Ratio Talks

Over the last few months I have been interviewing moral agents, people like Maff Potts, Srdja Popović, Joyti Mhapsekar, and Simon Duffy. And people like Sascha Haselmayer whose book Slow Lane is based on interviews with social entrepreneurs around the world, another group of moral agents.

We are talking about people who go against the grain of orthodox social thinking. What if the answer to all of our problems was each other, and not more services? How about revealing the dictator who runs our country to be the buffoon he really is? Why can’t people with intellectual disabilities exercise their rights to live in the community and not an institution?

We have turned the last page of each of these stories so none of the propositions seem shocking. But shocking they were before the authors of change put pen to paper.

In this episode, Katherine Zappone helps us make sense of these conversations. What do we mean by moral agent? (Spoiler alert, the answer is about morality). How do people sustain themselves through the long struggles of social change? When and where will the next generation of moral agents leave their mark on society? 

Katherine is better placed than most to answer these questions. She either led or was closely involved in the leadership of three major social movements in Ireland. On women’s education, on marriage equality, and on fertility rights. Then she moved from civil society to state, applying her moral compass to lead a ministry and contribute to cabinet decision making.

Sascha Haselmayer’s book The Slow Lane, is published by Berrett-Koehler. In the podcast we talk about Ann Louise Gilligan’s book Reclaiming the Secret of Love published by Peter Lang. Paulo Freire’s work is best understood through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Katherine is working on a memoir about her transition from civil society to government, hopefully to coincide with the 10th Anniversary of the 34th Amendment to the Irish Constitution that followed from Katherine and Ann Louise’s long struggle for marriage equality.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

Jyoti Mhapsekar is the child of Indian freedom fighters. Jyoti’s struggle was different from her parents. She fought not against the British but alongside and for the women of India. Her weapons were song and theatre. 

Her story, told in this latest episode of Ratio Talks, starts with The International Year of Women in 1975. Women of Jyoti’s class and caste began to re-interpret the global renaissance in feminist thinking for the Indian context.

The work of these women coalesced into a movement called Stree Mukti Sanghatana, which roughly translates as Women’s Liberation Organisation.

The movement spread out from Mumbai into the rural areas across Maharashtra and then to the rest of India. They put on theatrical events and concerts and engaged with tens of thousands of women at each performance.

The conversations that followed revealed new challenges. Violence against women. Blocked opportunity. The loss of dignity from working in harsh conditions, as exemplified in this episode by the waste pickers who make their living sifting through garbage tips.

When Stree Mukti Sanghatana was formed half a century ago, two thirds of Indian women were illiterate. Today two thirds can read and write. There is much more to be done. But the tide has turned.

In this episode you will hear Jyoti sing as well as speak. In this link you can see a younger Jyoti and her colleagues performing one of the songs that inspired a generation of women on the sub-continent. 

In addition to Jyoti, we hear from Noel Mathias, founder of Novel Solutions to Wicked Problems, an initiative to help listeners like you get more access to innovation and to learn more from people like Jyoti in the Global South.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song and design is by Luca Picardi.

Maff Potts, our guest on Ratio Talks this week, has much to teach us about a powerful civil society and the potential of a relational social policy. We will hear more from him as the series progresses.

But today’s conversation focuses on his moral agency, his constant pushing against business as usual.

Maff stumbled into the so called helping professions, rapidly becoming a leader of powerful organisations and an advisor to government. 

But he came to understand that too often the professions didn’t help. They were missing something. For Maff, that something was being human.

Systems systematise. Many people using systems don’t fit. Many workers don’t fit. Maff didn’t fit.

After several frustrating years agitating for change from within Maff decided to move out. He left work, retreated to his garden shed, and tried to figure out what was going wrong, and how to put it right.

He concluded that the answer to our problems is each other. He started a movement, Camerados, dedicated to connection. The movement sets up public living rooms, spaces for strangers to meet. There are now 250 around the world.

In this episode Maff talks about the challenges of being the moral agent that made all this happen.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

When we think of moral agents, the mind goes first to the figureheads. Emmeline Pankhurst. Nelson Mandela. Dr King. But many suffragettes led the fight for fair votes, and the leadership of the anti-apartheid and civil rights movements was similarly broad based.

In this weeks podcast, Simon Duffy describes the background, characteristics and contributions of several leaders of the movement that has secured, is still securing, independence and autonomy for people with intellectual disabilities.

Simon has played a big part in this story. He was part of the coalition that, over a four decade period, fought for the rights of people with disabilities to move out of the warehousing of Dickensian institutions and into the community. And then when they were in the community, to release them from the grip of professionals who saw themselves as indispensable. 

Simon is part of the global Citizen Network that works on the principles of community, justice, inclusion, democracy and environment. Simon’s book with Wendy Perez Everyday Citizenship: Seven keys to a life well lived is available from Redpress. 

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal in the postscript reflects their views.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

In this phase of the podcast we are talking about moral agents, people who stand against the grain of orthodox thinking.

Sascha Haselmayer set out to write a book about quick fixes but came to the conclusion that social change takes time. 

He got to that conclusion by talking to moral agents around the world. Many of them call themselves social entrepreneurs. Listening to Sascha’s descriptions, they often sound like community organisers or social pedagogues. 

Their designation doesn’t matter. Sascha is telling us something about the roots of civil society led change, about how ideas emerge and develop outside of organisations, and before they get the backing of philanthropy or social investors. And decades ahead of any state involvement.

Sascha’s book is called The Slow Lane: Why Quick Fixes Fail and How to Achieve Real Change, and is available from good book shops. 

In his reflection on Sascha’s work, Pritpal S. Tamber referred to this article by Angela Glover Blackwell about the Curb Cut Effect in the Standford Social Innovation Review. She shows how laws and programmes designed to benefit marginalised groups end up benefiting all of society. 

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal in the postscript reflects their views.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

We are learning in this series on relational social policy that the seeds for the most significant changes in the world are sown not by the state or by private enterprise but by civil society. And not by civil society organisations, but by moral agents challenging the status quo, and building relationships with like minded people. 

This is how we got women’s suffrage. This is how secondary education came into existence. This is the story of equal rights for gay people. 

And it is at the heart of the overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević.

In this episode of Ratio Talks, Srdja Popović , one of the leaders of the movement known as Otpor, tells us about the strategy and tactics of civil society resistance. 

As Executive director of CANVAS and Practitioner Democracy Fellow at Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia, Srdja sits between the growing body of evidence on non-violent struggle and activists in places like Iran, Russia, and Burma fighting for human rights.

Our resident critic Pritpal S. Tamber is on vacation, so his place is taken by Maff Potts from the Association of Camerados. Maff sits behind a movement of people around the world who believe that the answer to our problems is each other. As you will hear, Srdja’s ideas have been a major inspiration for the Camerados movement.

You will hear Srdja talk about the fifth People Power Academy that took place at the end of April. 2024. The proceedings are freely available for Day 1 Learning from the Frontline and Day 2 Technology and Disinformation. For those who prefer to read, Srdja’s bestseller Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, lego men, and other non-violent techniques to galvanise communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world is available from all good bookshops.

The conversation between Michael and Maff in the postscript reflects their views.

Subscribe to Ratio’s Newsletter here and find out more about the Association of Camerados here.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack and on Apple Podcasts.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

This year, Ratio Talks is exploring how a relational social policy can nurture the power of a big civil society. In recent episodes we have been considering the role of philanthropy.

Today, we talk to Romy Krämer from Germany. She helped establish and then shape the Guerrilla Foundation.

The foundation is the clearest example of next generation philanthropy. It is absolutely focused on civil society. It takes power away from rich donors and gives it to social activists, the moral agents who challenge the dominant order.

The Guerrilla Foundation is funding the next generation of suffragettes, civil rights activists, and climate agitators. The troublemakers operating outside of traditional civil society organisations.

It is the attention to the detail of how to shift power as much as the what of civil society led change that impresses.

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal reflects their views.

Subscribe to Ratio’s Newsletter here and find out more about Pritpal S Tamber’s work here.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack and on Apple Podcasts.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

*Thanks to Adrian at Straw Hat Studios in Totnes for helping us out at short notice.

The Ratio Talks podcast is currently exploring the potential for a ‘relational social policy’, one that seeks an optimal balance between two powerful forces, a big civil society and a small state. The ideas are summarised in this paper and this podcast. 

The first episodes in the series are considering the implications of a relational social policy for philanthropy. 

A fortnight ago we talked to Géraud de Ville de Goyet from Barking and Dagenham Giving, a new way of thinking about investing in place.

In this episode we talk to Jonathan Simmons, an entrepreneur who has switched his attention to social investment. 

In this episode, he talks about his partnership with Géraud and BD_Giving. Jonathan is looking to invest in local businesses that deliver a social good. 

The U.K. is often thought of as being at the forefront of social investment, but Jonathan has found it difficult to raise the money for his new venture. 

Jonathan’s story tell us a lot about the challenge of thinking differently about giving, and about widening our gaze from service providers to the full span of civil society.

Pritpal S. Tamber, international expert on community power joins the conversation at the end to draw out the main themes.

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal reflects their views.

Subscribe to Ratio’s Newsletter here and find out more about Pritpal S Tamber’s work here.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack and on Apple Podcasts.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

Relational social policy seeks an optimal balance between two powerful forces, a big civil society and a small state. The ideas are summarised in this paper and this podcast. 

This month the podcast focuses on the implications of a relational social policy for philanthropy.

Géraud de Ville de Goyet is CEO of Barking and Dagenham Giving, an innovative approach to investing in place, guided by local people, with the needs of each community in mind, and geared for better systems. In the podcast, Géraud talks to Michael about successes and failures of putting local people at the heart of decision making, improving social infrastructure, and about his aspirations to move beyond participatory grant making. As usual, Ratio Talks resident critic Pritpal S. Tamber gives his reflections.

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal reflects their views.

Subscribe to Ratio’s Newsletter here and find out more about Pritpal S Tamber’s work here.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack and on Apple Podcasts.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.

Relational social policy seeks an optimal balance between two powerful forces, a big civil society and a small state. The ideas are summarised in this paper and this podcast. 

For the next month or so the substack and podcast series focuses on the implications of a relational social policy for philanthropy.

Derek Bardowell, CEO of 10 Years Time, starts the conversation with a reflection on his most recent book Giving Back, a personal memoir of the limitations of orthodox philanthropy, and a treatise on how to release its potential. 

At the end of the episode, Pritpal S. Tamber, Ratio Talks resident critic, gives his reflections.

Show Notes

In their conversation, Michael, Derek and Pritpal refer to:

* Felton Earls and Maya Carlson’s book Voice, Choice and Acton: The Potential of Young Citizens to Heal Democracy, Harvard University Press

* Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press

* Matthew Desmond’s ground breaking article in the American Journal of Sociology in March 2012 Disposable Ties and the Urban Poor. This is the focus of next week’s contribution to the Relational Social Policy Substack

* Angela Glover Maxwell’s article How We Achieve a Multiracial Democracy was published in the Spring 2023 edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review

* Susan Wolf Ditkoff and Abe Grindle’s article Audacious Philanthropy was published in the Harvard Business Review in October 2017, and is the focus of a future article on the Relational Social Policy Substack

* One of many obituaries to Chuck Feeney, who coined the phrase ‘giving while living’ is available on the Atlantic Philanthropies website

* The conversation with Katherine Zappone about the path to liberation and social change is available here 

* As is the conversation with Tony Iton about how communities in California are pursuing health equity through structural change

* Peter Townsend’s seminal book Poverty in the United Kingdom was published in 1979.

The conversation between Michael and Pritpal reflects their views.

Subscribe to Ratio’s Newsletter here and find out more about Pritpal S Tamber’s work here.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack and on Apple Podcasts.

Get in touch with us any time by sending an email to [email protected].

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson and creative director Richard De Angelis. The show’s theme song is by Luca Picardi.