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Key words that begin with the letter S

by Phil Bartle

SANDWICH

When a client, volunteer or staff member does some thing with which we disagree or that should never be repeated, we can respond without criticism or complaint.  Please excuse the crude vocabulary, but we can serve what in management training is called a "sh¡t sandwich."  (You might object to the term, but you will remember it now). In such a sandwich, on either side of the part we do not like is the bread (which we do like). See Mistake.

It goes like this: (a) start with honest praise, pointing out the good things, (b) make a suggestion for improvement - and why, then (c) finish with more honest praise. The client or staff member is more likely to accept and listen to the unpleasant "(b)" if it is sandwiched in between the "(a)" and "(c)."  Part "(b)" is not criticism or complaint, but a suggestion for improvement.

SCHISM

A schism is like a dramatic and deep cut or canyon between two religions or religious factions. See Social Schism.

When applied to a community or organization, it means that factions are in conflict with each other.

SCIENCE

Science is a method of obtaining knowledge, plus the (changing) knowledge gained by that method

The method is the application of systematic techniques of empirical (factual) observation and logical analysis for testing theories.

SELF

The word "self" has different interpretations in different contexts, which makes it difficult to translate concepts such as self help, self management, or self reliance into French or Spanish. One meaning is that of the individual (ego), and that is not the meaning here.

Another is that it refers to independence, even of a group (in contrast to an individual), so it may be better translated as "auto."

SELF HELP

There are two levels of self help; (1) an individual helping herself or himself, and (2) a community or other social organism helping itself. Self help actions are part of the empowerment methodology, where effort is needed for anything to become stronger. When you go to the gym to develop strength, the coach can not do your push ups for you.

Training material on this web site aims at (1) income generation for individuals to help themselves become more self reliant, and (2) the mobilization cycle for a community to help itself become more self reliant.

SELF MANAGEMENT

The phrase "self management," derived from the Spanish concept of "auto-gestion," means that a community makes its own decisions, especially those kinds of decisions that fit into processes of planning and management.

For a community to become self reliant, it must have the capacity to manage its own affairs, and that requires, among other things, that its community members must have skills of management.

SELF RELIANCE

"Self reliance" means the ability or capacity to rely on one's self. The "self" is used rather freely in mobilization and might be (1) an individual but is more likely (2) a group or community. (The Spanish use of "auto" is more accurate).

Developing self reliance means "empowerment," and on this site that is addressed (1) for individuals (see income generation) and (2) for communities (see principles of strengthening).

SENSITIZING

It is important for local authorities and leaders to be sensitive to your goals and methods. Beware: you may be tempted to hold an early sensitization workshop without being fully prepared to show the authorities what you intend, also showing them how they benefit.

Make sure you are clear about what you want to sensitize them about, and plan your workshop (See Preparing a Workshop) accordingly. If you are not careful, you may raise unrealistic expectations which will work against your goals later.

Raise awareness, not expectations.

SETTLEMENT

See Human Settlement

SEX

The word "sex" has various meanings in different contexts. One way is as a category of distinction, between "males" and "females."

We usually think that there are only those two sexes, but geneticists now tell us that there are at least five categories, according to distributions of "x" and "y" chromosomes, which are the genetic determinants of sex of individuals.

More important to us, as applied sociologists, eg as mobilizers, is the concept of "gender." Unlike "sex" which has a biological and genetic definition, "gender" is defined socially ── the difference between "masculine" and "feminine." The distinction is social: a product of our culture, and determined by our communal understandings and evaluations of physical and biological differences ── not always accurate.

Another meaning of the word "sex" is as a reference to a physical act of coupling between males and females, the main method of producing offspring. The sexual act is one which is fraught with sensitivities in most cultures, and is therefore one which every mobilizer should seek to understand in the communities to be mobilized.

Stepping outside what is permitted in a community can be a powerful hindrance to the effectiveness of any mobilizer. One of the most important instructions to mobilizers is to avoid looking within client communities for sexual partners. That will definitely hinder effectiveness of any mobilizer and, in some communities, even endanger life.

See: Age, Race and Sex.

SITUATION ANALYSIS

A "situation analysis" is a procedure during which the overall characteristics and priority problems of a community are identified. See PAR.

Your job as a mobilizer is to ensure that all, or as many community members as possible, participate in the observation and analysis of the community situation.

SKILLS

These are the abilities, manifested by individuals, that contribute to the organization of the community, the capacity of it to carry out its projects, their technical, administrative, organizational knowledge, their capacity to mobilize.

Skills belong to the sixteen elements of strength, power or capacity of a community or organization. See: Elements of Community Strength. The ability, manifested in individuals, that will contribute to the organization of the community and the ability of it to get things done that it wants to get done, technical skills, management skills, organizational skills, mobilization skills.

The more skills (group or individual) that a community or organization can obtain and use, the more empowered is that community or organization. When stimulating a community to organize and act, the mobilizer needs to be aware of the role of skills in empowering that community or organization.

SKINNER

In prison slang, a "skinner" is a prisoner convicted of a crime such as rape or child molestation. In prison community, a skinner is at the bottom of the hierarchy, while a bank robber is often at the top, seen as a hero like Robin Hood. A skinner can not be put in general prison population for fear of their being killed so, once identified by other prisoners, must be put in isolation until he can be transfered to a facility set aside for such prisoners.

See: Criminal Sentences

SLUM

The word "slum" refers to a neighbourhood of a city where average income is very low, where communal facilities are poor or non-existent, and where petty and visible crime rates are high.

Slums are where homeless people may find some makeshift shelter, where drug addiction is common and public, and where the streets are dirty and filled with trash.

Family Out of Their Hut:

For the urban activist or mobiliser, this is your main target area.

SOCIAL ANIMATION

Social animation means to put some life ("anima") into a social institution such as a community.

Usually called "Animation" (not to be confused with making animated cartoons for the cinema). See Animation.

SOCIAL CHANGE

Society is always changing. Changes in any dimension affect all other dimensions.

The role of the mobilizer is to try to influence social change so that it is towards development

In sociological theory, Karl Marx wrote that changes in the economic and technological dimensions (independent variables) caused changes in the beliefs and values dimensions (dependent variables).

Max Weber, in contrast, said that changes in beliefs and values (independent variables) caused changes in technology and economy (dependent variables). Both Marx and Weber put social and political dimensions in between. Modern theories of social change combine both and others.

SOCIAL CLASS

Social class is a social institution.

It is a way of dividing up a society into different levels of power, prestige and wealth (the three elements of inequality).

In simpler societies, such as those based on gathering and hunting, it is usually absent or minimal.

In agrarian society, where there are land owners and serfs, for example, it tends to be fairly simple, with limited numbers of identifiable classes.

In urban industrial societies it tends to be very complex, with many levels of class.

Marx saw only two classes as being important in industrial societies, the workers and the owners.

Later sociologists added more classes, and today sociologists differ on how many classes are in an urban industrial or post industrial society.

Communities (for the mobiliser) are more identifiable in small societies without well formed distinctions of class, or within similar class levels in more complex societies.

Social class is more important, and more a consideration of social interaction, in the UK than in other English speaking societies, such as in North America.

See Class

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Where the pure science is chemistry, its practical applications are in chemical engineering. Where the pure science is physics, the practical applications are in civil engineering.

We might be predisposed to extrapolate and say that where the pure science is sociology, the practical applications should be called Social Engineering.

No.

A farmer can tell you that if you want a wheat plant to grow upwards, you do not mechanically pull it upwards.

You provide it with sunlight, water, some minerals and good soil, and it will grow ── organically ── from within.

Pulling from the top is mechanical, crude, rough, and ineffective. Social engineering is like that.

A social institution such as a community grows from within in an organic manner.

You can provide stimulus in the form of your mobilization interventions, but it develops itself.

Using force, such as the "villagization" attempts during the erstwhile Mengistu regime in Ethiopia (forced concentration of dispersed rural groups into nucleated settlements) belong to the category of actions called social engineering.

Encouraging communities to make themselves stronger, develop their capacity, is one of many practical applications of sociology, but it should not be called social engineering.

SOCIAL FACT

Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, wrote of "social facts" as observed characteristics that are social.

It is necessary to have a " sociological perspective" in order to recognize a social fact.

See: Durkheim.

SOCIAL INSTITUTION

In everyday language, the word "institution" usually means a bureaucratic organization with persons in it who do not have full legal control over their lives. It is therefore usually applied to such things as a prison or a hospital for insane persons. In sociology, it has a very different meaning. It means a recognized pattern of social interaction.

A "family" is such a pattern of social interaction. A "mother-in-law," as well as being a social role, is also an institution. An institution comes with a set of attitudes, behaviour patterns, expectations and meanings. A community, which is the object of a mobilizer's intervention, is a social organization and a social institution.

SOCIAL INTERACTION

Social interaction is the behaviour and beliefs between people that is dependent upon the behaviour and beliefs of each other and of other people. See social perspective.

Human beings are social, which means that they do not think or act in total isolation as individuals. They do so in response to other human beings. They/we do not merely act; they/we interact. See Interaction.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The concept "social organization" means that a society is much more than a collection of human individuals, but is composed of systems which each have "organs" that are the social equivalent of biological organs. The mobilizer is concerned with organizations and with communities, both of which are part of the broader social organization.

For a community mobilizer to be effective, she or he must be able to recognize the elements of social organization in the community, and to know how these act or operate.

SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE

The "Social Perspective" is a way of looking at society. It sees society as something over and above the very people who are in that society. It has a life of its own ── a sociological life. In anthropology, this is sometimes called "superorganic," where culture (society) transcends the individuals that constitute it. Society is not seen as a mere collection of individuals, but as a system of behaviour, interaction, ideas and values, all transmitted and stored by symbols rather than by genes or chromosomes.

It is a scientific construct ── social science. As a construct, it is like a model of the atom or of a solar system. You can not see society as a whole, but only some elements of it at a time. (See the Elephant Story). It requires analysis of you, the observer. A community, which is the object of your intervention (as a mobilizer) is a social organization, equally a construct, and which requires the social perspective to see and understand. If you want to effectively empower a community, or stimulate its development, you need to have the social perspective.

SOCIAL PROBLEM

A social problem is qualitatively different from an individual problem. What makes it social is that the problem is “systemic” meaning that it is a problem in the system, not merely an anomaly.

The “system” here is society itself. It may be possible to alleviate specific manifestations of the problem, but to solve the whole problem requires social change, and that implies the need for social intervention.

SOCIAL SCHISM

No community is a natural unity. There are schisms and disunities in every community. All actions you take must help to increase the unity of a community. (See Unity). Where you offer suggestions as to how to obtain resources for a community project, you must not insist on a particular strategy that the community must take; some strategies may contribute to disunity.

We must suggest and advise, and ensure that we listen to what the community members say (especially the quiet ones) and uncover negative hints about any strategy that might provoke disunity.

Divisions in any community may be based on many factors: clans, religions, class, income, education, land ownership, ethnic origins, age, gender, and so on. The level of tolerance between these divisions may also vary for several reasons.

It is our job to work in such a way as to minimize the differences, improve community unity and loyalty, and overcome community schisms.

SOCIAL SERVICES

The "social services" of a government or agency are services to disadvantaged persons.  Paradoxically, they are usually handled on an individual case basis, and seldom are practised with a methodology that is based on social dimensions, or social organization.

The handling of individual problems on a case basis is an inefficient, non sustainable and costly approach, and is usually only practised in wealthy countries or by wealthy agencies. A communal or social approach is more common among poor countries and areas. The best methodology to adapt is CBSW (Community Based Social Work).

SOCIAL SYSTEM

The concept "social system" is one that recognizes that the social level, where social organizations are seen as more than a mere collection of individuals, is systemic. At the inorganic or physical level, the solar system or an automobile engine is a system. At the organic or biological level, a tree or dog or ant colony is a system.

At the superorganic or cultural level, a community or agency is a system. Recognizing the systemic characteristics of society, that things interact with each other, at the social or cultural level, is important in knowing how communities work and how to influence them.

SOCIAL WORKER

A social worker usually works for a social services department, which is a contradiction because most social services are delivered (by case work) without reference to social organization, and certainly seldom through community mechanisms. See: CBSW.

Most social administration departments in universities, however, include the training of individual case work with what is more appropriate to this web site: ie techniques and theories of community development.

SOCIALIZATION

Socialization is the process, which begins at birth (some say earlier) in which we, as biological organisms, become human ── become social. Being social means going beyond (transcending) being biological organisms; it means becoming parts of social systems.

The process, like learning, continues until we are dead. See Enculturation. During this process, we learn our language, we learn our values and beliefs, we learn the symbols we need to participate in the economic, technological, political and interactional dimensions of society. See Dimensions of Culture.

SOCIETY (Sociocultural System)

The concept of society is easily misunderstood, in that many people think that a society is a collection of human individuals. In sociology, in contrast, a society is something that continues even though all of its individual humans come and go, through birth, death or migration, thus society transcends the very individuals through which it is manifested.

If society is not its individual human members, what is it? It is the systematic behaviour, actions, reactions and interactions, and the beliefs and shared attitudes that relate to those actions. It is carried on by symbolic communication, not by genes. See Culture.

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

This is a way of looking at human behaviour and thoughts as comprising an entity called society.

While the concept of society is a model, we can not see, touch or directly sense it, like an atom or a solar system, it is the fundamental basis on which the science of sociology is built.

Persons without the sociological perspective see human behaviour and ideas as separate and individualistic and not forming a greater whole.

In our study of community and how to strengthen it, the community itself is seen thus as a social construct, composed of behaviour and ideas of human beings, but not the human beings themselves.

STRANGE FISH

The term "strange fish" is slang for someone who is aware of culture. It comes from the proverb, "It is a strange fish that knows the existence of water."  We live with in our culture, which we also carry about with us. To be a fish is to be unaware of water. Perhaps the fish can move through different kinds of water, such as going from a river to the ocean, but it is still water. A fish that jumps out of water to rid itself of lice, experiences non water briefly. For us to be aware of culture, which is what makes us human, we need to remove ourselves from culture.

Moving from our culture that we usually live in, to an exotic or different culture, does not take us out of culture, but is just a move between different kinds (like the river and ocean, both water). Even that makes us odd, especially if we shift our values and behaviour. Remember we use the sociological concept of culture, which is equivalent to the total socio-cultural system (not just art and dance), composed of everything we learn, and what gives us our humanity. A community, for example, is a social or cultural entity, not the individuals which may compose it at any one time.

STRENGTHENING

Empowerment.

Increasing capacity or ability to achieve objectives.

Make stronger.

SUBSISTENCE PRODUCTION

Production that excludes both surplus and profit.

The producers consume the goods they produce.

See Peasant.

SUITCASE NGO

A phoney NGO. A fraud.

It gets its name from a common variety where a single person represents herself or himself as a whole staff of employees and volunteers, and where, instead of an office, carries essential documents around in a suitcase.

SUPERORGANIC

The word "superorganic" sounds a bit odd at first. It is used to summarize a model of looking at the nature of society. It is based on a sociological concept that a social organization, such as community, transcends the biological organisms that compose it.

Inorganic sciences include physics and chemistry; organic sciences include botany and zoology; super-organic sciences include sociology, economics, anthropology and political science. Just as an organic system (like a tree or a dog) transcends the inorganic chemicals that compose it, so a super-organic system (such as a community) transcends the organic beings that compose it.

SUSTAINABILITY

The word "sustainability" is important in development assistance. It refers to the "ability" of something to be "sustained" (carried on) after outside support is withdrawn. For the community that builds a water supply, the the assured and dependable repairing, cleaning and using the pump after it is constructed, is the desire.

For an external donor, it is the continuation of the project or its outputs after the donor withdraws. For you, the mobilizer, it is the continuation of the community strengthening social process after you move on. For environmentalists and ecologists, sustainabilty requires that an activity can be sustained (eg biologically) by the physical environment, that non-renewable resources are not used up.

SWOT

Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

From time to time (eg annually) you can assist a CBO in its self monitoring and self evaluation by setting up a SWOT session,  obtaining lists of each from all participants, and consolidating them on a board or sheet of paper in front of the group.

If the CBO takes this up as a regular feature of its activities (even after you, the mobilizer, leaves), it will help to empower or strengthen the group. See SWOT. See Acronyms.

© Copyright 1967, 1987, 2007 Phil Bartle
Web Design by Lourdes Sada

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Last update: 2015.10.10