model, notwithstanding its flexibility,can provide a template for the successful mobilisation of communication which guarantees a specified outcome. Norman Long's perspective, focussing as it does on the interfaces associated with development, suggests that it is
important to focus upon the intervention practices as shaped by the interactions among the various participants,rather than simply on intervention models,by which is meant the ideal-typical constructions that planners, implementers or their clients have about the process (2001 :72).
In a provocative (and largely depressing) paper,McIntosh et al (1993: 3) pose the question Whether and how a vibrant civil society might be fashioned in communities which rely largely on urban and welfare transfers,and where relations of dependency exist between such parties as commercial farmers, landlords, chiefs and their clients (like farm-workers/dwellers,tenants and other land holders).
Centring their research on KwaZulu-Natal, they identify a number of factors and processes which have an impact on local organisation in rural areas. In the light of the dependencies outlined above, we can identify a number of important points:
• That rural organisation "is not primarily a lobby of members' interests.Itis rather to provide mutual support; to provide mechanisms by which existing resources might be extended or preserved through collective endeavours"(1993: 3). These kinds of organisations are familiar; stokvels (credit unions),burial societies, church groups, sewing/gardening groups,buying clubs and water committees. These all have quite specific functions, and usually operate in terms of accepted rules. Citing a number of studies, these authors indicate that mutual aid organisations tend to flourish in better- resourced areas (e.g.more arable land,more migrant remittances) where there is more discretionary income.
• That resources alone are not a precondition for mutual aid activity, but also that the likely responses/ reactions of relatives and patrons,the social relationships within a collective, will be an important feature. The set of power relationships, for example, between commercial farmers (white) and farm-workers (black),where dismissal may mean destitution and homelessness, makes normal collective bargaining unthinkable for most people in this situation.
• That the rich history of popular resistancein rural areas (against dispossession, bettermentplanning, and the impositionof the Bantustans),are generally "defensive struggles directed at retaining access to an existing set of resources,or at recovering the resources that have been taken away" (1993: 5). The relatively weak bargaining position of rural people does not make competition to access private and public resources very attractive (many do not work where they live,disruption of social services may mean their cessation etc). Furthermore, social differentiation in rural areas means that rural resistance emerges when threats are posed to whole
communities (to a whole way oflife),and dissipates when it is likely to affect different 'parts' of a community in different ways.
• That the institutional legacy of colonialism (prefectoral rule) continues to exist although a functional system of administration has been in place for a long time.The authors identify the apparent paradox of passive acceptance of chieftaincy as the legitimate voice of the community,with quiescence towards service provision by state/provincial line departments.In other words, why does the institution of tribal authorities (which has modest powers) continue to be so influential? The authors suggest that it is because that they have fulfilled some of the functions that other institutional bodies have neglected.They also suggest thatinKwaZulu-Natal, many chiefs have sought assistance through Inkatha, and that a patronage system has been established which brooks no opposition even if it isinthe form of issue-based organisation.
Not only is rural organisation in a parlous state,but the frameworks which have
underwritten existing organisation (i.e. resource protection, reaction to threat, sets of internal power relations), would incline one to be pessimistic about the emergence of a strong civil society in the periphery.
But more specifically, what form do episternic communities take in reality, in the periphery?
What cultural forms encapsulate local knowledge and how are these expressed
organisationally among different sectors whose social characteristics predispose them towards association - men, women, youth, the old etc? These are the central questions that development communicators and development workers should be concerned with,not the 'community' in the abstracted sense of people sharing a premodern discourse or defmed by some geographic boundary (although this may sometimes be appropriate).
The implications of a weak civil society are profound,particularly in the political arena because it predisposes'outsiders' to an engagement with existing organisational structures, which may not reflect the episternic communities of a locale. At the same time, it is all that we have to go on, if a model of development, as planned and implemented social change with quantifiable outcomes, is adopted. As McIntosh et al (1993: 11) point out,
notwithstanding the careful and sustained efforts by NGOs working in the periphery, should control of projects in which they are engaged
be devolved to the local management structures,some of the benefits which disadvantaged sections of the population currently obtain would be lost because these benefits would be appropriated by the local elites who invariably dominate the area management structures.
There has been a lively debate about NGOs, and the role they might play in an emerging civil society. However,indications are,with the funding crisis deepening and a loss of leadership into government,that this sector may not be able to significantly support new organisational impulses.