Cooperation in Change

1
Cooperation in Change

• An Anthropological Approach to Community
  Development

By Ward Hunt Goodenough
Adriana Urbina 34053958 February 27, 2007
2
Chapter 12
Forecasting the Course of Change

• In order to predict the effects of change within
  a society, one must have knowledge of the
  different factors that come into play in
  producing a given change. Among these factors is
  the knowledge of the communitys public value
  system, without which the specific chain reaction
  of change is impossible to predict.

3
Activities as Units of Analysis

• Uses activities as an approach to the analysis of
  specific changes.
• Activity any action or coordinated grouping of
  actions that is aimed at affecting existing
  arrangements in the phenomenal world in some
  way.

4
Structure of an Activity

• Purpose
• a. stated goals and their justification
• b. other gratifications accruing to participants

• 2. Procedures
• a. operations performed
• b. media used
• c. instruments employed
• d. skills

5

• 3. Time and Space Req.
• a. time req. for each operation
• b. time as affected by numbers of participants
  and their skills
• c. min. and max. time req.
• d. space req. such as work areas and storage
  facilities

• 4. Personnel Requirements
• a. min. and optimal division of tasks
• b. min. and optimal number of persons for each
• c. specialists, if any

6

• 5. Social Organization
• a. categories of personnel
• b. minimal and optimal number of persons for
  each
• c. specialists, if any

• 6. Occasions for Performance
• a. occasions when mandatory, permitted, and
  prohibited
• b. processes by which activity initiated
• c. locus of privilege, power, or duty to
  initiate
• d. relation of initiation to direction
• e. availability of media, instruments, personnel

7
Interrelations Among Activities

• Feature Overlap
• Feature Complementation
• Instrumental Linkage
• Partial Fusion

8
Problems with partial fusion

• Net Efficacy and the Problem of Balance
• Conflict between the requirements for efficiently
  performing any one activity by itself
• Requirements of general efficiently or net
  efficacy of all activities taken together.

9
Onotoa case study

• Little rainfall ?limitation on agriculture
  ?dependence on ocean for sustenance
• Fish essential part of daily diet, therefore
  fishing activities created.

10
Fishing Methods

• In-shore fishing, main source of food supply
• -favors cooperating groups
• -promotes an extended family household (kaainga)
• 2. Deep-sea fishing, primarily regarded as
  sport
• -individualistic
• -connotes higher status
• -canoes necessary, short supply of materials to
  build them

11
Economic Change

• 1901 Ocean Island annexed by Great Britain
• Mining operations to exploit phosphate deposits
• By 1951 about 15 of Onotoa people as
  wage-workers on Ocean Island
• Main incentive to work was to acquire redwood to
  build canoes, and other materials to maintain
  them.
• By this year, 2 canoes per three adult men

12
Social Change

• Effects in the Long-run
• In-shore fishing
• -Became obsolete
• -Strong reliance on kaainga weakened
• 2. Deep-sea fishing
• -stronger ties with mivaneaba
• -stronger ties with neighbors

13
Conclusions of case study

• It is not enough to ask questions only in
  relation to the particular change whose effects
  are under consideration. The outcome for any
  change being considered will be abetted,
  inhibited, or diverted by the effects of other
  changes being taking place at the same time and
  by the existing public value system.
• Forecasting change requires a thorough knowledge
  of the total social and cultural situation in a
  community.

14
Activities and Institutions

• Institutions
• The recipes, stockpiles, materials and social
  arrangements, and schedules to which people
  commit themselves, and the arrangements to which
  such commitment has been made.
• Society has institutionalized particular bodies
  of doctrine, symbols, types of building, ritual
  procedure, and organizational systems.

15
Activities and Institutions

• There are areas of activity where flexibility is
  maintained, commitment to an alternative is low,
  and theres little institutional fixity.
• Others where commitment is high, flexibility is
  minimal, and institutions flourish.

16
Activities and Institutions

• Raises problems for development agents
• It is possible to solve a communitys problems by
  utilizing its established institutions.
• But when a problem cannot be solved in this
  manner and requires changes in the communitys
  institutional structure, whatever solution is
  adopted, a number of new problems can be expected
  to arise in consequence.