A Glimpse at Community Organizing

Hey Folks. So this will be a very strange post. I will be taking an exam tomorrow for my community organizing course and am required to post my exam study guide on a blog. It's a strange request, but it is a requirement because we have been investigating social media techniques to organize communities and our professor asked us to interact with a blogging site.

I thought I would use this time to introduce to some of the concepts we are discussing in 'Organizing for Social and Political Action.' Enjoy!

Conflict Styles and Resolution
One of the topics we covered in our course is conflict styles. Conflict styles are important because they can inform group dynamics during community organizing efforts. They are also helpful during regular group efforts.

Informal versus Formal types of meetings 

No single style is better than another (courtesy UM Office of Student Conflict Resolution)

These three styles are forms of opportunities to transform conflict.

Strong Ties and Weak Ties

Malcolm Gladwell, an intellectual who writes for The New Yorker and often shares the stage with his massive ego, wrote a provocative article suggesting that social change cannot rely solely on social media. The main crux of his argument is that social media is great for 'weak ties' where we have loose connections with lots of people, but no real impetus to get up and DO something. This is in sharp contrast to true social movements that require 'strong ties' to others to make real change happen. 

You can read his piece titled "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" here. 

Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Community Organizing relies on an understanding of a framework of social justice that a CO will operate under. The model that we use in class requires a topic called 'Possibility' which suggests that for truly transformative work to occur, one must understand the possibilities that are out there for things we can aspire to. 

One example of possibility is a typology developed by Gosta Esping-Anderson who reviewed different types of welfare regimes and worked to classify them into the types shown below:

Image developed by Professor Larry M. Gant, adapted from Esping-Anderson, 1990

One of the biggest pieces of these models is the idea of decommodification. Commodification is the practice of turning services into commodities such as health care or access to water. In the US, these are usually seen as commodities that require funds to pay for them. In other models, the State works to decommodify such services to ensure they are provided to all residents. 

It should be noted that this typology was completed in a European-Centric model, so the examples used are typically found with Anglo-Saxon countries such as the US and Australia, and examples from continental Europe and Scandinavia. Some additional characteristics are listed below:

Structural Determinants of Health and Epigenetics

All of this leads to the idea that the way our systems are set-up actually lead to detrimental health outcomes for members of society. Structural Determinants of Health is the term used to describe the complex, integrated social structures that are responsible for health inequities. This video suggests that we can measure the impact of inequality to show how structure impacts health. 

Epigenetics is a new term I learned that describes how traumatic experiences and inequality can be passed from generation to generation. This video (the third part of a five part series) describes how an event such as September 11th can actually be passed on from generation to generation. The traumatic stress endured by a parent during certain periods is actually attached to the genes of their children. While this is true for major events, it can also endure for something such as poverty or racism, where people experience everyday trauma. These traumas are then passed to their children who then experience new health problems that are uncommon to children their age. 

All of this suggests that we should do more to impact structures, inequality, and poverty in our nation. Not only is it a human thing to do, but we are literally making ourselves sick by ignoring it. 

I hope you learned something from this. If you want more detail on any of these topics I can send more. Wish me luck on my exam!