Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:24:36.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 10 - The Emancipatory Nature of Transformative Agency

Mediating Agency from Below in a Post-Apartheid Land Restitution Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2023

Nick Hopwood
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
Annalisa Sannino
Affiliation:
Tampere University, Finland
Get access

Summary

In this chapter we articulate how transformative agency via double stimulation in cultural-historical activity theory can be a form of emancipatory agency from below among those most historically excluded and marginalised. Generated in a six-year-long formative intervention focussing on African land restitution, we show that the emergence of emancipatory transformative agency involves responsive mediation in which second stimuli, suitable to arising contradictions and conflict of motives, need to be co-developed as the formative intervention process unfolds. Emancipatory transformative agency by double stimulation (ETADS) pathways involve complex and parallel forms of movement over time that are not necessarily linear. The chapter reveals that ETADS pathways emerge as communities take ethical-political ownership of co-directing the emancipatory direction of their own development in the formative intervention process. In the process they challenge deep-seated oppressions of longue durée, transform power relations, build intergenerational solidarity and make decisions that advance the common good.

Type
Chapter
Information
Agency and Transformation
Motives, Mediation, and Motion
, pp. 230 - 264
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

AWARD. (2015–20). Lekgalameetse co-management project: A sub-project under the USAID RESILIM-O programme. http://award.org.za/index.php/focus-areas/land/lagalemeetse-co-management.Google Scholar
Bal, A., Afacan, K. & Cakir, H. I. (2019). Transforming schools from the ground-up with local stakeholders: Implementing learning lab for inclusion and systemic transformation at a middle school. Interchange, 50, 359–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-019-09353-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2008). Dialectic: The pulse of freedom. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2009). Scientific realism and human emancipation. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2014). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences (3rd ed.). Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, J. (2006). Tracking in game trails: Looking afresh at the politics of environmental history in South Africa. Environmental History, 11(4), 804–29. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/11.4.804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, P. & Collins, C. (1982). Bantu education: Apartheid ideology or labour reproduction? Comparative Education, 18(1), 5975. www.jstor.org/stable/3098501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Sousa Santos, B. (2015). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2009). The future of activity theory: A rough draft. In Sannino, A., Daniels, H. & Gutiérrez, K. D. (Eds.), Learning and expanding with activity theory (pp. 303–28). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engeström, Y. (2016). Studies in expansive learning: Learning what is not yet there. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning: Foundations, findings and future challenges. Educational Research Review, 5(1), 124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2009.12.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. & Sannino, A. (2016). Expansive learning on the move: Insights from ongoing research (El aprendizaje expansivo en movimiento: aportaciones de la investigación en curso). Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 39(3), 401–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2016.1189119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y. & Sannino, A. (2021). From mediated actions to heterogenous coalitions: Four generations of activity-theoretical studies of work and learning. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 28(1), 423. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2020.1806328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y., Nuttall, J. & Hopwood, N. (2022). Transformative agency by double stimulation: Advances in theory and methodology. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1805499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engeström, Y., Virkkunen, J., Helle, M., Pihlaja, J. & Poikela, R. (1996). The change laboratory as a tool for transforming work. Lifelong Learning in Europe, 1(2), 1017.Google Scholar
Fanon, F. (1952 (2008)). Peau noire, masques blancs, Seuil. Translated as Black skin, white masks, Richard Philcox (trans.). Grove Books.Google Scholar
Findlay, S. (2015, March). Review of co-management strategies in South Africa: Attempts to reconcile land restitution, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. Report submitted to the RESILIM-O project, Association of Water and Rural Development, South Africa.Google Scholar
Fioramonti, L. (2017). Well-being economy. Pan Macmillan.Google Scholar
Haase, D. (2013). Participatory modelling of vulnerability and adaptive capacity in flood risk management. Natural Hazards, 67(1), 7797. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9704-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D. (2002). Agency and community: A critical realist paradigm. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32(2), 163–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5914.00182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopwood, N. & Gottschalk, B. (2017). Double stimulation ‘in the wild’: Services for families with children at risk. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 13, 2337. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.01.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ison, R. L., Wallis, P., Bruce, C., Stirzaker, R. & Maru, Y. (2013). Enhancing learning from AFSI research: Notes for the field. MSI Report 13/8, Monash Sustainability Institute, Melbourne, Australia.Google Scholar
Jalasi, E. M. (2018). Investigating and expanding learning across activity system boundaries in improved cook stove innovation diffusion and adoption in Malawi. Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University. Rhodes University Theses and Dissertations Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68170.Google Scholar
Jalasi, E. M. (2020). An integrated analytical framework for analysing expansive learning in improved cook stove practice. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 26, 100414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2020.100414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, B. T. B. & Murphree, M. W. (2013). Community-based natural resource management as a conservation mechanism: Lessons and directions. In Child, B. (Ed.), Parks in transition: Biodiversity, rural development, and the bottom line (pp. 63103). Earthscan.Google Scholar
Kachilonda, D. D. K. (2015). Investigating and expanding learning in co-management of fisheries resources to inform extension training. Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University. Rhodes University Theses and Dissertations Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018659.Google Scholar
Khan, F. (1989). The role of history in understanding current South African attitudes to conservation. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 10, 34.Google Scholar
Ko, D., Bal, A., Bird Bear, A., Sannino, A. & Engeström, Y. (2022). Transformative agency for justice: Addressing racial disparity of school discipline with the indigenous learning lab. Race Ethnicity and Education, 25(7), 9971020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.1969903.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LEDET. (2013). Five year strategic management plan for Lekgalameetse nature reserve. Limpopo Province, South Africa.Google Scholar
Lotz-Sisitka, H. B. (2016). Absenting absence: Expanding zones of proximal development in environmental learning processes. In Price, L. & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (Eds.), Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change (pp. 318–39). Routledge.Google Scholar
Lotz-Sisitka, H. B. (2017). Education and the common good. In Jickling, B. & Sterling, S. (Eds.), Post-sustainability and environmental education: Re-making education beyond sustainability (pp. 6378). Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lotz-Sisitka, H. & Pesanayi, T. (2020). Formative interventionist research generating iterative mediating processes in a vocational education and training learning network. In Rosenberg, E., Ramsarup, P. & Lotz-Sisitka, H. B. (Eds.), Green skills research in South Africa: Models, cases and methods (pp. 157–74). Routledge.Google Scholar
Lotz-Sisitka, H., Mukute, M., Chikunda, C., Baloi, A. & Pesanayi, T. (2017) Transgressing the norm: Transformative agency in community-based learning for sustainability in southern African contexts. International Review of Education, 63(6), 897914. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-017-9689-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magome, H. & Murombedzi, J. (2012). Sharing South African national parks: Community land and conservation in a democratic South Africa. In Adams, W. M. & Mulligan, M. (Eds.), Decolonizing nature: Strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era (pp. 108–34). Earthscan.Google Scholar
Maitlis, S. & Christianson, M. (2014). Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 57125. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2014.873177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar
Mignolo, W. D. (2011). Epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: A manifesto. Transmodernity, 1(2), 323. https://doi.org/10.5070/T412011807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. Verso Books.Google Scholar
Mphepo, G. Y. (2020). Informal learning in local farming practices by rural women in the Lake Chilwa basin, Malawi: Towards coping and adaptation to climate variability and climate change. Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University. Rhodes University Theses and Dissertations Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167540.Google Scholar
Mudokwani, K. & Mukute, M. (2019). Exploring group solidarity for insights into qualities of T-learning. Sustainability, 11(23), 6825. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mukute, M. (2010). Exploring and expanding learning processes in sustainable agriculture workplace contexts. Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University. Rhodes University Theses and Dissertations Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003421.Google Scholar
Mukute, M. (2016). Dialectical critical realism and cultural historical activity theory (CHAT): Exploring and expanding learning processes in sustainable agriculture workplace contexts. In Price, L. & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (Eds.), Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change (pp. 190211). Routledge.Google Scholar
Mukute, M. & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (2012). Working with cultural-historical activity theory and critical realism to investigate and expand farmer learning in Southern Africa. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19(4), 342–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2012.656173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mukute, M., Mudokwani, K., McAllister, G. & Nyikahadzoi, K. (2018). Exploring the potential of developmental work research and change laboratory to support sustainability transformations: A case study of organic agriculture in Zimbabwe. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 25(3), 229–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2018.1451542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pesanayi, T. (2016). Exploring contradictions and absences in mobilising ‘learning as process’ for sustainable agricultural practices. In Price, L. & Lotz-Sisitka, H. (Eds.), Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change (pp. 230–53). Routledge.Google Scholar
Pesanayi, V. T. (2019). Boundary-crossing learning in agricultural learning systems: formative interventions for water and seed provision in southern Africa. Doctoral dissertation, Rhodes University. Rhodes University Theses and Dissertations Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/94067.Google Scholar
Pollard, S., Biggs, H. & Du Toit, D. (2014). A systemic framework for context-based decision making in natural resource management: Reflections on an integrative assessment of water and livelihood security outcomes following policy reform in South Africa. Ecology and Society, 19(2), 63. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06312-190263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, S., Chikunda, C., Mohale, T., Goredema, L. & Kotschy, K. (2021). Power taken, power given: Lessons for collaborative governance praxis and co-learning from land reform and co-management in the Lekgalameetse Nature Reserve (South Africa). In Leal Filho, W., Pretorius, R. & de Sousa, L. O. (Eds.), Sustainable development in Africa. World Sustainability Series (pp. 709–31). Springer.Google Scholar
Price, L. (2020). Andrew Collier, Marxism and emancipation. Journal of Critical Realism, 19(3), 207–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2020.1771656.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabaka, R. (2009). Africana critical theory: Reconstructing the black radical tradition, from WEB Du Bois and CLR James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Rodney, W. (2018). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Verso Books.Google Scholar
Sannino, A. (2015). The principle of double stimulation: A path to volitional action. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 6, 115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2015.01.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A. (2020). Enacting the utopia of eradicating homelessness: Toward a new generation of activity-theoretical studies of learning. Studies in Continuing Education, 42(2), 163–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2020.1725459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A. (2022). Transformative agency as warping: How collectives accomplish change amidst uncertainty. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30(1), 933. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2020.1805493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A. & Engeström, Y. (2018). Cultural-historical activity theory: Founding insights and new challenges. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 14(3), 4356. https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2018140304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sannino, A., Engeström, Y. & Lemos, M. (2016). Formative interventions for expansive learning and transformative agency. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 599633. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1204547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2011). From relational ontology to transformative activist stance on development and learning: Expanding Vygotsky’s (CHAT) project. In Marxism and education (pp. 165–92). Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2019). Radical-transformative agency: Continuities and contrasts with relational agency and implications for education. Frontiers in Education, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2020). Research and activist projects of resistance: The ethical-political foundations for a transformative ethico-onto-epistemology. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2018.04.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stetsenko, A. (2021). Scholarship in the context of a historic socioeconomic and political turmoil: Reassessing and taking stock of CHAT. Commentary on Y. Engeström and A. Sannino ‘from mediated actions to heterogenous coalitions: four generations of activity-theoretical studies of work and learning’. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 28(1), 3243. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2021.1874419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Maltitz, G. P. & Shackleton, S. E. (2004). Use and management of forests and woodlands in South Africa: Stakeholders, institutions and processes from past to present. In Lawes, M. J., Eeley, H. A. C., Shackleton, C. M. & Geach, B. G. S. (Eds.), Indigenous forests and woodlands in South Africa: Policy, people and practice (pp. 109–35). University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1932/1987). Lectures on psychology, lecture 6: The problem of will and its development in childhood. In Rieber, R. & Carton, A. (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 351–8). Plenum Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×