Materials

Methodology Manual

Content of the Manual

This guide offers a com­pre­hens­ive nav­ig­a­tion chart designed for indi­vidu­als, organ­iz­a­tions, or insti­tu­tions aim­ing to facil­it­ate work­shops centered around the theme of “The jour­ney towards oth­er per­spect­ives”, a meth­od­o­logy based on glob­al south per­spect­ives, struc­tures of colo­ni­al­ism and exper­i­ences of racism and dis­crim­in­a­tion. This meth­od­o­logy is the res­ult of the work of five work­shops con­duc­ted dur­ing the months of Novem­ber 2022 to April 2023 with Chilean and Sudanese migrant com­munit­ies liv­ing in Ber­lin, Ger­many in con­junc­tion with the Ber­lin cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al asso­ci­ation OBUK. The Ber­lin cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al asso­ci­ation OBUK has been involved for eight years in polit­ic­al and cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion pro­jects in the areas of envir­on­ment­al edu­ca­tion, anti-racist edu­ca­tion­al work and glob­al learn­ing. For the past eight years it has been run­ning the eco­lo­gic­al sem­in­ar and guest house “tagung­swerk” at the Raoul Wal­len­berg cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al cen­ter in Ber­lin Weißensee.

The phe­nomen­on of racism, its emer­gence and spread are dir­ectly related to the his­tor­ic­al peri­od of colo­ni­al­ism and the emer­gence and spread of the cap­it­al­ist eco­nomy, per­sist­ing to this day through­out the world not only through pat­terns, but also through social struc­tures that devalue, dis­crim­in­ate and exploit people affected by racism. For this reas­on, this ini­ti­at­ive was born from the need for an anti-racist and crit­ic­al edu­ca­tion­al work on racism not com­ing from white per­spect­ives, but from glob­al post­co­lo­ni­al and inter­sec­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al approaches from migrant voices; which is the frame of the pro­ject “Post­co­lo­ni­al edu­ca­tion­al per­spect­ives on glob­al racism and res­ist­ance — inclu­sion and empower­ment of migrant voices”. The meth­od­o­logy presen­ted here was developed with­in the frame­work of the afore­men­tioned pro­ject.

Section Material

Objective of the method

With the meth­od­o­logy developed, we aim to achieve the fol­low­ing object­ives through col­lect­ive dia­logue:

• Raise indi­vidu­al aware­ness: The work­shop aims to raise par­ti­cipants’ indi­vidu­al aware­ness on aspects of the his­tory, con­sequences and cur­rent present struc­tures of colo­ni­al­ism that have not been learned, that have been unques­tioned or taken for gran­ted.
• Pro­mote col­lect­ive dia­logue: Through col­lect­ive dia­logue, par­ti­cipants will engage in dis­cus­sions that will help them under­stand per­spect­ives and nar­rat­ives from vari­ous parts of the world that are dif­fer­ent from Europe or the West­ern world in gen­er­al.
• Recog­nize the impact of col­on­iz­a­tion: The work­shop aims to enable par­ti­cipants to recog­nize col­on­iz­a­tion as a sig­ni­fic­ant his­tor­ic­al factor affect­ing col­on­ized ter­rit­or­ies, while acknow­ledging Europe’s role as a prot­ag­on­ist and pro­moter of this pro­cess.
• Under­stand colo­ni­al struc­tures: Par­ti­cipants will ana­lyse and under­stand the strong per­sist­ence of colo­ni­al struc­tures in mod­ern soci­et­ies as high­lighted by migrant voices, draw­ing on their own exper­i­ences and know­ledge.
• Ques­tion­ing hege­mon­ic struc­tures: The meth­od­o­logy encour­ages par­ti­cipants to ques­tion the hege­mon­ic nar­rat­ive of his­tory and the power rela­tion­ships it has cre­ated, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on under­stand­ing the struc­tur­al racism of Euro-cent­rism.
• Link­ing dis­crim­in­a­tion and col­on­iz­a­tion: Par­ti­cipants explore the his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion between dis­crim­in­a­tion, racism and the his­tory of col­on­iz­a­tion.
• Reflect­ing on priv­ilege: The work­shop encour­ages par­ti­cipants to reflect on their own as well as on oth­ers’ priv­ileges, thus fos­ter­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of social dynam­ics.

What you will find in the Manual

Individual travel logbook

This log­book will be the com­pan­ion of each par­ti­cipant in the jour­ney they will under­take, it will be a per­son­al item and will not be shared with any­one if they do not wish to do so. The main object­ive of the indi­vidu­al log­book is to chan­nel the indi­vidu­al reflec­tions of each par­ti­cipant as they pro­gress through the jour­ney.

Collective logbook

The col­lect­ive log­book is the instru­ment that will accom­pany the group on this jour­ney. This log­book will be their guide with ques­tions that will chal­lenge and guide them in each of the them­at­ic boxes.

Methodology Manual

Methodology Manual Cover