Views from researchers about the Charter text, Aotearoa (...)

As a project for identifying responses to the Charter of Human responsibilities text, Betsan is carrying out a series of interviews with a variety of socio-professional and cultural groups. This file is from an interview with a researcher in a Social Service agency research institute, associated with social research and political advocacy to address poverty.

After background discussion on the Charter, and on the Alliance website, we had a discussion of governance in different cultures, and in particular in the Pacific, where this researcher had done PhD research. Here, responsibility is vested in leaders. Even thinking about leadership in democracies, this is so, although organized in very different ways from traditional Pacific leadership and governance. Elections reflect the knowledge of electors, and tends to be decided around short term goals, such as tax cuts, which was at the centre of the October elections in New Zealand. Traditional leadership in the Pacific is related to long range knowledge (1).

Vesting leadership in ’leaders needs to be rationalized in the 21st century. We are in a situation bearing the legacy of the dereliction of personal responsibility. This is so in many fields, and poignantly so in respect of the environment.

The structure - agency dualism can be seen in the issues of governance and ethics. These classic social science terms don’t have to be seen in opposition; they can be seen as a relationship. People have the capacity for agency in a context of social constraint. Constraint is achieved and expressed through ideas available to people, and by general socialization.

Curiosity was expressed about the Alliance, which is neither an institution nor an organization, and thoughts of an anarchist framework were ventured. Anarchist thought includes an emphasis on people taking responsibility. Group formation is not derived from imposed leadership but from internal responsibility, from which cohesion emerges.

We returned to reflect further on democracy and how greater personal responsibility resulting in a participating engaged electorate would bring a different expression of leadership. Responsiveness to environmentally sustainable policies, which require long term goals and commitments requires an electorate which appreciates and supports decisions made in the interests of the long term.

(1) I think this might oversimplify. Traditional leadership in a traditional context (pre-contact) was exercised in an environment of slow historical change. In this situation, the expectation that conditions next year - or ten years hence —will be much the same as this year, knowledge can be "long range"; but it must be different in character from long range knowledge in an environment of rapid historical change. In reality, the "long term" nature of traditional knowledge might be illusory.... Another discussion point, perhaps?

Views from researchers about the Charter text, Aotearoa - New Zealand.