Define less, explore more: for a joyful awakening to a reality of chaos and complexity in the development sector! By Paola Beltrami

« What is the most resilient parasite? … Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? … An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it is almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully conceived - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere. »

This is what Cobb, the protagonist and dream-stealer of the movie “Inception,” tells his partners in crime in one of the 2010 science fiction movie’s most iconic scenes. This is what “Inception” is about: planting one simple idea into someone’s subconscious and infiltrating his dreams, where projections of reality and actual emotions mark indelibly one’s convictions about what is true and what is not. Once that idea is there, as a seed, it will grow and become one’s way of looking at reality and oneself in it. Only the realization of being in a dream can help contain and partly control the insinuating power of subconscious ideas. A realization that comes by experiencing the paradoxes: those places where the space of the dream ends into impossible architectures which could not stand in reality.

As I reflect on my over 10 years professional journey in the “International Development Sector”, I cannot help thinking about this science fiction movie and its powerful message. Throughout the ceaseless flow of projects, logical frameworks, papers, strategies, initiatives, reports, workshops, trainings, meetings that have filled my almost 4380 days of work in this sector, I have gradually started to sense some of these profound, unchangeable ideas that are deeply rooted within the framework of everything we do, that seem almost carved into a sort of collective professional subconscious.

Like in the movie, these ideas look obvious and “natural;” they are self-evident and taken for granted. Their definition remains mostly vague, making these concepts particularly versatile and adaptable, which can partly explain their success. Most of all, they inform policies, frameworks, and strategies, directing efforts and resources towards specific goals.

While these concepts have often served as powerful tools to introduce new visions and even shift power by making certain dynamics visible, they have also entered the realm of foundational unquestionable beliefs that are automatically proposed repeatedly. They have become, in many instances, “myths” which often lead to a reductionist and simplistic understanding of reality as well as static normative ideas that limit our capacity to explore and fully apprehend diversity. We need then, to explore these concepts and find those “paradoxes”, the non-senses that help us wake up to realities that encourage generative chaos, mess and infinite nuances. In this article, I am going to discuss some of these myths.

Community

Community is one of the most used and ambiguous concepts within the sector. In general, this concept is celebrated and even put at the center of initiatives and projects. We look for communities. We engage communities. We mobilize communities. Communities should lead and decide. Community-based services should be supported. Community-based organizations should get funded. While this concept of community is massively present and promoted, it often remains extremely unclear and seems to serve as catch-all concepts to describe very diverse social groups.

Indeed, one of the biggest challenges often faced in development sector programs is to define what is meant by communities in specific contexts. Communities get labelled for what they supposedly “have in common,” often overlooking their internal diversity and conflicts. Sometimes we may even say that some communities are artificially created by programs that need them to exist to incarnate the ideal protagonist of their narratives. As a result, you get very artificial approaches that do not support organic and spontaneous social dynamics, with lightening “changes” which quickly fall apart as soon as the program is over.

The awakening paradox on the use of this concept is the need on one side, to have communities as central actors of programmes with the risk, on the other side, to crystallize them into static groups which fail to express the full diversity of societies. To avoid this paradox, it is necessary to embrace the plurality of “communities,” with their names, stories, blurred and intricated boundaries.

Participation

Participation is another concept in the sector. Similar to the concept of community, oftentimes, this complex concept translates into limiting practices. Who ever is familiar with Hart’s ladder of participation is aware of what we call “participation” can mean very different things in practice. Roger Hart developed its model of the ladder of participation to explain how youth and children’s “participation” could also turn into manipulation, tokenism or even be purely “decorative.” The key factors to pass from a passive and opportunistic form of participation towards an active and meaningful one, are the level of input and independence experienced by youth in the decision-making.

My experience has shown how often very different practices like informing a group, consulting them, gathering their perspectives and inviting them to events are all labelled as “participation”. While it is understandable that this concept is broadly used to mean different things, I am also wondering if this elusiveness of its meaning has not contributed to many people’s scepticism towards the whole concept of participation in international development.

The awakening paradox, in this case can be observed in the use of participatory practices,involving different people and perspectives during the implementation of programmes’ where key decisions have already been taken. Consultations often happen when a programme has already been funded, leaving participants without the possibility to opt for the “option 0”, the possibility of not agreeing with the very existence of the program/initiative in the first place. Whenever participatory approaches are proposed, it is essential to focus more on what is at stake. Meaningful participation happens and catalysed when something important is to be decided. You may have everyone around the table, but this does not account for the quality of the participant’s engagement if the decisions to be taken are not significant.

Replication

Replicability is the idea that an intervention in a specific context can be modelized and proposed in other contexts, contributing to solving similar issues and problems. I have often looked at the possibility of replication as a dream. How great it would be to develop something somewhere and then be able to just replicate it in other contexts, saving a lot of resources and being already almost sure about a minimum rate of success!

I have witnessed the importance of offering inspiring models to unlock imagination and mobilize around novel solutions and initiatives. However, sometimes replication is a normative goal to be achieved at any cost. Complex initiatives, with specific stories and elements that made them successful, are modelized to become as “neutral” as possible so that they can be employed in other contexts. Also, the concept of replicability often tends to promote a focus on the technical aspects of a certain “solution,” putting in the background all the contextual elements that made that experience successful.

The awakening paradox, in this instance, is the contradiction between on one side the focus on the importance of local contexts within development practices and the oversimplification that can often result in an obsession with replicating a “solution”. Rather than replication, I would prefer if we started to think in terms of contagion and contamination. How can we make a certain context receptive to get “infected” by inspiring models? How can we pack the knowledge and learning generated in a context to turn it into a powerful virus?

Best practices and Success stories

We need to show what works and what was successful. The compulsion with success is everywhere in the field of international development. Personal stories of so-called “beneficiaries” (yes, many still use this term!) are wrapped up into a several paragraphs to market a certain intervention. The link between the intervention and the positive achievements of some individuals or organizations become the whole story. In these cases, we may have the impression of watching a play, where all the characters fade away and a solo actor stands in the light, at the center of the stage, reciting a monologue against a background of darkness.

The awakening paradox in this case, lies in the disempowering aspect of looking at “failures” in negative terms. While it is usually encouraged within programs to evaluate what went “wrong,” this binary vision and categorization of events is not really supporting a deep understanding of reality. Can we celebrate failure as much as we celebrate success? Or better, can we just embrace a complex and nuanced narrative of reality without promoting only.

So what?

This very brief review of some of the key “inception” ideas within our sector, was a mental exercise of reconnection. These concepts and their contradictory use are often creating parallel realities rather than supporting an in-depth connection with local realities. They keep us in beautiful dreams where we end up trapped for way too long. We end up looking for things that do not exist. I think we should all continue, through our practice, to face and actively look for paradoxes. To get “kicked” by reality and finally wake up. While complexity may make us feel uncomfortable, a chaotic, messy, mysterious collective reality is always preferable to a solitary dream.

¹I want to clarify, that here I am only talking about my personal experience, which cannot encompass the variety of perspectives within this sector. My situated perspective on someone who has primarily experienced the sector through INGOs work within the MENA region since 2012 until today.

Paola Beltrami brings over 10 years of professional experience in project management and design for local development, organizational and entrepreneurial initiatives in Italy, Europe and the MENA region. She has been supporting local and international organizations in creating funding mechanisms for civil society organizations, including feminist organizations and social enterprises. With a background in political sciences and human rights, she is committed to bringing a critical eye on how the international development sector reproduces colonial structures of injustice. She loves drawing on the walls with her 2-year old daughter.