Open house

Matthew Koschmann at a book launch event at the United States International University–Africa, in Kenya. His book examines the role participation can play in solving complex problems such as housing access, a major challenge in Manila. 

The title of Matthew Koschmann’s new book is The Philippines Road Home.

That road wound up being a journey he almost gave up on.

The book—which makes the case for a participatory approach to housing access—traces its origins back nearly a decade, when Koschmann was a Fulbright scholar at Ateneo de Manila University. An expert in nonprofit organizational communication, the opportunity to study a major, complex problem like housing in another culture was enticing.

But when he worked on the project back in the states, “it just felt impossible to do without living there,” he said. “It’s really difficult for some middle-aged white guy from Colorado to conduct ongoing ethnographic research on the other side of the world.”

Koschmann, chair of the communication department and an associate professor, had one final visit to the Philippines on his calendar when he pulled out of the book project, but elected to make the trip. The connections he made there convinced him there might be room for his insights, after all.

“There were big contrasts between government housing programs, which were largely non-participatory, and the nonprofit sector, which defined itself as having a more participatory approach to housing,” he said. “From a communication standpoint, how those nonprofits were approaching the challenge was fascinating to study.”

In the Philippines, and especially Manila, housing is a major challenge. Koschmann’s book, which published in April, looks at the idea of participatory housing—which involves the meaningful involvement of relevant stakeholders in key stages of development and decision-making.

“It sounds simple, but every word in that sentence is contested,” he said. “To me, the work of participatory housing is about what it means to the people involved and how we accomplish participation together—as opposed to a government saying, ‘Well, we posted a flyer, so we’ve participated.’”

Making the case

 

One of the cases in Matthew Koschmann’s book focuses on the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, which he visited after The Philippines Road Home published. 

In understanding how organizations are using participation in their housing work, Koschmann wrote cases for three of them—Habitat for Humanity, Gawad Kalinga and Community Organizers Multiversity—that showcased different ways to think about participation and communication as addressing a complex issue like housing. He brings that together around larger themes like language, symbolism, meaning and social construction to show how organizations can think about participation in framing and solving major problems.

“There’s no math equation that defines what it is to be participatory,” he said. “Taking a communication approach to this isn’t about trying to land on a definition, but rather, giving a fuller, richer sense of what participation means, how it’s practiced and how it’s experienced.”

You don’t, of course, have to travel to Manila to see what a housing crisis looks like: Access to housing remains a challenge in Colorado and throughout the United States. While the specific issues surrounding housing in the two countries are two different to compare, “where I see parallels are the conversations in our society around whose voice matters, who’s included, who gets to define what is meaningful and valuable, how we reach levels of shared understanding,” Koschmann said.

“That applies not just to housing, but immigration, higher education, policing, healthcare and so on. The book raises bigger issues of what it means to engage in participatory work, whatever the issue is, and how we help marginalized people become engaged in the decisions that directly affect their lives.”

That impact and perspective kept him going through countless research trips to the Philippines, where his affection for the local fruit has earned him the moniker “Mango Mateo.”

“I’m forever an outsider, but I’m also not a tourist anymore,” he said. “A big part of the work was earning that trust—so that when I got something wrong, people wanted to correct me, instead of joking about it behind my back, because they know this work matters.

“Connection, more than data collection, has been one of the most meaningful parts of the project. What really pleases me about the book is that the rich, full experience from the research work really shines through.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.