Community Building Practices that Attend to Difference

Positivity Strategist Podcast Trailer

The professionals, researchers and authors in this podcast season have shared their specific social constructionist practice in a pre COVID world. In this episode, five of us reflect how social constructionism as an orientation is relevant and meaningful at all times, in all places and communities. More than ever, constructionist approaches that are available to us can help us heal the past and respond to current challenges and societal unrest in relational and collaborative ways. To learn more and find links, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/social-constructionist-practice

Professor Mary Gergen, passed away on the morning of September 22, 2020. Mary was a lively, courageous, and innovative trail blazer of the Taos Institute.I had the honor and pleasure to interview Mary early in 2020 for the Positivity Strategist podcast season collaboration with the Taos Institute.In this 1 minute recording below, I celebrate Mary's life with her very own poignant words. Mary is quoting herself in her joyful, fun way. These words are timeless, priceless, and so-like-Mary! For links and resources please visit, https://positivitystrategist.org/professor-mary-gergen/

Helping people move further away from what produces conflict and closer to the relationships they prefer is what narrative mediation seeks to produce. Conflict resolution through the lens of social construction, and framed as narrative mediation, offers that conflict between individuals is usually constructed within a larger community context. To learn more and find links about this show, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/narrative-mediation

How do we participate in community building practices in ways that attend to difference? Ways that are genuinely committed to consider power relations and how they play out when working amidst differences? What we encounter in community can shift our perspectives and impact the relationships with ourselves and others. To find out more and access links, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/community-building-practices/

Transmaterial worlding provokes us to pay attention. Once we start to realize that we are merely co-inhabitors of this world, we awaken to the notion we are making it, or breaking it, with each breath we take, each word we utter, and each action we take. The human species as all powerful and in control is a social-cultural construct. Globally right now, we need to listen differently to the distinct parts of the world and understand that other matter is also communicating. Humans need de-centering and de-throning from the illusion of being in control of the world. For more information and links, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/transmaterial-worlding

Educational evaluation of the entire ecosystem in education can enhance learning processes, students’ engagement and vitality of relationships in classrooms, and in the evaluation of teaching and the school as a whole. Embracing collaborative learning, dialogic pedagogy, and flexible curricula, educational evaluation that comes from a relational perspective truly speaks to the demands of a rapidly changing world. To learn more, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/educational-evaluation

Relational processes are key to recovering from addiction. Addiction's development, sustainability and finally its ending are embedded in family, community and broader societal contexts. In order to recover an addict needs to establish new bonds based on trust respect and love; and, together with others build unique pathways to a sense of belonging. Interview with Pavel Nepustil, PdD. To find out more and gain access to links, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/relational-processes

Dr. Lois Holzman explores the topic of social therapeutics as a playful, performatory, philosophical methodology for person and community development. Influenced by three intellectual traditions, social therapeutics seeks to bring meaning to our relational processes in collaborative and appreciative ways to elevate human connection and bridge cultural divides. To access resources and links, please visit https://positivitystrategist.org/social-therapeutics

Transformative community conferencing is an approach to community building or reconciliation. As a narrative practice, it embodies a more reflective orientation to relationships and to systems change. How and when we ask questions helps us think differently. It helps to begin to ask questions such as: “What is the narrative here? What is the story you are telling in relation to that narrative?” It enables people to engage and to flourish. When you look at events as stories you can always unpack them to make the narrative more visible to support flourishing for all. To access resources, please visit, https://positivitystrategist.org/community-conferencing