Just due to my current mix of reading community development books from different perspectives, I’m wondering about how to open up invitations to new people to join a community of change.
Comparing some ABCD and Anarchist ideas about Strong and Wrong.
ABCD and Strong
ABCD uses focus on Strong to break the idea that communities are broken and thus needy.
The broken viewpoint is how governments and institutions frame people has lacking capacities and thus in need of capabilities that they design and offer.
Anarchy and Wrong
Anarchy has used Wrong lately to enable vision of some new form of Strong. That a clear rupture is needed in provision for people to perceive an Outside that may work in new, possibly mutual aid and non-capitalist, ways.
This is what happened with Hurricane Sandy and Covid.
Different Social Models
I wonder if this is like Social Model of Disability but where Wrong or Broken clearly needs to be placed on institutions not individuals. The problem is not in the people or the communities but the service assessment and design of the institutions.
Two sides of a Mutual Aid coin
The other thing that comes to mind is that these are the same thing but from different linguistic perspectives.
Both ABCD and Anarchy are about mutual aid. Both seek to offer assistance by building capabilities from the capacities of individuals.
The Strong and the Whole are therefore about perspectives on that offer.
They are also about finding the language and perspective that aligns most successfully with the people who might both seek and offer aid.
Anarchy and its desire for a rupture to see alternative futures may not be suitable language or action to draw in some groups. They may however, be drawn to an ABCD idea of recognising the capacities of people and inviting them to use them. There is still an underlying sense of ‘sticking it to the man’ in both approaches. Both offer people the idea that institutions have failed and communities can help. Anarchy and ABCD both share the same intent but their differing language shows that words can attract and repel individuals. As I wrote in this Finding the right language post, projects need to check their language early for its suitability of use.