Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Part II Interventions In Anthropology

4 ACTION ANTHROPOLOGY

Action anthropology is significant in the history of applied anthropology because it was the first of the value-explicit approaches. Comparison with the other approaches reveals a consistent concern with culture and with strategies that would have effects on it. Action anthropologists attempt both to understand communities and to influence the rate and direction of change within these communities.

Action anthropology is a value-explicit activity focused on two general goals of essentially equal priority. These are the goals of science and the goals of a specific, culturally defined community. Working in conjunction with community members, the action anthropologist works to discover community problems and to identify potential solutions, with continual feedback between its scientific and community subprocesses. The duality of the process can be seen in the two key base values in action anthropology, which are community self-determination and scientific truth.

Development Of The Approach

Although Sol Tax is credited with the development of action anthropology, the approach was developed by a group of student-anthropologists largely from the University of Chicago under "the non-directive direction" of Tax ( Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:1) The group changed through time as students went on to other activities and as new students replaced them.

The approach was developed in the Fox Project, which was initiated to give University of Chicago anthropology students an opportunity to gain field experience. Tax, having done his research with the Fox people in the mid-1930s, attempted to develop an opportunity for his students among a group of Fox Indians who lived near Tama, Iowa. The original group of students who arrived in Fox country in mid-summer of 1948 intended to engage in traditional social anthropology research.

Very quickly the goals of the research group changed to include development. It has been suggested that the field team turned toward development because of three factors. The first was the changes in the Fox community itself since Tax had engaged in field work some fifteen years earlier. Second, Tax had made a commitment to a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, John Provinse, also an anthropologist, to provide Provinse with whatever information might be useful to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The third influencing factor was that the project was not committed to any specific research problem. According to program participants, "that relative absence of structure permitted the field party to focus their interests wherever they wanted but, at least as importantly, it created a greater freedom for the Fox, in conversations with the field party, to guide the subject matter as they would" ( Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:26). This served as a germ for the role relationship characteristic of action anthropology.

The transition from vague scientific goals to the complex goals of action anthropology was not without difficulty. The field party had doubts about the legitimacy of the emerging approach. Tax himself had to reverse his earlier position on applied anthropology, which called for a separation of the role of scientist and the role of the practitioner. As he notes in an article published only three years before the initiation of the Fox Project:

A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an advisor for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to what great length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision. (Tax 1945, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie1960 :16).

It should be made clear that Tax was not saying that the scientist should not become directly involved in the affairs of life, it is just that in doing so he was no longer acting in the role of scientist. As will be seen, the Fox Project and its resultant formulation, action anthropology, represented a major transformation in his conception of the scientist's role. He even went so far as to suggest that anthropology can have only one goal, namely, that of advancing knowledge. Anything else, however valuable, was not science.

In spite of inconsistency with Tax's earlier position, the commitment to a program of intervention emerged quickly. Though rooted in the humane values of the student field staff, the tendency to get involved was encouraged by Tax, who was quick to argue that an action research approach might not only be practically useful, but in fact might represent superior science. A few months after the beginnings of the project it became quite clear that the field party was going to become involved in development as well as research. From this decision action anthropology emerged as an alternative model for applied anthropology.

Key Concepts

Self-determination is a key concept in action anthropology, which is expressed as a principle of action and a goal. The action anthropologist works to achieve self-determining communities. This goal consistently determines or influences the behavior of the action anthropologist in the field. Self-determination implies the opportunity to be right or wrong. As Tax has put it, thefreedom to make mistakes . That is, a truly self-determining community has the responsibility for both success and failure. As Gearing notes, "Any other freedom is false. And any less freedom will destroy a human community" (1960c: 414).

The action anthropologist works to achieve self-determination. In logical terms that is something of a paradox; that is, one attempts to generate self-determination by influencing the behavior of the group. Tax admits to the paradox, yet is within reason when he suggests that the concept is practically workable.

Tax expresses the complex meanings associated with self-determination:

All we want in our action programs is to provide, if we can, genuine alternatives from which the people involved can freely choose--and to be ourselves as little restrictive as is humanly possible. It follows, however, that we must try to remove restrictions imposed by others on the alternatives open to Indians and on their freedom to choose among them. We avoid imposing our values upon the Indians, but we do not mean to leave a vacuum for other outsiders to fill. Our program is positive, not negative; it is a program of action, not inaction; but it is also a program of probing, listening, learning, giving in. (Tax 1958, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:416)

Action anthropologists have a special relationship with power--that is, they must avoid assuming power. Action anthropology is not based on authority, but on persuasion and education. The process can therefore only go as "far as the community would voluntarily follow" (Gearing 1960d: 216). Even when the action anthropologist is not linked to a power-providing agency and has personally disavowed power and authority, he or she must actively resist the accumulation of power. If the anthropologist is placed in an administrative role defined as power holding, the approach becomes virtually impossible to use. In other words, the view of the client or target community as a passive entity to be manipulated is rejected.

As the action anthropologist avoids the accumulation and use of power, he or she also attempts to foster its growth and accumulation in the community. This implies the creation of social organization and the fostering of community leadership. Among the Fox, this represented a serious challenge. Power was diffusely distributed in the Fox community. Further, power was often used to express factionalism rather than purposive action toward the achievement of community goals.

Action anthropology rejects a linear view of planning. The approach used might be best termed interactive planning, because of the tendency to stress ambiguous means and ends distinctions and the continual consideration of the interaction of goals and action.

Interactive planning is characterized by a number of attributes. The primary proposition is that means and ends are interdependent. Ends are appropriate to means, and means are appropriate to ends. Action can be initiated in terms of means or ends. Ends and means are determined through an interactive process that is motivated by both the problem inherent in a situation and the apparent opportunities. The problem is defined as "everything that is wrong or missing about the situation. Problems and possibilities also interact. As Diesing notes,

The area of the problem to be investigated is continually being limited by reference to what changes are possible, and vice versa. Supposedly wrong things that cannot be changed are excluded from the problem, since they cannot be made right, and a study of them would be a waste of time. Likewise, possible changes, which are not changes of something that is wrong, are also excluded, since they are irrelevant to the problem. Instead, only those problems are investigated which could conceivably have some effect on a part of the problem. (Diesing 1960:185)

It is obvious that the key function of the anthropologist is to discover what is the problem and what are the possibilities for change. The problem represents a complex of problems complicated, by the limitations of the community and the external interventionist. Further, the capacity to solve problems is thought to increase through time. With these increases, the complexity of the problemsolutions engaged also increases. These increases may be attributed to decreasing community divisiveness and increasing community integration. According to Peattie, the goals of the action anthropologist "tend to be open-ended objectives like growths in understanding, clarification of values and the like" (Peattie 1960b: 301). The desired end-states are really expressions of a value stance, or as Peattie refers to them, "modes of valuing," used to analyze the continuous process. This approach generates severe difficulties in terms of evaluation, though in a sense evaluation is inevitable. It tends to be nonempirical and intuitive.

BASE VALUES

It is in the realm of values that the essence of action anthropology can be discovered. The value system that characterizes action anthropology is in part relativistic and situational. That is, the realities of the situation affect value judgments up to certain limits. The relevant values of a situation are those that are indigenous to it. This means that the action anthropologist must discover the value orientation of the community within which she works. She does not derive the plan from her own values. These values are important guides to action. In addition to the relativistic core, there are values that are regarded as universal and are accepted absolutely by action anthropologists. The absolute component of the action anthropology value system consists of two elements.

The first value is truth. The primacy of truth is rooted in the continued identification of the action anthropologist as an anthropologist. It is from this value that action anthropology is legitimized as anthropology. This value is expressed strongly.

We are anthropologists in the tradition of science and scholarship. Nothing would embarrass us more than to see that we have been blinded to verifiable fact by any other values or emotions. We believe that truth and knowledge are more constructive in the long run than falsehood and superstition. We want to remain anthropologists and not become propagandists; we would rather be right according to canons of evidence than win a practical point. But also we feel impelled to trumpet our truth against whatever falsehoods we find, whether they are deliberate or psychological or mythological. This would be a duty to science and truth, even if the fate of communities of men were not involved. (Tax 1958, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:415)

The second prime value is freedom--freedom for individuals, and communities, to be self-determining. The action anthropologist does not, therefore, advocate specific value choices. The process does involve the presentation of alternatives of choice to the community. This also implies working to free the client community from restrictions placed on their freedom by forces external to the community.

These values are consistent with the two general goals of action anthropology. These goals, expressed simply, are "to help people and to learn something in the process." These goals are explicitly described as equal in importance by Tax (Tax 1960a, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:379). Tax attempts to show that these two goals are not in conflict. In fact, they are mutually supportive. Through truth more beneficial change can be caused, and through action more can be learned. Action anthropologists argue that the emotional intensity associated with action-involvement can increase the perceptivity of the field observer. Participation in the action increases the extent to which the anthropologist comes to understand the nature of the situation that he or she is investigating. The critical events in the action process teach because they determine activities in the future.

Being an action anthropologist forces one to be a maker of value judgments. This can be stressful and burdensome. Tax and the other action anthropologists sought to limit this stress in three ways. Allusions to the first two limiting factors have already been made. The most basic is the assumption of a value-explicit position, which allows the anthropologist to escape the potential hypocrisy of the value-implicit approaches, and "places" values where they can be more closely watched. The second limiting factor is the recognition of paramount values. The self-determination value, for example, forces most value judgments into the hands of the community. The third stress-reducing mechanism used in action anthropology is the "principle of parsimony," which suggests that the action anthropologist need not resolve value-questions that do not concern him or her. Tax illustrates the principle:

In the beginning of our Fox program, having decided to interfere for some good purpose, we were beset with value problems. Some of us were for and some of us were against the assimilation of the Indians; what a marvelously happy moment it was when we realized that this was not a judgement or decision we needed to make. It was a decision for the people concerned, not for us. Bluntly, it was none of our business. (Tax 1958, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960:416)

This means that many value-questions are never resolved because it is not necessary or appropriate for the action anthropologists to resolve them. Many valueproblems are illusory.

ACTION ANTHROPOLOGY PROCESS

The process is goal-oriented, gradual, self-directed, and self-limiting based on education and persuasion. Action anthropologists proceed step by step, basing the rate of intervention on the community's capacity to assimilate change. The process can be thought of as a complex of concrete actions that are interrelated through feedback and are consistent with community values.

The process starts with the determination of the facts relevant to action and means-ends determination. This component of action anthropology includes the determination of relevant ethnographic facts about the community in its cultural setting and the value-stances of the participating anthropologists. The process necessitates the mutual participation of both the anthropologists and the community members in the determination of goals. Based on this, action is carried out to achieve the defined goals.

Action anthropologists express goals as open-ended objectives rather than quotas. Growth in understanding or clarification of values may be stated as an objective. As Peattie notes, "They are not properly speaking 'ends' at all, for they can never be said to have been reached. They are more properly modes of valuing--modes of valuing all stages in a continuous and infinite process" ( Peattie 1960b:301).

The action anthropologist does not initiate projects but instead points out alternatives. The alternative selection process is a key concrete activity. It requires that the social and physical environment be known, and thereby draws upon community research activities. Let us consider the process by which action alternatives are designed.

The process requires that the nature of the problems inherent in the situation are very clearly identified. This is complex and difficult. As Diesing notes, "Almost any serious social problem turns, upon investigation, into an endlessly ramified network of conflicts and maladjustments. It has no beginning and no end" ( Diesing 1960:186). It is from this complex situation that the anthropologist must select a problem to engage. Focus has to be maintained so as to avoid dissipating one's efforts.

Problems should be selected only if they are significant and can be solved.

-62- The action anthropologist must determine the possibilities for change in the specific problem areas as these relate to her personal inclinations and capabilities. With this in mind, it may be useful to consider what changes have been successfully made in the past.

Diesing poses two rules for problem selection:

One rule is: determine the relative possibilities of change of each problem area, and select the areas of greatest possible change as the areas within which the solutions can start. The reason for this rule is evident, since the easier the changes are, the greater is the likelihood that the changes will actually occur and persist. ( Diesing 1960:190)

This suggests that the problems engaged initially should be small, so that sufficient resources can be directed toward them.

The second rule is that one should begin the solution in areas from which an expansion of the solution is possible. Ideally, one should try to discover a starting point from which a solution can expand to cover the major problem areas in the whole community and beyond. This rule is the natural complement to the first rule, since a solution to a circumscribed problem is insignificant unless it leads to solutions of broader problems. ( Diesing 1960:191)

The selected problem areas may be characterized by high levels of stress and conflict. This conflict may preclude effective action by the focusing of community energies on contentiousness. Because of this, a prime responsibility of the action anthropologist may be the quelling of community factionalism and contentiousness. It is presumed that success in dealing with a single problem area that is limited in scope may result in increased capacity to deal with problems. This is an important kind of growth in action anthropology. It really represents an expression of the hope that significant transformations will emerge from modest if not trivial beginnings.

CASE STUDY: THE FOX PROJECT

The project involved the development of a special kind of relationship between a changing community of Fox Indians and a changing group of anthropologists.

The Fox community is located on a thirty-three-hundred-acre reservation in central Iowa, about two miles west of Tama. The five hundred Fox farm their river valley lands, but earn the bulk of their living by being employed as skilled and unskilled workers in the nearby towns of Tama, Montour, and Waterloo.

The persistence of the Fox through time represents a remarkable story. They were originally from Wisconsin, and have only resided in Iowa for about 120 years. Tenacious resistance to change marked the period of Fox history following the appearance of the French in Wisconsin. They were described as the most independent of the Wisconsin tribes and were the last to submit to the influences of the French. They were determined to maintain their cultural system in the old way, unmodified by the influences of white men. Their skill and tenacity, however, only delayed their inevitable displacement from their Wisconsin lands. The conflict was temporarily quelled by moving to Kansas. Finally in 1854, the Fox purchased eighty acres of white farmlands, an act rare in American Indian history. They continued to invest money in expanding their land base whenever they had the opportunity. By the early 1950s they had accumulated over three thousand acres.

The land itself is an important component of Fox society in that it provides a permanent framework for social interaction, and physical evidence for the contrast between the Fox and the surrounding white population. It "expresses visually the invisible barriers between Fox society and the white society" (Peattie 1960a: 41). The Iowa farmer dominates the land with the geometric precision of rationalized agriculture. On the encapsulated Fox land the precise regularities of large soybean and cornfields of the Iowans gives way to the organic irregularities of the Fox woodlots, gardens, and fields.

The land's importance is more than economic. Peattie expresses this:

The Fox were never wholly agricultural people, and used to live in settled villages only during the summer, dispersing to hunt during the winter months. During the historical period, we know that under white pressure they moved about over a wide territory. Even today, only a few Fox families are supported primarily by agriculture, and much of the tribal land stands idle. Why, then, the feeling for the land? The land, to the Fox, is the symbol, not of life and livelihood as to the peasant, but of refuge from oppression. It is a place of safety. ( Peattie 1960a: 43).

The three thousand acres of Iowa River bottoms is a self-made shelter for the Fox. It is from this enclave that the Fox encounter the white world, working at local factories and construction sites, and shopping at stores as far away as Des Moines, Marshalltown, Waterloo, and Cedar Rapids ( Gearing 1970: 10).

The Fox lands are also a framework for Fox social organization. The community is sufficiently small so that everyone knows everyone else. The community exists as a system of familiar actors. Fox social organizations are characterized by exceptionally loose organizational structure. Power and authority are widely distributed. The most important organizing principle is kinship, including fictive ties, as well as the ties of marriage and descent.

Kinship networks are a primary component of the Fox social fabric. These networks are expressed in the minutiae of day-to-day life, and perhaps most clearly in the context of the clan ceremonies. The clan ceremonies are described by Gearing:

Each year during the summer months there was a round of ceremonial feasts in which each of the several Fox clans took its turn being the host to the remaining clans; the host clan sang while the others danced, and the host prepared a feast for others to enjoy. This was the traditional Fox religion. ( Gearing 1970:80)

All but a few families participated in the clan ceremonials. Therefore it was an important manifestation of the community's organization while it expressed certain Fox conceptions of the supernatural.

To the observing anthropologist, the ceremonies were clear manifestations of the operating importance of the kinship system. The kinship system is a system of mutual obligations. Gearing suggests that these obligations were "more clear and more imperative" than what one would expect in the American setting ( 1970:82). The kinship system has endured, structurally, but has become significantly less potent. The logic of the system still exists, but its spectrum of uses has declined to those areas of human concern that are least related to the practical considerations of everyday life. In addition to the kinship system, clanlike groups, a tribal council, and various factions characterize Fox society.

Many Fox are organized in terms of a nuclear family pattern. There are a significant number of "large, bilaterally extended family groups" ( Peattie 1960a:44). These groups form the basis for extensive community factionalism. The factions consist of alignments of both large and small family groups. While these families serve as the basis for conflicting factions, they are also linked through various other social institutions, such as marriage and clanship.

The traditional tribal political system of the Fox was displaced in 1937 by an elected council organized under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act. This movement was associated with the efforts of a "group of young progressives" who worked very closely with the Indian Service ( Peattie 1960a:47). This council was established in conflict and was legitimized narrowly in a wellcontested election. As Peattie notes: "The council came into existence, thus, under a shadow, and it has not tended to fulfill the hopes of its founders as time has gone on. In fact, the council, officially the government of the tribe, does not govern" ( Peattie 1960a:47).

The functions of government have been carried out by organizations outside the community, such as the Indian Service, as well as special-purpose organizations within the Fox community, such as the Powwow Committee, which oversees the preparation for the annual powwow, with its public dance performances and food sales. The success of this committee is largely based on its narrowly defined purpose and the fact that the committee does not have to compete with any organization like the Indian Service. The Powwow Committee serves a number of uses in Fox society in addition to the obvious one of planning and executing the powwow. The powwow itself is an important group-focused event. It provides a variety of opportunities to participate. In spite of its commercial overtones, it is an important community activity, a situation where "Foxness" can be acted out and expressed with both individual and group benefits. Fox social activities are further channelled by various other types of organizations. In the realm of religion there can be found a number of organizational types. For a community of such small scale there is a surprising diversity in the organizational expressions of religious life. In addition to the clan-focused cer- emonial activities that can be characterized as traditional, there are a number of new cultural forms that have become part of the religion of the Fox community. The new religions include two Christian forms, the Presbyterians and the Open Bible Mission. In addition, two American Indian forms have come to be part of the Fox religious life. These are the Oklahoma-derived Peyote Cult, and the Drum Society, derived from the Potawatomi of Wisconsin. The organizational inventory of the community is also augmented by various secular organizations, such as a veterans' group and a women's club.The original conception of the University of Chicago-Fox encounter did not include the idea that the group would engage in purposive attempts to change the Fox. The project began more or less as a loosely structured field school, more likely to change a handful of would-be anthropologists than the Fox community. The collective focus of the group turned to Fox problems rather than scientific problems; or more precisely, Fox problems became the scientific problems.

Fox Problems

It was true that the Fox manifested a range of problems that are typical of conditions found in many American Indian communities. These included low income and low labor force participation. While these conditions were recognized, the action anthropologists of the Fox Project focused on problems in cultural rather than economic terms. They were particularly concerned with the problems that grew out of the relationship between the Fox and their white neighbors. They tended to see problems in abstract cognitive terms. The proposed solutions were of course concrete, but conceived as being linked to the abstract problems. Project participants also conceptualized problems internal to the Fox community.

The internal problems were of two interrelated types. These were the problem of factionalism and the problem of diffuse political authority. In a sense these two problems were both causes and effects of each other. That is, the division of a community into informal, contentious subgroups tends to limit a political leader's capacity to establish a power base in that he does not have equal access to the entire community. The diffuse nature of authority can create an atmosphere in which factions tend to develop, there being little power to mobilize the entire community across lines of contention. Further, it might be stated that in the absence of centralized political authority, factions may provide an important social control function, creating a kind of order generated out of the playing off of opposing forces. Both the issues of factionalism and diffuse authority were dealt with by Fox project participants.

Fox Factionalism

It is apparent that factionalism among the Fox dates from the earliest periods of contact, during which it was possible to identify both pro- and anti-French bands. The tribe existed as an expression of tribal identity, but not as a concrete planning and action group. There was a village council and a chief that seemed to rarely initiate action. "They could, through appeals to traditional values, adjudicate disputes, but had no authority to enforce commands through the exercise of coercive sanctions" ( Fallers 1960:80). In this early period of Fox factionalism there were numerous attempts by whites to "bind the entire tribe to a course of action" ( Fallers 1960:80). However, because of the powerlessness of leadership roles, these attempts failed. This pattern was encouraged because of the competition among the whites, as represented by various fur trading companies and various national interests.

As the fur trade matured and then declined, the purposive involvement of the American government increased. The economy of the Fox became more and more based on annuity payments derived from lands sold to the Americans. These annuity payments were channeled to the Fox through certain selected chiefs, and thus these chiefs developed a basis of authority and power. Government attempts at acculturation through these leaders caused conflict between the leaders and the rest of the Fox. This conflict was a cause of Fox separation and subsequent settlement in Iowa. In 1896, the Iowa Fox were again made the targets of concerted white attempts at acculturation. This took the form of educational activities that called for the enrollment of Fox children in schools. There developed in response to this movement an opposing faction.

The factions that existed during the Fox Project were historically derived from the factions that were operating in 1890s. In the intervening six decades a great deal of acculturation had occurred in the community that influenced both factions, yet the factions still existed and could be labeled pro-white and anti-white, or conservative and traditional. Both factions had allies among whites. It might be said that the balance of power among the factions of the Fox was maintained through affiliation with sympathetic whites. It is clear that the presence of the dominant white cultural system in the Fox environment contributed to both the creation and the maintenance of Fox factionalism. As Fallers notes,

When a cultural group finds itself in an inferior power and status position to another cultural group, certain lines of tension appear in the society. Those members of the inferior group who find favor in the superordinate group tend to press for the acceptance by their fellows of the values of that group. The members of the subordinate society who have not found such favor tend to oppose such acceptance. ( Fallers 1960:83)

Both groups perceive themselves as acting in the interests of the community and therefore become more and more persistent in their complementary contentiousness. In the face of a political system that is based on diffuse power relations, there are few ways of resolving the conflict internally. Among the Fox, the intransient nature of the situation was further enhanced by the ready availability of white allies to support each faction. The result was conflict that was seemingly unresolvable. Further, the conflict inhibited the establishment of institutionalized ways of achieving Fox group and individual goals.

Authority and Leadership

Prior to white contact, the Fox manifested a pattern typical of societies at the tribal level of sociocultural integration ( Service 1960). Tribal societies are egalitarian. There is little internal economic or political differentiation. Families are the basic units of production and consumption, and political power is diffusely distributed. Traditionally, the Fox tribal council was an important source of authority. It consisted of the head men of the constituent clans of the Fox. The council was a representative body that was highly committed to deliberative, consensus-based decision making. The consensus principle was at times applied to mass meetings of the community. The political system had relatively few formal roles. These tendencies were complemented by the general-purpose nature of the basic kin groups, which inhibited the formation of special-purpose organizations that might have accumulated power. Special-purpose organizations, such as they were, were temporary and fleeting, playing a small role in the life of the Fox. Neither was there a high degree of stratification.

Authority or power was a scarce and diffuse resource in Fox society. Yet given the nature of traditional Fox life, this pattern of distribution seemed appropriate. Most activities were carried out among small family groups. Largerscale activities were familiar and repetitive, and therefore did not require a great deal of coordination. Leadership usually consisted of merely signalling the next phase of a familiar routine.

As the leadership of the community acted, the citizens made judgments. If the people disagreed with the leadership they could choose not to follow. There was no unquestioning respect for authority or fear of repercussion for the unresponsive follower. The system provided sufficient leadership to deal with the familiar and simple, but was insufficient to deal with the changing white-dominated environment. In the face of the need for leadership, the Fox strongly resisted any tendencies to accrue power. Individuals who attempted to increase their authority were subject to severe sanctions. The constraints seemed also to increase the reluctance of individuals to participate in political leadership positions.

These patterns of leadership and authority were consistent with certain organizational patterns. The Fox had some success with native-derived organization, while white-derived organizations were often unsuccessful. Some whitederived organizations had developed, but tended to collapse with the withdrawal of white support. The more persistent native pattern was characterized by a number of key features, including consensus-based decision making and diffuse authority patterns. The fallout of this problem was that the Fox were more or less unsuccessful in using nonnative organizational models. This means that these organizations tended not to work effectively without significant white participation. This produced a sense of inadequacy in the Fox. This of course limited the range of possible effective Fox organizational alternatives, and thereby limited Fox developmental alternatives. These conditions were intimately related to the Fox problem, identified by Gearing as structural paralysis.

Structural Paralysis

It was, of course, possible to identify a functioning Fox social structure; Gearing, however, raised certain questions about how well these structures worked. As Gearing suggested, these structures no longer seemed to work very well, and therefore participation in these structures was neither satisfying nor rewarding. This may be regarded as the most significant problem faced by the Fox. This condition, termed structural paralysis, was defined as "a state of chronic disarticulation in the community-wide webs of influence and authority which form a small community" ( Gearing 1970:96). The condition was caused by the nature of the historical relations between the Fox and the federal government. Historically, these relationships generated conditions of dependency in which the federal government slowly preempted Fox responsibility for the dayto-day management of community affairs ( Gearing 1970:96).

It is possible to class Fox activities into two categories: one category, including the clan ceremonials, the annual powwow, and various other activities, could be characterized by a certain competence and assertiveness; the second category, including "school affairs, matters of health, and law and order," was characterized by "mutual hostility, fear, ignorance, self-pity and a feeling of incompetence" ( Gearing 1970:96). It was in this area that the term structural paralysis applied. Gearing and the others consistently argued that Fox problems were generated in the conditions of culture contact. Structural paralysis was causally linked to the nature of the relationship between the whites and the Fox. Gearing also identified problems that grew out of the differences between the mutual conceptions of the Fox and the whites. Gearing viewed the Fox problem primarily in terms of white beliefs concerning the nature of the Fox, Fox self-conceptions, especially as these related to white action, and the dynamic interrelations between these elements.

The approach used by Gearing emphasized the differences between the Fox and whites. Whites, in contrast to the Fox, are in a "becoming" process, described as "a ceaseless effort to make the real self coincide with that ideal self" ( Gearing 1960a:296). According to Gearing, the Fox do not have such tendencies. As Gearing notes, "The Fox individual does not seem to create such an ideal self; he does not see himself as becoming at all; he is" ( 1960a:296). This contrast expressed in terms of the day-to-day behavior of the Fox leads to a negative evaluation.

The Fox individual is committed through enculturation to harmonious relations with his fellow Fox. In contrast, the white is much more independent of group pressures. The problem arises in the perceptions of these behavior modes by representatives of the other culture. The harmonious relations of the Fox yield a behavior mode that is interpreted by the whites as laziness and unreliability. The Fox perceive the whites as selfish and aggressive. The laziness interpretation is carried further, and provides the whites with a basis for the belief that the Fox are a "burden on honest, hard working taxpayers." (Gearing 1960a: 296).

Whites conceive of the Fox as temporary; that is to say, they are viewed as under an inevitable, unstoppable process of acculturation that will result in assimilation. The white imputation of impermanence has certain effects on the Fox. They tend to resist change. They view their life positively and want to continue living as Fox. And further, they are threatened by the changes proffered by the whites as they act out their view of the Fox as temporary. As Gearing notes,

They want their lands to remain in protected status. They are instantly opposed to any suggested changes--in their school system, in their trust status, in the jurisdiction of their law and order. They oppose the idea of change, irrespective of the substantive details which never really get discussed. They do this because they fear failure--generically. ( Gearing 1960a:297)

The fear of failure is simple to understand, for in a white-dominated world the game is white, as are the rules. Success is more frequent when the Fox are in control. Yet in these situations there are limitations to the kinds of activities in which the Fox can successfully engage. The Fox have an especially difficult time with activities that require hierarchical organization of authority. The Fox, as discussed above, mistrust authority and invest much effort in social control to resist its accumulation in the organizations in which they take part.

Gearing depicted these conditions of beliefs and misperception in systemic terms; he referred to the system as "the vicious circle in Fox-white relations" ( Gearing 1960a:295). It was a system of problems to be acted upon as a system of interlocking causes. We will consider some of the "treatments" prescribed by the project later in our discussion. In any case, the "treatments" were multiphasic and were for the most part educational in nature.

Project Objectives

Clearly, the project viewed Fox problems as being largely cultural. The treatment specified tended to be cultural in nature. The project did not place primary stress on the physical or economic development of the Fox community, except as such developments were regarded as treatments effective in the cultural realm.

A major problem in value-explicit applied anthropology is the difficulty of linking conceptions of problems and prescribed concrete activities as mediated by the values that guide the project. Problems can be identified and actions can be specified. The problem of determining the extent of instrumental relationship between action and goal is difficult. This is complicated by the fact that some problems are not subject to control, and that other problems are caused by factors outside the community. The action anthropologist "has the problem of influencing not only the community but whatever forces impinge on the community" ( Tax 1960b:171). In Fox society, the achievement of positive impact was further complicated by the general lack of ways for the Fox to achieve group goals.

The project considered a large number of projects during its history. Many of the projects were implemented. These projects were of three general types: economic development, white-stereotype modification projects, and Fox training projects. Each project was considered in terms of how it would impact the overall set of problems manifested by the Fox and identified by the project. It should be reemphasized that the project attempted to carry out these programs in terms of the encompassing goal of Fox self-determination.

Economic Development

It was thought that economic development strategies should result in increased economic activity on the Fox reservation so as to allow increased material wellbeing in a context that did not necessitate increasing the rate of assimilation. The economic development projects that were proposed were all on the reservation. All projects were small in scale so as to allow groups to be formed of workable size.

The first economic development project was a small truck farm using land owned by the University of Chicago. It was not a success. The Fox seemed to have difficulty activating the required leadership roles. The most successful of the economic development projects involved craft production and sales. The idea appeared very early in the history of the project. Although ostensibly an economic development project, planners thought that such a project could have a major impact on the relationships that existed between the Fox and the whites.

Though, as an economic institution, its primary function will be seen as economic, perhaps, its most important value for Fox and whites will be educative, assisting toward the clarification of certain major [Fox] goals, aiding in redefinition of the general Fox situation in terms more acceptable to both Fox and whites, and providing a new and important opportunity for citizenship education for the Fox through actual participation in local social and economic affairs. ( University of Chicago 1960:335)

The response to the project was rapid and positive among both Fox and whites.

The objectives of the arts and crafts project grew out of the contact between the project staff and the Fox Indian artist Charles Pushetonequa. Pushetonequa had returned to the community, and while it afforded him an opportunity to reactivate relationships with the Fox, it meant that his involvement in art had to decline. Pushetonequa was a major force in the development of the project.

Through these efforts a group emerged called Tama Indian Crafts. They produced a number of products for sale, drawing upon the designs of Pushetonequa and financed through the project. The products included home painting kits based on traditional Fox life. Later, the group sold lithographed greeting cards and ceramic tiles, all with Pushetonequa's designs. Other items were added later. The sales of such products were good, and the number of participating Fox increased.

The Tamacraft products were of good quality. The whites of Tama County seemed impressed, as they always are with new locally made products. They also valued the "Indian-ness" of the products, which seemed to be "visible evidence that Fox culture itself has something to offer" ( University of Chicago 1960:338). Further, it should be noted that the Fox were perceived in a new role, namely, that of producer. This new perception was viewed as important in terms of changing the vicious circle of opinion and belief of the whites and Fox. Gearing suggested:

To some small, but important degree the Fox have been located squarely within the Iowan community as fellow producers, as it were, mitigating somewhat another negative white impression of the Fox as a dis-articulated passive group which needs to be integrated through assimilation; i.e., the fact of a settlement industry is a fact of integration. ( University of Chicago 1960:338).

Gearing further argued that Tamacraft allowed the Fox to participate effectively in regional life without being made to give up their identity. The project was viewed as an opportunity for the Fox to act out their desire not to be assimilated, to demonstrate a future at variance from that expected by the whites, with its implied assimilation.

Education Projects

One of the key Fox problems was the white conception of them as impermanent. White conceptions of the Fox as temporary were the first target of the project's educational activities. It was decided that the first treatment would consist of providing accurate information about the Fox through the mass media, directed at both the Fox and the white. The material was initially prepared by Frederick Gearing, and then commented upon by other anthropologists and Fox community members. The message was delivered in the form of articles prepared for local newspapers. The articles were based on a complex of assumptions. The core assumptions were that the Fox community and way of thinking were not likely to disappear, and that whites judged the Fox negatively.

The articles appeared in theTama News-Herald and expressed a number of elements of the cognitive view of difficulties of the Fox. The action approach used knowledge of cultural systems to modify the belief systems relevant to the problems of the Fox. This is a recurring theme in the action approach and is consciously cultural in nature. The project also carried out similar activities on broadcast media and other publication media.

The education needs of the Fox were dealt with more specifically by attempts of the Fox Project to develop funding for university fellowships for Fox students. After some conflict with certain Fox factions, the project was reexamined and placed on a somewhat firmer basis. Plans for a four-year project were developed. One of the key components of the newly reconstituted project was a major effort to increase the rate at which the Fox attended and graduated from college. The goal of this project was not to equip individual Fox with a means to escape their Foxness, but to increase the overall capability of the Fox by increasing their "education capital." Tax cites cultural data to support the contention that ties would be maintained between the Fox community and the newly educated Fox ( 1958). If the contention was not borne out in reality, it was felt that nothing would be lost because of the positive effect of education on the individuals of the community. The potential benefits were thought to be great, affecting both the Fox and the nearby white community. It was felt that this effort would make higher education an integral part of the community. The project entailed the acquisition of money from a foundation as well as certain tuition concessions from the State University of Iowa. The Fox responded to this project very well; by the second year, ten Fox students were attending various Iowa universities. The number of students assisted tended to run about twice the projected rate.

The major achievements of the Fox Project were Tamacraft and the scholarship program. The anthropologists assisted in a number of additional areas. These included engaging as a third party in negotiations with the Bureau of Indian Affairs concerning the future of the Fox government school. The Fox Project personnel, especially Tax, came to be identified clearly on the side of the Fox in these deliberations. In addition, others worked in conjunction with the American Legion organization in the Fox community, although these projects seemed to have little impact.

The project of course had a research output as part of the twofold goal of action anthropology--self-determination and scientific truth. The project resulted in a number of ethnographic studies. These studies included studies of ethnohistory, kinship and genealogy, Fox leadership and authority, and studies of Fox teenagers. These studies were viewed as an essential component of the action strategy. That is, program tactics were based on knowledge discovered through conscious and thoughtful anthropological inquiry. There was another motivation, however. Tax notes:

I have said that the corpus of knowledge that may be applied to a situation always falls far short of the needs of effective action. Application of what knowledge there is, one takes for granted. Not to turn about to replenish the common pot seems almost immoral. Every situation has its unique elements and should be reported. ( Tax 1960b:169)

Research results are an inevitable product of the activity of action anthropology.

Outcomes

The literature on action anthropology, though extensive, does not systematically review the effects of a program in a concrete sense. A review of the basic Fox Project documents does indicate, here and there, assessments of the individual treatments in terms of "how they came off." We are told that the truck farming venture was a failure. The scholarship program and Tamacraft project seemed to be quite successful. Yet the Fox Project was not systematically evaluated. This is consistent with both the action approach and the institutional context in which the Fox Project occurred. The low emphasis on evaluation of impact also seems to be consistent with the absence of an intervening agency. The project was not carried out for a third party and therefore it was presumably unnecessary to spell out explicitly the accomplishments of the project. It should also be clear that the general goals of the project were highly abstract. How does one measure goals clarification and self-determination? Reporting of success and failure is inhibited by the reluctance to engage in activities that might limit success of the total strategy. Retrospective accounts of the project, such asThe Face of the Fox by Frederick Gearing ( 1988) do not inventory success. Gearing's study is critical, yet suggests that the Fox Project can serve applied anthropologists as a prototype of a socially useful procedure. Gearing has his doubts about the impact of the project on the quality of Fox life. Given the identified causes, the solutions to problems proposed by the action team were probably appropriate as to form but insufficient as to scale. This raises an issue of concern for all applied anthropologists as problem solvers. Anthropologists may conceive of "treatments" to alleviate or solve problems, but what of the scale of the problems identified and the "dosage"' of the treatment? This issue was particularly striking in two realms associated with the Fox Project. These were the vicious circle of Fox-white relations and structural paralysis. It is apparent that neither problem was easily correctable or even reversible given the time, techniques, and resources of the Fox team.

SUMMARY

Action anthropology represents a useful set of ideas for dealing with research and development tasks in a number of different kinds of communities. Action anthropology is highly interactive. In this aspect, action anthropology represents a workable alternative to the more typical linear approaches to development planning often used. That is, in most development efforts there is significant investment in the specification of concrete, measurable goals early in the development process. Often development funding is contingent upon the capacity to document convincingly these kinds of goals.

In action anthropology goals unfold in the complex process of interaction between community and researcher. The research process is in fact focused on the discovery of goals and means of achieving them. This approach works best in small-scale communities and organizations. It is a mechanism for maintaining community control and fostering the growth of community adaptability. The approach is limited in that it requires substantial investment in the process of discovery, and because the difficulties inherent in evaluating a development effort that has changing goals. For these reasons, it is most workable where the relationship between the anthropologist and the community is independent of agency restrictions. One might also say that the action anthropology approach is indicated where the community has experienced what might best be called a dependency-generating history. It is important to remember that action anthropology is also a means of doing research.

FURTHER READING

Gearing Frederick O., Robert McC. Netting, and Lisa R. Peattie, eds., 1960.Documentary History of the Fox Project . Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology.

Anyone who is interested in using the action anthropology approach should carefully read this book. Most of the utility of the approach relates to the evolution of the relationship between the anthropologists and the community. This book, which is a collection of many different types of documents, shows this process quite clearly. One cannot just do action anthropology; the relationship with the community that makes it possible must evolve. In this volume, study the articles by Gearing ( "The Strategy of the Fox Project") and Peattie ( "The Failure of the Means-End Scheme in Action Anthropology") very carefully.

Gearing Frederick O. 1970.The Face of the Fox. Chicago : Aldine, Publishing.

This elegant book takes a retrospective look at the results of the Fox Project from a critical perspective. Out of print for some time, the book has been reprinted by Waveland Press (Gearing 1988).

5 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ANTHROPOLOGY

Research and development is a value-explicit, extended role approach to applying anthropological knowledge. Coupled with action anthropology it exemplifies the post-World War II shift from the more or less exclusively value-implicit approaches that had dominated applied anthropology previously. The approach, which was developed by Allan Holmberg, was first used in the context of a highland Peruvian hacienda community in the Cornell-Peru or Vicos Project.

Like action anthropology, the process has both scientific and developmental goals, but its basic concepts and strategies are somewhat different. The primary focus of the strategy is a value attainment process, around which other aspects of the activity revolve. Defined technically, research and development anthropology is a means of bringing about increases in the net amount and breadth of distribution of certain basic human values through research-based participant intervention in a community. The focus of research and development is values. Holmberg clearly recognized the value implications of all science. It is from this recognition that the research and development approach emerged.

Development Of The Approach

Holmberg recognized the inevitability of the influence between social scientists and their subjects. He thought that this influence should be understood, and perhaps controlled and guided for the good of science and the community. As Holmberg notes:

By its very nature the social process is an influencing process among individuals and social groups, one upon which the very existence of society depends. It is no less a necessary condition for the study of social life. Even the most "pure" anthropologist imaginable, conducting his research with "complete" detachment and objectivity, cannot avoid influencing his subjects of study or in turn of being influenced by them. ( Holmberg 1958:12)

Research and development anthropology is based on the idea that some communities are better places within which to live than others. The approach implies that better communities can be designed and achieved. The view seems idealistic, yet case study material indicates that above all it is a practical process, a process stimulated by a defined goal: the wider sharing of positive human values. The utopian tendencies suggested by this goal are tempered by the research component of the approach. As the reader will see, the technique is relatively precise. The precision is brought to the process by careful research and methodical documentation. The tendency to document is manifested in the substantial number of papers and reports written and produced by program participants.

The specific events that led to the testing of the research and development approach began in 1949. Mario C. Vazquez, a Peruvian anthropologist trained at Cornell, engaged in basic research in the highland Peruvian community named Vicos as part of a major comparative study of modernization. This project was part of Cornell University's major research effort that involved studying social change cross-culturally.

Although it is clear that the essential aspects of the approach were identified prior to the initiation of the project, the project had a somewhat accidental cast to it. The original and motivating goal was basic research in cultural change in a number of Peruvian communities of various types within the Callejón de Hauylas. One of the primary reasons for selecting this area was that a major hydroelectric dam was going to be constructed. It was thought that the Cornell team would carry out a state-of-the-art "before-and-after" research project in the area that was to be affected by the dam. Although the research team had done a good job of documenting the "before," the "after" never happened; a flood washed out the partially constructed dam.

Mario C. Vazquez suggested that the project focus on the Vicos hacienda community. It was regarded as representative of a hacienda community subtype. Vicos was a type of community called a public manor, which are common in Peru. Often, charitable societies hold title and rent them out for five to ten years to the highest bidder ( Holmberg 1971:34). The lease for Vicos was coming due. It was suggested by Vazquez that Holmberg and Cornell take over the lease. The prior tenant had gone bankrupt raising flax, when European flax came back on the market at the end of the war. Holmberg seemed to share Vazquez's belief that somewhere between the Peruvian Ministry of the Interior and the Cornell Board of Trustees the idea would get turned down.

KEY CONCEPTS

The goal of research and development anthropology is the wider sharing of basic human values. These values are not defined by science, but arediscovered through science . As will be apparent later in this chapter, knowledge of values is essential for the operation of the process. The process is, in its most general sense, a process of value achievement in which persons work to obtain certain desired ends. This is based on certain key assumptions made by Holmberg. These assumptions are, "(1) that human traits are such that progress can be made towards the realization of human dignity," and "(2) that the natural order (physical nature) is such that with greater knowledge and skill, human beings can turn it progressively to the service of social goals" ( Holmberg 1958:13).

The later work of Holmberg and the political scientist Harold Lasswell deserves our attention here. These two social scientists attempted to develop what they referred to as a general theory of directed social change ( Lasswell and Holmberg 1966:14). They conceptualized social change as "a process in whichparticipants seek to maximize net value outcomes (values ) by employing practices (institutions ), affectingresources " ( Lasswell and Holmberg 1966:15). The social change process as the two described it involved goals, interaction contexts, and the environment. At the core were the PREWSWAR Values, which were regarded as sufficiently precise and universalistic to allow systematic cross-cultural comparison. Further, the authors felt that the eight values and their related practices were the focus of specialized research disciplines. PREWSWAR is an acronym based on the initials of the eight values. The PREWSWAR Values are power, respect, enlightenment, wealth, skill, well being, affection, and rectitude. Human beings are viewed as maximizers; in Lasswell and Holmberg's terms, "Participants in the social process are seeking to maximize their net value position" (Lasswell and Holmberg 1966:17). To return to Holmberg's discussion of Vicos and values:

The wider sharing of such values among members of the Vicos community was essentially the overall basic value position and policy goal to which we subscribed. In other words, everyone, if he so desired, should at least have the right and the opportunity, if not the responsibility, to participate in the decision-making process in the community, to enjoy a fair share of its wealth, to pursue a desire for knowledge, to be esteemed by his fellowmen, to develop talents to the best of his ability, to be relatively free from physical and mental disease, to enjoy the affection of others, and to command respect for his private life. ( Holmberg 1958:13)

The intervening social scientist works to increase the sharing of these values. In order to do this, it is necessary to identify the base values in a community, and with this knowledge intervene in the community so as to help achieve value goals.

The knowledge required goes far beyond mere identification of the base values. It is necessary to investigate and understand the contexts within which the values are produced, exchanged, and shared. These contexts are referred to as institutions. Institutions are the social interaction patterns guided by more or less stable practice patterns that are to an extent focused on certain value outcomes.

The foundation of the research and development approach is knowledge. It is, in spite of all of its action involvement and change-producing behavior, research-based. It shares with all of the other applied anthropologies a base in research. This is fundamental and will be reemphasized in our discussion of the process. It is this firm basis in research that separates this approach from political action. It is also the source of the strength of the approach. It is through research that the "contextuality" of the process is understood. This is consistent with the total view of system stressed in anthropology, that is to say, the holistic approach.

Before considering the process specifically, it is necessary to review the relationship between the conception of values associated with the research and development approach, and the traditional concern in anthropology for cultural relativism. Although it is true that the approach does focus on a specific value orientation, generally stated as a "wider sharing of positive human values" as represented by the specific value categories included in the PREWSWAR list, further study of the approach indicates that the conceptual scheme recognizes the importance of local institutional variability. The values take different forms and exist in different institutional settings. As Holmberg states the principle:

I have not meant to suggest that movement towards these goals can occur only through a single set of institutional practices. Like most anthropologists I subscribe to the doctrine of the relativity of culture and I firmly believe that people have the right of self-determination, as long as they respect that right in others. ( Holmberg 1958:13)

Thus at the general level, Holmberg and his associates possessed a vision of the potential of human groups to change progressively. This vision was given substance by the act of research, and was guided by the conception of values developed through cross-cultural analysis.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Research and development anthropology is not based on the discovery of a secret strategy or mechanism, nor is it based on a single bright idea. Instead its strength is thoughtful, anthropological conceptualization of an encompassing understanding of culture appropriate to the goal of stimulating the "right" kinds of culture change. This conception would be meaningless without the detailed research necessary for understanding the substance of total context. The value scheme seems, in isolation, utopian and impractical. With basic research and the logical specification of reality, the construction of an effective overall action design is possible. With the recognition of possibilities and goals, practical action can be specific.

The key to success using the research and development approach is adequate research and documentation. The research makes the development work, and development efforts provide an opportunity for further research. This is, as Holmberg notes, not unlike the interdependence between natural science and related technology. As Holmberg suggests, "A great strength of, if not a necessary condition for, natural science is feedback through development" ( Holmberg -80- berg 1958:14).

The process is based on continual feedback. Each element may be rather minor. The total effect, however, may be quite significant. The significance is derived not from a few decisive acts but from a large number of small acts that are guided and mediated by an overall design, a theory, and ideology. This guide increases the total impact of the intervention. The persistence, coupled with the feedback loops, which constantly result in corrective behavior, can result in a powerful total effect.As the technique was applied at Vicos, Holmberg and his staff charted large numbers of potential interventions in the community. These interventions were laid out diagrammatically. At Vicos these were put on large bulletin boards. The diagrams, depicted below schematically, became a representation of the process of research and development.

The Research and Development Approach:

An ideological goal or end point

A corresponding institutional goal or end point

Program plans for probes, pretests, interventions, and appraisals

Present ideological situation with respect to above goals summarized

Present institution situation with respect to above goals summarized

Record of past interventions

Baseline ideological situation

Baseline institutional situation

CASE STUDY: THE CORNELL-PERU PROJECT AT VICOS

The Community

Vicos was a typical mountain hacienda community of Peru. It was about 250 miles from Lima, the capital city, and consisted of a tract of over thirty thousand acres. Only about twenty-five hundred acres were cultivated while sixty-seven hundred acres were used for grazing. Somewhat less than one-tenth of the hacienda was exploited through cultivation. In 1952, the population was revealed to be, through a project census, 1,703 Quechua-speaking Indians. These people were tied to the land, which was owned by the Public Benefit Society of Huaraz. The society rented out the land to the highest bidder for periods of five to ten years. The money paid in rent was used, along with the money from fifty-six other properties, to support the only hospital in the administrative district of which Vicos was a part. The estate was largely managed for and by the regional Latino elites. The key authority figure in Vicos political life was thepatrón who had rented the property. The patrón was never an Indian. Thepatrón possessed extensive power and authority and could profoundly influence a person's life. Thepatrón 's agent on the estate lands was another non- Indian, an overseer or administrator. It was his task to maintain the daily operations of the hacienda with its seventeen-hundred-person work force. Augmenting hacienda management was a number of non-Indian foremen who directly supervised the work force and dealt with such problems as absenteeism, fertilization, irrigation, and harvest. This small group of outsiders held power over the Vicosinos, who were bound to a community over which they had very little control.

The non-Indian managers were linked to the labor force through Vicosino straw bosses (mayorales ). These men supervised the 380-man work force of the hacienda, which worked three days a week for the manor for about a penny a day. On occasion, the Vicosino laborers were hired out to other farming operations in the region, in which case their pay was taken by thepatrón . Further, Vicosinos were bound to provide domestic services for the maintenance of the manor house. In addition to the labor exploitation hierarchy, there existed an organizational structure within the Vicos community itself. There were seventeen varayoc who formed the local decision-making body. Thevarayoc system had been created by Spanish colonial administrators as part of an indirect rule system. Through the years, thevarayoc system had become highly involuted, presumably because it was one of the few organizations in which Vicosinos could participate at a decision-making level. Through thevarayoc institution Vicosinos gained prestige and status.

Although their primary function was the planning and management of the religious ceremonial life of the community, thevarayoc also served to mobilize labor for public works and to resolve conflicts within the community concerning land and animals. In addition, thevarayoc were responsible for carrying out the punishments specified by thepatrón in response to infractions of the rules. This included floggings, public denunciations, and incarcerations.

The Vicosinos were peons, social inferiors with little control over their destiny. The relationship that existed between the Vicosino farmer and thepatrón was brutal and exploitative. It served as a model for virtually all relationships between Vicosinos and non-Indians. It was assumed that the non-Indian was inherently superior to the Indian, the latter being a slow-witted, ignorant drunkard, almost subhuman. The role expectations that the non-Indian held for the Indian were well sanctioned. Indians who did not play their role were subject to tremendous abuse from both the non-Indian and the Indian. The "successful" Indian manifested the stereotypical behavior that reduced sanctions but also placed him in a subservient position. Proper role behavior made the Indian a powerless exploited dependent.

The Vicosinos were organized into a somewhat different kinship system than the non-Indians. Instead of a bilateral system, they were born into a type of patrilineal descent group, termed locally acasta . Males dominated as family leaders. Marriage was often established on a trial basis, and then, if accepted, formalized in a church ceremony. Childhood for Vicosinos was a difficult time. School attendance was noncompulsory and rare. Children were involved in a Indian, an overseer or administrator. It was his task to maintain the daily operations of the hacienda with its seventeen-hundred-person work force. Augmenting hacienda management were a number of non-Indian foremen who directly supervised the work force and dealt with such problems as absenteeism, fertilization, irrigation, and harvest. This small group of outsiders held power over the Vicosinos, who were bound to a community over which they had very little control.

The non-Indian managers were linked to the labor force through Vicosino straw bosses (mayorales ). These men supervised the 380-man work force of the hacienda, who worked three days a week for the manor for about a penny a day. On occasion, the Vicosino laborers were hired out to other farming operations in the region, in which case their pay was taken by thepatrón . Further, Vicosinos were bound to provide domestic services for the maintenance of the manor house. In addition to the labor exploitation hierarchy, there existed an organizational structure within the Vicos community itself. There were seventeen varayoc who formed the local decision-making body. Thevarayoc system had been created by Spanish colonial administrators as part of an indirect rule system. Through the years, thevarayoc system had become highly involuted, presumably because it was one of the few organizations in which Vicosinos could participate at a decision-making level. Through thevarayoc institution Vicosinos gained prestige and status.

Although their primary function was the planning and management of the religious ceremonial life of the community, thevarayoc also served to mobilize labor for public works and to resolve conflicts within the community concerning land and animals. In addition, thevarayoc were responsible for carrying out the punishments specified by thepatrón in response to infractions of the rules. This included floggings, public denunciations, and incarcerations.

The Vicosinos were peons, social inferiors with little control over their destiny. The relationship that existed between the Vicosino farmer and thepatrón was brutal and exploitative. It served as a model for virtually all relationships between Vicosinos and non-Indians. It was assumed that the non-Indian was inherently superior to the Indian, the latter being a slow-witted, ignorant drunkard, almost subhuman. The role expectations that the non-Indian held for the Indian were well sanctioned. Indians who did not play their role were subject to tremendous abuse from both the non-Indian and the Indian. The "successful" Indian manifested the stereotypical behavior that reduced sanctions but also placed him in a subservient position. Proper role behavior made the Indian a powerless exploited dependent.

The Vicosinos were organized into a somewhat different kinship system than the non-Indians. Instead of a bilateral system, they were born into a type of patrilineal descent group, termed locally acasta . Males dominated as family leaders. Marriage was often established on a trial basis, and then, if accepted, formalized in a church ceremony. Childhood for Vicosinos was a difficult time. School attendance was noncompulsory and rare. Children were involved in a substantial number of chores at a very young age and interacted in few affectionate relationships.The material well-being of the Vicosinos was limited. Adults usually had no more than a single set of regionally distinctive clothes, with the children being dressed in little more than rags. The cost of the costume in labor and materials was equivalent to a year's wages for a Vicosino ( Alers 1971). Housing available to the Vicosinos was deficient: dirt floors and no windows were the standard.The health and nutrition status of the Vicosinos was poor. Their diet was limited largely to what they could produce in their small garden plots and what they could glean from the fields. Their limited diet was buffeted by success and failure in the harvest. Very few of the families had significant amounts of animal protein in their diets. Dietary surveys indicate that the Vicosinos consumed only about 76 percent of their daily needs of calories and protein. Associated with the nutritional deficiencies were certain health problems of high frequency. Fifty percent of the population were infested with parasites of various kinds. Given the diet and high incidence of parasite infestation, there was an expectedly high rate of gastrointestinal infection. The community was periodically subject to epidemics of measles, influenza, and whooping cough.The anthropologists of the Vicos Project deviated from the traditional analyst and consultant roles. To use Holmberg's term, they used participant- intervention as opposed to participant-observation. They became both observers and designers. The Peruvian government's Institute of Indigenous Affairs, which is a semiautonomous agency of the Ministry of Labor and Indigenous Affairs, gave its full support to this major field experiment.

Project Goals

The plan of intervention was framed in terms of the PREWSWAR values of power, respect, enlightenment, wealth, skill, well-being, affection, and rectitude. The overall goal was twofold. The anthropologists would work for wider sharing of values. Certain goal values were viewed as strategically more important than others. Consequently, the project invested greater efforts in intervention in the realms of power, wealth, enlightenment, skill, and well-being. It was hypothesized that the other values could be treated as dependent variables. That is, these values could be regarded as responsive to changes in the other values. These values derived their shape from the other values. Rectitude, affection, and respect were regarded in this way as derived values, best modified through interventions in other value domains.The general goals of the project thereby came to be:

1. Devolution of power.

2. Increases in the production and sharing of wealth.

3. Improvements in health and well being.

4. Increase in organizational complexity.

5. Improvements in the opportunities available in the community for enlightenment.

These goals became the development priorities for the anthropologists. The selection of these priorities was based on the values of both the anthropologists and the community, and the theoretical idea that some values are derived from others. They accepted as a guiding principle the notion that innovations would be accepted where the people felt the most deficiency.

The primary area of intervention in the initial stages of the project was the power domain. The goal was power devolution, that is, a reduction of the amount of control thepatrón had over the Vicosinos, and an increase in the amount of control the Vicosinos had over their own lives. This began on the first day of project operations. The Cornell staff decided quickly to work not with thevarayoc , but with the former straw bosses who, while being experienced in hacienda affairs, were not so tied to the religious life of the community. In spite of the age of this group and the fact of their preferred position under the old system, they represented an effective transitional organization. Older members were later replaced by persons more committed to modernization.

In preparation for the interventions, Cornell quickly resolved some of the problems that contributed to the bitterness of the Vicosinos. For example, Vicosinos strongly resented the practice of required unpaid service to the manor household. This requirement was immediately abolished. Instead, these services were provided by paid community members. It had been the practice to pay a small amount to each farm laborer. However, the previouspatrón had failed to carry out this responsibility. Cornell made the payments and charged the cost to the transfer fees. These acts, as well as the rapport that existed between Mario C. Vazquez and the Vicosinos, contributed greatly to the developing newpatrón Vicosino relationship. Paralleling the initial "therapeutic" and political interventions were activities in other areas, particularly in agricultural production, health, and education. These will be discussed later.

The power devolution process proceeded along three fronts. Cornell attempted to overhaul old organizational forms and to create new ones so as to facilitate a meaningful transfer of power. There was a concerted effort to increase Vicosinos' knowledge of democratic practice through discussion and other instructional efforts. And finally, largely outside the context of the Vicos community, advocates for the community were working to help the Vicosinos overcome political resistance to their purchase of the land. The advocacy work was crucial and occurred at the highest levels of the national government. Effort was invested in developing the skills ofmayorales as decision makers. This took place in weekly meetings and in the traditionalmando , the weekly gathering of peons to receive work orders. This strategy was designed by Holmberg, who was very successful in teaching Vicosinos to "think about Vicos as a whole, to consider issues in terms of a common good as well as individual and family interest, and how to arrive at group decisions upon a basis of open discussion" ( Dobyns 1971:147).

Themayorales met with Holmberg every week. After great efforts, the "timid and fearful" foremen were drawn into policy discussions. Ultimately, themando , or labor shape-up, in which representatives of all the families participated, came to be more democratic. Dobyns notes: "Slowly the serfs learned to discuss manorial activities in the shape-up meetings until they learned to make community-wide decisions in what became a sort of town meeting" ( 1971:147).

The overall effect of the transformation was remarkable. Soon these people were directly influencing the direction of their lives. The devolution of power occurred by providing an organizational context within which the Vicosinos could slowly activate power prerogatives, while the Cornell group consciously refrained from the use of power. The first stage of the power devolution process lasted five years and was concluded by the transference of thepatrón 's role from Holmberg and Cornell to the collective community of Vicos, as represented by the community council that evolved out of the Cornell seminars.

When the Cornell rental agreement was to end, the Cornell staff attempted to identify the community's future wishes. The identified goal was the purchase of the lands and the establishment of Vicos as a free and self-governing community. Vicosinos advocated that they continue to farm the lands collectively and that the proceeds go to pay for the land itself. The achievement of these goals required the establishment of more complex organization. The hacienda was subdivided into ten zones based on the distribution of population. Each zone was to send a single popularly elected delegate to the Communal Directive Board (Junta de Delegados ). The officers of the newly elected board made contact with the Peruvian Indian Institute, which assisted in beginning the process of expropriation. The passage of an expropriation resolution was not enough; the process of acquiring the land took four full years. The board rather quickly evolved in terms of more workable democratic practice.

Much of this development was made possible by Cornell and other project supporters external to Vicos itself acting on behalf of the Vicosinos. The Cornell Peru Project had a national power base. Because of this, the Vicosinos were no longer under the influence of the non-Indians of nearby towns. The Cornell-Peru Project served as a protective umbrella while development occurred. The presence of the Cornell people gave the Vicosinos much better access to extracommunity resources. Ultimately, the Vicos community had the benefits of government teachers, health care workers, and various technical assistance personnel.

The Cornell power umbrella was most crucial in regards to the final disposition of the land. As the rental agreement ended the project advised the Peruvian government to expropriate the land from the Public Benefit Society of Huaraz to be given to the Vicos communty. As this possibility developed, fierce local opposition emerged. The Public Benefit Society of Huaraz precipitously raised the price of the land tenfold, including in their appraisal facilities built by the Vicosinos as part of the development project. The Rotary Club of Huaraz accused project personnel of being communists. The resistance of the non-Indian establishment rather quickly developed at the national level. Later, the Prime Minister of Peru, Pedro Beltran, advanced the opinion to representatives of the American Embassy that sale of the land at any price would not be approved because of the precedent it would set for land reform in the country. The uncertainty that this resistance caused among the Vicosinos slowed the course of development in the area of capital investment.

The Vicosinos grew tense as the Public Benefit Society of Huaraz prepared to lease the land to the nextpatrón . These tensions increased when peasants on an adjoining hacienda were killed by national police. The Vicosinos were taking up arms themselves. From this high level of frustration the course of struggle shifted to the national level. Intervention at a high level from outside the country was required. The United States's ambassador to Peru worked to obtain the approval of land sales with the aid of Edward Kennedy. Finally, success was met.

Economic Development at Vicos

A major component of the development effort was an attempt to improve the economic well being of the Vicosinos. Virtually all of these efforts were focused upon the farming system. The Vicosinos were subsistence farmers for three days a week and unpaid agricultural workers for the remaining work days. In return for their labor they received the use of a homesite and a small plot of land to farm to support their families. These one-half to five-acre plots were planted primarily with potatoes, maize, various Andean root crops, wheat, barley, rye, beans, and pigweed. Many families owned cattle, which they grazed, in scrubby upland pastures. Families supplemented a protein-short diet by raising guinea pigs and chickens.

The transformation of the technology of Vicos agriculture was given a high priority by the Cornell-Peru Project. At the time of Cornell's assumption of thepatrón role, the hacienda lands farmed for the market were planted with flax. This practice was uneconomical. The project received technical assistance from the Inter-American Cooperative Food Production Service, which suggested that the project take up potato raising. Potato raising, as the technical assistants identified it, required the acceptance of an entire complex of practices, which included new mountain varieties, anti-rot fumigation of seed potatoes, fertilization at various stages, and spraying against insects and mosaic infection. The potato complex had to be introduced all at once in order to be successful. This broad spectrum substitution was in fact accomplished. The transfer of technical knowledge was facilitated by Cornell's identification as apatrón .

Later these technical improvements were augmented by improvements in the economic arrangement associated with the potato. Vicosinos became eligible for a crop loan program. Initially these funds were used to improve farming on communal lands. By this time, Vicosinos understood banking practices sufficiently so that they could manage their loans properly. In addition to the communal loans, individual Vicosino farmers were able to borrow for their farming operations. The Vicos farming operation remained in two parts: the communal lands and individual plots. The communal plots were farmed commercially and thereby served as a source of funds to maintain the farm operation. In addition, because these lands were under the control of Cornell aspatrón , they were also used as demonstration plots for higher technology farming practices. The Vicosinos could observe the improved practices when they performed their three days of required labor. In spite of favorable credit arrangements and demonstrations few Vicosinos engaged the new practices. Virtually all 17 of 363 families who adopted the innovations, however, made big profits. Over the next few years the innovations spread steadily. After Cornell ceased being thepatrón the Vicos Community Board took over the lending role.

In addition to the interventions in the political and agricultural realms, there were significant interventions in education, leading to a wider sharing of enlightenment. Control of knowledge and skill sources were a primary means of maintaining the status quo in the highland communities. Consequently, enlightenment was given major emphasis by the project. Vicosinos, like other Andean peasants, were dependent on traditional knowledge. As part of the adaptation to the complex system of dominance and submissiveness, the Vicosinos, like other oppressed Andeans, actively resisted what little educational opportunities there were. Part of this was motivated by fear of the non-Indian teaching staff. Education programs had been so ineffective that at the beginning of the project only 2 percent of the population could speak Spanish, and only five persons could read and write.

Improvements in enlightenment were essential for significant changes in other realms to occur. The first major educational efforts were informal and were related to knowledge of potato farming and political development. Knowledge of potato raising techniques led to a wide variety of changes in Vicosino life. As Vicosinos produced more potatoes for the market, their relationship of dependency on non-Indian merchants declined in importance while they became better integrated into the national market. This allowed them better prices. Their remarkable increases in disposable income led regional merchants to send goods to Vicos to be considered for purchase by community members. Again, this served to improve the Vicosinos' integration into the national economy. Vicosinos ultimately were able to reverse economic roles to the extent that some even hired skilled non-Indian workers.

In addition to the remarkable effects of training in potato raising, the Cornell project also attempted to improve local knowledge of construction techniques. This was done by hiring a non-Indian journeyman-instructor to assist the Vicosinos in constructing buildings. A similar arrangement was developed by Mario C. Vazquez in terms of sewing instruction for women. Later, the sewing classes were coupled with Spanish classes. Perhaps the most important thing taught at Vicos was democratic decision making. This "instructional event" represented the most essential transformation at Vicos. It was the ultimate expression of the project's values and the best evidence of the utility of the research and development approach. The success of the project was based on enlightenment domains, yet it was something more than education; it was education guided by a theory. That is, in the enlightenment domain as well as others, Holmberg and other members of the project were able to create a link between their theories of development and practical action. This perhaps is what is most remarkable about the entire Vicos enterprise: the capacity to link up ideas with direct action.

The educational strategy that the project followed was simple and direct. The first interventions for enlightenment were informal, carried out independently of whatever formal educational institutions existed at Vicos. The knowledge transmitted was directly related to immediately useful activities. The enlightenment process is instrumental and therefore can be judged in terms of its here and now impact on the community and the project. These interventions were not to make the Vicosinos ready for change, they were to change the Vicosinos directly. It was not until later in the project that general education was given a significant emphasis.

SUMMARY

Research and development anthropology is an approach to development intervention that is clearly focused on values. This focus is expressed in a generalized procedure that requires that the anthropologist understand the institutional framework of the distribution of valued "things." This feature of research and development anthropology gives it a holistic but systematic quality that makes the approach useful in a variety of situations. The approach provides a means of ordering and displaying information in support of the planning and implementation of interventions. The use of an institutional framework in conjunction with values gives the approach a somewhat greater potential for considering major structural transformations as development goals, along with the community needs focus of the approach.

Potential interventionists within anthropology might consider using features from action anthropology and research and development anthropology to develop a composite approach. Both provide ideas that may serve a variety of development situations well. Both schemes provide useful concepts for community-based development planning. Perhaps there is some potential for combining the value category planning techniques associated with research and development, with the interactive planning orientation characteristic of action anthropology. While it appears that the two approaches contain features that could be usefully combined, it is important to point out a fundamental contrast between the two approaches. That is, as these approaches were operationalized in their prototypical projects, they took very different positions on the extent to which the anthropologist assumes power. The action anthropologistavoids it. The research and development anthropologist assumes it, where appropriate, and then "devolves" it. Looking beyond this fundamental opposition will result in awareness of substantial similarities between the two approaches.

FURTHER READING

Dobyns Henry F., Paul Doughty, and Harold Lasswell, eds. 1971.Peasants, Power and Applied Social Change: Vicos as a Model . Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Contains many of the articles that describe the research and development approach. In addition, it contains descriptions of some project outcomes and characteristics of the Vicos community. Unfortunately, there is no single comprehensive description of the project, but this volume is an excellent substitute.

Doughty Paul L. 1986. "Vicos: Success, Rejection and Rediscovery of a Classic Program." InApplied Anthropology in America , 2d ed. E. M. Eddy and W. L. Partridge , eds. New York: Columbia University Press. 1987. "Against the Odds: Collaboration and Development at Vicos." InCollaborative Research and Social Change: Applied Anthropology in Action , Donald D. Stull and Jean J. Schensul, Eds. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

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6 Community Development

The origins of the community development model are more complex than the other models for intervention that we are considering in this text. The approach developed out of an uneasy and largely unplanned cooperation between academics and practitioners. Anthropology is only one of many disciplines that have contributed to the development of community development theory and practice.

Although the community development approach has been widely used by many different kinds of people, there is substantial agreement as to its essential features. Content analysis of fifty-nine policy articles, carried out by the anthropologist Charles J. Erasmus, reveals some of the conceptual uniformities that can be found in definitions of community development.

Erasmus attempts to identify the recurring stress given concepts that appear in the definitions. The most frequently stressed attribute is "'self-help' group action via community participation and voluntary cooperation," which appears in 60 percent of the definitions ( 1968:65). Forty percent of the definitions mention as "ideal goals" such concepts as self-determination, democracy, self-reliance, or local self-government; the articles deemphasize material goals, "such as better living standards, improved housing, health, and diet. " These things appear in only 10 percent of the definitions. Fifteen percent make reference to "the development of self-confidence in backward groups suffering from apathy, limited expectations and distrust of government" (1968:65). Further, the "felt needs" of the people to be aided and the need for "technical help" from agencies providing aid are each mentioned by approximately 30 percent of the authors (1968:65).

There are a number of definitions in the literature that accurately reflect the nature of the model. The one that was used by the program we will consider as a representative case study was developed by the International Cooperation Administration, an agency of the American government.

Community development is a process of social action in which the people of a community organize themselves for planning and action; define their common and individual needs and problems; make group and individual plans to meet their needs and solve their problems; execute the plans with a maximum of reliance upon community resources; and supplement these resources when necessary with services and materials from government and non-governmental agencies outside the community. (1955:1)

DEVELOPMENT OF THE APPROACH

Community development has a rather complex history. Special meanings became attached to the phrase in 1948 when the Cambridge Conference on African Administration, sponsored by the British Colonial Office, used "community development" to replace the phrase "mass education" ( Mezirow 1963:9). Mass education was a term coined in the British Colonial Office to signify an educational focus on the entire community with concern for getting people involved in their own development.

Influenced by diverse disciplines, community development received its major impetus from education and social work. The influence of education was especially important in Great Britain's colonial development policy. The influence of social work on community development has been more apparent in the United States than Great Britain. Community development has affinities with a subspecialty within social work called community organization practice. This field represents a major source of community development thought in the United States. The similarities are quite fundamental. Professional competencies in both areas are based on knowledge of community, the capacity to assist people in problem identification, the ability to identify and foster community leadership, the capacity to stimulate planning, and the techniques of resource mobilization. The differences between the two fields are subtle and unimportant.

KEY CONCEPTS

Community is a focal concept in the community development process. The process in its original formulation was largely directed at "little communities" in rural, Third World settings. Increasingly, however, a broader applicability was asserted and used by practitioners. Roland Warren suggests that "it applies to the needs of remote villages of traditionally agricultural countries and to those of turbulent metropolises of highly industrialized countries" ( 1970:32). More and more the technique was applied in a wider variety of contexts.

The concept of community as it is used in community development is quite variable. The anthropologist Ward Goodenough defines the concept broadly, focusing on the relationship between professional and client. "We shall use the expression 'community' broadly, referring to any social entity in a client relationship with a development agent or agency. It may be a rural village, a metropolitan government, a tribe, an industrial organization, or a nation state" ( 1963:16). Goodenough defends his choice by noting that "the human requirements for getting the cooperation of the members of a power elite in helping them to develop an effective national public health service are not unlike those for getting the cooperation of a group of villagers in helping them to improve agricultural production or to develop a local irrigation system" ( 1963:16).

A second perspective on community is apparent in the work of William Biddle, and Loureide J. Biddle. In their terms, "Community is whatever sense of local common good citizens can be helped to achieve" ( 1965:77).

These definitions are not so disparate as it may appear. Both implicitly or explicitly suggest that a community is a unit of real or potential interaction in a spatial or residential framework. Goodenough identifies the community as client while Biddle suggests that community may in fact be the goal. The community concept must be broadly defined so as to reflect the wide variety of behavior called community development. Community development specialists have worked to achieve the goals of existing communities, and to create communities.

Another focal concept in community development isprocess . Process has come to be a term subjected to a heavy load of meaning. It is a code word, often used to signify the whole of community development ideology. Its concrete foundation is based on the various conceptions of procedure. Various procedural schemes are to be found in the literature.

InThe Community Development Process: The Rediscovery of Local Initiative , William And Loureide Biddle describe "major stages" of the "flow of process" ( 1965:90-91). The six stages are derived from an examination of "numerous case studies of community development process" ( 1965:90-91). Biddle and Biddle emphasize the process approach in their work. They define community development as a "social process by which human beings can become more competent to live with and gain some control over local aspects of a frustrating and changing world" ( 1965:78).

Physical development of the community, which may be implied by the phrase community development, is absent from Biddle and Biddle's definition. The desired end of the process is not physical improvement, but the increased ability of a community to deal with its environment. The process approach continually stresses '"what happens topeople --socially and psychologically" ( Sanders 1958:407; see also Sanders 1970:19).

The actions of community developers are often thought to be contingent upon the discoveredfelt needs of a community. Orthodox community development was thought to discover the felt needs of a community and then stimulate action in response to them. This orientation is the product of other factors. It might be stated that the community development strategy emerged in reaction to the failures of more autocratic approaches the so-called development-from-above strategies. Because of the grass roots orientation of the community development movement, a target had to be developed that allowed programmatic involvement in small-scale communities by representatives of national or international agencies in a way that was acceptably democratic. Community felt needs came to be that target. The community development strategy requires intense local involvement. Involvement is most easily achieved when the community defines the goals of the activity as high priorities. Stated simply, the proposition might be, communities will work for what they want. The concept is appealing but, nevertheless, has its problems. For example, all participants in the development process--agents, community members, and community political leadership--have their own felt needs. The community as a composite has felt needs that are somewhat different from those of its individual participants. And further, a community's "best interests" may not be its felt needs.

Lack of recognition of the felt needs of a community is often stated as a cause of failure in development programs. Often the technical expert assumes that his or her understanding of the community's needs is virtually identical with that of the community (Goodenough 1963:59). It is in this context that the special skills of the social scientist Are so useful. Goodenough suggests that there are at least four relevant perspectives on community needs that must be accounted for in the program implementation process. These are: 1) the agent's assessment of community needs in terms of his or her own goals; 2) the agent's assessment of needs mitigated by his or her understanding of the community's goals; 3) the community's assessment as mitigated by their understanding of the agent's goals; and 4) the community's conception of its needs ( 1963:59).

It is through the need concept that the culture of the developing community becomes incorporated into the process of development planning. Goodenough infers that "customs, as shared habits, must be gratifying in some way to the majority of a society's members if they are to persist" ( 1963:64). One might say that the achievement of developmental goals would be facilitated if the community perceives them as a potential source of gratification. The saliency of the felt needs concept in the community development literature is derived from this fact.

Cultural systems rarely exist in isolation. That is to say, in virtually all human groups, one can detect evidence of adaptive change that was stimulated by intergroup cultural borrowing; cultural diffusion is a fact of human life. The community developer is oriented toward facilitating adaptive change in a focused and accelerated manner. This often involves conscious attempts to provide, in a discriminating manner, alternative and perhaps improved means of meeting cultural needs.

Because of the seeming inevitability of cultural change, one might ask whether community development is necessary. That is, if it is truly based on a community's felt needs, wouldn't the community act purposively without the stimulus of the professional practitioner? Given the nature of things, this question is not readily answered. There have been few really critical assessments of specific projects to appear in the literature.

VALUE SYSTEM

Perhaps the most fundamental value orientation represented in community development is the belief in progress. Biddle and Biddle notes: "Most community developers are optimistic about people. The belief in human potential for favorable growth is necessary to the process they hope to inspire" ( 1965:58). Rooted in this positive view of human potential is the understanding that in order to apply the community development approach in a particular community, the community members must have a positive view of their own potential. It might be stated that the value orientations of the practitioner are projections of his or her desires for the community.

Biddle and Biddle have stated their position on the human potential value quite clearly. Their discussion will serve as representative of this characteristic value of community development. They assert "each person is valuable, unique, and capable of growth toward greater social sensitivity and responsibility" ( 1965:60). They suggest further that "each person has underdeveloped abilities in initiative, originality and leadership [and that] these qualities can be cultivated and strengthened" ( 1965:60). further, "these abilities tend to emerge and grow stronger when people work together in small groups that serve the common (community) good" ( 1965:60).

This introduces a fundamental component of community development ideology: the process can result in two types of success, just as the process can result in two types of failure. That is, the process as it is usually implemented as it is implemented involves the definition of tangible goals. These may include such things as a new water system or a school. In addition, the community development process has abstract goals, which to the practitioner may be more important than the concrete goals. These goals relate to increasing the community's capacity to change purposively. This implies the creation of representative, competent community organization, and leadership that can instigate and control adaptive community action. The practitioner therefore often focuses on intangible "results in the mind" rather than the physical results of projects. We will consider this is our critique of the approach. The benefits of citizen participation in the community development process are viewed as extensive.

In spite of its importance, participation has not been adequately conceptualized in the community development literature. Frequently it seems to exist as a goal unto itself. We should emphasize that the goals of participation are manifold, ranging from the economic to the political. The quality and extent of participation expected is quite high, but in fact exceedingly variable. the variation is related to a number of factors. These include the size of the community, the extent of factionalism and stratification, the community's functional complexity, the nature of the problem faced, and previous experience in organized, change-directed participation.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

As suggested above, the concept of community development process carries a very heavy semantic load. Biddle and Biddle (1965) provide one of the most widely used and thorough analyses of the nature of the community development process. As noted above, they define community development in terms of process. Community development is viewed as a group process in that it encompasses "cooperative study, group decisions, collective action, and joint evaluation that leads to continuing action" (1965:78). It is thought to result in improvements in facilities, but the primary focus is on increasing human capability.

Biddle and Biddle define process as "a progression of events that is planned by the participants to serve goals they progressively choose. The events point to changes in a group and in individuals that can be termed growth in social sensitivity and competence" (1965:77). Although it may be initiated by a community development professional, process is motivated by its participants. The locus of process activity is a primary group of citizen-volunteers who manifest interest in the development of their community. Initially, the nucleus may be small, with limited goals and resources. The active nucleus may expand as they are able to identify new problem areas. Initial project success may provide a feedback of rewards, which may lead to increases in group size and capability.

The role of the practitioner is envisioned, by Biddle and Biddle, as that of researcher, encourager, and enabler. As such the practitioner discovers the existing processes in the community and the local culture and uses this knowledge to facilitate his or her invited participation. The research orientation is viewed as essential for the successful performance of the role. The primary research method might be labeled participant-observation in the initial stages, but may develop into community self-survey and community self-evaluation strategies. The accumulating findings are used to guide and correct the continuing process. Participants contribute to research in the manner that their increasing abilities will allow.

The process also emphasizes the education of the community, especially in terms of the range of developmental alternatives. The professional is usually not thought to be an advocate of a particular problem solution. It is his or her professional responsibility to assist the community in discovering all possible alternative paths to their goals, and to help stimulate the development of an organization that can legitimately and skillfully select from among the alternatives.

Community development programs are often evaluated in terms of whether or not they result in sustained developmental action following the withdrawal of the community development professional. The process-based scheme under examination here also stresses this orientation in the new projects and continuation phases. The goal of the process is to encourage and foster the emergence of a community development tradition in the community. Through the activities of the community development specialist, the community's capacity to sustain development action should be increased. Developmental competence is based on three components: organization, knowledge, and resources. Organization is largely an intracommunity matter, whereas knowledge and resources are often derived from outside the community. This requires that relationships be developed between the community and the world external to it. All three requisites for developmental competence imply increases in power (i.e., the capacity to control). Organizations serve as frameworks to concentrate and direct political power. This requires knowledge of the community's power brokers and their resources. In this way knowledge serves as a basis of power. The process sequence identified by Biddle and Biddle implicitly recognizes that power is a primary means for effective developmental action. They suggest that what they call pressure action is sometimes necessary "if the milder approaches to authority prove ineffective" ( 1965:101).

It should be recognized that the primary orientation of community development is toward cooperation rather than power. Yet community developers must be aware that in the face of an intransigent or oppressive political system, forceful political action is sometimes a necessity. Certain community development strategies, such as those designed by Saul Alinsky, are largely contingent on the development of a community power base and the "creative use of conflict" ( Alinsky 1946). Biddle and Biddle suggest that the process should proceed as far as it can on "assumptions of good will" ( 1965:101). Also, as M. K. Gandhi so convincingly demonstrated in the Satyagraha movement, morally right conflict can be an effective way to achieve political power. Conflict should not be precluded, nor should it be viewed as a requisite for developmental success. It is just another tool.

To summarize, process is a focal concept in community development. It is viewed as having two ends: theachievement of community goals , andthe improvement of the community's capacity to change purposively . This is to occur with the minimum of professional intervention and the ultimate withdrawal of that intervention. Further, the process is research-based. The professional must know the community and the community must know itself.