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:
1.
They support and nurture people psychosocially in everyday life
contexts
2.
They typically act voluntarily
3.
They have no formal preparation for the role; rather they are
naturally very good at it through life experience
4.
They typically network with and support other natural nurturers
5.
They use culturally appropriate ways to support community, family
and individual wellbeing
6.
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:
1.
A World level analysis
2.
A global transition model
3.
A credible transition strategy
4.
A strategy both meaningful and feasible to persons and groups
5.
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.