I think this demonstrates more than being or becoming. Another dimension that the new technology creates is legitimizing. What I mean by this is a person feels as if they have a voice that is allowed to be expressed and SOMEONE will hear. I’m not sure legitimizing is the right word, but there is something going on that gives a person a place in this world in relationship to others. This goes beyond being and becoming, and places someone within a system or network.

I subscribe to your normative expectation that we should “be” participative. But many libertarians will resist being told to engage with others with civility and tolerance, and that’s a democratic challenge.

Also, most people persist with a reified rather than dynamic view of institutions, and don’t accept that discourse shapes our world. Presented with the opportunity to join a discussion about improving a system, the response is “well, it is as it is.”

IAP2 addresses a particular context: the relationship between an electorate and its government.

I agree that IAP2 is process-focussed. It also respects the institutions of representative democracy. But it does not suggest that participation stops when policy is set. Every IAP2 practitioner agrees that the participatory approach should be ongoing.

This is important, as is Euan’s reflection.

Getting something organized and creating results, that ‘becomes’, out of all the constant networked ‘participation’, will IMO require that people acknowledge ‘being’ whilst ‘doing’ and increasingly accept or embrace (depends upon how enthusiastic or not one is about living in ongoing ambiguity) that the process is the outcome.

This in turn requires that there are real democratic principles put to work with respect to iterating through participation the objectives and values that networked groups of people can actually believe in and want to accomplish. Networks are increasingly the public places and spaces where attitudes, opinions and culture are / will be shaped, and they carry important information about attitudes and information that the still-rigid institutional stewards of our societies should not, or cannot, ignore.

It will remain a challenge as to how to reach consensus, but it seems clear that more and more our (negotiated) agreements will be our structures … agreements about what to do, how to do it, who will do it, by when and with what kind(s) of accountability.

Welcome, once again, to the early stages of a very real paradignm shift