Chapter
Thirteen – Evolving the Laceweb Social
Movement
ORIENTING
This chapter continues
research on the Laceweb and its role in Neville’s
exploring of epochal transition. It commences with a sociogram-based
discussion on actions among natural nurturers for evolving, enabling, and
supporting Laceweb networks, and the passing on of
nurturing ways. Neville’s own writings about his macro-framework for the next 250
plus years are discussed and analysed. The chapter concludes with evolving
action and future possibilities for the Laceweb
Social Movement.
EVOLVING
THE LACEWEB AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Turner and Killian define a social movement as:
A collectivity acting
with some continuity to promote or resist change in the society or group of
which it is a part. As a collectivity, a movement is
a group with indefinite or shifting membership and with leadership whose
position is determined more by the informal response of adherents than by
formal procedures for legitimating authority (1972).
Laceweb is a social movement within the terms of that
definition, though within the Laceweb as I
understand, nothing is resisted or confronted.
I have traced the Laceweb origins in
Through Psychnet
(an as a person linked to UN-Inma- refer Appendix 30)
I carried out a series of action research visits during July 2003 to October
2004 relating to finding and linking up natural nurturers among indigenous and
grassroots people. These visits were to
Through the Psychnet Secretariat in Manilla I
attended a five day action research gathering attended by 37 of the people I
had linked with in my above travels from seven countries (East Timor, West
Papua,
The participants were
given the following identifiers of natural nurturers by Elizabeth, Ernie and myself and they were asked whether such people existed in
their respective cultures:
- They support and nurture people psychosocially in
everyday life contexts
- They typically act voluntarily
- They have no formal preparation for the role;
rather they are naturally very good at it through life experience
- They typically network with and support other
natural nurturers
- They use culturally appropriate ways to support
community, family and individual wellbeing
- The locals know who they are and seek them out at
relevant times
While there were cultural
differences, every grassroots person at the Gathering agreed that such people
were present in their cultures. They were readily able to describe who they
were, their values and typical ways they support people. Also, attendees from
within the same cultures at the Gathering had consensus about characteristics,
values and ways of natural nurturers in their area. Below are two photos of
artistic representations of natural nurturers made by the participants from two
of the regions at the Gathering:
Photo 1 Photo I took at Tagaytay in Aug 2004 -
the natural nurturer wise old person from
Photo 2 Photo I took at Tagaytay in Aug 2004 -
natural nurturers symbolised as a coconut tree from
Photo 3 Photo I took at Tagaytay in Aug 2004 - A
Cultural Healing Action based mandala
I took photo 57 showing the Cultural
Healing Action based mandala we created on the final
day of the Philippines Gathering. It contains clay and paper sculptures of
natural nurturers from the eleven counties, flowers, the healing stones we
used, as well as paper models depicting the significance of our names. These
surround a clay model depicting the three landforms, Keypoints
and Keyline (modelling/sculpture as aspects of
Cultural Healing Action). Ceremony and ritual were regularly used throughout
the Gathering.
At Tagaytay
I again introduced Cultural Keyline to similar
effect. The term ‘connexity’ (and its connotations)
was greeted with great enthusiasm by the people from
EVOLVING
NATURAL NURTURER NETWORKS
What follows is a sociogram-based analysis of the processes Neville used in
networking with natural nurturers in evolving the Laceweb.
Neville repeatedly emphasized to me that in any engagement he had as an enabler
nothing happened unless local grassroots people wanted it to happen.
Locals would take what they wanted from him – again if they wanted it. This is
the frame in which the following analysis is to be read. The above is why
tentative language is used below.
The following sociogram material was well received in Tagaytay
in October 2004 by the grassroots people. The black disk symbol (Sociogram 1) is used to depict a local Indigenous, small
minority or intercultural wellbeing nurturer.
Sociogram 1
These nurturers are
living among other locals depicted as in sociogram 2.
Sociogram 2
The crosshatched disk
symbol (Sociogram 3) is used to depict a non-local Laceweb enabler. Enablers, as their name implies, enable
others to help themselves towards wellbeing. Enablers may share
micro-experiences of healing ways and ways that heal towards peace (what
Neville termed ‘peacehealing’). Neville defined ‘micro-experiences’ as
personally sensing some behaviour and noticing the resultant change in our body
- such that we have embodied understanding of new ways of behaving and
responding and change towards wellness.
Learning is typically by personally experiencing using the healing way
on self and others.
Sociogram 3
The darker crosshatched
disk symbol (Sociogram.4) is used to depict a local Laceweb
enabler.
Sociogram 4
Typically, co-learning
takes place. That is, as a person shares healing ways for others to experience
and embody, the sharer also receives insights and understandings back
from these recipients; hence, lines in the sociograms
represent a two-way flow of healing sharings.
Typically what flows between people are rumours – rumours of what works.
Typically the ‘author’ of the rumour is not disclosed. It does not matter.
Recall that Neville associated increases in uncertainty and rumour as a feature
of cultures in decline (Yeomans, N. 1971c).
Sociogram 5
The dark line between
two locals in Sociogram 5 represents a two-way
flow of healing sharings and that these sharings have been adapted to local healing ways. That
is, non-local enablers may share with locals many of the micro-experiences that
they have received from other places and cultures. The local(s) may adapt these
micro-experiences to the local healing ways. They may then pass these
‘localized’ healings on to other locals.
Sociogram 6
Sociogram 6 depicts an enabler interacting with three
locals and one of these three has links to a chain of four, and one other link.
Experiences passed from the enabler may flow through this network system.
In Sociograms
7 and 8 the local who commenced the chain makes links firstly with the second,
and then the fourth person in the chain. This may have the effect of enriching
the speed, flow and feedback of healing ways micro-experiences. In Sociogram 7 a link has also been made between one of the
original three locals and the new local not in the chain. The healing network
is beginning to expand in mutual support.
Sociogram 7
Sociogram 8
Further links have been
made in Sociogram 9 so that now, the local that
started the chain is directly linked to every member of the chain. The chain is
also linked into the original three via the other new member. Notice that the
enabler’s links to the three continue with the lighter links signifying that
the micro-experiences the enabler is sharing originate outside the local
culture. The enabler is in a two-way co-mentoring/co-learning flow and is
receiving feedback from the three locals about how the healing ways they are
receiving from the enabler are being adapted locally.
Sociogram 9
Sociogram 10
In Sociogram
10, the fourth person in the chain has linked with the first and second person
in the chain.
These further links may
have the potential to:
·
increase
and strengthen the diversity in healing ways in use as people share their
differing experience
·
increase
the intrinsic bonding within the network
·
increase
the availability of potential support
·
increase
the store of micro-experience in the network and relational communicating about
embodied experience
·
increase
the potential for self-organizing in the network
·
increase
the potential for emergence in the network
·
increase
the embodied unconscious use of Cultural Keyline
In Sociogram 11 the local natural
nurturer who has been evolving the network is depicted as evolving into a local
enabler. This enabler role emerges over time. Further linkings
have been made. The expanding network has potential for both unifying
experience and enrichment through diversity.
Sociogram 11
Now the ‘web’ like
structure of the linking is emerging.
When Neville got started
in each of Mackay, Townsville,
It will be noted that by
Sociogram 11, the outside enabler may have become a
relatively invisible figure. I am told by my overseas links that this is the
experience in East Asia and
In the contexts that
Neville energized in the Australian Far North, most of the natural nurturers
had a close connexion to Neville.
Healing
micro-experiences may be combined and adapted as appropriate to people, place
and context. Over 30 years of experience has demonstrated that:
- these processes may be self-enriching
- people may be intuitively innovative
- micro-experiences may be readily and easily passed
between cultures
To go back in time,
while the local network depicted in the preceding series of sociograms
has been emerging, the enabler may have been enabling, supporting,
mentoring/co-mentoring and linking with one or more other enablers who are in
turn linking with other locals not known to the local network mentioned above.
Sociogram 12 depicts such a linking. While this second enabler
is also linking with three locals, it may be any small number. Typically, these
linkings start out small.
Sociogram 12
Sociograms 12 to 17 depict the evolving of this second
network. The sequence may differ, though many of the characteristics of the
first network emerge. Linked chains of people may emerge. Further linking
strengthens the number of people available to each other for mutual sharing and
support.
Sociogram 13
Sociogram 14
Sociogram 15
Sociogram 16
Sociogram 17
Sociogram 18
Sociogram 19 depicts later links being made between the
two local networks and the local enabler in the first network links the two
local networks. As these links are extended, the two networks may merge to be
one expanded network.
Sociogram 19
There is always the
possibility that local healers may position themselves such that they generate
links to other local healers without linking the locals to each other. In this
way any local doing this may become the one all the others rely on.
Sociogram 20 shows the original network of eight locals
and underneath, another eight locals where seven locals only have one link and
that link is with the local in the centre. There are differences in the
structure and dynamic between the original network and this later form of
linking - what has been described as integrated and dispersed networks (Cutler 1984, p. 253-266).
Sociogram 20 - Integrated network
(above) Dispersed network (below)
This second pattern (the
dispersed network with a nodal person in the middle linking rumour lines is
prevalent throughout the Laceweb in SE Asia where the
safety and integrity of the natural nurturers is under threat. This is
discussed later. The August 2004 gathering in the
Experience has shown
that the integrated network with the multiple cross linkings
has many advantages such as:
·
Members
have multiple people to call on for support
·
The
flow of information tends to be fast and rich
·
The
diversity enriches the micro-experiences being shared
·
It
is possible to get cross-checks on others’ outcomes
Networks
in the Atherton Tablelands in the
LINKING THE NETWORK INTO THE WIDER
LOCAL COMMUNITY
So far I have only
depicted the links between enablers (non-local and local) and local healers and
nurturers. Typically, these local natural nurturers are regularly being
approached by local family, friends, and others for nurturing. As well,
nurturers tend, as a matter of course, to reach out to support others as they
go about everyday life. Sociogram 21 depicts three
other locals (shown as the striated circles) that have links with one of the
healers. Typically, each of the healers has a number of locals that seek out
their support from time to time. As healers pass on healing ways to locals that
enable them to help themselves, often these other locals emerge as healers and
start to merge with the wider healing network.
Sociogram 21
THE ENABLING NETWORK
Enablers are also part
of an enabling network. Sociogram 22 depicts the
original enabler’s links to the Laceweb enabler
network.
Sociogram 22
After a time, the
network may start to link more widely into the wider local community and extend
through a number of surrounding villages (settlements/towns) with links to more
distant places. The healing network starts to enable self-healing among the
local communities. More and more people discover that they can change their
wellbeing as depicted in Sociogram 23. Nurturers begin to identify other nurturers
living in their area with whom they have not yet
established links.
Sociogram 23
After a time, whole
villages (settlements/towns) may enter cultural healing action as depicted in Sociogram 24. The triangular symbol represents a dwelling
and the three rings of dwellings depict three villages located in reasonable
close walking distance from each other.
Sociogram 24
Note the differing
patterns of transfer depicted in Sociogram 24.
At the top right:
·
an
integrated support network
·
an
isolated link
·
a
dispersed chain linking 5 people
At bottom right:
·
one
nodal person is a source for five separate others in a dispersed network
After a time, locals may
evolve as enablers and so further assist in the spreading of cultural healing
action.
At other times there may
be campout festivals, celebrations, and gatherings of enablers, nurturers and
other locals from a number of villages (settlements/towns). These may last for
days with diverse and spontaneous cultural healing action occurring.
An example of this was
the Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering Celebration on the
Atherton Tablelands in Queensland Australia in June 1994 (Roberts and Widders 1994).
Sociogram 25 depicts the network shown in Sociogram 24 after they have gathered together in a healing
festival (what Neville (Dec 1993) called a HealFest).
Typically such gatherings create opportunities for a sudden large increase in
linking. You may note that the people in the lower right of Sociogram
25 who had relied on the central person, have now met
up with each other and formed into a mutually supporting net. This network has
linked with the enabler to their left and into that little network. The network
on the upper left has also made further linkings and
one person has made many linkings throughout the
other networks. All of this linking may hold forth promise for further
enriching. Just as the nature of the system covalent bonding at the molecular
level determines system properties such as transparency, malleability, conductance,
brittleness and strength, so the nature of bonding links determine healing
network characteristics (refer Neville’s poetic desert web metaphor in Chapter
One).
Sociogram 25
All
of the foregoing depicts the forms of networks Neville was evolving in the
Australia Top End.
Sometimes
an intercultural enabler may set up links with healers who do not want
information about themselves, their links, or their Laceweb
involvement known to anyone else. Where torture is used for social control,
healing the tortured is deemed by the torturers as a subversive activity.
Consequently, throughout parts of the Region, Laceweb
linking operates on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Neville never revealed his overseas
links to me as I had no need to know. Many of the people involved want to keep
a very low profile. Some healers are wanted dead by dominant elements in the
areas they live in; as stated, healing may be deemed by some the ultimate
subversive act. Someone else revealing a Laceweb
person’s details to another person without that person’s permission would
typically mean that the link with the betrayer would be severed permanently.
This limited knowing of who is involved is not a weakness; it is a strength. It is isomorphic with neural networks where only
four adjacent connections are typically activated as things fly along the
neural pathways; like the brain, information may travel very quickly.
In
the Laceweb there can be very long chains where
healers know only between two and five people in the chain. In these dangerous
contexts, no one can find out the ‘member list’ in order to undermine the
movement. The list does not exist. No one knows more than a few of the others
involved. An enabler may set up links with a number of these ‘anonymous’
healers. Each of these may have ‘trust’ links with between one or as many as
four or five people along ‘rumour lines’. Sociogram
26 depicts such a rumour line where each of the link-people has a small group
of healers they know in their local area. Each of these sets of other local
healers is not known to any of the others in the rumour line. Each segment (and
the whole rumour line) is self organising.
Sociogram 26 -
Rumours network linking
small healing groups
at different locations
Considerable
portions of the Laceweb throughout the East Asia
Oceania Region take this form. The larger black circles depict the healing
people who pass on the healing rumours backwards and forwards to healers in
other localities.
As
shown in Sociogram 26 there are small groups of healers
in the different locations. Number 1 is a nodal person with links to other
parts of the Laceweb. Number 1 knows 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Numbers 4, 5 and 6 know each other. Numbers 6, 7 and 8 know each other.
Typically, no one knows more than 4 or 5 people in the chain.
Sociogram 27 - A
dispersed network with a nodal link person in the middle
The
healer in the middle in Sociogram 27 is a nodal
person and a key energizer in passing rumours from one segment of a network
into many other rumour lines linking local small networks. Often a nodal person
is able to pass on the healing ways from one cultural rumour line into the
rumour line of another culture. Any of the little local networks may have
potential to expand in the local area by locating other natural nurturers, or
by so enriching others in their self-healing, that they also become enablers
and natural nurturers. The above sociogram is
idealized in the linear nature of some of the lines; this was only for ease of
drawing. Lines do not represent locality relationships; the links jump between
different places in the region.
While
these linkings are between caring enablers and
natural nurturers Neville spoke of there been misunderstandings from time to
time that cause people to sever links. Neville would from time to time tell me
not to contact certain ones till he lets me know things have been ‘cleared up’.
The Sharing of Micro-experiences
Among Locals - A Summary
The following lists
Cultural Keyline aspects of the above Laceweb action:
·
Nothing
happens unless locals want it to happen
·
Enablers
using all of their sensing of and attending to the local social topography
outlined in Chapter Nine
·
Interacting
with the surrounding cultural locality as a living system
·
Enabling
others to tap into personal and interpersonal psychosocial and other wellness
and resilience resources using the following processes:
o
Enablers
sharing healing micro-experiences
o
Locals
adapting micro-experiences to local nurturing ways
o
Locals
passing on their new micro-experiences to each other.
·
In
this way locals may become a resource to each other
·
No
local becomes a ‘font of all wisdom’
·
Locals
may be engaging in the enabler role or beginning to take on this role
·
Enablers
are not seen as the ‘font of all wisdom’
·
As
the local healing network strengthens, the enabler may become more in the
background
·
Networking
may respond to perturbing action by enablers
·
Networking
may be emergent
·
Locals
may take on or extend their local enabler roles
·
Locals
may use naturalistic inquiry and iterative action research
·
Nurturing
may take place as people go about their everyday life
·
Nurturers
may use local knowings in responding to themes
conducive to coherence in the local social topography
·
The
sharing may be self-organizing
·
No
one is ‘in charge’, although everyone involved may have a say
·
There
may be shared accountability for unfolding action
·
Global
multidirectional social, cultural and intercultural communicating and
co-learning may occur among those involved - following Terry Widder’s remarks to Franklin (1995, p. 59)
·
There
may be the sharing of embodied micro-experiences and the healing/nurturing role
·
Nurturing
may be an intrinsic aspect of cultural locality
·
There
may be the enacting of local wisdoms about ‘what works’
·
What
‘fits’ may be repeated, shared and consensually validated
·
Healing
actions may be resonant with traditional Indigenous ways
·
The
use of organic processes - the survival of the fitting
·
Knowing
may include the ever tentative unfolding action
·
Organic
roles - orchestrating, enabling and the like
·
Healing
actions that work may be passed on as rumours that may be validated by action
Laceweb as a
social movement, and evolving micro-models of epochal
transition are discussed in the next section.
ON GLOBAL REFORM
In Neville’s ‘On Global
Reform’ paper (Yeomans 1974) (introduced in Chapter One) he wrote about his
involvement in the New State Movement in Far North Queensland and its potential
relevance for his ideas. At one level this ‘On Global Reform’ paper was written
for the Australian Humanitarian Law Committee, and as a paper submitted on
humanitarian law for Neville’s law degree. At a more significant level, I
suspect that this paper is Neville’s key epochal transition document.
Its precursor is Neville’s ‘Mental Health and Social Change’ paper discussed in
Chapter One (Yeomans, N. 1971c; Yeomans, N. 1971b).
Neville’s wording of the
forward to his fathers ‘City Forest’ book (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b) published in October 1971 (Appendix 4) draws on
and extends Neville’s ideas from his July 1971 Mental Health and Social Change’
paper (Yeomans, N. 1971c), and acts as a precursor to his 1974 ‘On Global
Reform’ paper (Yeomans 1974).
The
i.
Sensing
ii.
Enabling
self organizing contexts where caring resonant people self organize in mutual
help using values and behaviours respecting the earth and all life forms
‘On Global Reform’
written by Neville in 1974 specifies Neville’s Epochal Quest and his big
picture long-term framework for achieving epochal transition. Neville told me
of this paper in 1994 and said he was unsure of where I could find a copy. I
kept asking and finally found it in June 2000 a month after Neville’s death in
a collection of Neville’s papers recovered from his Yungaburra
house by Marjorie Roberts.
In this On Global Reform
paper, Neville writes about one model of Global Governance being put forth by
people described as ‘normative realists’ (Neville recognized downsides of their
position):
The
global transition model of the normative realists has emphasized a credible
transition strategy in the move towards a more peaceful and just world. However
it is necessary to make such a strategy both meaningful and feasible to persons
and groups, and to underpin that world level analysis with relevant application
to individual communities. An attempt will be made to do this in an Australian
context by presuming the creation of an Inma in North
Queensland (1974).
Neville
refers to a ‘credible transition strategy’ - recall that Neville structured
Fraser House to be a ‘transitional community’. For Neville, the exploring of
the nature and behaviours of transitional communities in Fraser House was
evolving ‘Global transitional models’. Notice Neville’s linking of macro and
micro in the above quote – using the principal, ‘Think globally. Act locally’ –
using the following elements:
- A World
level analysis
- A global
transition model
- A credible
transition strategy
- A strategy
both meaningful and feasible to persons and groups
- Underpin
that World level analysis with relevant application to individual
communities
Notice
that Neville uses the expression, ‘presuming the creation of an Inma in
Neville
continued:
It is
submitted that…consciousness-raising...would occur firstly among the most
disadvantaged of the area, including the Aborigines. Thus human relations
groups on a live-in basis could assist both the growth of solidarity and
personal freedom of expression amongst such persons.
In
initial experiences along this line the release of fear and resentment against
whites has led to a level of understanding and mutual trust both within the
aboriginal members and between them and white members (Yeomans 1974).
In the last paragraph, the ‘initial experiences’
Neville was referring to was the Human Relations Workshops in Armidale and Grafton in 1971-1973 (Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971a). In saying, ‘the growth of solidarity and
personal freedom of expression amongst such persons’, Neville was referring to
the experience of participants in those workshops. Neville spoke of people
regaining their voice and forging inter-community cooperating in networking.
Terry Widders referred to ‘social and cultural
communication’ (Franklin 1995, p. 59).
Notice that the above process is again using
Cultural Keyline:
1.During the milieu of the Human Relations
Gatherings, at the various Therapeutic communities in
a. Pervasive attending, sensing and supporting
of self-organising action, emergence, and Keypoints
conducive to coherence – monitoring theme, mood, values and interaction among
the Indigenous and the marginal
b. fostering cultural locality (people
connecting together connecting to place)
Neville and resonant people engaging in support towards
strategic design possibilities and context-guided perturbing of the social
topography towards wellbeing – where nothing happens unless locals want
it to happen and make it happen – to paraphrase Maturana[1]
(1996):
….mutual help in interactional and
relational space re-constituting social relating through a flow in consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations
of behaviours (process about process) and emotions towards consensuality
and cooperation, rather than competition or aggressive strife – evolving homo
sapiens amans (lover) rather than homo sapiens
aggressans (aggressor).
2.Sensing and attending to the natural social
system self-organising in response to the perturbing, and monitoring outcomes.
Neville further links
the Inma framework to a tightly specified cultural
locality and place with the following:
Turning to the ethics and ideology of Inma
people; it is axiomatic that for a life-style and value mutation to occur in an
area, such territory needs to be in a unique combined global, continental, federated state and local marginality. Globally
it needs to be junctional between East and West (Parkinson 1963) at least geographically and in historical
potentiality. At the same time at all levels it needs to be sufficiently
distant from the centres of culture and power to be unnoticed, unimportant and
autonomous.
Sensitive to the
significance of place in Cultural Keyline,
biogeography and social topography, Neville envisioned a four-fold locality
positioning for his INMA to best explore global transition models at the margin
- in the niche of Far North Queensland:
1.
Global
(junctional between East and West)
2.
Continental
(within the continent of
3.
Federated
State, (within a Federated State System) and
4.
Local
marginality (Atherton Tablelands)
The
words ‘unnoticed, unimportant and autonomous’ are apt descriptors of the Laceweb networking in the Australia Top End. Neville told me (Aug, 1988, Dec, 1993 and July,
1998) that in 1963 when Neville travelled the World speaking to Indigenous
peoples about the best place in the World to begin evolving a normative model area, the constant feedback was that Far North Australia was
the most appropriate. Neville told me many times that Far North Queensland and
the Darwin Top End was the most strategic place in the World to locate Inma. Initially I kept thinking he meant the best place for
least interference. While ‘least interference’ was important, he meant the best
place to start global transition modelling. In July 1994, Neville told me that
action would be best above a line between Rockhampton
on the East Coast of Australia, and Broome on the West Coast. The Australia Top
End was a marginal locality adjacent the marginal edge of SE Asia Oceania – a
region containing around 75% of the global Indigenous population as well as
containing 75% of the World's Indigenous peoples (Widders 1993). Neville was convinced that these were the very
best people on the oppressed margins of global society to explore new cultural
syntheses. Zunzanka (Aug, 2004) told me of the most
advanced global discourse on global futures going on in languages other than
English – among the worlds oppressed Indigenous people. Neville had first
action researched ‘marginal locality’ in Fraser House.
Neville had been reading the writings of Richard
Falk of
Neville’s monograph then
proceeds to outline his 200-year transition process. (Neville at varying times
gave differing time periods for the transition - up to 500 years.) Neville
writes of adapting one of the World Order Model Project’s (WOMP) models toward
what he described as a ‘more problem-solving and value priority functionalism’.
By comparing texts it can be seen that Neville drew upon Richard Falk’s book,
‘A Study of Future World’s (Falk 1975), although Neville did not refer to this in his
‘On Global Reform’ paper. Neville also drew upon and referenced Falk’s Journal
article, ‘Law and National Security: The Case for Normative Realism (1974)’.
Three
Transition Phases
In Chapter One I introduced Neville’s three transition
phases in his global reform model (1974):
This
design involves the conceiving of a three-stage transition process (T1-T3)
(where T1, T2, and T3 signify three transition processes):
Tl = Consciousness-raising in national Arenas
T2 =
Mobilization in Transnational Arenas
T3 =
Transformation in Global Arenas
Neville went on to describe proposed political frameworks (1974):
The
political organs have tripartite representation:
1.
Peoples,
2.
Non-government
Organizations, and
3.
Governments.
Notice the bottom up ordering.
It is submitted that T1 consciousness-raising… would occur
firstly among the most disadvantaged of the area, including the Aborigines (1974).
This follows Neville’s starting with the
marginalised in
The next step could be focusing their activities on the Inma (1974).
Neville did this by networking among the
Aboriginal and Islander nurturer women.
This would be accompanied by widespread T1 activities in the
Inma, conducted largely by those trained by previous
groups. Aborigines from all over Australia and overseas visitors would be
involved as has begun (1974).
An example has been the Small Island Gathering
in July 1994 (Roberts and Widders 1994).
Over a number of years the Indigenous population of the Inma would be increasingly involved, both black and white (Yeomans 1974).
This especially started with the Armidale and Grafton human relations gatherings (1971 to
1973).
Co-existing with later T1 activity is a relatively brief
consciousness raising program with the more reformist humanitarian members of
the national community, i.e. largely based on self-selected members of the
helping and caring professions plus equivalent other volunteers. However
their consciousness raising is mainly aimed at realizing the supportive and
protective role they can play nationally, in guaranteeing the survival of the Inma beyond their own lifetimes, rather than trying to
persuade them actually to join it by migration (1974) (my italics).
In 1986, when I first
met Neville I slotted precisely into the italicised sentence. I was one of
those ‘more reformist humanitarian members of the national community’. In
writing, ‘rather than trying to persuade them actually to join it by
migration’, Neville actively encouraged me not to shift North. He said I
was most valuable as a distant resource person; in supporting the Laceweb Internet homepage and doing this research perhaps I
may contribute to, ‘guaranteeing the survival of the Inma
beyond their own lifetimes.’
In the years following
1974 when Neville wrote the ‘On Global Reform’ paper, he followed through with
the above social action. Neville implemented his networking firstly in the
Queensland Top End and in the early Nineties extended this to the Darwin Top
End.
Neville’s paper (1974) continues with the Second Level Transition
phase (T2 level):
‘T2
has two subunits:
T2
(a) commences with the mobilization of extra-Inma
supporters nationally.
Neville was doing this
on his return to
T2 (b) moves to the mobilization of transnationals who have completed T1 consciousness raising in their own continents. That mobilization is of two
fundamentally distinct types:
T2 (b)(i) mobilization of those who
will come to live in, visit, or work in the Inma.
As far as I can
determine T1 consciousness raising is evolving in the
Far North Queensland Inma, with links across
T2 (b)(ii) mobilization
of those who will guarantee cogent normative, moral and economic support
combined with national and international political protection for its survival.
By
T3, the effects of T1 and T2 have largely transformed the Inma,
which is now a matured multipurpose world order model. Its guidance and
governance will be non-territorial in the sense that it extends from areal to global. Politically it is territorial,
economically it is largely continental; in the humanitarian or integral sense
it is continental for Aborigines and partly so in other fields, but it is
largely global.
T3 for the Inma is
then nearing completion, while its ex-members who have returned to their own
continents are moving these regions towards the closure of T1, the
To quote the Inma poem (2000a):
Inma believes that persons may come
and go as they wish, but also
it believes that the values will stay and
fertilize its area, and
it believes the nexus will cover the globe.
Small beginnings have been made in T2a and T2b(i). Laceweb
is about 50 years into the 200 plus years considered by Neville.
The above 200 year global transition model is resonant with
the Yeomans pervasive sensing of all of the myriad
inter-connected, inter-dependent inter-related aspects of self organizing
nature on the Yeomans farms and being mindful of
timing and placement in design. Neville quoted Maturana
(1996):
In this evolutionary process,
living systems and medium change together in a systemic manner following
the path of recurrent interactions in which their reciprocal dynamic structural
congruence (adaptation) is conserved.
In Neville’s 200 year model, resonant people are the medium
for change and the uniquely appropriate placed bio-geographical context of
Northern Australia is the ideal medium for the medium – ‘reciprocal
dynamic structural congruence’.
While Neville envisaged
a ‘World nation-state’ he was not advocating a ‘World Government’. He always
spoke of ‘global governance’ with global governance of global issues, like,
Global warming, the atmosphere, the seas, large river systems, and global
peacekeeping. Regional issues would be covered by regional governance and local
issues by local governance. Recall that Neville had pioneered this three tiered
governance in Fraser House. Neville envisioned many aspects of current
Government service delivery being carried out by communal self help processes.
Having set out his
transition process, for completeness Neville proceeded in his monograph to give
a glimpse of his macro thinking about longer-term generative action for
evolving possibilities towards humane law and caring governance in the Inma.
It can be noted that in Neville’s ‘On Global Reform –
International Normative Model Areas’, he had not specified in detail the
processes he envisaged taking place in any of the three transition phases. He
had given an over-view and then went on to specify possible legal and
governance models that may be applicable at some time way in the future. It was
not until November 2002 (two years after Neville’s death) that I realized that Exegrity (1999) – a set of documents that Neville and I worked
on for nearly a year in 1999 (when he was in constant chronic pain) was this
piece missing from his, ‘On Global Reform’ monograph. These Extegrity
documents set out a comprehensive Laceweb process for
non-compromising funding and the reconstituting of a decimated society such as
East Timor or
The sequence for action embodied in the Extegrity
Document is as follows:
First comes enabling
local self-help and mutual-help towards biopsychosocial
wellbeing.
Second comes the re-connecting with local lore
rather than law. Locals reconstituting their lore raises
possibilities for the local-culture-sensible emergence of norms, rules,
obligations and local law - during their co-reconstituting of community, while
sharing in therapeutic Community Healing Action in evolving cultural locality.
Third comes local
democratic governance by local communities as exemplified by the Fraser House
patients’ committee-based governance. From this local governance may emerge
regional and global governance consistent with Neville’s model mentioned above. From this may emerge law. A
non-compromising non-pathologising international
peace-keeping process may ensure a peaceful framework while the above three
processes are evolved (1999).[2]
At each of the three levels - people’s wellbeing, lore and
governance – the Extegrity Document sets out social
action which reframes the European Community document to being Laceweb Cultural Keyline way.[3]
Neville described the Extegrity
Documentation as an isomorphic (of matching form) reversed,
reframe of the European Community documents. (For completeness we even matched
the layout, paragraphing, fonts and font sizes.)
A feature of both the
European documentation and the Extegrity
documentation is a preference for partnerships-in-action between previously
conflicted people. It was this funding preference for partnerships between
previously conflicted peoples and the ‘completeness’ of the European Community
document that attracted Neville to adapt these forms (European Initiative for Democracy and the Protection of
Human Rights 1998)
The Extegrity Documentation was
sent to UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, to Mary
Robinson, Head of UNHRC, and to various Global governance bodies. It was also
circulated widely among Indigenous communities in the Region – for seeding
possibilities.
The UN process in East
Timor implemented the
The
next section explores the structure-process of the Laceweb.
LACEWEB AND FUNCTIONAL
MATRICES
The Laceweb is not an organization
in the familiar sense. Laceweb in one sense is a
loosely integrated functional matrix of functional matrices (holons in holarchy), discussed
previously in Chapter Eleven. It is akin to the self organising living system
energy on the Yeomans’ farms. Within Laceweb (similar to Fraser House) the psychosocial
structure and processes are entangled - just as the process of
spiralling water structures the whirlpool. Just as the whirlpool is
entangled in the water process, so the Laceweb’s
tenuous structure is sustained as self-organising human energy in action.
As a functional matrix structure, the Laceweb
has no central ‘organization’ that any one can ‘belong to’ or
‘re-present’. Some Indigenous and small minority people can have as much
difficulty coming to terms with this aspect of the Laceweb
as mainstream Western people. While typically Indigenous and small minority
people spurn the idea that any one could represent (re-present) them, they
sometimes expect non-local Laceweb enablers to be
‘from’ or be part of some organization and to re-present it. It typically takes
a while to recognize and understand the amorphous nature of the Laceweb. Neville told me (Dec, 1993) that it is often a few
of the women elders who recognize it first and say that ‘Laceweb
action is like their old ways’.
The next section looks
at examples of Laceweb action.
EXAMPLES
OF LACEWEB ACTION
During the month of June
in the years 1998-2002 there were a series of small gathering celebrations in
the Atherton Tablelands Region to celebrate the anniversaries of the 1994 UN
funded Small Island Coastal Estuarine People Gathering Celebration. A pictorial
summary of action at the June-July 2001 Laceweb
Gathering has been posted on the Internet (Un Inma 2001).
Neville’s T2 (b)(i) consciousness raising in his 200 plus Year Model (1974) has transnationals
who have completed some T1 consciousness raising in their own continents,
coming to live in, visit, or work in, the Inma. An
example of this was the July 2001 Healing Sharing Gathering in
Photo 4 A photo I took in July
2001 of spontaneous dance as change process
Following the
Gatherings, some attendees visited with Aboriginals Geoff Guest and his partner
Norma at Petford Aboriginal Training Farm, 170
kilometres inland from
Photo 5 A photo I took of the
One of the visitors from
Consistant with Neville’s On Global Reform T2 (b)(i) transition phase (refer above), Nodal networkers linked to the Tagaytay
Gathering mentioned above have come from Cambodia and the Philippines to link
with Laceweb and attend ConFest
in 2003/2004 (Down to Earth Cooperative 2002, Newsletter Dec, 2003 &
Dec 2004).
As for Neville’s T2
mobilization in Transnational areas, Terry Widders has written of wellbeing links now existing among
Indigenous and Oppressed Small Minorities in the following places - Australia,
Bougainville, China, East Timor, India, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia,
Myanmar, Pakistan, Sarawak, Southern Siberia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet,
Vietnam, and West Papua, and on small islands dotted right along the Asian and
South East Asian mainland (Widders 1993).
Inma Involvement in Urban Renewal
Project
In October 2004 I funded David Cruise, a Down To Earth director
(accompanied by his son Matthew who paid his own way) to visit Geoff and Norma
Guest at Petford and visit Mareja
Bin Juda (now deceased) and her Manoora
Project in Cairns. This project like some other INMA praxis engaged in
cooperative action with State and Local Government. Resonant with the Rapid
Creek Project in Darwin, Mareja worked closely with
the Queensland State Government, the Cairns City council as well as the local
Aboriginal and Islander Community of the suburb of Manoora
in Cairns in a large scale whole community urban renewal project.[4]
Photo
6 Mareja
Bin Juda at Manoora
– D. Cruise’s Archives – used with permission
Mareja enabled many in
the Manoora Aboriginal and Islander Community to
engage in mutual help in supporting the urban renewal project. Ten years
earlier Mareja had taken a 60-seater busload of women
and children from Manoora for the NCADA funded
gathering at Geoff and Norma Guest’s Healing Farm at Petford
(discussed in Chapter Twelve). Mareja was able to
refer back to that Petford experience in mobilising
these women in the urban renewal project. For the Project Mareja
energised a group of Aboriginal and Islander women (some elderly) in doing day
and night voluntary safety audits of streets, footpaths, pathways, lighting and
other potential hazards. Mareja also energised
Aboriginal and Islander youth to prepare a Transport Revamp Project Report that
the Cairns Council stated was equal to a professional report; this report was
used by the council in its deliberations,
Mareja with community
and Project backing created a process whereby each family could decide how they
wanted the money allotted in upgrading their public housing property; some wanted
carports, others opted for covered verandas for breezeways and outdoor shade,
and others wanted palms and other garden shrubs (this is resonant with Fraser
House patients being asked their views on Sydney landscaping).
Photo
7 Example of House Upgrade
– photo from D. Cruise’s Achives
Prior to this
Project, one large housing complex in Manoora was
virtually without any greenery and extremely hot in the tropical summer and a
place of civil disobedience. This complex was turned
into a beautiful ‘resort’ like atmosphere with many large palms and tropical
plants, shade areas and lawns with sprinkler systems. The Project supplied the
trees, plants and equipment to dig holes and move earth. The local residents
supplied the voluntary labour to plant and maintain the greenery. Mareja told me (July 2003) that along with the habitat, the
sociocultural tone of the place was turned around
completely in twelve months with the crime rates significantly lower – refer
photo 63 below.
Photo 8 The
Housing Complex After Supported Community Self-Help Action
- Photo from D. Cruise’s Achives
The local community
decided what they wanted to do about a dark park in their area that was unsafe.
They decided that the tops of the trees be floodlit at night by using hidden
soft green lights facing upwards. Now the whole park is like an enchanted
forest at night.
Photo 9 The
Floodlit Garden by Day
- Photo from D. Cruise’s Achives
Strife in the park has dropped markedly. In the process, disadvantaged
Aboriginal and Islander people found their voice. They gained group and
community competencies and strengthened family and friend support networks.
Signing Un-Inma Memorandum of Understanding
and Treaties
In June 2002, a UN-Inma Memorandum of Understanding (Yeomans 1992a; Yeomans 1992b) was signed in Cairns by people of Aboriginal,
Torres Strait Islander, East Timorese and Bougainvillian
backgrounds acknowledging ongoing partnership and mutual support towards Laceweb action in and between their respective communities
with further outreach to West Papuans. This intercultural action linking
Indigenous and oppressed people in the Region is consistent with Neville’s Extegrity aspirations (Yeomans and Spencer 1999). Also signed in recognizing Laceweb
Way was the Unique Healing Treaty (Yeomans 1992a; Yeomans 1992b) and the Young Persons Healing Learning Code
included as Appendices 40 and 41 (Psychnet 2005d). The same documents have been circulated in
East Asia Networks.
East Asian Oceania Linking
During June to December
2003, through funding from the UK via East Asia, I visited grassroots people in
six counties in the region – linking with 40 grassroots wellbeing self help
bodies and networks, sharing with 240 people in Cambodia, East Timor (Dili and Bacau), Indonesia,
(Jakarta and Bali) Philippines, Thailand-Burma border regions (Chang Mai and
Mae Sot), Kowanyama Aboriginal Community on Cape York
in Australia, and in Hanoi, Saigon and communities in the Mekong Delta Region
in Vietnam. I heard about their healing ways and shared micro-experiences of
some of the things that had worked in Laceweb
networks. Amidst contexts of major man-made and natural harm, self-help and
mutual help is thriving in these grassroots networks (Balanon 2004; Psychnet
2005a).
In
the August 2004 gathering in the countryside in the
Following
Tagaytay I accompanied Faye Balanon
and Marco Puzin from UP-CIDS (host to Psychnet Secretariat), Than To from CamboKids
in Phnom Penh and a small select group of others linked to Psychnet
to trial our emergency response processes around Takepan,
a small rice growing district near Piket in the war
zone in Mindanao, Philippines. There we found and linked with natural nurturer
networks and resilient people in a number of small rice growing communities
made up of mutually cooperating Muslim and Christian families (Balanon, 2004).
Resonant with Neville’s later T1 action, and T2
(b)(ii), during 2005 among the ‘more reformist humanitarian members of the
national community’ - largely ‘self-selected members of the helping and caring
professions’ (Yeomans 1974), energy has been emerging towards evolving in
Melbourne, in Victoria Australia (at the Southern end of the country),
‘mobilization of those who will guarantee cogent normative, moral and economic
support combined with national and international political protection for its
(INMA) survival (Yeomans 1974).’ Ideas are evolving fund generating economic
application of indigenous knowings about nature’s
resources for generating possibilities for non-compromising funding for future Inma action research.
Action Researching Biopsychosocial Frameworks
Neville pioneered the biopsychosocial mode of wellbeing care (Engel 1977) in Australia and carried out constant action
research on the mode from 1956 to 1998. Inma action
research on the biopsychosocial model continues to
this day.
The biopsychosocial
framing of mutual help action and experience within Laceweb
and INMA may serve as a model for both health and wellbeing services, as well
as a model for Victorian Workcover where the
legislative thrust is to have Workcover claimants
taking their own action to facilitate a return to their prior life
participation and involvement.
SUMMARY
This chapter commenced
with a sociogram analysis of the evolving of Laceweb followed by a summary analysis of Neville’s ‘On
Global Reform’ paper. Laceweb was discussed as a
functional matrix of matrices, and examples were given of Laceweb
action research in evolving Inma as a micro-model
area exploring epochal transition. Chapter Fourteen contains a summary of my
conclusions.