A Systemic Change example: Relational Citation

Societal change is often (almost always?) rooted in intense personal frustration and even anger

Here is a game-changing, system-resetting and heart-pumping idea. Bear in mind it’s a simple one rooted in personal frustration and noticing a gap. In this case, it’s a gap in a specific environment - academia.

*Relational Citation* decolonizes how citation (academic-speak for giving credit) has been done historically. From its creator, scholar and designer Deborah Khodanovich:

“I’ve been working on the creation of a citation system from my thesis around the idea that all knowledge is communally generated. The Relationship Citation System (RCS) treats oral transmission and collaborative thinking as legitimate and valuable scholarly sources that should be properly credited and traced along its lineage.”

What this excerpt does not say outright here: ownership* of ideas and the history of citing it has been a hairball of misuses of power, violences and greed. Within the current system, in order to advance a new idea, it needs to be situated within existing research of a certain kind. And yep, you guessed it, that certain kind of research that’s deemed ‘proper’ to cite... has favoured some, and kept others out.

Ideas with no “formal” “lineage” behind them struggle to gain traction. That slowdown doesn’t help society. That friction is gate-keeping: marginalising some ideas - Indigenous lineages, Black feminist thought, immigrant community knowledge - and centering others. I don’t know about you, but I think humanity needs all the wisdom it can get, and there is more than one way to demonstrate a rigorous idea with legs.

Having experienced this gate-keeping first hand on my path to a master’s in communication and social justice, I can tell you the situation inside academia is not pretty. There are many times I would have quit, but I try to take my own advice: every non-status-quo line of thought that gets pursued/published, even if it never gets read - because Masters papers don’t - is worth it on principle. To complete my degree, it meant I had to scour the scholarly record for affirmation/validation so I could write about knowledge I have gained through living, and learning in community. Some ideas just got cut. (How many ideas do *you* think have been cut since the advent of academia?)

What comes to me is the slowly fading oral languages, the herbal remedies, the costly lessons learned early in the field in every realm. This too is Knowledge. Knowledge that cannot be cited traditionally but can now be cited relationally and perhaps... be less out of reach.

I love Relational Citation as an example of how a big systemic solution can arise from one individual’s frustration.

I imagine it arising from private torment on a late night: “Ugh, I need/want to say XYZ in my paper and the credit should go to something other than a ‘peer’-reviewed journal! Dang it, I’m just going to start crediting based on what’s real.”

The potency of personal pain and frustration breaks a very old spell and a new way is born. Great ideas, in my view, OFTEN come through this ‘grit in the oyster’ or ‘wrench in the machine’ way. Longtime readers will recognize this as a WTL teaching from 2010. 👋

Now that the Relational Citation tool is about to be released publicly, what the rest of us can do - after you’ve said ‘oh wow, why didn’t I think of that’ like me… ;-)

…is use it. Advance it. Share it. Claim it. When we support system-busting ideas en masse, we are voting for the world we want. We clap back at the old way and become the new.

Subscribe to show support and be notified when RCS is released here.

And then ask yourself: how (else) can you put your frustration, anger, grief, or heartbreak to use in the days we are in?

#DoOneThing #DoingTheImpossible #IdeasThatMatter #KeepGoing

*ownership is a key word here, isn’t it? when someone owns something, it means others don’t, or cannot… so then doesn’t the idea of ownership intrinsically create haves and have nots? 🧐

Got an interest, or stake, in creating systemic change in your way, in your own lane? I’ll be back from creative adventures soon, and have a heart open for new work, whether coaching, speechwriting, editing or other. If you’re looking for a strategic partner for one session or more, do please reach out. I’d love to hear from you.

Photo Credit from bottom to top: @dvoritdvorit on Instagram and Balikó András on Unsplash.