DRIVING FORCES FOR MAJOR DEVELOPMENT CHANGES - Social Shakes

Below is part of an overall paper called "SOCIAL SHAKES - rethinking the core principles for principled and effective development action" - the full Table of Contents is here.

DRIVING FORCES FOR MAJOR DEVELOPMENT CHANGES

When we assess the major reasons why significant improvements have taken place, it is tempting to exclusively focus on technologies with scientifically proven attributes - condoms, vaccines, oral rehydration salts, clean water systems, food supplements, and many more.

But many of those "services" or "products" would not have been developed and used without a high degree of entanglement with a series of social changes. By social change I do not mean a supportive environment where change is limited to simply supporting the availability and use of a product or technology.

It is the enmeshment, entwinement, entanglement of the issue or problem within a series of larger social changes taking place that is as important for progress as the technologies being developed and promoted.

Those social changes - some emerging from often unexplained or little-understood shifts in wider social belief systems, others the result of initiatives designed to encourage and support that change, often a mix of the two - provide us with the strategic insights required for future, effective communication policies, strategies, action and funding priorities.

Let's take a look at this dynamic specific to a few major, specific issues on which significant, positive change has been experienced over the past 20-plus years. These changes have been chosen because they are most easily explained through a "technology" analysis and explanation. But that is not the full story by any means.

The next section in this paper is FAMILY SIZE / FERTILITY TRENDS.

The previous section in this paper is WHOSE VOICE?

Editor's note: Above is an excerpt from Warren Feek's paper "SOCIAL SHAKES - rethinking the core principles for principled and effective development action".

The full table of contents for this paper can be accessed at the bottom of the opening page.