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I have been asked to say more about dynamic conservatism. A good chance to clarify my mushy thoughts.

"Dynamic conservatism" was a term coined by Donald Schon¹ (Blackmore 2010, p.11):

Taken at any time a social system is dynamically conservative in its structural, technological and conceptual dimensions. This last represents the 'system' of ideas in good currency. Characteristically, what precipitates a change in that system of powerful ideas is a disruptive event or a sequence of events, which sets up a demand for new ideas in good currency.

Schon says regarding new ideas that it takes energy to “raise them over the threshold of public consciousness” (ibid, p13)

1. That reminds me of Engberg-Pederson’s definition of social institutions as ‘Systems of shared meanings” (Engberg-Pederson 1997). Social institutions, made up of shared meanings, values and norms, persist in time but not forever (Brett 2000) and are much more difficult to change than social structures. They also signify both a potential basis for change and a potential barrier preventing planned interventions from reaching their policy objectives. It reminds me too of Gidden’s idea of the interdependency between social agency and structure: what we do is largely shaped by the expectations of our social environment, and yet our social environment is largely shaped by the collective combination of what we all do. Vickers too talks about this – how we are predictable because we choose to be. And Patricia Shaw talks about islands of order in an ongoing tension between stability and instability (Ison 2010, p.195)

2. It also reminds me of the concept of far from equilibrium, dissipative structures, from the world of hard science but applied to social systems. See the entry on Prigogine in (Ramage & Shipp 2009). Prigogine “showed that systems were essentially non-linear, dynamic and able to transform themselves into new states of being” (p229). What Prigogine called “dissipative structure”, von Bertalanffy called ‘dynamic equilibrium’ or ‘flowing balance’ (p230), and Capra (1996) offers the image of the ‘whirpool’ that forms when the bath is emptying – the shape stays the same but there is a constant inflow and outflow of water. This means that a dissipative structure is constantly maintaining its form, but with small disturbances can move to a new form, or collapse into chaos.

3. I find this metaphor useful when looking at the institutional change that AWARD would like to make in the African agricultural research for development (ARD) landscape. We can see the institutions as a dynamically conservative system of shared meanings, values and norms – people leave and new people enter but it more or less stays the same. AWARD aims at transformative change by opening up new meanings values and norms where women scientists have a central role.

4. I find the metaphor useful also looking at the subsystem of AWARD of a potential Alumni Thing, which might be a CoP. A CoP can be seen as a self-organizing system of shared meanings (repertoire), shared purpose (enterprise) with energy from the interaction of its parts (relationships). New fellows enter, and old fellows leave but the form is retained.

5. For me this implies that it will take a certain amount of energy to get it going and it has implications also for how it might be formed so that the energy needed shifts from the AWARD program to the COP itself. But that means letting go of its purpose and form – it will have to be independent. One key concept in a CoP is that it should be ‘self-organized’, it must have its own ‘enterprise’. Stacey says about self-organization (ibid p232):

An equilibrium structure requires no effort to retain its structure and great effort to change it, while a dissipative structure requires great effort to retain its structures and relatively little to change it.

6. Using this metaphor to look at COP formation, we can see in effect two ways of forming it:

1. AWARD forms it and provides the energy, in effect creating a reification of a COP (equilibrium structure)

2. the fellows form it and the energy comes from within, in effect creating it through participation (dissipative structure)

Applying CoP theory to itself like this, helps us see that theoretically one reason why CoPs often fail is that only the reified part is considered, whereas we need to consider also the participation.

7. all the above appeals to me and the way I like to see the world. Prigogine says (ibid p 235)

Not only does non-equilibrium lead to both order and disorder, but it also leads to events, because more possibilities appear than in a state of equilibrium

Since AWARD aims at change, transformative change, institutional change, then non-equilibrium seems a promising avenue to explore. But that implies unpredictability and risk. And hence responsibility.

But now I am going off on a tangent so I will close here.

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Blackmore, C., 2010. Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice, London: Springer.

Brett, T., 2000. Understanding organizations and institutions. In Managing development: understanding inter-organizational relationships. Milton Keynes: Sage in association with the Open University, p. 360.

Engberg-Pederson, L., 1997. Institutional contradictions in rural development. European Journal of Development Research, 9(1), pp.183-208.

Ison, R., 2010. Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate-Change World, London: Springer.

Ramage, M. & Shipp, K., 2009. Chapter 23. Ilya Prigogine. In Systems Thinkers. London: Springer.