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I am a Human Services major. My career interests are patient advocacy, social work in childhood cancer and animal assisted therapy for cancer patients.
In a paper, address how technical assistance can be used in community development. Your paper should include three (3) examples of how technical assistance is used in community development to resolve technical issues. Your paper will be graded based on your ability to relate any of the readings to your professional practice or to your “real world” experiences outside of work. Use your life experiences, your occupational background, and your skills and values to frame your approach to any idea, theme, or theory noted by the authors.
As you explore the examples of technical assistance that you want to evaluate, think about selecting those that align with your career interests in some way.
Requirements:
- Paper should be 3 to 4 pages in length (not including the title and reference pages), double-spaced, and it should conform to APA requirements
- Paper should include three (3) examples of how technical assistance is used in community development to resolve technical issues. Be sure to use headings in the paper to organize the three examples.
- Make sure to include at least one in-text citation for each source used in this paper.
- Include at least three (3) scholarly sources in addition to the course textbook.
I’m attached the two chapter from the textbook that are associated with this essay.
4/1/2019 Introduction to Community Development
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3 Community Development and NaturalLandscapes
Alan W. Barton and Theresa Selfa
BEHAVIOR OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter and completing the online learning activities, students should be able to
1. Describe ways in which community development is influenced by the natural environment.
2. Define “landscape.”
3. Explain how landscapes shape and reinforce the characteristics of the culture of the people who use them.
4. Explain how a landscape becomes a commodity, and identify some of the ramifications of this process.
5. Explain how a landscape can reinforce stratification in a community.
6. Explain what it means to say that landscapes are historically produced, and provide examples of how this process operates.
7. Explain how landscapes can be used to bring community factions together.
8. Explain how the values of a landscape can be marketed as an economic development tool.
Introduction
Social scientists have long debated the extent to which nature and society interact. One line of thought, proposed by Émile Durkheim
(1895/1982), suggests that social consequences have social causes. According to this view, to understand how humans interact in a
community context, only social factors offer a valid explanation. So, for example, to understand why some people in a community are
suspicious of individual achievement, it is more valid to argue that a relative lack of differentiation in social roles leads people to value
homogeneity, rather than to suggest that living in a hot climate suppresses people’s desire to achieve.
Those who believe that social behavior is best explained by social causes generally pay little attention to the natural context. Others,
however, argue that human behavior is always embedded in nature (Burch, 1971/1997; Buttel & Humphrey, 2002; Firey, 1960/1999;
Wilson, 1978). Humans are, after all, biological beings whose behavior is controlled at least in part by genetic codes and chemical
reactions. Furthermore, human groups live in a natural context, within ecosystems that establish boundaries within which people must
operate to construct and reproduce social systems. Humans frequently find meaning in the natural environment and use natural
elements in processes of social construction. Under this approach, humans cannot escape nature, even analytically, and social scientists
should consider the natural environment when studying social behavior.
Theory Is an Essential Ingredient to Community Development
Community developers often look to social theory to help guide their actions, but community development is a more applied
enterprise. Community developers are not limited by the rules of social science methodology. Theories of social behavior can help
community developers set goals and perhaps predict with some accuracy the consequences of decisions and actions. But community
developers also must take into account the real-world circumstances of their own communities. At any given time, the unique historical
trajectory of each community creates a set of circumstances that includes economic opportunity, political feasibility, and social
capacity, which combine to produce a limited set of options. Sometimes ignored, but always important, are the natural conditions as
well. In this chapter, we examine some of the ways in which natural ecosystems and landscapes interact with community structure and
culture to create opportunities and constraints for community developers.
Natural Resources and Community Development
How do natural conditions play a role in communities? For one thing, communities draw on natural resources to sustain themselves
economically. Indeed, the term resource is commonly used to describe the plants, animals, minerals, and water that make up natural
communities, particularly those that humans use to satisfy their needs and wants. This approach suggests that nature is separate from
human communities, and its primary function is to provide for humans as inputs in a productive process.
Also, natural resources serve communities in other ways. They shape community development by opening up opportunities for some
community groups, and imposing constraints on other groups. Sometimes overlooked are the characteristics of the resources
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themselves, such as the frequency of harvest, whether the resource is stationary or mobile, whether it is renewable or nonrenewable,
and the endowment of a resource in a particular area. All of these directly influence how individual communities interact with
resources. Soil quality and structure, topography, and vulnerability to natural disasters vary by location and shape the opportunities and
worldviews available to people and communities. The social institutions that emerge can organize and control social relations with
resources. For example, some institutions allocate property rights and control access, use, and disposal to specific plots of land and the
trees, soil, water, wildlife, minerals, and buildings on the land.
In some cases, natural resources come to define communities. Farming towns, ranching towns, logging towns, fishing villages,
mining towns, hunting camps, and resort towns are closely tied to one dominant industry, and each type of community brings to mind
particular cultural markers, such as the architecture, apparel, cuisine, political preferences, and organizational proclivities typical of
each. These cultural elements support and sustain the local industry by shaping the worldviews and identities of residents and ensuring
that at least some members of each generation will choose to pursue their livelihoods in the community’s industry. Understanding the
cultural functions of resources broadens the relationship between human communities and nature, but resources are still conceptualized
as individual entities that function primarily to service humans.
Landscape: A New Vision of Communities and Nature
In recent years, a new vision has emerged that offers a different conception of how nature and communities are related. Rather than
focusing on specific resources and their role in production, today many analysts use the concept of landscape to highlight that
communities and nature are linked in complex and multifaceted ways (Greider & Garkovich, 1994; Hinrichs, 1996; Petrzelka, 2004;
Walker & Fortmann, 2003). Landscapes are extensive tracts of land and all that is on them—trees, rivers, beaches, mountains, crops,
wildlife, buildings, roads, and, of course, people. The concepts of community and landscape have commonalities in that both are
emergent properties. Communities are more than aggregates of people—they have their own reality that forms a community identity
that may reflect the individual identities of community members, but that has its own essence as well. Likewise, landscapes are more
than aggregates of natural elements. They also have their own reality and identity. Landscapes are composed of physical and biological
components, but fundamentally, they are social and cultural constructs (Greider & Garkovich, 1994). They take on meaning as people
interact with them, and that meaning becomes part of how people see themselves, as attached to and shaped by a particular place.
As social and cultural constructs, landscapes contribute to the creation of meaning, the foundation and development of communities,
the construction and reproduction of social institutions, and the formation and internalization of social hierarchies. As humans interact,
they assign social meaning to places and use these meanings as symbolic markers that facilitate mutual understanding through shared
interpretation of worldly settings and events. Over time, these meanings become ingrained and take on their own independent form; as
sociologists like to say, they take on “a life of their own.” They begin to shape how people view themselves and others around them.
People also contest these meanings and try to shape them to enhance their own individual well-being. Thus, even as these institutional
forms facilitate social interaction, they also produce conflict between social groups, each of which interprets the meaning assigned to
nature and landscape differently.
Community developers contribute to these processes by helping communities develop these shared markers, and community
developers that work with landscapes in particular aim to construct and convey institutions that allow people to share meaningfully in
the natural elements that surround and comprise the places where their communities are located. The natural characteristics of a
particular place influence how community developers might approach the process of constructing meaning on landscapes.
The Landscape as Commodity
The way in which people shape landscapes often reflects the dominant culture. In a highly commercialized setting such as the United
States, it is not surprising that many landscapes are seen as commodities. In other words, they are valued because of their market
potential. Residents develop an identity in part based on how the landscape can generate income for the community (Silver, 1993). This
process involves more than the conversion of the natural elements into commodities (Shepherd, 2002). The landscape itself, including
the people and their sense of self, take on the form of a commodity. Over time, the landscape identity can evolve into a sort of “logo”
that can be used to sell the stories of the landscape. Thus, California’s “wine country,” Florida’s “sun coast,” or South Dakota’s
“badlands” shape how both outsiders and residents perceive a place, and these labels build a set of expectations associated with the
culture of those who live there.
Tourism Is Derived From Some Landscapes. A significant motivator for viewing landscapes as commodities is the establishment of
tourism, a community development strategy that many rural areas are adopting. The narratives that people create to understand their
landscapes come to be viewed as marketable entities and a source of income for residents. Landscapes with a strong place identity have
an advantage in marketing to tourists, as it is relatively easy to compartmentalize and market their narratives. Such places may have
disadvantages as well, however (Krannich & Petrzelka, 2003). If place identity is tied to a particular industry, local residents may feel
strongly attached to the definitions of place that stem from involvement in that industry, and they may resist losing that identity in favor
of one based on a tourism industry (Walker & Fortmann, 2003). People rooted in landscape may feel close ties to other community
members and may resent the incursion of outsiders whom they believe are different and challenge their common identity. Finally, local
residents may feel that this process reduces their identities to mere commercial transactions, and they may believe they sacrifice what is
unique and special about their place.
Constructing Landscapes
How do landscapes become commodities? We examine two case studies that illustrate these processes. First, we consider the case of
the Mississippi Delta, a region that has been characterized by internal divisions over racial identity. These divisions have produced very
different perceptions of the meaning of the landscape. For many white residents, the land is a source of wealth. For many black
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residents, it represents oppression. An emerging tourism industry has the potential to unite these groups. We then examine the
construction of landscape identity in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, a case that shows how interaction with outside forces can
galvanize community action and reshape a region’s identity. In Kansas, opposition to the federal government united local residents, but
then efforts to reshape the landscape brought about an alliance with the government and a new sense of meaning to local
residents.Finally, we describe a service-learning project in the Delta that aimed to reshape perceptions of the landscape and bring about
racial reconciliation.
The Mississippi Delta: Race and Landscape
Landscapes take on different meanings for different groups, meanings that are historically produced. Community developers
generally can work more effectively if they understand the historical conditions in the communities they serve. For example, in places
with strong cultural divides, the meaning that competing groups assign to the landscape can serve to accentuate the differences between
the groups.
The Mississippi Delta is a 7,000-square-mile floodplain in the northwest corner of the state of Mississippi. The Delta’s culture is
rooted in cotton production and plantation agriculture (Cobb, 1992). This was, perhaps, inevitable, given the region’s natural history
and the level of technology available at the time the land was first settled. For millennia, the waters of the Mississippi River spread out
across the Delta landscape during its periodic flood phase, depositing rich and extraordinarily deep alluvial topsoils and carving the
unusually flat landscape. The floods shaped the vegetative cover, consisting of bottomland hardwood forests dominated by species such
as oak, sweet gum, cottonwood, willow, and bald cypress, and thick patches of bamboo-like plants known as cane breaks (Eyre, 1980).
The dense vegetation inhibited human settlement, as did the threat of diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, and the dangers posed
by wild animals. Most difficult, however, was the frequent flooding (Saikku, 2005). As Asch (2008) described it,
Clearing the land required excruciating, time-consuming labor with handsaws and axes (not until the 1940s did gas-powered chain
saws come into use). Teams of men and mules struggled to drain the bogs, saw down centuries-old cypress trees, and burn the
remaining stumps to prepare the land for cotton cultivation. (p. 67)
It was hard to get a foothold and survive at a level above hunting and gathering in this swampy landscape.
As a result, farming arrived to the Delta late in the country’s history. After the cotton gin was introduced in 1793, cotton production
became highly profitable and expanded rapidly around the South. The plantation system was firmly entrenched at this point, although
most farms were still small, family-run efforts. But planters, who had slaves to do the hard labor of clearing the Delta’s forest, moved
into the region in the 1820s and 1830s, first settling the high lands near the Mississippi River (Tompkins, 1901). They expanded across
the landscape and organized to build an increasingly sophisticated series of levies to hold the river’s floodwaters at bay beginning
around the middle of the 19th century. African American labor was crucial to clearing the forests and building and maintaining the
levees. Even after slavery was abolished, forest clearing and levee building continued, and African American tenants continued to
supply the labor to carry out these rigorous tasks.
The plantation system shaped not only the region’s demographics, but also its distribution of status, wealth, and power. The African
descendants formed the majority of the population from the beginning. The plantations established a rigid system of polarized
stratification, in which the vast majority of the fruits of the slave labor went to the white planters. Each plantation operated as a small
empire, outside the system of rational law and administration that was developing elsewhere. Following emancipation and a brief
period of reconstruction, a long period of repression ensued to maintain the rigid race-based hierarchy in the Delta, which supported the
local system of production (Blackmon, 2008; Cobb, 1992). Black residents were relegated to sharecropping or tenant farming, and Jim
Crow law and politics ensured that African Americans stayed on the plantations as cheap labor. The Jim Crow system was enforced by
the white elite, using a mixture of paternalism, violence, and a rigged legal system, which invariably ceded to the will of the planters
(Asch, 2008). The plantations served to concentrate substantial power and influence in the hands of the landowners, and consistently
marginalized the black labor force by systematically denying rights and opportunities.
The conditions produced by this system shaped perceptions of the land and nature in the Delta. Today, race relations remain strained.
A report on the region prepared by the Housing Assistance Council (2002) described the situation:
The experience of enslaved Africans and of generations of African Americans in the region is in many ways the defining
characteristic of the Delta. Wealthy landowners bought African slaves to cultivate the land in order to make a fortune in the cotton
industry. For enslaved Africans, the Delta was notoriously the worst place in America to be a slave… White landowners … were
forced to coexist with a people they both feared and depended on for their wealth. This uneasy situation, racial animosity
combined with forced proximity, set the tone for tense race relations in the Delta. (p. 84)
Although the civil rights movement has made many gains, and today African Americans hold most of the local and county political
offices around the Delta, racial stratification and racial bigotry remain. Wealth is highly polarized, and the region has one of the highest
rates of poverty in the United States, with African Americans at high risk of poverty. Substantial power is still concentrated in land
ownership, and perceptions and beliefs about the landscape continue to reflect the region’s history in many ways. The challenging
natural landscape shaped the course of history in the Delta, leading to the polarizing parallel racial cultures found in the Delta today
(Duncan, 1999). The service-learning case study discussed later illustrates how racial identity is embedded in the landscape and shapes
people’s interactions, and highlights how nature tourism could serve as a uniting force in the Delta.
Tourism in the Delta. In the early 21st century, the Delta is in the process of building a tourism industry. This may seem strange for an
area that is poor, isolated, and rural, as these characteristics are probably not what most tourists are looking for. But the Delta’s unusual
and at times tragic history has produced a number of compelling stories of triumph over adversity, as well as highly marketable
commodities. Most significant is the region’s reputation as the “birthplace of the blues,” a musical form that recounted many of the
hardships that African Americans experienced in the plantation system. Blues stories shaped the identity of the Delta and today
resonate with many potential tourists, who also are willing to visit blues clubs and purchase blues recordings. The State of Mississippi
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has embraced blues tourism with a series of special historic markers along a Blues Heritage Trail, and with a number of blues-oriented
museums and events throughout the year.
Blues stories are intimately woven into the cultural fabric of the Delta and provide a unique opportunity to attract tourists to the
region. But the blues stories in many ways derive directly from the landscape, which spurred the plantation system. Other natural
features in the landscape are ripe for tourism development as well. The Mississippi River along the western boundary of the Delta is a
substantial draw and closely tied to the regional identity. The Delta also provides world-class hunting and fishing experiences, and the
story of cotton cultivation provides many opportunities for agricultural tourism. All relate directly to the landscape and the identity of
the residents, a fact that community developers can build on in cultivating a tourism industry in the region.
The Flint Hills: Constructing a Common Landscape
As in the Mississippi Delta, the population of most rural counties in the state of Kansas has been declining steadily throughout the
20th century. Since the 1980s farm crisis, low prices for agricultural commodities have furthered ongoing farm loss, farm
consolidation, and economic decline. In addition, resource extractive industries (especially oil) have been in decline, contributing to
dramatic population losses across the Great Plains (Johnson & Rathge, 2006). As a result, many rural communities in Kansas face
school consolidation, inadequate access to health and social services, and loss of local businesses (Hamilton, Hamilton, Duncan, &
Colocousis, 2008).
Many of these communities are eager to reinvigorate their local economies, and some are trying to capitalize on the unique cultural
and natural amenities their region offers. The Flint Hills landscape in north central Kansas offers an instructive case study of one such
effort at revitalization. Historically, the prairies of the Flint Hills region were valued for their productive qualities, but more recently,
changing values have converted the Flint Hills into an object of visual “consumption” and made the region into an object for tourism
and local economic development.
This transition cannot be understood without reviewing the context that produced the current conditions (Table 3.1). The region first
became known as the Flint Hills in the early 19th century, named for the flint-like chert stones that glinted through the tall prairie
grasses. In this nearly treeless region, big bluestem grass nourished by minerals in the limestone grew so tall as to obscure the horizon
(Middendorf, Cline, & Bloomquist, 2008). The lush grass drew herds of buffalo that the native hunters followed, but beginning in the
mid-1800s, cattle rapidly replaced the buffalo and homesteaders displaced the Indians. Because its rocky soil made plowing difficult
but cattle grazing was viable, the Flint Hills region retained much of its original character (Middendorf et al., 2008).
Ecologists have had a long-standing interest in the Flint Hills because they contain the largest contiguous tract of tall-grass prairie
left in North America. Recently, others have taken notice as well. In April 2007, National Geographic magazine featured the Flint Hills
in a cover story titled “Splendor of the Grass” (Klinkenborg, 2007). Soon thereafter, an article in the New York Times travel section
described the region as follows: “Seemingly endless, the landscape offers up isolated images—a wind-whipped cottonwood tree, a
rusted cattle pen, a spindly windmill, an abandoned limestone schoolhouse, the metal-gated entrance to a hilltop cemetery” (Rubiner,
2007). National Geographic photographer and local booster Jim Richardson proclaimed, “The Flint Hills should never play second
fiddle to our nation’s most recognized landmark landscapes” (Kansas Department of Commerce, 2008).
Table 3.1 Time Line of Important Dates in Flint Hills
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Local interest in preserving and promoting the Flint Hills landscape would have been unpredictable based on past history. Battles
between local residents, between conservation and agriculture interests, and between state and federal agencies were ongoing
throughout the 20th century over the costs and benefits of preserving the prairie. The battle lines were drawn between those who
wanted the Flint Hills to remain in private ownership for productive uses versus those who wanted to preserve it as a public good. In
short, the cleavages divided agriculture and environmental interests, and local and national interests. How these groups came together
and now are jointly promoting the landscape provides an interesting case study in community development.
Starting in the 1920s, natural scientists expressed alarm at how quickly the ecologically important prairie ecosystem was
disappearing. Their concerns were overshadowed by the more pressing issues of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, however,
and efforts to establish a “prairie park” were thwarted (Conard, 1998). Modest efforts continued in the subsequent decades but again
were sidelined by more important issues, such as World War II. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, advocates focused their attention on
tallgrass prairie—what they viewed as “true prairie”—and considered various sites across the Great Plains to establish a prairie national
park.
By 1960, the National Park Service recommended developing a large park near Manhattan, Kansas, based on several criteria:
acreage; the topography, drainage systems, vegetation, and wildlife species were typical of a prairie ecosystem; the site was free of
intrusions; and the site had sufficiently scenic qualities. Even at this early stage, local residents began to take sides for or against the
establishment of the prairie park. The opposition was shaped in part by an earlier flood control dam project, which some locals
perceived as a federal land grab. Ranchers and farmers also felt the National Park Service had excluded them from the planning process
for the dam. Thus, the dam project pitted many locals against the federal government in general. Over the ensuing years, several park
proposal bills were defeated in subcommittees by opposition from local landowners and congressmen from western states. Although
public interest in the prairie park was growing, no further federal legislation was introduced in the 1960s.
In 1970, the governor of Kansas appointed an advisory committee, which brought environmental groups, the Prairie National Park
Natural History Association, universities, newspapers, and many individuals together to ask for the introduction of legislation to create
a prairie park. The Kansas Livestock Association led the opposition and instead proposed a 600-mile “prairie parkway” driving tour
along existing highways in the Flint Hills. In an effort to unite agriculturalists and environmentalists, the Manhattan Citizens for
Tallgrass National Park was formed and lobbied for creating a landmark commemorating the ranching heritage of the region along with
a prairie ecosystem preserve. An alternate proposal of an “integrated park system” was put forth by a Kansas representative who
thought that a large expanse of prairie park alone would not attract enough tourists to offset the loss of property tax revenue. This idea
further polarized the opposing sides, with environmentalists favoring the park while ranchers and landowners organized against it,
forming a group they called the Kansas Grassroots Association (KGA).
Throughout the 1970s, Kansas remained divided over the issue, and in 1975, the Kansas legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill
requesting that Congress reject authorization of a tallgrass prairie park in the Flint Hills. Again, there was a strong antigovernment
rationale for opposing the park; opponents claimed that the federal government already controlled large amounts of property in the state
(apparently military reservations and reservoirs) and that a national park would remove too much land from property tax collection.
Meanwhile, support for a prairie park was growing throughout the rest of the country, as national environmental and conservation
organizations began to galvanize around the idea. In a major concession to agriculture interests, the legislation proposed creation of a
“tourway-parkway” that the federal government would not acquire directly, but would jointly manage with state and local government
and private conservation organizations. These proposals were still rejected by the KGA, whose members stated: “Preserve, reserve or
whatever it’s called, it’s a park. We oppose a national park in Kansas,” and “the Flint Hills would either become an ‘uninhabited no-
man’s land’ or a ‘tourist trap complete with curio shops and hot dog stands’ if H.R. 5592 passed” (Conard, 1998, p. 28). They
continued to express serious reservations about additional federal land ownership in the state.
In 1988, the idea of a prairie park resurfaced with proposals that highlighted public-private management partnerships. The National
Audubon Society offered to purchase a 10,000-acre historic ranch in the Flint Hills and share management responsibilities with the
National Park Service. Ranchers agreed to private ownership of the land but were still wary of federal involvement. A spokesperson for
the Kansas Livestock Association stated, “There is just a deep-seated philosophy in the Flint Hills that the government should not own
land” (Conard, 1998, p. 33). Over the next few years, as the National Park Service funded a feasibility study, the KGA, the Kansas
Livestock Association, and the Farm Bureau escalated opposition to federal landownership. The National Parks and Conservation
Organization entered the arena by creating the National Park Trust, a nonprofit land trust that would keep the ranch in private
ownership but enter into a relationship to have the National Park Service manage the property. But to do so, the federal government
needed to own a minimum of 180 acres, so in 1996, the 180-acre Tallgrass Prairie Preserve was designated. Various interest groups
were organized into an advisory committee to make recommendations concerning the management and development of the Tallgrass
Preserve. In 2004, the Nature Conservancy purchased the land and assumed ownership of the preserve, with the National Park Service
maintaining management control. This unique public-private partnership coordinates land management responsibilities between the
Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service, and the Kansas Park Trust (The Nature Conservancy, 2009).
Since the Tallgrass National Preserve was finally established in 1996, the growth in the number of organizations devoted to the
preservation and commoditization of the Flint Hills landscape has been phenomenal. The Flint Hills Scenic Byway was designated in
2005. Then, a proposal in 2005 by Scottish Power to install industrial-scale wind farms in the Flint Hills was fought vociferously by
locals, national environmental organizations (especially the Nature Conservancy), and the state government, and galvanized them to
form the “Protect the Flint Hills” campaign. The proposal was withdrawn, and opposition remains strong to any development of wind
farms in the Flint Hills. Maintaining an undeveloped Flint Hills landscape for its scenic value and the public good has become the
dominant objective in this region that was long dominated by commercial interests and the value of private property rights.
In 2005, the Flint Hills Tourism Coalition began with a mission of increasing “the economic base of the region and the state through
the promotion and marketing of the Kansas Flint Hills” (Flint Hills Tourism Coalition 2008 p 48) The organization promotes the
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the promotion and marketing of the Kansas Flint Hills (Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, 2008, p. 48). The organization promotes the
Flint Hills as “one of the few places left in the world that hasn’t changed since [the dawn of time]” and “an unblemished experience of
nature’s magnificence” (Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, 2008, pp. 16-17). The organization is now working with the Kansas Department
of Transportation in the design and creation of gateway monuments, and is exploring the feasibility of establishing a visitor’s center
and a national heritage site. A Flint Hills Heritage Conference was held in 2009 to bring together local groups to “identify the common
threads of our shared heritage” (Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, 2009, p. 1). The Flint Hills Tourism Council has branded the Kansas
Flint Hills as “The Grassroots of America,” placing large markers along highways to signal you have entered the region. Twenty-two
counties in central Kansas now claim to be located in the Flint Hills region and are attempting, through the Flint Hills Tourism
Coalition, to promote the Kansas Flint Hills as an “international tourism destination as a means of economic development of our
region” (Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, 2009, p. 4).
The Flint Hills case illustrates how conflicting visions of development can be drawn together by focusing on landscape. Historically,
the region was divided between advocates of productive versus consumptive uses, public versus private ownership, or local versus
federal control, but the designation of a national prairie preserve offers a new conception of landscape as a conservation area that
highlights the ranching heritage of the region. By shifting focus to a landscape that incorporated a variety of resources, organizers were
able to craft a partnership that included public and private interests and national and local voices, which afforded a compromise
between long-standing opposing interests. Now residents are able to capitalize on the landscape for local economic development.
Service-Learning
Both the Flint Hills of Kansas and the Delta region of Mississippi are creating tourism industries, but efforts have been complicated by
conflicting interpretations of local heritage and differing visions of how to best develop local resources. Both have settled on public-
private partnerships—the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, created in 1996, and the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area,
another federal public-private format, designated in early 2009. In the Delta, small-scale tourism development efforts focusing on the
blues and civil rights have incorporated racial reconciliation as a key goal.Here we illustrate how racial differences in attitudes are
shaped by the natural landscape, using a case study of three communities near a small national wildlife refuge in the northwestern
Delta. Insights about race and landscape were generated from a service-learning project carried out by graduate students studying
sustainable development at a nearby university. Service-learning involves using community service to provide learners with practical
experience, engage them in active learning, illustrate important concepts, and bring particular learning objectives to life. As Simons and
Cleary (2006) note, service-learning is distinguished from community service, volunteerism, and other forms of experiential learning
by the intention to benefit learners and service recipients equally. The case illustrates how race becomes acculturated and shapes
interactions with the landscape.
The service-learning project was carried out in conjunction with the Dahomey National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) and a nonprofit
“friends group” that collaborates with the refuge on educational projects. This federally protected sanctuary conserves 9,691 acres of
forest and wetland ecosystems, including the largest remaining tract of bottomland hardwood forest in the northern Mississippi Delta
(U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2009). The refuge provides habitat for migratory waterfowl species and other wildlife, and opportunities
for day hikes, hunting, fishing, wildlife observation, and photography. The refuge manager periodically engages students and teachers
in educational activities and has a variety of materials that are available to local teachers (Barton & Atchison, 2007).
Dahomey NWR was designated in 1990, and prior to this, the land was occupied by the Benoit Hunting Club, a private facility that
was widely known by residents in the area. Like many facilities in the Mississippi Delta in the past, the Benoit Hunting Club admitted
only whites to hunt on its lands, even though 63% of the county population was African American in 1990 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009).
White residents still recall the hunt club fondly; one said, “you can’t believe the amount of money [the hunt club] brought into this
area. People from all over came here to hunt!” (Barton & Atchison, 2007, p. 4). Before the Benoit Hunting Club, the area belonged to
the Dahomey Plantation, originally established in the 1830s. A portion of the Dahomey Plantation still exists today. The image of the
plantation serves as a reminder to local black residents of an oppressive past.
The project was conducted in three communities surrounding Dahomey NWR. Partnering groups included the refuge manager, a
friends group dedicated to the refuge, and the campus geospatial information technologies (GIT) lab. Each student worked with
classmates in one of the three communities, but within each community, each student had a unique role, and students also worked with
those who had the same role in the two other communities. The community coordinator established ties with community leaders and
developed a strategy to collect data in the community, including demographic data. The goal was to assess how community members
perceived Dahomey NWR, although specific research questions were left up to the three community coordinators working together.
The community coordinators used focus group interviews to gather information from community members. The education coordinator
contacted teachers and school personnel to assess the potential for collaboration between schools and Dahomey NWR. Education
coordinators in the three communities worked together to identify common themes and collect a common set of data. The environment
coordinator collaborated with the refuge manager at Dahomey NWR and with the Friends of Dahomey to identify areas of concern and
opportunities for local communities at the refuge. Dahomey refuge is small, so it was important to understand how much interaction
between the refuge and surrounding communities was possible and desirable. The geographic information systems (GIS) coordinators
were responsible for pulling together the information from the other group members, organizing it into a GIS database, and developing
ways of communicating findings to communities and to refuge personnel. A GIS course was set up to provide access to the GIT lab and
the instructors, and it was recommended that the GIS coordinators sign up for this course. Students also had the opportunity to sign up
for a regular GIS instructional course to learn more about using geospatial information technologies.
Findings from the service-learning project revealed a substantial amount of resentment toward the wildlife refuge among community
residents. This is not unusual, as protected areas frequently provoke strong feelings in nearby communities. What was interesting was
how attitudes about the refuge carried racial meaning. Recent research suggests that African Americans visit federal protected areas
less than other racial and ethnic groups (Johnson, Bowker, Green, & Cordell, 2007; Mangun, Degia, & Davenport, 2009). This finding
also holds true generally for the Mississippi Delta (Barton, 2007), as shown in Table 3.2. In a 2005 telephone survey of randomly
selected residents of 11 Delta counties, black respondents reported visiting both state and federal protected areas at a significantly
lower rate than white respondents. The same result held for private hunting clubs, as well as for one type of cultural site, those related
to literature and authors. There was no significant racial difference in visits to other heritage tourism sites, such as historic churches, or
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to te atu e a d aut o s. e e was o s g ca t ac a d e e ce v s ts to ot e e tage tou s s tes, suc as sto c c u c es, o
blues-related sites such as clubs, festivals, and museums. African American respondents reported visiting civil rights sites at a
significantly higher rate than whites.
Table 3.2 Percent of Residents of 11 Delta Counties Who Have Visited Various Heritage Tourism Sites at Least Once in the Past
Year
SOURCE: From a telephone survey conducted in February 2005 (Barton, 2007).
In the communities near Dahomey, almost all of the community leaders, residents, and educators who were interviewed were aware
of the refuge, but knowledge of the refuge’s purpose varied. A common perception was that the refuge continued to exclude African
Americans and other minorities. As one informant expressed, “I’ve always thought it was a private hunting club where just white guys
could go” (Barton & Atchison, 2007, p. 4). Historic patterns of exclusion persisted in residents’ minds, even more than a decade and a
half after the refuge was established. The federal government certainly bears some responsibility for this. Naming the refuge after a
local plantation certainly did not show sensitivity to the area’s majority population. In addition, as one informant noted, “When you
drive through and see the no trespassing signs posted, it’s obvious they don’t want you there” (Barton & Atchison, 2007, p. 5). The
refuge manager and friends group have taken up this challenge and are coordinating community outreach efforts to include more local
residents, particularly schoolchildren, in the refuge’s activities. In addition, the results from this project motivated a service-learning
project in another class that aimed to increase environmental education in one of the study communities. Continued efforts like this are
necessary to build a climate that is conducive to nature-based tourism in the region.
Preparing Students for Community Development
Activities carried out in university classes are often overlooked as community development, yet how instructors prepare students is
perhaps one of the strongest forms of community development. More and more, students are seeking opportunities to engage in service,
and instructors can encourage this by incorporating service activities into their courses (Rimer, 2008). As illustrated here, service-
learning provides opportunities to better understand the linkages between landscape and community, and can also serve to strengthen
those linkages. The results of this service-learning project were presented at a public meeting held on campus at the end of the
semester. Students also collaborated to prepare a report detailing the results to distribute to the schools, communities, and the refuge.
The professor organized the results into a poster, which has shown at regional conferences. The instructor has also used this project as a
case study in conference presentations on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Educational projects like this can serve a broader
community development agenda if results are distributed to participants and others.
Conclusions
Community development is fundamentally a process of building relationships, institutions, and culture, which shapes the personalities,
worldviews, and identities of community members. But communities are located in places and are influenced by the specific
characteristics of the landscape on which the community is embedded. Landscapes both shape and reflect the local culture, as
illustrated in the case studies on Kansas’s Flint Hills and the Mississippi Delta. The meaning that groups assign to landscapes can serve
to produce conflict and suppress efforts at community development, or landscapes can serve as uniting features and produce a sense of
shared meaning and community among various groups. Community developers can enhance opportunities and possibilities if they
recognize that landscapes unite diverse resources and take on their own meaning, and work to produce common meanings that unite
landscape and community.
Public officials have many tools that they can use to shape people’s understanding and perception of landscapes, but traditional tools
such as legislation and regulation are coercive in nature. When a public entity designates a park, wildlife reserve, or conservation area,
they not only affect the natural resources in the area, they also affect local residents and communities. Protected areas have economic
impacts, but also alter how residents think about their home. Community developers who work for public agencies must use these tools
carefully, as shown in the Kansas case study, because they risk alienating local populations and eroding the legitimacy of government if
their actions are perceived as abusive. Partnering with local private organizations has made federal interventions more palatable in both
the Kansas and Mississippi cases.
Community developers who work for private organizations face different issues. Local businesses and nonprofit groups often enjoy
support from residents as they are seen as representing and defending local interests. But they may only represent the interests of the
dominant group, at the expense of marginalized groups, as the Delta case illustrates. The Benoit Hunting Club and Dahomey Plantation
enjoyed substantial support among the region’s white residents, but because these groups were built on fundamentally unfair principles
that systematically excluded most of the area’s residents based on the color of their skin, they engendered a deep and long-standing
resentment that has carried over to the federal agency that now manages the same land.Private organizations by their nature represent
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g y g g y p
the interests of specific groups, but exist in broader communities and must recognize the broader implications of their activities.
Community developers in private organizations must be aware of the larger context and incorporate these insights into the decisions
and activities of their organizations.
Landscapes can serve important functions as the basis of community identity, which can be marketed to tourists. The development of
a tourism industry can offer many economic development opportunities, but as the case studies reviewed here emphasize, tourism also
brings opportunities for community development. Tourism frequently relies on an identification with landscape, which motivates
people to look beyond historic conflicts and draw together based on both their own and their community’s interests. In designing
community development strategies, organizers can enhance their efforts by constructing new visions of the local landscape.
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4 The Technical Assistance Approach
Jerry W. Robinson, Jr., and Frank Fear
BEHAVIOR OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter and completing the online learning activities, students should be able to
1. Define technical assistance in simple terms.
2. Explain how the technical assistance approach can be used in planned change.
3. Describe the difference between the self-help approach, the technical assistance approach, and the
conflict approach.
4. List and explain three approaches to providing technical assistance.
5. List and describe how different institutional actors use power to achieve their objectives in
community change.
6. Describe three basic assumptions undergirding technical assistance.
7. Describe the differences between the nondevelopmental and developmental approaches to
planned change.
8. Describe how technical assistance can be used to co-opt a community.
9. Prepare a short essay on the appropriate use of technical assistance in democratic society.
10. List and describe at least five criteria advocated for by the U.S. Agency for International
Development for leaders of technical assistance teams.
11. Describe how changes in technology may affect the need for and use of technical assistance.
Introduction
Technical assistance is intended to help communities define their problems, needs, and potential solutions.
It may allow for some degree of community autonomy or ownership of problem definition and solution.
Technical assistance is broadly defined as the provision of “programs, activities, and services . . . to
strengthen the capacity of recipients to improve their performance with respect to an inherent or assigned
function” (Wright, 1978, p. 343). A key ingredient in this definition is the application of expertise to aid the
recipients (Poats, 1972).
This chapter reviews the basic elements of the technical assistance approach to community development
and identifies a variety of issues that practitioners and communities should consider in adopting this
approach. We also provide some comparison of this approach with others in the field of community
development. Technical assistance has been a popular approach in international development. The
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experience with technical assistance in this context is discussed and analyzed. Finally, we consider some of
the conditions in which technical assistance works best in community development.
Perhaps more than other community development approaches, technical assistance raises numerous
ethical and professional issues for practitioners. Technical assistance providers need to guard against
maintaining the power structure in communities and undermining the capacity of communities to solve
their own problems. These challenges are discussed and proposals for handling these dilemmas are
reviewed.
Case Study 4.1 Engineering Projects in Service-Learning
The Engineering Projects in Community Service program was created at Purdue University to allow
students to gain experience in communicating and working with people of varying social backgrounds.
Students are given long-term design goals and are allowed to participate in the program for multiple
semesters. Projects are multidisciplinary, and teams are large and diverse in terms of age and
experience. This results in high gains for participants in skills like teamwork, communication,
resourcefulness, and professionalism. When a project partner is initially found, a team is organized
around it and must first come up with the long-term project goals. After a proposal is approved, the
project moves forward for as many semesters as are necessary until completion, with a final goal of
supplying a successful system to the project partner. Successful systems include a modified telephone
for children with disabilities, thermal imaging of houses to determine energy efficiency for Habitat for
Humanity, and an improved computer network for a local health care service.
SOURCE: Tsang, E. (Ed.). (1999). Projects thatmatter: Concepts and models forservice-learning in engineering. Washington,
DC: American Association for Higher Education.
Understanding the Technical Assistance Approach
From a technical assistance position, the scientific method is highly valued, advances in technology are
considered signs of progress, and rational planning in the decision-making process is a corollary of the
scientific method. Indeed, planning is a prized process, and the collection and analysis of data are important
elements in that process. It is assumed that all situations can be analyzed objectively and that bad decisions
are frequently a result of poor planning.
In the technical assistance approach, technical know-how is assumed to be good because efficiency is a
valued end. New technology may be uncritically accepted as a better way of doing things. Technology
transfer is often defined as the process of effectively communicating or marketing the technology’s benefits
to potential users. However, full attention may not be given to the technology’s fit to the sociocultural
context and the dysfunctional consequences that may come about because of its introduction.
A community’s official power structure is usually the employer or sponsor of technical assistance work.
Economic growth or improvement of the physical infrastructure is typically the focus of attention;
advancing community-based capacity may or may not be a central concern. Local resources—physical and
human—may or may not be drawn upon during the assistance episode.
Comparisons of Technical Assistance, Self-Help, and Conflict Approaches
The three major themes of community development—technical assistance, self-help, and conflict—
generally parallel the approaches to planned change. For example, in comparing schools of thought about
planned change, Crowfoot and Chesler (1976) discuss the countercultural (self-help) perspective, the
professional-technical (technical assistance) perspective, and political (conflict) perspective. In a discussion
of the primary areas of community organization in social work, Rothman (1974b) identifies three
approaches: locality development (self-help), social planning (technical assistance), and social action
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(conflict). Chin and Benne (1976) consider three strategies of planned change: the normative-re-educative
(self-help), the empirical-rational (technical assistance), and the power coercive (conflict).
A unifying theme of the approaches (or perspectives) is that they differ in a number of fundamental
areas. Crowfoot and Chesler (1976), for instance, emphasize ideological distinctions by showing how the
approaches vary in their response to very basic, value-laden questions: What are their general images of
society? What are their general images of the individual? What are their diagnoses of contemporary
society? What are their priorities with regard to change? Rothman focuses on selected practice variables,
including salient practitioner roles; differential conception of the client’s role, tactics, and techniques; and
orientation toward the community power structure. A comparative analysis of the approaches is presented
in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1 Self-Help, Technical Assistance, and Conflict as Planned Approaches
SOURCE: Adapted from Rothman (1974b), Chin and Benne (1976), and Crowfoot and Chesler (1976).
The differences described by these authors are worthy of note, especially for students and practitioners of
technical assistance. For our purposes, a useful distinction may be drawn between self-help and conflict, on
one hand, and technical assistance on the other hand. Both the self-help and conflict approaches fix
attention on human and collective development. Community residents are expected to come together,
identify problems through mutual agreement, and mobilize change that is fundamental to technical
assistance. Collective action is just as important—perhaps more important—than the products derived from
the change episode. That is, the process of collective action represents a literal learning laboratory where
persons can expand their repertories of community change skills. Self-help and conflict practitioners are
successful (other things being equal) to the extent that they possess well-developed process skills—
something emphasized in the literature on practice roles (Bennett, 1973).
Indeed, the differences between the technical assistance approach and selfhelp and conflict approaches
are often more than superficial. For example, because the power structure is the employer or sponsor of
technical assistance efforts, citizens are frequently not seen as consumers or end users. The concept of
residents as consumers or clients is also frequently eschewed in the self-help approach. In the conflict
literature, residents are often described as the victims of social inequalities and injustices. Similarly,
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members of the local power structure are collaborators, at best, and “blockers,” at worst, in the self-help
approach; they are oppressors to those who espouse the conflict approach.
Types of Technical Assistance
Is it possible to classify technical assistance by type? We believe it is, and two classifications will be
discussed here: (a) use of power actors to achieve goals; or (b) as a strategy used by consultants or
volunteer leaders as developmental activity.
Technical Assistance and Power Actors. Technical assistance relationships—and decisions to enter into
them—may vary according to the auspices under which they are organized and the impetuses for
undertaking technical assistance. The power sources under which technical assistance is provided can be
categorized as (a) legislation—having the powers to create, legislate, and appropriate; (b) administration—
having the power to manipulate resources, knowledge, and information; (c) education—having the
knowledge, skills, and processes of a specialized nature associated largely with educational and research
institutions; (d) collaborators—creating mechanisms, often mutually, for the specified purpose of providing
or enhancing technical assistance in the recipient’s domain; and (e) consultants—generally, performing
specific tasks by private consultants.
The sources for offering technical assistance—how it finds its way into a recipient’s domain—can be
categorized in the following ways: (a) imposed (i.e., thrust on the recipient unilaterally from the outside);
(b) negotiated (i.e., reached by mutual consent); or (c) most importantly, a community activity initiated by
those who perceive that there is such a need.
Nondevelopmental and Developmental Technical Assistance
Although technical assistance essentially involves the acquisition of problemsolving resources, the
rationale for the resource exchange and the nature of the relationship between the provider and the recipient
are critically important issues if we are to view technical assistance as a theme of community development.
Contemporary technical assistance efforts are predominantly associated with the desire of the provider to
enable recipients to do what they are incapable of doing or unwilling to do on their own. That is, the
provider is committed to some goal that, if it is to be attained, requires an adoption of particular skills or
technologies by the recipient. Additionally, the provider is unwilling to wait for “natural” (communication,
travel) means of transfer to reach the recipient and is unwilling or unable to directly take over the
recipient’s responsibilities.
These points are essentially captured in the basic assumptions of technical assistance:
1. Someone knows something about the issues that another does not know.
2. Someone decides that the potential recipient needs assistance.
3. A provider-recipient relationship can be established.
4. The provider provides and the receiver receives.
Given this backdrop, it can be argued that technical assistance, although an important approach to
planned change, may or may not be an approach (or theme) of community development. Technical
assistance as a nondevelopment approach to change is generally described by Batten (1975) in his
discussion of the directive approach to group and community work as follows:
The directive approach means that the agency … decides whatever …it thinks people need or ought to
value or ought to do for their own good, and sometimes how they ought to behave. These decisions
become the agency’s goal for people. The agency will then provide whatever staff, equipment,
premises, and programmes it thinks are needed to meet the needs or interest of the people it wishes to
help, in the hope that they will avail themselves of the services or activities it provides. This will bring
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them into contact with the agency’s workers who will then try to influence people in relation to the
agency’s ideas of betterment for them…. The agency and its workers think, decide, plan, organize,
administer, and provide for people. Always the main initiative, and the final say, remain with them. (p.
5)
Christenson and Robinson’s (1980) widely quoted definition describes community development as the
shared decision by community residents to initiate a planned change process. When conceptualized through
this filter, technical assistance involves the residents’ desire to accept assistance because of its fundamental
importance for improving the locale’s social, economic, and/or physical environment. Outside assistance is
therefore necessary and appropriate. In addition, legitimate representatives of the community collaborate
with the external change agents (i.e., those providing the assistance) as change agents on the “planning
change team.” This collaboration is based on a mutually agreeable set of role relationships. If these
elements are in place, then it is possible for technical assistance to be compatible with the Oberle, Stowers,
and Darby (1974) definition of development as the “process in which increasingly more members of a
given area or environment make and implement socially responsible decisions” (p. 61). This approach to
technical assistance can be classified as the developmental approach.
Perhaps the basic difference between technical assistance as a nondevel-opmental and developmental
approach to planned change rests with values. In reviewing the definition and assumptions associated with
technical assistance, adevelopment ethician such as Goulet (1977) might pose the question: Who decides
what assistance will be provided to whom, how, and when? In this realm, value-oriented questions may be
raised—questions that surround the issues of goal selection, problem definition, means selection, and
assessment of consequences (Kelman & Warwick, 1978):
1. Whose values are to be served by the intervention?
2. To what extent do the recipients have an opportunity to participate in the choice of the goals?
3. To what extent does the process enhance the power of the target population to solve problems?
4. To what extent is the provider engaging in a self-serving activity?
5. Whose problem(s) is (are) being primarily addressed in the technical assistance episode: the provider’s
or the recipient’s?
6. Is a reasonable set of alternatives available to the recipient? Does the recipient have the power of
choice? If so, does the provider assist the recipient in making informed choices?
7. Is incomplete or distorted information presented about the effects of assistance? Or, are only the
probable benefits emphasized? Indeed, does the provider know, understand, and communicate the
probable sociocultural, economic, environmental, and psychological impacts?
8. Will the assistance create a dependency relationship between the donor and receiver?
For example, if assistance is knowledge-induced (knowledge in search of an application) or profit-
induced (knowledge primarily or exclusively transferred with a profit motive in mind), then development is
not likely to be served. To the extent that the recipient fully participates—indeed, is at least a co-owner—of
the assistance process, developmental technical assistance is possible. The fundamental importance of these
questions and shaping the process leading to the answers need to be emphasized because technology
transfer characterizes much of what we know as technical assistance. Technology transfer, according
Glaser, Abelson, and Garrison (1983), is the application of knowledge or technology by a new user.
From our perspective, technology transfer may or may not be a means of development. Technology of
itself is equivocal, according to Glaser and his colleagues. The reasons for its application, and the
consequences of its use, typically define the relative goodness and badness of the transfer in development
terms. That is why different evaluators can advance very different—sometimes incompatible—criteria to
evaluate the process and its effects. Glaser et al. (1983) emphasize the need to consider the impacts from a
developmental point of view:
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Technology is defined as more than technique—that is, more than science and engineering. It
encompasses the totality of specialized means, including those of management, administration, and
public policy, used to develop goods or services for human sustenance and comfort. Technology also
has deeper anthropological meaning. It is a key element of culture; it determines the relationship of a
community with its natural environment, and is the most concrete expression of values (Wenk, 1979).
Sooner or later, each society that strives to upgrade its technical capability discovers that it is both
unfeasible and socially counterproductive simply to paste a veneer of technology onto indigenous
culture. Hence, transfers of technology require a high sensitivity to match technical resources
congenially not only with social goals but also with infrastructural, or cultural/social, foundations. (p.
383)
Using Technical Assistance as a Community Development
Activity
Given this background, we believe that technical assistance exists at both ends of a continuum: It
exists at both nondevelopmental and developmental modes of planned change. At one extreme,
technical assistance involves imposing assistance, technology, information, or ways of thinking on a
community. Community involvement exists at best for appearances or legitimation. At worst, it serves
the purpose of the co-optation. Conversely, as a developmental model, it is a vital and necessary
approach to community development: recipients need assistance, donors are able and willing to
provide it, and recipients regulate the assistance process in self-protective ways. The challenge to
community development scholars and practitioners rests not in debating whether technical assistance
is community development; our argument is that it is not. In our opinion, the field is better served by
uncovering (a) when technical assistance is an appropriate approach to community development, and
(b) how the community developer may effectively implement the developmental mode of technical
assistance.
Technical Assistance as an Appropriate Approach to Community Development
The concept of appropriateness occupies a central place in the vocabulary of community development.
Being able to analyze a situation and determine how to proceed appropriately are essential community
development skills.
What this means is that technical assistance has its place as an approach to community development.
Where? The concept of reliance on local resources and indigenous capacity is stressed again and again in
the community development literature. However, the notion of complementing these resources (when
necessary) with outside resources and assistance is also emphasized in the literature. It is naïve to believe
that all of the resources necessary for all successful community actions are available within the local
setting. Community leaders often need resources (e.g., money, technology, advice, person power) that exist
outside the locale.
Technical Assistance as Community Development
The developmental question that looms large is this: How is it possible to acquire, direct, and control
outside resources in ways that are consistent with local values and preferences? The tail-wagging-the-dog
scenario in technical assistance comes to pass when the cost of external resource mobilization is such that it
subverts the residents’ ability to build capacity. The challenge to technical assistance as community
development is that it takes place within a process whereby local people have an opportunity to enhance
their individual and collective problem-solving abilities. This is the same challenge facing self-help and
conflict as community development. The basic difference is that both of these latter approaches are
inherently absent in the technical assistance approach, but they must be added to the approach if community
development is to occur.
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The collective capacity-building notion is equivalent to the opportunity to enhance the sense of
community in the locale. Frequently in community development, we naively assume—sometimes with
disastrous consequences—that sufficient levels of community exist, in the psychological and sociological
senses, so that all practitioners need to do is focus attention on the substantive problem(s) at hand. In the
developmental sense, levels of community vary with the extent that people socially and psychologically
identify with the locale and aspire to strengthen its capacity to solve problems (Cottrell, 1977).
In self-help community development, the fundamental task of people wanting to come together to deal
with common problems assumes that sufficient levels of community exist. We know from experience that
people often do not participate in self-help opportunities because of their belief that an alternative means of
action can provide needed resources more quickly and effectively (Rothman, 1974a; Rothman, Erlich, &
Teresa, 1976). Similarly, lower levels of community may exist in precisely those environments where
community organizing (the conflict approach) would seem most appropriate. This may be primarily
because feelings of collective powerlessness—frequently expressed as fatalism and apathy—are often
ubiquitous in disadvantaged environments. Much of Alinsky’s work focused on describing tactics that
organizers can use to bring people together effectively and enhance the sense of community for the purpose
of taking collective action (Alinsky, 1971). This often involved using local institutions (e.g., faith-based
organizations) as a medium to broaden the sense of community.
Nondevelopmental technical assistance does not require the existence of high levels of community.
Outside change agents can “do for” the community because community capacity building is not a goal. At
times, community members even request such a structure. External assistance, in this case, is not viewed as
a means to capacity-building, but as an end in itself. This is precisely when technical assistance is not
community development but simply an approach to planned change.
In technical assistance as community development, practitioners must resist playing a service delivery
role only. Recognition of the existing sociocultural environment and the leadership structure, and an
understanding of the consequences of extending assistance, are imperative (Truman, Grether, Vandenberg,
& Fear, 1985). For example, are the potential dysfunctions of the technical assistance considered prior to
the initiation of the assistance process? To what extent will the leadership structure be affected by the
assistance process?
To further enhance technical assistance as community development, we recommend that greater attention
be given to (a) increasing the instances where technical assistance is subsumed under one of the other
approaches to community development, and (b) considering how technical assistance can be serially joined
with other approaches.
In the first case, this would mean delivering technical assistance as part of a larger self-help or conflict
process. Opportunities exist to accomplish this goal, although they are often missed. On the other hand,
political realities of agency agendas may preclude this, especially with respect to linking technical
assistance with conflict. A recent experience of one of the authors comes to mind. Research services (to be
offered by a publicly funded university) were requested by a community group to document the supposed
unjust and arbitrary decision by a local school district to close its neighborhood elementary school. The
researcher providing the assistance quickly found himself in several confrontational sessions with
representatives of the city power structure, most notably the superintendent of schools.
The serial linking of technical assistance with other approaches to community development appears to be
a more politically reasonable option, especially for organizations involved in longer-term development
efforts within specific community settings. The experience of nongovernmental organizations that provide
assistance in the developing world is that they constantly struggle with choices between relief and
development. Faith-based organizations are ideologically drawn to the self-help notion of community
development as a medium for holistic development, but also search for ways to break out of the seemingly
vicious cycle of providing relief with development even though technical assistance is very much needed.
This suggests that technical assistance is being viewed only as a nondevelopmental approach. The temporal
sequencing of developmental technical assistance (first) with self-help (later) would seem to be a strategy
for providing emergency services within a long-term developmental thrust.
Alliband (1983), a developmental writer, argues that both nondevelopmental and developmental
technical assistance are needed in the developing world because “each one works to solve different
problems and to address the problems of different socio-economic groups” (p. 3). On one hand, when
considering Third World agricultural development, he believes that many larger farmers stand ready to
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adopt new production technology imported from Europe and the United States. On the other hand, he feels
that the purpose of the developmental approach is “to generate community-based, community-wide,
problem-solving capacity” (Alliband, 1983, p. 5). The relevance of this approach is to encourage the
cooperative pooling of internal resources (mental, material, and financial) so that optimal change can occur
when these resources are commingled with scarce outside assistance.
Helping Others Use Technical Assistance Effectively
In developmental technical assistance, the process by which the assistance is carried out is as important as
the content of the assistance. Increasing concern is being directed toward including nonproduct and process
criteria in the determination of development effectiveness. Consider these effectiveness criteria advanced
by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1973 for leaders of technical assistance
teams. Note that the criteria pertain to issues of competence (Items 1, 2, and 3), morality (Items 4, 5, and 6),
and development orientation (Items 7 and 8):
1. Are the technical assistance givers technically qualified?
2. Can they administer what will probably be a complex process?
3. Will they be perceptive and politically astute in picking up undercurrents and tension in interpersonal
and interagency relations?
4. Do they exhibit decency, sensibility, and interpersonal skills?
5. Will they understand and accept their responsibility for the attainment of stated objectives?
6. Will they be able to defend convictions under stress?
7. Can they be relaxed about their own status in the community and be willing to share credit for success
openly and freely?
8. Will they accept the challenge of development and institution building as primary tools so as to leave
behind local skills and resources to carry on?
Perhaps the most impressive movement designed to bring developmental thinking to technical assistance
involves appropriate technology. Appropriate technology may be defined as
a way of thinking about technological change, recognizing that tools and techniques can evolve along
different paths and toward different ends. It includes the belief that human communities can have a
hand in deciding what their future will be like, and that the choice of tools and techniques is an
important part of this. It also includes the recognition that technologies can embody cultural biases and
sometimes have political and distributional effects that go far beyond a strictly economic evaluation.
Appropriate technology therefore involves a search for technologies that have, for example, beneficial
effects on income distribution, human development, environmental quality, and the distribution of
political power—in the context of particular communities and nations. (Darrow, Keller, & Pam, 1981,
p. 326)
The paradigm statement associated with the appropriate technology movement was published in 1973 by
Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Schumacher extolled the virtues of
“small scaleness” as a development alternative and emphasized the importance of such concepts as local
autonomy, consumer participation in decision making, and the optimal use of local resources in the
problem-solving process (Alliband, 1979, p. 136). Development does not start with goods, “it starts with
people and their education, organization and discipline” (Schumacher, 1973, p. 159).
If you want to go places, start from where you are. If you are poor, start with something cheap. If you
are uneducated, start with something relatively simple. If you live in a poor environment, and poverty
makes the market small, start with something small. If you are unemployed, start using your labor
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power because any productive use of it is better than letting it lie idle. In other words, we must learn to
recognize our boundaries. A project that does not fit, educationally and organizationally into an
environment, will be a failure and a cause of disruption. (as quoted in Dunn, 1979, p. 1)
Dunn (1979) conceptualizes appropriate technology as technology that is community-based, is small to
moderate in scale, and includes the following characteristics: (a) is labor-intensive, (b) is amenable to
management by its users, (c) encourages local innovativeness, (d) is compatible with local values and
customs, (e) helps meet local needs, (f) contributes to local self-sufficiency, and (g) relies on local human
and natural resources.
Even those who advocate appropriate technology as an approach to technical assistance might agree that
the more we attempt to impose technical assistance from the outside, the more we come to realize it does
not work as often or as well as those involved had hoped it would. The World Bank (Cernea, 1985) and
other international development assistance groups are finding this to be the case, and they are realizing the
importance of defining projects from the points of view of the clients, rather than from the points of view of
the technical assistance teams who assess the situations. The international experiences are equally germane
to the United States.
This suggests—and, indeed, there is evidence—that developmental thinking is creeping into the writing
and practice of those who would classify neither themselves as community developers nor their work as
community development. The reason is that experience has revealed that developmental thinking is vitally
important for “effective” (i.e., putting into place) technical assistance whether it be embodied (artifact-
based) or disembodied (conceptual) in nature (cf. Egea, 1975).
From this point of view, the considerable research that has been conducted on the factors that are
associated with planned change must be reviewed carefully. Zaltman (1983) believes that consensus is
beginning to emerge from research and that the successful practice of planned change can be described in a
compact set of concepts and guidelines. A convergent validity seems to exist, according to Zaltman,
because the work in diverse disciplines seems to be pointing to the same general conclusions about what
works in the field.
Among the numerous to summarize what is known about the successful practice of change is the well-
known and frequently cited work of Davis and Salasin (1975). Based on their work in the mental health
field, these authors have developed an eight-factor framework, arranged as an acronym: “A V-I-C-T-O-R-
Y.” Each letter represents a factor that change agents should consider when designing and implementing
planned change projects. Note that literally every element in the framework addresses one or more of the
developmental aspects discussed in this chapter.
A V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
Ability: The ability of members of the target system to understand and evaluate the assistance being
offered.
Values: The degree of fit between the assistance party and the target system’s philosophy and
operating style.
Information: The adequacy of the target system’s knowledge and understanding of the assistance
process to be used.
Circumstances: The extent to which those offering the assistance understand the target system’s
sociocultural context.
Timing: The ability of the party offering assistance to consider the optimal timing for structuring the
change process.
Obligation: The need for the assistance party to consider the change from the target system’s point of
view, particularly in terms of whether or not the change relates to one or more of their felt needs.
Resistance: The assistance party should understand and appreciate the myriad of forces—cultural,
social, organizational, and psychological—that may lead to change resistance.
Yield: The benefits and payoffs to the end user(s) if the change is implemented.
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Zaltman (1983) has extended the utility of the framework by creating a set of principles and propositions
that fine-tunes the requirements associated with successful planned change. With respect to ability, for
example, planners are advised that it is important for them to distinguish between client inabilities that can
be altered and those that are relatively fixed and to which they must adapt. The more unalterable a client’s
inability is, Zaltman counsels, the more change agents should focus on innovation-related alterations and
less on client-related alterations.
Concluding Observations
We have argued that technical assistance is the only theme or approach to community development that is
not inherently developmental in nature. In some places, technical assistance has been used inappropriately
in the name of community development. To be community development, technical assistance activities
must conform to the underlying tenets expressed earlier in this chapter and volume, namely, that it take
place within a larger process where community residents make a shared decision to initiate a planned
change process—a process that is based on a mutually agreeable set of role relationships between
community members and outside providers.
Contemporary emphasis on the “people component” of development is reflected in literature and practice
(Korten & Klauss, 1984; Pulver & Dodson, 1992). It suggests the timeliness of the developmental approach
to technical assistance. To take advantage of this situation, community development must use its value-
oriented, normative base as the foundation for “sciencing” the technical assistance process. This means
carefully documenting processes and results as well as testing process alternatives. In many fields, this
recognition that technical assistance should be grounded in community participation is widely accepted.
Most professionals in the community planning field now recognize the value and importance of this
dimension. In other professions, however, there is less value placed on the role of community participation
in technical assistance. Part of the problem may be that many professions do not have adequate models for
how they may engage the community in this respect.
What this all signifies, at least to us, is that community development professionals who provide technical
assistance must prove themselves to be worthy colleagues in the community development arena. The
potential of technical assistance has already been recognized; the community development way of thinking
is being increasingly viewed as relevant, appropriate, and necessary. Now the challenge becomes one of
“delivering the goods,” that is, producing efficient and effective results. Brokensha’s (1968) assertions that
community development is known for its “murky banalities and half-truths” must be invalidated. The very
future of technical assistance in the community arena as an objective scholarly enterprise hinges on
disproving its murky banalities and half-truths.
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