I noted two main problems with David Hill’s review. The first problem was that the review didn’t adequately describe the book (nor the larger project) itself. I am confident that at least some of the NMS readers would find the book interesting and useful and that the others would at least appreciate a more informative introduction.

The Liberating Voices book (and the project) represent an ambitious and innovative undertaking that is quite rare today. At the same time, I would maintain that particularly vital in this historical era.

We had several objectives in writing the book. At the basic level, we wanted to bring together a large collection of ideas or exemplars — what we call “patterns” — that can be employed in pursuit of social change. We believe that is effort is significant in its own right. Each pattern is presented in a short essay using, to promote some consistency, the same format. Some example patterns include “Activist Road Trip”, “Everyday Heroism”, “Meaningful Maps”, “Back to the Roots”, and “Experimental Schools.” Believing that this project ought to be participatory I worked with other contributors to identify, develop, organize, and link the patterns. From the onset of this project (in 2001) we stressed an open approach. We developed an online system in which anybody with access to the Internet could submit their pattern ideas. The patterns that were included in the book, as well as those that were not, are all available online to anybody with a web browser. We are currently extending our system (http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns) so that people can easily “annotate” patterns with additional information, comments or questions.

We also wanted to help bridge the divide between theory and practice, between the worlds of scholarship and activism. While we acknowledge the book’s inevitable lack of completeness, we did work hard to include issues related to a wide range of interests including communities, media, economics, ICT, art, social change, policy, education, and development. We tried to cast a very broad net, believing that conversations that were both cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary were absolutely critical (while knowing that it would be impossible to be comprehensive given this broad net).

The longer range goal was democratization — bringing issues that are being “resolved” now to the table. Our goal was to demonstrate and discuss opportunities for thought and action. The collection of these “exemplars” was intended to be useful for scholars examining social change and — ultimately — provide ideas or “prompts” that could help promote informed democratic decision-making.

The second problem is that the book seems to have been reviewed in relation to goals that weren’t our goals, using criteria that we had explicitly disavowed. For example, contrary to the reviewer’s apparent assumptions, the patterns were never intended to be the last word on the subject. The point was always to introduce or suggest ideas and perspectives that we believe could be useful in projects of social amelioration. In fact, we even refer to the book as “version 1″ to acknowledge its provisional and contextual nature. So, in other words, the book does not provide the grand scheme for guaranteeing success in social movements. (I’ve omitted a sizable list of claims that the book doesn’t make.)

I also take issue with Hill’s contention that there is no central thesis. The main contention is that there are many “patterns” that people have employed in pursuit of social change historically and are likely to be useful in the future as well. We developed the collection incrementally from the “bottom-up”, rather than the “top-down” purposefully so that “theory” would not oversimplify practice and that theory could possibly and ultimately emerge. A hope, or central thesis, is that the whole “pattern language” is greater than the sum of its “patterns” and that the resulting work represents a useful tool for fostering civic intelligence. Perhaps an additional thesis is that the complexity of the world (and the impossibility of understanding it with certainty) shouldn’t prevent people from taking action.

Unlike many strictly academic efforts we are striving to move forward with this project in the “real” as well as academic world. We are currently developing pattern cards (http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/cards/cards.php) that teams of people have been using in workshops to help them conceive and design future projects. We’ve learned how the patterns — particularly when depicted on cards — can be very useful for eliciting new ideas. We’ve also learned that people frequently will use two or more patterns together especially when they can physically manipulate them in card form. Tell how these are being used by groups of people and in combinations with each other. We have also modified the project web site to allow people to make annotations and comments on all patterns. We hope that scholars and activists of all types would join us and help augment the patterns that aren’t currently adequate and add the ones that are missing. (See http://www.publicsphereproject.org/papers/schuler.puarl.fall09.preprint.pdf for more information on the workshops.)

The book has been out for over a year and after receiving both accolades and criticisms, it’s clear that other approaches might have been more effective (such as developing cards in tandem with book). We are learning (and have learned) that the idea of a pattern language is sufficiently different than other forms of idea presentation that many readers — casual or otherwise — may miss the forest for the trees. Interesting this “pattern” format proved immensely popular in Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, the architectural book from which we borrowed the basic approach, that is still in print over 40 years after its original publication.

Although we created a book that is difficult for some people, our experience has shown that the more time spent with the book, the more value people will derive from it. While not every pattern will resonate with every reader, we will feel successful if some of the ideas in the book lead to innovative and influential projects that are either thought or action based. I believe that there is an immense amount of inspiration for scholars, teachers, activists, and others who are interested in the wide range of opportunities open to those who are interested in changing the world — or, even, trying to prevent others from doing so.

Finally, I wonder if the most important, yet unspoken, criticism in the review is the audacity of assuming that positive social change is possible and, further, that academics and researchers could (or should) play a role in promoting that. As we have noted in the book, many academic projects involve analysis and critique, but avoid the (more difficult?) job of actually making recommendations. We wanted to explicitly promote civic intelligence and social imagination even if it’s currently discouraged in many academic and other circles.