The Personal and Political: Ways to Support Participatory Design

Extending solidarity requires reconsidering who we are and what we stand for. Transformation requires inner and outer work, but by remembering our relationship with nature, we have a hope of rebalancing our lives as we teeter on the brink of multispecies extinctions. Meditation, storytelling and scenarios can help us to become more creative and hopeful. We cannot work with others until we know ourselves. The paper and volume on transformative systemic intervention aim to provide some pathways on how to support constructive engagement, hope and praxis by linking Indigenous views on natural law with multispecies relational governance for protecting the commons. The transformative research is based on the premise that we live in a participatory universe which we create. The overall purpose of the paper and the volume using a metalogue approach in the many joint chapters is to explore how transformative research can make a difference starting with recognising and remembering the value of Indigenous knowledge systems. The context of storytelling needs to be carefully considered. In the first place, it needs to be led by a trusted local leader, and the purposive process needs to be directed at areas of concern, for example, poverty, conflict or climate change. Appropriate ethics approval needs to precede all engagement. Extending solidarity requires reconsidering who we are and what we stand for. Transformation requires inner and outer work, but by remembering our relationship with nature, we have a hope of rebalancing our lives as we teeter on the brink of multispecies extinctions. Meditation, rituals, storytelling and scenarios can help us to move more rapidly towards ecosystemic living. These processes can also help us to become more creative, confident about Indigenous knowledge systems and hopeful. We cannot work with others until we know ourselves, explore our relationships, recognise our complicity and until we understand that human beings are a strand in a living system that will unravel if we do not respect and regenerate the intermeshed links with other species. Policies and governance systems cannot regard living systems as a commodity. This requires a new form of governance, democracy and ethics based on understanding of our place in the world and a renewed respect for Indigenous knowledge systems. Transformative research is about showing how this can be achieved in prefigurative case studies with scholars and leaders.