Program Outcomes for Communities

Citizen Development 

Citizen Participation: An Essay on Applications of Citizen Participation to Extension Programming

Fred Schmidt Director
Center for Rural Studies
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
University of Vermont

May 8, 1998

Table of Contents
Introduction
Why Citizen Participation?
A Comment on Organizing Participation Techniques
Contemporary Thinking in the Citizen Participation Arena
Synthesis and Emergent Themes

Introduction

This essay is written in order to introduce youth and family advocates to the arena of community development. Influenced by the Masai belief that it takes an entire village to raise a child, we seek here to share some contemporary thinking in community with those more traditionally inclined to focus upon individual youth, family and/or client based neighborhood organization. We feel that extension and kindred outreach human service personnel must become more familiar with the new thinking emerging in the area of citizen participation.

The nineties have been a decade of transition and change in all of the policy and applied social sciences. Concern for individual participation in group, workplace and community organization, long dominated by social psychologists and human relations experts, has been shaken from a limited, theoretical focus under new challenges from political scientists, social activists and advocates who are committed to 1) building capacity among the citizenry, 2) community empowerment and, more globally, 3) building a more decentralized society. Recent thinking epitomized by the work of Kretzman and McKnight challenges traditional limits by emphasizing an assets based approach to community analysis. So too, the critical observations of Harvard's Robert Putnam regarding the decline of civic culture, further stimulate contemporary thinking in the area of citizen participation and involvement, an action and research arena that is changing as we speak. This essay will examine reasons for reinvigorating our concerns for citizen participation, will just touch upon an overview of techniques, will provide a brief examination of contemporary trends in the 1990s and finally will attempt to analyze contextual features conducive to enhanced collaboration among extension personnel, kindred youth and family professionals and citizen participation.

Why Citizen Participation?

Involvement in public decision-making is the major goal of citizen participation. According to Heberlein (1976), increasing demand for public involvement is a matter of trust in government. "Concern for participation arises almost entirely in the context of real or imagined failure of government to respond appropriately to the more competitive needs and demands of citizens..." (p. 1). Summers (1987) defines citizen participation as "the active involvement of citizens outside the electoral process in making decisions affecting their lives" (p.16). Arnstein (1969) refers to citizen participation as "a categorical term for citizen power. It is the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future (p. 216). Clearly there is some disagreement in the literature regarding just when citizen participation includes activity in electoral process. In our work here, we side with Heberlein and Arnstein, recognizing that the implication for citizen participation in electoral process is appropriately rooted in an individual's concern for policy and, related program implementation. From an extension program perspective, an important characteristic of citizen participation is the education required in responding to concern for making appropriate policy related decisions. We will argue that it is the call for information required in selecting from among policy/program alternatives that represents the much vaulted "teachable moment" sought after by extension outreach and other adult educators.

Heberlein (1976) views pubic participation as a way of reaching "better decisions." By making the manager and planner aware of the range of alternatives, and by not leaving out or alienating groups (who, if ignored, will resort to traditional political and legal mechanisms to make their wishes known), better decisions will be made (p. 3)." And so on. The implication is clear: citizen involvement in this process is paramount to an incrementally improving system. The implications of this improvement, i.e. the introduction of a cumulative, progressively "better" process, reflects the basic optimism inherent in the American polity. In fact, this optimism may be misplaced. However, this essay, with its emphasis upon definition and elaboration, will not undertake an argument in defensive of the bias toward perfection. Suffice it to say that citizen participation is a part of an evolutionary social process which aims at political and social egalitarianism and is at the very core of the great American democratic experiment (Swell and O'Riordan, 1976). Just how much "better" in a value sense this changing process becomes is the subject for other discussions.

The emphasis upon citizen participation as part of an evolving, political process is the critical link between citizen participation thinking and that of community development. It is extremely important that those involved in extension programming and program implementation understand the relationship between these two, sometimes disparate activity areas. Why is this rapprochement so important?

Three contemporary factors encourage this convergence: reduced resources, the telecommunications challenge, and changing roles of extension specialist and agent. The pressure from reduced resources is obvious. The pressure to separate the extension messenger from the specialist's message has come primarily via rapidly improving telecommunication but actually began when print media first challenged the time-honored rural, face-to-face and "hands-on," informal exchange of information. These twin pressures have simply forced traditional program areas into greater collaboration. The third obstacle facing collaborators lies in the potential internal schism between extension specialist and extension outreach worker. Increasing research and professional responsibilities upon the often campus based specialist stretch the delivery of appropriate information to an impatient, besieged action-oriented field agent. It is paramount that a better understanding of programmatic themes be gained. One way to improve our grasp of these themes is to understand a bit about the conceptual underpinnings of community.

A programmatic concern for citizen participation becomes one critical link among the evolving focus of extension upon 4-H, youth, youth at risk, family discipline, family management, family nutrition, life quality, domestic planning and the community cradling much of these program activities. Thus citizen participation becomes the "process" link between a variety of recognized youth and family program themes and the community. Many would recognize changes in approach from any of the theme areas as community development. Consider for a moment some of the thinking about community development as critical to the understanding conceptual underpinnings for citizen participation. We aren't alone in this attempt to wrestle critical, unifying themes from a disparate literature. Jim Christenson and Jerry Robinson, editors of a classic community development text (1989) include two introductory chapters where a struggle to concisely define community development is reflected. In Chapter I., the authors identify a primary goal of community ("to help people improve their social and economic situations) and then present some "major concepts:" community, development, intervention, community development and community development in a world economy. Of less utility but better organized, the authors identify "Four Ways of Viewing Community Development (p.13); the four ways are 1) as a process, 2) as a method, 3) as a program and 4) as a movement.

Returning to greater simplicity, these authors present a 1963 United Nations' definition of community development. It is illustrative of the definition problems: "the process by which the efforts of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities, to integrate these communities into the life of the nation, and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress. This complex of processes is, therefore, made up of two essential elements: the participation by the people themselves in efforts to improve their level of living, with as much reliance as possible on their own initiative; and the provision of technical and other services in ways which encourage initiative, self-help and mutual help and make these more effective. It is expressed in programs designed to achieve a wide variety of specific improvements."

Reconsider the UN definition's first essential element, "the participation by the people themselves in efforts to improve their level of living, with as much reliance as possible on their own initiative." And next, please note the second essential element "the provision of technical and other services in ways which encourage initiative, self-help and mutual help and make these more effective." These two elements resonate throughout the community development "approach" and inherently illustrate the inseparability of citizen participation and community development.

However, two tenants (or operating principles) hardly constitute a comprehensive theoretical approach bearing conceptual potential. The specialist seeking greater articulation of a community development conceptual framework, notes that to this point a quest for an overarching paradigm for both community development and citizen participation has be stymied by the fact that it is at what Thomas Kuhn has called a "pre-paradigmatic" state. Simply, Kuhn recognizes that the policy sciences are in their infancy and an overarching explanatory framework is premature. Recognizing that this is the case with community development, one of the newest and most disparate of approaches, the conceptual quest may be best served by backing away from the academy per se and turning, instead, to some of the prevailing ground rules of the society in which we function. A logical institutional area to consult in these United States would be our "polity," the particular, unique form or system of government. Paralleling our economy (the system of resource management in a society with an eye to production and distribution of goods and services), the polity provides vital guidelines for citizen participation.

Our polity, nominally labeled a representative democracy is guided by a constitution and, especially, by a Bill of Rights (see Figure 1. below). Although contentious and under constant scrutiny, guidance from this sources is far more clearly articulated and concise than the concomitant body of thought characterizing our economic system. The Bill of Rights has the distinct advantage of being reflected in a single location. It is in this body of thought that can provide a logical and instructive framework for placing citizen participation and community development in a paradigmatic context. The point here is that our concern in community development is to create the infrastructure by which a community (in both its private and public decision making) can make decisions in a way that involves the entire community and thus guarantees collective responsibility. It is in that context of striving for the best decision for the collective that an educator can effectively intervene with the best, most current information at hand - identified above as the "teachable moment" - and it is here that those concerned with citizen participation (or consumer education for that matter) can most effectively intervene. After all, the principle grounding the two essential elements in the UN definition are that the individual citizen be involved in the decision making as THE SINGLE guarantee that those citizens responsible for decision making are responsible for the outcomes of those decisions. The U.S. Constitution, and more particularly, the Bill of Rights serves us well in a focused attempt to articulate a unifying set of ground rules underlying our own emerging "discipline" of community development. The Bill of Rights, serves as an accessible paradigm for our quest for an embracing set of propositions and assumptions underlying a community development approach. There are, of course, other amendments to the Constitution that collectively provide an action paradigm encompassing citizen participation. In our search for theoretical models, it is critical to keep in view the fact that one most appropriate paradigmatic framework includes the very ground rules of the society in which we live. There is no intention here to suggest that these "living" rules are simplistic, or, for that matter, static. Each amendment is subject to constant scrutiny. Inclusion of this figure serves to alert both the specialist and the program activist that ours is a program area with great depth. A far ranging series of finding has been forthcoming from researchers regarding the impact of implementing democratic citizen participation techniques. Although it is not the intent of the present discussion to systematically review all relevant research findings from the behavioral and policy sciences, one generalization characterizing our application of those techniques of citizen participation at a community level most in keeping with the ground rules of a political democracy, is that shared responsibility for critical local decisions tends to hold the system together. Simply put, if you are a part of the decision making process (or "think you are a part of it"), you are less likely to overthrow the decision makers. Classic words from the comic strip, Pogo, "we have met the enemy and it is us," serve us well as a principle governing public response to an unsuccessful decision involving a satisfactory number of a community's citizens.

Figure 1. BILL OF RIGHTS
Articles selected with direct relevance to citizen participation and community development. (Original text/Modern interpretation)

Article I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibition the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. "The free exchange of ideas..." as long as those ideas don't present a "clear and present danger" contain obscenity or other such content. Today we are encouraged to think freely but, that which we chose to share must be somewhat censored so as not to "offend" or place another in danger.

Article IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. - Security from invasion from by the state . Each individual is entitled to privacy. If there is sufficient reason to conduct a search the proper channels must be pursued. The authorities do not have the right to conduct a search just based on a hunch.

Article V - - No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. It has come to mean not just playing by the rules but activity ensuring liberty and justice. The backbone of the Bill of Rights, article V protects us from the legal system which convicts us. It allows for unarguably guilty criminals to check the government and its workers to ensure that they are correctly carrying out their responsibilities, without over-stepping their boundaries. It gives the citizen power over their own life.

Article VII - In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined an any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. - The industrialization and mass communication has allowed for more people to get a hold of information and use it to their benefit the same time those who had information the accused, have the right to have a trial by jury civil cases. Grievances concerning things such as who stole another's patent or how much money should be paid for emotional traumas.

Article IX - The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. - This article is one of the amendments which alludes the issue of privacy. There is no amendment which specifically states that individuals have a fundamental right to privacy. However this article implies that individuals have the right to do as he/she pleases, without harming others in any way.

Article X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. - This simply allows States to have certain separate powers. This has advantages and disadvantages; advantages-- distributing power/control; disadvantages-- allows for conflict among federal and state government.

Source: Used as a class handout in Sociology 218 Community Development, University of Vermont. Adapted from a Bicentennial Issue of Life Magazine, July, 1976 p 9 and ff.

A Comment on Organizing Participation Techniques

Extension programming is replete with citizen participation techniques. From the needs assessment materials through those dealing with conflict management (see especially the many materials generated and distributed by the Regional Rural Development Centers), techniques of citizen empowerment are easily accessible and most have been carefully field-tested. Classifying or making some order of the materials is, in and of itself, a matter that a number of people have struggled with. In the following, brief overview, the work of Kevin Wiberg (1992) has been extensively consulted.

Arnstein (1969) likens varying "degrees" of citizen participation to rungs on a ladder (a continuum). At the bottom of the ladder are therapy and manipulation - referred to as degrees of non-participation - where those in positions of power try to "educate" or "cure" the public. We would assume that most of the citizen participation techniques at this end of the continuum are not those that one would typically associate with the more democratic principles, but their implementation may well be with the consent of the participants. Further on the ladder one finds tokenism, a situation or technique series where citizens are informed or placated. At this level, citizens are afforded opportunities to participate and express opinions and even concerns. Clearly, even at these stages along the technique ladder-like continuum, participants are not empowered and lack a voice in the decision-making process. At the more democratic end of this continuum of techniques we identity degrees of citizen power which include partnership, delegated power and finally, citizen control. According to Arnstein, at this end of the ladder, a "partnership" enables citizens to "negotiate and engage in trade-of trade-offs with traditional power holders". The author feels that at this most empowering end of the continuum, "Delegated Power" and "Citizen Control," have-not citizens obtain the majority of decision-making seats or full managerial power" (p. 217). Reflecting the period in which this useful typology of citizen participation techniques was conceptualized, the War on Poverty adopted this citizen control model and incorporated it into the formation and governance of the Community Action Program(s), a legacy continued into the late 1990s.

Wiberg's review of ways to organize useful citizen participation techniques (1992) continues to include more work by Heberlein (1976) who identifies four functions of public involvement: informational, interactive, assurance, an ritualistic. "In the informational function, the public provides and receives information. In the interactive function, there is a two-way sharing of information between the public and the agency (planner or manager). In the assurance function, the agency assures the public that its views and opinions have been heard. And, in the ritualistic function, public participation, such as public hearings, serves to meet legal requirements." (Wiberg, 1992: p.14). In recent years, a number of classification typologies have been employed in an effort to organize a growing resource base of citizen participation techniques. (See for example, lists developed in the publications of any of the Regional Rural Development Centers, the ways in which Sage Publications promotes its extensive literature base, or any of the increasingly familiar (and thus, presumably popular) participatory workshops conducted by human relations experts associate with continuing and adult educational efforts or with business management consulting firms. An effort conducted by this author (and our working committee) to categorize the more popular and time- honored teaching packages assembled by various state and inter-state teams of Extension was overwhelmed by the sheer number of techniques discovered and, coincidentally, the lack of systematic and critical assessment of their application. Finally, we note that Heberlein, in the work cited above (1976:19) provides an excellent model for the evaluation of the utility of citizen participation techniques (Table 1.) where he reviews over a dozen distinct forms of public involvement.

Contemporary Thinking in the Citizen Participation Arena

Among a variety of contemporary perspectives in the area of citizen participation, one "school" has emerged with a proactive emphasis upon an assets based approach. Generally, this literature is characterized by its upbeat, proactive and structural orientation. Typically, it looks at both the conditions that effect individual citizens as well as that the capability of individuals to work together to create better conditions, thus linking it to the collaborative focus as well. Lofquist (1993) proposes three perspectives: 1) participation, 2) responsibility, and 3) changing conditions. Healthy communities depend first on citizen participation and investment in local problem-solving capacities; second upon people taking responsibility for themselves; and thirdly, upon people working together to create better local conditions, which in turn enhances a sense of the common good and provides increased opportunities for personal growth. These theories, he claims, are the foundation for a healthy democratic society, for good interpersonal relationships, and for effective community development (Lofquist, 1983).

Much of contemporary citizen participation field practice is built on similar principles, including a focus upon building relationships, involving local people in the process, and fully utilizing existing strengths, assets and capacities of community members. In these ways, asset based community development and prevention-oriented processes both build healthier, more sustainable communities, and not coincidentally, these principles also contribute to building communities with greater stocks of social capital. Social capital is viewed as an essential ingredient of a positive civic capacity (Putnam, 1986). The community is one critical arena within which to nurture children.

A parallel perspective utilizing similar themes is the asset-based community development emphasis of John McKnight and John Kretzmann (1993). Their concern is with community capacity building and their definition of community attempts to establish a common understanding of this complex concept. Community is "the social place used by family, friends, neighbors, neighborhood associations, clubs, civic groups, local enterprises, churches, ethnic associations, temples, local unions, local government, and local media" (McKnight, 1995: p. 164). A community of associations (collaborating organizations) according to McKnight and Kretzmann (1993) is one key to building healthy communities. Healthy communities and healthy families create a self-strengthening bond. McKnight and Kretzmann (1993) describe three interrelated characteristics which define "asset-based community development:" 1. It begins with what is present in the community, including the capacities of the members, people who work there, as well as the associations and organizational base, not what is absent, problematic or "needed". 2. This process is internally focused; i.e., it concentrates on the agenda building and problem solving capacities of local residents, associations and organizations. 3. Asset based community development needs to be relationship driven; in other words, a critical focus for community development work must be on the relationships between and among local residents, associations and organizations.

While McKnight and Kretzmann (1993) argue that communities need external resources to assist them with their efforts, all communities (and their organizations and individual members) possess significant assets which can be mobilized and utilized. This assets based approach, the authors feel, is particularly important in the approach to citizen participation in low income communities where the tradition has been to begin with deficits rather than strengths. These authors take the needs assessment folks head on, stressing the critical point of starting with a positive assessment of existing capacity as opposed to gaps, or deficiencies. Some call this the just say "yes" approach. Dr. Spock lives on as theorists, rooted in the 1960s, apply child rearing perspectives to community structure.) McKnight and Kretzmann (1992) have broken down assets and capacities into three categories.

The first of these are considered primary building blocks, assets which are located in the community and are controlled by its members (includes skills of community members and local businesses, forms of human and social capital). The second category they call secondary building blocks. These are assets not currently under community control but which can be brought under its control. Subsequently they can be used for community-building purposes (e.g. private and non-profit institutions and services). The third category McKnight and Kretzmann (1993) refer to as potential building blocks. (Here again we see that from an individual level of analysis, a whole school of contemporary action researchers have moved the assets based focus into "resiliency factors" as an assessment tool for working with disadvantaged individuals, most frequently, children. While the focus upon children not particularly relevant to this discussion - which has assumed that we are talking primarily about adult citizens - it is noteworthy in that much of extension's youth and family programming focus has been influenced by the resiliency focus. Of course we can't lose sight of the fact that today's children are tomorrow's adults; children and adults are, of course, citizens. The common dimension here is the building of social capital, be it "learning healthy social skills" or "finding positive role models" which can pay off as more self-sufficient, well-centered, participating citizens of the future.

Collaborative community efforts are constructive responses to creating caring communities and expanding the safety net for children, youth and families. The goal of community collaboration is to bring individuals and members of communities, agencies and organizations together in an atmosphere of support to systematically solve existing and emerging problems that could not be solved by one group alone. The community collaborative framework is an exhaustive model grounded in assumptions regarding diversity and focused upon collaborative, shared visions. It has systematically identified six contextual "process factors" and six contextual factors at large (Bergstrom, et. al., 1995:2). This model focuses contextual factors, diversity and vision upon impact measures at varying levels of analysis and lying in six specific fields of community concern: public safety, education, economic well-being, family support, health and environment. Although the systematic application of this framework is in its infancy, the work of Bergstrom and his colleagues represents a rare effort among extension specialists to pull real world experience into a cohesive theoretical framework. While this collaborative model draws from earlier work in cooperative and coalition building processes, and has been applied to many of the community issues of concern identified by the other groups and inherently provides a framework for a rich variety of techniques enhancing the arsenal of citizen participants. Because of the emphasis upon inter-organizational relations, teaching materials emerging from the collaboration framework are socio-genic in their focus (deal with organizational and community structure) rather than psycho-genic (reductionist foci of the self-improvement genre).

Again, we note that the simple belief of the East African Masai, "it takes a village to raise a child," has become the cliche symbolizing a decade of changing thinking in human and especially, child development and family counseling. Similarly, the psycho-social schools providing the conceptual underpinning in approaching substance abuse prevention have increasingly emphasized an emphasis upon using the community to provide a positive, non-abusive environment for youth (and elders for that matter), stressing participation and social activities in lieu of destructive, isolationist behaviors.

Synthesis and Emergent Themes

In sharing this perspective, it is clear that each of the applied perspectives embraces Putnam and his work on civic culture. McKnight, for example, goes directly to a key source for Putnam, Alexis De Tocqueville. De Tocqueville, stimulated by his travels in the United States during the 1830's, pondered, "How happens it that every one takes as zealous an interest in the affairs of his township, his county, and the whole State, as if they were his own?" (De Tocqueville, 1835/1984, p.104). McKnight (1992) credits De Tocqueville with identifying three steps in citizen problem solving: 1) groups of citizens decide they had the power to decide what a problem was; 2) they decided they had the power to decide how to solve the problem; and 3) they decided they would themselves become the key actors in implementing the solution. This process emphasizes the strengths, assets, and capacities of local citizens and can only take place when community members are involved in local decision-making activities. Associations, both formal and informal provided the context in 19th century America for citizens to participate in these activities. These characteristics impressed De Tocqueville and the legacy they represent in contemporary America excites Putnam, McKnight, and most of the other action framework discussed here. McKnight and Kretzmann (1993) in particular elaborate upon the types of civic skills and social capital necessary to "build communities from the inside out." Lofquist's prevention model focuses on the strengths and assets of community members and community associations, and seeks to build community well-being with the four principles identified above as a foundation. Putnam's theory of social capital establishes important links between civic participation and community well-being which supports Lofquist's prevention theory and strategies; and McKnight and Kretzmann's capacity-building model offers a theoretical construct consistent with Lofquist's prevention framework as well as with Putnam's concept of social theory.

The dominant common characteristic emerging from these perspectives is the emphasis upon context, or environment. Specifically, they all reference context or environment in terms of the immediate social community in which their clients reside. Despite a marked tendency to refer to only the generic community, a common perspective links them all to a serious, sustained focus upon community level intervention as one most effective means to impact their clients. We will turn in a final consideration of the implications of this community focus in conclusion to this paper, but the clear message to those of us interested in community capacity building, sustainable community, civic culture and social capital, is that each of these applied perspectives is speaking our language.

A second theme is the explicit emphasis upon the strengths represented by human diversity. Notably, communal diversity (other than community differences in social class) has not been a major focus in assessing citizen participation. However, ethnic, racial and certain physical and gender diversity is, by inference, treated by the emerging paradigms as representing a community resource. The emphasis appears to be upon participatory "inclusiveness". This emphasis appears to be good political strategy in action perspectives espousing to empower participants. However, it undoubtedly represents a recognition of the greater diversity of "need" to which communities are expected to respond. In addition to a burgeoning elderly population, American communities have been formally charged (by a federal government in the process of decentralizing) with new categories of need in recent decades. Crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome children, children bearing children and AIDs victims, all represent here-to-fore, unarticulated concerns. Certainly these represent new challenges to citizen participants, both in the areas of collaborative inclusion of typically excluded citizens, and in the programmatic content and quality with the community responds. This may represent a Pandora's Box of diversity which, when coupled with persistent environmental issues, will sorely tax citizen optimism. On the other hand, it may be that only through local mobilization can solutions emerge.

A third principle emerging from the perspectives here is the recognition of the need to fully mobilize community resources as an integral part of the solution to need. Local determination and control are seen as part of the solution to the alienation leading to damaging individual behaviors as well as behavior threatening and taxing the community. Community wide mobilization is more likely to be effective if channeled and goal oriented. Therein, the need for greater civic culture and social capital is recognized as representing expandable, renewable, sustainable, and environmental benign resources.

A final common focus emerging from the new orientation to assets based community development is an emphasis upon program accountability and evaluation. Re-emphasizing the point that public participation may involve a quest for new knowledge (the aforementioned "teachable moment"), a generally recognized emphasis upon measurement has accompanied concerns for accountability. In the first instance, the emphasis upon assets has had community leaders scrambling to better understand economic and democratic indicators as "benchmarks" capable of reflecting change created by the activities engaged and set in motion by citizen participants. Now, while generating data for communities is a useful exercise, it must be accompanied by a strategy that empowers community participants to find and use data on their own. The emergence of social capital theory has given us a framework to better organize what has been an eclectic approach to community profiling of a qualitative nature. Citizen participants can readily identify local resources, frequently with greater accuracy than the "experts" (see complete bibliography of materials on citizen research included below). The whole endeavor clearly parallels the work done by Kretzmann and McKnight in their assets based community and neighborhood profiling techniques, we may well decide upon a classification system that follows the social capital perspective e.g. Natural Resources Capital (including for example, community pathways, views, good places to hunt, game populations among many others), Built Resources Capital (landmark buildings, bridges, town water tower, skating rinks, farmsteads, etc.), Human Capital (heroes, artists, woodworkers, musicians, and the like) and Social Capital (unusual organizations, cooperatives, leaders, church group, local units of government, school organizations, and so on).

A broad variety of activity has been undertaken in this area by community researchers. Involving citizens in the process, and thus building community capacity has become a critically important perspective in the 1990s. Both Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) are derived from work in development projects in Third World settings, researchers and practitioners are becoming "impatient" with social surveys. Surveys not only take a lot of time and manpower to do, but the results are usually not timely with regard to planning and moving ahead with programmatic changes that they are supposed to help with the decisions on. In the last few years, professionals from a number of different disciplines have moved toward using RRA and PRA techniques because they are quick, cost-effective and productive techniques of data collection on socio-economic, institutional and technical aspects of inquiry related to programs for community development. First written up by Robert Chambers (1985), the techniques actually are grounded in the earlier work of anthropologists and sociologists whose use of key informant and participatory observation techniques generate useful data of a qualitative nature, as well as the work of researchers in a number of related fields since 1980. These techniques involve scanning the community, and are similar to yet another technique, the Civic Profile approach, used by New Hampshire community resource development extension agents. This technique draws heavily upon citizens perceptions and knowledge of their community and many ways parallels Take Charge (see below). In New Hampshire, extension specialists have used the profile approach to assist the community in identifying keystones and, as appropriate, to either organize to save or create these key elements of the locale. A rich variety of materials are emerging from expanded application of Take Charge, a field action model developed by Janet Ayers and colleagues in the Mid-west and based upon citizen mobilization to specifically identify and then address community issues (typically of a structural or economic nature). Take Charge implicitly assumes that part of citizen taking charge will involve locally directed research and building an inventory of community assets, a prior condition preceding citizen action. This model has been used for over a decade and its manifestation in literally hundreds of communities warrants further examination as we move to consider building community capacity through citizen involvement in assessing capacity and measuring policy and action impacts locally. Materials in our bibliography here of particular interest are Flora, et. al. (1997), Webler and Tuler (1996) and Kline and Goodman (1993).

Indeed, the decade of the 1990's has been an exciting time for those engaged in enhancing our knowledge and application of citizen participation. The premises with which we approach this area of human endeavor are changing. These changes suggest a stimulating century before us as extension programming wrestles with the twin pressures of increased collaboration and enhanced telecommunication potentials.

Sources
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Community Development in Perspective (1989). Christenson, Jim and Jerry Robinson, editors,, Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press.

Community Planning Council of Greenville County. Community Indicators: A Report Card for Greenville County. August 1993.

Hart, Maureen. Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators. QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment. May 1995.

Healthy City Toronto. Modeling Quality of Life Indicators in Canada: A Pilot Test of Quality of Life Indicators in Toronto. Toronto, Ontario: Healthy City Office. July,1993.

Heberlein, Thomas 1976

Hertzberg, Hendrik. (1998). Tap Dance: The big, scary, hard-to-figure, American people. New Yorker, April 20. p. 7-8.

Institute for Children, Youth, and Families. Vermont Cooperative Extension's Capacity to Support Programs for Children, Youth, and Families at Risk: Results of the Organizational Change Survey. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona. March 1998.

Kretzman, John P. and John L. McKnight. Building Communities from the Inside Out. Chicago, Illinois: ACTA Publications, 1993.

Lofquist, William A. (1983). Discovering the Meaning of Prevention: A Practical Approach to Positive Change. Tucson, AZ: AYD Publications.

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Putnam, Robert D. (1993). The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Economic Growth. Current, Nos.356, pp. 4-9.

Putnam, Robert D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. Current, Nos. 373, pp: 3-10.

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Sustainable Seattle. Indicators of Sustainable Community: A Report to Citizens on Long-Term Trends in Our Community. 1993.

[The] Aspen Institute Rural Economic Policy Program. (1996). Measuring Community Capacity Building.

Webler, Thomas and Tuler, Seth. Report on the State of the Art on Indicators for Sustainable Community Development. Leverett, Massachusetts: Social and Environmental Research Institute, Inc. May 14, 1997.

Wiberg, Kevin, A. (1992). Community Guide to Affordable Housing Needs Assessment. Burlington, Vermont, A Master of Science Project, Graduate College, University of Vermont, April, 1992.