Chapter 2: Literature Review
4. Results
4.3 Subprojects
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other community members being involved in project planning and decision making. The more participatory the program was perceived through reciprocal interactions, the higher the level of fairness was reported.
Trust and fairness were also rated higher by those with closer ties and levels of activity within the Initiative’s projects. Especially for interviewees that had roles as community and university members, perceptions of trust and fairness were good. This could be related to the importance of the project acting at the same time in two different important life areas, and therefore being highly salient to the individual. The importance of project salience was also seen in project actions that directly and strongly affected people. Three examples in particular stood out.
4.3 Subprojects
Prior to the commencement of the Old House restoration, the low level of community participation was a challenge for the team. Through the mobilization of university
resources, namely time and volunteer action the creation of a local base of operations was a highly visible signal that helped gain increased levels of trust from community
members, and the location was used both for official project meetings and activities as well as locally initiated social and educational events. At this point, for those involved with the Old House project and the activities held there, there was a higher level of trust and cooperation. However, with the withdrawal of project funding there was less opportunity to make use of the location as an administrative center, as well as other responsibilities of local community organizers resulted in less use of the facilities.
Upkeep of the old house then began to lag, and the area adjacent to the entranceway was used as a parking spot. Although the informal contract to continue use of the property still exists and there is still a willingness to use the property for community engagement, there seems to be a risk that the visible signal of inter-community cooperation could come to represent cooperation lagging.
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Two types of subprojects that took place under the Lokah umbrella were an elderly care program and cultural programs. Both of these programs involved contact between older and younger generations of community members. Youth spent time interacting with elder relatives, taking part in similar activities and learning traditional stories and skills. While trust was not directly identified as a result of these programs, however, it seems to have increased a general positive sense of the researchers’ intentions. Perhaps more important was the increased level of family connectedness, in other words, while bridging social capital was weakly affected, increases in bonding social capital appear to have occurred.
Reports of trust by those connected through the Atayal Weaving Association were in general positive. According to informants, the weavers enjoyed strong connections with the university, as well as pre-existing common interest and organization. The Lokah initiative was The association has office infrastructure in present use. This project is still underway as part of university activity in the community, and the informal ties remain strong with the Lokah Initiative. While reported trust and fairness were in general strong, this was not uniform across all interviewees. There was some indication of lower trust when concerns came up about differences in authenticity of different weaving styles. The fairness of a top-down vs bottom-up approach was questioned by two interviewees, with one asking: “If you want to promote, ok there are 20 weavers, and 5 are the most famous, you work with those 5. What about the other 15? But those 5 don’t really need much help, they are already great.”
However, it was also noted that bringing weavers to international venues for craft display increased confidence and capacity to the participants, as well as helping to link organizers with participants as to facilitate future cooperation, and it was also understood that due to limited resources not all weaving association members would be able to participate in these highly expected international events.There is a hope that more members can be included in future international activities, and there are presently plans for more trips.
Interviews indicate that both bonding and bridging social capital have increased through
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A final element that was related to levels of trust was found at the level of the individual.
As has been discussed at length in psychology literature, individuals have their own individual levels of trusting, as captured by agreeableness as one of the “big five”
personality traits. Briefly, individuals higher in agreeableness may be naturally more trusting, and someone who is seen as being more agreeable is usually seen as being more trustworthy. Although individual agreeableness was not specifically assessed, the
different reactions of interviewees to the interviewer as well as in discussions about members of the opposite group suggest that this dynamic is at play, especially considering the pre-existing historical conditions.
4.4 Social Capital
Using trust and reciprocity as proxy variables for social capital, analysis of interviews shows that social capital was increased through the actions of the Lokah Initiative.
Bridging relational social capital connecting researchers to the community and vice-versa has been developed, and the overlapping nature of social capital development appears to have had carry-over into bonding social capital within the community. The process is not without its own internal and external challenges, and social capital gains are not uniform across all stakeholders, but the gains that have been made can be the foundation of future interactions (fig 2).
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Figure 2. The pathway to building social capital (adapted in part form Jagosh 2010)
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