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Title: The Anthropology of Utopia Author: Dan Chodorkoff Date: 2014 Language: en Topics: anthropology, education, ecology, ecologist, human ecology, humanism, social ecology, utopia, utopian, utopianism, utopian socialism Source: https://libcom.org/library/social-ecology-ecological-humanism
These essays were written over a period of several decades, but have all
been considerably edited for this publication. “Social Ecology and
Community Development” was first published in John P. Clark (editor),
Renewing the Earth: The Promise of Social Ecology (London: Green Print,
1990). “Redefining Development” appeared in Society and Nature:
International Journal of Political Ecology, 7 (1995). “Toward a
Reconstructive Anthropology” is a previously unpublished manuscript; it
was written in 1982 and has been used extensively by students at the
Institute for Social Ecology. “Alternative Technology and Urban
Reconstruction” is also previously unpublished: in 2010 it was submitted
to Communalism: A Social Ecology Journal (the precursor of New Compass
Press), and was the essay that prompted us to turn this into a book
project. “The Utopian Impulse” was originally published in Harbinger:
The Journal of Social Ecology, 1 (1983). “Social Ecology: An Ecological
Humanism” is a previously unpublished manuscript, while “Education for
Social Change” originated in a lecture Chodorkoff gave in New York City
to the Friends of the Modern School, in September 1998. “Occupy Your
Neighborhood” was published at the ISE blog in October 2012.
Chodorkoff’s “Introduction” was written in 2014, specifically for this
book. Eirik Eiglad, Jakob Zethelius, and Peter Munsterman prepared this
collection of essays for publication.
We face an unprecedented crisis of global dimensions. Our reliance on
fossil fuels and chemical substances that poison our earth, water, and
atmosphere requires more than dramatic shifts in policy; it requires
that we begin to conceptualize and actualize new institutions and
relationships that can move us away from these destructive practices.
How can we reharmonize people and nature? How can we create an
ecological society?
These fundamental questions animate these essays. I believe that social
ecology offers a set of ideas that may help us formulate a comprehensive
response to the crisis we are facing. It suggests not only a
transformation of the underlying political and economic structures of
our society, but, equally important, the creation of a new sensibility
that reflects a qualitatively different understanding of peoples
relationship to nature and, indeed, a redefinition of nature itself.
Such a far-ranging transformation directly challenges our current global
systems of hierarchy, domination, and exploitation. Social ecology
believes that the creation of these new institutions and relationships
is both possible and necessary.
A grandiose project? Perhaps. But my background as an anthropologist has
shown me that much of what we assume to be the natural order of things
are, in fact, products of our particular culture; of a historical
trajectory which reinforces and then reifies our current institutions
and relationships based on greed, competition, aggression, and
domination as expressions of “human nature.” In developing a new praxis
we must go beyond such a narrow, culture-bound concept of “human
nature,” and look for a broader understanding of “human potential,” a
continuum that, while it undeniably encompasses greed, competition,
aggression, and domination, also contains the possibilities of care,
cooperation, nurturance, and unity in diversity. This collection of
essays suggests that our current assumptions about our “nature” are an
expression of only one set of the wide range of possibilities open to us
as a species.
Such a call for radical change may seem naïve, and I must begin with a
confession, I have spent much of my life, both personal and
professional, pursuing utopia. Not the cloud cuckoo land of fabulists,
nor the dream world of religion, rather I have tried to seek the far
shores of real possibilities: a just, ecological society. My involvement
in a wide range of popular movements, coupled with my personal journey
through collectives, co-ops, and squats, led me to the academic study of
literary, historical, and philosophical utopias. By being both a
participant and observer within utopian social movements, I have tried
to grasp what I call “the anthropology of utopia.” Admittedly, it is
often a study of shadows and flickers, of short-lived “festivals of the
oppressed” and movements stopped far short of their goals. But it is
also the study of potentiality actualized, of gardens growing in
ghettos, and direct democratic community assemblies.
I spent forty of those years working with the Institute for Social
Ecology (ISE), which I co-founded with Murray Bookchin in 1974. We
envisioned an institute for radical education, forwarding the ideas of a
decentralized and democratic, ecological revolution. The institute was
intended to be radical in form, in content, and in intent: a place where
we could educate people about the skills and ideas that can help to
create an ecological society.
The ISE has always emphasized the unity of theory and practice. In the
early years we focused on technical studies in then-pioneering areas
like wind power, solar energy, organic agriculture, and aquaculture,
which we understood as critical for the decentralization of food and
energy production. Such a self-reliant material base was seen as a
precondition for community control and direct democracy allowing for the
creation of a confederation of self-managed eco-communities. However, we
understood that such techniques and technologies were necessary, but in
and of themselves not sufficient to bring an ecological society into
being. We emphasized the need to develop a conscious, ethical approach
to social organization, based in the understanding that all
environmental problems are really social problems, and that our attempts
to dominate nature grow out of the domination of humans by other humans.
These concerns led us to offer classes in philosophies of nature; to
explore the anthropology of cultures that could give us insight into
qualitatively different forms of social organization and attitudes
toward nature; and to study a range of revolutionary and utopian
traditions. Our concern with praxis— theory and practice continually
informing each other and interacting in a developmental dynamic—was
carried into the realm of social action through involvement in community
development efforts and ecological movements. We worked with ideas
related to organizational forms, tactics, and long-range strategies:
many of these ideas have since become common practice in contemporary
social movements and in community development projects.
I was privileged to participate in the development and application of
those ideas in my role as executive director of the ISE, where we saw
our mission, in part, as educating educators and organizers; helping to
spread the ideas to an ever-widening group of people. We did that
through formal, credit-bearing and degree-granting programs, and through
various forms of popular education: conferences, workshops, lectures,
internships, and hands-on experiences in organic gardening, renewable
energy, and ecological design, as well as in community organizing and
political activism.
Here in the United States, the ISE has been involved in many of the
radical environmental movements of the last 40 years, ranging from the
movement for alternative technology and popular struggles around both
nuclear weapons and nuclear power, where we worked with the Clamshell
and Shad Alliances, to the emergence of the eco-feminist movement, the
formation of the Green movement, the movement against genetically
modified organisms, the anti-globalization movement, the climate justice
movement, and most recently, the occupy movement. We also worked on
community development projects with the Puerto Rican community on New
York’s Lower East Side, Ramapo Mountain People in New Jersey, rural
Vermonters, and Tzotsil speaking Maya people in Chiapas, Mexico. We also
published journals, newsletters, pamphlets and books related to social
ecology. These outreach efforts have contributed to the creation of an
informal international network of social ecologists in the Americas,
Europe, Australia, Asia, and Africa. In the essays that follow I reflect
on some of those experiences.
This anthology opens with the essay “Social Ecology and Community
Development,” which discusses the ways in which economic development is
often conflated with the development of community. Community
development, however, is a much more complex and nuanced process, one
which ultimately rests on the creation or recreation of affective ties
among people, and their participation in generating a common vision for
the future of their community. Grassroots planning, political action,
arts and culture, all play important roles in how we can physically
transform our neighborhoods and build community. This piece is in large
part inspired by my twelve years of involvement in grassroots community
development efforts in Loisaida, the Hispanic section of New York City’s
Lower East Side.
Development is a theme that carries over into the next essay,
“Redefining Development,” which offers a critique of international
development efforts like those promoted by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. This essay was written at a time when
structural adjustment programs were imposed on developing nations by
international funders—with devastating effects. Over a 30-year period of
travel and study in Chiapas, Mexico, I observed first hand the
destructive cultural and ecological impact of the large-scale
internationally funded development projects, with little or no benefit
accruing to the indigenous Mayan people of the region. In the current
era, while the players have largely shifted from the international
agencies discussed in this essay to private sector investors, the
dynamics have largely remained the same; calling for lower taxes,
privatization, and deregulation in the name of “free trade.” Further, we
have seen these same policies promulgated in the developed world under
the rubric of austerity. I suggest that these approaches are essentially
anti-ecological and colonial in nature.
All of these essays are written from the perspective of anthropology,
the discipline I chose to study and the lens through which I approach
social ecology. I was drawn to anthropology because it seemed to me one
of the few academic disciplines that allowed one to explore the breadth
of the human experience. Anthropology is essentially integrative in its
efforts to understand human development and its central
concept—culture—is at its core holistic. At the same time, I am deeply
ambivalent toward my chosen profession: I recognize its tainted origins
in colonialism as well as its methodological and practical limitations.
In “Toward a Reconstructive Anthropology” I offer a critique of academic
anthropology and suggest a reformulation of the discipline; I believe
this might help anthropologists to overcome those limitations and
actively engage with its important insights. Anthropology has much to
offer the world, but it must move out of the classrooms and into our
communities if its full potential is to be realized.
I return to the community development process in Loisaida in
“Alternative Technology and Urban Reconstruction,” where I examine
aspects of that work in greater depth. I focus on the experience of
CHARAS, a community group that introduced alternative technologies and
organic food production to their urban neighborhood. In doing so they
developed new forms of leadership and a directly democratic approach to
community planning that, for a time, successfully contested the city’s
plans for the transformation of their neighborhood.
To create a truly ecological society I believe we need to transcend the
given and imagine something that, while rooted in real, existing
potentialities, is qualitatively different from what exists today. In
“The Utopian Impulse” I sort through a variety of aspects of utopian
thought and action that have emerged in history, and I present a
typology of utopias; I also explicate the importance of the utopian mode
of thought as a form of social analysis that directs us toward the
future. Today, given the depths of the crises we face, utopian thinking
is more important than ever. I do not suggest that utopia should be
interpreted as a “blueprint” for a new society, but rather as a set of
principles; with the understanding that the details will have to be
worked out by individual communities.
These essays all revolve around the ideas of social ecology, which is a
complex, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on studies in
philosophy, anthropology, history, biology, and ecology. Social ecology
presents a framework for analyzing people’s relationship to nature, and
advocates a reconstructive perspective to reharmonize people and the
rest of nature. It cannot be reduced to a bumper sticker or be defined
in 25 words or less, it is an approach ill suited to the age of Twitter.
Yet it also deserves an explication that does not require a PhD in
critical theory to understand. This is what I try to provide in “Social
Ecology: An Ecological Humanism,” which gives a brief outline of the
main components of social ecology, encompassing its basic philosophical
concepts, its anthropological perspective, its interdisciplinary
character, and some of its political implications.
Education, too, is an essential part of any great social change, and I
have spent most of my life as an educator, but never in a traditional
setting. There are many different forms that education can take, the
classroom being one important arena, but not the exclusive terrain for
meaningful learning. “Education for Social Change” offers a critique of
traditional education and its “hidden curriculum,” and explores the
pedagogy that has animated the ISE. I profoundly believe that we need to
“learn our way” out of our current morass together.
The final essay in this collection, “Occupy Your Neighborhood,” is of
more recent origin. Social movements ebb and flow over the course of
years and I have been lucky enough to be there at the high ebb of
several significant movements. I arrived at Zucotti Park on the second
day of the occupation and was astounded to see Wall Street awash in a
“festival of the oppressed.” Like many long in the tooth radicals I was
inspired by both the message and the method of the Occupy Wall Street
movement. ISE alumnae and faculty were among the initiators, and we were
privileged to offer several weeklong seminars to key organizers. The
meteoric rise and then the decline of Occupy in popular culture led me
to reflect on its strengths and prospects as well as its weaknesses and
limitations, and, most importantly, on the potentiality of new
developments like Occupy Sandy to help us find a way out of the
conundrum of protest politics.
We are limited in part by our imaginations. The hegemony of the dominant
paradigm has blinded us and bound us to a world of buying and selling.
But human potentiality is what gives me hope: our very ability to
transcend the given and turn what is into what could be. I have been
chasing this dream of another world for 50 years. This may be a futile
pursuit, but over those years I have seen many of the ideas that grew
out of these utopian experiments take root in the popular imagination,
and, in the words of Errico Malatesta, “Everything depends on what
people are capable of wanting.”
I offer these essays in a spirit of humility. They are not scholarly
essays, but personal reflections and analyses. As a cultural
anthropologist, and in recent years as a novelist, I am, by training and
inclination, a storyteller. I have tried to make the ideas presented
here accessible, and interpreted my experience in light of these ideas.
These essays contain no answers: the solutions to the problems we face
must arise from the communities to which the reader belongs. But my hope
is that this collection of essays contains insights that resonate with
readers and, most importantly, suggests to them ways in which they might
apply these ideas in their own context, to help bring an ecological
society into being.
Social ecology, as developed by Murray Bookchin, brilliantly presents a
comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing the crises of
modernity. It is perhaps the first such comprehensive approach since
Marx, and suggests a reconstructive practice which holds promise of
fundamentally transforming people’s relation to nature and to other
people. The ultimate promise of social ecology is the reharmonization of
culture and nature. A vital element in that profound transformation lies
in the connection between social ecology and community development.
Community development is an often-abused concept. Perhaps the best way
to begin to define it is to state what it is not. As I use the term,
community development is not the delivery of services to a needy
population by professionals. This is the traditional model put forward
for decades by professional development agencies. It is the War on
Poverty model that views communities as battlefields on which “strategic
resources” must be brought to bear. It calls for bureaucratic
intervention on a massive scale to improve education, health care,
housing, nutrition, economic opportunity, and other facets of a
community’s life. Needless to say, these goals must be incorporated into
any meaningful approach to community development. The problem lies with
the methodology, the process whereby these noble ends are achieved.
True community development cannot rest on a foundation of outsiders
delivering services. Such an approach inevitably fosters dependence on
external “experts” and “resources.” This dependency hinders the
development of indigenous leadership, broad participation and local
self-reliance. Ultimately, it often degenerates into a form of social
control, strengthening subordination to the dominant culture, furthering
the homogenization of communities, and reinforcing centralization of
power and policymaking in the hands of outsiders. This approach leads to
the disempowerment of communities and citizens, not their development.
Nor can we understand community development in the terms conservatives
have presented it since the Reagan administration. Their position is
reactionary to the core, and lacks even the good intentions of the War
on Poverty approach. They suggest a policy rooted in private-sector
investment and a “trickle down” effect that can lead only to
exploitation, domination and community disintegration. Here too, the
focus is on absorbing communities into the mainstream of the dominant
culture.
The linchpin of this strategy is to offer incentives for private
enterprise to “develop” a community, thus subsidizing its subjugation.
Domestic “enterprise zones” have been proposed which would replicate the
domination of Third World nations by corporate investments. The
intention is to offer a package of tax deferments, relaxed health and
safety standards, and an elimination of both anti-pollution measures and
the minimum wage, in order to entice private industry to invest in
economically depressed communities.
The definition of community development here is economic. The assumption
is that business will provide jobs, jobs equal income, and increased
income constitutes community development. Yet, the reality is that
although such an approach may possibly increase income for individual
community members, it is done at the cost of cultural tradition,
community cohesion, a healthy physical environment, and community
control of important resources.
A more benign form of private-sector development was attempted in the
early 1970s under the rubric of “Black Capitalism.” Here the effort
targeted individual entrepreneurs within a community and aided them in
their efforts to establish small businesses. A similar expectation of
prosperity “trickling down” underlay this approach. The reality of Black
Capitalism was that the majority of these enterprises failed, unable to
compete with their more highly capitalized, better organized corporate
competition, and the few that succeeded brought prosperity only to their
owners and to a handful of employees. As a result, they increased social
stratification in the communities they were supposed to develop.
Another traditional approach to community development, “urban renewal”
through city planning, has had an equally dismal record. The failure of
ambitious plans for the rehabilitation of massive areas has been well
documented. Yet, planners persist in imposing new spatial relations on
neighborhoods with the expectation that their designs can create
community. While architecture and planning can help to reinforce
particular social relations, community development is not a “design”
problem. Grandiose plans for urban renewal reflect a technocratic
mentality that permeates our civilization, a belief in the quick fix of
technics. Historically, people have understood that design requires
integration into the social life of a community if it is to enhance the
quality of life. Sure enough, there exists a tradition that recognizes
the holistic nature of community design, but the technocrats who
populate professional planning largely ignore it.
The tendency of our society to seek technical fixes, technological
solutions to what are essentially social problems, is a strong one, and
has been carried over into community development efforts. The
introduction of “alternative technologies” into the community
development schemes of the 1970s constitutes a case in point.
Alternative technology was given a central role in a variety of pilot
projects for community development during the Carter administration. But
the model of introduction was, in too many cases, one of experts setting
up technical systems without significant community participation. As a
result, certain ghetto neighborhoods are now littered with rusting solar
collectors, nonfunctional windmills, and graffiti-covered greenhouses.
The “technological solution” to community development means no solution
at all.
In addition to the institutionalized approaches that have been described
over the past two decades, there have also been a variety of efforts at
grassroots community development, some of which have met with more
success. These efforts have largely focused on the issues of community
participation and control of local institutions like school boards,
planning boards, and specific programs in housing and job training. Many
of their concerns and approaches to change parallel those of social
ecology.
True community development, from the perspective of social ecology, must
be a holistic process that integrates all facets of a community’s life.
Social, political, economic, artistic, ethical, and spiritual dimensions
must all be seen as part of a whole. They must be made to work together
and to reinforce one another. For this reason, the development process
must proceed from a self-conscious understanding of their
interrelationships.
The dominant culture has fragmented and isolated social life into
distinct realms of experience. The rediscovery of the organic ties
between these realms is the starting point for the development process.
Once they are recognized, it is possible to create holistic approaches
to development that reintegrate all the elements of a community into a
cohesive dynamic of cultural change. Here, social ecology draws an
important principle from both nature and “primitive” society: the
integrative character of life in both natural ecosystems and organic
communities.
The everyday life of a community needs to be critically analyzed. Which
relationships work, and which are nonfunctional? Are there traditions of
mutualism and cooperation existent that can help a community to realize
its goals, or must new forms be created? How can the face-to-face
primary ties that characterized pre-bureaucratic societies be recreated
in the context of contemporary community?
Is there an existing political sphere that can be expanded and
transformed to empower the community? Town meetings, block associations,
neighborhood planning assemblies, and popular referenda are all vehicles
that can be revitalized through the process of community development.
How do the existing governmental structures stand in relation to the
community development process? The reclamation of politics by the
community and the creation of an active citizenry are, from the
perspective of social ecology, critical elements in community
development.
How can the arts aid in community? Poetry, music, community murals,
ritual drama, and literature can all help to foster a unique identity
and to reinforce a community’s sensibility, if fully integrated into the
process.
The spiritual element of a community is important in the developmental
matrix as well. From where does a community derive its values, its
ethics, and the principles that orient its development? What is its
cosmology? How can it gain the inspiration needed to sustain it through
the long, difficult process of cultural reconstruction?
The social realm, including family structure, women’s roles, social
networks like clubs, gangs, and cliques must be examined as well. These
relationships underlie many of a community’s formal elements, and
provide the clearest connection to the primary ties that need to be
recreated.
The integration of relational ties, the cultural traditions, myths,
folklore, spiritual beliefs, cosmology, ritual forms, political
associations, technical skills, and knowledge of a community is crucial.
All of these elements must be brought together to provide a base for
development. These extra-economic factors are the critical components
almost always ignored by the traditional development approaches. But the
concern of social ecology is with the development of community, not mere
economics. Economic development not rooted in a comprehensive
understanding of community may well have a disintegrative effect.
However, the economics of a community, and here I use the term in the
broadest sense, as its productive relations, are a vitally important
aspect of the project. Who owns and controls the productive resources in
a community? What can it do to develop its material base, particularly
in the crucial areas of food and energy production? How can technology
be used in the process? Are there existing functional or vestigial
cooperative economic forms or traditions that can be utilized? Food
co-ops, producers’ co-ops, land trusts, common lands, and credit unions
offer possibilities in this area.
In looking for models of ecological social organization, social ecology
recognizes that we must consciously look to history to understand our
own potential. For example, it proposes that we can separate the
liberatory principles of “primitive” societies from their superstition,
xenophobia, and ignorance. Human development and cultural evolution are
not linear processes. We still carry the potential for coherent
community within us. It is naive to assume that all was good in the
primitive world. However, primitivity as a comparative model allows us
to understand all that civilization has lost, and that our cooperative
potential as a species is much greater than civilization would have us
believe.
The form and sensibility of a community are both shaped by and help to
shape its environment. This is equally true of tribal communities, the
cities of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, the Greek poleis, the cities of
Renaissance Europe and modern metropolises. In the case of the modern
metropolis, however, the true substance of this relationship is clouded
by the mediating effects of modern technology and the striving for
“mastery” of the natural world. A sense of scale, an organic
relationship to a specific environment, have all been central to the
authentic sensibility which has informed community life for millennia, a
sensibility which has begun to break down only in the very recent past.
This is not to deny the existence of imperial cultures in the past, but
to recognize that these existed as a mode of domination, as an overlay
of oppression that exacted tribute from the local community. These local
communities continued to provide a coherent framework for the social
life of their residents, a sense of grounding and support that lay
hidden beneath the veneer of empire.
It is the breakdown of local community and its total subjugation to the
culture of domination which is unique to our own time. Therefore, a
primary task in the process of community development is the recreation
of local community, and a key component in that task is the
identification of humanly scaled boundaries and the reclamation of a
sense of place, be it rural village, small town, or urban neighborhood.
The creation of sensibility of a community—the self-identification of
people with place, a sense of commonality, cooperation, and a shared
history and destiny—is difficult to achieve, particularly in a social
milieu which emphasizes individualism, competition, mobility, and
pluralism. The growth of values like individuality rooted in community,
cooperation, identification with place, and cultural identity are
antithetical to the thrust of the dominant culture. But just as the
imperial cultures of the past constituted a mode of domination rather
than an authentic form of consociation, the dominant culture of our own
time is merely a system of control through exploitation and
manipulation. The forms that exploitation and manipulation take have
been effective in destroying community, but they have not replaced it.
They have left a vacuum, a hollow place in which resonates the neurotic
individualism of Western societies and the collective hopelessness of
the East. It is that vacuum, with the often unconscious yearning for
reconnection it produces, that the community development process must
fill.
Social ecology does not propose an abstract ideal society, but rather an
evolving process of change, never to be fully realized. For as soon as
we approach the ideal, the ideal changes. Engaging reality with the will
to transform it opens up a new realm of possibilities. This is the most
profound tradition of utopian thinking, a continuation of that of
nineteenth century utopian Socialists like Robert Owen and Charles
Fourier. Although their plans incorporated fanciful elements, their
concern was with a built environment that reinforces community, with an
integration of agriculture, industry, social discourse, poetry, spirit,
and even, in Fourier’s case, emotional diversity. The tradition finds
still more explicit expression in the work of the Russian anarchist
Peter Kropotkin. To this tradition, social ecology adds a consciously
ecological perspective.
The utopian element in the community development process should not be
misconstrued. Social ecology understands the limitations of utopia as
blueprint, the tendency to retreat from the problems of reality into the
cloud cuckoo land of abstract design. It also recognizes the power of
utopia as inspiration and as a point of orientation in the day-to-day,
incremental process of changing the world. It is the utopian
process—holistic, participatory and integrative—that must inform the
practice of community development.
This utopian view relies on community empowerment, the ability of a
community to consciously plan for its future and to implement those
plans. Empowerment can occur only through the creation of real forums
for planning and policy-making, forums that are decentralized,
participatory, and democratic. Communities must reclaim the public
sphere, which has become bureaucratized and professionalized. Old forms
may be utilizable or new forms may have to be created, but without the
initiative of an active citizenry no forum can serve as a vehicle for
community empowerment. Empowerment must be rooted in the full
participation of the citizenry in the decision-making process, the
reintegration of politics into everyday life.
Social ecology also proclaims the ideal of local self-reliance, and
dependence on indigenous resources and talents to the greatest extent
possible. This does not, however, mean “self-sufficiency,” a condition
in which no community has existed since the Neolithic. Self-reliance
recognizes and encourages interdependence among communities, but
emphasizes an ecologically sustainable ethos in the realms of production
and consumption, decentralization in the political sphere, and a healthy
respect for diversity.
Confederations must be created to help coordinate cooperative activities
between self-reliant communities, to administer those interdependent
functions which are recognized, and to work to equalize resources
between communities. Social ecology suggests that such confederations
might form a “commune of communes,” a commonwealth which could extend
from the local to the regional to the continental level and beyond, to
result in an ultimate unity through diversity. In this goal, social
ecology echoes the telos of natural evolution itself: a movement towards
ever-greater complexity and diversity within interrelated webs of life.
The tools and techniques needed to develop communities as unique
cultural entities based in the concepts of ecological sustainability and
local self-reliance are already available. Decentralized, community
scaled technologies for energy production can help to support the kind
of holistic community development envisioned by social ecology. Solar
energy, wind power, and small-scale hydroelectric all offer the
potential for renewable, nonpolluting sources of energy. Food-production
techniques like French intensive gardening, hydroponics, bioshelter
technology, aquaculture and permaculture can provide a good percentage
of a community’s food needs on a year-round basis. All of these
techniques are proven, and many are commercially available. Given a
humanly scaled community, the integration of agriculture and industry
relying on alternative technologies and advanced, ecologically sound
food-production techniques could provide a viable material base for a
self-reliant community.
One measure of a community’s sustainability and self-reliance lies in
the relationship between town and country. Where the city has become
totally alienated from the countryside as in contemporary urban society,
an unhealthy relationship exists. On the one hand, the city dominates
the countryside, draining it of resources for its own use; on the other
hand, the city is heavily dependent on the countryside, parasitically
requiring energy-subsidized forms of agriculture and transportation for
its existence.
The ethos of the dominant culture has fostered a specialization of
function, which has excluded food production from most communities. The
industrialization of agriculture has created a dangerous centralized
approach to food production, in which population centers are dependent
on food producers thousands of miles away for their daily sustenance.
This is a situation highly vulnerable to a variety of crises, such as
crop infestation, energy shortages, and disruptions in transportation.
If any of these disruptions occurred, disaster would ensue. This form of
food production also has destructive ecological implications, like
destruction of soils, loss of genetic diversity, and vulnerability to
infestation by fungi and insects.
Historically, healthy communities have achieved a balance between town
and country. The Greek polis of Athens, for example, consisted of a
central city and an outlying agricultural district. The medieval commune
integrated gardens within its walls. Even in our own era, there has been
a more balanced relationship. New York City, until the 1950s, got much
of its food from Long Island and New Jersey. There were dairy farms on
Staten Island, and chicken farms in Brooklyn. Today, the regional
agricultural economy has broken down.
The relationship between town and country has other, nonmaterial aspects
as well. The predominantly rural values of coherent communities have
given way, for the most part, to the anomie and alienation
characteristic of the city. The breakdown of community grows out of this
basic shift in values. The Folk-Urban Continuum of Robert Redfield,
Ferdinand Tönnies’s contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and
the split noted by Marx between town and country are all paradigms which
express a social division that is reflected in our own time by the
almost total alienation of community from its basis in nature.
The development of healthy communities requires a rebalancing of town
and country, a reintroduction of the organic world into the largely
synthetic environment of the city. Such an action may initially be
rooted in the purely material realm, as in the introduction, through
community initiatives, of green spaces, neighborhood gardens, food
parks, permacultures, and the like. This transformation of the physical
environment and the introduction of the skills of nurturance and
husbandry needed to transform the physical environment will contribute
to the development of a new sense of community, which will reflect these
skills as social values.
At this point, a concrete example of community development should help
to illustrate the praxis of social ecology. Loisaida is the Puerto Rican
section of New York’s Lower East Side where residents attempted to
actualize elements of this approach in the mid 1970s. There is much to
be learned from this experience. Let me describe the way that one of the
community’s problems was turned into a community resource through the
development process.
In Loisaida, there were over one hundred vacant lots. They were
rubble-strewn dump heaps, breeding grounds for rats and cockroaches, an
eyesore and health hazard. These lots often served as a dangerous
“playground” for neighborhood children, and constituted a blight on the
community. Viewed from the perspective of social ecology, however, these
lots represented a precious community resource: open space. In an
environment of concrete and decaying tenements, these lots, a
substantial percentage of the land of the neighborhood, offered valuable
sites for recreation, education, economic development, and community
cultural activity.
Local activists recognized this potential and began the development
process at the grass roots, organizing residents to clean up the lots
and put them to constructive use. Most of the lots belonged to the city
of New York, which had done nothing to improve them. The people of
Loisaida combined a critical analysis of their problem with direct
action. They protested to the city, and they cleaned the lots themselves
and began to use them.
They converted some to “vest-pocket parks,” a concept introduced by
Robert Nichols, outfitting them with benches and planting green spaces.
Others were turned into playgrounds, utilizing recycled material for
equipment. Swings were made from discarded lumber and old tires, jungle
gyms were built from recycled beams. Other lots were turned into
community gardens, which became a focal point for intergenerational
contact. One large lot was transformed into an outdoor cultural center,
La Plaza Cultural, where community poets, theater groups, and local
musicians all performed. Several lots were adopted by local schools for
use as teaching centers where area youths were introduced to lessons in
agriculture and ecology. The transformation of the lots helped to
reintroduce the natural world into this ghetto community.
These were simple actions, but their results were profound. The lots
were initially transformed by people acting on their felt need to
reconstruct their environment. They acted without the official sanction
of the city; in fact, in some cases, it was in the face of opposition
from the city. This direct action was a first step towards community
empowerment.
The initiative came from within the community, from an indigenous
leadership that analyzed the problem and sought a utopian and
reconstructive solution. They did not look to the city for a solution;
they created their own. They contested with the city for the material
base of their community, the land; and, in most cases, they gained
either legal leases to the lots for token amounts of money, or outright
title. Several community land trusts were created to remove particular
lots from the real estate market forever, and to guarantee their
continued use as a community resource. A philosophy of “doing more with
less,” the motto of CHARAS, one of the community groups involved, served
as an inspiration to the open-space movement in Loisaida.
Owing to a holistic approach, a number of other elements in the
community development process grew out of these simple actions. A
problem turned into a resource, and the health of the community
benefited as a result. The people involved in the work gained a sense of
pride and accomplishment. Several youth gangs were involved in the
movement, and their experience in constructive social action helped to
bring them off the street. A cooperative was formed to manufacture
playground equipment from recycled items, creating jobs and income for
the people involved.
The gardening groups drew on the traditions of the Jíbaro, the Puerto
Rican peasantry from which many of the Loisaida’s residents hail, and
thus provide a connection to a living cultural tradition. They were able
to draw on a cross-section of the community, young and old, which often
remains alienated from the development process. The gardens grew fresh,
healthy, organic produce, improving nutrition and lowering food costs
for community gardeners. They enhanced the community’s self-reliance in
an important symbolic way, and the training in gardening led to plans
for increasing it further, through the construction of commercial
rooftop greenhouses.
The establishment of the cultural plaza created an outdoor space for the
celebration of Loisaida’s New York Puerto Rican culture. This helped to
strengthen the identity of people often traumatized by their move to the
mean streets of New York. This identity was central to the development
of an effective movement for change in Loisaida.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the open-space movement was the
empowerment of the people involved. The transformation of their vacant
lots drew them into a larger vision of what their community might be.
The participants in the open-space joined together with other community
activists working on issues like health care, education, housing, and
job development. Quarterly town meetings were held to chart the progress
of the movement, to coordinate and integrate their actions, and to
develop a comprehensive plan for the future of the community. An
alternative grassroots planning group, the Joint Planning Council,
emerged to challenge the official city plan for the Loisaida community,
previously a disenfranchised, demoralized ghetto, became a force to be
reckoned with in New York, and emerged as a model for grassroots,
ecologically oriented approaches to community development.
The incorporation of the ideas of social ecology into the process of
community development provided a clear demonstration of the power of
Bookchin’s theories to further movements for cultural change. Social
ecology represents a vital source of ideas that will increasingly find
expression in an effective praxis. We must continue to develop and
articulate its theories in a holistic framework, because social ecology,
by virtue of its comprehensive vision and its truly radical nature,
represents a challenge to the basic assumptions of our civilization. It
is only by developing such a challenge that we can hope to move through
our current crises toward an ecological, harmonious, and peaceful world.
As the global expansion of “free trade” proceeds at an exponential rate
and the ideological hegemony of capital seems assured, it would appear
to be a futile exercise to undertake a critical analysis of the basic
assumptions of “development.” Yet without such a fundamental critique,
there is no way to make sense out of the paradox presented by a
grow-or-die economic model in an age of diminishing resources and
ominously declining environmental quality. In fact, the ecological
crises, which we face both in our local communities and on a global
scale, can only be understood as an outgrowth of industrial capitalism
and traditional models of development. And further, those crises must be
seen as social crises, arising from society and our attitudes toward and
relationships with each other, not from nonhuman nature. Thus any
authentic solution to the “development puzzle” must address both the
problematic of the industrial capitalist model and the society of which
it is an outgrowth.
Contemporary models of development assume an integration of
“undeveloped” nations and communities into the global market, and
through that process a rise in economic prosperity and a gradual
diminution of the differences in living standards between North and
South. Such a transformation requires a massive infusion of capital for
infrastructural improvements, usually in the form of international
loans, and large-scale investments by multinational corporations to
extract resources and create industry and jobs. The results of this
approach to development have often been catastrophic, leaving developing
areas wallowing in debt, poverty, cultural disintegration—caused by the
displacement of local cultures and economic systems—and, finally,
ecological devastation.
Rather than creating a stable middle class which can join the ranks of
benumbed consumers flourishing in the First World, this approach to
development commonly leads to a dual economy consisting of a tiny group
of the very rich and a great mass of the very poor. This trend has been
well documented in relation to Africa, Asia and Latin America by authors
as diverse as Ted Trainer, Lloyd Timberlake, Vandana Shiva, and
Rigoberta Menchú. While there has been a dramatic increase in the
overall “wealth” of the planet, an ever greater concentration of that
wealth is in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
An analysis from the perspective of social ecology suggests that current
development models must be firmly rejected if we are ever to achieve an
ecological society. In fact, a basic redefinition of “development” is a
precondition for the survival of the planet. How then does social
ecology define development? How does that definition differ in basic
ways from the traditional approach? And what are the means that can
bring a new definition to bear in the world? In answering these
questions, we must address certain issues in order to redefine
development. My treatment of these issues here are intended to be
suggestive rather than schematic, and they will need to be applied in
different ways in various parts of the world. But they must be,
according to Murray Bookchin, the seminal thinker in social ecology,
unabashedly utopian in the most profound sense. Utopian thinking today
requires no apology. Rarely in history has it been so crucial to draw on
the imagination in order to create radical new alternatives to virtually
every aspect of daily life.
A basic assumption of traditional development models is that bigger is
better. Large-scale, centralized projects that require massive infusions
of capital consume the vast majority of money spent, and success is
usually measured by quantitative means (increases in the Gross National
Product, output per worker, per capita income, and so on). Quantitative
criteria can reveal trends on a national level, but they do not
necessarily tell us anything about the impact of these forms of
development on the lives of people. Without a thorough understanding of
the social context in which such statistics are being generated, it is
actually possible to misinterpret what development means to people’s
lives. Despite impressive percentage increases in the Gross National
Product throughout the developing world, in his 1989 book, Developed to
Death, Ted Trainer remarks that “the poorest 520 million in these
countries are probably seeing their income rise on average about 73
cents per annum.”
Even in the industrialized North such figures can be misleading. For
example, since the late 1970s the United States has seen a steady
increase in the Gross National Product, dramatic gains in worker
productivity, and a small increase in per capita income, but the real
wages paid to workers have declined, and the number of people living in
poverty has increased. However, in a system increasingly dominated by a
bottom-line mentality which delegitimizes and degrades anything that
stands in the way of profit, such are the costs of progress.
A social ecological perspective on development views the process in
terms of quality, not quantity. It requires that we ask an entirely
different set of questions. Traditional indices do not provide a
framework adequate for the analysis of qualitative impacts. Here I am
referring not only to the impact of development on the environment,
which some “sustainable” development models do quantify, but more
importantly the impact on the quality of life—such as connections and
relationships between people, family and kinship bonds, sense of
community, maintenance of cultural cohesion, and other criteria that are
difficult to measure. These are critical areas that need to be assessed.
It is the development of a higher quality of life—with the economic
component as merely one aspect—that must be the overall measure of
success.
Quality of life is difficult to quantify. But the goal of development
must be focused on providing people with the security that their basic
needs, like adequate food and shelter, will be met, as well as what are
often intangible areas that are reflected in a sensibility. Well-being
undoubtedly requires a degree of economic security, but it rests more on
a sense of socio-cultural security. A coherent community and an
equitable distribution of even meager resources can often provide more
for an individual’s economic, social and spiritual needs than an
increased income. This point is well illustrated by the success of
Kerala, the poorest state in India, which has, through a process of
development which rests on redistribution of internal resources during
the 1990s, managed to attain India’s highest rates of literacy (70
percent versus 36 percent for all of India), and to guarantee access to
basic nutrition, health care and education for all of its citizens. The
culture of industrial capitalism, while it pays lip service to these
values, in fact is the major force undermining them around the globe.
The modern concept of development was born at the Bretton Woods Economic
Summit following World War II and led to the establishment of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These institutions
were designed to finance the rebuilding of Europe after the war. They
were operating in a milieu in which the basic assumptions of capitalism
were a given. That this model has since been promulgated as a universal
path for development speaks to both a basic misunderstanding of the
nature of Third and Fourth World cultures, and the arrogance of the
West. It is interesting to note that, despite more than 50 years of this
type of development, poverty, famine, environmental disaster and the
gulf between the rich and poor have been increasing at an almost
exponential rate. These facts suggest that there is something basically
wrong with the concepts that underlie this model.
Those qualitative aspects of life, upon which any viable form of
development must be based, should contain within them an important
economic aspect; however, the qualitative must not be subsumed by the
economic. In fact, just the opposite is true. If authentic development
is to occur, economics must be brought back under the control of
society, as it has been for most of humanity’s tenure on the planet. The
perspective of economic anthropology, most notably the work of Karl
Polanyi, supports this view. The social ecology of Murray Bookchin
posits this process as the creation of a moral economy. Moral economy
sees economic activity not only as a way to provide people with the
material means of life, but also as a way of creating affective ties
between people and their community.
Much of what passes for development today has the opposite effect.
Modernization undermines community and forces people into the market,
where they lose their identity as unique individuals and are reduced to
a faceless proletariat. The well-documented results of the “Green
Revolution” in agriculture present a stunning example of this highly
problematic process. A moral economy is perhaps the only alternative to
this destructive dynamic. It is the preservation, creation or
reinforcement of community and an active citizenry upon which
development must focus. These in turn are the preconditions for
resolving our ecological crises. Empowerment of people is the real goal
of any authentic process of development. Social ecology calls for the
primacy of these socio-cultural criteria over the economic. Indeed, it
is a revolutionary outlook: it understands the elimination of all
relationships based on hierarchy and domination as an integral part of
the development process, and as the starting point for a reharmonization
of people’s relationship with the rest of nature. This perspective
challenges in basic ways the institutions of the State and transnational
corporations that are the primary vehicles for development under the
current model.
Any approach which fails to offer this basic critique, even
“alternative” models like “sustainable” development, “trade not aid,” or
“green” and “caring” capitalism, can only lead to further immiseration,
poverty, exploitation, cultural devastation, and ecological destruction.
There is a growing literature touting such approaches and a substantial
critique developing as well. The criticism of these approaches offered
by Survival International reveals their self-serving nature, as well as
their underlying logic, which never questions the primacy of the market.
The fact is that traditional models of development, far from being the
solution to these ills, are in large part the problem. Unless the a
priori assumptions of statistic and corporate frameworks are rejected,
capitalism will continue to colonize and subvert the cultural and
ecological diversity necessary for a healthy planet.
In Staying Alive, Vandana Shiva notes that “development as capital
accumulation and the commercialization of the economy for the generation
of surplus and profits thus involved the reproduction not merely of the
particular form of the creation of wealth, but also the associated
creation of poverty and dispossession.” We need to reorient our thinking
about development and find real alternatives. Attempts to create a
“caring capitalism” are oxymoronic. The very nature of the global market
undermines what should be the goals of development: the promotion of
unity in diversity through processes that ensure local communities’
economic security, cultural survival and ecological health. Attempts to
posit capitalism and the market as appropriate vehicles to bring about
these conditions range from the extremely naive to the extraordinarily
cynical; for example, the focus of “sustainable” development, as it
emerges on the world stage, is finding a means to sustain the expansion
of capitalism.
When the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations, in its report Our
Common Future discusses “sustainable development,” it is exactly this
process to which it refers. It is the economic realm that currently
determines the conditions under which development occurs. Local and
particular needs are subsumed under a “global” perspective which views
the world as a series of interchangeable parts categorized under the
rubric of raw materials, pools of labor, and potential markets. The
homogenization of difference is posited as a progressive process. The
universalization of the culture of capitalism (such as it is) is viewed
as an inevitable and highly desirable outcome. Coca-Cola Redux!
The problem of modernization is subsumed under a western, linear notion
of progress which is rooted in a crude, Social Darwinist view of human
history that first surfaced in the nineteenth-century canon of cultural
evolution. These ideas were first presented by Herbert Spencer and
further elaborated by Frederic William Maitland and Henry Maine and, in
the United States, by Lewis Henry Morgan. These schematic views proposed
to rank all human cultures in a hierarchy, with Civilization (Western
European) at the top and all other forms below. Typically, the hierarchy
proceeds from Savagery to Barbarism to Civilization, to use Morgan’s
nomenclature. Here it is worth noting that Morgan’s scheme, as developed
in Ancient Society, was the basis for Marx and Engels’ thinking on this
issue, which is one reason that “Marxist” approaches to development have
been as destructive as those of capitalism.
The assumption underlying this thinking is that the rest of the world
has failed to reach the same level of prosperity as the North because of
inherent cultural flaws. They are beneath us because their cultures are
inferior to our own. Thus it becomes “the white man’s burden” to bring
the poor savages and barbarians the benefits of civilization. In the
nineteenth century, this line of thinking provided a moralistic
rationale for the worst excesses of colonialism and imperialism, and it
remains an a priori of traditional approaches to development.
This is not to suggest that Third and Fourth World people do not want
access to aspects of modern technology and knowledge, rather that they
are offered no choice in the matter. And further, that those elements of
modernity that could have a positive impact on their quality of life are
often presented only as part and parcel of a thoroughgoing
“modernization” which undermines their traditional culture and
transforms people into monadic producers and consumers operating as part
of the global market. Just as surely as the political domination of the
nineteenth century led to oppression, death and destruction, so too does
the new colonialism of the IMF, the World Bank and the multinational
corporations.
If anything, the neo-colonialism of the global marketeers is more
pernicious. In the nineteenth century, empire was a mode of oppression
which constituted a thin overlay of exploitative relationships intended
to extract raw materials and labor from peoples who were still embedded
in their unique cultures. In the late twentieth century we saw the level
of exploitation penetrate not only peoples’ social and economic
relations but their very consciousness as well. Today a diverse world of
unique cultures is being denatured and reduced to a collection of
interchangeable individual workers and consumers-isolated, exploited and
manipulated. Modernization is equated with homogenization—no
surprises—in a standardized world producing standardized products for
increasingly standardized consumers who confuse freedom with the choice
between white and pink toilet paper.
Authentic approaches to development must, from the perspective of social
ecology, emphasize a unique developmental path that critically explores
the potentialities of every individual culture as a distinct entity.
This is not a call for an extreme relativism that uncritically takes
every culture on its own terms. Rather it is a recognition of the
complexity and diversity inherent in social systems and an examination
of each in relation to a set of criteria which are extracted from our
interpretation of certain tendencies within natural evolution that
enhance ever greater complexity and diversity.
These tendencies include unity in diversity, non-hierarchical
relationships, mutualism, spontaneity and co–evolution. These are key
principles for us to consider as integral to a process of development
that can help to create an ecological society. Every community must have
a primary voice in its own development. Decisions regarding the
adaptation of elements of modernity must grow out of an extremely
self-conscious process, one which weighs not only immediate benefits and
risks, but also the long-term cultural implications of every decision.
The ecological principles mentioned above help to create an ethical
framework, and must be a necessary component of any authentic approach
to development. It is the realm of ethics that will allow for a
transcendence of the cost accounting methods prevalent among most
international development agencies. As Ted Trainer puts it in Developed
to Death, it calls for a “moral path to development.”
The hegemonic position of the culture of capitalism undermines most
efforts at maintaining a self-conscious and selective stance vis-à-vis
modernization. It is presented as a “take it or leave it” proposition.
If a nation questions the prescription of an IMF-style restructuring of
economic and development policy, sources of credit and capital will be
cut off. With the collapse of Communism and an end to the counter force
once represented by the Soviet Union, even the limited options once
available to underdeveloped nations have been constricted. The leverage
which growing international debt has given to the World Bank and the IMF
has effectively shut down the possibility for any creative approaches to
development. While individual communities may choose to pursue
alternative development models, the nation-states of the developing
world must pay homage to the mastery of the market and dance to the tune
of international capital.
However, it is the inherent tension between the market forces that power
modernization and the ecological imperative to preserve the biological
integrity of the planet that holds the potential for a creative
resolution. In places where capitalism’s assault on the environment is
still in its early stages, people have the opportunity to critically
analyze the experience of the developed world, to learn from our legacy
of ecological devastation and to choose consciously not to replicate our
mistakes. The crucial dynamic here is one in which people are able to
develop the self-awareness necessary for such an approach to succeed.
Increasingly, the pressure to open up markets and bring them into the
global economy has taken on an almost religious fervor. The global
market has become the holy grail of our time, and to resist the crusade
on its behalf is to risk the fate of all unbelievers: dismemberment or
death. Yet to not resist inevitably leads to the same end.
Traditional development models are geared toward increasing production,
greatly enhancing the wealth of those who are in charge of production,
and theoretically allowing the crumbs to “trickle down” to the lower
level. If, for production to be increased, people have to sacrifice
their freedom, their health or the environment, such sacrifice is
justified if it results in increased production and a rising Gross
National Product.
Social ecology views development as process oriented rather than product
obsessed, focused not on production, but on reproduction, on the
biological processes that renew the earth. The process of development
must be transformed so that it leads to growing empowerment of
disempowered sectors of the society, and an increased level of
self-consciousness regarding their ability to reorient the direction of
development. Development itself must be redefined as the empowerment of
communities to determine their own future in an open way, free of the
coercion of the IMF, the World Bank and other international development
agencies.
As André Gunder Frank pointed out in the sixties, capitalist development
fosters dependency on the dominant culture of the rich nations. As long
as they define the terms under which development occurs (or does not
occur), the chances for a process-oriented form of development, which
could allow Third World nations to break out of dependency, are slim
indeed.
Current development practice focuses primarily on resource extraction,
on creating and exploiting low-cost pools of non-unionized labor, and on
agricultural production of crops to be exported to the more affluent
nations. In other words the product-oriented approach to development is
geared almost exclusively toward production for consumption by the
wealthy nations and the tiny ruling elites of the Third World.
Ironically, nations like Mexico and Guatemala, which are both large
exporters of agricultural products, still have substantial populations
suffering from malnutrition and hunger. A growing consciousness of this
fact has resulted in popular insurgencies in both countries. The
Zapatista rebellion in Mexico focused on the destructive effects of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a major issue.
The increased globalization of production and the free market ideology
of NAFTA and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) can only
further the immiseration of the poor.
Grass roots localized approaches to development, like those proposed by
social ecology, would focus first on food security for the people living
within the developing nation. Development must be a process of education
as much as infrastructure building. It stimulates an unfolding of the
productive possibilities in every locality in accord with the specific
conditions in that particular place; it is an organic process in which
people define their own future, rather than allowing the market to
define it for them.
It is an internal process that flows out of communities rather than a
process which is externally imposed on them. Much current development in
the South is debt driven. International agencies use the leverage that
grows out of massive foreign debt to restructure the social policies and
political priorities of debtor nations to reflect the needs of
international capitalism. The “Shock Therapy” of IMF Structural
Adjustment Programs has devastated nation after nation in the South.
Often associated with right-wing regimes, these programs have been
effective in forcing even “progressive” administrations to redefine
their priorities.
A social ecological approach to development begins the process at the
grass roots, working with communities at the local level on projects
which they have determined will improve their quality of life. Regional
and national development priorities then grow out of the local
orientation. This dynamic is facilitated by a process of confederation
in which each locality has its concerns represented regionally and
nationally to allow for the creation of a coordinated strategy for
development that is built from the bottom up and reflects the desires of
the mass of the population rather than those of the elite.
Perhaps the most radical departure of a social ecological approach to
development is its rejection of the market as a viable mechanism for
stimulating or facilitating development. In fact, the market stands in
direct opposition to the goals of true development. The market demands
adherence to a model with built-in winners and losers; it creates
dependence on external sources of financing, technology and expertise;
it disempowers the local in favor of the impersonal economic forces; it
views nature as a “resource” ripe for exploitation; it presupposes a
universal standard of affluence modeled on the North which, if ever
achieved—and indeed it seems to be an impossibility from an ecological
perspective—would result in a homogenization of the world’s cultures and
ecosystems. We must recognize that dramatic changes in patterns of
production and consumption in the North are a precondition for true
development in the South.
The assimilation of the diverse cultures of the planet is the human
parallel to the loss of biodiversity that our current development
practice foreshadows. It is only through active resistance to the
dominant model and the creation of real alternatives which exist outside
of the framework of the global market that there is hope for the
authentic development of the peoples of the planet, an unfolding of
potentialities that could allow us to achieve the more profound ground
of a humanity which is both rooted in the varied lives of the world’s
diverse peoples and cultures and truly universal in its ethical stance
and practice.
One of my earliest memories is of a totem pole. Living just around the
corner from the Museum of the American Indian—then located on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan—the massive totem pole that sat in the museum’s
courtyard cast a shadow over my early childhood. The museum was an
enchanted place, with its colorful artifacts, and its carefully
constructed dioramas of Native American life. It was there that my
fascination with anthropology was born.
In my early teens I decided I wanted to be an ethno-musicologist, in
order to pursue my interest in folk music. But as I became more involved
in the anti-war movement and radical politics in my later teen years, I
dismissed anthropology as an indulgence, and focused instead on
political science and history, believing that the revolution required
more practical knowledge than could be gleaned from the study of such
exotic and frivolous subject matter as that approached by anthropology.
When I was in my early twenties, as I pursued my interest in anarchism
and social ecology, I was confronted, as I have been at many points in
my life, by my own ignorance. My understanding was limited by my
background, which was that of a recent college graduate who had led a
largely middle class existence. As a child of the ‘60s, I had been
caught up in the excitement of the anti-war movement and the
counterculture, but my experience during those heady times had been
primarily visceral, not informed by intensive study or research. Though
more motivated by the desire to solidify a theoretical basis for
effective action than by a love of scholarship for the sake of
scholarship, I felt the need to deepen my understanding of the dynamics
of cultural change, and the human prospect. So I returned to
anthropology: it was the only academic discipline I was aware of that
allowed its practitioners to consider the whole range of the human
experience throughout the whole of human history and pre-history. It was
both pan-human, and transhistorical in its outlook; it was not limited
to the study of the here and now, and, while still a discipline born of
the Western experience, theoretically, at least, it drew on all of the
world’s cultures to provide insight into their commonalities as well as
their differences.
As such, anthropology can offer a vital perspective into how other
cultures have organized themselves without the market or the state, it
calls into question the inevitability of capitalism, and it helps to
illuminate human potential. Anthropological understanding certainly
helps us to remove the blinders of the western cannon: I believe it can
help to combat racism, give insight into the process of cultural change,
and serve as an invaluable knowledge base for a revolutionary project.
However, when I began my studies in the late 1960s, I quickly discovered
that anthropology was in crisis. Anthropologists were engaged in a
serious critique of their discipline: the post-colonial era was raising
questions regarding anthropology’s origins and purpose, and the
theoretical firmament provided by Franz Boas and Claude Levi-Strauss was
being shaken by challenges from new theories, like cultural materialism
and the emerging ideas of post-structuralism. By the 1970s, when I was
writing my dissertation, the upheavals that shook the discipline in the
‘60s had receded, but the questions remained pertinent, as they still
remain today. What relevance does anthropology have in the increasingly
specialized world of “social science”? Where does a discipline born from
the study of “primitive” cultures turn when those cultures disappear?
How can anthropology resist its use as an instrument of domination and
become, instead, a force for liberation and reconstruction? As a newly
minted anthropologist I was deeply troubled by these questions, and I
have continued to struggle with them for the past thirty years. Even
though I have earned my living as an anthropologist, I have always
maintained an ambivalent and marginal relationship to professional
anthropology, which led me to try to formulate some ideas that might
help me to address these questions. These ideas, I hope, will provide
food for thought and stimulate further development—they are meant to be
more suggestive than prescriptive—in order to counter the crisis in
anthropology.
The crisis in anthropology unfolded on three distinct but related
levels—professional, theoretical, and ethical. Professionally,
anthropologists found that their traditional objects of study were no
longer readily available to them: The so-called “primitive societies,”
“tribal society,” “kin-based society,” “pre-literate society,” or
“traditional societies,” as I prefer, by which I mean societies, groups,
and cultures that exist outside of the reach of, or at the margins of,
the rapidly expanding realm of global capitalism, and retain much of
their historic tradition and cosmology. The decimation of these
traditional societies has been proceeding at an exponential rate, and as
the natural environments that provide the material base for those
societies—such as the rain forests, the arctic regions, and vast tracts
of undeveloped land needed to support hunting and gathering and
traditional nomadic pastoralism—are increasingly being destroyed and
eroded, so are traditional societies themselves. We can only expect an
acceleration of these trends.
Just as scientists recognize the threats to survival represented by the
destruction of natural environments and the extinction of species,
anthropologists have warned of the dangers posed by the destruction of
cultures and their knowledge. The frightening loss of biodiversity that
we are facing is paralleled by an equally frightening destruction of
cultural diversity, as the homogenizing effects of global capitalism
accelerate throughout the world.
Furthermore, traditional societies that have gained their liberation
from colonial relationships have become increasingly suspicious of, and
in some cases hostile to, the anthropological enterprise. They often
associate anthropology with colonialism and paternalism. Justified as
this attitude is, given the historical record, anthropology is nothing
if not adaptable: its terrain is the study of people and their cultures
in all of their broad dimensions throughout the whole of history.
Recognizing the practical and political problems facing conventional
types of study, many anthropologists, myself among them, shifted their
focus to the anthropology of “modern” societies. We engaged in urban
studies, migration studies, family studies, community studies, and in
applied anthropology. But here too, we are faced with a crisis in
traditional ethnographic methods that have largely proved inadequate for
the task of analyzing groups in the context of the larger culture of
capitalism in which they must be placed. In these fields, anthropology
has often lost its unique, holistic approach to become instead a
reductive, instrumental field, really just a qualitative adjunct to
sociology, narrow in scope, specialized to the point of a focus on
social minutiae and divorced from the culture concept itself.
Historically, however, anthropology has always concerned itself with
questions that are of great import to understanding our human past, the
dynamics of social change, and human prospects and possibilities for the
future. Anthropology has addressed big questions like, what is culture?
How does cultural change occur? What constitutes human “nature”? In an
era of increasing academic specialization, these larger concerns seem to
have fallen by the wayside.
In some cases, research in professional anthropology is being
constricted and contorted by more general trends in the academy that
limit funding to research projects that meet the needs of an
increasingly reactionary status quo. Many anthropology departments in
the United States have disappeared altogether or been collapsed into
departments of sociology. Add to this the fact that the majority of
anthropology PhDs will never work in the academy and face highly limited
job possibilities in nonacademic fields relating to anthropology.
Recently The Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed the job market in
anthropology and determined that 50% of the almost 500 PhDs graduated in
the US each year—that includes anthropologists working in all four
fields of anthropology: biological anthropology, anthropological
linguistics, archeology, and ethnography—will end up employed in the
government or private sector, working in consulting, public relations,
opinion poling, banking and finance, or federal and state law
enforcement. Only a few of those who do work in the academy will end up
with tenure-track positions, and the rest will be consigned to the
growing pool of visiting professors, lecturers, and adjuncts who
constitute the new, flexible labor force required by the education
business. The situation for ethnographers in particular is even worse
than these statistics suggest. When these facts are added together, one
has the profile of a profession in deep trouble.
On a theoretical level the crisis is more subtle, but no less profound.
The basic theoretical divide in anthropology has always been between
those who approach it as a science and those who view it as a branch of
the humanities. This dispute has never been resolved. Despite a
multitude of competing theoretical frameworks, very little coherence has
emerged beyond theories propounded over specific problems. Indeed, the
theoretical debate within anthropology has been stifled by the
ascendency of several major positions, which are seemingly
irreconcilable. Each has developed a cadre of proponents who exercise a
stranglehold on particular fields of anthropology and who seem
determined to perpetuate their own outlook. A theoretical base, broad
enough to explain cultural change, traditional ethnographic data, and
contemporary social problems, is not likely to achieve consensus in the
current climate of ideologically loaded discourse. Furthermore, many
anthropologists operate without an explicit theoretical framework, and
this tendency has been strengthened alongside an increased focus on
social minutiae rather than more comprehensive cultural analysis.. These
anthropologists may argue for “scientific objectivity,” or, in the case
of postmodernists and post-structuralists, attempt to operate from a
completely relativistic mindset. But, by refusing to define a
theoretical position, they are in fact accepting the underlying premises
of the dominant ideology: it is impossible to escape entirely one’s
background and cultural conditioning.
Before we turn to the ethical crisis in anthropology, let us briefly
review some of the dominant theories in academic anthropology then and
now, and quickly summarize the salient critiques that have been offered
of them.
At the turn of the last century, Franz Boas developed his historical
particularism—also known as Boasian relativism—which became an important
theoretical development in anthropology, with its recognition of the
intrinsic integrity of every culture and its self-conscious stance in
combating racism. However, in its reaction to nineteenth-century
evolutionary models, Boasian relativism presented a static view of
culture and lacked an explicit perspective for explaining cultural
change. Much of the focus of Boas and his students, whose influence on
modern American anthropology is still felt today, was the undertaking of
“salvage ethnography,” an attempt to observe and describe threatened
traditional cultures, like those of Native American peoples, before they
vanished altogether.
Then, in the 1950s, Claude Levi-Strauss established structuralism, which
emerged as an influential perspective in anthropology that attempted to
discover universal principles of the human mind that underlay cultural
traits, customs, and myths. The theory drew on concepts developed in
linguistics, and it likened the structures of cultures to the structures
of language. Levi-Strauss’s theory was influential, and useful in
helping to identify the underlying unity of all cultures, but it was
utterly unable to explain cultures as distinct and particular entities
with highly diverse content and unique differences. Structuralists claim
a pan-human application for their theory, but what is ultimately
revealed is structure without content—it is a lowest-common-denominator
approach to cultural analysis which conceals more than it explicates.
The structuralists, it seems, simply ignore society to focus on its
“structures.” Specific manifestations of a culture are seen as less
important than the broad categories that all cultures share.
Structuralism, in turn, lay the groundwork for other theoretical
schools, such as symbolic anthropology, cognitive anthropology, and,
importantly, postmodernism.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism had a tremendous influence in
anthropology. But, unfortunately, it was often introduced as a rigid
framework for analysis that contorted on-the-ground experience to fit
into predetermined categories of little relevance to the reality of
traditional people. Marx and Engels themselves drew heavily on the work
of early anthropologists like Lewis Henry Morgan to develop their
understanding of cultural evolution. Morgan’s schema was deeply flawed
in its emphasis on cultural evolution as social Darwinism, but Marxism
itself is, in fact, an extremely deterministic ideology that places an
inordinate—and historically unjustifiable—faith in inexorable historical
processes and “progress.”
Cultural ecology was the phrase used by Julian Steward to describe his
theory of cultural evolution, a much more nuanced approach than the
crude theories of the nineteenth century evolutionists and Social
Darwinists. Steward used what was essentially a Marxist framework, but
he emphasized environmental causality as the underlying factor creating
cultural adaptation and change, rather than economic factors. On the
other hand, cultural materialism, as practiced by anthropologists like
Marvin Harris, constituted a reduction and further vulgarization of the
Marxist view. While it was suggestive and sometimes productive for
analyzing cultural change, this scientistic perspective fails to
incorporate symbolic, cosmological, or psychological causality into
these schemas. Rather, it reduces all cultural phenomena to an
interaction between land, labor, and capital; specific cultural traits
are seen as an obfuscation of the underlying reasons for change, which
are presented as mere responses to environmental factors.
From the 1980s on, two major theoretical schools emerged, which
highlight the long-standing divide between anthropology as a science,
and anthropology as a branch of the humanities.
One the one hand, we saw how the tendency toward anthropological
scientism found new proponents with the emergence of sociobiological
anthropology, a theoretical approach which attempts to explain human
behavior from a biological perspective, with a major emphasis on the
role of genes in creating universal forms of human behavior.
Sociobiological anthropologists focus on three main categories of study:
evolutionary biology, human behavioral ecology, and the study of human
universals. For sociobiological anthropologists, human behavior and
culture are essentially genetic functions that, in a Darwinian sense,
either aid or hinder reproductive success. This extremely reductive view
fails to consider the crucial role of culture, and often draws on
research with non-human populations, like insects, and projects these
results onto human populations. By biologizing every aspect of human
behavior, this approach denies any role for ethics, education, and a
myriad of other cultural phenomena that influence the direction in which
communities evolve.
On the other hand, we saw how the postmodern, post-structuralist turn in
anthropology called science into question altogether, maintaining, at
its most extreme, that there is no such thing as a scientific fact or
even objective reality. It proposes, rather, that facts are cultural
constructs, and that reality is a relative concept. Postmodernism
presents a useful perspective for an ethnographer, demanding that, to
the extent possible, the anthropologist approach a culture on its own
terms. It also presents powerful insights in deconstructing power
relationships, noting how a position of cultural hegemony allows one
group to dictate reality for others.
However, postmodernism also represents a real danger: the assumption of
such an extreme relativism makes it impossible to make ethical
judgments, and it easily leads to quietism in the face of oppression and
domination.
These theoretical perspectives are seemingly irreconcilable. Where,
then, can anthropology turn for a theoretical framework that integrates
processual understanding and structural commonalities, and yet still
recognizes the unique, particularistic aspects of specific cultures? Is
there a theory that allows us to understand the process of cultural
change without hierarchical schema for valuing different cultures? Is
there a way to draw on scientific understanding without being reductive?
In order to fully address and hopefully resolve the current crisis in
anthropology, we must first outline the ethical dimension of this
crisis.
As an academic discipline anthropology positions itself as a
“value-free” approach to the study of culture. This was true of Boasian
historical particularism, and it is even more true in the era of
post-structuralism. Important as this was in response to nineteenth
century evolutionism and Social Darwinism, I would nonetheless argue
that a “value-free” approach to the study of culture and society is
simply not possible. What then are the values that anthropology
reflects? Unfortunately—and inevitably, I would add, given the lack of a
clear theoretical orientation—for the most part they have been the
values of the dominant culture, our own.
Both consciously and unconsciously anthropology has served as a
handmaiden of domination and exploitation. Historically, anthropologists
have provided strategic information for those who have exploited and
colonized the people whom anthropologists have studied. In a very real
sense, the earliest ethnographers were not academic anthropologists, but
rather conquistadores, colonial administrators and the clergy who
accompanied them. The information that they provided was used to expand
and maintain control over subjugated people. In the USA, there is also a
long history of anthropologists collaborating with the military and the
CIA, from World War II, with the creation of departments of area studies
to aid the war effort, through Vietnam, and into our own time. To be
sure, professional anthropology has a code of ethics stating that “prior
to making any professional commitments, they must review the purposes of
employers, taking into consideration the employers past activities and
future goals. In working for government agencies or private business
they should be especially careful not to promise or imply conditions
contrary to professional ethics or competing commitments.” Further,
anthropologists “must consider carefully the social and political
implications of information they disseminate.” and they “must be alert
to possible harm their information may cause people with whom they work
or their colleagues.” This ethical code was toughened in 2009 in
reaction to the news that anthropologists had been working with the US
military in Iraq and Afghanistan, though it still does not explicitly
forbid secret research for the military or the more widespread—and
growing—practice of undertaking proprietary research for corporations.
Despite a growing awareness of this dimension of anthropology, these
relationships still persist. As noted earlier, this is clearly one of
the symptoms of the professional crisis facing anthropology as a
discipline.
Aside from those who knowingly collaborate, anthropologists of all
types—traditional ethnographers, those engaged in urban studies, and
particularly applied anthropologists—find themselves serving, willingly
or unwillingly, as “fact finders” for those who would homogenize the
world’s cultures, providing insight into belief systems and social
organization that can be, and are, easily used by states and corporate
actors to develop strategies for controlling and dominating the people
being studied. Once their research is made public, anthropologists have
no control over how it is used. This ethical dilemma is unavoidable in
current anthropological practice unless one consciously defines oneself
in opposition to the culture of domination and exploitation.
Given the pervasive nature of these interrelated crises what is the way
out? Is there a perspective that can help anthropology reshape itself as
a coherent, ethical discipline that has relevance to the critical
problems faced by our civilization and our planet? I believe that the
answer is an unequivocal yes; further, I would suggest that the elements
needed for such a reshaping are largely present in the anthropological
tradition itself. We need to develop an anthropology that is
self-conscious about its role in both observing and shaping culture, an
anthropology that is both critical and utopian—in short, a
reconstructive anthropology.
Where in the anthropological corpus do we find the elements we need to
draw together toward this end? What are the preconditions for a
synthesis? I wish to suggest that the elements we need can be drawn
selectively from three distinct approaches to anthropology: critical
anthropology, social ecology, and participatory action research. But
before we turn to a more detailed examination of how we might constitute
a reconstructive anthropology, we must explore its preconditions.
Regarding philosophy, Hegel declared that “The owl of Minerva always
flies at dusk.” We might say as much of anthropology. Why do our
insights into cultures, their values, their organizational forms and,
particularly, their process of change usually come only after
destructive change has already occurred? Are we incapable of predicting
changes? Do we favor them? Or is it that we do not care? I would answer
no to all of these questions: The owl of Minerva flies at dusk because
of our conceptualization of anthropology as a descriptive, analytical,
and reflective discipline.
This is of course not meant to suggest that description, analysis and
reflection are bad. On the contrary, they remain necessary aspects of
the anthropological enterprise, but, from the perspective of
reconstructive anthropology, they are not sufficient. In order to
address the ethical dilemma of anthropology, as indicated earlier, we
must start by consciously identifying ourselves with the objects of our
study. In so doing we transcend the dichotomy between subject and object
to establish a relationship of intersubjectivity, and anthropology
becomes not only a reflective discipline but also an interactive one.
The crucial identification with the “objects” of study and the
establishment of truly intersubjective relationships are necessary
components to insure that the anthropology we practice is reconstructive
in nature and not simply an instrumental application of anthropological
perspectives.
It is interesting to note here that anthropology has always concerned
itself with humanely scaled communities that function in a relatively
unmediated fashion: Typical examples are the hunting and gathering band;
pastoral peoples, both nomadic and sedentary; peasant farming
communities; and, more recently, ethnic neighborhoods and sub-cultural
enclaves. Anthropologists have focused on societies and cultures where
face-to-face interactions are the dominant mode of relationship. The
very intimacy of these groups makes them more approachable, and more
conducive to the primary mode of research utilized by cultural
anthropologists, that of participation and observation. As such, they
also present situations in which it is possible to create truly
intersubjective relationships.
There exists within anthropology a tradition that had always been based
on the principle of intersubjectivity. Stanley Diamond identifies this
tradition as “critical anthropology” and counterposes this outlook to
the increasing scientism of academic anthropology. For Diamond, critical
anthropology is concerned with the study of the “primitive,” in order to
illuminate our understanding of ourselves, and to expand our
understanding of what constitutes the human potential.
The modern anthropological project, Diamond argues, saw an early
manifestation of this tradition in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concern with
“primitive society” and “man in nature,” and in his use of the
comparative model, notably, of the state versus civil society. For
Diamond, this comparative perspective is the essence of critical
anthropology. What can traditional cultures tell us about our own
society—its origins and its prospects? Diamond creates a paradigm he
called “the primitive/civilized dichotomy,” that brings into bold relief
the qualitative differences between cultures organized around the
principles of reciprocity, mutualism and participation, and those
organized around the market, the state, and the compartmentalization of
its members. Diamond’s dichotomy—which I suggest is best understood as a
continuum—helps us to broaden our understanding of “human nature,” or,
more properly, human potential, by contrasting the forms of social
organization, ranging from egalitarian to authoritarian, utilized by
different cultures. Diamond shows how various social formations
reinforce and reward particular aspects of “human nature” and de-value
others.
With the establishment of academic anthropology these crucial issues
were frequently subsumed under the rubric of cultural relativism. This
tendency eschews comparison for a cultural leveling which, while it
combats racism and help us to value all cultures, serves at the same
time to blind us to the qualitative differences that do exist between
cultures—I do not mean to suggest a qualitative ranking of cultures
here, but a recognition of their qualitatively different existential
experiences. Diamond, however, insists that a critical tradition in
anthropology has always been present within the discipline. He
identifies this tradition with the work of people like Paul Radin,
Marshal Sahlins, Eric Wolfe, Dell Hymes, Pierre Clastres, and others. By
extension one could argue that the emergence of feminist anthropology is
part of this tradition.
Critical anthropology calls for the self-examination of the fieldworker
as an integral part of the anthropological project. Diamond also calls
for the conscious identification of the fieldworker with his or her
object of study—a radical position indeed. Still, even with its emphasis
on this identification, the praxis of critical anthropology remained
primarily an intellectual enterprise: it was scholarship oriented toward
an important end—self-understanding—but still merely scholarship and
abstractly conceptual.
Diamond’s goals were explicit; he saw the need for “a cultural
transformation as profound as the shift from the Neolithic to
civilization” and suggested that critical anthropologists must become
partisans in struggles for liberation and for social reconstruction.
What forms can this partnership take? What, beyond scholarship, is the
practice of critical anthropology? How does critical anthropology become
interactive beyond the level of theory?
Surely, anthropology has always had an interactive dimension, although
it has not always been conscious, and only in rare cases has it been
critical. In many cases, this interaction has offered the use of
anthropological studies and data in the process of subjugating and
assimilating cultures and communities by the dominant culture. Often,
anthropologists are unconscious of the uses to which their research is
applied, but in some cases there has been conscious collaboration.
Most work done under the rubric of “applied anthropology” provides
negative examples of anthropological interaction. Most applied work
occurs in concert with the forces of domination, be they capitalist or
“socialist.” Applied anthropology has mitigated some of the overt
brutality of this cultural imperialism but it has nonetheless played an
important role in assimilating unique communities into the larger
political and economic structures of the dominant culture.
Anthropology that interacts on the level of policy design which is
intended to assimilate traditional people into modern nation-states—or
plans the pacification of dissident communities—crosses the line from
the unconsciously to the consciously evil. At this level anthropology
loses its humanistic content, as well as any pretense of “scientific
objectivity.” In these cases anthropology has become an instrument for
the destruction of the very thing that had sustained it, the ultimate
parasite.
As currently constituted, much of applied anthropology falls into this
category. It has lacked both critical content and self-consciousness.
The work of applied anthropology has to be reoriented toward the support
of traditional, alternative, and oppositional cultural movements—all of
which are under assault by the forces of domination and homogeneity. If
applied anthropology is to provide elements for a reconstructive
synthesis its intentionality must be inverted. We must create a critical
applied anthropology that identifies with the culture under assault,
helps to develop strategies for cultural survival, and expands
resistance rather than adaptation and assimilation.
There is a methodology that explicitly requires such a level of
engagement: participatory action research. This is a collaborative
process in which the researcher works actively with community members to
examine problems in their community that they wish to address, and
develop action in order to change or improve them. It requires critical
analysis of all relevant political, cultural, historical, economic, and
environmental factors that contributed to creating the problem. As the
name indicates, participatory action research is a process of action as
much as it is a process of description, analysis, and reflection: it
constitutes an ongoing praxis, an action that is analyzed, modified, and
then redeployed.
In other words, anthropologists should ally themselves with a particular
community as a resource for that community. They must share their
insight with the community, helping people to analyze and interpret
their own situation with the explicit goal of maintaining or perhaps
reconstructing cultural traditions that support the cultural integrity
of that community. As I see it, reconstructive anthropology must engage
in the planning process as well: not by implementing the top-down
planning mechanisms of the dominant culture, but rather by encouraging
and taking part in a participatory planning process in which the
community itself determines its future direction. This process must
therefore, in part, be an educational endeavor that helps to ensure that
a community takes conscious, critical choices about its future. Paolo
Freire, who has done much to inspire this participatory approach,
describes in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed how a community can learn its
way together to deal with problems. Such a process inverts the usual
planning mechanisms in which applied anthropology plays a role.
In light of this, the involvement of anthropologists in these
communities and their struggles has another important dimension as well:
to fully eclipse the subject/object dichotomy it is necessary to
establish active solidarity. Reconstructive anthropology must be rooted
in engagement and—if intersubjectivity is to be created—reciprocity.
Here I do not mean the payment of “informants” for their time and
information, nor a reductive quid pro quo, but rather the deeper sense
of reciprocity, as expressed by traditional people: active involvement
in the lives and struggles of those with whom we work. Indeed,
reciprocity in the deepest sense is not an economic form: it is not a
relationship of exchange, based on the calculation of return-in-kind. It
is mutualistic, growing out of a sensibility of solidarity—an organic
interrelationship in which the action of each supports the other—and a
recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Such
mutualism, I would argue, is a vital principle: anything less is
parasitic and paternalistic, as the trajectory of anthropology has
shown. Academic anthropologists have traditionally built their careers
from work with “their people” and returned little or nothing. The
interaction of anthropology and the process of cultural and community
reconstruction also has implications for the professional crisis in
anthropology. Anthropological training should not be limited to use in
the classroom or placed in the service of state and corporate entities.
The work of the reconstructive anthropologist lies in the world—in
communities and neighborhoods where people are struggling to control
their lives. The reconstructive anthropologist may have to look beyond
the traditional avenues of employment, but the opportunities to actively
practice reconstructive anthropology are numerous. Anthropology must be
understood as a calling, not a narrow vocation. The sensibility of
reconstructive anthropology demands praxis.
Praxis, to be complete, is not confined to action, however, or even
action informed by an anthropological perspective. It requires action in
a dialectical relationship with a theoretical perspective: a fluid
coupling in which each component consistently interacts with and
reshapes the other. For the reconstructive approach to become a potent
force in the world we need to overcome not only the ethical and
professional crisis in anthropology, but the theoretical crisis as well.
If we believe that a critical approach is needed to address the basic
orientation of anthropology and that a critical applied anthropology can
open creative paths for dealing with professional limitations, where can
we turn for an adequate grounding in theory?
While there are a myriad of theories that have utility for specific
questions raised in anthropology, one outlook provides a framework that
addresses the major issues with real coherence and consistency: social
ecology. The theoretical insights of social ecology are uniquely suited
to the new synthesis required if a reconstructive anthropology is to
emerge.
Social ecology must be distinguished from the reductive cultural
materialism, cultural ecology and other such forms of “ecological”
theory currently in vogue in the academy. Social ecology focuses on the
relationship between society and nature; indeed it posits this
relationship as central for cultural change, but in a multilineal
fashion that integrates nonmaterial elements into the causal mix.
Anthropology, as we have seen, is tormented by its conflicts between
science and the humanities. Social ecology, in its nuanced concepts of
“first” and “second” nature, strikes a balance between the two domains,
by emphasizing the role of natural evolution—what it calls “first
nature”—in creating the biological basis for human life and community,
and the gradual emergence out of first nature of a range of cultural
factors that, while still a product of first nature, represent a
qualitative change—a “second nature”—that allows a culture to alter
direction dramatically in less than a generation. Social ecology, at its
most profound level, offers these insights not as a rigid ideology or
dogma, but rather as a framework for inquiry that is explicitly oriented
toward reharmonizing people’s relationship with the natural world.
Further, social ecology suggests an ethics that can inform decisions
about the kind of commitments that reconstructive anthropologists make.
A recurring theme in social ecology is the relationship between the
domination of nature and the domination of people. Murray Bookchin, the
foremost theorist of social ecology, sees the elimination of the
domination of people by other people as a precondition for the
reharmonization of people and the natural world. The theory examines and
evaluates cosmology, technics, environmental factors, and social
organization as causal factors in the dialectics of culture and nature.
Social Ecology is concerned with the evolutionary process that
explicates our contemporary civilization’s destructive relationships to
both the natural world and the social world in order to suggest
reconstructive approaches. This theory attempts to present a critical
and utopian view that can help us make sense of the world, and suggests
the transcendental dimension inherent in a reconstructive anthropology.
Unlike vulgar variants of ecological theory, such as cultural
materialism, social ecology is coherent without being schematic or
dogmatic. On the contrary, it emphasizes the uniqueness of each culture
it examines and has an explicitly liberatory intent. Understood as an
open system of inquiry, social ecology’s framework has proven invaluable
for me, and many others. However, it is also an evolving theory and has
many gaps which anthropology can help to address.
By focusing on ecological relationships in both the realm of nature and
culture, social ecology presents a paradigm that illuminates prehistory
and contemporary society. It demonstrates the development of the latter
out of the former, but it does so in a critical manner that calls into
question the presuppositions of progress and linearity that underlie
civilization’s sense of its own development. Social Ecology consciously
addresses the most pressing problems facing the planet—the domination
and exploitation of people and cultures, pollution, resource depletion,
agricultural collapse, destructive patterns of development,
technological determinism, climate change, and the threat of nuclear
war—all from an anthropological perspective. Indeed, as I see it, it
constitutes the theoretical perspective needed to formalize a
reconstructive anthropology. To be more specific, social ecology
suggests that the creative human enterprise, when informed by a
conscious understanding of the relationship between culture and nature,
can create a new level of culture, profoundly different from our current
civilization, free from hierarchy and domination, and in harmony with
the other species on this planet.
The ethics of social ecology are derived from an interpretation of
natural evolution that emphasizes the role of non-hierarchical
relationships, mutualism, unity in diversity, homeostasis, spontaneity,
and ever greater degrees of consciousness and freedom in the
evolutionary process: it suggests that these same principles must be
developed as an ethical basis for action in the social realm if we are
to ever achieve a healthy, ecological society. The ethics of social
ecology thus provide a powerful set of ethical guidelines for the work
of reconstructive anthropology.
What, then, are the implications of a reconstructive anthropology? What
are the concrete tasks that practitioners of such an approach might
undertake? Not unlike academic anthropology, a primary task of the
reconstructive approach is the delineation of the process of cultural
evolution with particular emphasis on the emergence of hierarchy,
domination and the state. Reconstructive anthropology must examine this
development in relation to particular cultures and, departing
significantly from academic anthropology, must do so with the explicit
goal not only of explication but also of transformation. Beyond offering
insight into the roots of class stratification and state formation, it
must consciously link the anthropologist with the project of human
liberation and ecological restoration by suggesting concrete
alternatives to contemporary hierarchical social relations and
ecologically destructive social practices. As such, reconstructive
anthropology must be understood as a perspective and a project that
transcends the given of a narrowly defined human nature in order to, in
the words of anthropologist David Graeber, “understand the human
condition and move it in the direction of greater freedom.”
This concern must be fully integrated into the forms that the practice
of reconstructive anthropology takes: First of all in the content of our
studies, which focus on questions of significance to a ecological and
emancipatory perspective, as well as in the intentionality of our work,
which implies active collaboration with communities and movements
working for ecologically oriented human liberation. It must also be
manifest in our focus on intersubjective relationships rather than the
classical dichotomy between subject and object. As I see it, a concern
with hierarchy and domination is by no means the only appropriate topic
for investigation, but it must be integrated fully into a perspective
that informs our work as a whole.
In a world of increasingly fragmented bits of knowledge, reconstructive
anthropology offers a holistic framework for analysis, critique and
praxis. That framework can be used to explore particular problems of
concern to a given community: economic development, environmental
degradation, land reform, family relations, health care, technology
diffusion, agricultural development; indeed, the list can encompass
every aspect of a culture. But the method of reconstructive anthropology
requires an integrative approach that places the particular problem
examined within a multi-causal matrix in dialectical tension with the
whole of the culture.
The method proceeds through distinct stages of analysis and action:
there are cultural and historical research and reflection, analysis of
the contemporary situation, critique, planning and development of
alternative models, action and implementation, evolution, incorporation
of experience into new theoretical models, and further action—all
prompted by participation as well as observation. The method must be
participatory and inclusive, where the anthropologist serves as a
resource and, to the extent possible, as a catalyst throughout the
process. This intersubjective relationship provides a basis of love,
trust, and mutual respect necessary for an effective reconstructive
praxis.
It is surely a departure from “objective” scientific approaches of
anthropology to ask for love, trust and mutual respect as inherent
methodological components for praxis. However, I maintain that these
qualities are necessary parts of any process that hopes to change the
basic nature of the dominant culture. Without these underlying ethical
relationships, no authentic cultural reconstruction can occur. I call
for their development and implementation not as abstract concepts but as
crucial existential reality, as an ethical sensibility that can provide
grounding for the work of reconstruction.
The methodology of reconstructive anthropology suggests that the most
appropriate place for the reconstructive anthropologist to work is in
his or her own culture—perhaps even his or her own community. In this
regard, the theory of the “marginal man” as agent of cultural change,
proposed by Louis Wirth of the Chicago School, bears examination.
Wirth suggested that the individual with a foot in two cultures, the
person who is at the margins of his or her own society and has
experienced a culture foreign to him or her, is the one who is most
effective at introducing new concepts and cultural innovations. Growing
out of cultural cross-fertilization, such marginal individuals exhibit a
genius for cultural experimentation, and yet they are familiar enough
with the existent conditions to be socially creative.
Ultimately, who is more marginal than the anthropologist? Anthropology
is itself a marginal discipline within the academy. Individuals who
choose to study anthropology are notorious for their idiosyncratic
behavior and their social marginality, and they often come from
multicultural backgrounds or have had multicultural experiences. And
this personal marginality is reinforced further by the study of
anthropology: indeed solidified by the field experience—unique to
anthropology—of being a participant/observer. Those drawn to
reconstructive anthropology further confirm their marginal status by
choosing a marginal—practically non-existent—trajectory within a
marginal discipline. The reconstructive anthropologist seems to be the
marginal person par excellence and, if Wirth is correct, potentially an
effective agent for cultural change.
There are an increasing number of people studying anthropology who come
from communities that have traditionally been the subjects of
anthropological research. Some, like my late friend John Mohawk in the
Akwasasenee Mohawk community, or Gustavo Esteve working in Oaxaca, have
been able to apply their anthropological understanding in reconstructive
projects in their own communities. This encouraging development suggests
to me that one goal of reconstructive anthropology should be educating
more people from diverse backgrounds in the theories and techniques of
the reconstructive approach. I believe that the most effective
practitioners will be those who work in their own communities.
The marginal stance of reconstructive anthropology is further enhanced
by the need for its practitioners to develop a propensity for what Paul
Goodman called “utopian thinking”—the ability to project beyond the
given to what could be. This conceptualization of what could be cannot
remain an individual vision. It needs to be teased out by means of a
participatory communal process that evokes the aspirations of the
communities we work with. It cannot be a “blueprint”—it must grow out of
a utopian process, indeed out of the praxis of reconstructive
anthropology as such, in all of its existential and ethical wealth of
experience.
In some cases anthropologists may play a therapeutic social role, aiding
a given community or culture to transcend the forces of fragmentation
that contribute to cultural neurosis and psychosis. This is almost
analogous to the role that the psychotherapist plays in relation to the
individual, but reconstructive anthropology must be informed by a
radical ethical intentionality—not an adaptive one—in order to create
wholeness and integrity: the very integration that is the hallmark of
traditional cultures.
In this way anthropologists draws on cross-cultural, transhistorical
insights to extract principles necessary for the creation of healthy
communities and finally, through a process of dialectical
transformation, reintegrates those principles into the institutions and
relationships of his or her own community. This process can occur
through the reinforcement of still-existing traditions, through the
revitalization of vestigial forms, or even through the creation of new
institutional, organizational, and relational forms.
Reconstructive anthropology is by necessity rooted in decentralization
and an appreciation of human scale. A global perspective must inform the
concerns of reconstructive anthropology, but its practical approach must
proceed locally—at the grassroots level—if the transformative
development is to be authentic. Community can only be built and
sustained through participation; it rests on primary relationships, and
on face to face ties, which require a human scale. To be sure, humanly
scaled communities have always been the subject of anthropological
reflection: Anthropology—even academic anthropology—has always claimed
this terrain as its own, and it represents a vital part of the
anthropological tradition which must be retained by the reconstructive
approach. The “little community,” the village, the neighborhood, and the
intentional community: these are the realms of action for reconstructive
anthropology. Community provides the basis for cultural and ecological
revitalization and change.
These are at least three broad areas in which reconstructive
anthropology must be practiced. First, I would argue, we must work with
tribal and traditional cultures confronted by the homogenizing effects
of modernity. Second, we must vitalize community development efforts in
existing communities. Finally, we must stimulate the creation of new
intentional communities and alternative ways of living. While the
examples are few and far between, exciting work is currently done in all
of these areas that relates to the ethical framework suggested for a
reconstructive anthropology.
Reconstructive anthropology holds great promise. While anthropology as a
discipline attempts to take a “value-free” approach, the goal of a
reconstructive anthropology is to engage the human spirit, to stimulate
the human imagination in order to help in the unfolding of the human
potential, and to provide a reconstructive, ethical basis for human
community.
We are living in the new era of “green.” Green technologies like solar,
wind, biomass, and co-generation are being presented as the solution to
climate change, our dependence on foreign oil, and the economic crisis.
We are told that green jobs are the jobs of the future. Ideas and
technologies that were once the province of radical ecologists and the
counterculture have entered the mainstream, and large transnational
corporations are scrambling to jump aboard the bandwagon. BP, formerly
British Petroleum, recently marketed itself as “Beyond Petroleum.”
Greenwashing is the order of the day.
“Green Cities” are all the rage. The new interest in, and policy shift
toward encouraging the use of alternative technologies, like solar
energy and wind power, in urban environments—along with a growing
emphasis on urban farming, energy efficiency, green architecture, green
planning, and all things local—is unprecedented. Or is it?
In the late 1970s the Hispanic section of New York City’s Lower East
Side, known to its Puerto Rican Residents as Loisaida, grassroots
efforts at community development utilized all of these approaches and
more. In light of the newfound emphasis on green technology as the force
that will move us into the future, these remarkable efforts seem
prescient, and further examination might prove instructive.
I was privileged to be a part of these experiments, through my work with
the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE), and my involvement with CHARAS,
a group of young activists and community organizers who played a
critical role in the developments in Loisaida. I first became aware of
this work in 1974 when I organized a conference on urban alternatives in
New York City. We brought together urban activists and green technology
innovators like John Todd of the New Alchemy Institute, Karl Hess from
the Adams-Morgan neighborhood in Washington, Milton Kotler, author of
Neighborhood Government, wind energy developer Ted Finch, and urban
gardener Tessa Huxley. Following the conference I was approached by
grassroots activists from Loisaida and asked if the Institute for Social
Ecology could provide technical and program planning assistance.
The ISE worked on a variety of projects with the 11^(th) Street
Movement, the Cultural Understanding and Neighborhood Development
Organization (CUANDO), and CHARAS, helping in planning of programs and
the design of specific projects related to solar energy, wind power,
aquaculture, and urban gardening. I was living in New York at the time,
and began to work intensely with the Lower East Side groups as a
volunteer consultant. We developed a relationship of reciprocity, where
groups of ISE students came to New York to help with projects in
Loisaida, and members of the Loisaida groups came to Vermont to help us
with our projects. An intersubjective relationship based in solidarity,
mutual respect, and affection developed which forged strong
relationships that persist to this day.
As my involvement deepened I became fascinated with the projects and
convinced of their importance as an application of many of the ideas and
technologies that we worked with at the ISE. I was studying Cultural
Anthropology at the New School for Social Research and I decided to
write my doctoral dissertation about Loisaida. My thesis focused on the
role of alternative or green technology in grassroots efforts at
Loisaida’s neighborhood reconstruction. The reconstruction undertaken
was both cultural and physical. The people of Loisaida were people in
transition, seeking a new, ecological lifestyle. It was a cultural
expression with many sources: rooted in a strong traditional Puerto
Rican culture, it was an adaptation to the conditions of life in the
ghetto, and also a response to the mass culture of global capitalism.
Above all, it was an experiment in urban survival. The experience of
Loisaida has much to teach us all. While I was able to offer insights
and bring skills to the process, I readily admit that I learned much
more than I taught.
A group of Loisaida residents was the first low-income group of urban
dwellers in the United States to attempt utilizing alternative
technology in the reconstruction of their community. They used
ecologically sound organic gardening and aquaculture techniques to
reintroduce food production to New York City. They developed low-cost
ways to use solar energy to meet their energy needs, and they began to
recycle the wastes that littered their neighborhood into resources for
development. They pioneered the transformation of abandoned buildings
into affordable tenant-owned cooperative housing through the process of
urban homesteading. Ultimately, they began to create forms of social and
political organization through which they tried to regain control of
their lives and neighborhood.
The alternative technology movement in the 1970s and ‘80s was largely
the province of middle-class people of a counter-cultural persuasion.
The involvement of this low-income, mostly Puerto Rican community was
indeed a significant development.
During that period technologies based on utilizing renewable energy
sources were known by a variety of names: radical, soft, alternative, or
appropriate technology. In general, they were understood as those
technologies which are small scale and relatively simple, and therefore
useful for decentralized application, based on the use of non-polluting,
renewable energy sources; they were tailored to utilize locally
available resources, both for construction materials and labor in a
manner which supports, or at least does not disrupt, local cultural
patterns and enhances local self-reliance.
Alternative technology was first applied in relation to developing
nations as an alternative to capital-intensive models of Western
development. By the mid 1970s, there was a growing interest in the
application of these technologies to the developed world, as a means of
alleviating our dependence on fossil fuels and the concurrent ecological
costs of that dependence.
The advocates of this technological approach were arrayed on a continuum
ranging from those who advocated the incorporation of alternative
technology into existing capitalist modes of production, such as E.F.
Schumacher, to those who saw these technologies as part of a more
fundamental transformation of our society into a decentralized,
non-hierarchical, and communalistic one, such as Murray Bookchin. The
distinctions between the various positions on this continuum are
crucial. It must be emphasized that the mere use of a non-polluting,
renewable energy source does not make a given technology an alternative.
The very definition of alternative technology excludes those technology
applications that reflect the highly centralized—“the bigger the
better”—grow-or-die ideology of capitalism.
Alternative technology must be understood as a social concept rather
than an instrumental technological application of gadgetry to a given
problem. Alternative technology reflects a self-conscious notion of the
crucial relationship between technics and both the natural and social
worlds. At the ISE, while we did develop and demonstrate technologies,
our primary concern was always with the social and ecological matrix in
which any technology is embedded. Who owns it and who benefits from it?
How are decisions made about what technology to develop and deploy, and
who controls it? Is it humanly scaled and decentralized? What is the
ecological impact?
We saw alternative technology as having great potential for
decentralized, humanly scaled applications in the urban setting, and as
lending itself to community control and directly democratic forms of
decision making, thus providing a material base for the development of a
decentralized, directly democratic society. We also understood
alternative technology as a way to address growing concerns about
pollution, particularly air quality, in the urban environment. Although
Bookchin had pointed out the threat of greenhouse gasses as early as
1964, we did not have a sense of urgency concerning climate change. At
that time he suggested it might pose a danger in 200 years, but his
warnings were ignored, and even, in some cases, ridiculed. In light of
today’s assessments, we were foolish not to take those concerns more
seriously. However, the experience in Loisaida still has relevance to
the issue of global warming: Its call for decentralized, democratically
controlled, and humanly scaled technology are echoed today in the
climate justice movement, which recognizes that industrial scaled and
corporate controlled energy production, even if it is based on renewable
resources, is still part and parcel of a capitalist society run amok,
and, as such, fails to address not only the ecological concerns, but
also the questions of social justice, democracy, and equity that were
central to the alternative technology movement.
New York’s Lower East Side is America’s portal of immigration and also
its archetypal immigrant ghetto. Virtually every major immigrant group
that established itself in the United States came through the Lower East
Side. The Dutch, who first colonized Manhattan, built their city, New
Amsterdam, in the 1620s on the fecund hunting and fishing grounds of the
Lenape Indians and extended their Bouries, or farms, into much of the
area now known as the Lower East Side. This was not a peaceful process:
In 1643 a company of Dutch Militia under the command of Governor Wilhelm
Kieft slaughtered a group of forty Indians, mostly women and children,
encamped on Corlear’s Hook. The Dutch were followed by the British,
whose colonial project, resting heavily on the African slave trade,
finally collapsed after their defeat in the American Revolution.
The Irish, fleeing the potato famine, were the next group of immigrants
to establish themselves on the Lower East Side, mostly in what was known
as the Five Points District and around Chatham Square, beginning in the
early 19^(th) century. The Irish habitation set the stage for what was
to be an on-going way of life on the Lower East Side, the ghettoization
of immigrant groups in the physically isolated confines of Corlear’s
Hook, which jutted out into the East River, cut off from the rest of
Manhattan. The isolation, discrimination, poverty, crime, exploitation,
and neglect faced by the Irish became a pattern imposed on the many
other ethnicities that followed.
Western European Jews, from Germany and Austria, established a strong
presence in the 1830s, and other Northern European immigrants flooded
the Lower East Side after the failed revolutions of 1848. By the 1860s,
over 100,000 residents of German extraction lived around Tomkins Square
Park in a neighborhood known as “Kleindeutschland.” Chinatown was
established on the Lower East Side beginning in the 1850s, following the
depletion of the California gold mines. The 1870s and ‘80s saw large
numbers of Italians, mostly from the South and Sicily, and Eastern
European Jews, escaping the pogroms and forced conscription that were
their fate in Russia, immigrate to the Lower East Side. At the turn of
the century, the Lower East Side had a population density of almost
240,000 people per square mile, greater than the “Black Hole” of
Calcutta. These were the people whose plight was documented by the
photographer Jacob Riis in his shocking work, How the Other Half Lives.
The tide of immigration continued until the strict imposition of
immigration quotas in 1921.
Puerto Ricans, due to the colonial status of their Island, were excluded
from the quotas and established a presence on the Lower East Side
beginning in the 1950s. Loisaida is the name they gave to their
neighborhood, approximately 30 square blocks, bounded by the East River
on the East, Avenue A on the West, 14^(th) Street on the North and
Houston Street on the South. By the 21^(st) century, tens of millions of
immigrants of various ethnicities had come through the Lower East Side.
The 1970s was a period with a growing awareness and concern about energy
supplies and energy costs. The United States’ dependence on Middle
Eastern oil was highlighted by the emergence of OPEC and the Arab oil
embargos of 1973 and 1979. Gasoline shortages, rising prices, and long
lines at gas stations all contributed to a growing sense of crisis that
President Jimmy Carter called “the moral equivalent of war.” Nor was the
“energy crisis” the only crisis we were facing.
We were also in the midst of an “urban crisis.” The crisis of the cities
called into question the very viability of our urban centers. It was
characterized by a general trend toward urban decay, finding specific
manifestation in fiscal crises, like the one that nearly bankrupted New
York City; the breakdown of once identifiable and coherent
neighborhoods; the abandonment of whole areas of the City, epitomized by
the South Bronx, but also affecting Manhattan neighborhoods like
Loisaida; and a widespread erosion of services. All of these trends were
symptomatic of a deeply rooted malaise.
The flight of capital from our central cities, exemplified by their
rapidly eroding tax bases and the shift of corporate operations to the
hinterlands and suburbs, indicated a growing willingness to “write off”
our older urban centers. While urban values and urban culture are the
predominant forces that have shaped modern American society, the cities
themselves were no longer considered essential to our national
wellbeing. City after city was being deserted by the middle-class and
the cultural elite, and this trend continues today in cities like
Detroit and other decaying “rust belt” cities. The festering class and
racial tensions that once again flared up in our cities showed that the
period of optimism, born of the massive social programs of the 1960s,
was over.
Loisaida was the poorest neighborhood in Manhattan. Per Capita income
averaged $1,852 per year. Unemployment was estimated at 20%, with a high
percentage of the remaining population underemployed (working part time
or sporadically). Youth unemployment was close to 40% and one third of
the housing stock consisted of abandoned buildings and rubble-strewn
lots owned by the City. The rest of the buildings were rapidly
deteriorating: on some blocks the number of abandoned properties was as
high as 60%.
The pattern of abandonment began with landlords milking high rents from
tenants and refusing to make repairs or deliver services. They also
stopped paying taxes to the City. After three years of non-payment the
City would move to seize the building, at which point the landlords
would bring in arsonists to displace the tenants and burn down the
building in order to collect fire insurance. At 519 East 11^(th) Street
14 mysterious fires broke out in a three-month period. By the time the
ownership reverted to the City all that were left were burned out brick
shells, which often collapsed into a mound of rubble. These derelict
five and six story tenement houses and the vacant lots strewn with their
rubble were the cityscape of Loisaida.
In an eerie parallel to today, it was ironic that the very forces that
contributed to the downfall of our urban centers were proposing the
official solutions. When the government bureaucracies, the banks and the
large corporations condemned fiscal irresponsibility and informed us
that we had to pay the price for our free spending past, failing to
mention that the price included exorbitant interest rates and massive
public bailouts from which they benefited. We were told that the public
must pay the costs and have confidence in its elected leaders to deal
with the crisis. The onus for the “urban crisis” had been shifted to
those who were its victims, the inner city poor and working people.
The forces that created the crisis stood ready to pick the bones of the
ghetto for their own enrichment. The middle class who abandoned the city
was ready to return, if the poor could be eliminated. City planners
talked about “planned shrinkage” in population that would eliminate the
poor by displacing them. The banks, which consistently red-lined areas
like Loisaida, refusing to extend credit for low-income housing, stood
ready to finance speculators and developers who would revitalize the
area to make it attractive to the middle class. Gentrification had
already transformed neighborhood after neighborhood in Manhattan, and
Loisaida was prime turf for the implementation of those solutions.
There was, however, another response to the crisis of the cities. It was
rooted in the decentralist approach to town planning developed by people
like Peter Kropotkin in Fields, Factories, and Workshops, Ebenezer
Howard in Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Lewis Mumford in The Culture of
Cities, Paul and Percival Goodman in Communitas, and Murray Bookchin in
works like The Limits of the City and From Urbanization to Cities. It
was a response that called for a radical restructuring of cities and a
basic redefinition of urban life. It was not a unified movement with a
national program or leadership, nor even a strictly political movement.
It was, rather, a broad social movement based in neighborhoods and
communities involved in transforming the cities at a grassroots level.
It was guided by the principle of local self-reliance and concerned with
a wide variety of issues related to that principle. The areas that
emerged as priorities included community control of schools, health
care, law enforcement and governance; urban food production, housing,
planning and land use; energy production and conservation, waste
treatment, and neighborhood economics.
It was a movement that was influenced by an ecological sensibility, not
simply in terms of sensitivity to issues of environmental quality, but
in a more profound sense as well. The movement viewed the neighborhood
or community as an ecosystem, not merely as a spatial entity. This
provided a perspective that emphasized the interrelationship of the
various issues outlined above. It urged people to understand the crises
that they faced as symptomatic of a deeper social and cultural malaise.
It allowed people to develop a holistic vision for the future of their
community.
This approach drew on the lessons of natural ecology and worked with
ecological principles in developing both its critique of existing forms
of urban organization and in the alternatives it put forward. The
ecosystem approach stressed the danger inherent in the simplification of
an ecosystem, and pointed out that natural systems find unity in
diversity: the greater the number of species interacting in an ecosystem
the more stable it is. Simplification via the centralization of
functions like food and energy production, far removed from the people
who rely on them, creates a situation that is not only alienating, but
inherently unstable as well. They also understood ecosystems as
non-hierarchical: a web of interdependency, not systems based on command
and control. Furthermore, they were informed by the scientific insights
into the mutualistic nature of natural systems.
The ecological perspective also informed the concern about the
environment of the neighborhood. The urban environment of Loisaida
consisted of abandoned buildings, garbage filled vacant lots, decaying
tenements, deteriorating public parks, streets lined with stripped cars,
and soil contaminated with heavy metals and lead paint chips, polluted
air and congested streets. Those were the environmental concerns that
the movement focused on.
On another level the movement was ecological in that it looked toward
newly emerging ecologically sound technologies in areas like energy
efficiency, solar energy, wind power, and organic forms of food
production to alleviate their environmental problems.
The reintegration of functions like food and energy production into a
neighborhood or community was seen as a means of revitalizing the urban
environment. The movement for urban alternatives looked toward the
introduction of non-polluting, renewable sources of energy as a facet of
the reconstitution of the cities. Solar, wind and other alternatives
present the possibility of decentralized control and small-scale
application. Intensive organic food production techniques were being
used in vacant lots and on rooftops to reintroduce the growing of food
into the urban economy. All of these techniques were being integrated
into plans for neighborhood development that emerged directly from
grassroots organizations, rather than from centralized and
bureaucratized City or Federal agencies.
While the emphasis was on local control and decentralization, the
movement was not isolationist but recognized the need for cooperation
and coordination of certain activities, with the insistence that this
coordination should be facilitated through the principle of
confederation. Rather than beginning with the assumption that
centralization was efficient, the movement began with the principle of
decentralizing whatever functions could be dealt with in that fashion,
and accepted only the degree of central coordination which proved to be
necessary. Their vision was the creation of “A world of neighborhoods.”
This emphasis on decentralization grew out of a concern for the creation
of social forms and institutions which retained a small scale which was
accessible to people. A human scale acts as an inhibiting factor to the
growth of bureaucracy, and helps to ensure that people can retain direct
control over the decisions that affect their lives.
Chino García of CHARAS put it this way: “I myself, my group or my
family, is my nucleus. My building is part of it, my block is next.
There are family issues, building issues, block issues, there are
neighborhood issues, city issues, on to universal issues. Everybody has
to look up to that. You can’t play games. Things do not just happen,
there are always people scheming and manipulating. Therefore every human
being must be prepared to deal with this, with issues, with everyday
life operation.”
“In this society you are unconsciously or consciously a servant for
people who manipulate your whole life,” García continued. “You can’t
just sit and allow things to happen. You should take issue with
everything, everything that affects you.” García’s words reflected a
growing awareness in Loisaida.
A walk through the streets of Loisaida in 1978 revealed some remarkable
things if one knew where to look beyond the garbage-strewn lots and
abandoned buildings. Vacant lots on 12^(th), 11^(th), 9^(th), 8^(th),
3^(rd) Street and Houston Street were producing a bounty of fresh,
organically grown tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, squash, and beans. A
rooftop on 11^(th) Street had sprouted a windmill and a bank of solar
collectors. Numerous buildings, gutted by arsonists and abandoned by
greedy landlords, were undergoing tenant directed renovations. An
abandoned oil company garage on 8^(th) Street was transformed into a
recycling center. A loft on Avenue B served as a center for the
construction of portable geodesic domes, which were used as greenhouses
on rooftops and in vacant lots. A garbage-filled lot on 9^(th) Street
and Avenue C was developed into a cultural plaza for neighborhood
residents. Design work had begun on a permanent dome greenhouse intended
to house a 2,400 gallon (9,000 liters) pond for raising fish to edible
size in an intensive, closed system aquaculture project; fish were also
being raised in basements on 11^(th) Street. A youth run community
center on Houston Street near the Bowery was retrofit with the first
passive solar space heating wall built in New York City. Rooftop gardens
were flourishing at various locations around the neighborhood, and
rooftop solar greenhouses were under construction.
Alternative technology had come to Loisaida. The projects mentioned
above were the result of the work of a loose coalition of grassroots
organizations, including the 11^(th) Street Movement, CHARAS, and
CUANDO.
The 11^(th) Street Movement was a federation of low-income tenant’s
cooperatives on East 11^(th) Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.
Though mostly Puerto Rican, the movement had a diverse membership
including young and old, black and white. In 1973 they were the first
group in New York to undertake urban homesteading on a sweat equity
basis, which came to be a key concept in the reconstruction of the
neighborhood.
The process of Sweat Equity Urban Homesteading began with the formation
of a group of homesteaders, initially community activists, who went into
the abandoned building as squatters, claiming the space as their own.
Often this required confronting the police and resisting eviction by the
City. In the early days, repeated efforts were often necessary to lay
claim to a building. Since the squatters were poor, unemployed, or
underemployed people they lacked the financial resources necessary for
traditional approaches to home ownership, where typically banks required
a 10% payment of equity in order to get a conventional housing loan.
Instead, as the name suggests, they used their own labor, or sweat, as
equity. The group then began the physical renovation of the building,
which usually required an extended period of time cleaning out the
debris before the actual construction process could begin. This stage of
the process often took up to a year of work.
After the cleaning process was completed, the homesteaders needed to
find the materials required for renovation and acquire the skills needed
to do the work. They looked first to themselves and other community
groups for those resources. They formed an income-limited housing
cooperative to negotiate with the City for ownership of the building. At
that time, the City saw the buildings as worthless and was anxious to
get them back on the tax rolls. Under pressure from the community the
City frequently sold the buildings to the homesteaders for a pittance,
sometimes as low as $100 per unit.
In the work on 11^(th) Street, local tradesmen and union members helped
to train the homesteaders, who then went on to train others. They
hustled and scrounged building materials until they were able to secure
an interest-free loan from a dairy cooperative in upstate New York, and
over a period of six years were able to complete the renovations and
provide low-cost, attractive housing for themselves. They would continue
to contribute labor each week for the maintenance and management of
their building.
Buildings undergoing sweat equity renovation and management are income
limited. Homesteaders may sell their apartments, but only for what they
have put into them, eliminating profit and effectively removing the
property from the real estate market. They can only sell to others who
meet low-income guidelines, ensuring a supply of affordable housing for
poor people.
By 1978, East 11^(th) Street between Avenues A and B was in the process
of rebuilding itself, with two sweat equity low-income tenants
cooperatives completed, six other tenement houses under renovation, and
an ambitious program of open space reclamation. Their movement grew and,
after its initial successes, it would eventually gain national
attention. Ultimately over 40 buildings in Loisaida were successfully
renovated through the sweat equity process.
519 East 11^(th) Street was the first building in the city to utilize
solar energy and wind power. The 11^(th) Street Movement was best known
for this solar project, and for their legal battle with the energy
company Con Ed over the installation of a rooftop windmill, which
resulted in a decision that set the precedent for the purchase and
installation of independent power-producing utilities. Today,
independent power production constitutes a multi-billion dollar
industry.
The 11^(th) Street Movement was also the prime sponsor of El Sol
Brillante Community Garden on 12^(th) Street. Under the direction of
11^(th) Street member and ISE alumna Linda Cohen, residents began using
organic growing techniques, solar cold frames, and intensive composting
and worm production to grow a wide range of crops.
A series of large plywood tanks were constructed in a basement on
11^(th) Street. These tanks provided the basis for experiments in urban
aquaculture. Species being cultured included trout, carp, catfish,
tilapia, freshwater clams, and crayfish. The tanks were structured after
a system used at the ISE, where one tank yielded a harvest of
approximately 70 pounds (32 kilos) of fish every six months. The 11^(th)
Street Movement was attempting to find ways to integrate the various
projects, using wastewater from the fish tanks to fertilize the gardens
and garden waste and worms to feed the fish. The hope was to create
closed, self-supporting systems.
CHARAS was a small collective which touched the lives of thousands of
neighborhood residents. The group still exists today, after over forty
years of struggle. In the 1970s its full time members included men and
women, mostly young people between 18 and 30. They were local activists
who worked on projects involving environmental education and community
development. The group was founded after community activists met the
designer Buckminster Fuller in the summer of 1967. He introduced them to
geodesic domes and they proceeded to build over one hundred domes
throughout the city working with school kids, street gangs, garden
clubs, and anyone else with the desire. They transformed vacant lots
throughout Loisaida into playgrounds, gardens, vest pocket parks and
cultural plazas for local artists. CHARAS was active in the area of
housing as well, helping to initiate the work on 11^(th) Street, among
other projects. Their members included former gang leaders, carpenters,
poets, and musicians. They were committed to working with the youth of
the neighborhood and showing them alternatives to the street.
Their work centered on La Plaza Cultural Redevelopment Area, situated on
the corner of Avenue C and 9^(th) Street, and the adjacent blocks, which
was the largest vacant lot on the Lower East Side. This lot, where
weeds, garbage, and rubble from collapsed buildings once provided a
breeding ground for rats and disease, was transformed into a congenial
setting for neighborhood cultural events and festivals, and to this day
remains an important community gathering space in Loisaida. Local poets,
musicians and dancers performed poetry, Latin music, and folk dances for
a cross-section of the community on a regular basis. With its mural
depicting the many cultures of the Lower East Side as a centerpiece, La
Plaza was an oasis of color in an otherwise bleak cityscape.
It also illustrated the crucial role that arts and culture played for
the movements in Loisaida. Local poets developed a school of street
poetry, known as Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican), which spoke about
people’s lived experience in Loisaida, and dealt with issues like drugs,
police brutality, rent strikes, and racism. At the Nuyorican Poets Café
on East 6^(th) Street, they invented the form of performance poetry
known as the poetry slam. They also developed a vibrant community
theater. Bomba and Plena dancers kept Puerto Rican traditional dance and
folk music alive, and performed for the community in La Plaza. Local
graffiti artists and muralists, working in the tradition of Diego
Rivera, presented graphic descriptions of social issues facing the
neighborhood by painting on the sides of abandoned buildings.
Music filled the streets of Loisaida, particularly in the warm months
when life was lived largely outdoors on the stoops, street corners and
open spaces of the neighborhood. The sounds of congeros pulsed up and
down the block, salsa bands played at street fairs, in La Plaza, and at
local social clubs. The Nueva Canción movement also found expression in
Loisaida. A band called Loisaida, founded by CHARAS members Edgardo
Rivera and Edwin (Pupa) Santiago, performed music that melded Nueva
Canción, Latin rhythms, and hard rock to express a variety of
experiences in the neighborhood.
Directly across from La Plaza on 8^(th) Street stood an abandoned oil
company garage, squatted and renovated by CHARAS to serve as a
neighborhood recycling center. With the closing of the Village Green
recycling center on the West Side, CHARAS operated the only recycling
program in Lower Manhattan. According to Angelo González, coordinator of
the center, it was designed to recycle glass, paper, aluminum and
ferrous metals. The recycling center was a major step in the effort to
combine ecological concerns and neighborhood restoration.
On Avenue B, at a loft that served as CHARAS head-quarters and communal
living space, the first of a new generation of lightweight, portable
domes was completed. It was built to serve as a portable greenhouse for
the Green Guerillas, a citywide group of gardening activists. Luis
Lopez, coordinator of the porta-dome project for CHARAS, asserted that
domes had a number of other potential uses, including as portable
shelters, loft bedrooms and emergency housing.
Lopez and other members also designed a permanent dome to be built in La
Plaza, to contain a 2,400-gallon (9,000 liters) tank for raising fish.
Utilizing passive solar energy, the dome was designed to produce fish
year round with a very low startup cost and minimal energy inputs. That
dome was never built in La Plaza, but CHARAS members came to Vermont
and, working with a group of our students, constructed it at the ISE
center there.
The coordinator of Youth Environmental Action Projects for CHARAS was
Luis Guzmán, who later went on to fame as a film actor, but still
retains ties to CHARAS and his neighborhood. He noted how “all these
projects help people gain a sense of pride in their neighborhood. They
help them to see that things here are not hopeless and that if we all
work together we can change things. The domes are like a symbol of
something new, and it is happening here first.”
A concern with environmental action and the use of alternative
technology were areas that had been generally associated with the middle
class. Popular wisdom had it that low income people were too concerned
with daily survival to become involved with the luxuries of
environmental and alternative technological concerns. The experience of
these groups proved the conventional wisdom wrong. In fact, it was the
concern with daily survival that led these groups to begin working with
alternative technology. In the words of Edgardo Rivera, they were
looking for “survival with style” and alternatives to the arenas of
survival traditionally presented to Loisaida residents: survival via
welfare, street hustling, menial jobs, or, for a very few, assimilation
into the middle class.
Nuyorican poet Miguel Algerian also described the options available for
survival in Loisaida: the workaday world at the lowest rung of the
economic ladder, and survival via the street. He then mentioned a third
option: the establishment of a new set of social economic and political
forms that can sustain a people. It is this third option in which CHARAS
was engaged. Its members searched for alternatives to the traditional
economic options offered by capitalism, alternatives to the
individualism and homogenization presented by the mass culture,
alternatives to the assimilation of Puerto Rican traditions into main
stream America, alternatives to official plans for urban renewal, and
alternatives to the sense of powerlessness which permeated their ghetto
environment.
CHARAS went on to claim an abandoned elementary school on 9^(th) Street
as part of La Plaza Cultural Redevelopment Area. They began squatting
the building in 1979 and turned it into El Bohio Cultural and Community
Center. There they ran important educational, environmental and cultural
programs for 22 years, until they were forcibly evicted by the police
acting on the personal orders Rudolph Giuliani, in one of his last
official acts as Mayor of New York. Giuliani also tried to reclaim
Loisaida’s many community gardens in order to auction the lots off to
developers. He declared that “The era of socialism on the Lower East
Side is over.”
Cuando means “when” in Spanish. It was also the acronym for Cultural
Understanding and Neighborhood Development Organization, a youth-run
organization that offered a variety of educational, recreational, and
cultural programs at its center on 2^(nd) Avenue. The group was founded
in 1969 by students from the First Street School, a libertarian school
founded by Mabel Chrystie, and their members ranged in age from their
early teens to their early twenties. When I was first introduced to them
and given a tour of their huge abandoned building I felt like I was
meeting Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. When they told me of their
ambitious plans, I was skeptical of what they could achieve. I was
wrong. They spent three years as squatters in the building before
community pressure forced the City to offer them a lease.
The reconstruction of the neighborhood in which these groups were
involved took a radically different form than the official plans
suggested for the neighborhood. The CUANDO experience provides a
striking example of the difference. CUANDO was housed in the old Church
of All Nations Settlement House on 2^(nd) Avenue at Houston Street,
which was part of a twelve square block area proposed as the Cooper
Square Redevelopment Project. The group seized the building in 1975 when
the church moved out, leaving the youth of the area without a
recreational facility. According to CUANDO founder Roberto (Chi Chi)
Illa, through continual struggles they were finally able to gain legal
recognition of their occupancy in the summer of 1978.
Cooper Square wanted to tear down the CUANDO building and replace it
with high-rise, middle-income housing. The youths had different ideas.
With the aid of Ted Finch, from the Energy Task Force and under the
direction of Fred Cabrera, coordinator of CUANDO’s solar project, they
completed construction of New York City’s first passive solar heat wall
to provide space heating for their third floor gymnasium. They installed
five window box greenhouses and began developing French intensive
gardens on their 5,000 square feet (465 square meters) rooftop. They
developed plans for converting a nonfunctional 24,000 gallon (90,000
liters) swimming pool in their basement into a commercial aquaculture
facility, and designed an attached solar greenhouse for the south side
of their building. Richard Cleghourne, the program coordinator for
CUANDO, envisioned the building developing into a center for
demonstrating urban alternative technology.
The groups saw alternative technology as having the potential to provide
a material base for the development of a cooperatively owned and
managed, self-reliant economy for the neighborhood. Coupled with a
developing system of community control of neighborhood institutions for
education, health care, public safety, sanitation, housing, and
planning, this was the basis of the long range, holistic vision that
inspired the experiments they undertook.
The projects affected the community on three levels that interacted with
and reinforced each other. First, they contributed to meeting the
material needs of the people involved and improved the immediate
environment of the neighborhood. Concretely, solar energy meant lower
bills for oil and electricity. Gardens and aquaculture systems resulted
in high quality, healthy food and reduced food costs. The recycling
effort helped to alleviate the health hazards presented by garbage in
the streets, and provided a small additional income for those involved.
Neighborhood children now played in a grassy park rather than a
rubble-strewn lot.
In relation to the total population, the number of people affected to
varying degrees by alternative technology projects was arguably small.
The projects were conceived as pilot and demonstration programs, their
impact limited by definition. To meet needs, particularly food and
energy needs, in a more significant fashion would have required a
massive intensification of the principles demonstrated in the pilot
projects.
Secondly, the alternative technology projects provided a valuable focus
for community organizing. The groups were remarkably successful in
involving neighborhood young people in their work. They managed to draw
youth off the street and in some cases even recruited participants from
neighborhood gangs. The energies of the street, which claimed so many of
Loisaida’s youth, were drawn upon and channeled into productive
directions.
The gardening projects in particular drew participation from a broad
cross-section of the community. Many of the older gardeners brought
experience from years of gardening on the Island of Puerto Rico. The
gardens, housing cooperatives, and recycling efforts were all arenas in
which the participants developed the skills of self-management necessary
for community control.
The organizational forms which emerged were truly grassroots and
participatory. Each organization functioned as an autonomous group and
each had a particular structure, but they all reflected a common concern
with ensuring that all of those involved in a particular project
participated in making the decisions that affected that project.
Emphasis was placed on teaching rather than telling participants how to
work together. Learning by doing was the rule of thumb, and youth were
given positions of responsibility to help develop their leadership
skills. Leadership itself was defined in non-hierarchical terms. People
lead by example and by virtue of their experience. Leadership shifted
from individual to individual in relation to the specific activity. The
processes of both decision-making and physical work were seen as
inseparable from, and as equally important as, the end result.
Leadership in CHARAS was situational, shifting from task to task, with
everyone in the organization at some point providing leadership in one
activity or another, often defying stereotypes, with women taking on a
variety of leadership roles, including in traditionally male arenas like
construction. When working on projects, CHARAS always tried to involve
the broader community. As Chino García put it: “We try to make it, as
much as we can, a collective effort. It is not easy. A lot of people
don’t know how to work with a collective structure. A lot of people want
leadership, we have that trouble. They feel that they are useless
without it. They want some central body. They’re used to dictatorship,
not their own plans and preparations. We try to teach them to be more
independent of a central body, more independent as a team.”
That “people should work together collectively,” was the explicit ideal.
García further described the process: “We try to make decisions as a
group. Things are written by the group and signed ‘collectively’ rather
than ‘respectfully.’ It means the group decided. We do not use names
like ‘Director,’ we are not traditional leaders; we call ourselves
co-coordinators of what has to be done.” The whole point being that
CHARAS “try to get people to the point where they can be their own
bosses; develop their skills and break out of that whole leader/led
mindset,” García concluded.
This process of personal empowerment was reflected in the integration of
new members into the group. Leadership took on an educational form,
teaching people to become leaders themselves by empowering individuals
to become an effective part of a collective decision making process.
CHARAS had a mechanism known as the Yucca system. The principle at work,
according to Angelo González, was “Each one teach one.”
This practical learning experience was powerful. “I felt close to my
people. I wanted to do something, about the neighborhood,” said Luis
Guzmán, describing his experience as a seventeen-year-old. “When I was
in high school I was part of a study group of students and we would
discuss things, like how the economic system works, why we have poor
people, really breaking it down, you know, how the system works,
different forms of government. My mind was developing, questioning lots
of things.” Guzmán did organizing for the United Farm Workers when he
met Chino García, who invited him over to CHARAS. “I started getting
more involved, going to meetings, getting involved with committees, and
learning a lot about community politics, being asked to speak about the
community and my feelings.” In the process, “I opened up to a lot of
ideas, learned to make judgments, say yes or no; to develop a sense of
myself, and a commitment to the movement and my people; to understand
the system, come up with alternatives and think positive.” Participation
affected everything, he explained: “It’s like being a warrior, you have
to learn everything out there and change yourself, you can’t learn it
all from books.”
If politics is defined in its most basic sense as the way people relate
to each other and make decisions that govern their lives, then the
movement in Loisaida must be understood as intensely political. But not
so if politics is defined in its narrow, more generally accepted sense
as the parliamentarian or sectarian exercise of political power. The
groups did not conform to a particular political ideology, doctrine, or
dogma. However their practice was informed by a set of principles.
Edgardo Rivera explained it this way, “A different kind of politics is
emerging. A state of change is happening. Rather than push one model or
one program on people you have to be participatory and give support to
things that are beneficial to the people and the environment of the
neighborhood.” In reference to CHARAS he said, “Everyone is an
individual with their personal beliefs, but as an organization CHARAS
does not identify itself with any system, party, or political
organization. It is not separatist politics; it is a matter of
direction.” The basic idea was that the community should address its own
needs. “We are aiming for the area to define its own future,” said
Rivera. “As people keep learning they realize that there is a lot they
can do themselves to make things better.” The political implications
were obvious: “You suddenly realize that nobody should plan for anybody
else,” Rivera explained. “We meet our own needs. The community meetings
serve that purpose.”
The major emphasis of CHARAS was exemplary action and praxis. In the
words of Victor Sanchez, a prison organizer and former member of CHARAS,
“The concept is based on the practice of self-reliance and
self-determination. We do not deal with ideology or false pride. We are
about work.” To be sure, “When you talk about community development, in
the long run you are talking about controlling the police, the schools,
everything,” Sanchez admitted. “We are aware of the fact that we live in
a country full of contradictions; we don’t need any more contradictions
among ourselves. So we try to set an example of how things can be done.”
“The practice centers on everyday life,” Sanchez explained. “Did you eat
today? Do you have heat? We are open.” Indeed, “we have been accused of
being liberal, too open, too vulnerable. But it is not liberalism,” he
insisted: “we just don’t want our organization to be used as a platform
for someone’s ideology.” Their rejection of sectarian ideology should
not be misinterpreted as anti-intellectualism or ignorance, rather it
was a conscious choice to develop a politics based in direct action and
a reconstructive vision, and a recognition of the inadequacies of
sectarian political theory in dealing with the particulars of their
situation.
The organizations involved were part of a larger network of Lower East
Side groups involved in housing, health care, educational and cultural
issues. For several years these groups assembled at quarterly Loisaida
town meetings to make plans, discuss the problems and celebrate the
triumphs of their neighborhood. These town meetings, attended by
individual citizens and representatives of over one hundred community
organizations, were initiated by the Institute of Cultural Affairs, a
Chicago-based group devoted to grassroots community empowerment and
reconstruction, rooted in a utopian, communal, Christian tradition.
While overt religiosity was rejected by most of the groups and
individuals who participated in the town meetings, the forum itself
proved to be extremely valuable as a way to make decisions about
neighborhood priorities, assign responsibility for specific projects,
and coordinate activities between groups.
At the town meetings the community was divided up, block by block, and
detailed plans were blueprinted for the redevelopment of each abandoned
building and vacant lot, with responsibility for each project assigned
to a specific neighborhood group. A comprehensive plan for the
neighborhood resulted.
Over 300 individuals attended a typical town meeting. Decisions were
made using direct democracy, and the decisions affected a group of
approximately 3,000 people actively engaged in the process of community
reconstruction in Loisaida, about 10% of the total population of the
neighborhood. Given that a large number of neighborhood residents were
children and another large percentage of the population were involved
with crime, drugs, and other activities that made their participation
unlikely, 3,000 people constituted a significant block of Loisaida’s
citizenry. The groups also produced a magazine focused on community
issues, The Quality of Life in Loisaida.
Another level on which the projects affected the neighborhood was more
long term. While the projects that I have described were experiments and
pilot projects they were all seen as having a potentially transformative
impact on Loisaida. The economic development of the area through
alternative technology meant not only the physical reconstruction of the
neighborhood, but the creation of jobs, job training and new sources of
income as well. Such opportunities were desperately needed in Loisaida,
where estimates of unemployment among youth ran as high as 40%. Job
training was provided to people in the rapidly emerging fields related
to alternative technologies like solar energy and retrofitting buildings
for energy efficiency. Jobs for those trained could have been developed
in the neighborhood itself where about 70% of the housing stock was
abandoned or dilapidated.
The groups began to create small-scale cooperative businesses to put
their skills to use. CHARAS began building portable domes. CUANDO
constructed window box greenhouses that they hoped to market. Plans were
made for the expansion of the recycling center to full resource recovery
from raw garbage. The members of CUANDO designed an attached greenhouse
for their 2^(nd) Avenue center to supply ornamental plants for
neighborhood shops in addition to raising vegetables. The 11^(th) Street
Movement constructed two rooftop greenhouses for food production. A
carpentry cooperative and a tool lending library were developed on
11^(th) Street, as was a solar installation cooperative. Sweat equity
buildings throughout the neighborhood formed a fuel oil purchasing
cooperative, and the community started both a food cooperative, and a
community credit union.
The development and survival of the projects in Loisaida rested on an
economic base rooted in the tradition of mutual aid. It drew on Puerto
Rican communal traditions, and a sense of mutualism often found in
immigrant communities, with mechanisms like hometown clubs, extended
family networks and street cliques providing support and sharing
resources. The motto of CHARAS was “Doing more with less.” As Chino
García described it, “It means to take a dollar and stretch it, by not
being individualists and one person or group hog it all.”
In CHARAS people shared money as it became available; reciprocity was
the principle at work. Individual needs were taken into account; a
father of two children would receive more than a single person. The rule
was “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his
or her need.” Edgardo Rivera said, “Sometimes we get paid, sometimes we
don’t. Sometimes someone may have an outside job, or unemployment. We
share, we stay open, people are happy, and they survive. Sometimes it is
hard to believe that no one has any money.”
Funding for the projects has come from a variety of sources: community
churches, private foundations, public grants, and low interest loans.
After the work was already established, the three groups received
$96,000 from the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), an
independent organization funded by the federal Community Services
Administration to finance experiments in alternative technology for
low-income people. NCAT funded numerous projects around the country,
though most focused on the application of alternative technology in
rural situations. The projects in Loisaida were the first attempt at a
concerted application of alternative technology in the urban
environment. Hiram Shaw, the acting Director of NCAT, believed that “If
it can work in New York, it can work anywhere.”
The groundwork for the projects was laid over a period of several years.
Technical assistance through the planning and design phases was provided
by a number of groups and individuals, including Buckminster Fuller, the
Energy Task Force, Adopt-a-Building, the Urban Homestead Assistance
Board, the Green Guerrillas, landscape architect Robert Nichols, and the
Institute for Social Ecology. This collaboration between radical
environmentalists and the low-income Puerto Rican community of Loisaida
was unprecedented. The cooperation provided a strong argument against
those who claimed that environmental issues were irrelevant to inner
city people.
It is important to note that while outside assistance was instrumental
in making the projects a reality, the primary impetus rested within the
Loisaida community. Chino García noted that “In the ‘60s the
anti-poverty program came into the neighborhood with millions of
dollars, and the government had all these programs that were going to
help us out and save the Lower East Side. Those programs were supposed
to be controlled by the people, but they never really were. So those
millions of dollars were spent and nothing really changed, in fact
things got worse. Some people got the idea that the government would
provide for them. But some of us came to understand that we had to do
for ourselves if we really wanted to control what happens in our
neighborhood. That’s what the environmental projects are about. We do
for ourselves, we use whatever resources we have available in the
community (‘doing more with less’) and after we have gone as far as we
can go we look to the outside for some help. We welcome assistance from
the outside, but they have to understand that the community will make
the decisions about what goes on and the community will own and control
whatever we build up.”
This emphasis on grassroots control and decision-making was crucial to
the success of the projects. It enabled alternative technology to gain a
foothold in this neighborhood where other efforts to introduce
alternative technology to the inner city, like the community technology
experiments in Washington, D.C., which Karl Hess wrote about in his book
Community Technology, had failed. These were not groups of middle class
people bringing the blessings of alternative technology to the poor.
Rather, the efforts were an expression of the people of the neighborhood
demanding access to the tools that could enable them to reconstruct
their own neighborhood. In the words of Angelo González of CHARAS, “It
is the human energy, not the solar energy that will really make the
difference.”
While the projects were but a tiny fragment of the work that needed to
be done if Loisaida was to be turned around from its state of decay,
they represented an important first step. The use of forms of
neighborhood organization for which the technologies can provide a
material base had the potential to transform the Lower East Side. There
was, of course, no guarantee that such a transformation would occur. The
projects were underfinanced, understaffed, and frustrated by the
constant bureaucratic entanglements involved in any community work. But
given the technological and more importantly human energies involved,
there was great hope for “un milagro de Loisaida,” a miracle of the
Lower East Side. That miracle, the transformation and reconstruction of
America’s archetypal immigrant ghetto, had important implications for
all of our decaying cities, and for the redefinition of an urban
lifestyle for all of our citizens.
Clearly, the technologies were not a panacea. In fact, technology in and
of itself can offer no solution to what are essentially social problems.
But they did hold the potential to support the emerging cultural
movement in Loisaida in significant ways. I wish I could point to
Loisaida today as a model for a an ecological, self-reliant,
directly-democratic neighborhood built on the rubble of a collapsed
capitalist society, but the reality is that the larger economic and
political forces of the city and nation-state conspired to prevent the
developments described above from reaching their full potential. We
discovered that, to paraphrase Lenin, you cannot build ecotopia in one
neighborhood. From the early 1980s, the movement was forced to turn its
attention to the battle against gentrification.
As the US economy recovered from the recession of the early 1980s and
entered the era of Ronald Reagan, Loisaida was targeted for
“development.” Just a twenty minute walk from Wall Street, the vacant
lots and abandoned buildings were seen as ripe for picking by real
estate developers, who rechristened the neighborhood “alphabet city.”
Ironically, a major factor that made the neighborhood so attractive was
the revitalization of the community through the efforts of the
grassroots. Vacant lots were now community gardens, abandoned houses
were being rehabbed, and a vibrant New York Puerto Rican culture had
emerged. Artists, punk rockers, and students seeking low rents were
moving east of Avenue A, and bringing clubs, restaurants and shops with
them. A new “hip” neighborhood was taking shape, and real estate was
cheap. Speculators started moving in.
The building next to the CHARAS loft on Avenue B changed hands three
times in an eighteen month period, first for $12,000, then for $36,000
and finally for $320,000, without any work or renovation being done. The
City changed its policy and instead of negotiating with community groups
for ownership of abandoned properties, all City owned buildings and lots
were put on the auction block.
A huge struggle was waged when the Giuliani administration decided to
evict the community gardens and auction off the lots on which they were
built. Squatters were targeted for eviction and long-standing community
projects were under assault. The jiu jitsu of the real estate market
forced the community of Loisaida to fight a holding action, which
resulted in numerous confrontations with the police and the New York
City Housing Authority.
The gentrification of the neighborhood moved into high gear during the
1980s. The active displacement of low income residents increased, with
landlords using arson, harassment, and intimidation to force out
renters, abetted by the City’s efforts to build middle income housing
that would have excluded most of the poor and working people of
Loisaida. The City also tried to divide various constituencies in the
neighborhood; they proposed middle income artists housing be built on
the site of La Plaza Cultural, a move that was successfully resisted by
CHARAS and other community groups, including artists groups.
In the 1990s, the City renovated Tomkins Square Park in the heart of
Loisaida and used the opportunity to tear down the amphitheater there,
which had served as an important center for cultural and political
gatherings, and to push the homeless population, which had been a strong
presence in the park, out of the neighborhood in order to “sanitize” it
for the more middle class residents starting to move east of Avenue A.
In 1990 a massive riot began in the park and roiled into the surrounding
blocks as a protest against these actions.
The community groups held a series of protests and direct actions to try
to stem the tide of displacement; they fought back in every way
imaginable. They were forced to abandon their ambitious plans for
reconstructing their neighborhood and put all of their energy into
fighting gentrification. The shifting population dynamics insured the
election of a city council member who was a proponent of gentrification,
and the real estate interests, arguably the most powerful force in New
York politics, stepped up the pressure on the city for market sales of
city owned properties. By the mid 1990s, gentrification of the Lower
East Side was a fait accompli. Some of the community groups were able to
hold on to what they had built up; Sweat equity groups who had
negotiated legal title to their buildings were able to keep them. The
actress Bette Midler gave millions of dollars so that some community
gardens were purchased from the city and placed in a public trust, after
years of protest and resistance. However, many more groups lost their
hard-earned projects. After 22 years of operation, CHARAS was evicted
from El Bohio, based in the old public school on 9^(th) Street, and they
also lost their recycling center on 8^(th) Street. CUANDO was evicted,
their property sold, and ultimately torn down. One of the most promising
grassroots efforts at neighborhood reconstruction ever attempted was
crushed under the weight of the real estate market.
In retrospect it is clear that the movement made some strategic
mistakes. When the neighborhood was redlined by the banks and the
abandoned properties were considered worthless by the City, the
grassroots groups should have organized to ensure a comprehensive
approach to community ownership and control of those properties, rather
than the piecemeal approach that emerged. We should have had the
foresight to realize that, given the pattern that had emerged in so many
Manhattan neighborhoods before (like Greenwich Village, SoHo and
Tribeca), gentrification posed a real threat, something that was hard to
believe walking through the mostly abandoned neighborhood of the 1970s.
The City could have been pressured to guarantee community access as a
first priority for City owned properties. This approach was used by the
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston and they were able to
secure their part of the Roxbury neighborhood for community ownership
and community based development efforts. There was a City wide coalition
of grassroots groups that included the South Bronx People’s Development
Organization, the Banana Kelly Block Association, the Brooklyn based
National Council of Neighborhood Women, and numerous other grassroots
organizations dealing with housing and open space issues, which could
have mobilized to put more pressure on the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development to insure community ownership and provide
more public spending for Sweat Equity Urban Homesteaders, a position
which would have garnered broad public support since Sweat Equity
produced low income housing at approximately one fourth of the cost of
building traditional public housing.
The movement also failed to fully develop the potential of the town
meetings as a counterpower to the City government, a strategy later
developed by Murray Bookchin in his concept of libertarian municipalism.
As the pressure of gentrification increased the town meetings fell by
the wayside, replaced, in part, by the democratization of the Community
Planning Board, which now consists of elected, rather than appointed,
representatives. Representative democracy, however, is not a replacement
for the direct democracy practiced in the town meeting forum, and this,
I believe, led to a growing disempowerment of residents.
An approach which combined protest and direct action, the two primary
methods used by the movement, with the genuinely political dimension
expressed through the town meetings could have had a powerful impact and
set the stage for the creation of real community power. In addition to
reinforcing the democratic inclination of the people in the
neighborhood, and providing them with education and experience in the
exercise of direct democratic decision-making, such a strategy could
conceivably have presented a powerful counter-force to the real estate
developers. And it could have been further advanced to challenge the
very structures of decision-making that govern the City, ultimately
forcing a change of charter and a redefinition of governance that would
have allowed for the full realization of their vision of “a world of
neighborhoods.”
From a distance of almost forty years it is easy to see the shortcomings
of what we attempted. However, given the urgency of the crises we
currently face, the growing dependence of the planet on dwindling
supplies of fossil fuels, the need to immediately deal with climate
change, and the imperative to address all of these crises in a fashion
that emphasizes freedom and equity, the lessons of Loisaida loom large,
both as an inspiration and as a cautionary tale.
The ecosphere is threatened to a degree unprecedented in humanity’s
tenure on the planet. The rupture with the natural world is symptomatic
of and a causal factor in the breakdown of social relations. The
consciousness of exploitation and domination extends to both people and
nature and given their concurrent evolution it is unlikely that one will
be eliminated exclusive of the other.
The ecology movement, at least in its most conscious manifestations, has
recognized the need for a reconstructive vision that acknowledges the
primary importance of these interrelations. The radical ecology movement
rejects simple technical fixes as the solution to ecological problems
that have their roots deeply embedded in the culture. The movement has
stressed the need for a holistic approach to ecological problems and
further, has suggested that basic changes in the ethos of the culture
and the structure of its institutions are necessary if we are to ever
achieve a truly ecological society.
Radical ecologists are attempting to create a theory and practice for
such an ecological society: a reconstructive vision that they can begin
to actualize in the here and now. In the creation of their
reconstructive praxis they draw inspiration from many sources, including
the scientific discipline of ecology, the traditional cultures of Native
American peoples, and the spiritual paths of the East.
There is another tradition that informs their vision as well though
unfortunately it remains largely unknown, ignored, misunderstood, or
unacknowledged, even by the movement itself. It is the utopian
tradition.
While using a different language and set of references, the utopian
tradition in many ways parallels the concerns of the radical ecology
movement. There is much in the history and theory of utopia that can
help illuminate critical problems in social ecology.
What follows are reflections on that utopian tradition, a typological
analysis which differentiates various strains in the tradition, and an
analysis of those aspects of the tradition most relevant to the emerging
praxis of the radical ecology movement.
Throughout the whole of history there have been attempts to transform
the given social conditions in basic ways, to visualize and to actualize
a society more harmonious, fulfilling and clearly close to ideal than
the one given. These attempts have taken a variety of forms ranging from
the purely philosophical and conceptual to the reconstructive and
revolutionary. In a broad sense, these efforts can be understood as part
of the utopian impulse.
Utopia is a term coined by Sir Thomas More in 1515. He traces the root
to two Greek words: outopia, translated as no place, and eutopia, the
good place. The word has acquired, since Frederick Engles’ critique of
“utopian” socialism in Anti-Duhring, the negative connotation of
outopia—cloud cuckoo land. For our purposes, the term must be understood
in a more neutral way: as a description of an approach to social
reconstruction oriented toward the creation of an “ideal” society.
The utopian impulse is a response to existing social conditions and an
attempt to transcend or transform those conditions to achieve an ideal.
It always contains two interrelated elements: a critique of existing
conditions and a vision or reconstructive program for a new society.
Utopias usually arise during periods of social upheaval, when the old
ways of a society are being questioned by new developments. Thus,
Plato’s Republic emerged in Athens after the victory of Sparta in the
Peloponnesian Wars, More’s Utopia emerged during the Age of Discovery,
and the industrial revolution gave birth to numerous utopian
experiments.
While these utopias and countless others are all distinct in a
programmatic sense they share certain structural elements. The
combination of critique and reconstructive vision has already been
noted. They also share a holistic perspective, focusing on the
reformation of society as a whole rather than the simple reform of
specific social institutions. They tend to choose a humanly scaled
community as their locus of action and elaborate their transformative
vision within that context.
Utopias often display an orientation toward “happiness,” defined in
terms of material plenty—as communal property—and “justice,” a concept
defined in widely divergent ways. They frequently emphasize equality
between men and women, and an integration of town and country. The
themes of balance and harmony resonate throughout utopia.
Utopias develop their vision either by drawing on residual traditional
elements or historic tendencies of a society that are seen as positive
and elaborating and supporting those elements—as Plato took inspiration
from aspects of Greek tradition—or by drawing upon and elaborating new
developments, often scientific or technological, that seem to hold
promise—as Francis Bacon did in his New Atlantis.
The impulse toward utopia has persisted over millennia. Paul Radin
suggests that even primitive hunters and gatherers harkened toward
utopia, as reflected in their dream/myths of a past Golden Age that
would return in the near future. We see a certain continuity of utopian
thought from the philosophical writings of Plato through the Christian
myths about the Garden of Eden and eschatology.
In more recent times, utopia has shifted from the religious to the
secular arena. From the Enlightenment onward, utopia began taking a more
explicitly social form. Here too though, we must distinguish between the
utopias of intellect and attempts to actualize utopia through
communalistic or revolutionary experiments.
In examining the broad historic tradition that comprises the utopian
impulse we can develop general categories of utopias that display
similar characteristics. At one end of the continuum, the literary and
philosophical utopias present a theoretical “blueprint” for a perfect
society, while on the other end, utopian social theories, experiments
and movements make concrete attempts to bring about “utopia.”
These two approaches to utopia are described by Lewis Mumford in The
Story of Utopias: “One of these functions is escape or compensation; it
seeks an immediate release from the difficulties or frustrations of our
lot. The other attempts to provide a condition for our release in the
future.” Mumford called these “Utopias of escape” and “Utopias of
reconstruction,” respectively: “The first leaves the external world the
way it is; the second seeks to change it so that one may have
intercourse with it on one’s own terms. In one we build impossible
castles in the air; in the other we consult a surveyor and an architect
and a mason and proceed to build a house which meets our essential
needs; as well as houses built of stone and mortar are capable of
meeting them.”
Philosophical and literary utopias are the work of individuals and as
such tend to reflect their creators’ likes and dislikes. These
idiosyncratic approaches have given rise to the cliché that “One man’s
utopia is another man’s hell.” While the philosophical utopias address
important social problems they tend to generate “solutions” that take
the form of mechanistic plans requiring an authoritarian social
structure for enforcement. They are usually hierarchical, dogmatic,
static societies. This rationalization of society and the concurrent
rigidifying of social hierarchies was described by Karl Popper and
brilliantly explored in Stanley Diamond’s critique of Plato’s
Republic—the archetypal literary utopia.
Reconstructive utopian social movements approach the problem of creating
a new social order in a more organic fashion. The emphasis at the outer
edge of the continuum is on utopian process, with the actual
reconstructive details of the “new society” left to the participants’
determination. At this end of the continuum we can place the various
“people’s utopias” which have a long history suggested by the early
slave revolts, early Christian Gnostic communities, and the heretic
communities seen as part of the Gnostic or Anabaptist tradition, like
the Cathars in France, the Paterini and Lombardi in Italy, the
Brotherhood of Free Spirits, the True Levelers and Diggers during the
English Revolution, the revolt of Thomas Munster and other movements of
the Reformation, peasant revolts, the Paris Commune, and in the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries anarchist praxis in Russia, Spain,
and elsewhere.
These are the more libertarian forms of utopia, to varying degrees
participatory, democratic and non-hierarchical, and all dynamic and
transformative in their approach.
In Mumford’s words: “The Utopia of reconstruction is what its name
implies: A vision of a reconstituted environment which is better adapted
to the nature and aims of the human beings who dwell within it than the
actual one; and not merely better adapted to their actual nature, but
better fitted to their possible development.” Furthermore, “By a
reconstructed environment I do not mean merely a physical thing. I mean
in addition a new set of habits, a fresh scale of values, a different
net of relationships and institutions.”
At a variety of points between the extremes, we can place the ideal
constitutions, planned communities, intentional communities, communes,
and revolutionary movements. They conform to a general definition of
utopia that includes the combination of critique and reconstructive
program—a holistic vision of the new society that insists on the
integration of the various psychological, social, economic, political,
and spiritual aspects of society.
The tradition of the reconstructive “people’s utopias” is an old one,
predating the literary and philosophical. It is in all probability a
tendency that predates written history. “People’s utopias” have been
efforts on the part of groups of people to actualize their utopia rather
than to relegate it to a lost paradise or to defer it until death. They
have been concerned with a total restructuring of society from the
bottom up. These efforts have taken the form of attempts to institute
the new social order either through the creation of separatist
intentional communities or through active revolutionary opposition to
the old order.
The communitarian efforts of the classic “utopians”—Saint-Simon,
Fourier, and Robert Owen—were an outgrowth of the idiosyncratic
“systems” usually associated with the literary tradition. Yet they did
attempt to bring their utopias into being and in so doing laid the
foundations for modern socialist thought, which can itself be understood
as a further expression of utopia. On the other end of the continuum of
“people’s utopias” stand the revolutionary anarchist movements of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
One way of defining utopian social movement in the nineteenth century is
by examining the distinction between these movements and the “scientific
socialism” of their chief critics, Marx and Engels. The Marxist critique
of utopian socialism is most clearly expressed by Engels in
Anti-Duhring. He acknowledges the contributions made by Fourier,
Saint-Simon, and Owen toward the formulation of the basic ideas of
socialism. In Saint-Simon, Engels explains, “we find a comprehensive
breadth of view, by virtue of which almost all the ideas of later
socialists, that are not purely economic, are found in him in embryo.”
Of the utopians in general he states, “We delight in the stupendously
grand thought and germs of thought that everywhere break out through
their phantastic covering.”
It is the “phantastic covering” of Saint-Simon’s system of which Engels
was critical. He argued that Saint-Simon’s utopia, a unification of
science and industry in a “New Christianity” in which the bourgeois are
transferred into public servants by the spirit of reason and
cooperation, was an expression of a period when industrial capitalism
and its ensuing class antagonisms were still in an undeveloped state.
Though he recognized an embryonic class-consciousness in Saint-Simon’s
overriding concern for “the class that is the most numerous and most
poor,” ultimately Saint-Simon is seen to be dominated by the historical
situation that stimulated his theory: “To the crude conditions of
capitalist production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude
theories.”
Fourier is praised by Engels for his astute and biting criticism of
French society. However, in Engels’ words, “Fourier is at his greatest
in his conception of the history of society. He divides its whole
course, thus far, into four stages of evolution—savagery, barbarism, the
patriarchate and civilization.” Engels sees in Fourier’s historical
ideas an application of dialectics analogous to Kant’s use of the method
in natural science. Yet, Fourier, despite his brilliant insights into
the workings of society and history, projected a complete system as the
solution to France’s social problems. Engels said, “These new social
systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked
out in detail the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure
phantasies.”
Yet, by dismissing Fourier’s “phantasies” Engels and others dismissed
the most prescient and provocative aspects of Fourier’s thought: his
emphasis on the emotional content of life in his utopia, a whole
psychodynamic dimension displaying a set of concerns with the
nonmaterial quality of everyday life. Unfortunately, this did not
reemerge as a major theme in socially reconstructive thought until the
1960s, when it was advanced by theorists such as Herbert Marcuse and
Norman O. Brown.
The idiosyncratic element in these utopian systems was, in Engels’ view,
inevitable. As with the literary and philosophical utopias, they were
the works of individual thinkers who saw the new society arising out of
reason and self-conscious activity, divorced from a specific historical
period and level of economic development. They were an expression of the
likes and dislikes of their creators, conditioned by their subjective
views and expressing their own absolute truths. Unfortunately, in his
search for “science” and in his insistence on a narrowly defined class
analysis, Engels rejects some of the more profound aspects of the French
utopian tradition.
Robert Owen was a formulator of systems as well, but the industrial
capitalism of nineteenth-century England, where Owen put his theories
into practice, was significantly more developed than in France. Owen,
who began his career as a social reformer from the unlikely position of
factory manager, gradually came to believe that socialism was the only
means of guaranteeing justice to the working class he saw battered and
degraded by the new system of production. Owen made the transition from
philanthropist to socialist upon his realization that “the newly created
gigantic productive forces, hitherto used only to enrich individuals and
to enslave the masses, offered the foundations for a reconstruction of
society; they were destined, as the common property of all, to be worked
for the common good of all.” He saw private property, religion, and the
present form of marriage as the obstacles to the institution of his
ideal society. While his attempt to actualize his ideal in the form of a
communist community in Indiana met with failure, he was a major
influence on the British working class. Owen’s communism, grounded in
the materialist view that people were a product of their heredity, but
moreover their environment, was still an appeal to reason. Rather than
looking to the proletariat to emancipate themselves, he demonstrated the
logic of his system and hoped to convince the bourgeoisie through that
logic.
This brings us to another crucial point in Engels’ critique of the
utopians. He states that despite a genuine concern for the working
class, “one thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a
representative of the interests of that proletariat, which historical
development had in the meantime produced.” Here Engels is referring to
the failure of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen to represent the interests
of the proletariat exclusively, based on their lack of perception of
what he saw as the deep, irreparable chasm which developed between
bourgeois and proletariat under the impetus of industrial capitalism.
There can be no doubt that all three were concerned with the plight of
the working class but they did not envision the new society born of a
confrontation between classes over control of the means of production.
Theirs was not a truly revolutionary socialism; they still believed in
the ideal of reason, which lay at the root of the bourgeois revolutions,
and in the ability of reason to bring about the new social order. The
essence of Engels’ critique of the utopians lies not with their
formulation of the basic ideals of socialist theories, but with their
lack of understanding of the process by which the new society may be
brought into being and their idiosyncratic projections of what form the
new society will take.
After the classic utopians, socialism began to take on an identity as a
revolutionary movement, first in France, later in other European
nations. This development followed two distinct paths, the “scientific”
socialism of Marx and Engels, and a continued “utopianism” best
presented by the anarchists Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Both
positions were influential among the emerging workers’ movement; Marx’s
influence was strongest in Germany and England where an industrial
proletariat had developed and, according to Marx’s theory, the material
conditions were sufficiently evolved to allow for the development of
socialism. The anarchists’ theories were embraced by workers’ movements
in France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, where the craft tradition of
the small workshop and individual producer had not entirely given way to
the factory system necessary for the creation of a true industrial
proletariat.
The Marxists and anarchists were the two major forces in the newly
formed International Working Men’s Association, the First International.
Though doctrinal differences had surfaced before the formation of that
organization—most notably in the dispute between Marx and Proudhon,
sparked in part by Proudhon’s refusal to collaborate with Marx—it was in
the First International that the issues that divided the Marxist
“scientific” socialists and anarchist “utopians” clearly surfaced.
The differences revolved around three interrelated questions concerning
class analysis, organizational form, and the role of the state.
Though the anarchists recognized a severe class antagonism and had
discarded the classic utopian’s view that the bourgeois would reform
themselves, they did not accept Marx’s notion that the only truly
revolutionary class was an industrial proletariat, organized and
disciplined by the factory system. They posited the concept of
revolutionary activity arising from a multiplicity of classes: workers,
to be sure, but also peasants, déclassé intellectuals and students, and
even the sans-culottes, that lumpen element for which Marx had nothing
but contempt. The Marxists criticized this position as petit bourgeois.
Indeed, in Proudhon we do see a naïve belief in the ability of the
workers to create the new society without a direct confrontation with
the owners, but Bakunin and Kropotkin both clearly express a belief in
class struggle as the means of carrying out the “social revolution.” The
dispute lies then not with the concept of class struggle, but with the
composition of the classes that make the revolution.
The second major dispute was based on two very different concepts for
organizing the socialist movement. Marx saw the need for a rigid,
disciplined, centralized party organization that would take as its model
that most efficient form of organization yet devised: the factory
system. Workers, organized and disciplined by the industrial processes,
would find the embryo of the new society within the sweatshop of the old
and use any means possible, including parliamentary activity, to end its
exploitation. The anarchists were highly critical of this approach. They
saw it as a repetition of the bourgeois pattern in the sense that it was
hierarchical, authoritarian and stifling to people’s individual
initiative. They believed that this approach, though it might bring
economic justice, would perpetuate the larger structures of bourgeois
society. They were not simply concerned with ending exploitation, an
essentially economic concept, but with ending domination as well, a
broader social concern. They opted for an organizational model that was
decentralized, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian and committed to a
strategy of direct action. The anarchists believed that the means and
ends of their movement could not be separated: that the form of
organization for building the new society must be congruent with the
forms they wished to create in that new society.
This dispute over organizational forms is directly connected to the
third major area of disagreement: the role of the state. Marx called for
the creation of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would seize
state power, and through a transitional period, pave the way for the
“withering away of the state.” The anarchists were convinced that rather
than withering away, such a state would make its highest priority its
own perpetuation. They proposed the dissolution of the state per se, and
its replacement by a decentralized federation of autonomous production
units and communities, which under direct self-management would
coordinate the economic and social life of what was formerly the state.
With communist anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin, we see a new
definition of utopia emerge. They were not concerned with blueprinting
the ideal society for inherent in their approach was an aversion to
“systems” and preconceived utopias. Rather they tried to develop a
process whereby a multiplicity of new societies could form themselves.
They had a strong belief in cultural diversity as a value to be
encouraged for its own sake. They recognized in the vestiges of
authentic community life that survived the state, as well as the new
organizations created by the workers, the embryo of the new society.
They visualized communism developing in accordance with the specific
cultural tradition of each community, and each community, though
participating in a regional and national economy, retaining a distinct
cultural identity and the greatest degree of autonomy possible, without
sacrificing that degree of coordination necessary to insure the smooth
functioning of an industrial society. They saw the creation of a network
of such self-managed communities, social and economic units as a
substitute for the state.
The anarchist vision of the new society took much of its inspiration
from what they saw as the authentic social life and culture of the
people. They envisioned personal responsibility and self-conscious
ethical behavior taking the place of law. They called for the creation
of “people’s assemblies” as the basic unit of governance. Kropotkin
specifically offers the folkmoot of the Medieval commune; the Russian
mir, or peasant village commune; and the cantonal structures of
Switzerland as possible models. The anarchists developed concepts of
leadership that were substantially different from those which ruled
bourgeois society. Their ideal was much closer to communal and
traditional leadership roles, with leaders emerging in specific
situations because of specific skills, and with responsibility and
decision making ultimately lying with the collectivity. The anarchists’
brand of communism was close to the communal economic base
characteristic of pre-state peoples. They envisioned the creation of
self-reliant communities which integrated industry and agriculture, town
and country, and work and play. They projected the collectivization of
the means of production under the direct control of the workers and
peasants, not mediated by the state—as it is under a policy of
nationalization—and coordinated on the local, regional and, ultimately,
planetary level by a process of federation. Their ethos was from each
according to their abilities, to each according to their need. The
anarchists are a clear extension of the tradition of the people’s
utopia. Yet, despite their differences, and despite the denial of many
Marxists, in a sense, so too is Marx himself.
If we view utopia as a cultural development that replaces the political
association of the state as the organizing principle of society with a
multiplicity of authentic social and economic associations, we gain a
perspective that allows us to understand the utopian element in Marxism.
While Marx never spelled out his “utopia” in concrete terms, he
maintained that the new society must emerge from forms already present
in the old. Certain writings are pregnant with implications of the form
a post-revolutionary development might take. As Martin Buber points out,
Marx’s formulations concerning the “withering away of the state” point
in a direction similar to that suggested by the anarchists. In his 1844
essay, “Critical Glosses,” after discussing revolution as the last
“political” act, Marx says, “But when its organizing activity begins,
when its ultimate purpose, its soul emerges, socialism will throw the
political husk away.” Marx’s belief in the ability of and need for the
proletariat to seize direct control of the organs of production is
reflected in his attitude toward the Paris Commune of 1871, a historical
model that was also claimed by the anarchists. Marx praises the Commune
as an expression of “the self-government of the producers.” He believed
that ultimately “the communal constitution would have rendered up to the
body social all the powers which have hitherto been devoured by the
parasitic excrescence of the State which battens on society and inhibits
its free movement.”
According to Marx, capitalism must organize the forces of production
before socialism can emerge. Still, in a letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx
contradicts his own statements when he discusses the prospects of
adopting the cooperative tradition of the mir, the Russian peasant
community, as a basis for socialism, and he indicates that such communal
forms would prove valuable as models for the new society and in fact
might be able to transcend the development of capitalism and move
directly into communism. Here Marx was not advocating a return to
primitive village communism, but rather the integration of the tradition
of cooperation and communal ownership at a higher level of development
into the new society.
Further indication of the utopian element in Marx’s theories can be
found in the section of the Grundrisse discussing pre-capitalist
economic formations. Marx’s descriptions of the institutions of
primitive communism and their evolution into those of capitalism
communicate a sense of the respect that he had for those earliest
economic forms. In the dialectical formulations concerning the emergence
of socialism from capitalism, it is possible once again to get a sense
of the reemergence of the communist impulse, latent in society for
epochs, on a higher level, set free by the development of material
conditions that provide the preconditions for socialism. The impulse is
not a mechanical application of tribal, communal organization but an
unfolding of the same human potential in a new set of economic
conditions.
Marx does not look to a change in human nature as the catalyst to bring
socialism into being, but rather to the maturation of material
conditions. In reference to the Paris Commune he says, “It has no ideals
to realize, it has only to set free those elements of the new society
which have already developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois
society.” Marx avoided any but the sketchiest intimations of what the
“developed elements” might be, beyond the organization of the
proletariat provided by the factory system, but he leaves no question as
to the composition of the new society. It is “classless” in the sense
that the class antagonisms between proletariat and bourgeois will be
resolved by the elimination of the bourgeoisie, and it will be organized
by the workers themselves. Marx’s critical attitude toward the early
utopians and all socialists who proposed complete “systems” for the new
society is reflected in his unwillingness to draw his own blueprint. He
focuses his attention instead on the process through which the new
society can be actualized. It is, significantly, in the realm of process
that his vision departs from the tradition of utopianism.
In the creation of the increasingly rigid and reified body of
theoretical work that forms the basis of his political legacy, most
noticeably in Das Kapital, Marx betrays his own utopian promise. In his
search for a science with regular “predictable laws” and a universal,
inexorable dialectic, he commits the very error for which Engels
chastised the French utopians; he creates a rigid system that, despite
many valuable insights, allows for no deviation and that fully
incorporates Marx’s own idiosyncrasies. Despite his unwillingness to
blueprint his utopia, by the “scientific” pretense of his endeavor and
by thus enshrining the limitations of his thought, Marx doomed his
followers to a betrayal of his utopian impulse.
Marx’s utopianism is in a certain sense the most interesting,
provocative and inspiring aspect of his vast, often contradictory volume
of work. This is the core of Marx’s humanism and the engine that drives
forward his revolutionary project. It is the positivistic “science” of
Marx that has prevented the realization of this utopian core, and
allowed for its distortion by the various parties and sects that bear
his name.
As Ernst Bloch points out in his Philosophy of the Future, “A
distinction has to be made between the Utopistic and the Utopian; the
one approaches circumstances only immediately and abstractly, in order
to improve them in a purely cerebral fashion, whereas the other has
always brought along the constructural equipment of externality.” He
explains that “only Utopism, as it reaches out abstractly above reality,
need not fight shy of a mere empiricism that undertakes only another
form of abstract apprehension below reality. A real Utopian critique can
only proceed from a viewpoint that is adequate, that does not—so to
speak—correct or even replace over flying by a factistic creeping.”
Certainly, this sense of Marx’s critique of capitalism can be seen as
utopian. The utopian perspective is able to provide a valuable critique
because it exists outside of the given. Unlike ideology, utopia is a
projection of that which does not yet exist, rather than a reflection of
the ruling class and the dominant culture. As such, it is exempt from
decay. In Bloch’s paraphrase, “Only that which has never yet come to
pass cannot grow old.” Bloch concurs with the view that the urge to
utopia is a primal one, discernible from the earliest epochs to the
present, though represented by different forms in different historical
situations. However, he sees continuity between the various aspects
which utopia presents. The urge toward utopia, the vision of an ideal,
harmonized society, ever shimmering on the horizon, is in Bloch’ s view
an archetype, which precedes even formalized mythology. Bloch identifies
Marx as an heir to that tradition. It is the promise of utopia, not its
specific image, which gives urgency to the Marxist project. That
promise, while never crystallized, is central to understanding the
dynamics of revolution.
In a letter to Arnold Ruge, the young Marx explains that, “Our slogan,
therefore, must be: Reform of consciousness, not through dogmas, but
through analysis of the mystical consciousness that is unclear about
itself, whether in religion or politics. It will be evident then that
the world has long dreamed of something of which it only has to become
conscious in order to possess it in actuality.” It will be evident, he
continues, “that there is not a big blank between the past and the
future, but rather that it is a matter of realizing the thoughts of the
past. It will be evident finally that mankind does not begin any new
work but performs its old work consciously,” and thus “to have its sins
forgiven, mankind has only to proclaim them for what they are.”
In terms of his critique and his implicit vision, then, even Marx must
be understood to contain an element that is utopian. This is not to say
that the various hues of Marxists populating the left today have
retained this utopian impulse. Orthodox Marxism, as practiced by
“socialist” states and parties, however, is certainly distinct from the
utopian praxis of people’s movements.
“People’s movements” are an expression of a different set of organizing
principles. This is exemplified by the three interrelated questions that
split the Marxists from the anarchists. The first question concerned the
constituency of the movement—whether it was constituted by proletarians
or whether it was based on a broader constitution of proletarians and
déclassé intellectuals, peasants, petit bourgeoisie, as well as lumpen
elements. The second question concerned the structure of the
movement—whether it should be decentralized or centralized; and third
questions concerned the role of the state and politics—dictatorship of
the proletariat versus decentralized federation, party versus movement,
and political economy versus holistic socio-economic-cultural
reconstruction. Closely related to these major differences are questions
about the forms of ownership and decision-making—as in nationalization
versus collectivization, and central planning versus self-management.
Although the relationship between the two positions has been
historically complex and hard and fast categorizations are difficult,
these remain the pivotal questions. From the time of the Paris Commune
on, we can clearly note this bifurcation. Movements who insist on
decentralization and reject the framework of the nation state, as well
as parliamentary “political” activity as a valid means for cultural
reconstruction, seem to be the more direct line of connection to the
utopian continuum.
Given the historical trajectory of the libertarian wing of the utopian
tradition, it is not surprising that there has been an association of
the anarchist and reconstructive aspects with the radical ecology
movement. Aspects of the tradition that bear a direct relation to the
more conscious and radical elements in this ecology movement grow out of
the theoretical congruence of concerns which transcend gross economic
issues to examine the over all quality of life. The utopian—particularly
the anarchist—concern for a process and organization that embodies the
ideals of the new society is an obvious point of connection. The most
profound insights of the utopians contain a core of logic that seems
almost prescient when one considers that the concerns were addressed and
articulated by a movement that existed hundreds of years before the word
“ecology” entered our vocabulary.
In its concern with the whole of people’s lives and its refusal to opt
for the simplistic reductionism of the more mechanical “scientific
view,” the utopian tradition displayed an intuitive understanding of the
holistic approach embodied in ecology as a scientific discipline. The
perception of society as a whole and the concern of the utopian impulse
with the transformation of the whole, rather than the reform of its
parts, is reflected in the understanding that grows out of the study of
ecology: that there are critical interdependencies and relationships in
any system, social or ecological, that create a totality greater than
the sum of its parts. The integration of components, the awesome display
of unity growing from the diversity of nature, provides a powerful
paradigm for the understanding of social interactions. This shared
outlook, this concern with whole systems, is the underlying connection
between the utopian tradition and the radical ecology movement, but it
is further refined by a whole set of particulars that the two share as
well. It must be understood, however, that the “laws” of natural ecology
that influence the vision of the ecology movement are paradigmatic,
powerful metaphors for the harmonious, homeostatic reworking envisioned
by the radical ecology movement.
In that reworking, we could do well to reconsider the role of utopia,
for as Bloch points out, “Utopian consciousness remains wholly without
description inasmuch as the moment of its fulfillment is still
outstanding.” This “Utopian consciousness,” he continues, “does not
obscure its blinding goal with solutions, let alone with more reified
means from the route to that goal.” Its reason for doing so are not
skeptical or agnostic, but “superlatively real.” The “most objective
correlative ground that Utopian consciousness possesses,” Bloch claims,
is that “the world substance, mundane matter itself, is not yet finished
and complete, but exists in a Utopian—open state,” that is to say in “a
state in which its self-identity is not yet manifest.”
Social ecology begins with an exploration of the past in order to gain
an epistemological understanding into how humanity defines, and thus
constitutes, nature. This is a question of vital importance, not merely
an exercise in philosophical abstraction. The way we conceptualize
nature and humanity’s place in nature has become a highly contentious
issue in ecological thought and environmental philosophy. The
conclusions that we draw will inform our ethics and the political
decisions that shape our world.
How can we derive such an epistemology? We must start out by
understanding that nature is not a static entity but evolutionary,
indeed, that the very process of biological evolution constitutes
nature. The evolutionary record, natural history, is the reality of
nature. From the molecular to the biospheric level, nature is in a
process of constant flux and change: birth, death, mutation, even
extinction are all part of a process which creates the complex web of
life, of which humanity is a part. In biological terms, then, nature is
both being and becoming. Evolution is nature.
Humanity must be placed within the evolutionary matrix and recognized as
playing a unique role in that matrix by virtue of our capacity for both
creative and destructive interaction with the rest of nature. As a
species we have the ability to profoundly affect other species,
ecosystems, and the biosphere itself in ways unparalleled by any other
life form. This makes us both an integral part of nature—a product of
the same evolutionary forces that created all other species on the
planet, past and present—and at the same time distinct in our ability to
affect nature. Social ecology recognizes this fact, compelling us to
make a distinction between what we term “first nature,” nature evolving
according to processes not affected by humanity, and “second nature,”
which is nature determined by human consciousness and action.
In first nature a primary mode of evolution is natural selection:
species change or mutate over time in order to adapt to the environment
in which they find themselves, thus conferring an evolutionary advantage
that ensures survival and regeneration. At some point cultural evolution
emerges out of—though it does not replace—biological evolution. Second
nature is best characterized by the emergence of self-consciousness and
culture. Humanity remakes itself constantly through processes of tool
making (technology), institution building, explanation (religion,
philosophy, and science), and art. As humanity advances our
understanding of the evolutionary process, of physics, genetics, and
other arenas of science our species is becoming, at least potentially,
to use Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s phrase, “nature rendered
self-conscious,” nature aware of itself and consciously forming its own
development. To an unprecedented degree, and with a rapidity seen
nowhere else in nature, humanity adapts the environment to meet its
needs: cultural evolution is a remarkably dynamic process capable of
transforming the conditions of a society in less than a generation.
If we acknowledge the reality of a second nature, produced by human
creativity and artifice, as distinct from first nature, we must also
acknowledge that it grows directly out of first nature, or biological
evolution. Thus, logically, first nature contained within itself, from
its very inception, the potential for second nature. Natural history,
the evolutionary record, must be read as a process in which nothing
essential is lost. Second nature still contains within it first nature;
complex forms of mammalian life begin as single cells and organize into
more complex cellular forms (organs) contained within still more complex
assemblages of cells (organisms). The pH of the ancient oceans in which
life first began is replicated in the amniotic fluid that supports life
in the womb of complex mammals, like human beings. In a certain sense
the conception, gestation, and birth of an individual person roughly
replicates the process of biological evolution. Our species comprises
both first nature and second nature.
When we view the evolutionary record over the whole of biological
development we see a movement toward an ever-greater degree of diversity
and complexity of life forms, and the potentiality for consciousness and
self-consciousness. This is not to say that there is a linear, unbroken
ascent toward human consciousness; evolution is full of fits and starts,
florescence and decline, even extinction. But it is undeniable that life
on earth evolved from unconscious, single-celled organisms, to
biologically complex forms of life with the capacity to think abstractly
and to reason. Does this fact confer upon humanity the “crown of
creation,” the right to dominate the rest of nature and view first
nature as mere resource? Or does it require us to understand ourselves
as a part of nature with the capacity to play either a destructive role
or a creative and sustaining role? Does this understanding not bring
with it the responsibility to critically examine the existing
relationship between first and second nature, particularly in light of
the insights offered by the science of ecology? And should we not create
an ethics and politics that can ensure a reharmonization of first and
second nature to stem the tide of destruction resulting from our current
ethics and politics, which threaten the integrity of both first nature
and second nature?
Social ecology suggests that we need to look at first nature to gain
insight into the principles that inform natural history and ensure
ecosystem health. Such an examination must draw on the best scientific
understanding and interpretation we can assemble, but we must also
recognize that such a project is not purely empirical. The history of
interpretation of “the laws of nature” is fraught with highly
subjective, politically charged moments. In the nineteenth century,
Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer twisted Darwin’s ideas to provide
a rationale for British colonialism and imperialism. More recently,
Hitler justified his views by drawing on the “immutable laws of nature.”
In light of this history, rather than claim immutability or absolute
authority, social ecology attempts to use the best existing science to
identify tendencies or principles at work in evolutionary processes and
ecosystem dynamics, and acknowledges that these tendencies may be
mutable and do not exhaust the whole range of processes at work in first
nature. They do seem, however, to represent important tendencies that
relate directly to the project of reharmonizing first and second nature,
a project that takes on some urgency given the current threats facing
the planet. We must also recognize, as with any theory based on science,
that social ecology too will require modification as new scientific
insights emerge.
An ethics that has a goal to reharmonize first and second nature must be
oriented toward encouraging ever-greater complexity, diversity, and
higher degrees of consciousness. This orientation must inform its
relation to both first and second nature, striving to protect and create
ecosystems that offer a multiplicity of trophic levels to support
biologically diverse species in a set of complex interactions, and do so
in a highly self-conscious fashion.
The same principles must be applied in the realm of second nature. If
our goal is an ecological society our ethics must ensure complex,
diverse societies and cultures that encourage ever-greater degrees of
human self-consciousness, characterized by respect, participation,
equity, and scientific understanding. The pursuit of ever-greater
degrees of complexity, diversity and freedom (as consciousness and
choice) is a necessary condition for both healthy ecosystems and healthy
societies, and a precondition for the reharmonization of first and
second nature.
A related principle present in first nature that must necessarily be
applied to human societies in order to achieve a healthy relationship
between the two is the principle of unity in diversity. The health,
strength, and stability of an ecosystem stand in direct relation to the
diversity of species that interact within the system. Ecosystems with
the highest degree of biodiversity, like rainforests or estuaries, are
able to sustain themselves for thousands of years. Large numbers of
species fill every trophic level, giving the system as a whole the
ability to compensate for even vast fluctuations in the population of
any particular species, therefore allowing it to maintain its overall
stability and integrity.
An application of this principle is an ethical imperative in second
nature, where lack of unity and intolerance of diversity pose a threat
not only to individual cultures and societies but to the biosphere as a
whole. The results of second nature’s unwillingness to embrace this
principle has led to social and ecological disaster alike; warfare,
genocide, and racism in second nature, and a frightening diminution of
biodiversity, a wholesale destruction of ecosystems, and global climate
change, in first nature. The two are inextricably linked, and social
ecology demands a recognition and implementation of the principle of
unity in diversity as a corrective to the destruction that has already
been wrought.
When the science of ecology began its study of ecosystems the tendency
was to view systemic relations in hierarchical terms; a central concept
in understanding ecosystem dynamics was that of the food chain, a rigid
hierarchy of dependencies in which the largest carnivores were placed at
the top. As our scientific understanding has increased, this crude model
has been replaced by more sophisticated descriptions that define the
complex interrelationships at work in an ecosystem as a food web. The
food web describes an essentially non-hierarchical network of
relationships based on interdependencies, linking together all species
into a mutually supportive whole. This has led to a recognition that
first nature is organized non-hierarchically.
The hierarchies that we establish between species in first nature—the
lion as “king of beasts,” or the “lowly ant”— are really a projection of
human hierarchies. In a technical sense, hierarchy is defined as an
institutionalized system of command and control that ultimately has
recourse to physical coercion in order to compel obedience. No such
systems exist in first nature. The lion does not command and control any
other species, nor do lions institutionalize their relationships. Even
the seemingly dominant role that an individual female lion may play
within her pride is better understood as a form of situational dominance
than an institutionalized hierarchy.
Hierarchy vitiates the mutualistic web of relationships crucial to
ecosystem stability and even survival. The recurrent cycles of birth,
death, and decay link all of first nature and second nature. Despite the
undeniable role played by inter- and intra-species competition for
evolutionary advantage, ecosystem dynamics are best characterized as
rooted in the principle of mutualism; each species plays a critical role
in the health and development of the other. This is true even in
predator-prey relationships where various species are mutually
dependent: put somewhat simplistically, predator species depend on prey
for survival, and the prey is dependent on the predator for maintaining
healthy population levels. The mutualistic relationships at work in an
ecosystem become more complex in direct proportion to the biodiversity
of the system.
Evolution is, above all, the realm of potentiality. Every life form
contains within it a set of possibilities, both biological and
behavioral. These potentialities and the striving to actualize them are
what drive life forward. The degree to which this process is conscious
is a major factor in natural history and one way that we can begin to
differentiate second nature from first nature. This is not to suggest a
radical disjuncture between first and second nature: although first
nature is always present in second nature we can see a gradual emergence
of consciousness, self-consciousness, and human efforts to fulfill
inherent potentialities that characterizes the emergence of culture. If
mutualism is to serve as a natural tendency that informs human ethics,
it must be rooted in this understanding of potentiality; it must be a
part of the continuum of behaviors that make us human. This potentiality
has found wide expression throughout the whole of human history, which
itself offers convincing evidence that we must incorporate this
principle into an ethical framework that will allow us to fully
reharmonize first and second nature.
The popular conception of an immutable human nature based on greed,
competition, warfare, and domination is challenged by the
anthropological record. Indeed, anthropology forces us to reject such a
narrow view of “human nature,” and to replace it with the much broader
concept of a continuum of potential human behaviors. This concept, while
undeniably including the potentiality for greed, competition, warfare,
and domination, also includes the potentiality for caring, sharing,
mutualism, and non-hierarchical relationships. This framework provides a
real basis for believing that our species, humanity, has the
potentiality to create an ecological society. Anthropologists have
identified these ecological behaviors as central in many forms of human
society, primarily those rooted in pre-capitalist systems of production.
These traits represent a potentiality for the future. I do not mean to
suggest that our species could, or would want to, return to hunting and
gathering: there can be no return. Rather, I would say that these forms
of behavior represent principles. With human creativity and invention we
can apply these principles in ways appropriate to modern life.
Cultures and societies have always reinforced and rewarded particular
forms of behavior and devalued others. Through the processes of
socialization and formal education our society has chosen to reinforce
and reward ecologically destructive relationships and patterns of
behavior, and furthermore to reify them into “human nature.” An
awareness of the other potentialities embodied in our humanity gives
hope that a transformation of those patterns may occur. Although by no
means guarantied or preordained, social ecology argues that such a
transformation must occur if we are to truly achieve our potential to
become “nature rendered self-conscious,” thus reharmonizing first and
second nature and resolving the ecological crises that threaten our
existence.
A transformation of this magnitude requires a radically new vision and
program: a new ecological epistemology, an ethics rooted in principles
derived from first nature, and a bold social-political praxis. We must
be willing to undertake a searching examination of the roots of the
ecological crisis, using the ethical principles that we derive from our
understanding of nature. Such an examination leads us from the realm of
traditional environmentalism, still rooted in a dualistic epistemology
that views “nature” as a collection of natural resources, to a social
ecology that promises a fundamental reharmonization of first and second
nature.
Indeed, this recognition calls for political solutions that go far
beyond the “band aid” approach advocated by most environmentalists. It
requires that we resolve the social crises that are the underlying
causes of our various environmental crises. It suggests that healthy
ecosystems and a healthy relationship between first and second nature
only can result from an ecological society, and that such an ecological
society must be an ethical community, rooted in the ethical principles
that we derive from our understanding of first nature itself.
The ecological crisis demands more than a change in consciousness.
Though such a change is necessary, it is not, in and of itself,
sufficient. We must also begin to undertake action informed by a
consciousness rooted in a social ecology. To be sure, the process of
ecological reconstruction will not be an easy one: it will require major
shifts in thinking and in social organization, as well as the use of
new, ecologically sound technologies and techniques. We must begin the
process of ecological reconstruction by preserving existing ecosystems
to ensure their integrity and to draw upon them as reservoirs of
biodiversity. We must stem the current tide of extinctions. It is also
crucial to engage in ecological restoration to the extent that we are
able, restoring damaged ecosystems to their previous state. This in turn
suggests that we need to explore and implement new, ecological models
for development, a community-based process that both meets human needs
and respects and restores ecosystems. This critical reconstructive
dimension must be fully articulated and applied within the ethical
framework presented by evolution.
This reconstructive project is a crucial element in the development of a
social ecology: it is not enough to philosophize, we must act. Our
actions, however, must be informed by ethics and scientific
understanding. Mindless or insufficiently considered action may indeed
make our situation worse, instead of improving it. The ends that we
seek—societies moving toward ever-greater complexity, diversity, and
freedom, creating unity through diversity and mutualistic organization,
and highly self-conscious about their relationship to first nature—can
only be brought about by social movements that reflect and embody those
same principles. Ends and means must be congruent.
Action rooted in social ecology demands broad participation and
democracy. All around the world, local communities are already
challenging the irrational culture of destruction. The struggles of
indigenous farmers in Mexico fighting to save their rainforests,
peasants in Nepal fighting to prevent the damming of rivers, and poor
black communities in Louisiana fighting to close down toxic chemical
plants are all part of the same global movement. So too are urban
homesteaders in devastated Detroit neighborhoods reclaiming abandoned
buildings, and youth groups growing organic vegetables on vacant lots in
New York City. They stand together with the millions around the world
who protest a rapacious world economy dominated by giant corporations.
These combinations of protest and reconstructive action are only
fledgling steps in what must become a larger and broader movement, but
they are promising nonetheless. They point the way toward new
organizational models that embody the ecological ethics necessary to
achieve a reharmonization of first and second nature. They are diverse,
decentralized, non-hierarchical, and participatory, and represent a new
model for social action that can begin to counter the destructive path
of the dominant culture.
A perspective informed by social ecology must also address the future,
and it must do so in a manner that draws on the ethical principles
derived from first nature. It is insufficient to extrapolate the present
into the future, as futurists and systems theorists do. Any discussion
of the future, if it is to be ecological, must be rooted in the concept
of potentiality, an understanding of what could be. Evolution itself is
a process of unfolding potentiality on a biological level: of organisms
either fulfilling their potential for growth, development, and
reproduction, or failing to do so. Potentiality should not be equated
with inevitability; many factors influence whether it is actualized or
not. Social ecology examines the future by trying to tease out
potentialities for ecological restoration and a reharmonization of first
and second nature, while working to actualize those potentialities.
By doing so, social ecology draws on one of the great traditions of
humanity, utopian thinking, which is based on an understanding of the
potentialities inherent, though unrealized, in the present. During the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment, utopian thinking emerged as one of
the most important forms of both social criticism and speculation about
possible new forms of social organization. It was used to explore the
far shores of human possibilities; to inspire people to transcend the
limitations of their severely limited societies. But utopian thinking
offers more than inspiration: it also offers a sense of orientation.
Without a vision of the type of society we desire, it will be impossible
to ever achieve it. In a modern ecological context, the details of those
utopian principles, rooted in a scientific understanding of ecosystems,
will be applied through democratically developed plans at the local
level.
Social ecology examines the future from this perspective and recognizes
the real, existing potentiality for an ecological society. Utilizing
modern scientific insights and technics we have the potential to solve
the world’s ecological problems; we can create and utilize
non-polluting, renewable sources of energy; we can reverse the process
of global climate change; we can restore damaged ecosystems and ensure
continued biodiversity; we can end pollution and clean up toxic wastes;
and we can provide a healthy diet for the world’s population. Today, all
of this is possible by utilizing existing technologies.
For the first time in the history of the planet we now have the capacity
to eliminate scarcity. Our society has the technology and science
required to meet the needs of all humanity for food, shelter, and
energy. What we lack is the social vision and the political will to do
so. Hierarchical concentrations of wealth and power have led to a
catastrophic imbalance in the distribution of resources around the
planet. The gap between rich and poor has been steadily increasing in
recent decades. Just as the Enlightenment led to a restructuring of
society that shook the foundations of the old social order, a new
Enlightenment rooted in a social ecology must aim for the same. I am
painfully aware of the limitations and many problematic aspects of the
original Enlightenment, and I am not arguing that we should replicate
the content, but rather that it represents a process from which we must
learn.
The Enlightenment project began with a set of ideas that offered a
radical critique of what was, and a transcendent vision of what could be
and what should be, rooted in a new ethical framework. A similar process
is urgently needed today if the potentiality for an ecological society
is to ever be realized. To fail to do so is to abandon our humanity and
enter headlong into an era of unprecedented ecological devastation.
The social and ecological crises we face require new thinking and
creative solutions. Those solutions will only grow out of an educational
process, and it has to be education of a particular type. It is
imperative that we now re-examine our basic notions of what constitutes
an education. What are we educating people for? How can we equip people
with the critical thinking skills required to change the trajectory of
our culture?
I would suggest that traditional education is not really education at
all. What passes for education in our public schools and in most of our
private schools—and certainly in our universities and colleges today—is
in fact a sort of training. It has very little to do with allowing for
the unfolding of potentialities within the individual, which I see as
the basis for real education, and the formation of ecologically
responsible community members. It is, rather, an attempt to reinforce
the hegemonic culture and to reproduce its structures of hierarchy and
domination. Today more than ever, students are being tested, sorted, and
inculcated with the ideology of capitalism. The aim is to train willing
young minds to meet the needs of corporations and industry by producing
students who unquestioningly go out, join the work force and become
“productive” members of society. In the United States, there have been
recent calls for curtailing support of the traditional liberal arts
curriculum, and investing our resources exclusively in training in math
and science, in order for our country to “remain competitive.”
Given the direction in which society is moving today—toward ecological
catastrophe—the last thing we need to do is reproduce the system. We
need instead to generate approaches to education that help transform
that system and change its basic structures. Traditional education
operates on a variety of levels, and we have to understand how those
levels reinforce each other. This problem must be confronted in a
critical fashion, one that recognizes that beyond teaching particular
skills and techniques, contemporary education reinforces the hegemony of
capital and socializes students in the habits of obedience and
acquiescence. These behaviors are modeled day after day in classrooms
and lecture halls, and students who fail to get the message are
disciplined and humiliated.
More than anything, the very form of traditional education is intended
to drill students into a culture of unquestioning obedience and
passivity. They are taught to sit in orderly rows in classrooms, they
are taught to respond to bells and whistles, and to never question the
authority of the teacher. In the early grades the teacher’s primary role
in education is maintaining order in the classroom. It has very little
to do with learning at all. Actually, that attempt to reproduce the
order of our hierarchical society; to create obedience to authority and
compliant students who become willing workers, is extremely destructive.
It squelches initiative, discourages questioning, rewards conformity,
and all too frequently determines, at an early age, whether a child will
“succeed” or not. This behavioral modification and a child’s reaction to
it then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: in the higher grades and in
college and university, the perception of the student’s capacity, and,
all too often, the students own self-image is shaped by these early
classroom experiences. Questioning and resisting authority are seen as
signs of deep emotional problems. Indeed, the emphasis on obedience has
given rise to a newly discovered psychological condition: ODD,
Oppositional Defiant Disorder. A basic developmental process of
childhood—questioning authority—is now being defined as a disease!
The regimentation of the earlier grades is carried on with a vengeance
as students progress through their educational career. They come to
accept the perspective of their teachers, and grades are used as a
cudgel to maintain their teachers’ authority. At the university level,
the enormity of the lecture halls and the anonymity of the student
reinforce the received wisdom of the dominant culture. Here, the
emphasis on training for careers becomes a mania, and the pressure of
paying back huge student loans tends to further narrow a student’s focus
and sense of possibilities. And we now see how corporate interests hold
colleges and universities in thrall, and, through funding and joint
ventures, increasingly shape their research agendas and curricula.
So what are students actually being taught? Undeniably, it’s useful for
young people to learn how to read and how to write, and how to do basic
mathematical calculations. These are all things that will serve them
well, and should be part of any curriculum. But beyond that, there is
also a hidden curriculum: the basic assumptions of the dominant culture
are grafted into the very character structure of the students, with
devastating effects for both the individuals being “taught” and for our
society as a whole.
And more than ever, we are seeing the corporate agenda enter directly
into the classroom, as pre-programmed, packaged curricula that make it
very easy for a teacher—by using these “enrichment” opportunities for
students—to bring home the message of capitalism and the corporate
world. I saw this very strikingly when I took my elementary-aged
daughters to the American Museum of Natural History in New York some
years ago. We went into the Hall of Biodiversity, a multimillion-dollar
exhibit sponsored by the Monsanto Corporation, Citibank and the
Rockefeller Fund. It was a huge hall, with millions of dollars worth of
exhibits, intended primarily to educate young children about the need
for biodiversity, and about the ecological crisis that the planet is
facing. But in that whole entire hall there was not a single mention of
corporations and not one word about capitalism. The fact that today’s
crisis can be traced directly back to corporations and capitalism does
not enter into the discourse to which our children are exposed. And
there were busloads of kids going through the hall, with well-meaning
teachers, no doubt. But this basic outlook is never challenged—it’s not
even questioned—and thus the hegemonic nature of capitalism is
reinforced.
This brings us to another level on which we have to understand
traditional education, and that is the intentionality with which
children are educated today. This intentionality is not concerned with
the individual students, their needs, their wellbeing, and the unfolding
of their particular potentialities. It is, rather, a cookie cutter model
of education, which follows the agenda of the corporations and the
capitalist system. It reflects and reinforces the class divisions that
riddle our society. In the United States this is very obvious: by and
large the children of the poor are educated for work in the trades or
the service sector, and those of the wealthy sent to elite universities
and prepared for management or professional positions.
So what is the alternative? If we accept the idea that meaningful social
change will only come about through a process of education, which is, of
course, one of the underlying beliefs of social ecology, then we need to
look very carefully at what constitutes a radical education. What kind
of education would be able to bring about the social change necessary to
reverse the engines of destruction that are literally eroding three and
a half billion years of biological evolution on this planet? How can we
create a radical education? I suggest the very same categories we use to
understand traditional education must be applied to explain radical
education.
For an education to be truly radical we first need to examine the form
it takes. How can the structures of learning be altered to encourage
creativity, questioning, and critical thinking? To be sure, there is not
a single solution or a single model that would constitute a radical
education. Individual students have individual learning styles and our
education should reflect this. No single approach meets the needs of all
students, and students at different developmental stages respond to
different approaches to teaching and learning. Radical education
requires a student-centered approach, and this is something traditional
classrooms cannot provide. Such an approach undermines the authoritarian
mechanisms that govern contemporary classrooms and replaces the modern
“teach to the test” education, and its hidden curriculum of obedience
and discipline.
A student-centered education means that students are encouraged to
pursue their interests, and teachers provide resources to aid them in
their pursuit: they should help students identify important questions,
help them to acquire the skills they need, and offer guidance and
critique along the way. As we know from studies of development in early
childhood and adolescence, there are various stages at which particular
kinds of teaching and learning are appropriate. At the level of
elementary education, I would suggest that the primary need of children
is a type of free and unfettered development and education that is very
rare today. Certainly there are oases around the world; there is a free
school here or a free school there. But in general these noble
experiments are isolated and the number of children that they reach is
extremely limited. And that is unfortunate, because at this formative
stage in children’s development the most valuable thing we can offer
them is freedom to explore, and resources they can use in that
exploration. This is not something that figures largely in traditional
education schemes at all.
Learning is not limited to the classroom; in fact a radical education
must recognize that the local community and the natural world offer
tremendous opportunities for learning. Participatory and experiential
learning are powerful adjuncts to more conventional forms of education.
The stimulation offered by taking teaching and learning into the
community and bringing the community into the classroom helps students
engage with the larger world.
As children develop we can begin to also look at how their interests as
students evolve. Typically today, the subject matter being studied helps
to reinforce the hidden curriculum. In the United States, as students go
through traditional high schools they are taught with text books that
talk about Christopher Columbus as discovering the New World, and say
very little about the oppression and the slaughter of Native Americans
that accompanied the “age of discovery.” Instead of learning about the
deleterious effects of colonialism and imperialism, we celebrate the
great warriors and conquistadores who brought the benefits of European
civilization to the rest of the world. We valorize the founding fathers,
but never mention that many of them were slave owners, and we never
question why there were no founding mothers.
Any kind of radical education has to expose students to a hidden
history: the stories of those who paid the price of conquest, whose
voices are silenced by conventional history. We have to ensure that
students are exposed to a history that reflects a critical view of
modernity and the development that we so blithely assume to be
inevitable. Students need to know the history of resistance, to
understand cultures that are organized around very different sets of
principles than our own, and to be exposed to the lives of people who
questioned the status quo; this is not part of the standard curricula in
any high school that I know of today.
This question of content is closely wedded to the form of the education;
they mutually reinforce the foundational hierarchy of our society.
Today, students are exposed to curricula that offer the analyses and
perspectives of the dominant culture. For example, in the Hall of
Biodiversity at the Museum of Natural History there was an emphasis on
overconsumption as a pressing ecological problem. Blame was placed
exclusively on the individual—the analysis presented suggested that we
are all greedy consumers and that is why we have an environmental
crisis. The crisis exists because each one of us consumes too much, and
the problem will become worse because the world is becoming
overpopulated. The “greedy consumers” are to blame, whether they are
driving SUVs in America or trying to find enough food to survive in
Africa, no differentiation was made. Such an analysis is grossly
inadequate and does nothing to prepare young people, or anyone for that
matter, to make sense out of the mess that we are in today. Rather, it
mystifies it and ensures the continuation of a system in which the
elites benefit at the expense of the poor. And that’s very much the
intentionality of traditional education. So, if we are to help students
to develop their critical faculties, and the ability to draw their own
conclusions so they can contribute to a larger project of social change,
they must be given an adequate historical grounding and the tools needed
to critique the contemporary system.
Indeed, from an ecological perspective, a radical education should
encourage students to look critically not just at the impact of their
individual decisions as consumers, not just at how they pollute, but
rather how the dominant culture produces the conditions that make
pollution inevitable. It is important that students understand the
underlying sources of the problem, and not the fact that they aren’t
recycling enough paper. Because, in truth, the pollution created by a
reader of this book over their lifetime is insignificant compared to the
pollution created by one day of production at the International Paper
Plant in Glens Falls, New York. We need to develop educational processes
and curricula that give students exposure to the ideas, concepts, and
critical understanding that will allow them to begin to deconstruct the
mythology supporting the current system. This is crucial if we are ever
to change that system and replace it with something positive and
life-affirming.
The Institute for Social Ecology is committed to radical education and
utilizes many different approaches to learning. Since 1974 we have
offered a wide range of programs and a variety of formats, from
workshops and single lectures to conferences and longer intensive
seminars. In addition to programs based on our own campus in Vermont, we
have offered programs at numerous colleges and universities, as well as
in communities all around the country, from New York City to Seattle.
Our work focuses on the concrete skills needed to participate actively
in movements for the creation of an ecological society.
Our classes are small and often discussion-based. Students in our
campus-based programs also take part in weekly community meetings, which
establish the norms for campus life and policies related to the
particular program. Students, faculty, and staff set the agenda for the
community meetings and bring forward their concerns, and together,
through face-to-face discussions, we find common solutions. The ISE
itself is an institution that operates democratically, both in setting
policy and defining programs. Students are encouraged to participate in
that process, gaining experience in the practice of direct democracy.
This institutional commitment to prefigurative politics is conceived as
an essential part of a student’s education. Involvement in the
governance of the ISE gives students a real voice in determining all
aspects of their education, and helps to create an environment of mutual
respect in which they are truly empowered to help define the content of
their learning.
Although we emphasize alternative education, I think it is very
important that we have provided credit-bearing and degree-granting
programs for both graduate and undergraduate students. These courses of
study present an alternative to more traditional institutions of higher
learning, and have provided a forum for educating people who will become
educators and organizers themselves. In these programs students
individually design a course of study that can include discussion-based
classes, lectures, experiential learning, community involvement,
independent study, and research. Often their studies include critical
reflection on activist projects in which they are involved. We have also
insured that our programs are available to people regardless of their
financial ability, and have tried, with varying degrees of success, to
recruit a truly diverse student body.
In addition to the radical institutional setting offered by the ISE and
its non-hierarchical formats for teaching and learning, our programs
also present radical content. We seek to lay the groundwork for students
to develop analyses from a perspective that is both critical and
utopian, one that challenges the shibboleths of capitalism and
transcends the limitations of the given. We strive to help students
“make sense” out of a world that seems increasingly beyond our
comprehension. Our courses thus cover a broad array of topics, ranging
from nature philosophy and ecological ethics, to practical politics and
community activism. We explore hierarchy and domination in many of its
manifestations—such as colonialism, racism, sexism, heterosexism,
antisemitism, and class oppression—utilizing philosophy, anthropology,
history, and sociology to deepen our understanding of those phenomena
and to analyze ways to combat them. We try to unearth the “hidden
history” of our own communities, and any active or vestigial
manifestations of mutual aid and cooperation that might help in their
reconstruction. We look at politics from both a critical and a
reconstructive perspective: we explore the concept and history of direct
democracy, and try to extract lessons from radical movements that can
inform our own practice.
The ISE has also offered a series of classes in “applied social
ecology,” often incorporating experiential, hands-on approaches to
learning. In the 1970s we offered pioneering classes in solar energy and
wind power in which students built fully functional energy systems from
the bottom up. Students have also designed and built energy efficient
buildings on our campus as part of their course work, and they have
developed organic gardens for campus use as well as in their own
communities. We integrate work in the community with work in the
classroom and stress the interaction between theory and practice. All
these classes provide practical skills that will be needed to create an
ecological society.
Furthermore, we eschew testing and arbitrary measures of achievement,
instead asking students to undergo a rigorous process of
self-evaluation, and our faculty members also contribute to this
evaluation. Rather than ranking and grading students these evaluations
are our assessment mechanisms—individualized and qualitative—intended to
help students recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and, most
importantly, to help them further develop their insights and skills.
The form of education we offer at the ISE—open and flexible,
student-centered and community-based, non-authoritarian and
developmental—is meant to reinforce the lessons of the curriculum. The
institutional setting itself is seen as prefiguring a cooperative,
ecological society and offering another level of education for the
participants. A diversity of strategies and tactics has grown out of our
work, and a further refinement of the theories of social ecology is
ongoing in light of those experiences.
There is a great deal of intent behind traditional approaches to
education; they know exactly what they are doing. We have to be equally
intentional. I am not suggesting that we have to be dogmatic or
sectarian, and that we have to limit expression or inquiry. Rather, we
have to ensure that students are allowed to explore “subversive” and
radical ideas, that they are exposed to alternative views of the world,
that they are given access to the resources they need to sort things
out, and that they come away with an understanding that helps them make
sense out of a system that thrives on its own mystification. By
providing our students with the ability to think critically and
independently, to question authority, and to view themselves not as
passive consumers but as active citizens, we can help them become agents
of social change. They can all make a real difference in moving us
toward an ecological society.
If we fail to do this, however, if we do not educate for social change,
we will be condemning the world to simply reproducing, at ever-deepening
levels of degradation, the system that exists today. Therefore, at the
risk of sounding grandiose, I would argue that the real work of
education should be nothing less than the transformation of the world.
It is not a simple task, but it is vitally important, and it requires a
concerted effort and a willingness to challenge the assumptions of our
current system at every level. To this end, I believe that each of us,
as an individual, has a responsibility to serve as both a student and an
educator.
Murray Bookchin once wrote, “Every revolutionary project is an
educational project.” But not every educational project is a
revolutionary project. Education for social change requires a conscious
effort to embody the principles of an ecological society in the form,
content, and institutional structures of the education that we offer. We
need to re-envision teaching and learning in a fashion that can help us
to re-envision a new, ecological society.
In the wake of the recent financial crises, a new social movement
emerged—the Occupy movement—which was remarkably successful in
attracting media and the eyes of the public. The Occupy movement
highlighted capitalism’s inherent injustices, and its message resonated
with a broad cross-section of the public. But the movement failed to
establish a solid foothold. The initial media frenzy has subsided and
Occupy activists are now struggling to develop new strategies to engage
the 99% and to re-energize the movement.
My experience with Occupy (I was in Zucotti Park on the second day of
the occupation and made several other visits to the encampment,
participated in protest marches, General Assemblies and Working
Committee meetings, and taught classes at three week-long seminars for
Occupy organizers), and the meteoric rise and decline of the movement in
the popular culture led me to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of
Occupy. Conceived as primarily a protest movement, Occupy is a testament
to both the vision and spirit of its organizers, and the limitations of
protest. The repression of the various physical occupations of public
space in the United States and elsewhere undercut the primary vehicle of
the occupiers and their presence on the ground in the face of the 1%,
their allies, and hirelings.
The Occupy movement, with its emphasis on prefigurative politics,
presented a model for how direct democracy can be applied in a movement
setting and served as an inspiration both for participants and
observers. However, as events unfolded the limitations of this approach
were revealed. The open-ended nature of its general assemblies led to
time-consuming and, for many, frustrating meetings dealing with
formidable logistics of managing the encampments. Increasingly, tactical
and strategic discussions were the province of working committees and
other small groups. The fetishization of process played a role in the
decline of Occupy’s public presence, and led some people to question the
efficacy of direct democracy. As important as directly democratic
processes are in the movement context they do not constitute direct
democracy, they constitute movement democracy. Movement democracy
functions under duress, and makes decisions of a primarily tactical
nature. Direct democracy functions in an entirely different fashion when
it is based in a geographic community where people share their daily
lives in an on going fashion, and think long term about the direction of
their community.
This conflation of movement democracy with direct democracy can be
confusing, and severely limits the movement’s effectiveness, but at the
same time, it also suggests an approach that might deepen and broaden
Occupy’s presence and impact. I believe we should understand the
protest-oriented approach as part of a larger strategy for social change
that links together oppositional and alternative movements, and takes
them into the realm of politics.
Inspiring and exciting as moments like the occupation of Zuccotti Park
and other public spaces are, they constitutes festivals of the
oppressed, or in the lexicon of postmodern anarchism, “temporary
autonomous zones.” These are important spaces for learning and
celebrating the spirit of revolt—they give us a glimpse of what could
be—but they are by their very nature and definition illusory and
momentary. The question that occupiers should be asking is not how we
can create more of these moments, but rather, how the approaches we
celebrate can become institutionalized: we should be asking how we can
create permanent autonomous zones and expand them to encompass cities,
regions, nations, and, ultimately, the globe. Are these goals grandiose
and unrealistic? I do not think so. My personal experience with town
meeting democracy in Vermont, and “town meetings” in New York’s Loisaida
neighborhood has convinced me that it is possible to create and empower
local forums for directly democratic decision making in virtually any
setting, and to use them as a means of both educating people in the
practice of democracy, and helping them to affect their own lives in
meaningful ways. This is the way we can begin to create the new
sensibility required for the revolutionary restructuring of contemporary
society.
It is time to extend the experience of the Occupy movement into new
arenas and transcend the limitations of protest by applying direct
democracy not just in our movements, not just in our encampments and at
our protests, but where we live. It is time to occupy our neighborhoods,
towns and villages; to take the lessons learned in the streets and in
the parks to our own geographical communities. An old maxim suggests
that all politics are local. Let us recognize that change of the
magnitude required to mount an effective challenge to the capitalist
system will require a majoritarian movement, and that it is a project
which will demand the development of not only new institutions, but a
new sense of community as well. This is certainly a daunting task, but
such revolutionary changes in the underlying structures of society have
occurred before, and they can occur again. It will take a concerted
effort over an extended period of time, but it provides a clear path out
of the conundrum in which we currently find ourselves mired.
The limitations of a purely oppositional movement, which is essentially
what Occupy has been, have become clear. We need to combine protest with
the creation of counter-institutions that empower people to make
decisions that affect their communities and the larger society as well.
Such a libertarian municipalist approach addresses the issue of power
directly, something that a purely protest-based movement is unable to
do. Libertarian municipalism attempts to engage with politics by
redefining the dynamic of power. Rather than demanding redress and
reform, this approach offers a revolutionary redefinition and
transformation of politics.
Organizing of this type requires developing real relationships with ones
neighbors. Participatory action research of the type practiced by
Students for a Democratic Society in the mid sixties offers a good model
for this work. Their Economic Research and Action Project brought
collectives of young SDS organizers into a number of low-income
communities where they worked with community members to identify issues
they could address together. In addition to building relationships of
solidarity in front-line communities, they were able to address the real
needs of community members. Alliances created through such struggles
could provide the basis for an effective and inclusive “town meeting”
approach.
The need for a place-based politics rooted in direct democracy is the
critical component largely missing in recent discussions of movement
strategy. I emphasize this because I believe that community is the locus
for real change from a centralized state to a decentralized, directly
democratic society. I am referring here to a geographic community, be it
an urban neighborhood, village or town. Genuine community-based
organizing and activism is the only way to create direct,
community-based democracy. This is where we can achieve the human scale
needed for face-to-face decision making and unmediated relationships of
all types. Directly democratic forums like these have a deep and rich
history. In the Western tradition we can look back to ancient Greece,
the medieval folkmoot, and the New England town meeting, to name but a
few examples. In fact, for almost the whole of human history, from the
Paleolithic until the advent of civilization, many cultures are
understood by anthropologists to be egalitarian, with all participating
fully in the self-management of their society. Even today, most
communities can identify at least vestigial institutions that embody
that sensibility.
I do not assume that coherent communities exist everywhere, or that
there are not communities rooted in exclusion rather than inclusion. In
many cases we need to re-create connections between people, in other
cases we need to combat racist, sexist, and reactionary attitudes of all
types. Our role must be to organize and educate. In many communities,
however, affective ties between people do exist, and there are many
places where there are still vestiges of community life.
Most communities offer at least rudimentary institutions and cultural
traditions for direct civic participation. Let me now briefly explain
how I apply these insights in practice. In addition to teaching and
writing about social change, and participating in campaigns and
protests, I live in Marshfield, Vermont, which is the second poorest
town in Washington County. Most people live in mobile homes, run-down
turn-of-the-century farmhouses and Section 8 rental housing. People here
work hard to scrape by at an annual household income that averages well
under $50,000 a year. Marshfield is not an urban neighborhood, but a
town with 1,300 residents.
Here in Marshfield I participate in our Town Meeting, which is a
directly democratic form of town governance. At Town Meeting we make
decisions about every facet of our community and consider resolutions on
national policies like nuclear disarmament, genetic engineering, nuclear
power, global warming, campaign finance reform, and any other issue
citizens of the town care to raise. I also serve on the town energy
committee, which has brought bus services to town, (admittedly more
limited than we would like, but a step in the right direction); it has
conducted energy surveys and efficiency updates, mostly for trailers and
drafty old farmhouses owned by low income people; and it has offered
forums on global warming, retrofitted town buildings for energy
conservation, and created a tax district to help finance alternative
energy in town. Currently it is installing solar photovoltaics to power
public buildings, and is beginning to organize an energy co-op in town.
Nothing revolutionary here, just working with people in directly
democratic forums in a cooperative and mutualistic fashion around
decisions that affect their lives. I believe this is all part of the
long process of educating people about particular issues and learning
together the actual process of practicing democracy. It is a way to
build relationships of trust and mutual respect—a precondition for the
kind of movement necessary to truly transform the system.
There are divisions in Marshfield, of course, but primarily of a class
and ideological nature. I try to overcome these divisions by actively
working with people across those lines through forums like the town
meeting, energy committee, and school board (to which I was elected and
served on for three years), trying to find common ground, explore
differences and convince others of my point of view. All of this is
possible only because we live together in a community. I certainly
recognize the difficulties people face in their neighborhoods and do not
mean to minimize them. But there is a very strong sense of community
here in Marshfield, continually expressed not only through town
governance, but also through how we share tools, co-operates to maintain
neighborhood trail systems, and gather regularly to celebrate our
community.
I believe it is important to build on this sense of community and
develop local traditions for sharing and improving people’s quality of
life. My experience in New York’s Lower East Side in the 1970s was that
it is possible to create alternatives that markedly improve people’s
lives and fight for social justice at the same time. In Loisaida people
were able to cross racial, ethnic and class lines to create low-income
co-ops in abandoned buildings, build community gardens in vacant lots,
and create a myriad of cooperative enterprises, while holding town
meetings and contesting for power with official city planning agencies.
There the struggle against gentrification was waged when these positive
actions made the neighborhood attractive to gentrifiers. By the 1980s
the forces of gentrification had won and the poor were largely replaced
by Yuppies. The only projects that remained were those where people
managed to take the land off of the real estate market through the use
of community land trusts and low-income covenants in deeds. Market
forces are extremely powerful and difficult to resist. The lesson I took
away from my experience in Loisaida was the need to anticipate
gentrification and secure control of the physical neighborhood as well
as improve it. I reject the argument, however, that people should live
in horrible circumstances to prevent gentrification. I believe that the
type of occupation of neighborhoods I am advocating has the potential to
both create alternatives and fight gentrification, but it requires
solidarity, trust, time, and a lot of hard work.
All communities face specific challenges. Despite the relative poverty
in Marshfield gentrification is not a big issue. We face very little
development pressure and there is a good supply of low-income housing
available. Nonetheless we have secured a degree of control over the
physical environment of the town through the creation of community land
trusts to insure an affordable housing stock that exists outside of the
market, land trusts that conserve agricultural and forest land, town
ownership of large conservation tracts, and progressive zoning developed
by a volunteer board and voted on at town meetings. These are mechanisms
available to both urban and rural communities. Obviously, these
approaches do not constitute a revolution. They are tiny incremental
steps that improve people’s lives—they are just reforms. Do they buy
into the system and support its continuation? They certainly can. But
they may also constitute a first set of demands that can be continually
expanded. If we have the vision of a free, just, and ecological society
we must ask ourselves if these approaches take us closer to what we
envision or move us farther away. I am not willing to wait for an
insurrection before I engage in struggles that improve people’s lives. I
am not sure such a moment will come in my lifetime, and I reject the
notion, bandied about in the 1960s, that the worse things get the more
likely people are to revolt. In America, I fear, the worse things get
the more likely people are to turn to forms of fascism. I think we need
to dig-in, educate, organize, and develop relationships and
counter-institutions that offer an alternative at the same time that we
protest and oppose. I think it’s possible to achieve reforms without
becoming reformist. We need to keep our goal in mind, educate and take
the incremental steps that can lead to real change. That’s not as
romantic as mounting the barricades, but it’s the only way I know to
bring about a new sensibility and transform the underlying structures
that control our society.
Furthermore, I do not see the community-based approach I advocate as
being the exclusive strategy to bring about the changes we so
desperately need, but it is a key component that needs to be developed.
I fail to see how we can possibly bring a decentralized, directly
democratic society into being without a movement that creates direct
democracy in our communities. Of course, we also need to continue to
protest, both locally and nationally, and we also need to create other
alternative institutions. The crises we face are so dire, compelling,
and all-encompassing that there is need for work on all of these levels.
It is interesting to witness the more recent Occupy Our Homes and Occupy
Sandy manifestations, which are important developments that begin to
move in the direction I advocate. Engagement in struggles that have a
direct impact on people’s lives and communities help build relationships
of trust and solidarity and reach people who would not become involved
in oppositional “protest” politics. These relationships can provide a
basis for further organizing, and an entry point for the creation of
democratic forums at the neighborhood level that can serve to link
issues of social inequity and a critique of capitalism and the larger
social order directly to people’s lives. Such forums can also be used to
undermine the legitimacy of the centralized state and allow people to
experience and imagine alternative ways of life.
Actualizing these ideas will not be easy. It requires a commitment to
becoming part of a physical community. It demands a recognition that
change really does begin at home, and that the process requires
grassroots-organizers ready to fight alongside their neighbors to bring
a revitalized direct democracy to their communities. We must be prepared
for a long-term struggle, and must ally ourselves actively with our
neighbors. It is worth remembering that the Zapatistas spent more than
ten years organizing in Tzotzil and other indigenous communities before
they emerged to challenge the Mexican state.
In short, I believe that the concerns Occupy so effectively raised on
Wall Street need to be brought home to our neighborhoods, and that the
most effective way to do so is to establish real, face-to-face
relationships in our communities and to raise these issues with our
neighbors in the context of our shared lives. I do not believe that
communities are the only place where struggle can occur. I recognize the
catalytic role that the highly visible movement encampments played; I
see the need for such manifestations, but I argue that they must now be
linked directly to people’s everyday lives. I recognize the
importance—both symbolically and actually—of contestation at the points
of power, like the Wall Street encampment, but I also recognize that
participation in the actual encampment was largely limited to young
people who had the ability to devote themselves to the project because
they didn’t have jobs, families dependent on them, or the other limiting
factors that most people face. And even for these activists, the
experience of the occupation was ephemeral, a “temporary autonomous
zone” that was extremely important but ultimately unable to sustain
itself. I would suggest that this is more often than not the case with
movements that are purely oppositional or protest based. Occupy
demonstrated that such movements are necessary but, in and of
themselves, not in any way sufficient. I maintain that neighborhoods and
communities are the most fruitful places to build democratic
counter-institutions that can provide a basis for lasting change.
It would be foolish to believe that neighborhood assemblies and town
meetings could supplant state power tomorrow. For one thing, many of our
existing communities are mired in racism, classism, sexism, homophobia
and all of the other ills of our existing society. We should use
neighborhood forums as a vehicle for both education and action; a place
to raise issues and discuss them with our neighbors. My experience has
been that, when approached from this perspective, even very conservative
neighbors have changed their views on critical issues like climate
change, nuclear power, health care, and the banking system.
For this approach to successfully replace our current sham democracy a
majority of the population must begin to practice direct democracy and
they must do it where they live, revitalizing and reinventing our
definitions of community and citizenship. Is it possible? Yes. Will it
happen overnight? No. It is a massive educational project indeed,
especially where there are reactionary attitudes that need to be
overcome. But if we truly believe in democracy and empowerment this is
just the work we need to do. It will not be easy, but without it I fear
that we will continue to fall short of what it takes to transform the
underlying structures of hierarchy and domination, and create a free
society.