By Joe Mancini
Published in March 2010
Last April, Jim Lotz spent three days with us when he was the guest speaker at our Local Democracy Lectures. We had been encouraging Jim to visit us as we have admired Jim’s ability to describe the community development process through his books and his astute observations.
We spent much of the three days showing Jim the many projects of The Working Centre. Our lunch at St. John’s Kitchen was memorable for all the conversations and stories that were shared with so many people. He also participated in the Aga Kahn Foundations consultation on development organized by Paul Born. Later that night, at the well attended Local Democracy Lecture, Jim spoke about his people-centred community development approach. One of Lotz’s main themes is that Community Development does not need to be mysterious, there is common knowledge in all communities, experts do not need to dominate the landscape, but subtle energy must be applied to listen to those involved, to find ways to increase meaningful participation, to describe your work far and wide so others can understand it, to stay small, to keep good records, and to be as flexible as possible.
Jim, who is over 80 is a prolific author. He recently completed a draft of a new book which he has titled, Community Entrepreneurship: The Quest for Economic Democracy. Among a host of other books, Jim has also written The Lichen Factor The Quest for Community Development in Canada, Sustainable People and two books on the Antigonish Movement – Moses Coady: The Humble Giant Canada’s Rural Revolutionary and Fr. Jimmy: Life and Times of Jimmy Tompkins. During his stay we had a long discussion about Understanding Canada: Regional and Community Development in a New Nation, a book I was not familiar with.
Two weeks after Jim had returned home to Halifax, a large package of materials arrived at The Working Centre. It was like opening a treasure when I saw that the package included a copy of Understanding Canada, which was published in 1977 by NC Press Limited. In Jim’s opinion the book sank without a trace, but it is “one of the few books that deal with the turmoil in Canada in the 1960’s when community development was the flavour of the decade.”
When I read the book I found it to be an excellent primer on Canadian community development. We asked Jim if we could reproduce a limited run of copies to make this Canadian community development classic book available to students and practitioners who want to learn more about this history. We are excited to announce that Jim will visit us on April 14th and we will have a book launch at the Queen Street Commons Café to celebrate this event. (see ad below for details)
In 1977, when the book was published, Lotz was asking important questions about the level of government intervention in the lives of Canadians. How does such intervention distort our sense of identity and purpose? Can the State really help us to develop as individuals and as citizens?
The original cover jacket summarized Understanding Canada as tracing the concept of community development from its colonial African beginnings to recent attempts at self help in Canada and relates it to the ideas of individualism and liberalism. Lotz looks at efforts to “help” the poor from top down and from the bottom up. He analyses the successes of the approach of the Antigonish Movement which flourished in the Thirties.
Lotz emphasizes that the title of the book “derives from living and working and travelling in Canada, and the parallel process of seeking to better understand myself, as I reacted to what I saw and experienced. My years in Canada have been a journey outwards and a journey inwards in a country that has an enormous range of landscapes, people and activities”.
Understanding Canada provides a unique history of community development up to the 1980’s. At one time it seemed to offer a cheap and easy way of bringing outsiders into the mainstream of Canadian society – or perhaps a new form of government social control. Lotz analyses why the Democratic Deficit – the gap between the government and the people they claimed to serve – has in fact, widened over those years.
In Understanding Canada, Lotz first developed his critique of the Cargo Cult approach to development. This is the belief that development will result when outside money, skills training, consultants, and managers work together to lift people out of poverty. Jim has observed and documented enough projects where all the good intentions in the world fall flat by not involving those who are to be assisted in meaningful ways. Human beings reach their true potential through subtle processes that involve factors far beyond the managerial control and outside funding that is usually offered. Integral development for Jim involves “self-help, mutual aid and cooperation that can help individuals and communities to create better lives for themselves through their own efforts”. We consider it a privilege to make this book available to better understand Canada and community development.
