Your presence changes what you see.
Every reading of a landscape is situated. Who you are, how you enter and the fact that you are there shape what you can see – and what the system does in response.
Some signals you carry. Some you choose. Some are unavoidable.
Race, gender, nationality, language, accent and comportment send signals before you say anything. They cannot simply be switched off.
Clothing, vehicles, technology, meeting formats, methods, who you choose to meet and how long you stay. These are design choices.
Your presence perturbs the system. Attention, money, legitimacy, expectation and access shift because the intervention exists.
Counter the biases built into the visit.
Awareness alone is not enough.
Build ways for communities and partners to say how the team is experienced, not merely what they think of project activities.
Include the intervention in the Power VistaPower Vista and strand map: A map of who influences whom, through which practices and with what weight. The full reading treats the Power Vista as a strand map read through power relations.. Track its money, legitimacy, networks, knowledge and convening capacity.
Your credentials and networks can open doors or connect actors. Deploy them towards the Alternative HeadingAlternative Heading: A better direction an intervention seeks to support, revised as it learns. It is not a fixed blueprint for a final state. with explicit awareness.
Continue through connected concepts
Read the landscape while attending to how your position shapes the read.
→Build complementarity into the team to counter collective blind spots.
→Compare stated purpose with operating interests – including your own.
→Treat the intervention itself as an actor with regulatory capacity.
→Read the full Positionality chapter.
The full reading provides the conceptual foundations, examples, sources and methodological detail behind this page.
Terms used on this page
- Alternative Heading
- A better direction an intervention seeks to support, revised as it learns. It is not a fixed blueprint for a final state.
- Power Vista and strand map
- A map of who influences whom, through which practices and with what weight. The full reading treats the Power Vista as a strand map read through power relations.
