Us Against When: Testing Possibilities for Domestic Peacebuilding in the United States
Institutional Affiliation
George Mason University, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
Start Date
2-11-2023 3:30 PM
End Date
2-11-2023 5:00 PM
Proposal Type
Workshop
Proposal Format
On-campus
Proposal Description
The US Against When Project gathered 800 interpretations of artifacts from the future or alternative visions of the future with SenseMaker technology. The patterns in these interpretations will provide a baseline for the new theory of change- “How can we create more stories like the ones that we want to see?” by working backwards from which futures are deemed possible, probable, and desirable by respondents in five states at elevated risk for political violence. During the workshop, the presenter will share his experience helping U.S.-based peacebuilders develop their early theories of change and challenges in the sense-making methodology that was utilized for the process. Then participants will be presented with patterns in the SenseMaker data, read narrative material to understand the context of those patterns, and draw implications for how peacebuilders in the U.S. can develop scalable approaches that resonate more broadly.
U.S. peacebuilding programs are at an early stage in development and often the theory of change is not clear. In developing networks that can respond to political violence or to create scalable solutions, the theory of change should lead to a future that can commonly be agreed upon as desirable and meaningful and that would inspire action. The Us Against When project has captured data from respondents in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio with SenseMaker, that provides quantitative interpretation data along with narrative about possible future states. The project seeks to create a baseline understanding of how the future peacebuilders want to create resonates with people living in states of interest so that peacebuilders can frame their projects more effectively and design complexity-informed programming that utilizes portfolios of safe-to-fail experiments to explore the conflict context and create opportunities for peace to emerge. The sense-making workshop format will challenge participants by exposing where their vision of the future might differ drastically from the audiences they are trying to engage in their work, exposing assumptions in U.S. peacebuilding work, and supporting critical thinking about how current programming fosters the emergence of peace.
Us Against When: Testing Possibilities for Domestic Peacebuilding in the United States
The US Against When Project gathered 800 interpretations of artifacts from the future or alternative visions of the future with SenseMaker technology. The patterns in these interpretations will provide a baseline for the new theory of change- “How can we create more stories like the ones that we want to see?” by working backwards from which futures are deemed possible, probable, and desirable by respondents in five states at elevated risk for political violence. During the workshop, the presenter will share his experience helping U.S.-based peacebuilders develop their early theories of change and challenges in the sense-making methodology that was utilized for the process. Then participants will be presented with patterns in the SenseMaker data, read narrative material to understand the context of those patterns, and draw implications for how peacebuilders in the U.S. can develop scalable approaches that resonate more broadly.
U.S. peacebuilding programs are at an early stage in development and often the theory of change is not clear. In developing networks that can respond to political violence or to create scalable solutions, the theory of change should lead to a future that can commonly be agreed upon as desirable and meaningful and that would inspire action. The Us Against When project has captured data from respondents in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio with SenseMaker, that provides quantitative interpretation data along with narrative about possible future states. The project seeks to create a baseline understanding of how the future peacebuilders want to create resonates with people living in states of interest so that peacebuilders can frame their projects more effectively and design complexity-informed programming that utilizes portfolios of safe-to-fail experiments to explore the conflict context and create opportunities for peace to emerge. The sense-making workshop format will challenge participants by exposing where their vision of the future might differ drastically from the audiences they are trying to engage in their work, exposing assumptions in U.S. peacebuilding work, and supporting critical thinking about how current programming fosters the emergence of peace.