Author Archive for Shane Lofgren

Ethical Considerations in the Design of an Educational Curriculum on Sanitation

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Shane Lofgren
on 3 January 2009
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Hey guys, I feel like I wasn’t able to really get across what I felt were important points about our curriculum project during our call today so I’m going to try to clarify them for you now in an email (that I’ll also post on the blog, so if you have any responses post them there).

So we’re being tasked to design the presentation that either we or some group will give to the villagers of Suro Antivo.  Now, one of the goals of that presentation–which everyone can agree upon–is that we need to transfer knowledge of the health benefits of sanitation as well as the means to achieve those benefits.  We’re not on any sort of ethically shaky ground here because all we’re doing is providing knowledge that is generally agreed to be correct to people who willingly come to hear us and we’re letting those people do what they wish with that knowledge.

However, since one of our overaching goals for the project is to improve health among the villagers of Suro Antivo and since there is a strong and direct correlation between sanitary practices and health, we might decide that we want to do everything we can (ie, more than just transfer knowledge) to get the villagers to adopt sanitary practices.  One such way to increase the adoption of sanitary practices is through persuasion.

If we designed the curriculum to not just be informative, but persuasive as well, then we would add elements that attempted to change the behavior of our listeners (now, I think a fair argument would be that even the informative-only approach attempts to change behaviors, but with the persuasive approach, changing behavior would be an explicit goal).  Now, there are levels of persuasiveness you can use.  You can simply rely on your authority as someone who seems to know what they’re talking about and say “you should really wash your hands!” and stuff like that.  Or, you can take it quite a bit further and use techniques from marketing and other disciplines who have studied human behavior and have well-established methods for changing people’s behavior.

Now, the question is–do we design our curriculum to be solely informative, or to be persuasive as well?  If persuasive, how much persuasion are we willing to use?

I would encourage you not to take this matter lightly, because the decision we come to here really sets a precident for the type of development organization that we are, and what development doctrine we adhere to.  Just to show you that there are different schools of development thought who would answer the questions I’ve posed very differently, I’ve liked you to two different readings (Encountering Development and Marketing Safe Water Solutions)  a that roughly argue for and against persuasion.

The Escobar reading (of which you only need to read from the beginning to the end of the second paragraph on page 5–though if you have time at some point, I’d like to have us read the whole thing, because it’s a fascinating different take on development) attacks that idea that Group A, which believes it knows better than Group B what is good for Group B, has the ethical right to do anything to Group B without Group B’s express permission, even if Group A thinks it is acting in the best interests of Group B (haha, sorry if that’s confusing). Furthermore, the reading argues that such efforts have been totally unsuccessful historically.  From this school of thought comes to common practice we see currently that NGOs don’t do development unless the target of the development asks to be helped and that the help provided should be based upon what the target asks for (often discovered through a needs assessment).  To this school of thought, you should only give people information and let them do with it as they please–you should NOT try to impose your ideas upon them.

The contrary opinion, provided by Marketing Safe Water Solutions (skim to get the main ideas), argues that such ideas are hindering development.  Marketing provides all sorts of unused methods to improve peoples health by changing their behaviors, and while developers worry about ethics, corporations (who have no such concerns) are already using methods from marketing to great effect.

Think about this, read the 2.5 pages from Escobar and skim MSWS, and let’s discuss this issue on Wednesday.

P.S. It also occurred to me that Green Empowerment and/or Solucciones Practicas might be expecting a certain kind of curriculum, so that’s also something for us to take into consideration.

Unintended Consequences in Development Work and Ways to Prepare for and Solve Them

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Shane Lofgren
on 3 January 2009
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While I was in Mexico on vacation this winter break, I had a conversation with a man who had done some development work.  He told me about a project he’d heard about from a village in Chiapas, Mexico.  In that village, Women travelled to a river every day to wash their clothes.  This took time and (I’m assuming) got soap and other pollutants in the river.  The project installed a pump that brought the water back to the village and into each house.  The project accomplished its goal–women no longer traveled to the river every day to wash their clothes.  However, it turned out that the time the women spent washing their clothes was an important social period for them, and it also was a time they used to settle disputes as a group.  With the group dissolved, disputes were not taken care of and there was strife in the village.

I feel that this is a great example of unintended consequences that can come as a result of outside groups instituting a change.  I feel like such actions often don’t take into account such things as social harmony because, though they are incredibly important to the happiness of the villagers that developers are trying to create, they are hard to quantify and require an intimate understanding of the life of the villagers.  Furthermore, community and social order are not things that are as highly valued in (parts of ) Western Culture and thus can be undervalued by Western developers.

I think that if such disruptive consequences are recognized before the project is implemented, however, then they can be averted.  These consequences will only be recognized if developers recognize that development involves people with different values and circumstances and make a commitment to understanding the complexity of each unique situation. In the case of the village in Chiapas, a developer could try to organize a community gardening project or other community activities that could perform the same social function as washing clothes used to.  Still, I think that such social institutions take time to come into being, and new ones the developer tries to create, such as a community garden, would not be as effective, at least a first.  I think effectiveness is maximized when the community decides what the new activity will be that takes the place of the old and when they are commited to making it work.  Ultimately, though, I think it is naive to think you can make a drastic change in a community without costs (and I’m not just talking about monetary costs).  Realisticly, a good development project will be one whose benefits far outweigh its costs, not one that is all benefit and no cost, because such projects do not exist.

Notes From Another Sanitation Project in Peru

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Shane Lofgren
on 28 December 2008
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I just read a project proposal from a Linfield group (available for download as “Conservation, Food, and Health Foundation Concept Application“) that is also working with Green Empowerment and planning to go to Peru.  Their project focuses more on sanitation than on water provision–they’ll be installing 300 Bio Sand Filters (they didn’t explicitly state that they’d be doing this many, but I inferred it from their budget).

Here are the notes for that reading, with thoughts and questions specifically about how aspects of their project and their proposal apply to what we hope to do:

  • We need to find out how many people in the village where we’ll be working speak Quechua.  Also, even if many villagers speak Spanish, we might be better off giving presentations in their native tongue.  If we need to prepare presentations in Spanish and Quechuan, we will likely have to pay for a translation and so we should work together with the Linfield group, even if only to split the cost of this translation.
  • In this project, money is budgeted to pay for training and educational programs–is there any way we can reduce these costs by using members of our group rather than hiring people and by preparing educational materials ourselves or finding them for free.  I’d like to see a more detailed account of their expenses that went toward education.
  • This project plans to have some of its hygiene education accomplished through theater.  We should communicate with them and find out how exactly they’re doing this and see if we can’t also use their scripts or whatnot in our project.
  • We should think about alternative methods besides theater we could use to convey knowledge and proper concern for sanitation.
  • This paper talks about biosand filters removing 96% of fecal coliform bacteria.  I wonder if this is a high enough removal rate to be substantial.  I imagine that it is, because Bio Sand filters have a good reputation, but I could also imagine that not being the case if, for example, it only took 1 PPM of coliform to have a 90% likelihood of sickness, and the water has 100 PPM (this would mean the filter would reduce the coliform to 4 PPM–still far more than the hypothetical amount that would be highly likely to cause sickness).

Some Useful Psychology to Aid Development

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Shane Lofgren
on 27 December 2008
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I was reading an article in the NYT on the issue of relative happiness–a phenomenon which can basically be summed up by the finding in many studies that many people would choose to lose money if they knew others would be losing a larger amount of money and, conversely, would rather earn $50,000 a year if their neighbors earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if their neighbors earned $250,000–and it got me thinking about development.

One of the big problems with a project like we’re hoping to do in Peru is getting the community to care enough about the system we’re installing to put in the time and money to maintain it.  Now, we’re addressing this in many ways, including education programs (to show people the benefits of sanitation) and community investment of time and money (the idea being that you care a lot more about something if you had to pay for it).  I was thinking that we could also leverage the phenomenon of relative happiness.

We need to show people that our system has increased their relative happiness, not just absolute happiness.  Let me show you the difference:

(Absolute happiness) “Now you don’t have to spend time every day carrying water from a river back to your homes.”

(Relative happiness) “Now you have to spend way less time than in neighboring villages carrying water from a river back to your homes.”

The article would suggest that the second statement would cause the listener to value the solar water pump much more.

This can be further applied to a goal of spreading a desire for development to neighboring villages.  If we subtly drop hints in neighboring villages that they have to work all day carrying water while their neighbor sits back and lets the sun do the work, then they’d start organizing and working hard for such a system as well.

Of course, there are downsides to this approach (especially the second aspect).  First, you’ll be promoting the worst of Western Capitalism’s “Keeping Up With the Jones’,” a terrible habit in my opinion that leads to excessive consumption with no increases in happiness.  Also, until the neighboring villages get water systems of their own, they’ll feel their lack much more acutely and we’d be spreading unhappiness.  Suddenly carrying water, which likely was an acceptable every day routine, would become torturous for these women and children.

Reflections: Green Empowerment Technical Training

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Shane Lofgren
on 19 October 2008
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This weekend, I spent most of my days at a technical training, put on by Green Empowerment at PSU. The training was divided up into 3 sections: 6-9 PM on Friday, 9-5 PM on Saturday, and 9-5 PM on Sunday. Most of the time was spent in a classroom where we learned about specifics of solar and wind electricity generation and using these things to pump water. Four times throughout the sessions, we would break from a classroom format for hands on time, where we got to work with and assemble the systems we were learning about.

For this reflection, I will start with the things I didn’t like, and then end with the things I did like. For me, having not been in a class setting in awhile, the 8 hour blocks on Saturday and Sunday were difficult for me at times. I would have preferred a different division of time (perhaps a session across multiple weekends). Also, I felt like the teaching sessions got bogged down in details at times. Finally, I wish that we could have spent more time talking about interacting with the people we’re helping–something that both Michel and Jason agreed occupied 90% of time spent when working on a project (be it electrification, water pumping, or otherwise). However, given that this was a technical training session, I was not too bothered by the technical focus.

Things I liked: While I said that I felt that sometimes the session got bogged down in too many details, for the most part I appreciated the in-depth approach to teaching us about the technical side of such a project. The book of slides they gave us will serve as a good reminder of all of the lessons we learned, and I look forward to having it when I design and implement a project. I also very much enjoyed the hands-on sessions, where I got to work with a voltmeter, solar-panels, a wind-turbine, and ask informed people all of the questions that came to me, both practical and theoretical. I’m glad that I got to do this electrical work now in a friendly, no-pressure environment full of people who know what’s up, because it’d be a lot harder (and potentially very costly) to have to pick this stuff up in the field. Finally, I enjoyed the chance to meet and spend time with a wide variety of intelligent, pleasant, and motivated people. Almost everyone there had a project they were working on. I got to chat with them and exchange ideas. I just regret that I didn’t get anyone’s contact information, because I feel that there were a lot of potential partners there.

In conclusion, though the format was hard on me, the experience was definitely positive. I’m glad I have the skills and knowledge that I do now, and I feel that they will be very helpful to me in the future.

Partnership with Students for Global Health, fundraising ops, and project discussion

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Shane Lofgren
on 4 September 2008
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Tonight, we got to talk with two new people who hopefully will be heavily involved in ODA, each in their own way. First we talked with Kevin McNaught, an incoming freshman at the U of O who Dan and I know from high school. He’s pretty tech savvy, having worked as the Director of Technology for the Tualatin High School Associated Student Body (quite a title, eh?), and will be possibly joining ODA in the tech position. Exciting stuff!

The other person we talked to was Alex Goodell. He proposed a partnership between ODA and his organization, Students for Global Health. SGH is primarily a fundraising organization, and so far they’ve been raising money solely for Face AIDS. However, he would like for SGH to have a “Direct Action” component that they would fundraise for, and he would like us to be part of that direct action component. Not only that, but he would also like for our communities to work together where doing so would be mutually beneficial. From what I can tell, the relationship would work as follows:

  • When requesting donations, SGH would ask people if they’d like to donate either to Face AIDS or to the direct action component, with descriptions of specific projects such as ours.
  • SGH and ODA would work together to do fundraising projects around school.
  • SGH and ODA would collaborate where efficient on any other projects
  • SGH would become a co-partner on ODA projects
  • ODA will attend SGH meetings and teach members of SGH lessons we’ve learned from our work in direct action.

We’re all very excited about this relationship and the way our community is expanding.

During Adrien’s Community Development report, she talked about her discussions with Allen Hall Advertising. Megan, from AHA, would like to meet with us to talk about how exactly we see our two groups working together. We decided that we should have a quick conference call to discuss this before the meeting, so that we can have a concrete proposal to bring Megan for our meeting on the 22nd of September.

During Dan’s Lead report, we were planning to talk about our Mission Statement and Team Goals, but we decided that it was inefficient to talk about these in small chunks spread over many meetings. Instead, we will have a call specifically devoted to perfecting these two documents.

During my Research Report, I talked about my Summary of Diagnostico. I also gave the team reading assignments. The most important thing for them to read are sections from Diagnostico that I will highlight, because it will give them further idea of what we’re working on. Besides that, they should read specific EWB reports in order to learn how a project is designed and a project report is written. Finally, I told them that they should further develop their philosophical underpinnings for their development report by reading all of the readings that I selected from my INTL 240 class.

The last thing we talked about was our relationship with Green Empowerment. We decided that we’d like to have a meeting with them so that both groups could gain a clearer understanding of the others desires and expectations, as well as our visions of our places in this project. We plan to email Jason and set up a meeting to discuss this. We are also planning to have an exploratory with Health Bridges International and perhaps talk about similar things with them.

 
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Summary of Diagnostico

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Shane Lofgren
on 2 September 2008
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A while back, Green Empowerment (GE) sent us a diagnostic assessment that Solucciones Practicas did of the province of San Pablo where we hope to be working. Unfortunately, the document was in Spanish, and so we kept drawing straws to see which of the rusty Spanish speakers was going to have to read through and translate it.  Luckily, I was assisted in this task by the tool Google has that, when emailed a PDF as an attachment, allows you to convert that PDF to HTML. After I converted the document to HTML, I put it through Google Translate in hopes of getting a comprehension aid, and what I got instead was a fully understandable (with effort) English translation. So, as I read Diagnostico, I mainly read the translation and looked through Diagnostico to see the pictures, graphs, etc. Though I have reasonably good Spanish skills, this is something that anyone could do. I’m amazed at the tools the internet, especially Google, has to offer.

On to the summary. As a quick background, this region (San Pablo) is roughly equivalent to a county, it is part of the larger state of Cajamarca, and contains the towns of San Pablo, San Luis, San Bernardino, and Tumbaden. The province has around 20,000 people, most of whom live in the town of San Pablo. The diagnostic concerned itself mainly with describing the culture, the economic activities, and the relevant organizations with the area. Also, throughout the document there was a focus on rates of, previous efforts at, organizations concerned with, and potential benefits of electrification, culminating in an assessment of various sites where electricity could be generated. This makes sense given that Solucciones Practicas is, to my understanding, mostly interested in doing an electrification project in San Pablo.

Regarding electrification, it seemed to me first that providing electricity would greatly benefit this province.  Even beyond my first thought, that electricity could pump water and save people the time of moving it, electricity would allow for economic development beyond the current low-tech, agriculture and resource-gathering activities that comprise more than 90% of the local economy. Without electricity, the local dairy farmers are forced to sell to Nestle at whatever prices it demands, as Nestle has the only refrigerated storage in the area. Diagnostico identified a number of value-added industries, such as carpentry, that would be possible with electricity to power the machines. Even beyond this, electricity could help power the internet, thus opening people up to a world of free educational opportunities, and it could make life more pleasant, powering lights and electrical appliances. The author talked about a problem where many young people leave, and only ~50% of them return. Perhaps this could be stopped by providing better jobs, more education and more amenities.

The diagnostico also provided insight into the organizations in the area and how they could assist or hinder electrification and other development projects.  It seems possible that we might be able to set up a relationship with the Peruvian government (at the federal level), because they have expressed goals of rural electrification, have made strides toward accomplishing this, and continue to have agencies and funds for this purpose. However, I don’t know what other obstacles might stand in the way of such a relationship, but this does seem to be a worthwhile lead to explore since the federal government could undoubtedly marshal a large amount of resources to help us.

At the local level of government, it is clear that there is a complex web of relationships. There are non-elected (I believe) governors, along with elected lieutenant governors and mayors, who have overlapping responsibilities and don’t always get along. For instance, the governors don’t work well with the mayors of Tumbaden or San Bernardino, the author suggests that this could be because of political jealousy. Now, I don’t imagine the situation is much different or worse than it is in any representative democracy. I’m simply going to assume that, in this area, there is a complex bureaucracy. If we try to work with them, it would likely be in our best interests to enlist a local who knows the system.

The most promising groups, in my mind, are the very local government groups and the civic organizations. There is apparently a group of elected officials called the Peasant Patrols, who help with projects around the town. There is also a great number of organizations with economic purposes, such as the Association of Agricultural Producers, who could bring together many of the local farmers. Then there are service organizations, some of which help the poor and others who help with education and health. They could be very helpful when we decide to run educational programs on clean water and sanitation.

It is clear from reading Diagnostico that there is great good that can be done here, and many groups who could help us do it.

Retreat reflections: Shane

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Shane Lofgren
on 15 August 2008
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So, as I’m sure you’ve read from the previous retreat reflections, Adrien, Dan and I went to a friend’s lakeside house to build a sense of team, to learn from each other, and to further focus our vision for what we want ODA to be.  This post is not going to be a summary of what happened; rather, I’m going to talk about the events that were most meaningful to me.

The first was when I had the opportunity to teach Dan and Adrien a lecture from my INTL 240 class with Professor Galvan.   Now, it’s true that I was teaching someone else’s material, but still, I did it by mashing together a group of his readings and this lecture slide, and I had to make it relevant to ODA.  It was a great experience for me.  I really enjoy teaching, and we later agreed that, as the point person for research, I should be reading and learning about more stuff than the rest of the group to have the ability to teach distilled versions of what I read to everyone else.  I look forward to this added aspect of my job description.

One aspect of this lecture was the idea that institutional imposition, or forcing a way of thinking or acting on other people, is neither a humane way to treat others nor an effective way to accomplish your goals, including goals of “helping” others through development.  Rather, the most humane and effective way help others is to work with them, to determine what they want, and to assist them in making what they want a reality.  This idea highlighted a feeling that I think was already part of Adrien, Dan and my personal philosophies and we are working now on how we can integrate this into our mission statement.

The next day, we also had an interesting discussion about our feelings on faith-based organizations.  We came to the consensus that, though none of us is highly religious, we recognize the ability of religion to create a sense of community in an area, and unite people around a common cause.  However, we don’t approve of the way some religious people seek to impose their ideas on others.  Thus, faith-based organizations that allow us to have a more intimate relationship with the community in an area (such as a Catholic organization would in a Catholic village in Mexico) would make it easier for us to build a relationship with a village so that we can understand what they want and help them to achieve it.  However, organizations that would seek to evangelize are ones that go against our core philosophy of not imposing our beliefs on others.  For the future, then, the former kind of organizations are ones we should seek out and the latter are ones we should avoid.  I felt like this was a very fruitful conversation that left us with tangible ways we could apply it to ODA.

The best part of the retreat, however, was the time spent relaxing at and after dinner.  Dan, Adrien, and I had some great conversation while making dinner (as usual, I ended up standing around and talking while the other two, mainly Adrien, cooked dinner.  I swear it’s not that I’m lazy, I just get so caught up in what I’m thinking about that I don’t think to do anything else).  We then went on to have “mind sex” (in the spirit of an open source organization, I’m practicing full disclosure, and that is what we called it) and talk about topics ranging from Ayn Rand and the nature of the individual, beauty for beauties sake as opposed to beauty in function, and the singularity.  The best part of it was that we all three agreed that such mind sex is the way we like to hang out, as opposed to talking about how wasted we got the previous night.  I think that there’s a really solid group dynamic here based on a love of thinking, and then applying the fruits of that thought to action.

That is what I see ODA being: an organization of intense thought, and then of intense action.  Such an organization would only work with members who adhered to this philosophy, and I’m pleased to see that we do.

Kirsten, Allen Hall Advertising, and Health Bridges Interational

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Shane Lofgren
on 11 August 2008
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We began our retreat with a quick meeting to allow everyone to fill the others in on what they’d been doing.  Everyone had completed the action items from the previous meeting. Adrien contacted Kristen and Allen Hall Advertising.  Dan and Adrien worked on the Clinton Grant Proposal and Dan powered through the last of it to get it in on time (go Dan!).  Dan also finished outlining responses to additional grant proposals.  Finally, we continued in our quest for additional grant sources, with Adrien finding out about the Knight Library grant database from Kirsten.

Next, Adrien told us about her meetings with Kirsten, head of the Environmental Leadership Program and an ENVS adviser, and Allen Hall Advertising, a group which does pro bono advertising work for groups on campus.  Allen Hall Advertising told us that they’d already decided on their projects for the upcoming year, but that they would tell their members about us and see if anyone would want to take on additional work for us.  Adrien said that Kirsten seemed very enthusiastic about our group, its vision, and the progress we’ve made so far.  In addition to telling us about the Knight Library grant database, she told us that she’d pass any other grant information on to us.  Having worked for an NGO in India, she has many contacts there and told us that she would put us in touch with them if we ever decide to refocus on India.  Finally, she put us in contact with Andrew Hyde, a board member of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), an NGO currently working extensively in Peru.

Next, I talked about the email contacts I’d made with Solucciones Prácticas, asking for details about projects, planning reports, surveys, after-action reports on what worked and what didn’t, etc.  At the time of this meeting, I’d just sent a letter to a person I’d been told would have the information I was looking for.  The next day, a man, Javier, told me that they could send me information, but that it was in Spanish.  My ability to speak Spanish is currently quite rusty, but given that I plan to go to Peru, I’ve decided that it’s time to get practicing.  I told Javier that I would appreciate whatever he could send me, in English or Spanish.

Also, during these emails, I’d been sending a standard template letter asking for information, and we decided that this would be a template letter we would continue to use in all requests for information.

Dan then talked about a meeting he was going to be having with Wayne Centrone of Health Bridges International, another group working in Peru, about the possibility of adding a medical relief component to our project in Peru.  The meeting will be tomorrow and Dan and I both plan to attend.

Finally, we talked about Hannah, who is currently in New Zealand working on a project and mostly out of contact.  We figured that we should be flexible and not worry too much if other group members need to take time to take care of other things.  We figured that all we would ask of Hannah is that she write a blog post or two, if she gets the chance, about what she’s done and learned while in New Zealand.

With that, we wrapped up our meeting after 33 minutes, and Dan allowed me to deviate from our tight schedule to take a 45 minute (strictly enforced) nap, to recover from my 24 mile bike ride in Portland that morning.  Sure enough, after 45 minutes, there was Dan.

Agenda/Minutes - ODA - 10 August 2008 [Google Docs]

Suggested readings: summer retreat

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Shane Lofgren
on 8 August 2008
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I took a class last fall from Professor Dennis Galvan called INTL 204: Perspectives on International Development, and I believe that it was the most eye-opening course I’ve taken in college.  Classes like that are why I go to college.

Luckily for us, Professor Galvan posted the syllabus, readings, and lecture notes for the class online and so I have been able to compile a mini lesson and a large set of readings based on what I learned in his class and what he’s posted online.

One warning: this is not all theory of change per se, but I would say that it is all very relevant to the future of ODA.

  • Communitarian Theory: This theory describes a political system in which small, intimate communities are the most important part of society rather as opposed to individuals (liberalism/democracy) or the entire state (fascism), to name a few familiar examples. 
  • Modernization Theory: Modernization theory was the first major theory of development.  It was born out of Truman’s Four Points which first set development as a goal for the current governments.  It involved massive infrastructure projects in other countries.  The Marshall Plan, where the U.S. financed the massive rebuilding of factories, roads, farms etc. in Western Europe can be considered in some ways a fantastic success of this theory, and its core model.  However, such projects proved far less successful in other regions of the world.
  • Marxian Theory: Marxian Theory is developmental theory in the tradition of Marx’s thought.  I tried my best to pick articles that represent this theory, but it is very diverse.  What it basically addresses is the Marxian idea that increasing the productive capacity of a region does little for the good of the society unless wealth is evenly distributed.  It also contains the idea that uneven distributions of wealth are self-perpetuating and will lead to injustice.  One of the ways this theory was practiced was the basic-needs plan, which declared that all people in the world deserved certain basic items.  For awhile, the result was something akin to global socialism, where countries attempted to provide basic needs for all (like the way, in Sweden, the government taxes the rich in order to provide for the basic needs of its poor).  This program was quickly abandoned as too-expensive and too inefficient. 
  • Neo-Liberal Theory: Neo-Liberal Theory is one we are more familiar with.  It states that the way for nations to become developed is to lower barriers to trade, decrease taxes and regulation, and privatize all industries and then let the free market go to work.  It is very similar to what we consider globalization today.
  • Post-Modernist Theory: Post-Modernist Theory is basically a catch-all phrase for those who question the core beliefs of development.  Some of it questions the notion of development as progress (ie. they would question that a group of people would be better off with outside intervention) or even the very idea of progress (that it’s possible to improve) or at least western ideas of progress (that there is one linear path to progress, and that it involves increasing industrialization, liberalism, and democracy).  Others question the means previously used to achieve progress (ie. the modernist idea that development is something one nation should do to another;for instance, that the U.S. should try to aid development in Uganda).  The general consensus of post-modernist theory on progress is that it means wildly different things to different groups, and that the needs of people should be addressed on as small a scale as possible to allow for the different desires and ideas of progress of different groups.  On the issue of means, they believe that development should be a collaboration between small groups (NGOs) and communities (villages, neighborhoods etc.), as this is more efficient and more responsive to the specific challenges and needs of people.  The current development theory of the time seems to be mostly of the Post-Modernist school; certainly ODA and the community work ODA is trying to achieve would tend to fall under the blanket of Post-Modernist Development.
  • Other: 

There are a very large number of ideas here, and there’s no way to do them all justice in the time we have before the retreat, so I’ve selected five readings that are somewhat related and pertain to the post-structuralist theory.  I also plan to go over Galvan’s lecture slides on that subject and teach them as best as I can.

Here are the five readings, with notes where appropriate:

  • Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998, pp. 11-52. [PDF] This reading talks about how a state will, by necessity, view the territory and the people which it rules in an oversimplified manner in order to make sense of the huge variety of cultures, institutions, relationships etc. that exist, and in doing so will often make decisions that don’t reflect the true needs of its people.  Furthermore, many states will seek to simplify these cultures, institutions, and relationships in order to make its people easier to rule, often going to great lengths and causing much suffering to the people.
  • Fukuyama, “Social Capital,” April 5, 1997. This article says that there are more types of capital (ie, things which increase productivity) than our typical western ideas of capital, which are generally limited to things like factories, and tractors, or sometimes skills and experience.
  • Rotella, “In Brazil, a Threat to Fusion of Religions,” August 8, 1998, p. A18. This article describes ways in which local cultures don’t have to be destroyed by new institutions, but can fuse with them to create new cultures that better suit the needs of the people.
  • Etzioni, “Religious Civil Society is Antidote to Anarchy in Iraq & Afghanistan” 4/1/04. This article talks about how we shouldn’t take it for granted that increasing people’s freedom (by freedom, in this case, I mean removing obstacles to what people can do) will increase their standard of living.  The example it gives is that, in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing, rather than decreasing, the influence of Islam in people’s lives would be a good way to make people happier, even though Islamic rules might limit the freedom of the people (especially women).
  • Fung & Wright, Deepening Democracy, 2003, ch 1. [PDF] This reading especially contains ideas on how alternative democratic institutions can be created, and how our current system in the U.S. is far removed from an ideal democracy in which the people have a strong say in their political system.

These readings are all meant to contain ideas about how ODA can improve the standard of living in places by respecting local culture, and how, hopefully, we can empower the people to create democratic institutions that reflect the will of the local people.