article for
Policy Sciences , used “wicked” to describe the
malignant, vicious, tricky and aggressive problems of
planning (or intervening in social issues)
• Solving the assignment problem is a wicked problem
– The information available is non-linear
– No clear objectives are available- we have to create our
own
– Information available is huge, but not exhaustive
– There is no overview, we have to ‘fly that kite’ ourselves
7. Social problems are wicked problems
• There is no definitive statement of a wicked
(social) problem.
• Each (social problem) is an evolving set of
interlocking issues and constraints.
• In most cases these issues and constraints
are people-centric.
• This makes wicked (social) problem solving a
fundamentally social process.
8. The next assignment is to find a
solution [interventions] to a
[wicked] social problem for your MI
client, and all the other MI clients
create by the class
9. Solutions to [wicked] issues
1. Solutions are not true/false, but good/bad.
2. Every problem is the symptom of another
problem.
3. Every solution is a one-shot deal.
4. The answer cannot be wrong.
10. How do we make problem solving
‘social’?
• Rich pictures
1. As a process of investigation
2. As a process for collaboration
3. As a process of idea creation
4. As a form of communication
11. Linking Boundaries
• Cohen’s work is about Symbolic (social) Construction of
Community
• He writes a lot about boundaries
• Later in term we will look at Urban Morphology
• i.e. How cultural boundaries get ‘written’ on urban
landscapes and design
• Communities have boundaries- physical, and cultural
• We draw boundaries on rich pictures
• The module has boundaries
• We have boundaries
• Cohen’s work is about ‘transgressing’ the boundaries
• This balancing between boundaries is called ‘liminality’
12. to be a critical community
development worker is to
inhabit liminal places
To be:
Neither a public, nor wholly private, person, if being authentic
To neither work in official, or unofficial, places, if being critical
To move communities from space to place, to journey
To keep things wicked, never to collapse the tension/paradoxes
http://www.liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/
