1. Lines of action and action map
2. The general outline
3. Methodological phases
There is an instrumental concept of the approach that needs to be introduced before dealing with methods, i.e. the notion of line of action. It is a system of human action, whose purpose is to attain one or more common objectives and which is clearly identified in practice by the actors interested in these objectives. It is a system with three kinds of elements: actors, activities and objectives. Actors are the persons, groups or institutions who can perform such activities; for instance, a peasant, a group in charge of a community plantation or a cooperative. They always give names to the lines of action they are interested in, to identify them in real life. The existence of a commonly-accepted name to designate "what is being done" (e.g. irrigating this land) is a good indicator of the presence of a line of action.
Lines of action appear in practice as groups of parallel lines. As an example, the lines of action in improving fuelwood ovens and stoves in the Coquimbo communities turned out to be:
- selecting and adapting designs;
- supplying building materials;
- training oven and stove builders;
- building ovens and stoves;
- adapting cooking habits.
The actors in these lines are: technicians and experienced peasants, a "bank of materials" or similar arrangement, technicians again, building teams, and peasant women with possible external support. The distinction between lines does not reflect physical or economic theories, but practice. Theoretical distinctions are different, such as the one between fuelwood demand and fuelwood supply, which is oriented to analysis rather than to action.
Like a physical map, which represents geographical properties of a locality, an action map may be drawn to represent the action that does or that could take place in a social system. It is the ordered set of names of the system's lines of action and is always expressed in the language of its actors. As an example, the following is the action map prepared by PRIEN for energy-related action that could be undertaken in support of the agricultural communities of Coquimbo (Sáez, 1986, pp. 141-142):
A. Management and development of wood resourcesA-1 Management of collection areas
A-2 Development of energy plantationsB. Household energization
B-1 Multi-use fuelwood equipment
B-2 Thermal conditioning of housesC. Agricultural energization
C-1 Traction
C-2 Organic technologies for food productionD. Alternative technologies
D-1 Wind pumping of water
D-2 Water collection from mists
D-3 Solar heating of water
D-4 Solar drying of agricultural products
Note that in this case the actors are researchers and regional agencies who were expected to become interested and involved in joint work with PRIEN. This is shown by names such as "household energization" or "alternative technologies", which belong to the cultural repertory of professionals. They clearly cannot designate lines of action having peasants or their organizations as actors.
Lines of action have two important properties that may easily be observed in the action map. They have practical consequences for planning, that are utilized in this approach.
Property 1: every line of action is made up of more particular lines of action.
Consequence 1: lines of action permit working at any degree of generality or particularity.Consequence 2: the methodological bases for planning are the same whatever the location of the line of action in the system.
Property 2; lines of action include both actual and potential actors, activities and objectives.
Consequence 3: in principle, every development potentiality may give rise to a line of action.Consequence 4: in principle, every well-specified line of action presents development potentialities.
On the following page, a general outline of the participative planning methodology is presented. This is not an outline of steps or phases of planning, but an outline of the whole development process, conceived as innovation, that was described in the preceding section of the paper. The phases of planning will be presented subsequently. It is convenient to review briefly the process by following the different elements that are contained in the outline.
a. Community and environment
The bio-physical and social environment of the community is shown surrounding it. It includes a large number of components with which it is related in various ways: its forests, agricultural land and livestock, the weather, the buyers of its outputs and sellers of its inputs, the radio through which it listens to the rest of society, and many others. The main linkages of the community with the environment are shown as hollow arrows: its operations (cultivating, buying, selling, travelling, sending children to school, etc.) and the cultural influences received from the outside.
Other elements depicted in the environment are related to the planning and development process and will be mentioned later.
b. Current operations
The current operations of the community are the result of a long process of interaction with the environment and of survival in it. These operations give rise to the slow process of cultural evolution that was called passive learning.
c. The cycle of innovation
This is the cycle that involves potentialities, organization and operations. When innovation is activated, something affects the long-standing tradition of current activities: it is the awareness of development potentialities. Then, the cycle of innovation is slowly set in motion: motivation rises to consider and test new modalities of organization, new operations are executed in an exploratory manner, and new results are achieved which show that the potentialities indeed exist and can be actualized. Then awareness spreads, motivation grows, organization becomes stronger, operations become more efficient and results more clear. And the cycle goes on and on, making use of the potentiality.
The final result is new actors that are well organized, have clear objectives and are efficient in their activities. A new line of action has been established.
d. The external support cycle
Innovation is not free. It requires investment in capital goods and running capital (tools, equipment, inputs, cattle, etc.), in technical training of the people who will carry out the new operations and in managerial training of the people who will run the new organizational arrangements. We have said that innovation gives rise to resources for the community, which are implicit in the potentialities and which could be used to pay for all this. But such resources will not accrue until the new line of action is firmly established. How can this time gap be bridged?
The answer is in the external support cycle. This is a cycle derived from the innovation one: once there is organization, it can mobilize support from external sources, which is usually available and made use of by the better organized. Promotional sources would be well disposed to provide both technical and financial support since they would have the potentialities as guarantees (i.e. in the form of viable projects).
e. Animation of the process
The cycle of innovation cannot start by itself for two reasons: the experience of the community does not include innovation among its cultural patterns and the community lacks resources. While only the second reason is usually considered in rural development practice, the preceding discussion shows that the real block to development is the lack of innovative culture.
This is the point where animation comes into the picture and the reason why it is depicted at the centre of the diagram. Animation is essentially communication and the topic around which community and animator carry out their communication is innovative action, i.e. all the elements just presented in the cycles of innovation and external support. But it is not communication in the abstract or about any action; it is about the concrete action that is meaningful to the community. It is, therefore, about the actual and potential lines of action of the community. The segmented arrows (excepting, for the time being, the ones linking animation and research) show then the contents of the communication: potentialities, organization, operations and sources of support. This communication has language requirements that will be discussed further on when dealing with the methodological phases.
f. Learning and cultural change
The process of communication just described takes place in the field of culture. It starts in the traditional language of the community and slowly widens and enriches it, as well as all the cultural contents, with new perceptions, concepts, techniques, values and images of future. This is the very core of the development process: the field where learning occurs. It is shown in the diagram by means of a pair of solid arrows. Among the values-related aspects of this process, naturally, the new valuations related to innovation should be highlighted: change, organization, self-confidence, a future that can be created.
g. Research and maturity
There is a last corner on the upper left of the diagram, to which we turn to conclude. The concrete potentialities of a community that lives on tradition are unknown by definition. But they are the starting point of the whole process. How can they be found? The answer is in action-oriented research., It is neither socio-economic analysis nor technological work, although it requires teams that can deal with both types of variables. It is a systematic and professional search for development potentialities that can only be done in the field. It requires right understanding of the concepts of development and potentiality, professional competence and good communication with the members of the community.
There is little doubt that this research cannot be undertaken by rural communities of developing countries and somebody else has to take the initiative. But most other social systems of the Third World (public and private companies, government agencies, service institutions) are as little inclined to search for their potentialities as are rural communities. Only when they acquire the habit of doing - or contracting - their own action-oriented research, they can be said. to have attained maturity in their development process. This is even within the reach of rural communities, e.g. if a local association requests such a study from a research centre.
For this presentation, it will be assumed that some development agency, either governmental or non-governmental, intends to promote participatory energy planning in some particular rural area, involving a number of localities or communities of whatever kind. A small number of communities (only one assumed here) is selected for pilot work, and subsequent expansion to the rest is foreseen. The process starts with three phases, to be undertaken by the agency before making any commitment or promise to any community in order to avoid raising unwarranted expectations:
- formulating the action map;
- carrying out the institutional diagnoses;
- evaluating development potentialities.
These phases lead to identifying the relevant lines of action for the pilot community and to establishing their perspectives for subsequent work. The most promising line, in terms of both potentialities and feasible external support, is then selected for the following phases:
- demonstrating potentialities: animation begins;
- animating: organization, techniques and results;
- consolidating external linkages.
By the time these phases are completed, a dynamics of innovation has become established in the pilot community, and neighboring ones have become interested in what is going on. It is possible to go into the two final phases:
- going deeper: additional lines of action;
- going wider: disseminating innovation, not techniques.
Three general characteristics of the methodology should be highlighted: (1) as mentioned initially, it does not start from problems but from potentialities; (2) it does not start by selecting "priorities" in advance, as is usual in technocratic settings, but by reviewing all relevant lines of action and then selecting the most attractive one for innovation; (3) it is gradual, involving several opportunities to revise decisions and contents of work, in order to increase the likelihood of success; success has to be felt as a moral obligation by the agency, because nobody has the right to experiment with human beings as if they were guinea pigs.
The presentation of these phases will be brief, just to identify the purposes and types of activities carried out in each. Naturally, a paper like this cannot provide training on them, as would be required in practice for development agencies and animators. Such should be the purpose of special training workshops.
a. Formulating the action map
Current and potential lines of action (actors, activities and objectives) of the pilot community are identified through conversations with its members. Whenever problems are mentioned, the potentialities and potential lines of action that may lie behind them are sought. The language of the community is utilized to name the lines. Considerations of technological and institutional realism always limit the number of potential lines to a few ones. The final result, in the form of an action map, is a considerably improved understanding of the current operations and of the areas in which development potentialities may exist. Reaching the final version always takes time, as the map evolves significantly along this work. The written action map is not shown to the community, since this is not a meaningful means of communication with it.
b. Carrying out the institutional diagnoses
An institutional diagnosis involves two types of study, related to the current and the potential lines of action identified in the action map. With regard to the current lines, both basic and particular, it consists in an action-focussed analysis of their organization: who are the actors, what are their objectives and their activities. With regard to the potential ones, it is a review of the existing capabilities that are relevant to their eventual establishment in practice. One of the critical questions to be made in the diagnosis is to what extent is their awareness of the corresponding potentialities. Two institutional diagnoses, at different levels, are to be carried out in our case. One refers to the pilot community and the other to the whole area to be covered by the planning process. The latter is done to identify actual and potential sources of technical and financial support.
c. Evaluating development potentialities
This is not only work of technical people but also of economists and social scientists. Natural resources that could be utilized, social and human needs that could be met, techniques that could be applied, potential costs and economic viabilities, training needs that would appear and a number of related issues are dealt with in these prospective evaluations of each line of action. They do not need to be extremely detailed and refined, however, since they are not at all decisive. Their purposes guide their particularity: to confirm or discard tentative lines of action, to select the starting line of action, and to gather the material on which basis animation will be initiated.
A delicate issue should be mentioned at this point, with regard to participation. The starting line of action is selected on two criteria: attractiveness of its potentialities and availability of external support. But notice that this selection is made by the agency rather than the community and that this is not participative. The reason is simple and essential: participation actually begins in the phase "going deeper: additional lines of action", when a number of lines of action are considered by the community. It cannot begin before because participation can only take place once the dynamics of innovation has set in. It can only be meaningfully initiated in the creation of the future; attempts at promoting participation in the administration of the present are bound to degenerate in unending power strifes.
At the risk of seeming obvious, we should notice the responsibility involved in the agency's selection of the starting line of action. A poor selection, or one guided by other than sound development criteria, will surely end up in frustrations for the community, a lost opportunity and wasted money.
d. Demonstrating potentialities: animation begins
Demonstration is a common practice in rural development projects. While it is usually assumed that what is under demonstration is a technique, in well-done cases it is in fact a potentiality. The technique is just one of the means for the result that is sought. Other means have to do with labour, natural resources, organization, external support and financing, and tend to be forgotten - to the detriment of realism and feasibility - when the accent is placed on the technique.
The role of demonstration is to present the potentiality in a language that may be understood by the community members, so that communication may start. Some adaptations and adjustments in the techniques initially proposed by the animator may be required; this is shown in the outline as a feedback arrow from animation to techniques. Demonstration over sufficient time and variety of conditions creates awareness of the potentiality and provides the initial test as to how meaningful if may be for the community members. If it proves meaningful motivation for innovative action will arise. The agency should never forget that a demonstration is a commitment to follow-up animation and support. No one should be made if there are no resources or decision to continue. Otherwise the motivation will become frustration.
e. Animating: organization, techniques and results
The animation phase is the core of the process and was already described. It should be emphasized that the only actors in this process are the community members and that the animator is just a co-ordinator. He is not a saviour providing "solutions" to the long-standing "problems" of the community. He is a facilitator for a process the community has to live through. The community is the one that has to learn to innovate and if it does not, all other work is meaningless. The capacity to distinguish neatly between means and ends at every step is crucial for effective animation: ends shall always be selected by the animator or by experts under his supervision. The selection of ends, however, may have the methodological support of the animator. The central purpose of this long process of animation is to leave the new line of action established in the community, with its objectives, activities and actors well linked together. The objectives are clear and concrete for all: to make the potentiality a real thing. The activities are new operations for which the required techniques are acquired by community members through training; even technological research may be required, and done jointly with community members. The actors are the new working groups, committees, workshops, micro-enterprises or other ways of organization to carry out the new operations; their particular modalities will be the ones required by the operations, will depend upon cultural patterns and will have to be reached by a mixture of trial and error and technical advice.
f. Consolidating external linkages
The animation process brings about learning to the community. But not only to it. The external sources of support that will be mobilized need also to learn how to relate with the community. They should be advised of the roles of participation and innovation in the experience right from the first contact and all Initial dealings with them should be handled by the animator. Every technocratic inclination should be fought. The final agreements should be duly formalized as written contracts, binding both parties.
g. Going deeper: additional lines of action
The two preceding phases leave finally established the starting line of action. Organizational arrangements, external linkages, operations and results, new to the community, are now working and evident for all. It is time to initiate the truly participatory phase of the planning process. Participation takes place essentially in the definition of ends, and this will now occur for an important one: the selection of the next line or lines of action to work on. With the methodological support of the animator, the potentialities of the remaining lines are demonstrated to the community, along with the request to make the selection. Once this is done, the same phases followed for the starting line are repeated, with one significant change: the role of the animator begins to be reduced and the new organizational arrangements take on their roles in the now established management of innovation. The process of communication around lines of action, however, remains as the central point where learning and cultural change take place. The community has finally started its own development process.
h. Going wider: disseminating innovation, not techniques
After a first successful experience, a number of elements are available to support the expansion to a wider area. But let us start from the central objective: what is to be disseminated is the idea and practice of innovation and not this or that particular technique. Every community has to live its own innovation experience; techniques are just means to this end. A second consideration is that every community is unique in itself and its environment. Mechanistic views of expansion lack respect for this diversity and are doomed to failure.
Having said this, we can notice the elements now available: potentialities evaluated for some lines of action, awareness of one of them easy to rise through visits, demonstration avoidable in some cases, motivation probably awake, techniques identified and organizational arrangements tested for a few lines, one or more animators with experience, a more confident agency, external sources of support with new awareness and procedures, and the members of one community converted into the most credible disseminators of the idea of innovation. There are no recipes for going wider. It is essentially a matter of good judgement and strategic capacity. The methodological issues are the same, but the precautions to be taken are greater: it is now easier to forget that development, involving as subtle processes as participation and innovation, is a qualitative and not a quantitative endeavour.
