SAS2: A Guide to Collaborative Inquiry and Social Engagement

The possibility of a collective dream was something the Katkari community in Siddeshwarwadi, India, had never considered prior to participating in a process called ‘Ideal Scenario’. Yet, as described in this useful guide on participatory techniques for ‘creating and using knowledge for the common good’ (page 11), these landless villagers agreed on actions that could result in a better life for everyone. How these and other communities were helped to define, analyze and come up with solutions to specific challenges that prevent them from leading healthy, productive lives is one of the inspiring aspects to this guide.

Before digging into the book, however, the reader would be well advised to visit the web-site of Social Analysis Systems www.sas2.net. Thinking that as a long-time practitioner of development communication, I would understand the concepts and processes with no other initiation than the book’s Foreword by P.V. Satheesh of the Deccan Development Society and the editors’ introduction, I soon back-tracked to the web-site to explore the origins of the Social Analysis Systems approach put forth by Carleton University, Canada, along with partners in South Asia and Central America.

The guide is comprised of two parts – the what and the how. The first one presents the concepts and the circular planning and implementation processes of social analysis that comprise SAS². The second part presents 18 techniques for use in engaging community members and, sometimes, external stakeholders such as landowners or politicians in fully defining and understanding an issue that divides them. The techniques all aim for the stakeholders to come up with interim or permanent measures to resolve the issue.

The methodologies described in this dense but readable guide were selected from more than 50 tools and software contained on the website. Collectively, they form the foundation for training in SAS². In fact, individuals who go through the well-defined training process may be certified as SAS² Instructors or Practitioners. Two familiar principles are that problem-solving must be people-based and evidence-based. To that end, the editors emphasize five skills: mediating (supporting reasoning and dialogue among people with different perspectives), grounding (being systematic), navigating complexity, scaling (the selection and adaptation of the right mix of tools) and interpreting (making sense of complex information). The SAS² approach to planning an intervention with a community uses Process Management (PMt). Process Manager (PMr) is a tool for making detailed action plans.

By now, you may have caught on to one of the challenges of reading through this guide, mainly that of acronyms. With two decades of experience in the UN system, I thought the UN had everyone beat for use of acronyms, but SAS² may come close. I would have welcomed a list of acronyms with a reference to the corresponding section. This would have facilitated understanding terms such as the name of the system itself (SAS² – Social Analysis Systems), to PMr, PMt, GAS (Gathering, Analyzing, Sharing), CLIP (Collaboration, Conflict, Legitimacy, Interests, Power), P5BL (Problem, Process, Project, Product and People Based Learning), ART (Action-Research-Training) and others.

Despite the new names and acronyms, all the concepts and processes described will be familiar to development specialists who focus on the full participation and the empowerment of people and communities. In fact, some of the techniques described in Part 2 have been adapted from other methodologies that may be more familiar to some readers. For example, both ‘Causal Dynamics’ and ‘Role Dynamics’ have been adapted from input-output analysis, used by many economists for several decades. Each technique is clearly presented with the following sections: main author, the purpose of the technique, its guiding principles, its process and scaling it up or down. The inclusion of references at the end of each technique description allows the reader to do additional research.

While the editors – Jacques Chevalier and Daniel Buckles (Chancellor’s Professor and adjunct Professor, respectively, at Carleton University) -- bill the guide as a contribution to building knowledge, I was struck by the participatory aspects of the techniques. I can imagine the techniques being applied by colleagues in UNICEF Country Offices and their government and NGO partners. For example, VIP (Values, Interests, Positions) facilitates the comparison of the different positions that stakeholders take on a particular problem with their actual interests and moral values. By completing and analyzing a diagramme that visualizes high gains, high losses, high moral acceptability or low moral acceptability, the group eventually arrives at a position that meets stakeholder interests and moral values. Similar to VIP, Option Domain looks at how people view options across cultural and social boundaries.

Each description of a technique is followed by a well-written case study on its application at community level. For VIP, conflict over the use of timber in a small Bolivian municipality was addressed to all parties’ satisfaction, despite tense discussions. The case studies may have benefitted from greater diversity, as the Katkari communities in India were the subject of at least five of the 18 techniques.

The guide describes how to apply each technique in great detail, assigning numerical values to various options and providing details on how to analyze them. Some of the techniques are very technical, such as Causal Analysis, and may require support from individuals more strongly versed in mathematics or statistics. The menu of techniques was somewhat numbing and I felt at the end that everything I do in my personal and professional lives can be labelled by someone somewhere.

The guide provides little sense of which technique might be best suited for a particular situation. Likewise, the guide seemed slim on monitoring and evaluation. No doubt, formal training in SAS² would help students distinguish amongst the techniques, selecting those that are most appropriate for specific communities and issues. Training may also include more information on monitoring for mutually acceptable, sustained outcomes.

Useful reminders creep up throughout the entire guide. For example, in discussing overall ‘active listening’, the reader is urged to be aware ‘that the same people may be members of different groups that may have different views on the issues being raised’ (p 67). And ‘The Wheel’ recalls that new knowledge may affect how people might change their opinions if they were able to go through a decision-making process again.

It will be interesting to see how SAS² evolves and is used by institutions and individuals other than official SAS² trainers. Each institution, agency, academic and practitioner has his or her favourite methodology and terminology. So long as basic human rights principles of inclusion and gender sensitivity are always consciously applied, the mixing and matching of techniques in this guide should yield results. I would like to see how the SAS² techniques might be adapted for use in UNICEF, by and with children and adolescents as well as with their parents, other caregivers and community members.