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Author: James Wallbank
Date:  
To: brico
Subject: Re: [Bricolabs] Eu-rope
I'd suggest that the clip really demonstrates something which we
struggle with all the time. Bureaucrats are almost completely culturally
illiterate. (They would complain that we are almost completely
bureaucratically illiterate - a charge which may be true, too!)

Rather than pointing fingers of blame, we need to work out how to fix
the problem.

How do we bring people together so that they REALLY understand each
other? How do we cut away exclusive language, confusing terminology, and
lack of transparency of values and intentions?

All of us are all trying to work to make our home neighbourhoods,
cities, regions, nations, and other places, better, more positive places
to live, work and thrive, now, and into the future. We are all, in
principal, on the same side. (Hey, let's trust that we ARE all positive
people... even though sometimes it seems hard to believe.)

The diverse cultures of bureaucracy and academia, technological and
sociological research, the arts, community development and activism are
far further apart, and more mutually misunderstood, than are the diverse
cultures of mere nations and geographic areas. The Greeks are closer to
the Germans than the Bureaucrats are to the Bricoleurs.

The arts, technological research, activism, community development,
bureaucracy - all of these have their own, special, coded languages
which insider groups use:

* To communicate specialist concepts precisely to those "in the know"
* To exclude outsiders from their profession or tribe

Without the sort of cultural and conceptual transparency I'm calling
for, mere numbers (what a video cost, who commissioned it, who produced
it, who signed it off) are just focusing the symptom, not the disease.

There are certain beliefs and assumptions across these groups which are
mutually antagonistic; bureaucrats tend to start with, concepts of
efficiency, centralisation and policy; bricoleurs tend to start with
concepts of resilience, localisation and practice. Both wrestle with the
tricky relationship between independence versus interdependence.

However, the applications of these methods are aimed at achieving the
SAME OUTCOMES - better lives for as many people as possible, now and
into the future. We may argue about the methods, but the core values are
(or certainly SHOULD BE) the same.

Best Regards,

James

P.S. Jaromil, if that video is a spoof, it's the best EVER!!! You had me
fooled.
=====

On 11/03/12 08:50, Patrice Riemens wrote:
>
>> 3) campaign about open data and ask this failure to not just
>>     apologize, but also open up the funding plan of this Enlargement
>>     program, how much money is being allocated and where it goes and in
>>     which way we can make accountable those committing the admitted
>>     error of producing.

>>
>>
> All the budgets and fundings of the EU are -relatively- transparant. So
> one can -relatively- easily find out what the videoclip has cost and what
> the budget of the enlargment dept (why do I get the wrong associations
> with that word? ;-) actually is.
>
> I have discussed with uite some people now, and though they all share the
> generalised outrage at the viso, I still don't really see the point. Given
> the Eurocrats are what they are, what do you expect...?
>
> Cheers, p+4D!
>
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