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Twofold Dialogue – On the didactics of the 4th Austrian Conference on Development

The 4th Austrian Conference on Development, taking place in November 2008 in Innsbruck, deals simultaneously with growth, environment and development.
Translated by Johanna Grillitsch

03.03.2008 | Andreas Novy

The 4th Austrian Conference on Development, taking place in November 2008 in Innsbruck, deals simultaneously with growth, environment and development. The conference’s objective is to link theory and practice in various ways, because only by this it is possible to solve existing problems in world development. This requires the willingness to experiment with new forms of thought and action, because in the prevalent approach problems normally get pigeonholed according to responsibilities, competences and disciplines. Political-bureaucratically this happens through the division of Ministries: Department of the Environment for Environmental Protection, Ministry for Foreign Affairs for Development Cooperation and the Ministry of Economics for Growth. Academically, the division of universities in disciplines prevents interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. This fragmentation can likewise be observed in civil society: environmental NGOs fight against climate change, developmental NGOs combat poverty and trade unions campaign for growth and employment. This partition of the world into pigeonholes leads to various detailed responsibilities and ends with no one being accountable for the whole, the very development as a coherent process.

The Conference on Development experiments with innovative forms of organizing and reflecting and lives on people who are poised for dialogue and learning. The activities before and after the Conference are designated to discover new interconnections between allegedly divided aspects of development. This type of reflecting works in coherence and exceeds the horizon of the own, often limited view of problems. The Conference on Development addresses specialists who look beyond their own immediate concerns and disciplines, and invites practitioners who are eager to search for exchange and alliances with new partners. The activities before and during the Conference on Development offer those persons places of dialogue, based on a question-orientated educational approach that inquisitively declares assumed certainties as a problem: Often enough economists, for example, propagate growth strategies, but how much growth can the earth endure? Natural scientists in fact analyze the environment, but what do they know about economy? Climate change, water shortage, harvest and agricultural earnings are topics of some; others concentrate on competitiveness and industrial growth. What do they have to say to each other? What have they learned from each other? And how does all that match together? Who cares for contradictions? What to do if a factory produces essential goods but pollutes the environment at the same time? And what difference does it make if this does not happen in Leoben, but in China?

The Conference on Development wishes to link and produce knowledge to enable an integrated perception of development that recognizes the economic logic of growth and the natural scientific logic of environment as part of the same dynamic of world development. To view the world as a complex unit takes its complexity as well as its relatedness seriously. Its investigation requires innovative forms of organisations as much as transdisciplinarity in order to generate such kind of knowledge. The basis of transdisciplinarity is a twofold dialogue that does not monopolize knowledge within the walls of university, but that wants to harness the same for practical action. A twofold dialogue arbitrates between disciplines of science and between science and everyday life. It is particularly suitable for building bridges between different perspectives and to translate between dissimilar languages of science and to interpret ways of thinking and living. This broad mobilisation of diverse knowledge is essential, because the alleged differences are taking place in the same world. It is part of one development, even though the dynamics of environment differ from the dynamics of growth. There does not exist a commercial production that does not change, renew or destroy nature. Nature in turn is not only an eternal cycle, but something lively with dynamics of growth and diminution that highly depend on social development. There are scientific approaches that are committed to cross-linked thinking: In economics, for example, approaches that understand economy as embedded in society, like it is happening in Karl Polanyis’ tradition, are particularly interesting. In natural sciences the concept of sustainability alludes that the sustainability of systems are to be understood not only ecologically, but also socially and economically. Interlinked thinking requires the interdisciplinary exchange of natural, social and economic sciences. Thus, academics of various disciplines are invited in the conference’s preparation to conduct problem analysis of different perspectives: One of the Conference’s aims is to make available a broad expertise and to harness the same through dialogue and translating work for an integrative understanding of development.

However, interlinked thinking alone is not sufficient to solve problems. Therefore a dialogue between knowledge generated by science and such generated by everyday life is important. Problem solving ability emerges not until this second form of dialogue. Transdisciplinary research requires the dialogue between expert and experience knowledge, because development is a complex and complicated process in which people unconsciously and intentionally interfere: (Wo)men make development, intendedly or unintendedly! By collective cogitation of people with diverse experience and different expertise it becomes possible to enhance, support and to facilitate certain processes identified as eligible. Here science can provide valuable assistance, especially if it sharpens and uses its own potentials in the exchange with knowledge of experience. But change cannot stop with knowledge, which is why thinking differently also requires political rethinking: To think cross-linked relating to the state for example means a stronger cooperation between diverse ministries. It contradicts an integrative understanding of development if the ministry of finance and of economics, because of their position of power, put the logic of growth and budget politics above the interests of climate protection and of poverty reduction.

The activities around the Conference on Development create spaces where both forms of dialogue are practiced. However, of main importance in the course of the Conference on Development are learning processes within civil society. For stakeholders in civil society, e.g. environmental or developmental NGOs, the challenge of networked action consists in moving from single-issue movements – initiatives that pursue only one concern as a lobby-group - to initiatives that consider development holistically and that suggest integrated solutions. This means learning from each other and building alliances for common aims. Cooperative and sustainable steps of development between the complex contradictory contexts of environment and economy demand the cooperation of developmental and environmental organisations. Only by means of this cooperation NGOs become competent partners and critics of the state, and are able to criticize the one-sidedness of ministerial-based problem solving and to demand an integral approach. This dialogue of NGOs has existed too rarely till now. It is in the centre of the 4th Conference on Development.