Is Stage Theory Colonial? Nora Bateson in Dialogue with Robert Conan Ryan
Channel: Jeremy Johnson
Date: 30/08/2021

"Stage theory... Is BS. Always was. And it is colonial as hell."  

https://www.facebook.com/norabateson/posts/10159038460440860

That was the "whole tweet," as it were. But the responses online proliferated, and were explosive. Sometimes insightful, sometimes heated and polarizing. The Mutations community has been fascinated by this development in the discourse. 

Nora's original thread alone now has over 1000 comments. Many were thanking Nora for saying what she said, others were rushing to the defense of developmental theories (theories, largely drawing from Piaget and MHC - the Commons Model of Hierarchical Complexity - as their foundation, that propose human individuals go through distinct and measurable stages of maturation, and then later, adult development, and that these stages can then be applied collectively to human societies), which are something like a mainstay for integral and metamodern communities, who have championed the return of 'generalist' thinking and meta theory to respond to the complexities and challenges of our time.

Mutations has scheduled a new panel series, "Stages and Development,"exploring this important inquiry from historical and critical perspectives. Nora Bateson and Robert Conan Ryan started us off with his first dialogue on the historical legacies of stage theories themselves.

Nora Bateson: https://twitter.com/NoraBateson
Robert's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAhhtHFbIMpdA_f2S82Q-Xg

#StageTheory #Complexity #DevelopmentalTheory