“THE NUTS & BOLTS OF CHANGE”
In this community-engaged practicum, we will examine the “nuts and bolts” of social change: what it is, what it looks like, how it happens, and how to do it. Specifically, we’ll focus on diverse efforts currently underway in Vermont aimed at building collective power among ordinary people trying to fight their way out of the crises making everyday life precarious.
As struggles to enact a “just transition” in Vermont continue apace, our senior seminar will explore what kinds of democratic capacities might be needed to mount an effective challenge to “business as usual” and to interrupt the existing balance of forces which are sustaining an unsustainable status quo. Students will partner with a range of organizations who are trying to work out the necessary preconditions for achieving change in their respective contexts (tracing, realistically, how to get from “here” to “there”); to bring together the requisite coalitions of actors who will carry out that change (out of what can be a fractious set of constituencies); and to assemble the various practical building blocks needed for a sufficient and equitable response to the startling imperative to overhaul “all aspects of society,” as scientific bodies like the IPCC have called for.
Our entry point into these questions will be through “theories of change”: explicit statements outlining a group’s key hypotheses, beliefs, and assumptions about how it will succeed in enacting change in its context. Remember that these are more than just tools for strategic planning. They can also serve as revealing windows into longstanding movement debates between reformers and radicals, insiders and outsiders, realists and…well, other kinds of professed realists. By foregrounding these implicit underlying beliefs—essentially, making us show our work—theories of change invite us to talk openly about, and thereby directly confront and reckon with, fundamental strategic questions (and substantive disagreements) about the nature of power, about social change and social struggle, and how to best relate to established patterns of social order.
We don’t need to remind you that these questions are more than just an interesting intellectual exercise. Much is at stake in our collective assessments about how to get from Point A to Point B at this critical juncture. Moreover, don’t let the word “theory” give you the wrong impression. This work is inherently messy and personally involving. An important goal of this class is to give you some exposure to this reality as you learn how practitioners of “social change” contend with the everyday dilemmas, entrenched power structures, dynamic relationships, idiosyncratic personalities, emotional rigors, and occasional windows of opportunity that all combine in different ways to define the terrain of today’s ongoing struggles to transform our world.
DANIEL CHIU SUAREZ 