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POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
A PERPETUAL QUEST
Valerie Miller, May 31, 2002
What does a person from the United States have to say of value
to colleagues in Pakistan about political consciousness? I am
not entirely sure. But let me try by starting with my own initial
struggles with consciousness and move to some of the lessons
and questions gathered from friends and colleagues around the
world.
I first got into a fight with political consciousness as a
summer student in Mexico - not really understanding what it
was, but feeling its consequences like an earthquake shake me
to the core. For me at that time, the United States was a paragon
of democracy, equality and human rights -- principles I passionately
affirmed. So when my Mexican history professor told us that
the US had backed a coup against Guatemala's democracy in 1954,
I stood up in class and told him he was wrong. Profoundly disturbed,
when I returned to my university, I spent weeks researching
the case, only to find out he was right and I was wrong. That
discovery led me to a life of constant questions and a career
dedicated to advocacy and education on issues of peace, social
justice and development.
Disturbing Trends: Current interpretations of
advocacy, however, have made me grapple again with this thing
called political consciousness. Let me explain. What colleagues
and I have seen in our work is quite troubling especially for
those of us concerned about making relations of power more equitable.
In the last decade advocacy has increasingly been seen as a
new panacea for problems of government corruption. It has been
promoted by Northern agencies, often well-intentioned, but with
a narrow technical focus on elite lobbying that is relatively
devoid of any deeper power analysis or vision of empowerment.
Disadvantaged populations are seen as groups to be mobilized
on behalf of policy change but not as real partners or decisionmakers.
The importance of strengthening the clout, leadership and voices
of marginalized peoples is not recognized as being an integral
part of advocacy. As a result, advocacy essentially becomes
depoliticized and delinked from building social movements or
transforming NGO beneficiaries into active citizens and real
agents of change - vital elements of democratic governance.
Dimensions of Power : In such circumstances,
power and strategy are viewed rather one dimensionally. Lobbying
and monitoring the visible institutions of authority such as
government or corporations are seen as the answer. Yet these
same forces work at an invisible level to exclude marginalized
groups from public decisionmaking by labeling their leaders
as troublemakers or dismissing their grievances, such as domestic
abuse or peasant land rights, as illegitimate. Without education
campaigns, research, and grassroots constituency building to
gain legitimacy and clout, these voices and issues are denied
an actual place at the table. However, another form of power
operates even more insidiously on consciousness shaping how
people see themselves -- socializing certain groups into subordinate
roles and others into superior roles. Increasingly social justice
groups point out that these attitudes and beliefs are at the
core of inequity, violence and fanaticism.
My colleague, Lisa VeneKlasen, and I explore these different
dynamics in a book - A New Weave of Power, People and Politics:
An Action Guide for Advocacy and Political Participation
- that highlights the experiences and voices of advocates from
around the world. The book points out that, besides resistance,
"Poverty, discrimination, and adversity can breed paralysis
and resignation. They can also generate frustration and anger
that can fester to shape hostility and hopelessness. This is
reinforced by the tendency of society to "blame the victim"
and the "victim" to internalize social prejudices.
For example, many landless peasants believe they are poor due
to their ignorance. Other people see them as undisciplined and
lazy. In reality, most peasants work long hours for extremely
low wages. Similarly, in many countries, women do not seek legal
redress when raped because they are ashamed. Society and the
legal system reinforce this shame by insisting, "she must
have asked for it." What appears to be acquiescence may
be the only option that people have to resist the psychological
consequences of subordination. What does it take to help people
recognize, understand, and act to address the injustice in their
own lives? …many different competencies are needed, but
a core competency has to do with political consciousness."
Political Consciousness: We define political
consciousness as a way of seeing, caring about and acting in
the world. It is guided by a commitment to human rights and
justice and an understanding of power and inequity in social,
political and economic systems, relations and values. We look
at the roots of the term political or politics to distinguish
the term from negative interpretations often associated with
it. Derived from the Greek word 'polis' which meant city-state;
politics had to do with the life of the community. For us, the
challenge of politics and political consciousness, therefore,
involves caring about community and seeking the common good.
It is about hating injustice and the systems and structures
that perpetuate it, but not hating people. It is the art of
respecting and working with one another, seeing the 'other'
as a fellow human being -- shaped by social forces both perverse
and praiseworthy, joined in a common quest and struggle for
dignity.
Grounded in critical thinking and values of solidarity and
human rights, political consciousness is a lifelong exploration
of who we are, how we have been shaped, and how our values,
world view, and actions can contribute to a better world for
all. It is a journey filled with conflict and growth that can
be both liberating and painful. Latin American colleagues working
on gender describe it as in interactive and iterative process
that involves four overlapping levels of consciousness. These
range from passive (accepting roles of subordination as natural)
to questioning (asking why) to analytical (naming and analyzing
oppressive situations) and finally to active-critical consciousness
(developing a critical analysis of inequitable systems and structures
and taking action with others to transform them) .
For social justice advocacy, "Political consciousness is
both a tool and an objective…. As a tool, political consciousness
motivates critical analysis of power dynamics on many levels.
As an objective, developing political consciousness provides
the basis for the kind of sustained and informed citizen participation
necessary to hold powerful interests accountable. Becoming politically
aware can help unravel the self-doubt fostered by subordination
and discrimination and enable people to recognize their individual
power and link with others to address common problems. "
It is what the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, often called
critical consciousness and similar to what others call social
consciousness but with a greater emphasis on understanding power
relations.
Political consciousness not only involves questioning current
power dynamics and demagoguery but also building new forms of
more inclusive and transformative power that improve human life
and forge bridges of cooperation across cultural, racial, ethnic
and religious differences. Categories from gender analysis have
helped us think beyond the traditional negative and coercive
views of power over other people to explore more collaborative
ways of understanding and exercising power. Three alternatives
offer possibilities for creating more equitable relationships.
Power with involves finding common ground and building collective
strength with others. Power to refers to the unique potential
of people to shape their life and transform the world into a
better place. Power within has to do with an individual's sense
of worth, hope and self-knowledge and ability to respect and
engage with others in the common search for human dignity and
fulfillment.
An important part of work on consciousness, especially with
seriously marginalized groups, involves helping people develop
a sense of their own rights -- understanding that for centuries
people have fought to get issues of respect, dignity, and economic
justice put into community rules and, more recently, into international
and national laws. As a result of these agreements, society
and governments are supposed to treat people with certain standards
of fairness. To make these rights real, however, it's also important
for people to understand that they must continue to challenge
power that subordinates and undermines those rights.
Empowering Strategies: How to promote political consciousness?
There are a variety of empowering learning and action strategies,
sometimes called popular education, that help people ask critical
questions, discover new truths, and affirm collaborative values
while solving real life problems. " Paulo Freire spoke
about popular education as a participatory process of action-reflection-action.
While popular education has spawned a myriad of participatory
learning methods, the basic process always involves problem
identification, analysis, and the pursuit of solutions through
dialogue, self-awareness and organizing….Over the last
25 years, activists have built on Freire's approaches and developed
methods that assist people in analyzing their own problems through
participatory research [and what is called participatory learning
and action]….For example, communities concerned about poverty
begin by mapping the individual and collective resources in
their surroundings. They then construct matrices that help analyze
the data and use it in decisions about expanding community economic
projects or creating new ones." Other methods involve sharing
personal stories -- analyzing life histories and community experiences
-- to build bonds between people and develop critical thinking
and action skills.
In our advocacy work, we incorporate empowering strategies
into the entire development and implementation process from
strategic planning to action and evaluation. Starting by developing
a common vision of a just society, people examine their own
histories and then move to a careful analysis of their own country
context and circumstances as a way to better identify and analyze
the specific problems they plan to address . By using participatory
methods and involving the people most affected by problems,
the process becomes one of political education, citizenship,
organizing, and consciousness-raising.
The late Mahbub-ul-Haq, respected Pakistani founder of the
UNDP Human Development Reports, raised concerns several years
ago about how people think and act politically -- concerns that
are ever more urgent today in the face of possible war . He
asked the question - how can we build a more compassionate society?
In so doing, he expands the challenge and understanding of political
consciousness.
"…building a compassionate society is not a technocratic
exercise. It requires solid ethical and moral foundations. It
requires entirely a new way of thinking of ourselves as a human
family, not just a collection of nation states. It requires
a new concept of human security which is founded on human dignity,
not on weapons of war.
In the last analysis, human security means a child who did
not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that
did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit
that was not crushed. And the imperatives of this human security
have become universal, indivisible and truly global today.
The choice before is simple, though stark. We can either learn
to live together, or we can all die together.
Robert Frost summed up the challenge before us when he said:
Two roads diverged in the wood and I -
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
I hope that we show the courage and the wisdom to take the
road 'less traveled by' as we build up a more compassionate
society in the next century."
As violence and hatred spread across our planet, I find great
inspiration in such words. I also find hope in the gestures
and consciousness of people who, in the face of their loss,
turn pain and anger into a search for deeper human connection.
One story that links my country to yours touches me deeply.
In the aftermath of Danny Pearl's killing, his wife and family
have started a foundation focused on building dialogue between
people of different cultures and beliefs through music and journalism
-- passions that were at the heart of Danny's life. I share
this with you because, if we are to build compassionate and
just societies, I think we need to create a tapestry of such
stories from around the world to inspire and challenge our collective
consciousness and actions.
Just Associates
2040 S Street NW Suite 203
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202.232.1211 Fax: 202.234.0980
info@justassociates.org
