This book introduces social practitioners - community development
workers, social workers, organisational change facilitators, social,
ecological, cultural and political activists - to a phenomenological
tradition of reflective practice.
Critiquing reductionist, linear and ossified thinking in the social and
ecological fields, the book offers an exciting new alternative that is
honouring of the uncertainty of all living and therefore emergent social
processes. Linking phenomenology and Goethe's 'delicate empiricism', the
book challenges practitioners to observe and work with living processes.
As such, the book charts two stories, two inquiries. One personal and
the other social. The first is the personal phenomenological inquiry
into the author's own practice, a search to make sense of the nuanced
and subtle practice that he brings to the social world.
The second journey is the inquiry into how this social practice, shaped
as it is by a confluence of three rivers - dialogue and community, soul
and depth psychology, Goethe and 'delicate activism', along with other
thinkers on 'observation' and 'aliveness' - can be understood in the
context of a wider phenomenological reflective practice.
This second journey draws on years of experience and research in Brazil,
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe. Presenting a
philosophical, personal and practical analysis, it offers a new approach
to observation and action, while working with aliveness and complexity
within the social and ecological fields.
It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work and
community development and particularly courses on social complexity.
