| People are joining together
-- across borders, races and other sources of division to produce appreciative
change.
While Appreciative Inquiry and other approaches do TD2 processes, they do not invoke the resistance tactics of Saul Alinsky, Illich, or Emerys. |
My own preference is to go grassroots organizing that identifies points of domination and resistance. I assume that people organize in fields and frameworks of power that need deconstructing. |
| Appreciative Inquiry views
deconstruction of the dominant narratives (some are grand, other not) as
an exercise in negative thinking and the negative sciences of criticism.
Cooperrider and Srivastva says deconstruction consulting "... has failed to become catalysts for positive organizational transformation because [these] methodologies that by design are meant to de-legitimate existing organizational theories rather than create new constructs that hold positive possibilities for the future (as cited in Ludema et. Al, 1996: 6).
In Appreciative Inquiry the person or field of organization writes a new and positive story. |
Narrative Therapy
views deconstruction of the dominant problem-saturated stories as a necessary
step to liberation. The point of deconstruction is to resituate the dominant
narratives, so that a new liberating story can be authored.
Michael White & David Epston (1990), founders of the restorying approach have spent two decades developing narrative, restorying approaches to family consultation. They rely heavily upon deconstruction approaches.
In Narrative Therapy the positive story is written after the deconstruction of the iron cage of the dominant story. |
| In 1997 I organized a panel
debate between AI and deconstruction proponents. "Pollyanna
Meets Professor Nietzsche" was the title of one of Joanne Martin
slides, but her discussion also challenged us to stop dualizing:
"Why accept the dichotomies?"
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