[Ailist] AI summit with the illiterate people

[Cheri Torres]

Parashu,
Help me understand why people who are illiterate are not able to interview
others?

In my limited experience (and it is limited), cultures where reading and
writing are not stressed often have a heightened capacity for storytelling
and memory and/or for pictures/images/metaphors that express the wholeness
of their experience (the thing us literate people often have difficulty
creating from our more verbal stories).  I think people can be curious about
people and their world's without being literate.

So then a question arises, for me. Could the issue be something other than
literacy? Is it possible that some small groups of people share a group
story and they have collective experiences. The idea of individual stories
doesn't make sense because the self-as-separate doesn't make sense? Perhaps
even talking about their experience doesn't make sense because it requires
them to objectify the people and their experiences, which may be foreign. It
suddenly occurs to me that the concept of time is central to every AI
interview I've ever written or participated in.  What happens if a culture
doesn't experience time in western terms? What if all time is now?  It may
then require quite different language and conceptualizing.

Perhaps a question that would support AI around the world is how has AI been
adapted for use in different cultures that hold quite different paradigms
for what it means to be in the world. And what kinds of outcomes have
occurred from their practice of AI?

You've certainly given me food for thought this morning!
Cheri



On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 1:25 AM, Parashu <parashu at wlink.com.np> wrote:

> Dear All,
> Namaste from Nepal !
> I need to do summits (with a certain purpose of research) with the people
> of rural parts of Nepal where most of the people are illiterate . I have to
> interview as many people as I can and the best way to do is to do the
> summits (I think). Even in summit, there can be very few people who can
> interview others. Does anybody have any experience of doing summits with
> such people? Or is there any references/books/articles regarding this
> subject? Do you know if the book "The Appreciative Inquiry Summit"(By Jim
> Ludema and .......) available in the internet? We don't have any books of AI
> in our market.
> parashurt at gmail.com
> parashu at wlink.com.np
>
> Appreciatively
>
> Parashu Ram Timalsina (PR)
> Secretary General
> Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (NAINN)
> 977-1-5529844 (R)
> 977-98510-19145 (Cell)
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-- 
Cheri B. Torres, Ph.D.
Collaborative-by-Design
Asheville, NC
828-225-5088