This book explores the practice of organisation development and group change in a way that will appeal to anyone involved in working towards social transformation. Drawing on extensive experience gained through many years of process consultancy within the development sector - mainly in Africa and Europe - as well as on the work of Goethe and Jung, Allan Kaplan presents a radically new approach to the understanding of organisations and communities and to the practice of social development.
Challenging the tendency to reduce development to a technical operation that attempts to control, Kaplan's approach embraces the full complexity of the process of social transformation. He describes the terrain of social change whilst simultaneously providing exercises through which practitioners can enrich their abilities to respond to the mix of chaos and order which characterise social development. Exploring this delicate balance, Kaplan inspires a sense of responsibility and possibility for the discipline, and reveals how development groups can intervene in social situations in a manner that is both humane and effective.

Acknowledgements

The Endeavour - A Preface

Social Process and the Practitioner - A Synopsis

SECTION I - observation

1. Beyond Reductionism

2. Emergence

3. Life's Resources

4. Intuition - Seeing Holistically

5. Indications for Practice

Exercise - Drawing

6. Revisiting the Whole

Exercise - Listening (1)

SECTION II - understanding

7. Freedom and Constraint

Exercise - Developing the Core

8. Balancing Heaven and Earth

Exercise - Creative Thinking (1)

9. The Creative Round

Exercise - Growth and Decay

10. On Becoming

Exercise - Reading Oneself

11. Dancing with Shadows

Exercise - Exploring Shadows

12. Paradoxes of Power

Exercise - Fingering Power

13. The Pattern of Reversal

Exercise - Making Culture Conscious

SECTION III - change

14. The Narrative Thread

Exercise - Discovering Wonder

15. Stories from the Field

Exercise - Characterisation

16. Metamorphosis

Exercise - Turning Points

17. Guidance

Exercise - Listening (2)

18. Rites of Passage

Exercise - The Elements

19. Consolidating Change

Exercise - Working with Peers

SECTION IV - practice

20. Discerning

Exercise - Creative Thinking (2)

21. Co-creating

Exercise - Questioning

22. Emptying

Exercise - Shifting the Pattern

23. Awakening