Creating Cultural Synergy

BOOK REVIEW

Synergy, Healing and Empowerment: Insights from Cultural Diversity. Richard Katz and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, eds. Calgary: Brush Education, 2012. 312 pp. ISBN 978-1550593860, $34.95.

Recently I attended an Ojibwe healing ceremony and became aware of the presence of a vastly different paradigm for creating and sustaining networks of healing and personal transformation than what I have grown accustomed to within my own culture. It was a paradigm built on shared experience, com- munal bonds, and synergistic participation instead of the competitive, iso- lated, and diminishing institutions of the “Western” model. I witnessed people healing one another through story, through presence, through an interconnected web of relationship that extends from the individual to the group and out into the living Cosmos and back again in an energetic circle of spiritual regeneration. How wonderful to experience such abundance; such accessible, practical wisdom and healing; healing for all, by all, through all. It seems that all too often in Western societies, valuable resources like heal-

ing, spiritual wisdom, and knowledge are in scarce supply, with access favor- ing those possessing power, money, and prestige. Healthcare is rationed to those who can afford it or those in the most critical states of disease. Spiritual wisdom is sold to the highest bidder or doled out to initiates who attend lux- ury retreats, seminars, and conferences. Education is increasingly a “for- profit” business that forces people to trade their future financial indepen- dence for temporary access to the ivory towers of academic knowledge. In stark contrast to this steadily-increasing chasm between essential services

and the people who need them most, Richard Katz and Stephen Murphy- Shigematsu have written a fascinating book about holistic healing and educa- tional networks within indigenous communities and how they can provide models for us to reform our failing systems along more inclusive, empower- ing, and sustainable lines. Synergy, Healing and Empowerment juxtaposes indigenous models of education and healing with those of scarcity and

Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 25, Issue 2, pp. 181–185, ISSN 1053-4202, © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12024

181

competition that have been institutionalized in most Western cultures. Katz and Murphy-Shigematsu have challenged the “zero sum” paradigm that has isolated and monetized social services to the point of near collapse. Drawing on insights from counseling, educational theory, ecopsychology, community health and development, and narrative medicine, the authors reveal how modern societies can reorient systems of health and education along synergis- tic lines to increase access and opportunity to healing and empowerment for all and to create sustainable healing networks that only strengthen as they are used. Synergy, Healing and Empowerment suggests an alternative to the com-

monly held “scarcity paradigm” of thinking about valued human resources, which assumes individuals must compete because resources are inherently scarce. The alternative—the “synergy paradigm”—is epitomized in a “syner- gistic community,” where valued human resources are renewable, expanding, and distributed equitably to members. In this model, what is good for one is good for all. The emerging whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The findings are based on three field studies that present cross-cultural evi- dence for the functioning of social empowerment and healing within a syn- ergistic paradigm. Empowerment is considered as “access to and control of valued resources.” The studies suggest that community-healing resources can become renewable and expanding, as can the process of empowerment that accesses them. Community members share these resources, combining and allocating them into unexpectedly effective “treatment packages” that are not diminished from use but rather become expansive, collaborative opportunities for individual and group transformation. To better understand the concept of synergy and how it works in indige-

nous healing networks, the authors turn to diverse cultural experiences beyond the Western paradigm. There are, for example, eloquent teachings from indigenous peoples such as the Cree from Saskatchewan and the Ju/ ’Hoansi from the Kalahari Desert. Through compelling narratives and ethno- logical detail, the book explores the creation of synergy in counseling, educa- tion, and community settings; whether it is encouraging teachers to be healers, emphasizing transformation and vulnerability in the education of health providers; or examining indigenous structures of women’s talk. Though synergy is a vital asset in the search for community health and social justice, praxis must also be highlighted. Synergy requires hard work and commitment to implement. It also requires the participation and collective wisdom of the entire community. In a chapter on training culturally sensitive counselors, a case study of the

Masters of Aboriginal Social Work (MASW) program is analyzed with an eye toward encouraging patterns of collaboration between aboriginal and Western approaches to counseling. “Building on a respectful exchange” between two

182 anthropology of consciousness 25.2

often conflicting counseling models—one based on the traditional teachings of aboriginal elders, the other on the principles of modern psychology—the MASW program “generates synergy in its teaching/learning environment by constructing knowledge as a shared, renewable resource and by stressing edu- cation as transformation” (186). Participants in the program build cooperative models of counseling that draw from both paradigms to create a synergistic, empathetic healing community that is patient centered, sustainable, and culturally inclusive. Katz has an extensive experience here. As professor emeritus at First

Nations University of Canada, he has spent decades researching indigenous educational and healing networks. His study of community healing among the dances of the Kalahari Kung (Boiling Energy, 1982:xi) was an ethno- graphic masterpiece. In the book, Katz bridged the gap between humanistic psychology and field anthropology to show how community healing arises from “a body of protective spiritual energy endlessly recycled from healer to community and back in a process that extends deep into the past” of the tribe (1982:xi). The collective health of the tribe is of considerable impor- tance in the indigenous cultures Katz has studied. He states, “Without the need for experts. . . groups rely on the renewable resource of members will- ing to talk about their own experience, struggling with the problems they share with other members” (p. 14). The focus on the individual is also demonstrated in the reflective work of

Murphy-Shigamatsu in which he considers “the synergistic process and crea- tion of a rich and larger identity from seemingly disparate parts, how I sought to transform the self, and how that shaped a productive counselor/ healer identity” (p. 76). Murphy-Shigamatsu writes from the perspective of an enlightened practitioner. A consulting professor at the Stanford Univer- sity School of Medicine, Murphy-Shigamatsu uses narrative, writing, per- forming arts, and film in medical education to enhance cross-cultural sensitivity and patient-centered care. His work focuses on personal develop- ment through establishing and maintaining relevant connections in transna- tional and multiethnic contexts. Both Murphy-Shigamatsu and Katz stress that individual identity within a synergistic community places less emphasis on ridding oneself of psychological or other impairments and more on dis- covering ways to embrace them in a coevolutionary process of personal development. The process leads to enhanced authenticity, confidence, and commitment to individual and community identity as members are encour- aged to share their own experiences as part of an ongoing ritual of healing and transformation. The authors carefully contextualize their research in relation to the larger

considerations of social justice and community health. Participants in systems based on synergy become empowered through the importance of individual

book review 183

intentions and behaviors in shaping and influencing the larger whole. This culture of mutual empowerment supports systems of cooperation and shared responsibility that in turn enables the symbiotic evolution and mimetic inter- dependence of the two. The process “seems to bring on a (new) way of expe- riencing self as embodied in, and expressive of, community.” Given the present inequities in resource distribution, transformative education is offered as one means to support a shift in thinking toward synergy. Those previously denied access are now empowered, as they become active participants in the generation and utilization of valuable resources. Indigenous cultures in general operate from a cosmological model that

establishes, nourishes, and celebrates the intimate connection between mac- rocosm and microcosm, between, in the words of Joseph Epps Brown, “humankind and an earth of beauty, peace and harmony” (2007:70). All forms of life are understood to be mysteriously interrelated. Everything is rel- ative to every other being or thing. Nothing exists in isolation. Many indige- nous peoples use the intricately interrelated threads of the spider’s web as a metaphor for the world. This is a profound symbol, when understood cor- rectly. The threads of the web were drawn out from within the spider’s very being. Like the Pueblo and Navajo myths of the Spider Woman, the “wis- dom body” of our essential connectedness helps us to escape life-threatening crises and to overcome the power of “monsters” and other calamities. Indige- nous peoples knew that the threads of the web in concentric circles were sticky, while those leading to the center were smooth. Pushing us to the “center” of our very existence, the Spider Woman represents the transforma- tional power and healing of synergistic communities. Energetically, we are stronger when we move toward each other than when we stay separate. Shar- ing our stories, our experiences, and our wisdom allows us to become “unstuck” and to grow together in meaningful, deeply interconnected ways. What is acknowledged here is not only the relatedness of the immediate

participating group. There is also an affiliation of the mysterious interrelated- ness of all that is. This awareness of the deep connection between all things is essential to the healing networks Katz and Murphy-Shigamatsu describe. The synergistic communities they detail serve as conduits for the reaffirma- tion of relationship, belonging, and identity. Many people, indigenous and nonindigenous alike, are being drawn to such expressions because they have been denied truly meaningful, healing relationships within the dominant cul- ture. Others have found perpetual frustration in a society where experience is so excessively and artificially fragmented. Katz and Murphy-Shigamatsu attend to the notion of interconnectedness (and its roots in indigenous episte- mologies) as leading to “the subtle and complex interweaving between indi- vidual and community growth” (p. 15). This requires synergy, which in turn requires ways to encourage synergy. The book, then, becomes a practical

184 anthropology of consciousness 25.2

manual for how to build and sustain synergistic networks outside of the indigenous communities from which they arise. Synergy, Healing and Empowerment clearly illustrates how healing is a

shared, dialectical exercise in communal responsibility and Gaian intercon- nectivity. It is a book that offers significant clinical and cultural application of its transformative ideas. Healers, teachers, counselors, and advocates alike will all find within its pages practical, timeless guidance for building sustain- able models of collective psychospiritual restoration. The authors have reminded us of the ancient, intuitive wisdom that our indigenous brothers and sisters have never forgotten: namely, that our understanding of the inter- related processes of health, healing, and self-knowledge are rooted in the negotiation of collective identity and a shared story of regenerative power, healing, and synergistic transformation.

Andrew Gurevich Mt Hood Community College

[email protected]

references cited

Brown, Joseph E. 2007 The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian. Bloomington: World Wisdom, Inc.

Katz, Richard 1982 Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung. Cambridge, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

book review 185

Copyright of Anthropology of Consciousness is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.