In this blog-series I explore the various philosophies which have shaped, are shaping or (imho) should shape community development work. Search for the tag: #CDPhilosophy to find all related posts.
Martin Buber is one of the best places to start when it comes to Community Development Philosophies. His simple, but powerful Philosophy of Dialogue, consisting of the “I-Thou” relationship, is little known but essential to engage in when working with people, particularly diverse people who sometimes come together with apparently little in common.
In fact the recent move of some toward gender fluidity can be seen to relate to this “I-Thou” approach. In many ways the call to change pronouns requests that people look beyond a person’s apparent gender to consider the nuance of a person’s being and identity. One can do this while maintaining gendered pronouns, but by bringing pronouns to the fore it does force others to consider thinking about the unique stories people bring into their lived experience.
I believe that adopting a philosophy of “I-Thou” and developing a deep understanding of this approach is more powerful than asking others to change gendered pronouns as it is likely that adopting ‘they’, alongside ‘he’ and ‘she’ will just become a ‘third gender’ with little understanding of the intent behind it. There is also no way two, three or even four or five pronouns can capture all the variance of the human experience, therefore we risk not allowing our limited vocabularies to rightly accommodate true diversity if we stipulate that our language must be precise to the point of legal speech in daily life – and in fear of causing offence, language actually becomes a barrier instead of a doorway to understanding.
Adopting a philosophy to inform the way one relates to other people (i.e. knowing why you do something) is more powerful than changing a behaviour due to common practice or because you have been told/asked to do so. A rigorously examined personal philosophy is transformative rather than prescriptive.
So, what is the Philosophy of Dialogue? What does it mean to adopt an “I-Thou” approach?
It is very simple really.
It is coming to someone without any assumption of who they might be based on what you see in front of you, what you have heard about them or what you assume based on what you can see (e.g. their gender, the colour of their skin, their size, their obvious abilities, and so on). On approaching a person you approach to deeply listen, to allow time and space to truly connect as beings, to be open to sharing yourself (the “I”) and open to truly hearing and understanding the other (the “thou”). It is turning the objective “you” into the subjective “thou” and allowing the “I” to be seen.
I hope you can see that this distinction is a subtle but powerful shift in approach. It is where Asset Based Community Development needs to begin, where a “culture of silence” is confronted and where a Critical Pedagogy can be established.
Tulitha King 