3.The Sociological Perspective that drive James’s desire for important cultural change for the ‘Good’ of all Citizens – their ‘Whys’

From James’ perspective, early in his career he became aware of the work of social anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1966), and one of her disciples, Michael Thompson. Their work indicated that different cultures have different ways of seeing the world, and thus acting in it. Their research comprehensively showed that there were four constructive alternative ways of doing this. So, when others didn’t believe in the way James saw the world, he could begin to understand why. Such cultural constructed world views explains, at least to us, that whatever skills we possess in developing human futures, we should try to truly reflect what others want for themselves, and not just what we want for ourselves alone. It is because of this that James continues to be concerned with, and passionate about, enabling others achieve that which is meaningful to them and the empowering to enact it, while ensuring this allows harmony with the rest of us. Let’s not control, destroy others or harm them.

As an important aside, reflecting this in a different way, Sir Antony Gormley, the creative British sculptor, said recently on Grayson Perry’s TV lock-down Art Club, ‘we are all makers of art! There is no pinnacle to our creativity, for me, or for anyone. Everyone can reveal their creativity in their own way’. This, to James, is the same for all Citizens, in whatever they strive to achieve, or want to strive to achieve. So those who can and want to help Citizens Enablement, particularly those from higher or further education, should, in our view, try to do just that, so we need to understand if anything constrains this. We also need to recognise that higher education empowers some – by creating an elite – so simultaneously disadvantaging others. And this is what Michael Young meant when he criticised ‘The rise of the meritocracy’ (1958).

However, and to put this in perspective, the problem of developing change is not simple, rather the future is complex and requires those of us, who want to help, to think more systemically, about how we drive a change where the enablement needs to be personally contextualised. This is at a time when education often seems increasingly about the narrowing of what is on offer, to the lowest common  denominator, for reasons of economy. In particular, we have to use our improving teaching and learning skills, resulting from meaningful research, to lead citizens to learn to learn for themselves. This has never been more possible, and perhaps even necessary, at a time when our societal context is so open, and where the future situation is almost experimental and where everything can be at stake, it is now just worth a try at the new. But, we all need to keep optimistic and keep trying in the face of adversity. What we also need is ‘excellence in diversity’ for all our educational and learning support. And, we repeat, it won’t be easy, especially as we watch social and political life crashing about us, now. This is where facilities like the Salford Innovation Forum (Case Study 9, page 62) come into play, as they provide a context, people and facility which enables innovation to start, grow and flourish for local citizens.

James has particularly found it possible to use whatever skills he has simply to help other citizens and communities learn to do better for themselves; at least the ones he works with seem to think that to be the case. He sincerely hopes others in Leonardo will do like-wise, as he sees them  beginning to think this way in all their recent Leonardo discussions. Both the present authors would welcome the opportunity of developing a maturing conversation with like-minded people, who are well grounded  in what Gramsci (Forgacs,1999) would call ‘good sense’ or the quality someone has when they are able to make sensible decisions about what to do . While it is important that we should all be richly engaged in discussions reflecting powerful world-wide views, if we cannot also be well anchored locally, as if we were stable in one place, we believe all our efforts will be in vain. The Action Learning which is used in Case Study 6 (page 54), in a project known a ‘Bouncing Higher’, shows how citizens can truly be supported in their cross fertilisation of best practice working to enable small business to develop better innovation and wealth creation.