| This participatory research endeavor describes and analyzes the organizational change of the Permanent Seminar of Resources for Rural Development in Oaxaca, Mexico. The Seminar is a unique collaboration of scholars and peasants joined in the search for answers to a variety of economic, inter- and intra-community and cultural challenges emerging during the latest stages of structural adjustment and globalization in Mexico. The Seminar and its modes of collaboration provides a model for fostering local alliances and coalitions of peasant communities who, with development professionals, learn together and support each other in innovative social and economic research and development initiatives. This research occurs as Seminar members come to the realization that successful strategies and frameworks of the past may no longer be adequate to meet the demands of a changing Mexican political economy. In response, Seminar members seek to increase the organization's diversity. The "logic of the milpa", a seminal concept of the Seminar, predicts that increased diversity will enhance the Seminar's creative problem solving potential. The Seminar invites peasant leaders from the state of Nayarit and a graduate student from the United States to join in their endeavor. As the diversity of the Seminar increases, participants begin to reflect upon themselves as an organization. This research analyzes the Seminar as it changes from an "adaptive organization" to a "critical learning organization" (CLO). As a CLO, Seminar members reflect upon and reconstruct the social relationships within the organization. This research develops the concept of a critical learning organization and compares the organizational learning of the Seminar to organizational learning in other PR approaches. Additionally, the research presents the Seminar as a 2nd generation of PR that transcends the temporal, spatial, and conceptual boundaries that may restrict the collective learning processes of other PR approaches. |
