Shadow Report

CAE Paving the way towards ICAE World Assembly in Nairobi, 2007

Virtual Seminar

March 6 - 24, 2006

Welcome to ICAE Virtual Seminar: Paving the way towards ICAE World Assembly in Nairobi, 2007 that is starting today,
March 6 and ending on March 24.

Through this virtual Seminar we intend to provide a participation space with relation the preparatory process of ICAE World Assembly and the definition of strategic and organizational aspects. At the same time, we want to promote the reflection on global networks, their functions and challenges in the present global context, incorporating new perspectives, experiences and lessons learnt, as part of this preparatory process and as a new step for the renewal of ICAE.

Programme

Programme

Session 1: March 6 - 10

Introduction - Paul Belanger
Global Networks. Functions. Organizational Models
Sharing and learning from the experience of some global networks: Advantages and challenges of global networks
Cecilia Alemany - Social Watch
David Archer - Global Campaign for Education/ CIRAC (Reflect -Action)
Ximena Machicao - REPEM
Kumi Naidoo - CIVICUS-GCAP
Summary of GCAP Review
Analyzing in depth how networks operate in the present global context - Jeanine Anderson
NETWORKS : Context and Characterization.
Inputs by Sofia Valdivielso
Inputs by Salma Maoulidi
Inputs by Imelda Arana
Paper by Jeanine Anderson
Inputs by Budd Hall
Summary of the week

Summary of proposals

Final conclusions

Regarding logistics, we would like to remind some practical issues about this virtual seminar:

* All of you have been suscribed to the seminar list to follow the whole seminar. If you do not wish to participate, or if you wish to do so through another email address, please write to: secretariat@icae.org.uy or oficina@icae.org.uy

* In order participate, sending your inputs and comments, you have to reply to the list:
icaeworldassembly@listas.chasque.net
* The seminar will last 3 weeks and will be coordinated from Montevideo, with weekly summaries through a moderated list, that is to say, we will try to gather short messages into single messages so as to make reading easier and to avoid receiving hundreds of messages per day.
* The documents will be put up in our website: www.icae.org.uy
We invite you to participate and enrich the debate through your contributions and comments, from your vision and experience.

Warm regards,

Celita Eccher
ICAE Secretary-General

Virtual Seminar
Paving the way towards ICAE World Assembly in Nairobi, 2007
March 6 - 24, 2006

Introduction

by Paul Belanger
ICAE President

The right for women and men to learn and to participate in the construction of alternatives is still more a hope than a reality for the majority of adults around the world. This issue is the central focus of ICAE’s networks.

In the coming three years, two key ‘rendez vous’ will give us the opportunity to debate the issue and make a difference in the political agenda of both our own networks and policy makers at regional, national and global levels. The first event is the World Assembly of Adult Education convened by ICAE in Nairobi in January 2007 and the second is the UN/UNESCO International Conference on Adult Education, CONFINTEA VI in 2009.

During the last fifteen years, since 1990 in Jomtien Conference on Education For All, we did succeed in ensuring the adoption of declarations and plan of actions. It is now time for action, for real correction of injustices. It is now time for rigorous monitoring and efficient advocacy, for building initiatives as prototypes for new public policies. It is also time for new forms of global civil society organizations and actions in order to stop the ever growing inequalities as well as the ecological high risks created by uncontrolled neoliberalism.

In 2009, our networks have to set up clear and attainable targets. For this, we need to discuss now, the role of ICAE’s networks for the following three years. For this, we need to think about how to anchor the right to learn to each and all Millennium Development Goals. For this, we also have to establish the program of our coming WA--and the required processes--, but, even more importantly, we have to prioritize and clarify the central issues of this strategic meeting.

ICAE, a renewed and consolidated ICAE, is more necessary than ever before in order to initiate and connect the much awaited advocacy actions at the world level as well as to strengthen the interconnections between regional and national actions. We cannot start thinking about transforming the multilateral and national agenda on lifelong learning without transforming our ways of doing and without strengthening our network formation and connections.

During the present virtual seminar, we have to examine our chosen actions as networks--and networks of networks--, and also to debate our current advocacy strategies for the recognition of education as a fundamental enabling right to improve our conditions of life, to stop discrimination and to create a future for the new generations.

This seminar is a unique opportunity to ‘make things happen’. What’s at stake? In the long run: less obstacles towards women’s and men’s empowerment and more capacity of actions for citizens. In the short term--or better immediately: a more dynamic network of networks as an efficient watchdog as well as a source of innovations in the exercise of creative citizenship.

Now, it is your turn to speak up and debate.

.............................

We hope that you have already received the welcome message and the introduction words by Paul Bélanger. Now we would like to share with you the paper of Ana Laura Rivoir and we expect it will be helpful to start the reflection on networks.

We encourage you to send your comments so as to start our exchange of experiences.

Cecilia Fernández

Networks and network organization. New organizational strategies in Knowledge and Information Society

By Ana Laura Rivoir

spanish

The network concept is being repeatedly used in different areas: media, business, academic, etc. The concept seems to be in fashion. I think that it is worth thinking that this means something in terms of new organizational forms and this concept fills a gap that had not been considered up to the present moment.

These considerations about new organizational forms relate to deeper structural changes that obey to the so-called knowledge and information society. Thus, organizational forms that used to be efficient and appropriate in modern industrial societies, today are considered inadequate and do not promote the participation of the people involved. The hierarchic-pyramid structures, with rigid and bureaucratized norms, go the opposite way of the present organizational needs.

Thus, it is necessary to investigate which are the possibilities that new technologies provide to facilitate changes and the cultural innovation that is necessary to face them. At the same time, we need to approach a political debate on contents, objectives and principles that shall guide those transformations.

Along these lines, some conceptual elements on networks and network organization, shall be dealt with.

Network: a metaphor and a methodology

We cannot refer to “the theory of social networks” as different approaches coexist in the present scientific-social production. For some people it is a theoretical approach while for others it is an analysis methodology. In some studies carried out about social networks, we can notice an attempt to leave the reductionist analysis and incorporate elements and dimensions that enable a complex analysis, while in other ones, networks are presented in excessively descriptive terms and without theoretical background.

Social networks can be considered in a dual sense whereby they are considered as an existing organizational form and, on the other hand, as an analysis category that can be used as conceptual basis for the analysis of those relationships.

An academic effort to avoid concepts involving rigid cultural standards or fixed social institutions can be noticed ever since the first network analyses in anthropology were carried out. This search aimed at the discovery of elements for change, inflection and social innovation. The study of informal relationships appeared as a tool to identify the discontinuity of social processes and was marked by the interest in the analysis of more complex and heterogeneous social structures. Interest lay in going beyond the analysis exclusively linked to formal organizations and extend it to the study of interactions promoted by individuals. It was understood that these interactions created guidelines by own decision-making, and, in this sense it was essential to study the initiative within the different contexts of interaction.

This need coincides with the above-mentioned present requirements regarding social analysis, in terms of building concepts that enable the analysis of existing social relationships outside institutions or what is instituted. Moreover, recent investigations give account of how network organization constitute the morphology of the main organizations of contemporary societies. In this way, M. Castells calls it Network Society. Possibilities offered by information and communication technologies have enabled to extend this type of organizations to circumstances and institutions that were unthinkable some decades ago. This innovation started with the financial system and has spread out to business organizations (business network), social organizations, and even the State. (Castells, 1997)

In this sense, this perspective of analysis and organizational change constitutes an important element to be taken into account by social organizations. Likewise, the idea of closed and open networks is important as they can be considered as systems. For their survival, networks depend on external inputs which are elements that constitute their mission and contribute to their organization and information resources. Closed networks would be those that have little contact with the environment while open networks receive the inputs of the environment to a greater extent. In closed networks strong links prevail, while in open ones, weak links prevail. (Bott, 1957)

The strength of links is given by the combination of links’ duration, emotional intensity, mutual trust, and reciprocal services. In this way, strong links are characterized by higher frequency, more emotional intensity, greater trust and more reciprocity. On the other hand, weak links are characterized by their instrumentality, low emotional intensity, less trust and frequency of contacts. (Granovetter, 1979)

Among the characteristics of the networks surveyed based on previous studies, we have found: informality of prevailing relationships; horizontality in terms of information flow and regarding decision-making opposed to organizations where vertical-hierarchic relationships prevail; flexibility in the organization and decision-making. The concept of “proximity” in the analysis of networks is also important. It is defined as the combination of trust and proximity of daily relationships and of the other’s knowledge based on the common history. (Lomnitz, 1994)

To wrap up

Based on the characteristics analyzed about network organization, we can conclude that this type of organization constitutes an interesting alternative for organizations and institutions that need to adapt to the new times. Present social structures impose on organizations, a growing adaptation capacity and response speed vis à vis problems and demands. On the other hand, the processes of organizational change are slow and have to be tailored to the needs, capacities and objectives of organizations. Information and communication technologies facilitate changes in global organizations, and, at the same time, enable to increase the information flow and make communication among members possible.

These changes are essential for the survival of organizations in terms of what they are required.

Bibliography

Adler Lomnitz, L. (1994) Redes Sociales, Cultura y Poder: Ensayos de Antropología Latinoamericana. FLACSO, Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrúa.
Castells, Manuel (1997) La era de la información. Economía, Sociedad Cultura. Vol. II El Poder de la Identidad. Alianza Editorial.
Granovetter, M. The strength of weak ties.(1978) American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360-80.
Hannerz, U. (1986) Exploración de la ciudad. Fondo de Cultura económica, México.
Morin, E. (1997) Introducción al Pensamiento Complejo. Gedisa, España.
Rivoir (1998) Redes Sociales: Instrumento metodológico o categoría sociológica. Revista de Ciencias Sociales nº 15, 1998. Fundación de Cultura Universitaria.
Villasante, T. (1998) Cuatro Redes Sociales para mejor-vivir. Del Desarrollo Local a las redes para mejor-vivir. Tomo 1. Lumen/Humanitas, Buenos Aires.
Wellman, B. (1988) Structural Analysis: form method and metaphor to theory and substance.
Whitten, N.E.; A.W. Wolfe Análisis de red. En: Fernández-Martorell, M. (1988) Leer la ciudad. ED. Icaria, Barcelona.

Inputs by Celia Eccher, ICAE Secretary General
spanish

Hi friends,

I think that Ana Laura's presentation enables to take a critical look at ICAE's organizational structure.

Once again, we face the following paradox:

The coexistence between a pioneer and avant-garde vision of the founders, the power of the work of networks, with an organizational structure of the 19th.century unions that was already getting out of date and is now suffering its harmful consequences.

However, aging also brings wisdom, and on this wisdom we base our hope to move forward with the renewal process that started in the Assembly held in Philippines.

Our next World Assembly is a wonderful opportunity to go deep into and analyze carefully this "pyramid" structure, that still survives and promotes a qualitative progress in this renewal process, in the construction of an articulated network and present at global as well as regional and local levels, working jointly with social movements and other networks, coalitions and global campaigns, as well as a learning space in itself, with our regional and national members.

We have made a lot of progress since the Assembly in Philippines, if we recall the recommendations of the external evaluation, we have met all of them.

Likewise, the World Assembly in Nairobi provides this and other spaces for reflection throughout this year, so as to extend our capacity for quick, flexible and horizontal action, and also to have higher and positive impact on Education for All and make it come true.

Virtual Seminar
Paving the way towards ICAE World Assembly in Nairobi, 2007
March 6 - 24, 2006

Dear all,

We are enclosing an interesting paper prepared by the anthropologist Jeanine Anderson that provides elements to go deep into the analysis of organizations and networks as "part of the process of building a global society".

We hope you enjoy the reading and you feel encouraged to make comments and share your experiences.

Cecilia Fernández

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Paper by Jeanine Anderson

International networks and international civil society organizations are some of the most important new phenomena of our era. Governments have long had their webs of relationships, diplomatic alliances, official visits, joint proclamations, shared strategies, formulae for approach and for disengagement. Commerce, businesses and financial institutions also have long histories of interconnections throughout the world. The novelty is the expanding presence of social movements, not-for-profit organizations, and campaigns for international causes based on a shared vision of a different kind of world that the activists wish to bring about.

Sustaining such organizations and campaigns is difficult enough on the local level. The people that are attracted to them tend to be busy and active on many fronts. Though committed to a cause or an idea, they have their own interpretation of it, and it may be difficult to accommodate to other peoples’ somewhat different interpretations. Though motivated by solidarity and the possibility of collective action, such people are often quite individualistic. They value highly their freedom of conscience and action.

All of these difficulties increase greatly when causes, campaigns and organizations move from a local to an international plane. Locally, the members of a network, movement or organization can see and know each other. They can talk face to face and understand each others’ positions. They have a shared context in which they operate, and they can develop a shared analysis of useful strategies corresponding to that context. They can develop common norms, such as rules for debating and reaching closure on controversial points. All these possibilities recede as the scenario for action grows larger and as the actors involved become more diverse and far-flung.

International networks and social movements are, in fact, a very new subject for analysts of social organization. Thus far, few comparative studies exist. A good example of the kind of research that is needed is Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s book, Activists Beyond Borders (Cornell University Press, 1998). The research shows several tendencies:

· Organizing is easiest where there is a clear danger of bodily harm. An example would be the tsunami of recent history, earthquakes and other natural disasters, but also campaigns against torture, child sexual exploitation and similar threats that combine physical and moral danger.

· Single-issue networks are the easiest to establish and maintain.

·       Networks that combine functions on different levels are particularly useful but difficult to manage. The functions may combine research, documentation, denunciation, mass mobilization, organizing to expand the membership, lobbying and making alliances with other international organizations.

International civil society organizations and networks are part of the process of building a global society. It is useful to think of this as involving a new “social technology” that is in full process of evolution. Several matters are at issue. What kind of leadership is most effective? What kind of decision-making mechanisms can ensure the correct mix of local autonomy and global responsibility? What kind of structures can promote initiatives from below while giving the network a strong operational capacity? What kind of management systems are needed for making the best use of money and other resources while ensuring accountability?

Perhaps the greatest challenge for international networks is to reach agreements on a diagnosis of the situations they wish to affect and the strategies they need to deploy. Each member of the network local, regionalexperiences the same problems in different versions. Each participates in a local dialog about these problems and their solutions. Their order of priorities is different from other groups in other parts of the world.

Adult education is particularly affected by the contrasts among local, regional, and global expressions of the problems it seeks to address as well as the opportunities for relevant, practical initiatives. The countries and regions of the world vary dramatically with respect to literacy and basic education, not to mention communications media, access to the Internet, and all manner of popular education activities. Adult work roles, community and political participation, and values around recreational and aesthetic experiences are vastly different. Where can common ground be found to talk about learning: topics, methodologies, applications, significance?

All networks are shaped by their interlocutors. Many network analysts consider that “relations are all.” Networks become strong to the degree that their partners in exchange (friends or “enemies”) are strong. This means at least two things for a network such as ICAE. The first is that part of the differences in context are differences in the type of organizations that ICAE members are involved with at local, national and regional levels. Misunderstandings may arise because it proves very difficult for local members to explain to other local members, on the other side of the planet, just who they are relating to, how and why. One member organization may be surrounded by a dense array of adult education programs and institutions. Another inhabits a region where it practically stands alone. Their very different situations need to be made visible so they can be taken into account.

The second implication of the “interlocutors problem” is that, if a network’s international partners other global networks, organizations such as UNESCO, agencies of cooperation, even critics and oppositionare weak and dispersed, that network will have difficulty shaping its strategies. By all reports, this seems to be the case for ICAE. Many governments are looking to NGOs to carry the entire responsibility of adult education in their countries. Educational theorists are uncertain about what kind of adult learning is necessary for the 21^st century, and even about what “schools” and “universities” may come to look like. International organizations are scrambling to respond to the continuing problems of quality and relevance of basic education, even in rich countries. Under these conditions, defining ICAE’s advocacy role becomes a complex and controversial task.

Whatever else it may be, working globally is complex and demands a capacity for complex thinking. The members of global networks and international organizations have the privilege and the responsibility of thinking on a very large geographical scale and on a temporal plane that is also vast. They need to visualize a future that emerges out of historical processes that, to a large degree, establish restrictive parameters. Participating in such a network is an exercise in complex thinking that has educational value in itself. Most of us who have done this remember intense experiences of intercultural learning, and we are also conscious of our own mental construction of a complex world. With the study of complex systems at the vanguard of the sciences at the moment, the processes involved in constructing such new visions could be useful instruments of pedagogy.

Keck and Sikkink speak of international networks as being places where new norms are negotiated. None of the actors can expect that their vision of the world will come to prevail. All must be willing to make compromises and accept the truth that lies in contrary views. This also must be a skill that we all must learn, for living in a globalized world. The theorists speak of different types of literacy and different kinds of literate societies that we are seeking to build. Societies that are “complexity-literate” and interculturally literate might well be on that list.

An international network concerned with adults and concerned with education ought to be the source of important new thinking about teaching, learning, living and surviving in a complex, multi-level, global world. Such a network would do well to keep a diary and make its own learning process available to itself and others. The members of such a network have the brilliant opportunity to learn and to teach the new “social technology” they are involved in inventing.

Dear all,

We would like to thank you and share with you the interesting comments made by Sofia Valdivielso from Spain to the paper of Ana Laura Rivoir, which calls for the analysis of the specific experience of ICAE, its structure, its operation and its "multiple identities".

We encourage you to share other visions, this is what this exchange is about.

Cecilia Fernández

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Paper by Sofía Valdivielso

Hello everyone, Firstly, I would like to thank ICAE and the GEO team's women for the efforts aimed at this new virtual seminar, which invites us to reflect upon the issue of networks and their operationality. I wish to thank Ana Laura for her paper on networks and I agree with her analysis. In effect, it seems that currently networks are trendy. They are everywhere, in both the public and private spheres; some of them are open, some of them are closed. The network’s morphology tells us if it fits the former or the latter. Is ICAE a network? If the answer is affirmative, is it an open or a closed network? Which would its aims be?

The answer to the first question is yes, and no. In my opinion, there is not only one definition of what ICAE is. We can affirm ICAE is a network because its morphology leads us to think this way: a global structure that is present in every continent, connected, and which operates in several ways. However, we can also think that ICAE is an organization in which several structures exist, some of them necessarily hierarchic, other ones not so much. At certain point it keeps on working on account of its representativity, and in other cases on account of the individual participation of people that want just to participate in order to bring about change. These people participate in certain activities, and they do not participate in other ones; sometimes they are in the vanguard, sometimes in the rearguard. They participate as long as they feel they are being useful, and stop doing it when they think it is no longer necessary, or when they cannot dedicate the necessary time to the task. These are people that connect or disconnect themselves according to the emerging needs and their available time. The whole of this diversity can be found under the acronym of ICAE. ICAE is a structure, a network, a network of networks, a movement, and also a social subject which occasionally is reactive, while being proactive at other times; it is open sometimes (and this seminar is an example of this), and in other occassions it is closed (the executive council meetings, for example). Some times it is present at global level, and in certain opportunities it is present at local level. All these identities coexist simultaneously. ICAE is defined by all these identities. ICAE must become a generator of new social values related to lifelong education and learning. Our work is about generating new cultural codes that will make education a reality for all. This implies legislative changes that shall be assumed by governments, and ICAE has to do an important work along these lines. To this end, the experience of other movements and other networks can result extremely useful. For example, the women’s movement has imposed the greatest cultural revolution of humankind’s history, and it has done so without following the traditional political channels. The changes of the cultural codes, which took place in women’s minds first of all, were so deep that finally they were institutionalized by the political systems, and above all, by those most dynamic and democratic ones. At the same time, this complex identity of ICAE results in the fact that sometimes the carried out actions are global, but in other opportunities the actions turn out to be partial and fragmentary. Well, all those actions carried out by thousands of people create, little by little, a network. Our hope is that the networks’ development will be strengthened right until they include even those who want to fight their unacceptable effects. This way, the social movements, which were previously local, and therefore localist, can connect themselves through the internet – and in fact they are already doing that- not only to exchange information and experiences, but also to coordinate actions and vindications and produce media impact, because, quoting Castells, in information society, that which is not in the media just does not exist.

Inputs by Ana Laura Rivoir