In which those who change the world ponder the racial and socioeconomic implications of working at the neighborhood level
4 Feb
I went to see Fred Turner speak at the Science, Technology and Society seminar today. He introduced his book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture”, and touted Worldchanging as an exciting descendant of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. After his talk, we discussed the value of focusing on neighborhood-level change. While he understood the allure, he feared that if people only operated at the neighborhood level, they would never interact with anyone different from themselves.
So what do you think? Here at anonymous cowgirl we applaud working at the neighborhood level; it’s a manageable scale for change. But we live in a country defined by de facto segregation. If I only work at the neighborhood level, and never leave my own, that can’t be good. What are the haps, readers? I have a feeling the answer is not either/or, so I’d be thrilled to know your thoughts.
For more on Fred Turner, check out his page at Stanford: Fred Turner’s Papers, Journal Articles, etc.
hmm I have the feeling it is not either/or, as well. However, if change is implemented at the neighborhood level, it allows those people to become more mobile, educated, move outside of their norm, etc. Also, we can’t operate under the assumption that people will always stay in their neighborhood. Change started in one place can move to another place because of the constant mobility of the population.
Of course, isolated neighborhood level change will not be effective. There has to be a system that is followed in different places that allows people to feel like they are a part of something bigger, that lets them know that the change that happens on their streets has an effect on the wider community.
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell talks about the power of 150, about how a group of more than 150 people becomes unwieldy and difficult to work as a coherent organism. I don’t know a lot about sociology and psychology to make any strong statements, but it seems to me we can be perhaps more effective changing small groups really successfully than trying to enact mass change all at once.
Those are my ramblings for the day.
Can’t you operate at the level of other people’s neighborhood? Then you get around the segregation problem.
-Dave
This is question number 1 on my mind lately, so grant me the inches I’m about to take up.
A renewed friendship ask me before the new year if I was more or less critical of government than when we had last spoken. I told him that my primary dissatisfaction with government, especially national and global, is that the scale of the strategies don’t match the scale of the situations. As a non-profit program manager, I’m buried under grant reporting requirements that have me spending as much time chasing money as using those resources to support work for change, for fairness, for some improvement.
Lately, the costs of doing work broadly are becoming plain. In 2006, I traveled nationwide to conference and field learning events and internationally to the most recognized world conference for my field of work. I lose time on the ground everytime I leave the city limits. I lose the chance for more plants in the dirt, more bees in their hives, more worms in the compost.
I’ve also been active in city and state level policy and projects. These I can make rational with the work on the ground. I don’t have to leave the city limits to be a real part of them, and the connection is very direct with the faces and hands of the people in neighborhoods I work with. I can get traction here. And I’m learning some raw strategy and how to apply it to a situation.
All of this benefits from the global context, says the girl with a degree in international social movements. I could even see myself at some point being more of an actor in national and global structures. There are some situations that need strategies at that scale, or at least coordination of strategies. But there’s a certain kind of focus, a lens, a filter that’s needed. Think of a situation like a complex digital image with different layers. If you’ve got the right tools, you can separate the filo-thin layers and make some solid changes to something whole that is part of the more complex system or you can change the relationship between/among the layers. Rather than working with the whole situation and all the layers, I think that the way to get traction at larger scales is to be able to separate and group the layers of a situation and edit it like an image.
At least that helps me get to sleep at night, and keep my patience.
mm. thanks for askin’, cowgirl.
I’m interested to hear where people feel friction at this point in their daily.
incidentally, segregation vs. worldchanging has some things tucked inside of it that are counter to the rosy vision. access to cyberculture modes of change and the ability to capitalize on that access are nowhere near evenly distributed.
if the graces favor it, we’ll be back for seconds at this table. for now, we’ll apologize for not handling the direct question.
whoops.
Sholeh – I love getting comments from the other side of the world. Makes me ever so happy when my Google Analytics map has little yellow dots from across the ocean. I like your point about operating outside of norms. That perhaps working within a neighborhood – a ‘safe’ space as it were – allows someone to push at the boundaries of their world in some useful ways.
Dave – You certainly can work in someone else’s neighborhood, but I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. Fred Turner actually brought this point up – he talked about working with some type of do-good organization in California, and going home at the end of the day feeling like he had gotten much more out of the experience than the person he helped. That while he had been in some sense transformed, the recipient had gotten far less utility. (That Mitzvot transform us is an interesting topic all by itself, and maybe we’ll talk about that later.)
Tyromaven – Kudos for finding a way to blend bakery vocab with a digital imaging metaphor. Filo-dough and Photoshop, together at last. But the metaphor works for me. At what point do we ask these layers to go transparent? At what point do we multiply across them? When do we turn one off so we can focus on the composition of underlying foundations? You know, neighborhoods are big places. They have worlds inside them, and change practiced here, in Ypsilanti or in west Ann Arbor, or down in Woodlawn or Stony Island, goes all fractal. While there is something magic and worldchanging about a local act, I think we benefit greatly from seeing a global context and knowing that there are many others in many different places taking related actions. I liked this: “To separate and group the layers of a situation and edit it like an image”… and also to see the patterns in how the layers interrelate.
I agree on the choice of seconds. We’ll revisit the question of access further down the line. I hope folk have more to say on this point, though, so please post away.
Sorry, forgot I commented here.
I agree with you that people who go and try to help people usually get more out of it than the people they are helping. You commented on my post regarding that here, and I touched on it a little tangentially in this one.
That being said, if I get more out of helping than the person I help, does that mean I didn’t help them? It seems to me like in that situation, everyone is better off.
On another note, doesn’t the assumption that operating on the neighborhood level prevents you from being exposed to diversity overestimate the homogeneity of most neighborhoods?
How about collaborating with others around the globe, to empower people to work in their own neighbourhood? I see that as the key way of resolving this question. And that’s what we’re trying to do at Appropedia.
I visited here cuz I saw a comment from you on WC, and sensed a kindred spirit and wanted to connect, and see if Appropedia resonates with you.
Cheers,
Chris,
Sydney
Chris –
Welcome! Your work over at Appropedia reminds me of some of the folks I met at RecentChangesCamp last year. Let’s talk more. I’ll poke around the wiki over the next few days, and then get in touch.
Global collaboration in support of local work makes a lot of sense. (And frankly, it’s where I’m at right now in my own path.) That said, it doesn’t address the fact that in the States, communities segregate along racial and class differences by default. And this addresses Dave’s last point, I guess. Yes, some neighborhoods are diverse, and diversity can mean lots of different things. But segregation is a very real problem here, despite no longer being sanctioned by federal law.
I just discovered this blog through Malik at The Struggle Within. This issue of neighborhood level change is really interesting. As I understand it, real change must take place at the grass roots of any society, though it can be supported and facilitated by changes happening at higher levels. The issue of segregation is an important one, but I guess it depends on what changes you are trying to make. If your goal is to have people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds interact, then this can be a challenge, though in many places there is a great deal of diversity in spite of “white flight”, because minority groups are all living together or at least very close to each other. Boston is a good example of this kind of thing. Anyway, I like your blog and will be linking to you and visiting regularly. Keep it up.