(Journal of the Community Development Society Vol. 30 No. 1: 66-82 1999)

Self-Organization and Community-Based Development Initiatives

Anil Rupasingha, Timothy R. Wojan, and David Freshwater *

Correspondence to: Anil Rupasingha TVA Rural Studies 400 Agricultural Engineering Lexington, KY 40546-0276 PH: (606) 257- 7272x246 FAX: (606)257-7268 email: anil@rural.org

_____________________

* Rupasingha is a Postdoctoral Scholar for TVA Rural Studies in the Department of Agricultural

Economics at University of Kentucky. Wojan is an Economist, Economic Research Service,

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Freshwater is Program Manager for TVA Rural Studies and a

professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at University of Kentucky. The views

expressed herein are the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of their respective

institutions. The authors would like to thank A.E. Luloff and three anonymous reviewers for

comments that improved earlier drafts .

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Self-Organization and Community-Based Development Initiatives

What country people want is life. They must work out their own civilization.

-- Arnold Arvoldism

Abstract. The self-organization paradigm, a theoretical framework with roots in biology and

physics, has been proposed as having relevance to understanding change in social systems. The

processes and design features associated with self-organization can be used to describe the dynamics

of social groups and organizations, especially in cases where non-marginal change disrupts the basic

structure of a community. Self-organization refers to the ability of a complex system, when exposed

to severe shock, to find a new equilibrium that may be far from its starting point. When applied to

economic systems it leads to a major shift in perspective, from a search for ways to return to the prior

equilibrium, to a search for a new one. Recent advances in our understanding of community-based

development initiatives are shown to be consistent with the notion of a self-organizing system and in

the article we discuss the conditions necessary for this type of approach to work. When development

is seen in this context the roles of community development professionals and senior levels of

government are also altered. Finally we note that self-organization complements rather than replaces

traditional equilibrium models, which remain useful for analysis of marginal change.

Keywords: community, crisis, development, participation, self-organization.

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1. Introduction

At a time when federal financial assistance to rural communities is declining, it is crucial that

rural communities foster a greater ability to solve their own problems. Local initiative is now

advocated by all levels of government as one remedy to global economic restructuring and local

decline. This has included an emphasis on ‘public entrepreneurship’ to devise increasingly

productive uses of limited resources (Flora and Flora, 1996). Local initiatives are based on the

concept of ‘bottom-up economic development.’ They are a form of economic self-help. The basic

objectives of these initiatives are: to gain control over the local economy by the community; to

promote economic development of the locality; to generate employment for the community; to

inspire self-help and group-based support; to operate for the benefit for the whole community; and to

promote the collective management and ownership of enterprises (Blakely, 1994). The precondition

for emergence of a successful community-based development project is a community's active

participation and coordination.

The emergence of community-initiated development projects in rural communities can gain

productive insights from the theory of self-organizing systems. We will argue that the emergence of

community-based participatory development approaches is similar to the emergence of order in

biological and physical systems. Local communities may be subject to a turbulent and chaotic

environment taking the form of deteriorating economic and social conditions. When such turbulent

and chaotic situations exist, the social system may possess certain qualities that can help to restore

order. The self-organization paradigm is useful in identifying those endogenous qualities or

variables within the system, which act to restore order (Smith and Comer, 1994).

In particular we argue that the typical response of most communities to a major change–to

search for a way to the return to the prior equilibrium—may be intuitive but inappropriate. The

essential lesson to draw from self-organization theory is that a large change in condition may

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establish a new equilibrium that is far from the previous one. Where this is the case, efforts to return

to the prior equilibrium cannot be successful. Instead, the local economy has to move in a new

direction. Although the direction of the movement appears to be random, another principle of self-

organization is that there is an inherent tendency for systems that are disturbed to find a new

equilibrium state. The objective of this paper is to build on the literature of community participation

from a self-organization perspective to develop a framework that helps us understand those

community characteristics that are essential to the transformation from chaos to order. However, it is

important to recognize that the parallels we draw are limited to those special cases characterized by

crisis or far-from-equilibrium conditions—we do not argue that the self-organization perspective is

the appropriate approach for all community development and planning activities.

Of critical importance in community-based development is the community’s support and

participation. While development can involve providing financial, physical, and information

resources, it is human development, cultural attitudes, and perceptions which are increasingly

recognized as the most important components (Naqvi, et al, 1995; Flora and Flora, 1996; Green et al,

1990; Parsons, 1993). This is because community-based development is initiated as social

development and proceeds through mobilizing the local population to counter market failures or

coordination problems (Naqvi et al, 1995). Aligning expectations through a process that is cognizant

of the varied and sometimes conflicting perceptions of a ‘given reality’ is the requisite function of

facilitators from the self-organization perspective.

This study is an attempt to adapt and extend a theoretical natural science framework to the

emergence of community-based efforts for economic development. This analogy will be employed

in formulating a conceptual evolutionary model that can be used in understanding self-development

efforts in rural communities. We will argue that the social phenomena in communities are similar in

structure to such systems explained in biology and physics. However, we fall short of presenting an

operational model of self-development through self-organization. The importance of context

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specificity in this domain suggests that such an effort would be capricious. Rather, the analysis

points to salient characteristics that may help practitioners, communities, and government agencies

understand the structural characteristics that promote or impede processes of self-organization.

2. An Illustrative Example

We begin with an example of a producer community facing dire conditions in both its input

and end markets to make the various concepts within the self-organization paradigm concrete.

The furniture industry in Central Luzon of the Philippines was nearly driven to extinction by

two simultaneous crises in the early 1990s. The most visible was the shutdown of U.S. military

bases in Subic Bay and Pampanga. The demand for cheap knock-offs evaporated with the contingent

of U.S. military personnel. Less visible but more important for the furniture producers’ inability to

adapt to the change by shifting to (genuine) domestic production was the national ban on logging.

While traditional economic analysis is very helpful in illustrating the impacts of a supply shock or a

demand shock it is ill-suited to make sense of events that take an industry (or economy) far off of

both schedules. If anything, the appropriate answer of traditional analysis to the crisis in the

Philippines would be simple--shut down. We can be thankful that the industry did not follow this

course because the response of many of the furniture firms to the ‘catastrophe’ provides an

instructive example of how economic institutions may ‘reinvent’ themselves in very short order

(Wojan, 1994)--an example of special relevance to those rural areas in the U.S. which face seemingly

cataclysmic crises.

A highly routinized set of economic tasks characterized the Olongapo (Subic Naval Base)

and Pampanga (Clark Air Force Base) furniture industries before the crisis. The firms could be

described as ‘sweatshops’ albeit ones where worker productivity increased over time. There was an

incentive to keep workers for a relatively long time but this interest was driven by ‘getting product

out the door;’ not by the development of craft skills of the workforce required to sell in the high-end

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furniture market. The relationships among furniture firms were arms-length, sales to customers were

through vertically integrated retail shops and price was the principal if not sole mediator of exchange.

Product design consisted of imitating models from the most recent Sears Catalog. The dual crises

made two things apparent--1) the only profit opportunities worth exploiting existed in export

markets, and 2) any individual firm lacked the capability to penetrate these markets. The severity of

the crisis made the transformations required for survival more transparent. The supply of raw

materials shifted from lower grade domestic species to hardwoods mainly from North America. The

higher value of raw materials required a commensurate increase in labor value-added. While

workers had demonstrated the ability to acquire skills to quicken assembly, the firms had to quickly

augment the craft skills of these workers. The vestiges of formal Philippine furniture craft (Micucci

1997) embodied in some of the older workers became a critical cultural input to the transformation.

The information on product design, previously supplied by the Sears Catalog, was replaced by

intensive interaction with the Design Center of the Philippines (DCP). However, this level of

assistance would not likely have been available to an individual firm. Design collaboration was one

incentive for forming producer consortia. Another incentive, and perhaps more important, was the

need to accumulate the collective productive capacity to justify a presence in export furniture

exhibitions such as that held in High Point, NC and other loci of the high-end furniture market.

The characteristics of the crisis and the path to an eventual solution in the Philippine case

provide a succinct outline of the self-organization process. The starting point is crisis and seemingly

limited resources to deal with it. This forms the first substantive difference with more traditional

policy approaches. The assumption that greater resources will, ceteris paribus, increase the

probability of successfully resolving the crisis is not maintained. A significantly higher level of

resources may increase the probability of temporarily accommodating the crisis rather than leading to

the required long-term transformation of the system. The one resource that is critically important in

the self-organization paradigm is access to rich sources of information and the motivation to fully

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exploit them. The long-term employment relations provided the firms with knowledge of the

capability of workers to accumulate skills. Workers possessing largely unused artisanal skills could

be tapped to diffuse these skills throughout the workforce. The firms lacked good information on

design and market trends but were fortunate in finding a public entity (DCP) to supplement this

deficiency. The fact that much of the product design function was being delegated to an outsider is

illustrative of the third major characteristic: the transformation was not ‘planned’ in the traditional

sense of the word. Rather, the furniture firms ‘discovered’ their areas of comparative advantage and

maintained the flexibility to exploit these opportunities. Finally, the small-scale of these operations,

the ‘us vs. them’ sentiment created by the magnitude of the crisis, along with the communal

experience of working in a craft contributed to the success of collective agreements that were

indispensable to resolving the crisis.

The objective of the next section is to connect the various characteristics of the furniture

industry crisis, specifically, and rural development processes more generally to the vernacular of self-

organization.

3. The Concept of Self-Organization

The application of self-organization into social systems shows how variables and the

connections between them are changed through an interactive process that takes place in historical

time (Hinterberger 1993). The most evident parallel to the economics discipline is that defined by

Schumpeterian economics (i.e., the concept of an entrepreneur inducing gales of creative

destruction). But more generally, the growing attention to ‘entrepreneurship’ in both public and

private endeavors suggests the relevance of the self-organization paradigm for understanding the

contemporary economy. The concept of self-organization in social systems can best be grounded in

evolutionary economics in which the optimizing behavior of economic agents is considered as a

process. In evolutionary economics, agents are allowed to re-evaluate their own behavior step-by-

step and thus learn through trial and error.

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Self-organization is a continuous process that occurs in social systems through exposure to

new information and new ideas generated by chaotic conditions. A self-organizing process will

reallocate energy and action within a system in order to achieve a larger goal after a disruption in the

operation of the system (Comfort, 1994). Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine has shown that

disequilibrium situation in a system can provide the conditions through which new structures may be

created, formations that he calls "dissipative structures" (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). In the

Philippines example there was an explicit transformation of energy and action from the initial goal of

producing furniture quickly at the lowest possible price to the final goal of increasing labor value-

added to produce furniture that would appeal to the high-end export market.

Order is established amidst turbulent or chaotic conditions through complete reorganization

(Smith & Comer, 1994). Thus, within the transformation, old incentive mechanisms could not be

modified piecemeal but rather the magnitude of the crisis induced sweeping changes in how the

furniture firms operated (see Wojan, forthcoming, for examples of systemic change owing to the

domestic rural manufacturing crisis).

The process may start with a new type of element (a mutant), one comprised of new

behavioral characteristics (Allen, 1981). This phenomenon is often the most difficult to document

and study after-the-fact in the economic sphere. One requirement of a sustainable collective action is

that the ‘innovator’ or mutant does not take action to try to appropriate rents from the new behavior

(e.g., purchase the productive assets of competitors). Rather, as these new behavioral characteristics

dissipate through the group there tends to be a reinterpretation of the group’s history to suggest that

collaboration is a natural outgrowth of whatever came before (Sabel 1992). Indeed, in an adaptive

system individual agents will be working around whatever exists at present making the sequence of

transformations from competitor to collaborator difficult to untangle. It is here that the theory of

self-organizing systems is most productive in suggesting the characteristics that are required for

reorganization of the system to achieve a higher level of functioning. Thus, the self-organization

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framework may contribute to a structural explanation of the successful adaptation to crisis that

heretofore has been credited solely to human agency—that is, to the creative powers of community

entrepreneurs.

The following is a brief summary of properties of a self-organizing system which help to

explain the dynamics of the system (as adopted from Smith and Comer 1994; see also Nicolis &

Prigogine, 1977; Jantsch, 1980) and their relation to the concept of community-based development.

A. Openness:

Openness to energy and information, and in a more general sense, to fluctuation and

turbulence, creates conditions for new structures to emerge. It is because of this openness that

disequilibrium may occur in a system. This has been expressed in the community development

literature as community members’ uncertainty about a community’s future. This is the crisis stage.

Characteristics include uncertainty about the community’s future, speculation, possible

counteraction, antagonism, and conflict (Naqvi et al, 1995). In addition, openness to outside

turbulence may dismantle internal structures and relationships setting the stage for the eventual

reconfiguration of the system. The Philippines example is one successful case where the furniture

producing niche was fully exposed to the severity of dual crises—indeed, the extinction—wrought on

its input and end-market niches. There were no substantive attempts by public authorities to try to

accommodate the crises. While efforts to accommodate a crisis may increase the chances of initially

successful piecemeal reforms, this accommodation removes the incentives for radical innovation.

Clearly, what was needed in the Philippines case was systemic reform and reconfiguration of the

mode of production. This raises the first concern—are the limited resources available being used to

accommodate the crisis or to empower change?

More generally, researchers have identified the crisis stage as a part of the development

process (Flora et al, 1992; Douglas (in Naqvi et al, 1995); Gittell, 1990). The most frequently cited

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trigger events in rural communities that lead to far from equilibrium condition were plant closing and

a downturn in a local economy (Flora et al, 1992). Their empirical investigation into these projects

found that in 54% of the cases, self-development projects were initiated in response to a specific

event in the community. After reviewing some empirical evidence, Gittell (1990) suggests that a

crisis situation may be a necessary condition for community-wide receptivity and commitment to

new proposals in economic development. He also points out that a crisis alone is not a sufficient

condition and strong local leadership is needed to take purposive action to emanate from crisis

situations.

B. Experimenting Behavior

New behaviors and structures come into play. This makes it possible for the system to

address the paradoxes and complexities of turbulence. Individuals try to identify the problem and the

informational resources needed to work toward a solution. Members feel the need for action and the

importance of getting organized. Naqvi et al (1995) identify this stage as a preliminary search period

where problems are being identified, personalities emerge, information is shared, and initial actions

are suggested (p. 289).

The amount of experimenting behavior in any system is influenced by many factors (Smith

and Gemmill, 1991). Also, the process in social systems may be different from that of physical and

biological systems given the purposive, creative faculties of human beings. The abilities of listening,

speech, and writing have permitted an outstanding evolution of cultural traits that affect

experimenting behavior. The component parts of social systems have the will and the ability to

purposively and consciously select some particular path for change even though the choice of a path

is constrained by the existing technological and normative or ideological traits (Chase, 1985). The

processes of cultural diffusion, change and innovation, and adaptation are highly developed in

humans. The social interactions among the individuals provide the opportunity to learn others'

behavior, ideas, languages, values, and technologies.

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In the Philippines, the fact that the crises impacted a group of competing firms which were

fairly similar in size and access to technology allowed experimenting behavior with respect to

associative forms of production. The threat of insolvency was a powerful impetus. However, it was

the capability to experiment without undue fear of appropriation or reprisal that resulted in an

eventual solution to the crisis. Thus, while the first point regarding openness sets up the requirement

that the crisis is not artificially accommodated, experimenting behavior requires that diverse

individuals are sufficiently empowered so that their ideas, organization and communication are

actionable.

C. Self-Reference/Alignment to Deep Structure

This property is perhaps best understood by fully appreciating the ramifications of turbulent

or chaotic conditions. What would it mean to react to turbulence? One could try to limit the effects

but it is unlikely that one could adapt to random battering. Rather, self-reference refers to the

internal sources of learning and experience—as distinct from reactions to the immediate

environment—that facilitate the eventual reconfiguration of the system. The property in natural and

physical systems appears almost mystical (e.g., an evolutionary memory, Bronowski, 1970). The

property as applied to willful, purposeful human communities is perhaps less controversial but still

an uncommon characterization of people facing crisis. Self-reference is derived from the constitutive

components of being as contrasted to the instrumental definitions of the self. The self and its

connection to the community are defined by who one is, not merely by what one does.

This implies the ability to self-organize without reference to any external authority.

Members are able to formulate a common goal and to connect the problem with expectations and

experience. According to Naqvi et al (1995), this is a consolidating period where leadership

(possibly a local development organization) is defined, and interchange and goal formulation takes

place. This stage may be the core structure of reaching the social order or equilibrium. Indeed, a

group that is referenced only to the actions that it takes in an uncertain environment may never be

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able to anchor its resources so that they can be reconfigured to operate at a higher level. Individuals

bring their own ideas and experiences to these collective gatherings, share with other members,

communicate and learn from others. However, self-reference does not imply a homogeneous or hive-

like mentality. Flora and Flora (1996) define the principle distinction between ‘feel-good consensus’

and ‘productive debate’ expressed as ‘symbolic diversity’. “...people can disagree with each other

and still respect each other. There is acceptance of controversy.” (p. 10).

Self-reference as it emerged in the Philippines case is similar to phenomena observed in

many producer communities of small firms that discover the benefits of collaboration (see Piore

1990). The combination of competition and collaboration in these communities does not require

schizophrenic or irrational behavior. Rather, maintenance of these seemingly contradictory

behaviors relies on the dominance of the ‘reflexive’ self over the ‘instrumental’ self. Production

needs to be more than the source of revenue and profit—it needs to serve as a means of affirming the

identity of the participants. In this case, the transformation from low-cost to high-end producer

required self-reference to an ideal of artisan or craftsman that was invariant to the volatility of the

outside environment. In other environments these references may come to be defined as “farmer” or

“steward” among many others.

To the extent that the solution to crisis may require collective action, community-based

development efforts are vulnerable to free riding or shirking by community members. In these

situations, conventional theories of collective action have concluded that individuals will resort to

strategic behavior (free-riding or shirking) by refusing to reveal their true preferences for the good in

order to obtain a benefit far greater than the cost they have to pay (see Hardin, 1968; Olson, 1965). If

a particular community-based development project is treated as a capital asset, then the free-rider

(the opportunist) enjoys a net wealth transfer from the rest of the group (the victims). In a group

context, individuals may also make less than optimal contribution of effort towards the attainment of

group objectives (shirk).

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There are two reasons that free-riding may be less of a problem under self-organization in

small rural communities owing to self-reference and boundary reparation (discussed below). The

anonymity problem plagues the formation of collective solutions and finds its converse in self-

reference. Real world examples of the cooperative actions of local communities demonstrate the

advantages of individuals living in relatively small communities, possessing a relatively accurate

picture of each other’s selfhood. There is less difficulty in communicating in these communities

because the number of members of the local community is small enough so that they know each

other. They have relatively good information about each other’s activities and the condition of the

community. Thus, the chances of aligning group expectations with the internal learning and

experience of community members increase. Having good information and the opportunity for open

communication allows the members of the community to devise joint strategies that achieve higher

joint outcomes. The result of this process is a new and more constructive order in the community.

D. Boundary Reparation and Resonance

Boundary reparation is the process of reinforcing the new structures that have come into

being following the breakdown of old structures. There is a resonance or mutuality between

community members in the new configuration—i.e., a coherent movement of the elements in a

system that demonstrates a strong affinity to some focal point. Energy and resources have to be re-

adjusted, and a critical mass is required for a new structure to be reinforced and maintained. Again,

this does not imply an emerging homogeneity within the community. Rather, boundary reparation

may have to be a continual process within groups where relationships are subject to conflicting views

and competition for resources.

Boundary reparation defines the second potential advantage of small communities in

overcoming the potential problems inherent in collective action. Part of boundary reparation will be

comprised of the evolution of the norms and conventions required sustaining the reconfigured

system. Transaction costs to community organizations will be reduced to the extent that regulation is

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governed by tacit rather than contractual agreements. Norms and conventions define a pattern of

behavior that is customary, expected and self-enforcing (Young 1996). Once a rule becomes a

custom, (1) everyone conforms to it, (2) everyone expects everyone else to follow the custom, and (3)

if anyone ever deviates from the custom it is known that some or all of the others will punish the

deviators (Schotter, 1980). It is also true that resources expended in monitoring often enhance

residents’ knowledge of the local community. That is, if the process of monitoring is

indistinguishable from the process of learning then monitoring becomes a by-product of efficiency-

enhancing voluntary activity of residents. These dynamics between learning and monitoring have

been used to explain long-enduring common property resource systems (Ostrom, 1991; Rupasigha,

1997) or the thick inter-firm relations in Japanese production practice (Sabel, 1994). Clearly, an

important distinction exists in rural areas: monitoring can also be used to increase the social control

to efficiency reducing conventions or norms (Yaeger, 1997).

In the Philippines there was formal recognition of the producer associations that formed.

Rules of conduct related to protocol at trade shows, hiring and training practice, royalties on designs,

etc., were agreed upon. These have been important to the maintenance of the collaborative relations

that maintain the competitive edge of these producer communities. A recent compilation of self-help

projects in the developing world affirms the importance of organizational capital that has a strong

semblance to boundary reparation:

One of the most remarkable and important features of these cases is the way that local people utilize various organizational capabilities, once these are created and command confidence, to solve a wide range of problems and meet a variety of needs. This contradicts the assertions of ‘policy dialogue’ proponents who think it sufficient to ‘get the prices right’ and manipulate incentives from olympian national seats of decisionmaking.” (Krishna, et al., 1997, p. 295).

4. The Role of Practitioners

It is important to note that the efforts of a community to resolve a crisis by self-organizing

does not obviate the need for community development practitioners and other external forces

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including government. Cooperation and active participation of community members are the key to a

self-organizing process. But to be successful, openness and experimenting behavior of a community

may require information or resources from outside. The critical role played by the Design Center of

the Philippines in the furniture industry crisis is one such example. As open systems, communities

would be remiss if they did not attempt to harness the services of community development

practitioners and government agencies.

The self-organization framework provides a conceptual justification for the advisability of

earlier models of “community development…with emphasis on local development and high

interpersonal interaction” in favor of sole reliance on a technology transfer model (Sundet and

Mermelstein 1988 p. 93). In an examination of community reaction to the 1980s agricultural crisis in

northwest Missouri, Sundet and Mermelstein find that disregard of the “field agent as change agent”

cripples the technology transfer model by failing to sufficiently develop the provider-receiver

relationship. They call for an augmentation of the technology transfer model with greater emphasis

on community interaction. Or in the parlance of self-organization, the practitioner must remain close

to the actual form of the system if they are to serve as conduit for outside expertise and resources.

A “field agent” is a community development professional who is in immediate and continuous communication with local individuals, who is sensitive to the pull of traditions and values, understands the evolution of the specific community and its problems, and is more of an expert in process than in content (Morris 1970). Field agents have the relationship skills and the time necessary to reach out to people who need emotional support, reassurance and the opportunity to ventilate their feelings. Then, and only then, can the rural field agent productively broker expert solutions (Mermelstein and Sundet 1980) and attain the required involvement level (Cawley 1984). (Sundet and Mermelstein 1990, pp. 103-104)

Other parallels are present in a phase model of the community-based development process is

provided by Douglas (in Naqvi et al, 1995).. Phase one begins with a general awareness of problems,

a process that may take weeks or years. Phase two is a preliminary search period and chaotic phase

where problems are being identified, personalities emerge, and initial actions are suggested. Phase

three is a consolidating period, where leadership (possibly a local development organization) is

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defined, and interchange and goal formulation occurs. Finally, phase four consists of planning.

However, these phases and the practice of community development more generally can be further

illuminated by explicit consideration of the self-organization parallels. The purpose of this section is

to highlight productive questions emerging from this analysis that may provide insight to

practitioners helping communities respond to formidable crises.

Openness as a requisite property of self-organization is not a prescription to “open the flood

gates” assuming that greater severity of the crisis will induce greater self-organizing forces for its

resolution. Rather, a greater appreciation of the community characteristics related to properties of

self-organization may inform a more rational allocation of limited resources. Resources committed

to the accommodation of crisis may dull the incentives for finding a long-term, sustainable solution.

Of course, these potential costs must be weighed against potential benefits owing to the short-term

ability to cope with the crisis. However, the self-organization perspective suggests that the allocation

of resources to the resolution of crisis is inherently a dynamic problem. The tension created is

between the allocation of resources to accommodate versus the allocation of resources to empower.

The central question posed by a consideration of openness: To what extent is the allocation of

resources merely redistributive in contrast to investment in enabling forms of human, physical or

social capital (see Castle 1998)?

The central insight regarding the property of experimenting behavior is the importance of

rich sources of local information that are essential to resolving crisis. The challenge for practitioners

is to devise ways to mobilize the widest possible range of local information. The advantages are two-

fold. As an inductive process the novel combination of pieces of information may provide a better

comprehension of the crisis and suggest alternatives for its solution. As a creative process the

collection of assimilated facts will be essential to assess the potential plural consequences of the

considered strategic alternatives (Smith 1993). There is much in the community development

literature on ‘process’ that is directly applicable to this concern. The self-organization paradigm

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reinforces the idea that this concern is well-placed. Another resource is the emerging literature on

complexity and self-organization in business organizations (e.g., Wheatley 1992, Peters 1994).

The importance of self-reference–having a strong semblance to the more common reference

of social or community identity—has been long understood by community developers (Wells 1990a;

Wells 1990b; Sundet and Mermelstein 1988). The contribution of the self-organization paradigm is

added insight into how self-reference interacts with crisis. One can start with the simple question:

How do community members identify themselves beyond stating what they do? Or alternatively,

What are the constitutive sources of identity for people in the community? One example is the

alignment of the Philippine furniture workers to the reference of craftsman. A rich source of

examples is found in The Ecology of Hope (Bernard and Young 1997) where reference to the tribal

heritage as forest people, or resonance with a ‘land ethic,’ or to a city’s enduring relationship with its

river provide the internal reinforcement to overcome ecological crises. However, the self-

organization process illuminates a critical subsequent question: How robust is this self-reference to

the turbulence of the outside environment? An example of self-reference not robust to the crisis

situation is the case of the logging crisis in rural Oregon communities. Any self-reference to

“logger” was nullified by Federal mandates to reduce the harvest rate to preserve the habitat of the

Spotted Owl (Seidman 1996). Additionally, the direct connection to crisis raises questions as to the

depth of this communal identity. I.e., Does this self-reference define a commonality or are

community members constituted by disparate foundations? Disconnected communities that are

defined merely by a geographical boundary may not possess a strong internal source of self-reference

that can withstand chaotic conditions in the environment. As such, the productiveness of the self-

organization construct may be greatest in community development activities compared with strictly

territorial or regional development efforts.

Not all community members will be motivated by the initial take-off stage of a community-

based development project. However, the uniformity of minimum amount of cooperating individuals

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("critical mass") is needed for the new structure to be initiated and reinforced (Smith and Comer,

1994). The mutual trust gives participants the assurance that they will not be "suckers" who adopt

altruistic qualities for the betterment of the community. This will allow them to work together

creatively and effectively as a group and reduce the costs of assurance by exogenous means such as

formal legal methods. The practitioners who understand this necessity can work toward securing a

critical mass so that the community-based projects get off the ground. But while the concepts from

self-organization may help us to understand the structural requisites to resolve a crisis, the construct

does not release the development process from the importance of human agency. Strong local

leadership is required "… for purposive action to emanate from crisis situations, …" (Gittell, 1990, p.

519).

5. The Role of Higher Levels of Government

There are three areas where the activities of higher levels of government are critical despite

the strong local bias of the arguments presented so far. First, and most important, are the wide range

of policy problems which are still best addressed through conventional tools of applied welfare

analysis. As argued to this point this would include problems which are best characterized as shocks

to equilibrium or which may result from market failures which can be resolved through modest

modifications to existing institutions. More generally, in stable environments or where planning has

intrinsic advantages over entrepreneurship (say, because of strong inter-jurisdictional spillovers) the

pursuit of allocative efficiency will dominate the pursuit of adaptive efficiency. This is because the

experimentation required of adaptive efficiency will result in post hoc redundancy (North, 1990).

The second rationale is that of ‘facilitating’. Government could act to reduce the transaction

costs facing community organizations, and thereby move the organizations to a higher level of

efficiency. Within the context of this essay, these grants should not be used to encourage the

formation of organizations, but rather to support them once they have been formed voluntarily by

interested parties. Using grants to encourage the formation of organizations might encourage

18

strategic behavior and rent-seeking. Given the highly technical nature of some community economic

problems, voluntary organizations may not be equipped to gather the necessary information for

corrective action. A state or federal agency may be in a better position to collect and disseminate

such technical information. The presence of formal institutional arrangements can stimulate and

support local development initiatives by developing work facilities for community groups,

establishing technical assistance and making community-based initiatives a component of the overall

local development strategy (Blakely, 1994).

The final rationale for an active role of higher levels of government is the capability to

compile the variety of crises and the variegated responses of rural communities. The Cooperative

Extension Service provides a model and successful example hinting at how this might be

accomplished. The transformation of agriculture occurring over the past century contains many of

the same experimental challenges currently facing rural communities in more disparate economic

sectors. The lesson from Cooperative Extension is that information is the critical bottleneck. Where

the analogy fails is the atomistic character of the individual farmer operating in perfect markets

compared to the collective action problems which characterize many of the current problems faced

by rural communities. Since the resolution of such problems is context specific within the self-

organization framework, a community group facing such a crisis will require a large number of

examples of similar situations if the examples are going to provide a substantive learning experience.

Within the self-organization framework the national interest is best served by promoting

experimenting behavior of local communities facing crises while attempting to minimize the number

of redundant experimental errors. A clearinghouse of substantive, in-depth analyses of the specific

crises and responses made by rural communities would aid in realizing this objective. (see Flora and

Flora, 1996 Yager 1997).

6. Concluding Comments

The most pressing need—one that was evident in writing this paper—is for systematic

19

analyses of rural community response to crisis. We have attempted to demonstrate that the self-

organization paradigm provides a productive framework for structuring such studies. The discussion

presented in this paper contends that the emergence of community-based development projects in

rural communities has parallels to the notion of self-organization in physical and biological systems.

Our contention—supported by the ideas presented in this paper—is that insights from the theory of

self-organizing systems can be joined with evolutionary economic theory to develop a framework

that yields important insights into the dynamics of rural communities.

At the same time, the epistemological foundations related to self-organization impose much

greater empirical requirements than traditional policy science (see Ostrom, 1990, pp. 23-27). It is

important to study those community-based development initiatives that function like dissipative

structures, representing the properties explained here as central parts of a self-organizing process.

Empirical investigation is needed to understand the factors that encourage or inhibit community-

based development initiatives in rural communities. The dynamics that freeze a system on an

inefficient outcome may be overcome by promoting the factors that help institute successful self-

organization.

The difficulty the self-organization paradigm presents for policy arises because it may only

provide a more productive framework for dealing with a subset of policy problems. Specifically, the

paradigm provides an understanding of those problems that uproot the structure of local economies.

The focus on marginal attributes of traditional policy analysis is unproductive if not irrelevant in this

instance. By the same token, the self-organization paradigm is not useful in providing productive

insights into problems better understood through marginal analysis. This suggests that the policy

focus should be augmented, not shifted. Such an augmentation provides both a wider range of

rational responses as well as providing a comparative basis for better differentiating ‘shocks to

equilibrium’ from ‘far from equilibrium’ conditions.

20

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