This ontology finds application in other scientific disciplines as well. Political
economist Robin Hahnel, for example, also makes this point when arguing that the
mainstream economic paradigm is not objective or value-free but through its
dominance in decision-making bodies and public discourse shapes future relationships and people: “When we fulfill needs through particular activities we are
induced to mold our thoughts to justify or rationalize both the logic and merit of
those activities, thereby generating consciousness-personality-structures that can
have a permanence beyond that of the activities that formed them” (Hahnel 2002:
4–5).
Thus, ideas are both inherent in less conscious individual sense-making processes but also frequently expressed in the efforts of creating relations with others.
This is what the definition of paradigms stands for in Meadows’ analytical
framework presented above: “The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big
unstated assumptions—unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone already
knows them—constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about
how the world works” (Meadows 1999: 17). Other researchers use the term
‘worldviews’ and define them as “inescapable, overarching systems of meaning and
meaning-making that to a substantial extent inform how humans interpret, enact,
and co-create reality” (Hedlund-de Witt 2012: 18).
Personally, I prefer the term ‘mind’ to ‘paradigm’ when speaking about social
rather than scientific contexts because it expresses the way that seeing and believing
differently goes beyond an update of information. It also means changes in attention, consciousness, instinct, imagination, judgment, power, sense, spirit, and
psyche. ‘Mind’ emphasizes not so much the facts or ideas in themselves but the
processes of knowing, believing and arguing in which they are embedded. This
encapsulates the many ways in which our manner of thinking influences human
existence.
Moving from the individual-psychological level to the sociopolitical research
designs for explaining transformation we find, as one example, Polanyi-inspired
political economist Nancy Fraser. She highlights how widely spread ideas, like the
mainstream economic paradigm, function as the “discursive face of politics,”
mediating structure and agency by providing “the social imaginaries through which
social conditions are experienced, interpreted and evaluated by social beings”
(Fraser 2013: 125). The analytical term ‘narratives’ captures something similar,
sometimes defined in a rather instrumental way: “Narratives reduce complexity,
creative collective perspectives, support reliability of expectations, build a basis for
current and future-oriented action plans, and are a foundation for the cooperation
between actors” (Messner 2015: 263). Here, the emphasis lies more on understanding how humans choose communities and get energized for collective action
and less on the effects that this may have on their future identities.
Both the individual-psychological and the sociopolitical are important to the
transformative leverage of a Great Mindshift: an understanding of the imaginaries,
identities and narratives that guide individual and collective actions provides
explanations for the perpetuation of the status quo, an understanding of which
alternative solutions might find support and who might bring them about.
46
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research
economist Robin Hahnel, for example, also makes this point when arguing that the
mainstream economic paradigm is not objective or value-free but through its
dominance in decision-making bodies and public discourse shapes future relationships and people: “When we fulfill needs through particular activities we are
induced to mold our thoughts to justify or rationalize both the logic and merit of
those activities, thereby generating consciousness-personality-structures that can
have a permanence beyond that of the activities that formed them” (Hahnel 2002:
4–5).
Thus, ideas are both inherent in less conscious individual sense-making processes but also frequently expressed in the efforts of creating relations with others.
This is what the definition of paradigms stands for in Meadows’ analytical
framework presented above: “The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big
unstated assumptions—unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone already
knows them—constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about
how the world works” (Meadows 1999: 17). Other researchers use the term
‘worldviews’ and define them as “inescapable, overarching systems of meaning and
meaning-making that to a substantial extent inform how humans interpret, enact,
and co-create reality” (Hedlund-de Witt 2012: 18).
Personally, I prefer the term ‘mind’ to ‘paradigm’ when speaking about social
rather than scientific contexts because it expresses the way that seeing and believing
differently goes beyond an update of information. It also means changes in attention, consciousness, instinct, imagination, judgment, power, sense, spirit, and
psyche. ‘Mind’ emphasizes not so much the facts or ideas in themselves but the
processes of knowing, believing and arguing in which they are embedded. This
encapsulates the many ways in which our manner of thinking influences human
existence.
Moving from the individual-psychological level to the sociopolitical research
designs for explaining transformation we find, as one example, Polanyi-inspired
political economist Nancy Fraser. She highlights how widely spread ideas, like the
mainstream economic paradigm, function as the “discursive face of politics,”
mediating structure and agency by providing “the social imaginaries through which
social conditions are experienced, interpreted and evaluated by social beings”
(Fraser 2013: 125). The analytical term ‘narratives’ captures something similar,
sometimes defined in a rather instrumental way: “Narratives reduce complexity,
creative collective perspectives, support reliability of expectations, build a basis for
current and future-oriented action plans, and are a foundation for the cooperation
between actors” (Messner 2015: 263). Here, the emphasis lies more on understanding how humans choose communities and get energized for collective action
and less on the effects that this may have on their future identities.
Both the individual-psychological and the sociopolitical are important to the
transformative leverage of a Great Mindshift: an understanding of the imaginaries,
identities and narratives that guide individual and collective actions provides
explanations for the perpetuation of the status quo, an understanding of which
alternative solutions might find support and who might bring them about.
46
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research