Promoting Dialogue and Democracy in Post Conflict Liberia

Organization of the book The book has been organized into five chapters excluding these introductory sections. One important fact to mention here is that this book is a compilation of a series of microethnographic studies about adult learning and social change in Liberia. The idea of change through open systems of thought and democratic discourse runs through the book as an organizing theme. Chapter one maintains that through critical consciousness and dialectical thought processes as posited in the field of developmental psychology, human beings can become motivated and empowered, thereby enhancing a profound process of structural and institutional change. Thus, what weaves the different sections of this chapter together into a coherent whole is the suggestion that the main challenge of post-war development in Liberia is to modify the influence of existing historical and contemporary institutions by building upon and refining those aspects that appeal to our rational instincts and sense of modernity, such as the need to change and improve the way we interpret the meaning of our experiences, so that we may become co-creators of our historical destiny. Chapter two builds on the first chapter in very significant ways, including how the breakdown of reasoned discourse, due to selfishness can lead to innumerable consequences for human social systems and civilizations. This chapter is primarily an imaginary dialogue about the relationship between our various definitions of self and the emergence of tragedy in Liberian society. I attempted here to gauge the social anthropological question as to how best to maintain or restore a stable balance between the imperatives of selfhood and the ethics of collective social action. A major hypothesis emanating from this heuristic approach is that the Hobbesian dilemma posed by random disorder arising from the urge to self-preservation can be somewhat restrained by balancing communal interest with individual autonomy, within the context of a deliberative democracy. The dialogue in the chapter primarily reflects a variety of sources and methods across the social science disciplines. It is further viewed as an exercise in learning and criticism as David Bohm and Hans-Georg Gadamar would understand these terms (see chapter three). The dialogue also resembles a Socratic type dialogue in which the reasoning process that leads to the elimination of contradictions in thought is more important than the mere presentation of facts. The aim of this chapter, as with other chapters in this book, is to highlight the importance and means of facilitating personal and social transformation in a postconflict situation in Liberia. In the context of adult participants in learning and civil society, this transformation can come about by facilitating movements toward more developmentally advanced meaning schemes and perspectives (Mezirow, 1995). Chapter three is about the constitution of legitimate governance arrangements that embrace participatory models of development. One of the central theses of the chapter is that the process of change in Liberia should be undergirded by rationally based institutional rules and norms. This process of building legitimacy requires meaning construction within the framework of agreed upon procedures and modes of justifications to arrive at tentative best judgments and paradigms. Through this process of democratic discourse, we can internalize processes of legitimacy, change, and constitutional self-governance. Like chapter four, the chapter concludes that democratic elections in Liberia are only but the beginnings of a process of structural and institutional transf