CHAPTER 5 Theory of Effective Community
5.3 Theory Analysis
technology refers to the technical application that people (villagers) develop or/and borrow or/and imposed to the villagers to cope with the essential condition. People (villagers) in a society (village) develop, create, modify and keep changing from time to time to be able to survive those components. The previous two (a) and (b) are the components of the social capital as used by a popular scholar Puttnam (1995).
5.3 Theory Analysis
will be used and shared as guidance for the living. Here a new or modified technology is created and/or modified. At the same if the workload is too much to be carried out by one person or one family, another solution is to be made, by gathering several neighborhood to work together- then a social organization is emerged. In order to control or to prevent free rider (someone to break the rule), the social or natural disorder and disasters or/and to cope with essential conditions a code is developed for the specific purposes (as the rule for the reciprocal labor exchange- I work for you, you have to work for me in return, or the ceremony to predict the rainfall pattern). Then find the codes for specific purpose.
One component of society connects with the others three components and vise visa. While there is a change in one component the others are also changed. But in the past the changes often came from the essential conditions (for inside factors) and with some occasions the change was made by the outside factors (trader, religious missionary and invasion war or internal country civil war). As the change in the past due to the change in essential conditions then these changes were gradually made and modified by the villagers and in a more proper way (without making much harm to the human who live in the society) so the question is why it was happened without making harm to the people and/or society? Before answering to this question, I would like to turn the attention to the changing of society in the contemporary time. Each change has its own reasons and it slowly and gradually happened.
The indigenous social, institutional organization and indigenous technology are the results of a long and enduring adaptations of the people (villagers). All of them were simultaneously emerged during a specific period and for the specific purpose, condition and needs and wants of the people (villagers) in the society (village).
5.3.1.2 The Change of the society in the Contemporary Time
In the contemporary time, the most affected influence to the change of a society is the globalization and the development agents. The 21st century- is the century of development with the popularity of the International Development Assistance (IDA) or period that the industry of aid now can be named as a Market for the Aid (as it can be seen the title of a book by Klein Michael et al. 2005). As for Cambodia rural society these two factors play a very crucial role in its change. Many new social organizations, technologies were introduced by the development agents (here I refer to government, donor, and NGOs).
(But no one see the institutional organization in a positive way). Those development agents are reasonable (they are right- what they are doing now) because they have found that the society lacks technology, does not have social organizations for coping with the essential conditions. For example: for confronting with the drought, scientists based on their germplasm knowledge with their artificial man made ecological condition; they developed many new high yield variety seeds and applying to the society via the development agents together with extension training. Both of them scientist and development agents who are responsible for the task hope that it will be useful for the people in the rural area. However, the result comes with a very limited as they are choking on the imposition of the new technology and new social organization. They didn’t recognize that it needs to be based on current available social organization, technology and institutional organization to help them to spread this new technology and succeed in their
development project/program. Be awaken by this loss, still new strategy was introduced in order to set up social organization, as nowadays find the farmer association or the extension farmers. However, still it is not as useful and effective as the social organization which is self-emerged and the institutional organization that co-existed with.
Current development in Cambodia is trying to make change in all four components of the foundation of the society but they are doing this work not together, not in the same time and not base on the existing components, resulting with less effective or for the most it has partial result. For example a social organization- forestry community was set up by a NGO namely Mlob Baitong in Sambo village, this community has very narrow role and activities and participated by a few villagers only. The consequence of this failure is the fact that poverty incident still remained the same or even increased.
In Cambodia, each rural society has no choice to avoid to cope with or to escape from the change imposed by those developments agents as well as the globalization wave itself. If an component- technology, institution and social organization was introduced by development agents, subsequently that component will be trial (not directly accept or take), learnt and modified and keep (sometime just keeping there without usage but people do not reject) by the people/villagers. Most of the imposed components have to be gotten through the experimental and modification process of the people/villagers before it can be functioned. This type can be named as vernacular type- if borrowing Dove’s terminology (Dove 1992). The modified or vernacular types are the alternative types resulting from modern imposing change made by development agents and process of modification made by the people.
The social organizations are among the most impositions into the rural society of Cambodia. Each sector has created own social organization in the village and/or commune and by both the government and the NGOs. They are together creating their own communities for their own specific purposes. For the government, to count some for the readers notion- the forestry administration authority of Cambodia has forestry community, the department of fishery has fishery community, the water resources has water user group…for the NGOs there are water user groups community, forestry community, micro finance community, extension farmers community, rice and /or cow bank community…there are many, in one village, more than three communities which were created by the NGOs and/or government can be found.
With diverse community types in the village, villagers are sometime getting confuse and hardly to catch up with those community in term of recognizing (not even the chance to be participated). However, as the other imposed components, the community is functioned in some degree after it proceeds through the modification made by villagers (people). The processes of changes of the created/imposed community, result another component- something differs from the creative shape, that is an alternative one which is in here names as vernacular shape.
5.3.1.3 Alternative change
Alternative change results alternative or practical or vernacular type of components- it can be alternative/practical technology (originally it is the scientific produced technology), vernacular social organization or vernacular institutional organization. In short, those alternatives are unofficial types but
they are practical. Why does the imposed type not function? Because it does not fit with other components as it is partially purposed covered. It is not compatible with the other three components that is, why it has to be modified to enable to be functioned and manageable. Scientist or/and development agents are the outsiders equipped with ready-artificial facilities and plan for a just period of their job description and try hard toward their setting goal then finish as Chambers wrote what a scientist wants is “to seek peer approval and promotion” while the poor [people or farmer] wants is “to seek livelihoods and survival”
(Chambers 1997: 180). The consequence is an incompatible result which needs people to make another experiment and/or modification before an alternative type is emerged and useable.
As long as the imposed components do not well function and the useful are those people-modified types then it is necessary for the scientists and development agents to take into their accounts those latter types for their development planning as well as for the implementations.
In conclusion this Chapter has shown two dimensions of structure or mechanism to support to IDA and/or development. Those are the vertical and horizontal dimensions. Each of these dimensions composes of different entities. The existing research or strategies or theories were based mostly on the vertical dimension. The horizontal dimension was not received much attentions in the research or study. If there is, that research is dealing with individual one (as it has four components) but not altogether at the same time.
For the existing research, which focused on the vertical dimensions, they were mostly discussed at the recipient government levels or donor or NGOs level. For the horizontal dimension, the discus was just on the community alone. As I already informed, at the horizontal level it is involved by not only the target community (which is a social organization) but other three are also involved: the institutional organization, technology and essential condition.
By explaining as I made above was just a theory, it is doubtful, thereupon I would like to turn to next chapter for a case study in a village central of Cambodia which I will test my theory of the importance of horizontal dimension using a case study of a village in the central part of Cambodia.