Editorial (En Español)
Welcome to International Journal Collaborative-Dialogic Practices. The Journal brings together members of a growing international community of practitioners, scholars, educators, researchers, and consultants interested in collaborative practices based in postmodern-social construction-dialogical assumptions. This community responds to the important question in social and human sciences:
How can our practices have relevance for the people we meet in our fast-changing world? What will this relevance accomplish? And, who determines it?
Globalization and technology propel the social, cultural, political, and economic transformations in our shrinking interdependent world. Concomitant with these transformations is a rhizomatic and swelling plea from all corners of the world for democracy, social justice, and human rights. People want to participate, contribute, and share ownership in their daily lives and their futures. They demand flexible systems and services that honor their rights and respect their needs. They have lost faith in rigid institutions that treat them as numbers and ignore their humanity. Alongside these challenges segmentation of peoples, ideologies, and values within countries and cultures continues. Combined, these challenges compel us in the social and human sciences to reassess how we understand the world we live in, how we respond with the people we meet, and how we determine and use our practice tools, and our ways of being and becoming with others.
Faced with local, societal, and global shifts, and with the unavoidable complexities they engender, the Journal is designed to serve as one part of a timely and valuable response by spotlighting interconnected issues such as: 1) the juxtaposition of democracy, social justice, and human rights; 2) the importance of people’s voices locally and globally; and 3) the fundamental need for collaboration. Toward this aim, the Journal publishes articles on a variety of practices from various disciplines, contexts and cultures, and it encourages the inclusion of well-published and new authors.
Mission
The International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices provides a bilingual forum for the exchange of ideas and practices from professionals and scholars around the world. This forum aims to help produce and promote relationally responsive- dialogic processes which generate new opportunities and new futures in our working and living together locally and globally.
This Issue
This issue features articles from practitioners and scholars in Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Mexico, and United States along with a Special Section on Violence and Peace. Each author shares their unique application of working collaboratively and approaching their work from a relational-dialogical perspective. Each author’s voice serves as an invitation and catalyst for dialogue.
The Frequently Asked Question section offers two beginning responses by Kenneth Gergen and Susan Levin to the question: How is dialogue transforming? The From the Bookshelf Essay features reflections comparing the work of filmmaker David Cronenberg and collaborative practice.
We also offer a glimpse of Issue 9, sharing an article by Julie and Jacob Storch.
I invite you to step back, pause and reflect on your own practice as you engage with the authors in this issue. We welcome your comments, contributions to our blog, and article submissions. Our authors and readers would love to hear from you.
Acknowledgements
The Journal depends on volunteers for reviewing, editing, technical production, and translation. I thank the volunteers who made Issue 8 possible: Translation Editor Monica Sesma and translators for this Issue: Rene Buenfil, Sylvia London, Anisley Martinez, Mario Osvaldo Rangel, Josep Segui, Monica Sesma, Paloma Torres, and Carlos Felipe Villar; guest reviewers Leticia Rodriguez, Josep Segui, and editorial assistants Candace Runaas and Tushanna Price. I offer a special welcome to our new From the Bookshelf editor, Daniel Wulff.
A special thank you to the Houston Galveston Institute and The Taos Institute and their Board of Directors for their continuous support of the Journal.
Co-editors: Harlene Anderson and Saliha Bava
