Knowing Like an Ecosystem

Toward forming a local learning community

I concluded my final article on applying resilience science to community well-being by emphasizing the importance of information in navigating the challenges ahead. We need to know what a healthy community ecosystem looks like and how ours falls short so we can strengthen it. We need to know whether our efforts are working and how to change them if not. And we need to do that collectively, to become a strong knowing and learning community.

But what does that actually mean? What does it look like for a community to “know” or “learn” something?

I have a tendency to think about this in domination system terms. I imagine a human brain being “fed” information by a nervous system so that it can make all the decisions. That’s not an ecosystemic paradigm (and probably not even a good description of how the brain actually functions).

In an ecosystem information is a resource that flows through the system. Our concern is to ensure that all parts of the system are able to participate in and benefit from that flow.

A better analogy might be the human immune system, sometimes “referred to as the body’s second brain because it is capable of learning and changing and remembering in response to changing conditions. Anatomically, it is partially localized in the thymus, the bone marrow, and the spleen, and in part, it is non-localized.” Through the immune system, “there seems to be a continual conversation among all the members of the society of cells that constitutes the body.”¹

In recent conversations with nonprofits about their work after the hurricane, I encountered a story that nicely matches this analogy.

A volunteer at the Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church distribution and rental assistance site following Helene shared a story of a landlord who had charged someone a late fee with someone from Just Economics (which organizes a tenants’ network). That person reached out to collaborators at Pisgah Legal Services, who responded that the late fee had been illegal and provided general information on illegal fees. Just Economics and Grace Covenant passed that information on to rental assistance agencies so they could look out for and be prepared to challenge such fees (removing the burden from tenants, who would reasonably fear retaliation). Since both Pisgah Legal Services and Just Economics regularly participate in conversations with governance bodies at the local and state levels, such information can also flow up to affect policy-making.²

Not only does this story elegantly align with the immune system analogy, it also illustrates several healthy flow network principles: beneficial relationships between organizations of different types and sizes grounded in common-cause values and working to prevent extractive and exploitative behaviors.

The point is not that this is the right way for information to flow, but that we can learn from the way this particular flow is so well-suited to the information being distributed and the people who need to receive it. It wasn’t necessarily designed for this particular purpose – the connectivity was probably built around the need to make referrals between agencies – but the structure and connectivity of the ecosystem was such that it was able to quickly adapt to new needs that emerged after the hurricane.

So how can we be more deliberate about fostering such information flows, whether for rapid response to emerging issues or for long-term learning?

This particular example gives us some excellent clues. In particular, it tells us that we should be concerned about three things: connectivity, form, and power.

The first, connectivity, is essentially what we've been talking about for the last several articles. We need a network with characteristics that ensure that things can flow effectively, in this case that information reaches everyone who needs it, from individual renters all the way to governments.

The form of the information is critical as well. Information that a lawyer can easily use, say state landlord/tenant statutes, is somewhere between daunting and useless for a tenant actually facing eviction or illegal behavior by their landlord. Nor are those statutes particularly helpful for a local government official who wants to prioritize and design programs – they need data on trends and top issues. So, in addition to ensuring that information can flow, we need to think about how it is translated into forms appropriate for any given point in the path, whether a statute, a checklist, a helpful conversation, or a presentation on trends.

But access to information and the ability to understand it are not sufficient by themselves. In order for the information to actually have an impact, someone must use it. Someone must have the power to use it. In the example above, it is quite relevant that a tenant at one end of the chain is connected to a lawyer at the other end who could represent them in a dispute.

To summarize: information must flow where it’s needed, appear in a form that’s accessible, and be connected with the power needed to use it. With that in mind, I want to refine what I wrote at the end of the last article. I still think there are two tasks.

The first task is focused on the institutions that play a major role in structuring and funding the ecosystem, including governments, foundations, and business advocacy organizations. It is vital to help these institutions understand how resilience actually works and the necessity and power of an ecosystemic frame for making plans and investments. That will require both education and the creation of data and planning tools that enable them to actually do that. The latter certainly include metrics for understanding the health of the system itself and indicators to understand community needs and the impact of efforts to address them. But tools and procedures that organizations can use to make use of the data and to design interventions are also needed.

The second task is focused on the broader network of formal and grassroots organizations. As with the first, the most important priority is to help them discover their power as parts of a larger system and to learn to operate strategically within it. That again includes education and information access, but it also includes connecting them with tools that support collaboration and organizing and that provide means for translating community-centered and community-led storytelling and research into forms that can be used to gain resources and influence institutions.

Each of these tasks will have its own agenda and activities, but there is much in common as well.

First, the most important tool for accomplishing these tasks is the network itself. It is the best way to share what we are learning as a community and to explore ways to strengthen and diversify our connections. Using the network will strengthen it at the same time.

Second, I believe there’s a place for a collaborative effort focused on creating and maintaining some of the tools and resources that are part of both tasks, including the development of network and community metrics, the creation of assessments and planning tools, and perhaps some basic ecosystem mapping. The challenge is to do it in a way that honors and amplifies existing efforts, acting as a channel and connector rather than one more competing player.

I am actively exploring ways to do that and some of those explorations may show up in future articles. But I think my next article will try to move from knowing and learning to how we build on that to actually govern ourselves as a community. See you next time.

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This article builds on a previous three-part series on network flow science and its application to improving community health, based on recent academic papers. The first article of that series is here.

Links & Thoughts

• Journalism as connective tissue. I haven’t focused on the role of local media in the information network, but it’s obviously an important component. This article describes an effort to rebuild Oregon’s information ecosystem through listening and trust: “When we visit communities across Oregon, we learn how journalism can function as a connective tissue rather than just a delivery system for news.” The effort also offers an interesting example of the use of the Listening Post Collective’s Civic Media Playbook and Civic Information Index.

• The liberatory power of cultural knowledge as data. I identified “community-centered and community-led storytelling and research” as resources to cultivate in the ecosystem, but it’s important that we think carefully about how we ensure that both the value and the control remain in the communities that create them. In this article, Katya Abazajian shares what she has been learning about equitable data governance from the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement.

• Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy. The Observatory on Information and Democracy published an “assessment of the role of information ecosystems in the Global North and Global Majority World,” where information ecosystems are “systems of people, practices, values and technologies configured in social, cultural, political and economic contexts… How these operate in a specific context is what conditions the integrity of information and the possibilities for informed participation in the public sphere.”

If you want to share thoughts on anything I’ve said here or have ideas about further questions or topics you’d like me to explore, please feel free to reply to the newsletter email or contact me here.

1. Kabat-Zinn, Jon. The Healing Power of Mindfulness: A New Way of Being. Hachette Book Group, 2018 (pp. 21-22).

2. Thanks to the folks at Just Economics and Pisgah Legal Services for taking the time to share their stories about the aftermath of Helene and for all the vital work that they do.