Informed by Diversity
Relational Self/Other Practice, Language Performance, and Social Realities as Critical Approaches to Persons, Peoples, and Organizations
This article introduces critical approaches to persons, peoples and change efforts that involve the assistance of practitioners. Such approaches place an emphasis on: An evolving relational, embedded and distributed Self The idea that language constructs or re-constructs social realities, and Reconstructions of practitioner knowledge, from the assumption of a world ‘out there’ that can be measured and known, to focusing on social realities and including client-local knowledge. I argue that these approaches can further inform and develop our practices. In an integrating, global society it is time to move from constructions of persons, peoples and organizations as separate and static, to constructions of relatedness, collectivity and fluidity. The need for change (effected through, for example, individual coaching, therapy, family dynamics, organization development, diversity awareness building, and community development) is often identified and mobilized within a context of Self/Other interactions. Similarly, evidence of a change is also identified through the experience and perspectives of observing Others. I will therefore be referring to all of these contexts with the broader term, ‘social change’.
