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Finn Dickman
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Finn commented on the article |And concerning the poor, I would need to look closer at the context in which they were defined as social entrepreneurs in their own right, but I'd agree that although they are absolutely to be taken into account as potentially major actors in the solution, they can't all be said to embodie the essential values of social entrepreneurship "by definition". Even micro-credit has been seen to have its limits, although it's an amazing tool and a great argument for any who still need to be convinced that the poor can play a part in freeing themselves from poverty.
3. & 4. Can an organization grow and still meet the local community needs? (And) do social entrepreneurs address root causes or just symptoms of social problems?
As far as I'm concerned, these two questions basically deal with the same thing. The key slogan here is the much repeated "think global, act local", to which I would add "think long term, and act now".
The way I understand it the relationship between global/long term and local/short term is the following:
* A number of major issues that Social and Solidarity-based Economy propose to deal with are impossible to solve on a local scale because they are systemic, interrelated to a vast number of other factors and issues. The complexity involved in dealing with any of these requires very well articulated action in many fields and on many levels simultaneously. Without a global/long term perspective, local and short term action runs the risk of wasting a lot of time, energy and ressources, reminding me of the classical Tex Avery or Tom & Jerry situation where one character hammers a nail in one place and another pops out somewhere else, over and over again. So the question of "acting at the adequate scale" is crucial.
* Nonetheless, there *is* no global/long term action without local/short term action, the last literally composing the bricks of the former. Another way of seeing this is that any *real* impact is expressed locally depending on the context, and so any truly impacting action must take local conditions into account.
* Additionnally, local/short term and more or less individual initiatives can be truly creative and sometimes offer a quick and perfectly adapted answer to a local/immediate problem where institutionalised action can be slow and full of constraints. On the other hand, the use of institutionalised action is in avoiding circumscribed groups having to rely only on their *own* creativity, faced whith reinventing the wheel every second day.
To sum it up, I'd say that there has to be an intelligent and flexible coordination of both local and global action, and that the reason for this is precisely in order to ensure that the action is pertinent in the bigger picture, takes a real part in addressing the root problems, all the while keeping local initiative, creativity and flexibility maximum.
Probably the best "institutionalisation" would be merely systematized communication of who is doing what, where and how, and pooling of crossed-analyses, so that people can easily situate their action in the larger framework...
5. Is the growing relationship between the nonprofit and for-profit sector a good thing?
Nothing much to add to waht's already been said about this.
Thank God ! :o)
Best regards.
finn -
Finn commented on the article |
Hi,
Thanks to all for an insightful and much needed discussion indeed.
And thanks to Sue Ellen for expressing pretty much exactly my thoughts on the subject ! :o)I would back what she has to say on each of these points, but to put it in my own words and contribute my own two cents :
1. Do visionary individuals or collective action drive social change?
Definitely both - and as all here have remarked they are inseparable aspects - but I would argue that the very word "social" in "social change" points to the heart of the matter : it is a collective question over and above anything else.
Change is effective only when embodied by those who change, individuals can be amazing sources of inspiration, facilitators and pedagogues, they can indeed have visionary insights, but all this is just one element in the bigger picture of collective change.
Any authentic "vision" in this sense must take root in the collective reality and context, be aimed at the collective well-being, and be implemented by the interested parties themselves - the very body of society - *all* of us.
There is of course plenty of room for individual creativity and initiative in this, it is just a question of frame of mind.
2. How narrowly should "social entrepreneurship" be defined and to whom should the term be applied?
I agree that what is at stake is the integrity of the term more than anything else, having people deviate the meaning of it to serve their own private purposes - which links this issue to the one on the partnerships with private business entities.
It's a fine line to tread and another critical and delicate question here is the relationship between the "means" and "ends", what ends justify what means ? It seems quite widely accepted - and I would tend to agree - that it's good to go by the understanding that the ends are already in the means, just as a tree is in its seed (an idea popularized by Gandhi, who certainly had a certain grasp of what "social change" involves). I would tend to be quite wary of any borderline means (ethically speaking) justified by a greater end.
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