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The Amethyst Effect: Challenges in Decoding Change Processes
When seen from the outside (at least to the untrained eye), amethysts look like mundane rocks, so I chose that name to explain some of their attributes of change and particular methodological challenges.
I have analyzed human group behavior for more than twenty years. I like Clifford Geertz’s metaphor for this profession: those who study collective behavior go after a carnival to collect, describe, and interpret its traces (After the Fact, 1995). In Mexico, we call this process — which is a metaphor for other things, such as making lousy love decisions — “picking up cigarette butts at the party.”
The profession of picking up cigarette butts was resignified when I took over the leadership of CENTRO’s graduate program in futures studies, which I have been directing for a decade. Then, looking for timely facts became crucial to decipher processes of change. In this activity, I found my sense of belonging to this field in which, from time to time, I feel like an outsider.
In other posts, I referred to the art of cherry-picking and some attributes relatos to amethyst effect. You can check out those posts to explore these topics further.
