Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 02:43:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Blancato <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Social change from the top-down or bottom-up? (fwd)



Continuing in this line of thinking/acting...



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 10:49:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Robert Corbett <bcorbett-AT-netcom.com>
To: Bob Corbett <bcorbett-AT-netcom.com>
Subject: Social change from the top-down or bottom-up?


Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 17:03:12 -0400
From: David Collesano <dcc-AT-pobox.com>

Bob:

Your "dissenting voice" strikes the right note.

The history of capitalism has taught us a few things: When bargaining power
is all on one side, the conclusion is foregone. Also, people can be
organized to pursue any end - no matter how dangerous or absurd - if the
salary is high enough, comparatively speaking.

Dictated "from above" by however enlightened a "vanguard", development
projects follow the same rules. In this respect, a deep-pockets donor in
dialogue with village elders is indistinguishable from a mobile
transnational facing a government representing a vast pool of unorganized,
starving workers. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. The request may
indeed be for a free-form jazz improvisation as in your case, but the
request, as such, cannot be ignored - if the piper wants money for his
work.

The Fourth World is a vast cemetery strewn with inert monuments to the
impotence of top-down social engineering. The corruption which attends
dependency is hard to avoid. A good rule of thumb is that projects should
be small enough so that no participant earns most of his/her living
therefrom. Ideally, the object of the activity is so self-evidently
desireable that folk will organize themselves *as volunteers* to achieve
it. The point of these small exercises is not their tiny outcomes (a
footbridge, drainage, a stand of trees, etc) it is, rather, the
transformation of a mere aggregate into a functioning group capable of
assessing alternatives, allocating resources, dispassionately evaluating
the results of purposeful action and adjusting strategy without
recrimination.

The formation of such a group may take a decade or two as folk, initially
reliant on the local gwo neg, come to see that his vision is limited to
support of the status quo and that more participatory democracy insures a
wider perspective and better results.

There's a lot of romanticism out there on the short-term efficacy of change
>from the bottom-up.
Au contraire, the social dividends are subtle and require the patience
necessary to let folk, through trial and error, teach themselves the value
of democratic process at the local level. If you throw a lot of money
around and push too fast, your project will become just as manipulative
(and feckless) as large-scale, top-down plans beamed down from the moon. We
all have our favorite stories in the latter regard - most are so funny, you
could cry.

It's a matter of degree. Your money entitles you to a chair at the table.
If you limit your interventions to process-oriented "poze pwoblem" issues
and do not, yourself, vote, you're on the right track. Ideally, one should
be on-site continuously as the neutral outsider's role in facilitating
group process is helpful and usually welcome. Also you need to be living
there to choose the earliest moment when the group is ready to manage your
resources on its own. An error in this regard is usually fatal to the
project.

Few have the stamina for this kind of work. They wind-up handing money to
the local hierarchs and bullying them to go for the quick result - to their
eventual dismay.

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| David C.Collesano, Pompano Beach, FL  |
|   dcc-AT-pobox.com    (Fax)954-698-9894  |
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