Philip Woods and Holistic Democracy
By Wade Lee Hudson
Professor of Educational Policy, Democracy and Leadership at the University of Hertfordsapphire in England, Philip Woods offers a comprehensive worldview — holistic democracy — that complements Elizabeth Anderson’s democratic equality. Though he focuses on educational institutions, he applie his perspective to society as a whole. Woods’ contributions are extremely valuable, but he seems to overlook that not all conflicts are “win-win. ”
As a member or leader in multiple European professional associations and projects, as well as a member of the US-based Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership network, and the author of more than 120 publications, Woods is highly regarded by his peers internationally. An American, Jill Bradley-Levine, recently described his work as
a relatively new theory to frame the ways that teacher advocacy creates a space for the development of collaborative leadership where teacher advocates influence their colleagues’ practice. When teachers advocate on behalf of students who are marginalized, they place their students’ needs above their own. This approach becomes a way of acting not only with their students, but with their colleagues as well. Teacher advocates challenge other teachers to meet students’ needs more fully while supporting teachers as they try new instructional approaches. Collaborative leadership [promotes] co-development….
Teacher advocacy demonstrates a way of carrying out teacher leadership that can be framed through collaborative leadership theory. Collaborative leadership consists of the view that leadership is intentional and emergent. School leaders have choices about what intentions they bring to their work…. Such leadership develops from intentions motivated by moral and ethical standards. Woods and Roberts argue that the “core values of democracy and social justice are essential measures of intentionality.” As an emergent process, leadership arises “from numerous, ongoing actions and interactions.” Further, leadership roles and responsibilities are fluid where all participants of organizations may actively engage to lead intentionally. When leaders emerge to act ethically, codevelopment may occur. The philosophy of co-development unites the application of holistic democracy and social justice to the intentional and emergent practice of collaborative leadership. Thus, the process of collaborative leadership occurs when leadership...is deliberately directed toward achieving social justice as defined here, and members of the organization allow leadership to emerge through collaborative processes so that individuals are given opportunities to develop in a holistic way.
In his essay, “Holistic Democracy,” Woods summarizes his perspective as follows:
Holistic democracy is a way of working together which encourages individuals to grow and learn as whole people and facilitates co-responsibility, mutual empowerment and fair participation of all in co-creating their social and organizational environment.
Four dimensions of practice are at its core:
holistic meaning: aspiring to as true an understanding as possible not only of technical and scientific matters but also the “big” questions of enduring values, meaning and purpose, through development of all our human capabilities — from the intellectual to the spiritual
power sharing: inclusive participation in shaping organizational operations, policy, direction and values. And autonomy to exercise initiative with the parameters of agreed values and responsibilities
transforming dialogue: a climate where exchange of views and open debate are possible, and people cooperatively seek to enhance mutual understanding and reach beyond narrow perspectives and interests
holistic well-being: sense of belonging, deep connectedness, inner knowing, feelings of empowerment, self-esteem, and independent-mindedness through democratic participation.
Woods affirms “the study, practice and development of leadership that effectively fosters learning, social justice and collaborative agency.” He argues:
Holistic democracy responds to key trends in society, education and organisations, and what we know from research about learning:
Collaborative learning benefits students’ affective development and achievement outcomes.
Distributed leadership in schools benefits learning amongst staff and students.
Employers want students to leave school able to work in more participative, flexible and creative environments.
Organisations work better where people are involved, innovate, have choices, and are able to work flexibly.
Collaboration aids learning and innovation — and organisations need to learn and be creative in order to survive and flourish.
Wise organisations work for the greater good, not just the bottom line or narrow performance measures.
People are increasingly looking for ways of expressing meaning in their lives, including exploration of spiritual awareness and energies.
People want to be able to shape the environments they live and work in.
A healthy democracy is a healthy environment for organisations, and needs people who experience in their everyday life what it means to be a democratic citizen.
Collaborative School Leadership
In Collaborative School Leadership: A Critical Guide (2018) Woods and Amanda Roberts present a comprehensive overview of their philosophy.
Schools need to respond to rising expectations and the imperative to release the creativity of educators and learners to achieve more socially just education. Yet, strongly hierarchical structures and reliance on the idea of ‘great’ leaders are persistent features of much school education. This book offers an alternative vision of leadership. Collaborative leadership as we examine it in the book is a deeper conception than the idea of distributed leadership that is often applied or studied. We see collaborative leadership as both emerging from the perpetual process of complex interactions across the school involving not only school leaders but teachers, support staff, students and others (hence as emergent), and shaped by individual intentions which express meaning, purpose and goals and the will to make a difference (hence as the product of intentionality). Our concept of collaborative leadership draws attention to both the context that gives rise to leadership and the human sparks of creativity and freedom generated by teachers, students and others as they work together. The book argues that integral to a desirable conception of collaborative leadership is an explicit value-base — a philosophy of co-development rather than dependence. It explains how collaborative leadership practices can be guided by co-development values, where progress is achieved with and by helping others as co-creators of the learning environment of the school. The practical process of developing collaborative leadership is explored through ideas on reciprocal learning, values clarification, reframing leadership and collective identity construction. The book is a crucial aid in developing distributed leadership practice, through teacher leadership, for example, that is more collaborative, innovative, critically reflexive and capable of advancing social justice.
In their review of this book, Paul H. Smith and Melanie J. Blackburn write:
Philip Woods and Amanda Roberts offer a valuable exploration of how leadership that is based on a deep commitment to social justice can improve the experiences of school children as well as those who are employed to support their development, It productively focuses on two key questions that all school communities should reflect on: (1) what is leadership? and (2) what should leadership be? In response to these questions, collaborative leadership is offered as an “alternative vision” to a top-down approach.
Distributed Leadership
In recent decades, many management consultants have promoted “distributed leadership,” which encourages recognizing and harnessing “the expertise and insights of diverse organisational actors,” not just topmost leaders. However, Woods cautions that this approach “is capable of being subjected to and instrumentalised by the performative and competitive agendas” of the dominant culture. Holistic democracy aims to avoid this pitfall by deepening distributed leadership. Woods argues:
Educational institutions internationally are encouraging distributed leadership, collaborative working across networks, greater creativity, more innovation and student voice, pushing against traditional boundaries. These boundaries can be opened further by working towards holistic democracy.
Woods’ approach is founded on three elements. The first is “the appreciation of social phenomena as emergent and complex,” an ongoing interaction between structure, person and practice (or action).
The second element
is the recognition of an innate human capacity for ethical agency and the aspiration to, or a feeling for, an idea of human perfection — however difficult this may be to articulate or practice. This is the capacity for ethical and spiritual awareness…. An essential point in this line of thinking is the view that there is something in the nature of “ordinary consciousness” that lays the basis for ethical and spiritual progress.
The third element
is an appreciation of conceptions of democracy that see the democratic process as more than clashes of narrow interests — in particular the idea of deliberative democracy, which seeks ways of transcending difference and enhancing mutual understanding and developmental democracy, which highlights both the ability of people to discover and bring to fruition “innate potential excellence” and the policy imperative to provide the necessary conditions for self-development.
In these ways, holistic democracy is about
both meaning and participation. Holistic democracy describes a way of working together which facilitates the growth and learning of individuals as whole people (meaning), as well as co-responsibility, mutual empowerment and fair participation of all in co-creating their social and organisational environment (participation).
As touched on above, the meaning dimensions involve:
holistic meaning (learning collaboratively, by integrating all our human capabilities — spiritual, intuitive and ethical, as well as intellectual and emotional — and seeking purpose guided by that aspect of ordinary consciousness that lays the basis for ethical and spiritual progress), and:
holistic well-being (experiencing an environment where there is a sense of belonging and connectedness — spiritually and ecologically, with nature —and both community and individuality, and where confidence and the capacity to think and feel for oneself are promoted).
And the participative dimensions involve
power sharing (inclusive involvement and shared responsibility for decision-making, providing opportunities for co-leadership), and;
transforming dialogue (respect, freedom to share views, increasing mutual understanding through people reaching beyond and working to overcome individual narrow perspectives and interests).
In these ways, holistic democracy deepens “distributed leadership.”
The Human Interaction Sphere
Woods’s conception of holistic democracy affirms that people are able to become more authentic, and this capability gives “ethical validity to challenges to unjust power inequalities.” This affirmation is based on three beliefs:
Grounding in Being. Humans are grounded in being. Being precedes and enables thought. “Being in a way that draws upon and develops the whole person” grounds learning and “enables progress towards holistic meaning.”
Grounding in Capacities for Existential Meaning. “People possess a capacity for ethical and spiritual awareness and existential meaning, which fosters deep connection with others.” Interaction can form a grounding that cannot be deconstructed or swept aside by skepticism. Judgments cannot be taken-for-granted, but they are not always “arbitrary and reducible to personal subjectivity.” People are able to relate to others as ends-in-themselves. “They are capable of intrinsic relations which entail the experiencing of values and meanings that are qualitatively different from the arguments of logic.” We can discover existential meanings that “are not the product of logical or market place calculation, as with the death of soul mates, the joy of children, or trivial habits.”
Micro-interactions. Face-to-face relationships involve physical and emotional elements that leave people vulnerable, exposed. Within these contacts, “meanings are exchanged and constructed,” and “rules (such as turn-taking)...[are] a necessary characteristic of human life.” These rules or protocols “may be specific to the people involved, [with] a degree of autonomy from the wider society.”
These interactions make demands on the participants, with “potential consequences for feelings such as guilt, status and self-esteem.” The need for restitution and forgiveness often results.
Since skill and subtle responses are essential, many sociologists argue that socialization must teach individuals how to engage in effective social encounters. But an exaggerated emphasis on socialization denies the importance of “the inner work of social agents through their internal conversations and orderings of ultimate concerns and their capacity for ethical and spiritual awareness.”
The exaggerated emphasis on socialization overlooks “the human interaction sphere,” the “experience of being with and interacting with other human beings,” which is “qualitatively different from interaction with the natural environment.” Others are experienced not merely as symbols of social structures, “but as a subject which shares human-ness,” which leads to “fundamental ethical impulses.”
Feeling connected to other human beings who are like one’s self generates the unique feeling of being responsible to those others — ”an unconditional, inexhaustible command on the person, which requires them to be permanently ready to rise to its requirements and, however often they may do this, is never diminished.”
Feeling connected to others also generates “tacit knowledge about our own human-ness,” our shared humanity. This knowledge “consists of unarticulated insights and understandings” generated by feeling connected — knowledge that may later be translated into theories. But “the moral element is not socially constructed.”
This human interaction differs from “social interaction,” which involves fulfilling certain roles, such as being a teacher or having a working class background. “At the same time as people are, in interaction, engaging their social identity with that of others, they are also engaging their human self with those same others as human selves…. There is a mutual recognition of...the sense of self that makes us each human.” This awareness and feeling connected “give a more profound and enduring meaning...than changeable social rules and statuses.” These interactions are essential to the possibilities of non-ideological, sacred, holistic democracy, including in economic, legal, political, sexual, and other realms.
“A radical challenge to ideology requires an opposition from a framework of thought that offers some degree of transcendent validity,” based on a worldview, such as holistic democracy, that is grounded “in the individual and intersubjective capacities of people” and “the desire for a better way of being.”
These emotional roots of democracy, which are both individual and intersubjective, include “the individual human capacity for ethical and spiritual awareness.” Feeling connected to and interacting with other human beings generates emotional “calls for a human, ethical response to the other.” These emotions are “intrinsically compelling.” They are not “the product of a reasoned construction of moral responsibility” — though “critical discourse and analytical thinking” are important in order to test actions.
Systemic Ethics
With his systemic analysis, Woods embraces the need for a peaceful “social order” (as discussed for instance in the 1940s by Karl Mannheim). Intersubjective interaction is an important corrective to focusing solely on individual awareness and change. The belief that mere awareness “will dissolve systems [overlooks] the importance of context, including the effects of social inequalities and the distorting influence of ideologically driven discourses.” The social order “can be a conduit for the formation and exercise of power differences and the shaping of identities that are not consciously chosen but imposed.”
The human and the social sphere operate simultaneously. “We are constantly processing both social and human interactions, and the influences of instrumentalising trends are strong and often insidious…. More often than not,” the human sphere must “be consciously struggled for.”
“The capacity to recognise and nurture the affective and ethical value of the human interaction sphere within the context of other pressures and influences” contributes to “the evolution of values and ideas with enduring validity that transcend narrow interests.” This evolution “also involves co-creation through transforming dialogue and holistic learning” in a process that is intersubjective and collaborative.
He writes:
There are interests and groups who are marginalised and systematically disadvantaged... Rich democracy addresses systematic social injustices. The full power of democracy, however, is not only as a vehicle for championing the weaker interests and aspiring to inclusive participation. [It counters] a performative and neo-liberal ideology that appears so dominant in many countries.”...
Holistic democratic practice involves an “expansive notion of social justice [that] spans four dimensions” — “fair distribution of respect, participation, development opportunities (that is, the opportunity to learn and grow as a person with a capacity for independent thinking and connectedness with others) and resources….”
This approach affirms
day-to-day life values such as justice, tolerance, mutual understanding and a concern for the welfare of others, and to ensure that no-one is excluded from opportunities to participate and learn. Integral to collaborative leadership is a concern for inclusion — who is able to speak and be heard, who is able to help shape change, who benefits; and who is marginalised in all these things.
“Systemic ethics goes beyond company values and individual leader morality” that ignore “social inequality, the downstream impacts of pollution and supply chain workers, world poverty and environmental sustainability” and acts “in ways consistent with a self that is defined by the values and priorities of neo-liberal, competitive governance, measured by narrow calculations of achievement.”
Systemic ethics pays attention to “‘community and friendship’ and to ‘the unconscious and non-rational, creativity and imagination’”, and draws “upon the beauty and vitality within human relationships and the natural world.” It’s rooted in “a philosophy of co-development [and] social justice.”
Social justice is thus sketched as a four-fold scheme. Participative justice concerns people’s rights to participate in the decisions which affect them…. Cultural justice is concerned with the absence of cultural domination, lack of recognition and disrespect…. Distributive justice focuses attention on eradicating unjustified socio-economic inequalities and deprivation,... Developmental justice…is concerned with factors that facilitate or hinder growth as a person and the development of a person’s knowledge and capabilities….
Eco-leadership focuses on connectivity and interdependence; it encourages distributed leadership at local levels, leadership from the edge and the building of strong networks, coalitions and collaborative relationships that are responsive and adaptive to change…. [It] integrates a view of values and ethics that...challenges and subverts the narrow logic of the market…. This stance is not only about personal conduct but also addresses organisational and systemic issues…. Equally important are the ways in which the overarching co-operative ideas (the participatory culture) and institutional arrangements for co-operative practice (the enabling institutional architecture) are designed….
The book’s central focus has been relational freedom — freedom with others. Self-awareness and critical reflexivity are essential constituents of individuals exercising self-direction as social beings. Relational freedom entails both developing in the self and supporting in others growth towards autonomy, as well as responsibility that reflects a deep relatedness to other people, the natural world and those experiences and elements of life, from music to expressions of community, that feed the human spirit….
The core purpose of holistic democracy is, then, to enable people to develop a capacity for freedom as social beings…. Leadership may in its practice be guided more by values associated with dependence or by values associated with co-development.
The System
The whole thrust of his work strongly implies he believes all of our systems are interwoven into a single, coherent, dominant social system. He speaks of “the social order,” refers to “the performative and competitive agendas” of established organizations, and questions whether practices serve those “performative and competitive agendas…[that are] dominated by instrumental rationality.” He writes about “the dominant literature on leadership and education” that reflects “a performative and neo-liberal ideology that appears so dominant in many countries” and “dominates what is taken-for-granted truth...because its interests are able to dominate the discourse.” He concludes that the purpose of ideology is to “justify the interests of dominant groups,” laments that “there are interests and groups who are marginalised and systematically disadvantaged,” which calls for a “rich democracy [that] addresses systematic social injustices” with “an alternative framework” rooted in a “systemic ethics” that distributes “leadership at local levels” and cultivates “the participatory culture” and designs “institutional arrangements for co-operative practice” — that is, “the enabling institutional architecture.”
Ideology
In “Against Ideology: Democracy and the Human Interaction Sphere,” Woods addresses the struggle between the dominant society’s “instrumentalising trends” (which reduce humans to objects) and “drivers to democracy” (which nurture whole people). On the one hand, the dominant instrumentalising trends comprise:
a culture shift around an instrumentally driven business model of entrepreneurialism and innovation
structural changes institutionalising private, competitive values and managerialist priorities
growing reliance on network governance which can mitigate against democracy, and participation, and
exacerbation or reinforcement of power inequalities by aspects of post-bureaucratic changes.
The promotion and justification of these trends form an ideology… — specifically, a performative and neo-liberal ideology that appears so dominant in many countries.
This dominant, “performative” ideology is based on a “managerialism” that aims to justify the interests of dominant elites. Woods argues:
Ideology, from whatever political perspective, implies a system of ideas and values that purports to make sense of the context and choices facing people as organisational actors. Ideologies act to construct and shape knowledge, and its presentations, in the interests of a particular power grouping…. The essential purpose of ideology, however, is to shape and present ideas in ways that favour certain relationships of power.
The function of ideology is to “protect and promote” relationships of domination in a non-transparent manner. “Its fundamental aspiration is not the enlargement of truth and understanding.”
On the other hand, as Woods sees it, a non-ideological framework “offers a guide to social action with greater validity and more robust understanding.” It transcends particular interests and enables antagonisms to be acknowledged “and for suffering, inequalities, and aspirations to social justice to be articulated as parts of the critique of ideological representations.”
This holistic-democracy perspective argues that democracy has “some degree of transcendent validity” because it is rooted in deep feelings related to the human “capacity for ethical and spiritual awareness.” Woods’ “extra-ideological, critical viewpoint” is informed by two dynamics.
The first dynamic — ”critical illumination” — comes from
a concern with interests and the antagonisms that these underpin. These include inequities of distribution and (unequal) access to material resources, social capital, cultural acceptance, status, and so on. This illuminates the portion of real experience that is repressed by a necessarily distorting ideology. This first direction of critique gives a voice to marginalised and disempowered interests.
The second dynamic — ”positive illumination” — comes from
the positive view of humanity, centering on humanistic potential, and the recognition of the communicative capabilities and the spark of goodness and wisdom that enable and entitle everyone to have their say in the conduct of social life. This direction is grounded in some sense of transcendent validity. That is, it is supported by a basis for judging experience that is not simply personally subjective or the arbitrary product of a particular community, group or culture.
Holistic democracy thus “provides a framework within which to critically and positively illuminate that which ideology systematically overlooks.” Drivers to democracy counter ideology. These drivers include participative drivers that nurture broader participation, and expressive drivers “that are fueled by impulses to extend opportunities to express spiritual, artistic and creative drives, enjoy the warmth of caring human bonds, live ethically and to learn and grow as full human beings.”
Woods declines to characterise this democratic,, countering set of ideas as ideological. He argues that a counter-ideology would present itself “as being rooted in partial interests with its superiority dependent on enabling its power and interests to become dominant.” With this approach “validity becomes a function of power.” Holistic democracy, as Woods sees it, is “an alternative framework” that challenges the “interests-bound” basis of ideology. This perspective gives holistic democracy “greater warrant and power than seeing democracy as a counter-ideology.”
Reservations
I concur with Woods placing high value on democratic deliberation that results in “win-win” solutions embraced by all participants. He’s right to emphasize transcending narrow self-interest in a way that affirms our common humanity. He’s right to question the urge to dominate and the use of ideology to serve that purpose — many people become addicted to power for its own sake. He’s right to advance “power with” rather than “power over.” He’s right to constantly seek reconciliation; even those involved in heated confrontations can still hold out hope for eventual unity.
But some dilemmas are black-and-white and cannot be compromised. The state either has the death penalty or it does not. It either outlaws all abortion or it does not. The President can either do whatever he wants or Congress and the courts can exercise countervailing power. Black lives matter or they do not. With regards to matters like these, the power to dominate is decisive. Society must take a stand and enforce it.
With these exceptions, Woods is incisive and inspiring. His “holistic democracy” pulls together a solid foundation for forward-looking work throughout society.
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RESOURCES:
Researching Holistic Democracy in Schools, Philip A. Woods
Transforming Education Policy, Philip A. Woods - online book