‘Soil’, ‘Wind’ and Real Apples

How to Let Local be Different?[1] Structural solutions, such as decentralisation don’t seem to work. This note examines two eccentric, ‘third sector’ approaches, one Japanese, one English and their links to government. Post modernism in play?

Country rambles and visits to remote islands provide for urbanites - Japanese as well as British I was happy to discover - a necessary degree of mental displacement. Things can be seen in a new perspective. Things happen at a different pace. Things insignificant in one context take on significance in another. This can be mentally refreshing in itself. It is also the basis, I find, for refreshingly open, pluralist, approaches to public policy formation; all very necessary in an over-standardised, over-centralised modern world. This note outlines and contextualises two similar approaches, one in Britain and one in Japan, that address what seems to be a dilemma for contemporary governance; how to let or enable local to be different. Both countries, with otherwise differing histories, cultures and political systems, experienced rapid industrialisation and extension of ‘modern’ social and governmental systems through the 20th Century, with rising standards of living but increasing problems of uniformity and increasing marginality for some. To find relative advantage in difference provides a ‘post-modern’ escape route; but the question is, how to do it or to let it happen.

In both countries some people have tried to do something about these problems and in doing so encounter the same dilemma. You cannot, as a central agent, tell people how to be different. So the issue becomes how to set up non-prescriptive processes that enable people in rural communities to break out of modernisation-induced lethargy and which enable modern government delivery systems to allow non-standard things to happen. In Japan, Jimoto-gaku process facilitators resort to metaphor. They seek to relate Soil [local] and Wind [outsider] to discover local Treasure. In the UK, Common Ground - to single out one NGO amongst others - points people to local history, to fruit varieties, to festivals and traditional games, to stimulate local responses. The UK national government seems to be supportive but is so intent upon post-modern deconstruction and system reinvention that [for me] reality becomes virtual, or virtual unreality. I get lost in verbiage. Somewhere in the midst of these processes is an old community development formula that needs new and simple forms of expression to enable diversity to happen.

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John Stewart, early in his career as luminary of British local democracy, said that the function of local government is to ‘legitimate difference’. Yet, as he and others have well recognised, the thrust of 20th Century modernisation in Britain and other advanced industrial countries was to promote uniform goods through the mass production methods of big corporations; while governments followed suit with centrally defined services, delivered bureaucratically, assessed by standard measures, and demanded as rights by citizens[2]. Japan has been no exception to these tendencies.

The 21st Century has seen the beginnings [or is it continuing rumblings?] of dissatisfaction with the outcome. There have been dramatic increases in standards of living as a result of these processes but for people at the economic margin or in remote rural places there has also been;
· deskilling as crafts are replaced by mass-produced goods,
· devaluing of local knowledge in the name of ‘science’[3],
· disempowerment as local forums are replaced by more remote hierarchies
· and homogenisation of cultures as mass communication extends its reach.

‘Modern’ sometimes presents itself as a mirage that disappears as people grope towards it.

The same central forces and agents have been at work in the so-called developing countries, though often less successfully so that much political and professional energy within the ‘development industry’ is still, perhaps correctly, directed to seeking to extend the benefits of large scale, science based, mass production process for food-crops, goods and services to places that have so far been excluded. In this mind-set local initiative is often associated with people having to fend for themselves; a recipe for survival perhaps but not usually for wealth. However Japanese awareness of the limitations of successful modernisation, evident in the One Village One Product (OVOP) movement, may in fact be a useful pointer to diversification strategies in many countries that can still benefit from industrialisation.

Modernisation has everywhere been driven through big, bureaucratic, central institutions. A century of institutionalisation is difficult to change. Even in Britain, where New Labour came to power advocating change and promoting a Third Way that would involve the private and voluntary sectors, bureaucratic values and monitoring practices continue to extend their control over these agents. Central politicians daily make pronouncements as to what the nation needs, while both press and citizens confine their engagement in public affairs to grumbles about standards. ‘What, Minister, are you doing about it?’ demands John Humphries on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, morning after morning, reinforcing centralist expectations[4].

If this is the reality of ‘modernisation’ then what or where is ‘post-modern’?[5] In art, postmodernism involved deconstruction, breaking out of familiar forms and images as well as making use of divergent materials in surprising ways. Is the same break-out or deconstruction required in social institutions before there can be local difference? The British government certainly behaves as though, as a matter of principle, no institutional structure should survive more than a handful of years beyond its conception. Old institutions such as the Trust, are given new shapes and functions. Reform is its central mantra. No supplier can be allowed to become complaisant [some would say competent]. To me the bigger question is about demand[6]. Deconstruction - if that is what it is – can be approached from above or below, dismantling from above [by the state] or articulation and re-construction or institutional ‘bricolage’ from below [by civil society]. In UK we have seen plenty of governmental deconstruction, the main consequence of which has been that a vast field has been created in which people are able to contest relationships. We have also been treated by our authorities to a plethora of words such as ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘representation’, ‘democracy’. But, as political scientists note, such words can be fronts for power-play games. In this context ideas about how to create or enable difference, diversity, the unique; are always going to be in tension with both social group tendencies to conformity and hierarchical demand for compliance. How these ideas and tendencies play themselves out within the complexes of state / non-state, mutual and private institutions is not always clear, particularly when proponents claim to be inverting established norms.

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In this note I pay particular attention to the One Village One Product (OVOP) movement in Japan and to Common Ground UK - a small charity – which appear to have in common a concern to stimulate / allow / challenge a revival of local economic and social life and culture. While there are differences in scale and approach, common features include
· outside [non-local] origin and stimulus
· imaginative, non-prescriptive means of intervention by these stimulating agents
· but outcomes intentionally reliant upon responsive local initiative and agency
· probably also – though this is not specified - networks of individuals that officially or unofficially link public, private and community institutions

Common Ground UK has its home in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It is a registered charity and is active through an elegant and complex website[7]. Each page picks up ideas, examples and a bit of philosophising about different aspects of ‘distinctiveness’ that can enrich aspects of rural life. I came across Common Ground UK through researching apples in preparation for a visit from Professor Nishikawa. Common Ground is responsible for the Apple Day festivities that are now practiced on September 21st in many parts of the country. But enter the website and there are links to field days, poetry, community orchards and many other surprises. The charity sponsors campaigns for growing ‘real fruit and vegetables’, protecting old trees, using local materials for property boundaries and protecting rivers from canalisation. People entering the website can find their way to a site that revives the annual calendar as a significant feature of life in the countryside, pointing to typical festivals and inviting readers to submit information about their own localities. The site also promotes a number of techniques for stimulating responses within local rural communities such as parish mapping; though campaigning seems to be its strategy for gaining local engagement.

The OVOP movement also employs stimulation techniques including the ‘Treasure Hunt’ that is described below. However exponents emphasise that technique is incidental to the process[8]: the important thing is to enable people to find and appreciate what is special about a place and to live satisfying lives. In contrast to Common Ground UK, its participative method avoids any structuring of the minds of participants through calendars or ideologies (organic commitments, etc.,), or other devices. The locally significant must be allowed to emerge.

The OVOP movement in Japan was initiated by Morihiko Hiramastu while he served as governor of Oita Prefecture (1979-2003). His frustration with the growing disparities in incomes and opportunities between the prosperous cities of Japan and the hinterland as well as the draining away of resourcefulness from rural to urban led to his initiating a movement with three key principles;
First: ‘Local yet Global’.
Second: ‘Self-reliance and Creativity’.
Third, and to him most important: ‘Human Resources Development’[9].

The same speech emphasised that the key to success is an ability to engage local people in identifying the potential of their own areas, through finding its material or non-material ‘treasures’, encouraging local leaders to persist till they have managed to take the local through local decision making to the wider social or market context. With this origin it is not surprising that OVOP has been taken up by the Japanese government and is now being promoted internationally both from Oita Prefecture[10] and through Japanese overseas development assistance[11].

In Japan itself a number of academics, NGO leaders and consultants have been working on a parallel set of ideas about stimulating local difference and can now be engaged as the external facilitators within rural communities, funded sometimes by local government, sometimes community bodies. One method of search involves the Jimoto-gaku or Treasure Hunt approach[12].

As explained by Kazuhisa Matsui, a Research Fellow at The Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo, the Jimoto-gaku approach was developed in Japan to stimulate processes of social initiative. In some ways this is an anti-scientific, post modernist philosophy. It has some parallels in the Participative Rural Appraisal (PRA) philosophy, very popular on the Indian Sub-Continent, or in the Planning For Real technique that is found in Britain. In all cases the emphasis is not so much on technique as upon establishing proper dialogue, giving priority to voices from the community, constraining the voices of the outsider professional. The Jimoto-gaku movement see this as a relationship between ‘Soil’ – local, and ‘Wind’ – outsider, the ‘Soil’ being there, the established and the ultimate resource. Wind blows in with questions that might or might not help ‘Soil’ to see what has hitherto not been seen[13].

The Treasure Hunt method involves external recourse persons brought together with local citizens. They are divided into teams, armed with cameras and sent off to walk around the community taking pictures of anything of interest. This process is deliberately non-directional – not guided by economic ideas of relative advantage, or of socio-cultural differences. So when the teams reconvene at the assembly point and each team produces a map and a commentary on the pictures that it has taken, it is hoped that internal / external differences in perception of what is ‘interesting’ will produce surprise ‘treasure’ of development potential. Neither of the two exercises that I witnessed personally[14] actually came up with treasure, thought they possibly did have some impact at what the purists take to be the more important level of impact; strengthening local confidence and HR capacity [Dr Hirimatsu’s emphasis above].

The reputation of the movement relies in practice upon success stories from different parts of the country – the hot springs that became a magnet for tourists, the community business that developed when a market for decorative coloured leaves in Tokyo restaurants was recognised, distinctive local dishes that attract visitors. Now no doubt other participating countries will be looking for their own stories to sustain the movement. Otherwise the risk in all this official recognition is that experimentation and looking for difference will disappear in ritual and routine.

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The government contexts within which these agents or movements have emerged are relevant. Diagram 1 suggests that there can be a straightforward set of relationships between state and civil society over the scope for diversity. These can range over; no diversity – civil society compliance, through the classic representative role for civil society in which its primary function is to demand modifications or adjustments to what will still be a uniform state provision, through negotiating a framework that will allow room for local difference, to a situation in which the state demonstrates a willingness to allow civil society to respond to perceived needs in diverse ways.


Diagram 1 The political scope for diversity

State

Civil Society

Exercises control
Non-negotiated uniformity


Compliance

Willingness to talk / negotiate
Negotiated uniformity



Capacity to influence
Negotiated Framework allowing / constraining diversity


Willingness to ‘let’ or leave alone
Plural responses outwith the control of the state


Capacity to supply

This classification of relationships is unlikely to represent a clean set of options on the ground. In practice it is likely that;
· there is little agreement and plenty ongoing contestation about the desirability of uniform or varied responses to any particular good or service [for instance the education curriculum in UK]
· what is allowed in law can be constrained by money
· the motivation on either side will not be straightforward;
o government willingness to tolerate diversity may increase if by this means responsibility for funding supply is passed to civil society
o and conversely, civil society willingness to accept uniformity may increase if the state can thereby be obliged to fund or supply
· political commitments are often unrelated to implementable options
· any negotiation process can be as long as a piece of string….

The UK government appears to be committed to a very open strategy towards local civil society initiatives. The Japanese government may be less so - I am not in a position to judge. But in neither case is the ideological position adopted by the government necessarily a clear indicator of likely outcomes.

In Japan OVOP was initiated by a Prefecture governor. In any administrative system the local boss or Governor is an interstitial position representing both national government hierarchy and regional or community interests. A governor will be expected to comply with national norms but may nevertheless be able to exercise a touch of ‘blind eye’[15]independence. If there is going to be any scope for exercising difference within the hierarchy this is where it may be expected. The OVOP methodology is not seen as anti-establishment. Its advocates do not condemn uniform crops and are not seen as being against standard government supplied structures or services. So, particularly if there is a Prefectoral precedent, it is not a problem for a municipal official to commission NGO facilitators or academic consultants to initiate a Treasure Hunt or to liaise with community leaders over OVOP stimulated proposals. In both Kamae and Ojika island local government officials were actively involved with and responsive to the local citizens.

Structurally speaking what seems to be required can be represented in the following diagram.

Diagram 2 Community Development Relationships




Local initiator stimulated to see difference and champion it within the rural community in various ways
Facilitator with a non-prescriptive approach that enables locals to see and officials to be open
Official with sufficient executive freedom to be able to respond to / take the part of / local agents while working within an official hierarchy

[Circle = community, stars = individuals, triangle = hierarchy]


The diagram describes a set of relationships that appear simple and in practice must be simple despite the fact that they cross behavioural boundaries that demand conformity in contrasting ways. Although the language changes, the diagram represents the essentials of a longstanding Community Development tradition that has been evident in many parts of the world for decades. Within this tradition the facilitator - the star in the middle - is usually seen as the key figure. If appointed by government he/she may be called Community Development Officer (CDO), or, in the French tradition, Animateur. The problem is deemed to be that ‘communities’ need to be stimulated into addressing their own needs through ‘self-help’. If this ‘star in the middle’ position is taken up by an NGO the language may differ and the problem may well be seen as government rigidity rather than community lethargy. However the diagram above suggests that self-help or local initiative is most likely to take place when active individuals take the initiative within both community and bureaucracy. Norms are challenged on both sides. Room for negotiation is necessary. Success may come from pre-negotiating spheres within which predictable state / local relationships can take place; describing conditions for public funding, defining boundaries of responsibility, or, in the OVOP instance, outlining processes for finding local ‘value added’. When we turn to the current British scene my question is whether an apparently accommodating set of governance structures actually allows for simplicity.

* * * * *

The UK is unexceptional in having a long tradition of local participative planning, such as being advocated by Common Ground UK[16]. With an urban orientation The Neighbourhood Initiative Foundation has developed and promoted the ‘planning for real’ methodology that is adopted by both statutory and voluntary agencies[17]. Rural Community Councils (RCCs) have existed in most parts of England (many established alongside the Counties, the top level rural statutory local governments) – going back to the 1960s in some cases - as voluntary but officially supported bodies that have a range of supportive community development roles. They encourage Parish Councils as well as NGOs to initiate plans and projects and will support such initiatives with some professional or technical advice. Most of these were initially supported by local government but in recent years these bodies - along with other private or NGO bodies in rural or environmental development - have been coordinated and supported through the (charmingly titled) ACRE (Action for Communities in Rural England) which is a governmental agency set up under the National Environment and Rural Communities Act of 2006[18]. This agency falls under the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

How ACRE support works is something that could be investigated, with a bit of patience, on line, but a thorough investigation would really require extensive participative research with actors within the system. Within an overall governance framework about openness, participation, democratic accountability…: note the density of discourse, the uniformity of diction….; note the fashionable partnership working requirements…..; recognise the competitive bidding for funds…. and, not least; register the fact that Defra bureaucrats will take final decisions on funding. Then attempt to answer my question: will this process let local be different? Here is government attempting to turn itself inside out. But I confess myself lost in the innards.



[1] This note arises out of discussions with Professor Yoshiaki Nishikawa of Nagoya University, Japan, on the theme of diversity, its relevance in present day public policy and how it can be supported. My note draws upon field visits with him to remote parts of Japan in 2005 to take part in Jimoto-gaku exercises as well as subsequent excursions into Kent, England in search of diversity in English apples.
[2] Stewart J 2003 Modernising British Local Government Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan

[3] Crop varieties produced in central laboratories replace the land-races nurtured by farming women and men; one outcome being that local is no longer unique.
[4] Guardian columnist, Simon Jenkins, in his book Thatcher and sons; a revolution in Three Acts Penguin 2006, sees the governance reforms introduced by Margaret Thatcher and followed through by her successor Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair as having two contradictory thrusts, one towards devolving power and marketisation and the other, centralisation through regulation and ‘performance monitoring’.
[5] I use the word ‘modern’ or modernisation’ to refer to the industrialisation, mass production / consumption phase of the 20th Century, preferring ‘post-modern’ where Tony Blair and co are inclined to extend the use of ‘modern’.
[6] One has to recognise parallels with the Cultural Revolution in China when Mao Tse Dung, in pursuit of ‘constant revolution’, deliberately let loose the Red Guards against the established Community Party hierarchy which had become set in its ways. The first post-modernist movement of the 20th Century?
[7] www.commonground.org.uk and www.england-in-particular.info/
[8] a point also made by exponents of Participative or Rapid Rural Appraisal (P/RRA)
[9] Morihiko Hiramatsu, PhD., Presidential address, 1st Annual Conference of International OVOP Policy Association: IOPA, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, November 22nd, 2007.
[10] http://ovop.jp/en/ison_p/jissent.html

[11] www.jica.go.jp/english/resources/announce/2007/dec.03.html

[12] The Jimoto-gaku or Treasure hunt technique http://www.japanfs.org/en/public/education03.html
[13] from personal notes December 2005
[14] One in Kamae, Saiki-City, Oita Prefecture and the other in the Ojika island cluster off the coast of Kyushu in Nagasaki Prefecture
[15] The liberty or risk that a leader can take in prioritising local knowledge over central direction; inspired by Admiral Lord Nelson when, before the Battle of Copenhagen (1801), he put his telescope to his blind eye in order not to see a signal instructing him to call off the action.
[16] In relation to ‘Third World’ development the practice of participative planning is well developed; at best leading to a truly plural approach to solving very real problems of public well-being and environmental sustainability - see Robert Chambers, 2008 Revolutions in Development Enquiry London, Sterling VA, Earthscan
[17] www.nif.co.uk/planningforreal or www.communityplanning.net


[18] ACRE www.acre.org.uk/index.html