RAIN Destroying Community Building Community September/October 1985 U.S.-Soviet Links Volume XI, Number 6
Page 2 RAIN September/October 1985 RAINDROPS RAIN Volume XI, Number 6 September/October 1985 Coordinating Editor F. Lansing Scott Copy Editor Ralph Coulson Contributing Editor Steve Johnson Editorial Assistant Madeline Dalrymple Circulation Manager Alan Locklear Intern Rebecca Foy Golden Contributors Steven Ames Rob Baird Bruce Borquist Barbara George John McKnight Mark Roseland Joel Schatz Stephen Schneider Ethan Selzer Graphic Design Susan Applegate Printing; Argus Printing Typesetting: Irish Setter RAIN magazine publishes information that can help people make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, and build a society that is durable, just, and ecologically sound. RAIN is published six times a year by the Center for Urban Education. RAIN subscription and editorial offices are located at 3116 North Williams, Portland, OR 97227; 503/249-7218. Subscriptions are $18/year ($12.00 for persons with incomes under $7,500 a year). For additional information on subscriptions and publications, see page 39. Writers' guidelines are available for a SASE. Editorial and advertising deadlines are two months prior to publication date. RAIN is indexed in the Alternative Press Index and New Periodicals Index. Copyright © 1985 Center for Urban Education. No part may be reprinted without written permission. ISSN 0739-621x. Cover: Peace rally photo by Barbara Gun- dle, 1984. A Slight Change In the Weather As we've explained in recent issues, this year RAIN merged its operations with Portland's Center for Urban Education. With this merger come some changes and clarifications in our editorial direction. Although some of the details are still being discussed, we thought we'd provide you with some of the broader outlines as they are emerging. As many of you know, RAIN was subtitled "The Journal of Appropriate Technology" up until the beginning of 1984. We had always conceived of appropriate technology in broad terms, discussing the ramifications for social institutions and personal lifestyles as well as its technical aspects. "Appropriate technology" seemed to be a very useful umbrella concept throughout the seventies for incorporating a whole range of concerns, such as renewable energy development, recycling, sustainable agriculture, community land trusts, frugal lifestyles, and so on. But as we entered the eighties, A.T. began to seem less useful as a way of describing what RAIN was about. There were many reasons for this. One was that, despite our best efforts, many people (especially those not already in our circles) continued to confuse appropriate technology with simply "new gadgets," especially new energy gadgets, without including the wider social context that seemed important to us. And as public concern about the "Energy Crisis," one of the driving forces behind the appropriate technology movement, began to wane, and as the business of developing new energy gadgets became increasingly commercialized and thus removed from people's everyday experience, RAIN'S old identification seemed to relegate us to an increasingly marginal role in the world. Since dropping "The Journal of Appropriate Technology" as our subtitle, we have been doing some casting about for a new umbrella term, a new central organizing principle, that will bring together in a coherent fashion the range of concerns we are involved in. In our discussions, one idea that has continued to assert its importance is the notion of community. For us, an important aspect of appropriate technology has been that it should enrich relationships between people rather than isolate them as most of our prevailing technologies have done. RAIN has always sought to empower people to work together in their communities to respond to various human needs in an equitable and ecologically sound manner. Our book Knowing Home perhaps best typifies this approach. "Community," "knowing home," "working together," "politics of place"— these are some of the words and phrases that keep cropping up in our discussions about the future direction of RAIN. We see local community as a place where people of different races, cultural traditions, social classes, and political ideologies can work together on practical projects and transcend some of these differences. We also see community as a place where the values of participation, social justice, non-violent conflict resolution, and ecological harmony can be put into practice. Clearly, using the concept of community as a primary touchstone for RAIN content is not a change in our direction so much as a clarification and slight shift in emphasis, one that may narrow our range of subject matter in some ways and expand it in others. If you have any comments on any of the ideas expressed here, we'd love to hear from you. This Issue The theme of community pervades this issue. The lead article by John McKnight demonstrates the way both land and community can be damaged by "new and improved" technological and social innovations. Toward the end of the article, McKnight suggests a return to traditional wisdom to help cultivate community. Traditional wisdom is found in abun-
September/October 1985 RAIN Page 3 dance in the ideas and work of Griscom Morgan, who is interviewed in the following article. Griscom and his father, the late Arthur Morgan, have done perhaps as much as anyone in America to cultivate community. Community Service Inc., founded by the Morgans in 1942, bases its work on nearly half a century of practical experience with communities, plus extensive knowledge of community life in other cultures and other periods of history. A review of the new edition of Arthur Morgan's classic. The Small Community, accompanies the interview with the younger Morgan. Trying to build a sense of transnational community across a historical schism of distrust and fear is the subject of Joel Schatz's article, "Reflections Along the U.S.-Soviet Frontier." Perhaps the more we begin to see the Soviet people as "us," rather than "them," the harder it will be for our government to convince us to go along with its elaborate, expensive, and dangerous plans to protect us from "them." Building community involves working together, and often this is done in some kind of formal organization. The better skills we have for working in these organizations, the better we will be able to achieve our goals. This is why we offer "Tools for Better Meetings," a useful set of guidelines for an activity almost all organizations engage in. Expect to find more of these organizational how-to pieces in future issues. Staffing Status After a fairly long process of searching for a new editor, it was decided that the job would be much better handled by a two-person team. It was also decided that I would make up one half of that team, but we are still looking for the other half. If you are interested and have a strong background in community concerns, request a job description from Stephen Schneider, Center for Urban Education, 0245 SW Bancroft, Portland, OR 97201. We hope to find our ideal co-editor by sometime early next year. In the interim, Ralph Coulson, who assisted with the last issue, has been hired for a six-month position. Welcome, Ralph. The other new face around here is our intern, Rebecca Golden. She has been in charge of managing much of the information flow around here (requesting books, magazines, and organizational literature for review, filing things once they come in, and so on). —ELS Subscription Expiration For those of you who wonder: The last issue of your subscription is indicated by the four-digit number in the upper right- hand corner of your mailing label (for instance, 12 03 means your sub expires with volume 12, number 3). We do our best to notify you when your sub is expiring. We send out a flier with a postage-paid envelope before your last issue reaches you, we stamp "Renew, now, this is your last issue" on your last issue, and we send another flier and postage-paid envelope to those who haven't already renewed after their last issue. Also, we mail RAIN at the nonprofit, third-class postage rate. Under most circumstances, the Post Office will not forward this class of mail. If you wish to receive all your issues of RAIN, you must notify us of your change of address. Please remember that we need your old address as well as your new address. —-AL MOVING? If you're moving, please let us know. With a month's notice we can make sure you get each issue of RAIN. But if you don't let us know, you may miss out. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't usually forward RAIN's class of mail. Attach your address label here (or copy it carefully): New address: CITY RTATT? ZIP CITY .. . STATE ZIP Mail to: RAIN, 3116 North WUIiams, Portland, OR 97227 Index to Volume XI Vol. XI, No. 1, November/December 1984 The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome, by Michael Marien, 4 Wild and Wooly Vegetables, by Robert Kourik, 11 Golden Rules of Edible Landscaping, by Robert Kourik, 14 Solar Power: The Promise Fades, by Roger Poliak, 15 Framing Hexagonal Floors: A Lesson, by Richard Conviser, 20 Ecology of Everyday Life, by F. Lansing Scott, 23 Vol. XI, No. 2, January/February 1985 Military Spending Drains Rural Economies, by J. David Colfax, 4 War Tax Resistance, by Ann and Bruce Borquist, 6 A.T. Coes to Grad School, by David Biddle, 1,0 Building a New Economy: Three Models: ARABLE, by Mary Vogel, 13 EarthBank, by Ellen Chilarducci, 15 LETS, by Kris Nelson, 17 Hike, Bike, and Bus Week, by Dorothy Mack, 19 Teaching Children, Reaching the Community, by Debbie Habib and Kim Knorr, 20 Should We Pave Our Dead End Road?, by Kirn Stafford, 24 Community Information Technology, by Steve Johnson, 26 Vol. XI, No. 3, March/April 1985 Land, Housing, and Community Finance, an interview with Chuck Matthei, 6 Bioregional Balancing Act, by Carlotta Colette, 20 The Regional Council in Court, by Ralph Cavanagh, 22 The Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program (In a Nutshell), by Carlotta Collette, 23 An Affirmative Neighborhood Information Plan, 26 Community Information Technology, 28 Vol. XI, No. 4, May/|une 1985 Three Models for Community Development: Housing Trust Funds, by David Paul Rosen, 6 Neighborhood Housing Services, by Annette Osso, 7 Invest in Neighborhoods, by Rob Baird, 8 Recycling Plutonium: Inappropriate Technology for a Sustainable Non-Future, by Chuck Bell, 12 Watching the World with Lester Brown, 16 Cultural Clearcutting: The Human Costs of Tropical Deforestation, by Thompson R. Smith, 23 Community Information Technology, 28 Vol. XI, No. 5, July/August 1985 Theme; Planet, Community, and Person—Working Toward Sustainability Globescope: Practicing Planetary Populism (in Portland), by Dwight Wilson, 4 Collectively Crafting the Globescope Action Plan, by Jeff Strang, 7 Uprooting World Hunger, a talk by Frances Moore Lappe, 8 Growing a Bioregional Politics, a talk by Peter Berg, 14 Trimming Your Waste: Potentials for Resource Recovery and Recycling, by Jerry Powell, 19 Taking Charge of Our Lives: A Review Essay, by F. Lansing Scott, 23 Community Information Technology, 28 Vol. XI, No. 6, September/October 1985 John Deere and the Bereavement Counselor: Turning Community Into Desert, by John McKnight, 6 Family, Community, and Economy, an interview with Griscom Morgan, 11 Reflections Along the U.S./Soviet Frontier, by Joel Schatz, 19 Tools for Better Meetings, by Barbara George, 24 Community Information Technology, 28
Page 4 RAIN September/October 1985 I Women and Technology On August third, more than 130 women attended a historic event in Portland. "Women and Technology: Changes in the Workplace" brought together feminists, educators, union members, technology professionals, and technicians. According to conference organizer Mimi Maduro, this was the first community-based conference in the U.S. on this topic. She said the only other similar events, in New York and San Diego, were sponsored by universities. The one-day conference looked at the technological changes occuring in the workplace and how these changes affect women. Two key facts were considered: Technology is transforming the way we work, and women are entering the work force at an unprecedented rate. From these two facts other critical questions were examined: What jobs are women going to hold in technological fields? How are women influencing technology in the workplace? The keynote speaker. Dr. Sally Hacker from Oregon State University, provided a theoretical framework for the day's sessions. Hacker's life work has been dedicated to researching women, work, and technology issues. Dr. Corky Bush from the University of Idaho provided a historical framework emphasizing the bottom line: technology is political. Workshops included discussions on the effects of technology on employment, job skills development, automating the office, women technical managers, starting your own technology-based business, career options, and managing technological anxiety. The conference was spearheaded by a group of seven Portland women and co-sponsored by the Portland YWCA. Corporate Execs Jailed for Toxic Dumping "Warning: The illegal disposal of toxic wastes will result in jail. We should know; loc got caught!" This was the lead-in to an adverHsement that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The full-page ad, sponsored by American Caster Company at a cost of $15,000, was the result of a judgement against that company for "clandestine ... midnight dumping" of toxic wastes. In addition, the company had to pay a $20,000 fine and put up another $20,000 for clean-up costs. American Caster's president and vice president are also serving six-month jail sentences. This advertising for corporate responsibility and admitting guilt publicly was the result of action by the Los Angeles Toxic Waste Strike Force, which uses undercover monitoring and SWAT-like tactics to discover illegal waste dumping. The force is made up of people from the state and county health departments, and city police, fire, and sanitation workers. (Source: Good Money, July/August 1985.) SCATTERED Nuclear Power Outlawed in Denmark The nuclear industry is finding something rotten in Denmark. In March of this year, the Danish Parliament voted to approve the following statement: "The Parliament directs the government to adjust the official energy plans to include the condition that nuclear power will not be used. The government shall therefore inform the electric utilities that they will not receive approval for application for permission to construct nuclear power plants." This decision is the culmination of 11 years of active opposition to plans presented by the electric utilities to introduce nuclear power into Denmark in 1973. The national anti-nuclear organization, OOA, hailed the decision as a great victory. It warned, however, that unless concrete steps are taken the decision will be simply a symbolic gesture that can be changed at any time. The OOA has therefore decided to remain in existence to pursue the following projects: conservation and renewable energy, cogeneration, low-temperature heating systems, the prohibition of electric heat in new construction, withdrawal of government funding for nuclear power research, and a call for Denmark's participation in international nonproliferation activity. (Source: NECNP Nesletter, Summer 1985.) Fertilizer from Renewable Resources A process to produce nitrogen fertilizer using primarily air, water, and electrical energy has been developed for use in remote areas or developing countries where fertilizer must be imported at high cost. Designed by researchers at the Batelle-C.F. Kettering Research Laboratory in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a prototype system was installed recently in Nepal, where electrical energy to power the process is being harnessed by a water turbine. Energy to operate the arc-reactor system also can be generated by wind-electric and photovoltaic power sources. Battelle's system uses an electric arc reactor to combine renewable resources such as nitrogen and oxygen from air with water to produce a weak nitric acid. When the acid reacts with a neutralizing agent such as limestone in an absorbtion column, it yields calcium nitrate fertilizer. (Source: Bio-Joule, July 1985.) Energy Recovery System from L.A. Wastewater The solids handling portion of the City of Los Angeles Hyperion Treatment Plant is in the process of being transformed from a traditional sewage plant to a super-modem facility that will treat over 370 million gallons of sewage each day and generate enough electricity to run all of Hyperion's operations plus an additional 19,000 homes. The HERS project (Hyperion Energy Recovery System) will include sludge processing from wastewater treatment
September/October 1985 RAIN Page 5 SHOWERS to produce sludge-derived fuel. The plant is scheduled to come on line by March 1986. The current system of generating digester gas will be retired. A gas turbine, combined cycle system will be installed which will nearly quadruple electrical production to 24.9 MW. This is 10 MW in excess of the plant's needs. The excess will be sold to utilities for an estimated $5.3 million a year. That, plus saving $7.4 million yearly by not buying power, adds up to $12.7 million in savings, which should provide an annual credit of $300,000 over the $12.4 million needed to run the plant each year. The capital cost of the project will be about $198.2 million. Seventy-five percent of the funding is coming from the Environmental Protection Agency, 12.5 percent from the State Water Resources Control Board, and the City of Los Angeles will provide 2.5 to 12.5 percent of the project's costs. (Source: Bio-Joule, July 1985.) Solar Tax Credits Today, renewable energy sources—solar thermal and photovotaics, wind, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal —provide nearly 10 percent of U.S. energy, while conservation and efficiency improvements effectively supply 21 percent through savings, according to Solar Lobby. Ironically, tax credits for renewable energy and conservation, which amount to only about five percent of the tax subsidies given to oil, gas, nuclear, and fossil electric sources, will expire this year unless Congress takes action. Recently the oil and gas industries and the electric utilities testified that even with their tax credits in place, and without disruptions in the Middle East, energy shortages will occur within the next five to 10 years. Renewable energy provides a prudent insurance policy for America's future energy independence. Legislation has been introduced in Congress (H.R. 2001 and S. 1220) to provide for subsidies for renewables and conservation. For more information on Solar Tax credits, contact: The Solar Lobby, 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW, %638, Washington, DC 20036; 202/466-6350. World Bank Stops Brazilian Deforestation Loan On April 1, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a.k.a. the World Bank, stopped payment on $209 million of a loan for a road-building and development project known as Polonoreste, in northwest Brazil. Thirty environmental and human rights groups from the U.S., Brazil, and 10 other countries had opposed continued financing of the project, which has caused deforestation and destruction of Indian lands. Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Bruce Rich, who helped spearhead the project, said that the cutoff "represents the first time the Bank has halted disbursements for environmental reasons." (Source: Not Man Apart, July/August 1985.) Innovative Bike Shelters in New York In New York City, there are 2.5 million bicycles, and 60,000 people commute via bicycle daily. Storing those bicycles is a problem because of small apartments and security concerns. Early this year, Gail Boorstein of the Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council initiated a design contest to try to solve the storage problem. The Bicycle Shelter Project requested submissions that were "economical, street-wise, and appealing." More than forty-five proposals came in, and three winners were chosen. One winning design uses wrought iron for a picket fence look, a common feature of N.Y. brownstone architecture, and another features a kiosk design using roll-up metal doors similar to those used by shopkeepers in Manhattan. One very street-wise design proposed using old vans, with seats and motor removed and windows covered over, as shelters. The Bicycle Shelter Project is now seeking $15,000 to build prototypes. Eventually, they hope well-designed shelters will protect bicycles and free up apartment space in many cities. For information, contact: Bicycle Shelter Project, Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council Inc., 561 Columbus, New York, NY 10024; 212/874-7272.
KAREN GOTTSTEIN Page 6 RAIN September/October 1985 John Deere and the Bereavement Counselor: Turning Community Into Desert The following article has been reprinted by permission of the E.F. Schumacher Society. It is one ofa series of Schumacher Lectures available in booklet form for $3 each from: E.F. Schumacher Society, Box 76A, RD 3, Great Barrington, MA 01230. by John McKnight Only eleven years ago, E.F. Schumacher startled western societies with a revolutionary economic analysis that found “Small Is Beautiful." His book concluded with these words: The guidance we need ... cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind. Because traditional wisdom is passed on through stories rather than studies, it seems appropriate that this lecture should take the form of a story. Making Deserts The story begins as the European pioneers crossed the Alleghenies and started to settle the Midwest. The land they found was covered with forests. With incredible effort they felled the trees, pulled the stumps, and planted their crops in the rich loamy soil. When they finally reached the western edge of the place we now call Indiana, the forest stopped and ahead lay a thousand miles of the great grass prairie. The Europeans were puzzled by this new environment. Some even called it the "Great Desert." It seemed uninhabitable. The earth was often very wet and it was covered with centuries of tangled and matted grasses. With their cast iron plows, the settlers found that the prairie sod could not be cut and the wet earth stuck to their plowshares. Even a team of the best oxen bogged down after a few yards of tugging. The iron plow was a useless tool to farm the prairie soil. The pioneers were stymied for nearly two decades. Their western march was halted and they filled in the eastern regions of the Midwest. In 1837, a blacksmith in the town of Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a new tool. His name was John Deere and the tool was a plow made of steel. It was sharp enough to cut through matted grasses and smooth enough to cast off the mud. It was a simple tool, the "sod buster" that opened the great prairies to agricultural development. Sauk County, Wisconsin is part of that prairie where I have a home. It is named after the Sauk Indians. In 1673, Father Marquette was the first European to lay his eyes upon their land. He found a village laid out in a regular pattern on a plain beside the Wisconsin River. He called the place Prairie du Sac. The village was surrounded by fields that had provided maize, beans, and squash for the Sauk people for generations reaching back into unrecorded time. When the European settlers arrived at the Sauk prairie
September/October 1985 RAIN Page 7 in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi River. The settlers came with John Deere's new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod- busting tool for planting wheat. Initially the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However, each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only 30 years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming became uneconomical and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust. It took the Europeans and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And even they forgot about the techniques and tools that had sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created —Wisconsin, the reservation, and the memories of people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover crops and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realize, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere's plow. The Bereavement Counselor The new technology is called "bereavement counseling." It is a tool forged at the great state universities, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can process the grief of the people who now live on the Prairie of the Sauk. The counselor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness hy invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere's plow, one can also imagine the arrival of the first bereavement counselor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the townspeople mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son, or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbors and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer, and song. They call upon the words of clergy and surround themselves in community. It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of the past and the future of the people on the Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead. The counselor's new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighborly obligations, and community ways of coming together. It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counselor arrives with the new grief technology. The counselor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counselor's claims. However, the counselor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved's community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counselor will offer help in grief processing. These lonely souls will accept the intervention, mistaking the counselor for a friend. For those who are penniless, the counselor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Board's decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counseling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centers, who will seek out the bereavement counselor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbor who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counselor, he will probably have major psychological problems later in life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counselor because, since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they will feel that to fail to be counseled is to waste their money, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right. Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbor will not drop by because he doesn't want to interrupt the bereavement counselor. The woman's kin will stay at home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counselor knows how to process grief in the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance from the bereavement counselor to learn the correct form of service
KAREN GOTTSTEIN Page 8 RAIN September/October 1985 to deal with guilt and grief. And the grieving daughter will know that it is the bereavement counselor who really cares for her because only the bereavement counselor comes when death visits this family on the Prairie of the Sauk. Shredding the Fabric of Community It will be only one generation between the time the bereavement counselor arrives and the community of mourners disappears. The counselor's new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighborly obligations, and community ways of coming together and going on. Like John Deere's plow, the tools of bereavement counseling will create a desert where a community once flourished. And finally, even the bereavement counselor will see the impossibility of restoring hope in clients once they are genuinely alone with nothing but a service for consolation. In the inevitable failure of the service, the bereavement counselor will find the desert even in herself. There are those who would say that neither John Deere nor the bereavement counselor have created deserts. Rather, they would argue that these new tools have great benefits and that we have focused unduly upon a few negative side effects. Indeed, they might agree with Eli Lilly whose motto was, "A drug without side effects is no drug at all." To those with this perspective, the critical issue is the amelioration of the negative side effects. In Eli Lilly's idiom, they can conceive of a new drowsiness-creating pill designed to overcome the nausea created by an anticancer drug. They envision a prairie scattered with pyramids of new technologies and techniques, each designed to correct the error of its predecessor, but none without its own error to be corrected. In building these pyramids, they will also recognize the unlimited opportunities for research, development, and badly needed employment. Indeed, many will name this pyramiding process "progress" and note its positive effect upon the gross national product. The countervailing view holds that these pyramiding service technologies are now counterproductive constructions, essentially impediments rather than monuments. E.F. Schumacher helped clarify for many of us the nature of those physical tools that are so counterproductive that they become impediments. From nuclear generators to supersonic transports, there is an increasing recognition of the waste and devastation these new physical tools create. They are the sons and daughters of the sod buster. It is much less obvious to many that the bereavement counselor is also the sod buster's heir. It is more difficult for us to see how service technology creates deserts. Indeed, there are even those who argue that a good society should scrap its nuclear generators in order to recast them into plowshares of service. They would replace the counterproductive goods technology with the At what point does the economics of a service technology consume enough of the commonwealth that all of society becomes eccentric and distorted? service technology of modern medical centers, universities, correctional systems, and nursing homes. It is essential, therefore, that we have new measures of service technologies that will allow us to distinguish those that are impediments from those that are monumental. Professional Services: Weighing the Costs We can assess the degree of impediment incorporated in modern service technologies by weighing four basic elements. The first is the monetary cost. At what point does the economics of a service technology consume enough of the commonwealth that all of the society becomes eccentric and distorted? E.F. Schumacher helped us recognize the radical social, political, and environmental distortions created by huge investments in covering our land with concrete
September/October 1985 RAIN Page 9 in the name of transportation. Similarily, we are now investing 12 percent of our national wealth in "health care technology" that blankets most of our communities with a medicalized understanding of well-being. As a result, we now imagine that there are mutant human beings called health consumers. We create costly "health making" environments that are usually large windowless rooms filled with immobile adult bicycles and dreadfully heavy objects purported to benefit one if they are lifted. Beyond the negative side effect is the possibility that a service technology can produce the specific inverse of its stated purpose. The second element to be weighed was identified by Ivan Illich as "specific counterproductivity." Beyond the negative side effect is the possibility that a service technology can produce the specific inverse of its stated purpose. Thus, one can imagine sickening medicine, stupifying schools, and crime-making correction systems. The evidence grows that some service technologies are now so counterproductive that their abolition is the most productive means to achieve the goal for which they were initially established. Take for example the experiment in Massachusetts where, under the leadership of Dr. Jerome Miller, the juvenile correction institutions were closed. As the most recent evaluation studies indicate, the Massachusetts recidivism rate has declined while comparable states with increasing institutionalized populations see an increase in youthful criminality. There is also the unmentionable fact that during doctor strikes in Israel, Canada, and the United States, the death rate took an unprecedented plunge. Perhaps the most telling example of specifically counterproductive service technologies is demonstrated by the Medicaid program that provides "health care for the poor." In most states, the amount expended for medical care for the poor is now greater than the cash welfare income provided that same population. Thus, a low income mother is given $1.00 in income and $1.50 in medical care. It is perfectly clear that the single greatest cause of her ill health is her low income. Nonetheless, the response to her sickening poverty is an ever-growing investment in medical technology—an investment that now consumes her income. The third element to be weighed is the loss of knowledge. Many of the settlers who came to Wisconsin with John Deere's "sod-buster" had been peasant farmers in Europe. There they had tilled the land for centuries using methods that replenished its nourishing capacity. However, once the land seemed unlimited and John Deere's technology came to dominate, they forgot the tools and methods that had sustained them for centuries in the old land and created a new desert. The same process is at work with the modern service technologies and professions that use them. One of the most vivid examples involves the methods of a new breed of technologists called pediatricians and obstetricians. During the first half of the century, these technocrats came, quite naturally, to believe that the preferred method of feeding babies was with a manufactured formula rather than breast milk. Acting as agents for the new lactation technology, these professionals persuaded a generation of women to abjure breast feeding in favor of their more "healthful" way. In the 1950s in a Chicago suburb, there was one woman who still remembered that babies could be fed by breast as well as by can. However, she could find no professional who would advise that she feed by breast. Therefore, she began a search throughout the area for someone who might still remember something about the process of breastfeeding. Fortunately, she found one woman whose memory included the information necessary to begin the flow of milk. From that faint memory, breastfeeding began its long struggle toward restoration in our society. These women started a club that multiplied itself into thousands of small communities and became an international association of women dedicated to breastfeeding: La Leche League. This incredible movement reversed the technological imperative in only E. E. TAYLOR/Oregon Historical Society
JUDITH RAFFERTY Page 10 RAIN September/October 1985 one generation and has established breastfeeding as a norm in spite of the countervailing views of the service technologists. Indeed, it was just a few years ago that the American Academy of Pediatrics finally took the official position that breastfeeding is preferable to nurturing infants from canned products. It was as though the Sauk Indians had recovered the Wisconsin prairie and allowed it once again to nourish a people with popular tools. The fourth element to be weighed is the “hidden curriculum" of the service technologies. As they are implemented through professional techniques, the visible message of the interaction between professional and client is, “you will be better because I know better." As these professional techniques proliferate across the social landscape, they represent a new praxis, an evergrowing pedagogy that teaches this basic message of the service technologies. Through the propagation of belief in authoritative expertise, professionals cut through the social fabric of community and sow clienthood where citizenship once grew. It is clear, therefore, that to assess the purported benefits of service technologies they must be weighed against the sum of the socially distorting monetary costs to the commonwealth, the inverse effects of the interventions, the loss of knowledge, tools, and skills regarding other ways, and the anti-democratic consciousness created by a nation of clients. Weighed in this balance, we can begin to recognize how often the tools of professionalized service make social deserts where communities once bloomed. Community Busters Unfortunately, the bereavement counselor is but one of the many new professionalized servicers that plow over our communities like John Deere's sodbusting settlers. These new technologists have now occupied much of the community's space and represent a powerful force for colonizing the remaining social relations. Nonetheless, the resistance against this invasion can still be seen in local community struggles against the designs of planners, parents' unions demanding control over the learning of children, women's groups struggling to reclaim their medicalized bodies, and in community efforts to settle disputes and conflicts by stealing the property claimed by lawyers. Frequently, as in the case of La Leche League, this decolonization effort is successful. Often, however, the resistance fails and the new service technologies transform citizens and communities into social deserts grown over with a scrub brush of clients and consumers. This process is reminiscent of the final British conquest of Scotland after the Battle of Culloden. The British were convinced by a history of repeated uprisings that the Scottish tribes would never be subdued. Therefore, after the battle, the British killed many of the clansmen and forced the rest from their small crofts into coastal towns where there was no choice but to emigrate. Great Britain was freed of the tribal threat. The clans were decimated and their lands given to the English Lords who grazed sheep where communities once flourished. Through the propagation of belief in authoritative expertise, professionals cut through the social fabric of community and sow clienthood where citizenship once grew. My Scots ancestors said of this final solution of the Anglo Saxon, “They created a desert and called it freedom." Our modern experience with service technologies tells us that it is difficult to recapture professionally occupied space. We have also learned that whenever that space is liberated, it is even more difficult to construct a new social order that will not be quickly coopted again. A vivid current example is the unfortunate trend developing within the hospice movement. In the United States, those who created the movement were attempting to detechnologize dying—to wrest death from the hospital and allow a death in the family. Only a decade after the movement began, we can see the rapid growth of “hospital-based hospices" and new legislation reimbursing those hospices that will formally tie themselves to hospitals and employ physicians as central “care givers." The professional cooption of community efforts to invent appropriate techniques for citizens to care in community has been pervasive. Therefore, we need to identify the characteristics of those social forms that are resistant to colonization by serving technologies while enabling communities to cultivate and care. These
authentic social forms are characterized by three basic dimensions: they tend to be uncommodified, unmanaged and uncurricularized. The tools of the bereavement counselor made grief into a commodity rather than an opportunity for community. Service technologies convert conditions into commodities, and care into service. Unfortunately, the bereavement counselor is but one of the many new professionalized servicers that plow over our communities like John Deere's sodbusting settlers. The tools of the manager convert commonality into hierarchy, replacing consent with control. Wherq once there was a commons, the manager creates a corpora- hon. The tools of the pedagogue create monopolies in the place of cultures. By making a school of everyday life, community definitions and citizen action are de-graded and finally expelled. It is this hard working team—the service professional, the manager, and the pedagogue—that pull the tools of "community busting" through the modern social landscape. Therefore, if we are to recultivate community, we will need to return this team to the stable, abjuring their use. Cultivating Community How will we learn again to cultivate community? It was E.F. Schumacher who concluded that "the guidance we need ... can still be found in the traditional wisdom." Therefore, we can return to those who understand how to allow the Sauk prairie to bloom and sustain a people. One of their leaders, a Chief of the Sauk, was named Blackhawk. After his people were exiled to the land west of the Mississippi, and his resistance movement was broken at the Battle of Bad Axe, Blackhawk said of his Sauk prairie home: There, we always had plenty; our children never cried from hunger, neither were our people in want. The rapids of our riverfurnished us with an abundance of excellent fish, and the land, being fertile, never failed to produce good crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes. Here our village stood for more than a hundred years. Our village was healthy and there was no place in the country possessing such advantages, nor hunting ground better than ours. Ifa prophet had come to our village in those days and told us that the things were to take place which have since come to pass, none of our people would have believed the prophecy. But the settlers came with their new tools and the prophecy was fulfilled. One of Blackhawk's Wintu sisters described the result: The white people never cared for the land or deer or bear. When we kill meat, we eat it all. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pinenuts. We don't chop down trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. The trees say "Don't. I am sore. Don't hurt me!" But they chop it down and cut it up. The spirit of the land hates them. They blast out trees and stir it up to its depths. They saw up the trees. That hurts them . .. They blast rocks and scatter them on the ground. The rock says, "Don't. You are hurting me!" But the white people pay no attention. When (we) use rocks, we take only little round ones for cooking . .. How can the spirit of the earth like the white man? Everywhere they have touched the earth, it is sore. Blackhawk and his Wintu sister tell us that the land has a Spirit. Their community on the prairie, their ecology, was a people guided by that Spirit. / When John Deere's people came to the Sauk prairie,^' they exorcised the prairie Spirit in the name of a new ' God, technology. Because it was a God of their making, they believed they were Gods. And they made a desert. There are incredible possibilities if we are willing to fail to be Gods. □ □ September/October 1985 RAIN Page 11 John McKnight is the associate director of the Centerfor Urban Affairs at Northwestern University. BARBARA GUNDLE
Page 12 RAIN September/October 1985 Family, Community, and Economy: A Conversation with Griscom Morgan Interview by Steven Ames The Morgan famil]/ of Yellow Springs, Ohio, must surely represent a unique kind ofAmerican dynasty—not one of corporate wealth or political power, but of intellectual gift and social purpose. Their collective work represents a lineage of thought that is indigenously American, one with roots in the most fundamental J^ersonian ideals. IfArthur Morgan, father, is the American who has best given expression to the idea ofcommunity, then perhaps Griscom Morgan, son, is the American who has best embodied that ideal in his lifelong work. Along with his wife Jane and the staffof Community Service Inc., the younger Morgan has spent the last four decades inspiring and assisting the cause of community. Implicit in Griscom Morgan's analysis ofour society is an understanding ofboth the deep strength of basic American principles and the sheerfolly ofour societal excesses. Undoubtedly, since World War II he has observed successive waves of change in American society—the rapid disintegration ofsmall towns and communities, the rise ofsuburbia, the revival of interest in intentional community, the gentrification of large cities, and the continued restructuring of the American family. While no one may quite be able to predict the ultimate resolution ofsuch disparate trends, Morgan's fundamental cause endures. Witness thefact of this interview. It was the result ofa short visit to Community Service by myselfand geographer Tom ■Detwyler in October of 1977. While much has changed since that time, including a social and political climate that often seems hostile to the concept of community, Griscom Morgan's ideas remain fresh, vivid, and visionary. As the three of us sat in the old house that is the Community Services office—tape recorder running—Griscom drew lightly from a well of information filled over many years. Thefollowing excerpts ofour talk could only be considered a sampler of ideas from a man whose contributions are wholly underappreciated. There is something profoundly sane in his vision. Whether it will prevail is another story. -Steven Ames Intentional Communities Morgan: The orthodox concept of commune has always been that if you want to live commmunally, you must say goodbye to solitude. You are bound. You can no longer think independently. That, to me, is a violation of the fundamentals of human life. It's a violation of community to try to make community a dominating world unto itself. You've got to be part of the universe. We bought the land for Celo Community in North Carolina in 1938. After World War II it was settled by people who had been in Civilian Public Service camps and prisons objecting to the war. But we had been working on the land trust and with the people in the valley in regard to this concept before we bought any land. We planned it through, talking with local people so they would be involved. Eventually, a sociologist came to study the community' Celo, he said, is an anachronism." He apparently had assumed from past studies that a community must have a common ideology or religious belief in order to succeed. Whereas Celo's success, it seems, was precisely because there was no lockstep—because people did think independently. It was intentionally headed in a
September/October 1985 RAIN Page 13 different direction than that of the orthodox commune. Ames: Yet wasn't this diversity of thought and expression a kind of common value? Morgan: Definitely. There was a broader, overarching perspective as a basis of unity in which a wide diversity could live together. And also, for Celo, we conceived that it should be intimately involved in the surrounding community, rather than isolated from it. Ames: Orthodox communes often seem to have been intended to surpass traditional family roles. One wonders if some of the people who later abandoned the communal experiment were not reacting to such heavy expectations. Morgan: Historically, it has been looked upon as an either/or situation: either you maintain the isolated biological family or you eliminate it for the commune. That, to me, is a discussion I would not want to engage in. It may seem fitting to people who are reacting to the disaster of the present-day fanuly, but in the long run I don't think it makes sense. For thousands ofyears all kinds of experiments have taken place, yet the biological family still remains a universal in human society. We recently had a visit from an Antioch graduate who had been living with Point Barrow Eskimos. He observed that if there are any people in the world that would have eliminated the biological family in preference for the commune—in terms of their experience and circumstances—it would have been these people. They are so utterly dependent upon one another. Under such primitive conditions, any member of the family can be gone in an instant, not coming back from whaling or what not. Why, he asked, had they not dissolved their families for a totally communal existence? Although there are all kinds of factors that do not exist in our society, he came to the conclusion that the biological family is a fundamental unit of economy and responsibility. Without it you get into so many complications, it simply takes too much energy. I have observed this again and again when people have tried to by-pass the family. For scores of thousands of years, in hundreds of thousands of societies, all kinds of experiments have taken place, yet the biological family still remains a universal in human society. A person can think, well. I'm going to invent a new way of walking in which we'll have our feet in the air and our hands on the ground—all manner of experiments can happen. But I'd like not to repeat what most of human evolution has explored pretty thoroughly. We need to start with what is the fundamental nature of human society and to go on from there. When we do that, we have tremendous possibilities ahead of us. All the evidence I have seen—and I think there is tremendous evidence—leads to the conclusion that the biological family cannot exist without the larger association of the small community and that the small community by and large does not survive without the biological family. If you have mass rearing of children, for example, as compared to their being dealt with individually, some of the fundamental qualities of individuality are lost. Rosabeth Kanter has said that individualism must be given up. But individuality is a very distinctive quality without which we become mass-think. I think it is a chacteristic of human life. By and large, we don't have litters of young. A mother gives attention to one baby or two babies. When we start to by-pass that process, I think we do terrible violence to human character. American society is characterized, says Robin Williams, by polarization between the idea of the individual as supreme and the society as supreme. Anthropologist Paul Radin said that the stable, competent societies are those in which this is not conceived of as a dichotomy. That is to say, both are sacred—the individual and the unities—and neither at the expense of the other. This is made possible by having a larger configuration in which both the family and the community are conceived of as having their own life, neither one secondary to the other. As long as we view it as an either/or situation, it's like saying, which are we going to dispense with, the right leg or the left? Small Towns Ames: What is the significance of the current migration of Americans back to small towns—where the intent is something less than building intentional community? Morgan: A great deal of this movement is more healthy than most communal and intentional community endeavors. But there must be an added ingredient if this hopeful development is not to become sterile and dead- ended. A larger vision is necessary to carry it further. Without that vision, it can become another kind of provincialism. This new input of life from the city could become isolated and be lost within a generation. Ralph Borsodi preached his "Back to the Land" message during the Depression of the 1930's. Lots of people did go back to land. But they found it was sterile, they couldn't stand it, the economics of it wasn't working. We could have a repetition of that experience unless we have some new insights—some process to maintain the integrity of the community. The same is true for intentional communities. They must have a larger vision and process. One of the problems is that people who are communicating in this setting are almost exclusively a university- trained, middle class group. They are isolated from the local "folk society." One Antioch alumnus who was teaching here is now getting down on the ground in Adams County, Ohio—the poorest county in the state. The folk society that he is living among means a tremendous amount to him. But he, alone, living there would
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