This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Back when I was in school for Anthropology, I had a professor who taught half the year, and spent the other half doing research projects for the United Nations (UN).
He told us this story about how one year, the UN learned about a fishing village in Southeast Asia that used wooden dugout canoes to fish. Every year or two, the boats would rot out and have to be replaced.
The UN created a project to “gift” the community modern metal motor-powered boats. They would last longer, and go further and faster, making life easier for the fisherfolk. Or so they thought.
Yesterday, I wrote about mutual reciprocity. This community had an economy built on it.
Boat building was a highly specialized craft. The folks who built boats didn’t charge money for them. They gave them to people who needed them. Later in the season, they would receive gifts of fish from the people who used them.
They’d share those fish with other people, who in return would gift them specialized goods they needed—tools, clothing, and so on—when the need arose.
I didn’t recognize this as mutual reciprocity at the time. I thought of it as a complex barter network. But I now recognize it as an example of modern-day economic systems outside of capitalism. They do exist!
Another fun side-effect: no one in the community knew how to fix combustion engines. And the boats were heavier than the wood ones, and harder to maneuver.
They were used for a season, and then when the engines started to fail, the boats were mostly used as storage on the beach, overturned to protect fishing gear from the elements.
My professor’s job was to understand community needs before the UN implemented projects, to ensure stuff like this didn’t happen again.
But I think the real lesson here is that solutions for community development need to come from within the community, born out of real community need rather than an outside perspective on what a group’s problems are.
The tech industry in particularly is very prone to this. We create tech-based solutions to problems we perceive that other people have, without being part of those communities or knowing anything about them.
No wonder so many “disruptive” startups either fail or create problems worse than the ones they’re trying to solve.
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This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things