Relationality …. forest – trees

We, working on social quality, thought for many years now how to explain properly what it is about, the social, defined as

an outcome of the interaction between people (constituted as actors) and their constructed and natural environment. Its subject matter refers to people’s interrelated productive and reproductive relationships. In other words, the constitutive interdependency between processes of self-realisation and processes governing the formation of collective identities is a condition for the social and its progress or decline.[1]

Perhaps it is easy – at least grasping one decisive part. It is a poem which I actually quoted already many years ago, when writing my doctoral thesis:

Yaşamak bir ağaç gibi

tek ve hür ve bir orman gibi

kardeşçesine,

bu hasret bizim.

            (Nâzım Hikmet)

_____

To live in solitude and free

like a tree but on the same time

like a forest in solidarity

this yearning is ours.

(Nâzım Hikmet)

 

How often do we forget the essentials – also in daily life, even if we try to improve it. Or especially then …

 

[1]            van der Maesen, Laurent J.G./Walker, Alan, 2012: Social Quality and Sustainability; in: Van der Maesen, Laurent J.G./Walker, Alan (eds.): Social Quality. From Theory to Indicators: Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 250-274; here: 260