"I suggested that the students perceive the educational process as an intellectual laboratory, where we will jointly look for a solution"

The Public Affairs course was first implemented on the basis of the Communication in Government Agencies and NGOs program at HSE. We talked with the discipline lecturer Aleksey Firsov, the  founder of the Social Design Center "Platforma".

Aleksey, you have developed and implemented a unique course on Public Affairs. Please tell us how the course was built, what challenges did you face?

You are right, this course is being taught for the first time and it's great that we were able to implement it on the basis of the Communication in Government Agencies and NGOs program at HSE. The discipline was not worked out in terms of some curricula, structures, experience of other universities, in this regard, I did not have methodological guidelines. Yes, I have a lot of expertise in this area, but shifting that and structuring is a separate skill. There are also nuances - my typical speech in front of a client, or at some conference, lasts about 20 minutes, and not 80 minutes, as dp our lectures. I cannot call myself a professional teacher (Aleksey is the founder of the Social Design Center "Platforma", formerly Managing Director of Communications at Rosnano, - editor's note). But when Stanislav Naumov offered me to teach this course, I agreed for several reasons. The first is selfish: the desire to understand the subject for yourself and use the course as an opportunity to reflect on it. The second is the understanding that this is still a demanded discipline and it will develop. It has its own advantages - the possibility of synthetic knowledge, which includes a number of subjects and directions that were previously taught in a rather isolated manner. Public relations, sociology, government relations, some elements related to conflict management, social psychology. And plus a large set of corporate or social practices. This was the idea: not to try to immediately set a large theoretical horizon, but to proceed from the analysis of cases. Analyzing some practical stories, in the framework of their analysis and dialogue with students, find some generalizations.

You analyzed the cases - can you please share how you worked on them, what elements did you pay attention to?

At the beginning of the course, I created a certain methodology for analyzing stakeholders and conflict participants who take on a strong resonant sound. In this matrix, you can clearly see the participants in the conflict, their motives (studied and hidden), resources, value base, level of support, allies, and so on. Then the idea was to take specific situations and consider. There were quite a lot of environmental conflicts, urban conflicts related to construction, with some kind of development projects on the topical agenda. Sorted out many conflicts arising on national and cultural grounds. It is important to understand here that public affairs is not just any conflict. This area is about harmonizing different social or corporate segments. This is not a situation when someone is to blame, but someone we a priori support. The idea was to understand that each participant in the conflict, process has its own logic, its own system, its own values, its own approaches. And each of them has a right to exist. That is, the public affairs situation is not a zone of ethical conflict, where we can clearly divide: here is good, and here is evil. This is a situation where all participants have a view of the situation, their own logic of behavior, business logic, or social logic. The task, in fact, of the discipline is to understand with what tools their interests can be coordinated, to try to find some summarizing, smoothing, harmonizing processes; understand how to build them. Take, for example, the sensational conflict in Pashtau, or the construction of a temple in Yekaterinburg, or environmental conflicts in the Arkhangelsk region. If you look at it, the authorities, business, and the population have their own logic. And often problems arise due to the fact that the parties do not know how to hear each other, do not know how to take each other into account, do not know how to interact. Our task was just to understand how to build such interactions.

What goal did you set for yourself as a teacher? What was a marker for you that made it clear that the discipline was mastered successfully?

Students had to understand the very tool for analyzing these situations. The main problem that arises is the desire to immediately take someone's position. A lot depends on how the understanding of the situation itself is formed: it is important not to arrange everything according to some evaluative criteria, to find the right and the wrong, but to see that each subject has its own logic, its own approach. If you are inside this institution, this social stratum, then you yourself will use this approach with a high degree of probability. This was the main difficulty: to stand above the fight, realizing that you are still inside. We are still people, with our social connections, preferences - in a real situation, we would somehow be in some of their group of stakeholders, taking positions from their horizon. And therefore, the key skill here is the ability to simultaneously remain a part of some social group, to go beyond its borders and look at the situation more distantly, more objectively. And the second skill is, of course, the skill of analysis. You need to be able to decompose any situation into components, players, participants; analyze the capabilities of each player. That is, it is a skill, on the one hand, of understanding, social empathy, the ability to feel social motives, and on the other, such a surgical skill, to be able to decompose and analyze. This combination is quite difficult to achieve.

There are those who divide social practices into sectors (“we are doing this - we are political scientists / we are sociologists / someone else”), and there are those who, on the contrary, integrate them, establish these connections and interactions. 

Aleksey Firsov
lecturer

How did your communication with students work?

We understood the subject collectively. I suggested that the children perceive the educational process as an intellectual laboratory, where we will jointly seek a solution. My role in this process is organizational. The guys turned out to be quite prepared and responsive, many of them have practical experience in social work.

Please tell us in general about the relevance of the direction of public affairs. Why does it make sense for students and children who are considering their further professional trajectories to pay attention to our master's program, which is the first to consider these issues?

The relevance will definitely increase, and for several reasons. First, society is becoming more and more complex. And the more complex a society, the more difficult it is to harmonize the interests of groups within it. That is, a banal, of course, already statement - a large development of weak ties, in contrast to a small number of strong ties, leads to the formation of an increasing number of subcultures, some special groups, interests; fast information exchange, fast consolidation opportunity. All this makes the task of social harmonization more and more important and serious. This is one direction. The second argument is the request for integrated disciplines. There are those who divide social practices into sectors (“we are doing this - we are political scientists / we are sociologists / someone else”), and there are those who, on the contrary, integrate them, establish these connections and interactions. There are not so many of these harmonizing practices that unite integral subjects. We are trying to find them now. Public affairs is one of the integral subjects. In this sense, it is also extremely useful, because it allows a more comprehensive assessment of social processes. And the third is fashionable, after all. There are fashionable and unfashionable things. Well, public relations is such a fading nature. PR sounds too service, from the last century - has not yet completely lost its attractiveness, but in general it has already faded. The language itself is looking for replacements for some more weighty and interesting ones. Public affairs is also partly a substitute for some old names at a new level, this term develops and expands them.