Dissertation Draft, Chapter One

Overview and summary of the theory

 

     We are living in an age of marvelous advances in technical knowledge. Yet despite so many important technological developments in recent decades, progress in addressing our basic social problems seems as slow as ever; perhaps even slower than in some past eras. It may be this emerging disparity between technological and social progress which has prompted so much recent interest in understanding how effective communities develop. For example, the World Bank (2001) recently established a goal "to identify ways in which outside assistance can help the process of social capital formation". Yet at the same time the World Bank observed that "the social capital literature at large (has) been more successful at documenting the beneficial impact of social capital than deriving policy prescriptions and providing guidelines about how to invest in it.".

     In this report I present a theoretical model of social capital formation grounded in the philosophical writings of John Dewey. The objective of this document is to begin to lay out a Dewian model or framework for understanding the process of social capital formation in any setting. In other words it seeks to address the issue mentioned in the World Bank quotation above, i.e. to provide a basis for a conceptual framework for policy prescriptions or guidelines as to how to invest in social capital.

     In keeping with Dewey's pragmatic philosophy, the model employs an action-based definition of social capital, rather than a more conventional definition of social capital based on social norms or relationships. Thus the model used herein defines social capital as instances where individuals take actions which appear to benefit the social system at personal cost. In chapter two of this report I explain why from a Dewian perspective this action-based definition is preferable to the standard definition of social capital, and give multiple examples from the fieldwork of behaviors which I think illustrate this definition of prosocial behavior and its role in social capital formation.

     The model presented herein was developed during my UCLA doctoral dissertation research in education in a part of Mexico a few miles from the U.S. border. The focus of the activity for this dissertation study was to help establish a community computer learning center. The community computer center is used as a case study to examine the process of social capital formation. I argue that social capital arises from individual acts of prosocial behavior as modeled by Dewey's theory of the "active self". I show how the computer center itself becomes a vehicle to facilitate the formation of social capital within the community. The presence of the community computer center places social resources within the community, and the availability of these resources creates opportunities for latent social capital which was already within the community to become active. I discuss how community organizations like the computer center help to make the prosocial efforts of any individual available for leveraging by other community members.

     How does the Dewian model I present describe the process of social capital formation? The model is built upon Dewey's concept of the "active self" as the basic source of social capital formation. The central point of this dissertation is that development organizations need to be attuned to this active self process and work with it, not against it. This Dewian development model contends that that sometimes it takes the special efforts of certain individuals to bring about real progress in a social system. This is because sometimes situations occur which are not fair or efficient, but these situations are not going to change on their own. Someone has to work for change. In other words, the model says that social systems have a tendency of reaching equilibrium points or stasis at sub-optimal levels, i.e. a social system becomes established which isn't really fair nor efficient for the community members at large. For example, the area where I conducted my fieldwork had reached an equilibrium point at which the distribution of access to computer technology was inequitable.

     The model argues that whenever a social system reaches one of these sub-optimal plateaus, an infusion of energy is needed to help the social system transition to an alternative configuration which will ultimately be more fair and efficient. However the required infusion of energy cannot be compensated for from within the system, given that the social system had already reached an internal equilibrium point or plateau based upon the existing political and economic forces at work within the system. Therefore in order for the social system to move ahead and reach a new plateau, some individuals have to be willing to make contributions for social progress which are not going to be compensated. In other words, social progress often depends on voluntary prosocial behavior. For example, prosocial behavior on the part of a number of individuals was needed to enable the formation of the community computer center. From a Dewian perspective these voluntary infusions of energy which cannot be compensated for by existing economic or political forces within the system are what is defined as social capital. So within this model social capital is required to help a system move to a higher level of equilibrium.

     But why should any individual voluntarily behave prosocially in the absence of compelling rewards or sanctions from within the system? After all, voluntarily contributing to the well being of a social system absent personal incentives or sanctions is seemingly irrational from an economic standpoint. This raises a dilemma. If social progress depends upon voluntary prosocial behavior, and if voluntary (i.e. uncompensated) prosocial behavior is irrational, how can the model explain social progress? This dilemma is resolved within the theory by resorting to John Dewey's model of the "active self". Basically, Dewey's "active self" model suggests that individuals are "social utilitarians" who develop their identities dynamically through social contexts. They do so by leveraging resources within the social domain along with their own contributions to steer the social systems and indeed their own social identities in desired directions. In order to form their own identities and the identities of their social environments in desired ways, the active self model holds that individuals are willing to voluntarily behave prosocially even in situations where such behavior appears to be contrary to their own interests. It is this basic mechanism of the active self, according to Dewey, which accounts for the voluntary prosocial behavior which ultimately makes social progress possible. Within my fieldwork I observed that the individuals who helped to create the community computer center appeared to be behaving in a manner consistent with Dewey's "active self" model. I argue that understanding this Dewian perspective of social capital formation has implications for the design of programs intended to promote its development.

     The brief "thumbnail sketch" of this model presented above in the preceding paragraphs will be more thoroughly explained in this report along with illustrations from my data from the study I conducted in Mexico. I underscore through many examples the role voluntary prosocial behavior plays in helping social capital to accumulate. I also show how individuals use the process to influence how the computer center will operate, and how they assume social roles vis-à-vis the computer center. These individuals, upon realizing that these resources are available in the social domain, undertake voluntary prosocial behaviors in which they expend their own efforts to leverage these social resources in certain ways. The presence of the community computer center creates the conditions for these individuals to develop for themselves more productive social roles, leading to social capital formation. In effect the presence of the community computer center creates a venue for social capital exchange.

     A central theme of this Dewian model of social capital formation is that voluntary prosocial behavior is the basic engine which drives the process of social capital formation. Dewey did not develop a model of social capital formation per se, but he did develop a model of prosocial behavior. According to Dewey voluntary prosocial behavior is attributable to a concept he called the "active self". Dewey's "active self" model of prosocial behavior represents the core of the social capital formation model presented in this document. I illustrate Dewey's theory of the "active self" with examples from the fieldwork. These examples show how individuals actively assume social roles which leverage social resources along with their own efforts to shape the nature of the social organization of the computer center.

     According to this reading of Dewey, the individuals who volunteer at the computer center do so because they are interested in influencing the emerging social system. This illustrates Dewey's model of the "active self". Dewey felt that this in essence is how our identities and the identities of our social systems are formed. These emerging social systems are of interest to the individual actor and to the wider society. Since the individual is interested in a prospective social system, I refer to this trait as "social utilitarianism". In other words since we are all fundamentally social beings, we could think of ourselves as "social utilitarians", i.e. beings who derive utility from social systems in which we will participate. As social utilitarians we are interested in helping to bring about desired social systems and to create desired social identities.

     This penchant for being willing to exert ourselves in order to bring about our desired social identities and desired social systems explains prosocial behavior according to Dewey's "active self" model, and is seen within the model presented here as the basic wellspring for social capital formation. I show within the data from my fieldwork how individuals behave consistently with Dewey's "active self" model, in other words how they employ social resources within the computer center and their personal energies to shape both the social organization of the computer center and their own social roles within the center.

     This Dewian social utilitarian perspective provides a new way of understanding voluntary prosocial behavior leading to social capital formation. It offers an explanation as to why individuals sometimes may act for the social good even in cases where these efforts are uncompensated. What is considered unique in Dewey's social utilitarianism is that it argues that individuals are primarily motivated by interest in social systems in which he or she will be a part and which will be of interest to society. Thus Dewey's social utilitarianism is seen as distinct from the utilitarian views of Mills and Benthan, who felt that individuals are motivated either by self interests or by a vicarious regard for the self interests of others.

     It is argued that understanding social capital formation in this Dewian way has implications for development programs. According to this model, social capital formation can best be promoted by organizations which effectively manage common pool resources in the social domain and which have educational components designed to promote civil interaction between individuals who do not share the same subjective views as to how these shared resources ought to be employed.

     The model developed herein has three components. The first two are the two inputs to social capital formation, i.e. the subjective visions of the members of the social system, and the social resources available within the social system to be leveraged in order to help those subjective visions come about. Community organizations, the third component part of the model, modulate the interactions between the two other parts, to help ensure that the prosocial efforts of individuals within the social system and the resources within the social domain do not dissipate.

     The role of community development organizations, such as the community computer center, in this process of social capital formation is seen as crucial. These organizations provide a vehicle for the conversion and accumulation of social capital and serve a function similar to the function performed by commercial markets with respect to pecuniary capital. In other words, just as in a commercial market the capitalist must repeatedly buy inputs, sell product, and end up with more pecuniary capital after each conversion cycle, this model of social capital formation assumes that social capital must move back and forth from the social domain, (as a common pool resource), to individual control and back into the social domain. For example individuals who volunteered to teach classes at the computer center were temporarily taking control of computer center resources to steer the social organization of the computer center in certain directions of their own design. Afterwards these resources moved back into the social domain.

     I argue that community organizations like the computer center make these conversion cycles possible. Without this, especially in resource-scarce less developed areas, these social resources may quickly dissipate before accumulation can occur. Community organizations like the community computer center provide a vehicle by which the social capital created by the prosocial behavior of one individual becomes available for use by others. These social resources move back and forth between the control of individuals and control of the organization, just as a library book which circulates is sometimes in the possession of the borrower and sometimes in the possession of the library. Organizations manage assets in the social domain and hopefully enable this pool of assets, including both tangible and intangible assets, to accumulate.

     This document develops the Dewian model of social capital formation and describes my study in more depth. The remainder of this first chapter provides background information on the study I conducted and the location where it took place. In the next chapter I discuss the pragmatic definition of social capital I am proposing, and why I believe Dewey would have preferred this definition to the prevailing conventional definition of today which attempts to describe social capital in terms of social connections and the attendant norms and trust. In chapters three, four, and five I discuss Dewey's "active self" theory of prosocial behavior as the core of this theoretical model for understanding the process of social capital formation in any setting. In chapter six I discuss the relationship between prosocial behavior on the part of individuals and social capital formation the level of the social system. In the final chapter I discuss the role of community organizations in supporting social capital formation. All of these chapters make reference to my fieldwork in helping to establish a community computer center in a low-income area of Mexico. The remainder of this chapter provides additional background information about my study and the location where the study took place.

     In conducting this study I used the Emergent Design approach which was developed by David Cavallo at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cavallo created this Emergent Design approach in the hope that it would be effective in helping to unlock latent social capital in less developed areas of the world. Cavallo's idea is that to obtain social progress one must create the conditions that will allow new ideas to emerge spontaneously and develop. His theory is that social progress doesn't really come from trying to impose some mandatory, uniform system from the top down in an authoritative way. Rather progress occurs when people are free and new ideas are allowed to develop and grow from the bottom up. The good ideas spread on their own, and societies improve in a gradual and stepwise fashion, moving ahead slowly and steadily. The key is that one must create the conditions for these ideas to emerge, give people access to the resources they need, and not stand in their way.

     Cavallo's studies in Thailand had established that the Emergent Design method could be very effective for unlocking latent social resources in less developed areas. Although Cavallo's study was much larger than the study reported on here, his study did not focus specifically on the social learning process behind the Emergent Design approach as did this study. In conducting this study I used an ethnographic, i.e. a descriptive approach to doing the research, rather than an experimental approach. I selected this ethnographic approach because it is generally recognized within the social sciences that ethnography is a useful tool for developing theory. I developed this theory within the context of a practical situation in which I was working at the time. Hopefully this helped me to keep my theory building on track and more in contact with reality than had the theory been developed in a more remote setting.

     In February 2003 I set out to conduct my dissertation study in a low-income area of Mexico chosen because I already had some contacts in that region. I selected a neighborhood which I thought would be an appropriate location for the study. I then arranged with a nonprofit organization already working in the area to conduct my study at their existing community center. I would help set up the computer learning program within the community center, and then use this project as the source of my data for my dissertation study. I rented an apartment in the neighborhood, which I will call "Colonia La Herencia", moved in, and began the work of helping to set up the center. I lived in the neighborhood where the community center is located for about ten months as I participated in and observed the development of the community computer center.

     Colonia La Herencia is located only a few miles from the United States on the outskirts of a large Mexican border city which has been experiencing rapid growth in recent years. A little over a decade ago the sparsely vegetated rolling hills in this area were almost completely uninhabited. Today nearly 200,000 people live in the area around the community center, and movement into the uninhabited fringes of the community continues at a very rapid pace. The roads are unpaved, dusty in the summers and at times muddy to the point of being impassable during the rainy season. The most common modes of transportation are walking and riding in the old buses which regularly traverse the bumpy dirt roads throughout the neighborhood. These buses trudge along at all hours of the day and night, as they take residents to and from work and on shopping trips to more commercial districts outside of the Colonia. If the rider wishes to go as far as the central business district of the city it will be a slow, bumpy and possibly very crowded two hour bus ride each way to and from the Colonia. One father in the Colonia once told me that he and his family had not visited his brother's family who live at the other side of the city for several years because the trip for he and his family on buses to get across the metropolitan area and back would have cost $15 dollars U.S., which was a prohibitive amount. But the bus rides to the nearby maquilladora plants are free for those who are willing and able to work at these assembly plants for the low wages offered. These buses run around the clock, corporate buses sent by the large, new, modern and massive maquilladora plants which ring the Colonia. These assembly plants came from the leading industrial powers of the world to perch on the doorstep of Colonia La Herencia. Large, boxy, white, new and multiple-football-field-in-size, attractive if unsubstantial buildings, these neat and trim maquilladoras seem to rest just beyond the consciousness of daily life in the Colonia, like a vaguely remembered dream, modern buildings with manicured lawns behind the security fences. But generally the local streets and vacant lots of the Colonia are strewn with litter and the occasional item of discarded furniture or abandoned automobile. Graffiti is everywhere. Stray dogs peacefully roam in the streets. In the mornings and the evenings there is a bit more car traffic during rush hour, and the principle road in and out of the Colonia becomes clogged with traffic as residents drive or take the buses to and return from work. Some of the people who live in the Colonia work in the United States, leaving for work as early as 4:00 a.m. if they have to take a bus to the international border crossing, and returning in the evenings as much as 16 hours later to their homes. Some even send their children to school in the U.S.

     Building construction is a very slow but never ending process in the Colonia. Many of the houses appear to be only partially constructed, and sometimes even late at night one hears hammering as some resident tries to complete some home construction task after a long day at work. Some of the houses are large, some are small stucco or concrete block buildings, and many others are small, provisional buildings made of used garage doors and other recycled materials. There is running water for cleaning available in the Colonia, but no one drinks this water, purchasing instead their drinking water in plastic 5-gallon "garafones" at the local shops. The neighborhood has electricity, but many of the residents obtain it via poaching, and at some points one can see dozens of illegally hung wires hanging off of the power lines laid along the ground and running into homes. On the Fourth of July, 2003 I was returning late to my apartment when I saw flashes of light illuminating the entire neighborhood. I thought that someone was celebrating our Independence Day, until all of the lights in the neighborhood went out and I realized that someone had shorted out the line in an attempt to tap into the electrical system.

     There are a few small shops and food stands along the more heavily traveled streets, which meet the most pressing needs of the community, and several times each week large sections of certain streets are closed to make room for travelling "sobre ruedas" swap meets, where vendors sell groceries, hardware supplies, used and new clothing, Music CD's, cell phones and second-hand household items. Also within the swap meets are food stands and even the occasional barber shop. A far greater variety of items can be found at these traveling swap meets than is available on a daily basis in the few shops of the Colonia, and the swap meets offer lower prices as well. There are also churches and schools in the neighborhood . One provisional school which was originally built with secondhand garage doors and is now covered with graffiti is being replaced by the government with an attractive new brick building.

     Despite the pervasive impression of poverty which may occur to the unfamiliar visitor from a more developed area, the Colonia is in fact a vibrant area with very earnest hard working and friendly residents laying down roots and establishing stable lives. Because of the system for allocating land in Mexico many of the residents still do not have title to the land where their homes are located, and this fact may explain why so many of the buildings are not completed and made with less expensive materials. There is a strong entrepreneurial spirit in the area, and many small businesses are run by the local families. With the neighborhood being so new, one gets the sense that the residents are almost more like what we in the U.S. would call homesteaders than homeowners, and there is a positive and expansive attitude often in evidence around the place. The people who live there seem to understand the society in a way outsiders can't, and realize that while there is poverty in the neighborhood there is also opportunity and the chance of a much better future, at least for most of the residents.

     Although the roads are bad, and the appearance of the Colonia seems depressed to the visitor from the U.S., I can honestly say it's the nicest place that I have ever lived. It is an area poor in its material and rich in its people. Although living under difficult conditions, one meets the best people here. Being isolated, it is in some ways like a quiet small town.

     This is a very brief introduction into the community where I lived and worked during ten months of last year. In the following chapter I begin discussing the study I conducted in this community. I will discuss the process of setting up a community computer center as interpreted through the lens of John Dewey's concept of the active self.

Very preliminary draft: Please do not quote without permission.
Comments welcome at KenDaniszewski@yahoo.com
© Copyright by Kenneth Stanley Daniszewski 2004