Practical wisdom (Phronesis) from Development Cooperation -- What is "useful"? --The Unstoppable, Unsustainable Growth of Inclusive Society with Disabilities

Knowledge that can be otherwise

Hosei University regards the "Phronesis" described in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" as " Practical wisdom " and has Hosei University Charter " Practical Wisdom for Freedom " Hosei University Charter. In this issue, I would like to consider this phronesis by taking development cooperation, my research field, as a starting point. To consider phronesis, it is necessary to touch upon "episteme," another way of knowing discussed in the same book. Aristotle calls episteme the state of recognizing "what cannot be in any other way," that is, what is inevitable and universal. Although being disprovable is science, episteme has developed as scientific knowledge in the sense that it explores universal laws. Because it cannot be otherwise, episteme seeks argumentation. Aristotle, on the other hand, called phronesis that which belongs to the realm of action among "that which can be in any other way. I assume that the reason why the translation " Practical wisdom " was used is because it is knowledge that focuses on "action. Unlike episteme, Aristotle claims that phronesis, which questions necessity and universality, involves thought, not argumentation. However, unlike scientific knowledge, it has not been much discussed since then as a way of knowing. In order to develop phronesis as a way of knowledge different from argumentation-seeking science, I think it is necessary to consider not only the aspect of "action" (practice) but also the meaning of "the possibility of other ways of doing things. This is because the Japanese translation of " Practical wisdom " may give a false impression of "knowledge that is immediately useful in practice. Let us consider this based on a specific example I once experienced as a staff member of an NGO* engaged in grassroots development cooperation.

Problems that cannot be solved only by established theories

When I discuss development cooperation in class, students usually respond, "What is important in development cooperation is to provide support based on local needs. ---- This is a common theory that often appears in the literature on development cooperation. Is this the "correct" answer? I encountered this problem in Laos, Southeast Asia. A women's organization in a province asked us to help them build a small training center in their community. Believing that there was a need for a place to provide training in various aspects of livelihood improvement, such as maternal and child health care, vegetable gardening, and organization building, the NGO to which I belonged at the time cooperated in the construction of the center. However, one day, not many years later, we were asked to change the use of the funds because the needs for a nursery school had become greater than the needs for training. If we follow the principle of respecting the needs of the field, there seems to be no reason to oppose the change to a nursery school. On the other hand, if we allow the change of use in a short period of time, it would raise questions about the validity of the prior needs assessment, and the recipient of the support may easily request a change of use.
Let me give you another example. In the field of development cooperation, since the 1990s, endogenous nature and sustainability have been emphasized as norms, and activities are expected to be carried out in a "participatory" manner. As a result, workshops and training programs for residents and local government officials, who are the main actors in these activities, have become popular. One of the headaches of these "participatory workshops/trainings" was the "daily allowance. The idea was to reimburse the participants for the time they had to take off from their farm or work to attend the workshop/training, so to speak. While this in itself was persuasive, the reality was that the daily allowance was often high compared to the actual living conditions of the residents, and there were not a few people who participated for the daily allowance. In addition, as various NGOs and international organizations conducted similar training programs, there was a "competition" for key residents and government officials, and the amount of daily allowances was affected by this competition. I continued to have a blurred feeling in the field as to what participatory development, in which residents and administrative officials mobilized by the daily allowance were the main actors.

It is not useful to give the correct answer

This is only a fragmentary episode, but there is no correct answer as to how to make it work in either case, and in the first place, implementing activities with the idea that it is the absolute right answer may itself lead to the creation of new problems. The "knowledge" needed in development cooperation must take into account the possibility of other ways of doing things, which cannot be understood in terms of inevitability or universality. What is needed is the ability to consider a single event from multiple perspectives. These perspectives can be based on theories from various academic fields or examples from other completely different fields. I believe that phronesis is the state of being able to use such different knowledge (not systematically organized "knowledge" but simply "knowing") to think "this way" and "that way" about a single event, while providing evidence. However, in the field of practice, it is not enough to consider "other ways," but we must make a certain judgment from that judgment and lead it to action. It is not enough to simply say, "There are many ways to look at it. Yujiro Nakamura wrote in his book "What is Clinical Knowledge" (Iwanami Shinsho), "Practice is to bring out the hidden aspects of reality through the decisions and choices that each person makes with his or her own body. This is how theories are forged and leapfrogged by the challenges of reality" (p. 70). Phronesis, a practicable state that is equipped with "other ways of doing things," leads to the uncovering of a reality that cannot be captured by episteme, which in turn shakes up the world of academia. I joined the faculty of the University after 25 years of practical experience as a broadcast journalist and in the field of development cooperation. This is because I saw firsthand the importance and necessity of the connection between practice and academia. If you have read this far in this paper, you understand that this does not mean that academics are directly useful in practice. Such seemingly immediate "specialized knowledge" can sometimes even cause new problems in the field of development. Practical wisdom is about bringing diverse theories and perspectives into the real world, where there are no right answers, discussing them, making decisions, and feeding them back into academia again. We believe that this is "useful" knowledge in both practice and academia. Above all, the act of writing this paper itself is for me a modest attempt at Practical wisdom.

NGO: Non Governmental Organization

(First published in the August/September 2019 issue of Hosei, a public relations magazine)