EditoriAnA – Community
Development : from Theory to Realities
Laura GRUNBERG
AnA carried out a Phare community
building micro project for a year. I must start by a confession: we proposed
the project because we felt the topic is fashionable and has a chance to
be selected. As a non-governmental organization continuously searching
for funds we can tell the key words imposed from abroad. The topic was
a challenge for us as well. AnA is mostly a documentation center, a research
group for gender issues and feminism. To get out of the library and schools
and “practice” feminism was a first time for us, too.
In another context the issue
of how much is imposed from abroad in democracy building here in the country
of Caragiale may be worthy of discussion. The truth is that ‘academic’
feminism or activism are ‘imported’, and that many of the ideas and strategies
we formulate today are less interiorized and more taken ad literam and
delivered to a population unprepared to accept them. It is the same for
community building: it has a good ring, a Western one, but it has no cover
or support in the Romanian reality. The history of the totalitarian regime
makes us hold back from dealing with people in any situation. The precariousness
of community type relationships in the Romanian society, the lack of aggregation
capacities contributes to the perpetuation of the “civilization incompetence”
syndrome of which the Polish sociologist Piotr Sztomka was talking. Still
we have to try – and in this context the imposition of the topics of democracy
from abroad may be beneficial – it forces us to overcome our prejudices,
to leave the past behind and to be more inventive about the future.
The program was called “Together
at Foisor”, was carried on around the Foisorul de Foc area in Bucharest
and addressed to the people living and/or working in a clearly delimited
area in the district (12 streets around the Foisor). We started from a
suggestion of Marta Bibescu who, in a very beautiful text: “Suggestions
for the embellishment of the city of Bucharest”, talked about “the need
of solidarity over individualism”(see no. 4-7, 1997 of Secolul XX, Bucurestiul).
We have thus tried to open the “community dialog” with the people here
and “together with them” to do some things so that the every day life of
the men and women in the Foisor area be closer to their desires.
The group Together was a
group of women of different ages, education, family situations and ethnicity.
Living by the Foisor and the fact that we were all women were the only
common points. The group simply formed on the way, to it adding up those
persons who wanted to get involved, to participate. For a few months we
had regular meetings trying to identify and to negotiate priorities of
the district. We tackled the problems of the community from an exclusionist
perspective, but it was an exclusionism we were aware of and we assumed.
Of course a group formed by men and women would have been more representative
for the district, but we never claimed to represent the district, the community.
We only wished to practise dialog on concrete topics near us, dialog which
is to continue with assuming responsibilities, involvement and empathy
towards the problems of those surrounding us. There were contradictory
arguments, negotiations, and attempts of imposing certain ideas, compromises.
It was the period in which a certain solidarity and group intimity was
formed. First of all we learned not to say “this should be done” or “somebody
ought to try to”, but to see what we can and what we cannot each of us
do, assuming various burdens in the attempt of being less selfish.
Following the discussions,
on the basis of questionnaire analyses and of the letters we received for
the project we selected four issues: the lack of a space/framework of dialog
and meeting in the district; the problem of pollution of all types; the
lack of security and the lack of dialog between teachers and parents. “Operational”
groups were formed who tried to solve a few things in the second part of
the project. We inaugurated the Foisor Evenings, in order to make the Foisorul
de Foc the meeting place of the people. We made pollution measurements,
we wrote a memoir, we collected tens of signatures and we went to see the
sector mayor (a ‘public’ meeting – an amazing experience for the humble
inhabitant of the district!). We organized meetings with parents in various
schools of the district. In parallel with this operative part of the project
we tried to reconstruct “ the Foisor identity” inviting specialists to
talk and write about the rich history of this district, collecting old
photographs (offering prizes for the oldest family of the district, for
the most interesting story of the district, organizing exhibitions). Each
Together mini team has its own story – stories shared with the others either
at the formal meetings or in the Gazeta de Foisor edited all through the
program.
Next to this effort of doing
something we did not abandon what we always wanted to do: research. We
gathered and processed statistic data, we made interviews and a few studies
and qualitative observations. At the end of any project there is a time
for conclusions. Next to the formal ones – obligatory for the financing
institution, to which we are grateful, we felt the need to speak more comprehensively
in a special issue of AnALize about the community linked problems. Can
we talk about a community at Foisorul de Foc? Why would the rebirth of
the feeling of belonging to a community be important? What are the roles
of men and women in the life of this district? What would the gender dimension
of the Foisorul de Foc area mean? Feminism often criticizes the traditional
community theories –why and what would various feminist variants suggest?
Although the texts will raise more problems than give answers we think
that the issue is topical in nowadays Romania where, lost in the tunnel
of transition, we become more and more lonely, isolated, indifferent in
today’s Bucharest in which Marta Bibescu’s appeal - solidarity against
individualism - is more actual than ever.
Top
Communitarism - a
possible political doctrine
Andrei Taranu
For the author, communitarism
appears as an extremely new (although with old roots) political and social
doctrine whose main preoccupations are forming and structuring communities,
as public actors (submitted inside for the common good) in connection to
a communitarian state capable of organizing and refereeing the dinamics
of such a community.
The interior of these communities
is grounded on free association of individuals in view of obtaining the
common good, accepted by all as main aim of forming the community. The
internal values of the community are respect towards the others and mutual
help offered among the members of the community, as well as to other individuals
outside it.
Towards the state all communities
have equal rights and responsibilities, and the abstract sum of the communities
represernts the historic community – the people or the nation.
The communities defend the
rights and support the demands of its members towards the state, and through
specific methods control the state, accepting at the same time its
policies.
Top
The green grass of home
Simona PASCARIU
The project “Together at
Foisor” has brought an experiment of community development in the area
which gave its name, and it represents the beginning of a long term process,
in which, hopefully, in time the local authorities will be involved together
with NGO’s.
For the time being the success
of this project can be measured less in quantifiable results and more in
what is usually named ’best practice’. Which is not at all little.
This article represents
a personal point of view on the necessity to extend and to deepen this
experiment and on a possible way of community life in a well-known and
architecturally valuable urban milieu in Bucharest.
We have to mention that
a significant number of persons live by the Foisor, people who were born
and lived surrounded by the same neighbourhood, and the sadly remembered
demolitions did not affect the district too much.
At the same time, we have
to remark the involvement of the women in the community development, their
special role as guardians of traditional values and also of bringing up
the new things in the life of the family and of the community. In this
context, the Society for Feminist Analyses AnA makes a big step forward
in building a real partnership and a durable dialog among all the actors
involved in everyday life of the area.
Top
People at Foisor.
Profile in Majuscules
Ana Luana STOICEA
Together At Foisor contained
a field research of approximately two weeks, the purpose being to see the
extent to which one can assume that there is a Foisor community. This was
done through obtaining some qualitative data (answers to questionnaires,
interviews, participatory observation) and through crossed interpratation
with quantitative data (furnished by the General Department of Statistics
of Bucharest). The priviledged perspective (both in the study and in the
interpratation) was the gender one, the main partner being the women who
live and /or work in this district. The problems of the people living here,
the way in which they were mentioned, and especially the possible types
of solutions show that, if a de facto community is not present (a community
based on consecrated social institutions), the women in the district see
the functioning of relationships of a community type as a kind of normality.
Top
Stories from times
I was trying to be a good neighbour
Laura GRUNBERG
The article is based on some
participatory observations during the one-year involvement of the author
in the micro project on community development Together. Looking at community
as a process, the author outlines some of the gender dimensions of the
Foisorul de Foc district and identifies various reasons for the lack of
involvement of the women and men living and working at Foisorul de Foc
in the life of the community.
The Foisorul de Foc – a
feminine space in the morning when mothers, and especially grandmothers,
leave the children at the district schools and kindergartens – becomes
masculine in the evenings when the pubs in the area fill up with men savoring
a pint of beer. The hoardings, the verbal and nonverbal language of those
who come here every day build the gender dimension of this old district
of the Romanian capital city.
“To be a man of the Foisor”
or “a woman of the Foisor” has no meaning for the people of the district.
The years of communism, the demolition policies of Ceausescu, the chaos
of real values, not only the economic and political one of the transition
period, canceled the idea of community in the sense of shared lives. This
was the main obstacle of the women of the Together group. The women involved
in this project have learned to negotiate their priorities, to listen to
one another, to respect their differences, to become conscientious and
to assume the exclusion unavoidable in such an endeavour. They have formed
a “micro community”, but were unsuccessful in transposing their success
on a macro level.
In order to give the Foisor
back to its inhabitants we need more time and energy. And certainly, as
the author remarked, the feminists – through “caring for others” and through
their emancipation – could play an important part.
