Australian Comparative Empirical Philosophical Investigation (ACEPI)
The Yolngu Aboriginal Consultants Initiative (YACI) initiated in 2006, in a direct sense grew out of the experience of a group of people who had worked with each other on antecedent projects – Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia, InterNetworking Communities and Sharing the True Stories. Taking ‘project’ as a verb, rather than a noun in thinking about those previous collaborations, we were clear that there would be a descendent. It happened to us in the sense that we were approached by diverse institutions asking us ‘what Yolngu thought about this or that’. Within a few months of our first consultancies, we had its name taken directly from the language of those who had approached us, recognizing the rationality of Yolngu practices linking knowledge and social organization. We located our new project in what we identified as the emergence in Australia of a new rationality of government. YACI works through the medium of workshops, and following the example of workshops that were developed during the 1980s and 1990s at Yirrkala School we have always seen workshops as opportunities for wider, more philosophical dialogue. BUT YACI workshops are commercial products, they need to be focused and narrowly instrumental to generate appropriate outcomes, as such they are missed opportunities for meaningful on-the-ground reconciliation, and development of profound ideas through dialogue. The concern which animates the project we present here originates in recognizing that in YACI we are passing up opportunities to do important philosophical work.
In 2011 Michael Christie and Helen Verran submitted a proposal to the for funding to institute an Australian Comparative Empirical Philosophical Investigation (ACEP). Here is a copy of our description and justification of this project AustralianComparativeEmpiricalPhilosophy.pdf
Here is an earlier version of a paper recently published in 2011 in Culture and Dialogue Vol 1, no.2, 21-36. DoDiffTogether.pdf