Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

Looking back on my rather cognitivist defaults as described in the account of my taken
for granted assumptions (chapter 3) the introduction of and reflection on the way
interaction of people is explained from a complex responsive process-perspective
incited other insights. Especially the confrontation of the work of Mead with the more
recent developed psychological concepts of framing, social contagion and cognitive
dissonance invited me to a reorientation on my cognitivism. A cognitivist stance
emphasizes a rather individualistic approach of social interactions. As if social interaction
is a game of deliberately and unilaterally influencing each other, as if social interaction
is a process manageable by the shrewdest agent. The work of Mead, supplemented
with the concept of social contagion, exemplified the social and
constructionist nature of human interaction. Connecting these insights to my advisory
work is connecting me and my work to other people within the UAS instead of positioning
me as a quasi-experimental psychologist who co-creatively ‘toys’ with people.
A last observation is that in the discussions about the internal branding programme
the wavering between a co-creative and planned change approach is recognisable.
What I wrote in chapter 3 about a wavering context for the development of policy in
the UAS appears not to be some abstract somewhere allocated perspective, but this
perspective is real in the positions taken of people in the discussions. ‘The wavering
context’ is an abstraction from what the members in the coordination team were
doing; it is an expression of what we were discussing.
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