ISLAMABAD, June 29: What is the best policy? The question might have defied definition since times immemorial. Social scientists, reformers, managers and visionaries, nevertheless, continue to find ways to improve it.
Dr Sohail Inayatullah spelled out one such scientific methodology in his lecture on Friday evening at the TVO auditorium, arranged by Islamabad Social Sciences Forum.
He spoke of using an integrated depth analysis to create a more effective policy. It has been the subject of 15 to 20 PhDs, and seven countries including Singapore are using it in various social sectors.
Dr Inayatullah, a political scientist, is a visiting professor at the Tamking University, Taipei, and adjunct professor faculty of arts and social sciences, University of Sunshine Coast, Australia.
He has worked and written on “futures” studies, and has published a number of books and articles on the subject.
He called his lecture less a presentation of a theory and more a practical discussion of creating more effective social, economic and technological policy. His “methodology of epistemology” has helped in policymaking and planning, in challenging official views of reality, in creating alternative futures and in acting as change agents in creating desired futures.
Reality is layered, he said, and going down to layers takes longer to realize. There are also multiple points of intervention. The idea is to challenge each level. In addition, the doctrine, as it were, is not anti-empirical but seeks to understand all levels and integrates them.
What are these layers? Dr Inayatullah examined them at four levels. Litany, the things that are said about it generally, the recital of tales of woes (perhaps the terminology derived from the church practice of prayer), systemic view, (based on social science), world view (the weltanschauung), and myth and metaphor commonly associated in people’s mind about a certain policy. He referred, for instance, to various mistakes by doctors and paramedical staff that resulted in the death of patients.
Then a large number of people die not of their ailments but of tripping. In Australia, he said, it was the third biggest killer. If these things are analyzed and debated at the above four levels, this kind of occurrence can certainly be reduced.
Questions can also be examined as to how people are turning to homeopathy and local therapies in spite of the existing medical expertise. It can be analyzed at the above four levels and one can find guidelines to rectify the faults in various policies.
Dr Inayatullah listing the benefits of this four-layer methodology said that it extended the range and richness of scenarios. It leads to the inclusion of different ways of knowing among participants when used in a workshop setting. It can be used by a wider range of individuals because it incorporates non- textual and poetic/artistic expression in the “futures” process. It moves the debate and discussion beyond the superficial and obvious to the deeper and marginal, and takes the whole thing to a longer term: allowing for a range of transformative actions by various actors. Alternative layers of analyses can inform the policy of actions taken. It can lead to policy actions that are sustainable, that is, authentically solve problems instead of merely reinscribing current issue. It can reinstate the vertical in social analysis that is from post-modern relativism to global ethics.
A number of participants including German scholar Dr Fry, Abida Aziz, who teaches at the Aga Khan University, and social activist Tahira Abdullah took part in the discussion while Zarian Salamat of the Forum introduced the speaker. — MJA