This seems to be an extraordinarily fruitful line of thought. My suggestion would be to ground it in actual experience and case studies.
I think of a friend Arie van den Brand, who runs an network of "nature coops" in the Netherlands. These are groups of farmers who contract, as groups, with local authorities for payment to protect specifically defined biodiversity. It all started with concern over bird nesting, and the realization by enviro groups that farm fields were actually better for particular species than "wild" nature. The farmers have become expert at noticing species interactions and entrepreneurial in their development of contractual relationships. We might describe this as component reductionism, but it seems to me to be an example of what Jim calls a learning community in which relationships and continual learning lead to a more complex "box."
The conversation also makes me recall long "lessons" from John Berry Sr., who described the tobacco program: "We created the program for people. The crop was incidental. The goal was to keep these families on these hills (as he waved his arm across the window of his little country law office), to support a local economy based on good grass farming, to make sure they could pay their notes and send their children to school." [Wes Jackson once observed that the best thing about the tobacco program in KY is that it subsidizes a grass based economy.]
I also recall a group of Americans I was leading in France last year. We were visiting very successful coops and entrepreneurs, and a couple of our US participants kept asking, "What's your 10 year plan for the business? What are your long term goals?" The answer kept coming back that our hosts were satisfied with where they were, of course aiming to make improvements, sometimes with modest growth goals, but rarely with ambitious growth goals. The US participants at first thought the French farmers were lying--such is the power of our assumptions. After several more interviews we because clear that there was a significant cultural difference. These were people who had created successful products, were making money, but who had few aspirations to wealth. Protecting native meadows, keeping stocking densities low, developing relationships with consumers, supporting new allied businesses in their towns, celebrating traditional culture along with innovative ideas--all these !
aspects are intertwined. Supports your assertions, Jim, I think.
Hal
Hal Hamilton
Center for Sustainable Systems
433 Chestnut St., Berea KY 40403 USA
Phone: (606) 986-5336; Fax: (606) 986-1299
hhamilton@centerss.org
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu [mailto:owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu]On
Behalf Of Jim Worstell
Sent: Friday, July 09, 1999 9:59 AM
To: Ikerd, John E.; sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: Social and political aspects
John,
I like your three dimensional box analogy much better than the three-legged
stool. I guess I'm not so much interested in measuring the outside of the
box as I am understanding how the box creates itself. Like many phenomena,
the important dimensions of sustainability are as yet undefined. These
dimensions could be said to be folded up inside the box--as in string
theory, we know time and three dimensions, but several more are inaccessible
to our observation.
The three dimensions are the results. What are the causes of
sustainability?
Let's hypothesize that the vital cultures discussed by Douglass and Bawden,
are at once the foundation and the generator of sustainability. Given that
notion, the task is to define the values, assumptions and habits of such
"learning communities" to determine which are causes of sustainability and
which are epiphenomena or even detract from sustainability.
Most people growing up on small farms close to no large cities, as you and I
did, experience something less than a "vital rural culture." Something like
the old German saying, "Cities make free" lead many to find vital community
away from the often stultifying rural areas.
So, "vital rural cultures" to many is a internal contradiction.
Do you think this line of thought is worth pursuing? If you do, how would
you do it?
----- Original Message -----
From: Ikerd, John E. <IkerdJ@missouri.edu>
To: 'jim worstell' <jvworstell@futura.net>; Hal Hamilton
<hhamilton@centerss.org>; Wilson, Dale <WILSONDO@phibred.com>;
<sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 1999 2:33 PM
Subject: RE: Social and political aspects
> Jim;
>
> I think you raise an excellent point concerning the natural tendency of
> people to want to dissect sustainability into three parts - ecological,
> economic, and social. I try to avoid the habit of referring to
> sustainability as having three "parts" - although the reductionism habit
is
> hard to break. Instead, I think of sustainability as a single entity
that
> has three distinct "dimensions" -- in the same sense that a wooden box has
> three dimensions; height, length, and width. A box that lacks any one or
> two of these dimensions is not a box at all, but instead is an infinitely
> thin board or stick. We can't understand the fundamental nature of a box
> by taking it apart and looking at its height, length, or width separately.
> We have to understand the concept of a box as a whole. But, once we
> understand the holistic concept of a box; knowing its height, length, and
> width become important descriptive dimensions. A fundamental problem
with
> sustainability is that, unlike a box, we can't measure the three
dimensions
> of sustainability using inches or feet or any single unit of measure.
> That's one reason why we simply cannot ignore the fact that sustainability
> has these different dimensions.
>
> It really doesn't matter to me whether we come to the sustainability issue
> from an economic, ecological, or social perspective, as long as we give
due
> consideration to all three dimensions. I have no problem with your
> suggestion that we approach sustainability from a social/cultural
> perspective as long as we give adequate consideration to the economic and
> ecological dimensions. I agree that we have given far too much emphasis
to
> the economics and too little emphasis to social organization in the past,
> but we don't want to make a similar mistake by ignoring the economic
> dimension in the future. We can't make a bigger box simply by making one
> that it taller, or wider, or longer - by concentrating on one dimension
and
> ignoring the other two. You included "the values of stewardship,
> self-reliance, humility and holism" in your description of sustainable
> social organization. I just prefer to deal with the dimensions more
> explicitly so that none gets left out.
>
> John Ikerd
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jim worstell [mailto:jvworstell@futura.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 1999 9:17 PM
> To: Hal Hamilton; Wilson, Dale;
> sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu
> Subject: Re: Social and political aspects
>
> By accepting a reductionistic three component definition of
> sustainability we invite people to delete or redefine the "social"
component
> as wilsondo@phibred.com <mailto:wilsondo@phibred.com> and others do.
> The original source for the three part definition seems to
> be misleading simplification of a 1984 analysis by Gordon Douglass.
> Douglass described three schools of thought regarding agricultural
> sustainability. The "community school" , in contrast to the other two
> schools, "pays most attention to the effects of different agricultural
> systems on the vitality, social organization, and culture of rural life".
> "[I]t's members are also ecologically minded, but their prime interest is
in
> promoting vital, coherent, rural cultures that encourage the values of
> stewardship, self-reliance, humility, and holism".
> The "social aspects" then become not one leg of
> sustainability, but the entire foundation. Any economic or ecological
> "profit or loss" results from these social structures. Such an approach
> underscores the qualitative difference of sustainable and conventional
> agricultural systems.
> Think about abandoning component thinking for a more
> holistic approach. Aren't "vital, coherent rural cultures" common to all
> sustainable agricultural systems?
> Stressing profit and ecology instead, as we have here in the
> U.S., have led us into our present quagmire of agricultural crisis.
Social
> organization which encourages "the values of stewardship, self-reliance,
> humility and holism," appears to provide the long-term solution. Yet
we've
> allowed such concepts to be marginalized to the point of extinction in ag
> policy debates.
> Douglass' book, Agricultural Sustainability in the New World
> Order, in out of print, but a webpage discussing some of his ideas can be
> found at www.canr.msu.edu/bailey/background/pub
> <http://www.canr.msu.edu/bailey/background/pub> 3.htm
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hal Hamilton <hhamilton@centerss.org
> <mailto:hhamilton@centerss.org> >
> To: Wilson, Dale <WILSONDO@phibred.com
> <mailto:WILSONDO@phibred.com> >; sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu
> <mailto:sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu>
> <sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu
> <mailto:sanet-mg@shasta.ces.ncsu.edu> >
> Date: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 11:34 AM
> Subject: RE: Social and political aspects (was:
> Questions on organic
> livestock...)
>
>
> >Dale,
> >
> >Sustainable agriculture, as defined by Congress and
> many others, has a
> social leg to balance environmental and economic legs.
>
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