Chapters 4-7 continued to pose challenges for me in attempting to understand Thin’s perspective on social progress and sustainable development. The challenge was not in understanding the topic, but because I had to reexamine my own experiences with development in both the U.S. and South Asia. My ‘ah ha!’ moment came when Thin emphasized issues such as:
· Institutions which are guided by a foundation of ideals and principles are what help ensure social progress and development. More importantly, these institutions must be able to adapt to the changes that occur in their environments. The example I could think with regard to this is NGOs in South Asia being able to change policy direction when a natural disaster occurs or during political and economic turmoil. These institutions must continue to evaluate their work and ensure that their implementation is really helping their beneficiaries.
· Policy making should be participatory. However, participatory means that all members of a community are included. For example, Thin argues that women’s empowerment does not occur by just having policy focus on the woman, but it must include the man as well. This could help with gender equity. Also, by making policy making participatory, it allows for the policy makers to mold the policy in such a way that it will better benefit the beneficiaries. One issue that Thin pointed out was that we should not assume that beneficiaries knowledge is perfect either, it could be wrong if the facilitator does not properly conduct the participatory policy making. The facilitator must find a way for the beneficiary to enlighten her/himself in order to become a more responsible citizen of the community. I search for an example and found an article about The Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) in India. In 1984 SPARC conducted a census with the residents of a slum in Bombay in order to stop the demolition of a slum community. The authors concluded that the best way to help empower the slum dwellers by helping them learn about their community, neighbors and occupations, government process to receive ration cards, and by including the slum dwellers in the census. They considered the census as participatory action research.
· I referred back to Amartya Sen’s holistic model of development. Sen emphasized that all the political, social, and economic aspects of a society should be developed in order to develop the individual. I remembered that at the end of his book, Sen points out that by using this model, and then one could help create responsible citizens. Thin also notes that freedom shouldn’t be the only goal, but also creating responsible citizens.
My only question is: How do organizations create positive social progress and sustainable development without having to sacrifice the self-evaluation? Does this mean that only small organizations are capable of this or could larger organizations be effective as well? One challenge I saw with the Institute of Integrated Rural Development (IIRD) in Bangladesh was that being engaged with too many projects funded by different donors placed a strain on the organization.
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This post gives me the chance to introduce new authors and to connect several readings:
1) Elinor Ostrom (and Sue Crawford). Ostrom is economist and political scientist.
2) Alan Wolfe
General topic: moral codes regulate human behavior. We regulate through the social institutions we (humans) create. We have cultural, social, political, economic, and physical (ie., highway system or dams) infrastructures.
Crawford and Ostrom have a useful article on A Grammar of Institutions. It discusses 'institution' in a different way, as norms (i.e., values), organizational arrangements, and practices. In effect, institutions are devices that order and regulate human behavior.
Alan Wolfe, in Whose Keeper?: Social Science and Moral Obligation, refers to these (moral) regulating institutions as the civic society, the state, and the market. In a subsequent book, Moral Freedom, he says (p.22), "Morality at the beginning of the twenty-first century is best approached the way William James treated religion at the beginning of the twentieth century. All religious experience, he showed, contained common elements, yet James could also be struck by and be sensiive to the many ways belief could be expressed and practiced. To treat religion as if it were an objective reality governed by unvarying laws, rather than something people experience in the course of their everyday lives, James believed, 'would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid meal." Morality is all to often treated as if its commandments were etched in stone, commanding obedience (if one is conservative) or imposing conformity (if one is liberal). We need to discover whether Americans have an understanding of morality that makes sense to them before we decide whether it can or should make sense to others."
In one sense, both Thin and Sen build their argument about development on the same moral foundation (freedom as choice and reasoning). Our regulating institutions must reflect this morality/values in both principle and practice. Moreover, methods of regulating behavior within and across domains (community, state, market) must be complementary and mutually reinforcing. In short, Ghandi said something like, "we must be the change we seek." Or, our morality and values is in our behavior, not necessarily in what we say.
Finally, policy making is a dimension of what Sen calls 'statecraft.' His argument is the state has a specific (policy) role in removing barriers and enabling opportunity, particularly in the areas of education and health. Education needs to be accessible, inclusive, participatory, egalitarian. Thin might call these core principles.
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