Examples of this have been seen in countries such as South Africa
where a white minority controlled power, controlled access to jobs,
controlled access to education.
Social change ultimately resulted in a democratically elected government.
And in similarity to the power coercive approach to planned change,
can see that the conflict point of view looks at changes in social norms,
power relations, distribution of resources
from the perspective of opposing interest groups in which ones are able to
exert more influence over the system to control more power within the system.
So again, in summary, there are views of the community that has a natural
system of different institutions and groups that evolve norms over time,
or the conflict view that sees groups with different levels of power coercing,
opposing, or struggling with each other to gain ascendancy.
A very useful model for community change, or models, has been proposed by Rothman.
And these parallel in large part, Benne and Chin's theories of planned change.
Rothman looks at community change from the social policy planning model.
As a situation where experts, whether they're people trained in public health,
trained in city and regional planning, trained in engineering,
trained in education, but experts designing programs for
communities assessing available data and information.
Identifying appropriate strategies and interventions, and providing leadership.
In large part, this represents in health things like our immunization programs,
our antenatal programs, environmental health control.
A second model for community change is community action.
And this resembles the conflict view that we've just discussed and
the power coercive approach to planned change in the context of community action.
Community members recognize that there's an imbalance of power.
They don't have access to good jobs.
They don't have proper sanitation in their area.
Their children do not have good educational opportunities and
they organize themselves to redress this through the political system,
through protests, through lobbying, and this is community action.
A third model is community development.
This is embodied in the concept of self-help.
It's also known as community organization.
People mobilize their own local or internal resources, and
this is very much a normative, re-educative approach to change.
A fourth model, which was not proposed by Rothman, but
follows suit from these, is community mobilization.
It has in common with social policy that programs
are externally designed by experts, but whereas social policy may use tax,
public, or other moneys to provide services, community mobilization
requires that a large part of the expenses for
health services, for community programs are donated or come from the community.
What we could say is that social policy planning has ideas generated from
outside the community by experts and brings in for a large part the resources,
whether it's staff, whether it's equipment, whether it's funds,
into the community to deliver that program or solve that problem.
In community action, the idea for
change comes from community members themselves, they perceive the discrepancy,
they perceive discrimination, they perceive lack of resources.
And they organize and demand that these resources that are outside the community
be brought in, that they have their fair share of these resources.
In community development, the idea and the resources for
change come from within the community.
And with community mobilization the ideas come from outside, but
the agency staff try to get the community to buy into and
contribute much of the resources needed to solve the particular problem.
In social policy planning, we have the typical agency-centered, or
expert-centered, approach, so we said it's empirical-rational in philosophy.
Prime example is city and regional planning.
New communities, such as Columbia in Maryland, between Baltimore and
Washington are examples where land use, educational
institutions, shopping and industry, the whole design of the community,
how neighborhoods are structured, warehouses are built are designed by
experts through their social epidemiological environmental research.
In health, we observe rates, outbreaks, trends, and
plan programs to address those.
We set up surveillance system to look for
acute flaccid paralysis, an indicator of Polio.
In a community in where we discover there is a trend of increasing
paralysis then we organize our resources to go to those areas.
In social policy planning the planning focuses around a problem, not so
much about people.
This appeals to the ready responders.
If you think about our adoption of innovation curve, the people who have
the knowledge are aware of scientific explanations and
these days when services are made available through social policy planning,
promotion of those services relies heavily on social marketing.
In particular we will look at the difference between social marketing and
advocacy in our final chapter and you may look ahead to see those distinctions.
Community action as we said is related to the conflict perspective on change,
redresses imbalances of power,
imbalances in resource allocation within the community.
It concerns empowerment.
It acknowledges that empowerment is something that people do for themselves.
One cannot reach into a community and empower people.
People have to realize their needs and take actions for
themselves in order to become empowered through their own initiatives.
This is a power-coercive approach to change in the sense that power is used.
Power can be used in a positive way.
One of the most famous examples of this approach was the community organization
done by Saul Alinsky and company in Chicago where poor people
who do not have services engaged in a variety of disruptive activities,
concerning garbage collection, various kinds of protests, etc until
the power elite were made aware of them and their needs, and changes occurred.
In this case the change agent acts as an organizer to help community members
identify the pressure points, where they could lobby, where are their connections.
Media advocacy plays an important role in getting the attention of decision makers.
In the next slide we see a youth group from a church in a small community in
Honduras.
Working together in many communities groups like this form an important
part of the broader social system of the community.
They not only are concerned about their own immediate social needs
that want to make a contribution into the community.
In this case, the youth are taking part in community environmental cleanup exercises.
These are things in terms of locality development or community development
model where people organize, recognize a problem and organize to help themselves.
Again, as we were talking about community diagnosis, it's important for
us to identify such social groups in the community and the role they play
in keeping the community strong socially, and keeping it healthy.
For example, we've mentioned in communities in the eastern part of
Nigeria, there are formalized age grades within the community.
People born within a three year period are automatically joined together in an age
grade, and as these groups mature, they have different responsibilities for
the welfare, the security of the community.
In locality development, we see embody,
the normative re-educative approach to change.
This model builds on existing community capacity.
The goal is problem solving, and sustaining this, because the community
is involved in seeking its own solutions to its own problems.
Emphasis is on community control.
In locality, development,
or community development, the change agent is a facilitator.
The change agent does not have an agenda other than to enable the community
to identify its own problems, seek its own strategies and solutions.
The primary expertise of a facilitator is in the process of change.
In contrast, the primary expertise of the change agent in a social
policy approach is that of technical competence in a particular area,
health, engineering, education, a content emphasis.
Locality development builds on indigenous knowledge.
How people themselves have solved problems.
How people themselves have organized and gotten things done over the years.
Through these indigenous organizations people can organize themselves for
change and
they can identify the local technologies that will allow change to occur.
Finally, community mobilization, as we said,
is the fourth approach, although not originally proposed by Rockman.
If one looks at a matrix, as we said of the source of the idea internal or
external to the community, and the source of the resources to solve the problem,
primarily internal or external to the community,
the community mobilization box in that matrix becomes apparent.
In this sense we have agency oriented priority setting, and
effort is made to bring people together for action.
It's usually specific program or goal oriented.
And a good example is in the area of immunization coverage.
Now, the agency will provide the vaccines, but in terms of getting mothers and
fathers to bring their children, this role falls primarily on the community.
Effort is made to reach community leaders and
have them identify resources to bring people in.
Town criers go from door to door, people in the association of taxi or
lorry drivers will go out and bring mothers in, social groups such as boy and
girl scouts will go house to house, tracing children who have defaulted.
Community members will be encouraged to provide food and lunch for
mobile teams of immunize immunization staff.
And so the community is encouraged to make a contribution
to a program that the agencies have brought in.
Social marketing is a major strategy for
creating demand interest in the specific service itself
as well is in mobilizing different social groups and agencies in the community.
So far we've looked at the functionalist versus the conflict
view of community change.
We've also looked at four different approaches or
models of change according to Rothman.
Finally, another perspective contrasts the process approach to change verses
the content approach to community change In the process approach, the community
itself is actually part of the change process, it's part of what changes.
New structures, new norms, new relationships, a new leadership,
new problem solving capacity, new local organizations evolve,
as the community improves it's problem solving capacity.
