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In 2003 the former Flemish minister of Welfare handed over the first certificates to trained experts by experience, in full experts by experience in poverty and social exclusion („ervaringsdeskundigen in armoede en sociale uitsluiting”). This new profession is defined in the 2003 decree of the Flemish Community as referring to persons “who experienced poverty, widened this experience and who completed a training to apply this widened experience of poverty as an expert in the struggle against poverty.”
The advocates of this new profession refer to a growing gap between the world of the poor and the world of those who aim to combat poverty. They claim that experts by experience will re-establish the contact between both worlds. They live themselves on the banks of poverty. Yet, after a 4 years training that liberates them at least partially from the chains of (material and psychological) poverty, they get entrance to the other world. The concepts of “experience” and “expertise” take on specific meanings in the discourses around the training and the implementation of this new profession. These concepts form the central topics of my doctoral research project.
The image of the gap suggests socially salient groups, that are assumed to have distinct, coherent and rather homogeneous cultures that shape our experience. Our experience then is rooted in a way of life passed down from generation to generation. Experience in this line of thinking implies an essentialist notion referring to worlds of Difference. Current academic conceptions of culture and identity in the post-modern society refute this image. The image of the gap is replaced by the image of ambiguous borderlines. In the interplay between globalisation and individualisation -these scholars argue- we develop multiple identities as an adaptation to our continuously changing social situations. This hybrid condition applies to each of us, but is blown up in the position of “halfies” who live in the borderlands of historically separate cultural groups. Do experts of experience live in these borderlands? What does their experience tell us about ourselves?
Mere experiences do not suffice to call oneself expert by experience. To become an expert one should come to terms with one’s history of life. The self-reflection on one’s (intergenerational) roots is crucial. The advocates of the training claim this to be a process of liberation. Yet, they introduce techniques of self-discipline that seem to shape a new form of governmentality. Experts by experience reproduce this process in their contact with clients. “We support the poor by asking those questions that invite them to investigate themselves.” Their employers on the other hand anticipate another expertise. They expect their new employees to act as a “cultural interpreter”, someone that gives them access to the world of their target group. As a cultural interpreter their position has some similarities with the position of the ethnographic researcher. Do experts of experience share the same ambiguity as ethnographic researchers do? Also the ethnographer has to cope with different worlds of experience: his own biography, his immersion in a distinct cultural group and the representation of this experience. However, since the writing culture debates of the 1980s, the legitimacy of this expertise is severely criticized from within the ethnographic tradition itself. Do experts by experience hold a better position than critical ethnography to give ‘voice’ to minority groups? Or are their efforts too under suspicion of introducing new forms of surveillance ? Can they escape the aporias of the ‘reflexive turn’? Or do they get entangled in the struggle between regimes of truth?
I do not intend to perform an empirical research. Yet, following the early tradition of the empirical philosophy, I will make use of empirical data as a source of philosophical and educational reflection. I will refer to my research on the work experience of beginning experts by experience. Complementary, I will use my own experience as a participant observer in the training to become an expert by experience. Since September 2005, I have taken part in the training as a trainee. As I am an inhabitant of the other banks, I will not receive a certificate at the end of the training. Still, will there be a difference in experience or expertise?
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SUIJS STIJN
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
Doctoral Programme in Educational Sciences
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Project number:
3H050409
Duration of the project:
01.10.2003 - 01.10.2007
Onderzoek met eigen middelen
Nederlands
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