Community Transformation: Redefining Culture

Dr. Paul Uhlig joins Peter Block for this week’s blog on cultural transformation. In it, they discuss the underlying processes behind culture and the ways we are consistently recreating it.

Instead of viewing culture as a linear process that ‘grows,’ they discuss the possibility that we create a new shared culture with each experience. This means that cultural change doesn’t have to be a slow-moving process, but can instead be recreated in a shorter time just by changing the circumstances the culture is created from.

Paul mentions how collaborative models could change the way we view a specific subset of culture and the same is true for many situations. The reason it seems slow to change is because we’re constantly using the previous paradigm of culture to determine where our next step should be. By taking a few steps back and asking ourselves how we really want our culture to be shaped, we can transform it much more quickly than most would imagine.

If we view culture in this way, as a cyclical process rather than a linear one, we open ourselves to the possibility of transforming it into one that reflects the ideologies that we find important in our own communities, rather than viewing culture as an obstacle that must be overcome to initiate change.

If you would like to hear more about Peter and Paul’s views on community, transformation and culture, visit our information about the upcoming Community and Transformation: Beyond Reform in Healthcare and Education workshop coming up on October 10 and 11 in Red Bank, New Jersey.

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