“Before, everybody helped everybody. All the neighbours helped each other”.”
Manuel Carballo Luis, Manolo “el viudo” (San Matías, 2024)
In this brief text I reflect on something that connects with the human sphere, with people, that can offer keys to overcoming the stage of profound dehumanisation we are going through, with greater or lesser intensity in each case. Directly, there where we are in our daily lives, or through the media and social networks, at a level that is often beyond our reach.
It is often said that people must be at the centre of our interest and action, they must be the focus of our main effort. People... them. This formulation alone separates them from “us”, those of us who might have some kind of power to place them at the centre. To move them from here to there, from there to here. An interesting paradox then arises: we want people to become the centre, but it is usually other actors who decide for what, how, when and where to place them. There is then often a clear gap between intention, discourse and actual practice.
Because considering this centrality perhaps implies that people, this category we are talking about, can really be protagonists, or at least more protagonists in deciding what for, how, when and where they want to be, as reflected in Amartya Sen's thinking. This leads me to think about their indispensable intervention in everything that may affect or concern them. We discover, for example, the true meaning of universal goals that we often relate to and that we sometimes handle lightly, such as number 11 of the 2030 Agenda, which requires us to build more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable communities. All of this is incompatible with the fact that they are dependent.
We move forward.
Favourable environments, favourable contexts, which are configured in the plural, far from resorting to isolation and impoverishing individualism, as suggested by the universal declaration of human rights in article 29.1, which is almost at the end of its unassumable repertoire of purposes for a part of our planet, something which is increasingly evident and which is having its corollary in multiple contexts of the present. Simple, but at the same time emphatic: “Everyone has duties towards the community, since it is only in the community that he or she can freely and fully develop his or her personality”. More than a right reflected on paper, an unavoidable recommendation, people have duties and we must develop in community, we are an essential part of community building.
The key then is to learn how to generate these favourable circumstances, so that people can place themselves at the centre by themselves, facilitating processes with a community accent: governing to facilitate. This is a very difficult task at present, in a framework of increasingly complex realities. But the fact is that we do need more capable societies and it is clear that this is incompatible with certain practices that we have been consolidating over time, which distance us from the essential social competition.
Let us remember the question: are we really helping people to place themselves at the centre? To manage the centrality of their own existence, to project themselves beyond their exclusive environments of interest and to achieve the greatest possible protagonism in their living spaces. And from there, to reactivate their community frameworks of relationships and to build valuable communities by their trajectory of choral action. It seems an exhausting effort...
Not so much.
In our opinion, to make it easier for people to be at the centre is to think in a multi-scale key, not only about them individually, favouring their greater protagonism on the large geographical scale, the one that offers us more detail, the one that takes us to the proximity, what for us would be our neighbourhood or village. Why?
Because the neighbourhood is the territory, synonymous with social construction, around which a particular collective identity is built. It is the most feasible framework for involving people and undertaking community dynamisation and development processes. It is the human scale, the most accessible ⎯and possible⎯ for intervention with different social groups through public policies.
The neighbourhood encourages an encounter with the socio-territorial reality together with its protagonists, it also favours the understanding of the local projection of general processes - such as, for example, migrations - and stimulates the involvement of the community in confronting their effects or repercussions.
To build a community is to adequately articulate its different components through the magical power of relationships, from encounter, dialogue and joint action, ensuring that each one plays ⎯as best as possible⎯ the role that corresponds to them, all being fundamental to their progress. We will then be ‘building community’ and creating more compact and cohesive societies, more capable and protagonists of their own destiny, where each person finds their centrality.
But...
We observe some major difficulties: our reality is fragmented and our participation is segmented. And in many cases, we have forgotten the basic community references, the importance of intergenerational relations and the need to define collective strategies with a territorial approach. Thus, it is not possible to...
For this reason, we must update certain tools, if not reformulate them and link them to the production of structural changes in our living environments. This is not easy, because it encounters multiple resistances in all spheres and on the part of many actors; change produces uncertainty and novelty alters the routine in which we are almost always comfortably installed.
In this sense, we are committed to a reformulation of the idea of participation, until it acquires a more community dimension, which aims to contribute to its effective expression, especially in the field of action of community development. In other words, the perspective of the progress of a territory and its community of reference, which emphasises the commitment and involvement of the latter as a source of inspiration and collective intervention, in order to respond to its main challenges by taking advantage of its diverse potential. Here I recommend a careful reading of priority action 1.6 of the Canary Islands Agenda for Sustainable Development, which refers to the community approach, transversal to the whole strategy.
Through this perspective, the community can be a participant and protagonist in the positive transformation of its situation. Community is not exclusively synonymous with citizenship or neighbourhood; community is a compendium of the political, technical and civic spheres, dimensions that must aspire to combine their capacities and find a common framework for action.
How? Well, through open and inclusive work dynamics that favour confluence, relationships, action and joint learning among the diversity of people and organisations that make up a given socio-territorial reality, as Paulo Freire taught us. Dynamics that become participatory processes that remain active over time and acquire the necessary sustainability to become levers or engines of change, a concept that is sometimes empty of content and method, even of horizon, but valid if we really intend to bring about an effective improvement in our shared circumstances.
Theory, you might be thinking... A fiction, perhaps.
Experience tells us otherwise. Reality where it has been tried, believing in its validity and effectiveness. Where there has been the necessary trust for it to be applied and to bear fruit, bringing about transformative results. Our University knows something of this, because it has accompanied and facilitated a good handful of encouraging processes and is in the process of continuing to deepen this framework for action. The one that generates continuous recognition based on its contribution to regional development, for being one of the higher education centres that most positively influences its environment, as for example the CYD ranking points out. A ranking with a collective weight, fully aligned with its statutory aims, although perhaps more distant from the individual careers of its components; connected with the community, a valuable contribution to the social centrality on which we are reflecting.
Adeje can also be a good example of what we have been sharing, since, together with the University itself, it establishes strategic alliances to find generous centralities. From the South Campus itself and the Summer University, to the wide range of initiatives developed over time, some of which are closely connected to its territorial, economic and social reality. I would like to refer to a very humble one that was carried out a few months ago in the neighbourhood of La Postura, next door: BarriODS, promoted together with our regional government, which served to validate an effective way of intervening in the local framework with a community approach, emphasising the protagonism of its actors, as has already been pointed out.
A project that also led to the connection between people from different localities of the archipelago, from their respective centralities, to test a model of networking permeated with change, combining their talented contributions. I recommend that you review the Guide to transforming our neighbourhood or town, which was derived from this original experience. At the same time, I would recommend the City Council to continue supporting these processes in a municipality whose socio-demographic base has changed radically in recent years, being one of the territories of the Canary Islands with the greatest accredited human and cultural diversity. In fact, the representation of La Postura, aware of its current social circumstances, has already enunciated as one of its essential objectives, “the use of the existing multiculturalism in the neighbourhood to favour community development”. People of integrity...
It is worth applauding other more recent initiatives, with a demonstrative effect in my opinion, such as the participatory preparation of the Adeje Friendly Guide, also in conjunction with our University and the Island Council on this occasion, a prototype of a process committed to welcoming, inclusion and coexistence. It is a reference that should guide the path of an increasingly multicultural region, moving from the simple premise of managing diversity to that of innovating on the basis of diversity.
And this is where I would like to go in the last part of my reflection...
We are talking about people and their centrality, achieved above all through collective effort. People who make up, with greater or lesser fortune, communities that evolve at a particular pace, depending on a series of processes in which various dimensions interact, such as, for example, demography and the economy, both of which are interconnected. Demography, the great forgotten except when we sense certain dangers or face certain discomforts.
The fact is that we seem to be once again at a stage of significant complexity due to the trends observed in our specific population development. Natural decline, sustained ageing, permanent migratory impact - we are not referring here to irregular immigration -, a high degree of diversification, high demographic concentration in central locations, with intense occupation of the coastal strips, compromised socio-demographic solvency in inland areas, etc. We are conceptualising all of this as a demographic challenge and outlining its multiple challenges for public policies, because it is evolving towards unbalanced frameworks in many cases.
In fact, the regional strategy in this area also includes the aspiration to make progress in territorial cohesion, although the work with the people who are at the centre of the vital processes that generate the demographic results that make up the challenge, mentioned above, has been weak, at least until now.
Yet another paradox... ordinary people are still largely absent from the formulation of responses to a situation that looks set to be complex and long, and which, moreover, promises discomfort and even conflict. Because we will be more, older and longer, more diverse and more crowded.
However, I would like to see it the other way around, to reframe it better, as an opportunity to foster a greater and richer centrality of the people who are called upon to manage this complexity alongside the institutions. Provided that it is understood that, if we do not generate frameworks of co-responsibility, active processes will be increasingly ungovernable and will accentuate social and territorial differences, for example, between those who have the experience, more and better resources, organisational capacities, and in particular, the will and confidence to generate conscious and responsive community contexts. As opposed to those who continue to think that this can be solved alone or with the current limited strategies, designed in many cases to manage different scenarios.
In other words, I think that the demographic challenge may present an opportunity, perhaps a unique one, to get our society back in tune with the community airwaves. If not, this will be something akin to “every man for himself”; in fact, to a large extent, we are already encountering this type of complex context. The South of Tenerife, for example, is and will be a privileged setting for all that is being expressed.
Let's go back to the beginning, to summarise.
Putting people at the centre means creating the conditions for them to take that step. Better together. This implies community pedagogy, i.e. acting where people can meet and socialise in close proximity. It is already invented, it is their neighbourhood, our neighbourhood. To do this, we must think of other configurations of public resources and services, developed in terms of physical and emotional proximity, overcoming some resistance, because we will always be more comfortable in our own centrality and we must aspire to build collective centralities wherever possible. This requires generating new learning and even finding renewed leaderships that favour the transition from the individual to the collective, as Marco Marchioni would say.
It implies important adjustments in the institutional, but also in the social machinery. As a resident of Valle de Aridane told us after the eruption, when we carried out an important social listening process there: “(...) because citizen participation is not just listening and that's it, it is about being involved in the decisions that are taken. If you don't do that, it's a show”. And the fact is that, despite the obstinacy of some, citizen participation, as it was conceived a few decades ago, is no longer relevant to us; the circumstances, the context and the challenges have changed, and have even amplified or will do so soon. Only that which generates and strengthens the community and its collective action, outside of paternalistic structures based on assistance, is of any use to us. Therefore, let us definitely move from the event to the process; let us give value to collective capacities rather than to activities for the collective. This is also transversal and strategic, not sectoral or testimonial, it requires multiple and lasting commitments. Because the best public policy will always be the one that makes its community of reference capable.
The demographic challenge opens up a new window of opportunity, but we must judiciously incorporate the whole of society into the equation; it is not enough to think that the institutional sphere will solve the problem. Because it will not succeed: it does not have the size, the gearing or the effectiveness to do it alone. The general processes that we are already noticing on the planet, and not only of a natural order, will pass over us if we do not do something together to remedy them also from the local level, the starting point for more structural and essential changes. Fiction is becoming reality.
This has to do with becoming more and more capable and therefore resilient, for which we must find - for ourselves, the people - our own centrality.
Let us contribute to this.