A quarter of a century after our country declared a war on poverty, social theorists and policy makers have said and done many things to attempt to fix our economic inequities. Yet, by many accounts, the situation that the poor find themselves in is actually getting more desperate. It is not simply an economic tragedy that the underclass face, but it is also devastating levels of crime, violence, addiction and despair that are a dramatic crisis among them. We could view the situation as simply an example of the problems of modern social stratification, but I believe that it is an expression of a more universal issue of our time. The conditions that the underprivileged face have crystallized into a devastating enigma that affects and challenges each of our lives in the increasingly complex world in which we live.
Alienation is becoming the common denominator in our modern age where the only constant seems to be the increasing pace of change in our society. As change has become the rule, fear and anxiety have begun to reign. If we can learn anything from the plight of the underprivileged, it is that their situation reflects some of our own disaffection and instability as well. As our social, economic and technological order continues to evolve rapidly, there is no one who can safely predict how any of us or our children will fare in the future. Is America in a decline, doomed to suffer as a second-rate economy and as the world's largest debtor nation? Have we failed our children, leaving them with a broken educational system, unsafe streets and deteriorating social norms and traditions? Or will we find new ways to draw upon the potential and the promise within all of America's citizens, to shape our collective future in a positive direction? Our only hope is to face this new world with a growing ability to change along with it, as Seymour Papert recently noted:
Not very long ago, and in many parts of the world even today, young people would learn skills they could use in their work throughout life. Today, in industrial countries, most people are doing jobs that did not exist when they were born. The most important skill determining a person's life pattern has already become the ability to learn new skills, to take in new concepts, to assess new situations, to deal with the unexpected. This will be increasingly true in the future: The competitive ability is the ability to learn. (Papert, 1993, p. vii)
In cities and among the poor, we see the clearest picture of pressures that the pace of change has put upon all of our lives. As American society has become more technical and urban, the local community and family units have begun to change and exhibit less cohesion. As social bonds have suffered there have been certain well-documented consequences. There are now fewer two-parent households, fewer intergenerational associations and fewer defining traditions among many social groups. In particular, for the underprivileged, the neighborhood setting has become less of a tight-knit community as neighbors have begun to distrust one another as much as they have historically distrusted outsiders. As a larger proportion of our society has moved to live in the city, cities have become increasingly more difficult places in which to live (Heilbrun, 1981, pp. 1, 6, 269).
No one can doubt that most American cities these days are deeply troubled places. At the root of the problems are the massive economic shifts that have marked the last two decades. Hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs have either disappeared or moved away from the central city and its neighborhoods. And while many downtown areas have experienced a "renaissance," the jobs created there are different from those that once sustained neighborhoods. Either these new jobs are highly professionalized, and require elaborate education and credentials for entry, or they are routine, low-paying service jobs without much of a future. In effect, these shifts in the economy, and particularly the disappearance of decent employment possibilities from low-income neighborhoods, have removed the bottom rung from the fabled American "ladder of opportunity." For many people in older city neighborhoods, new approaches to rebuilding their lives and communities, new openings toward opportunity, are a vital necessity. (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993, p. 1)
In their introduction to "Building Communities From the Inside Out," John Kretzmann and John McKnight argue that it is common knowledge now that what it means to be a community in an urban environment has radically changed. Our cities are experiencing troubling economic shifts that are resulting in social upheaval, and the old neighborhoods that we used to live in no longer exist. The economic realities in modern urban settings appear to be producing unforeseen consequences that are forcing many to rebuild the premises, the assumptions and the institutions that serve as the organizational foundations for their lives and their communities.
Schools in urban America are experiencing enormous difficulties adjusting to the changes in the surrounding social setting. As issues concerning crime, violence, drug use and teen sexuality become more prevalent, we are seeing record high drop-out rates and declining academic performance. Practically all big cities have public schools that are struggling with the attrition of a large percentage of their teenage student body. Many social theorists view the situation as one that will continue to worsen with no end in sight, especially in light of political realities that include shrinking budgets and declining commitment to public education (A Nation at Risk, 1983).
Without better methods for understanding the difficulties involved in urban experiences, much of the public debate is centered around how to force schools and students to perform, often by threatening to purge those in either category who fail. School departments are being blamed, teachers are being blamed, parents are being blamed, and the children themselves are being blamed. But assigning this blame has done little to change the situation. This scenario is one of social retrenchment and retreat.
They say there's too much crime in these city streets
My sentiments exactly
Government and big business hold the purse strings
When I worked I worked in the factories
I'm at the mercy of the world
I guess I'm lucky to be alive
They say we've fallen through the cracks
they say the system works
But we won't let it
Help
I guess they never stop to think
We might not just want handouts
But a way to make an honest living
Living this ain't living
Subcity
Tracy Chapman, 1989
Chapman's desire is that we see these problems not from the position of one who wants to assign blame, nor as one who wants to do a good deed for the helpless. But instead she is imploring us to see it from the perspective of one who believes that there is unleashed potential and capacities within the underprivileged that can restore to them their dignity and self-respect. If we begin with this understanding, then there is hope that we might be guided by a philosophy that can humbly bring us onto common ground with the underprivileged, from which we can collectively bring about social redress. Paulo Freire reinforces this point when he discusses two possible results that can come from one group's attempt at intervention to help another group. He calls the first type "cultural invasion," which can be devastating to the latter group, and he calls the second type "cultural synthesis," which brings benefits to both groups.
In cultural invasion, the actors draw the thematic content of their action from their own values and ideology; their starting point is their own world, from which they enter the world of those they invade. In cultural synthesis, the actors who come from "another world" to the world of the people do so not as invaders. They do not come to teach or to transmit or to give anything, but rather to learn with the people, about the people's world.
In cultural invasion the actors (who need not even go personally to the invaded culture; increasingly, their action is carried out by technological instruments) superimpose themselves on the people, who are assigned the role of spectators, of objects. In cultural synthesis, the actors become integrated with the people, who are co-authors of the action that both perform upon the world.
In cultural invasion, both the spectators and the reality to be preserved are objects of the actors' action. In cultural synthesis, there are no spectators; the object of the actors' action is the reality to be transformed for the liberation of men. (Freire, 1982, pp. 181-182)
If we invade the poor with our solutions to their issues, then we shall betray them by forcing them to be spectators, passive in the face of critical questions that concern them, while our modern world demands that they be active and engaged, prepared for the realities of constant change. But if we work with them to find solutions, then we are developing together with them our capacity to continually learn as we face the future that Papert spoke of above. One way or another, we all share the fate of the poor and the underprivileged. Either we shall all lose hope in the face of extreme social upheaval, or together we shall all find productive responses to the new realities that we face. In the pursuit of the latter ends, I believe that certain epistemological paradigms and inquiries can help.
Constructionism, epistemological pluralism and dynamic objectivity are three important theoretical models to consider. Through the lens of constructionist inquiries, I have found that it is possible to see how urban communities can be the active forces in their own development. Through the insights and techniques this type of inquiry provides, it is possible to make sense of the connection between the work of community building and the issues of social development and interpersonal relationships. Epistemological pluralism and dynamic objectivity provide a framework for understanding how inner-city environments can support the various types and styles of constructive analyses that urban communities might engender. In fact, I will use these theoretical models as a basis from which to analyze my own research activities in the latter portion of this thesis.
However, this thesis goes beyond discussing theoretical paradigms. I will also evaluate how these ideas are expressed in the praxis of actual community development projects that have been the focus of my research during the past four years. My work involved, among other things, analyzing the role that technology can play in these types of projects. I will look at a particular example of communal appropriations of technological media--namely a telecommunication system I developed--and I will evaluate ways in which this type of media can strengthen or weaken internal ties within the community on which I focus my study. I will attempt to demonstrate that activities and tools in this social setting which are related to the concepts above can help to create urban environments that support profound examples of social development and urban renewal. In short, I seek to explore how certain urban models can guide the use of various technological media as our society attempts to address the concerns raised by Chapman, Papert, McKnight and Freire.