social change: the intentional restructuring of social and environmental arrangements to improve society.
- Location 370
- social change,

social change practitioners nonprofit leaders, activists, environmentalists, community organizers, social innovators and entrepreneurs who work to influence social change
- Location 389
-

Social challenges are inextricably linked to the historical contexts and the natural environments in which they manifest,
- Location 395
-

We believe that these characteristics—notably, the complexity, scale, and depth of social problems—explain the lack of confidence, even overwhelming cynicism, that pervade our attempts to “change the world” for the better.
- Location 397
-

Many social problems are what design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber dubbed “wicked problems.”9
- Location 401
-

such as rising obesity rates in contrast to malnourishment, and climate change as a result of industrialization and economic development.
- Location 405
-

Discussion around systems change can create the belief that social systems can be “engineered” or “perfected,” that our social change ambitions are akin to scientists manipulating variables in a highly controlled lab experiment.
- Location 504
-

implies that complex, large-scale, and deep problems can be solved by “one-size-fits-all” solutions, or “big bets” promoted by powerful actors.
- Location 506
-

shifts the debate of social change away from a central issue: we are part of the systems that we are changing.
- Location 507
-

technical social change approaches that assume problems can ultimately be solved as long as the right solution is developed and taken up by those who require it transformational social change approaches that assume existing social structures must be torn down and rebuilt from scratch
- Location 520
-

We ultimately came to the conclusion that both approaches are essential and, in fact, serve as important counterweights to achieving systems change.
- Location 529
-

As systems scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam explains, “the complexity of our approaches needs to match the complexity of the systems we are trying to change.”26
- Location 530
-

witnessed the “tipping point” pattern where organizations typically partner with governments, other NGOs, or the private sector to scale their solutions significantly and ultimately create a “new way of doing things” in the world. This was the type of technical systems change that we had read about in books
- Location 536
-

also on the lookout for transformational systems change, such as influencing policy at the local, national, or international level or forcing political change through community organizing and large-scale protest action.
- Location 539
-

began to realize that the two approaches—technical and transformational—are necessary but not sufficient to create systems that are enduring and just. With these organizations, we eventually journeyed to a deeper set of principles which we came to call systems work.27
- Location 547
-

systems work the day-to-day principles and practices that guide the actions of organizations and individuals as they undertake to change systems; emphasizes process over outcomes
- Location 556
-

primary actors the people most immersed in the context of a social issue, often with lived experience of the issue itself supporting actors professional managers, funders, policymakers and advisors who work in partnership with primary actors to support social change
- Location 566
-

The Principles of Systems Work foster connection building new collective identities that keep groups together while learning embrace context equipping primary actors to respond to day-to-day complexity, dynamically adapting as the context requires reconfigure power putting decision-making and resources in the hands of primary actors, ensuring that social systems fully represent the people who live in them
- Location 577
- decision-making, power,

systems cannot be “fixed.” Change is constant and even the perfect solution is made immediately imperfect by even subtle shifts in the context. However, through the work of the organizations we studied, it is clear that organizations can work to ensure that key actors in systems are connected to one another, acting with creativity and dynamism, and thus able to make decisions in responsive and representative ways.
- Location 588
-

RLabs, a social movement that is making “hope contagious” by recruiting former gang members in post-apartheid South Africa and more than twenty other countries to drive new technology start-ups; mothers2mothers, an organization working across ten countries in Africa to promote mothers living with HIV as frontline healthworkers; the original version of the Family Independence Initiative, an organization in California set up with the premise that poverty doesn’t mean families shouldn’t make their own decisions; Buurtzorg, a Netherlands-based health services provider that has banned bureaucracy in favor of neighborhood nurses; Slum Dwellers International, a transnational network elevating the urban poor to the top of the international political agenda; Child and Youth Finance International, a global collective that equips children to become fully empowered economic citizens; Nidan, the incubator of twenty-two “people’s institutions” organizing informal workers to stand up to exploitation and forming self-governed committees to influence the urban development of India’s fastest growing cities; and finally, Fundación Escuela Nueva, a nonprofit in Colombia working across Latin America and beyond to improve the quality and relevance of education by putting children at the heart of the learning process.
- Location 599
-

Although the supply of food in Mexico, India, and other Green Revolution countries substantially increased, this did not immediately translate into food for those who were hungry. The RF program was focused solely on yields, a problem that could readily be answered by science and industry. In doing so, it had neglected to account for demand, an issue that required purchasing power by the poor. At the same time, the program required landowners to purchase new seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation to implement the high-yield techniques. Naturally, the World Bank extended credit to larger landowners more readily, and smaller farmers were squeezed out of the market. Thousands of farmers moved off their land, providing cheap labor for more successful landowners and for corporations now manufacturing to meet the increased demand for agricultural inputs. Those who could not find work in the rural areas joined the ranks of the urban poor, increasing the pace of urbanization to already crowded cities.
- Location 707
- food systems, externalities,

Around the world, labor struggles, anti-war activism, and the anti-apartheid movement crystalized into a global resistance to what was increasingly seen as a world of “haves” and “have-nots.”
- Location 764
-

development and the delivery of state-sponsored social services materialized as an antidote to social radicalism, a mediating influence to associate progress with the staid and comforting measures of health, education, and livelihoods. This approach to social change was technical in nature; it was built with the express purpose of creating an interconnected world girded by sound institutions that would never again go to war. At the same time, the world was undergoing profound societal shifts that challenged the values and norms underpinning these very institutions. These changes, led by activists, union leaders, anti-war protestors, and community organizers, envisioned a world free from hierarchy and institutionalization. Therefore, their means and objectives were fundamentally different. While international development technocrats saw economic development as a primary route to peace and prosperity, social justice activists saw a capitalist juggernaut taking advantage of a “continual crisis” mindset context to entrench the growing traditional order. The change they sought was transformational, requiring a fundamental rethink as to who was included in the very institutions that were charged with maintaining peace, and who was included in the prosperity they envisioned.
- Location 766
- approaches to global development, capitalism, social change,

four trends emerged that impacted the way social change was conceptualized. Firstly, crushing economic circumstances and growing dissatisfaction with the “Keynesian consensus” of state-sponsored social spending led to important funding shifts globally. Secondly, as governments reduced their responsibilities for directly delivering social welfare, they began to partner with nonprofit and voluntary organizations to fill the gaps in service provision. Thirdly, in response to fluctuations in funding and stakeholders, these organizations increasingly professionalized, adopting a corporate and managerial culture in pursuit of legitimacy and efficiency. Finally, and most recently, rising inequality and a tidal wave in the transfer of inherited wealth have escalated the influence of private philanthropy, largely toward organizations and initiatives that reflect their backers’ economic and political leanings. These four interrelated trends together have had the paradoxical consequence of merging the competing ideologies of big government and radical activism into a professional class of organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, who see it as their “business” to drive social change.
- Location 796
-

expecting private philanthropy to foot the now increasing bill of nonprofit activity was decidedly optimistic. While governments reduced their financial support, nonprofits and NGOs increasingly turned toward commercial activities to fund their activities.
- Location 827
-

efforts to pool financial capital traditionally destined for investment vehicles seeking returns, has resulted in entirely new ways of funding social change such as “venture philanthropy,” “impact investing,” and “outcomes-based financing.” Devotees have dubbed these trends “philanthro-capitalism” and “compassionate capitalism,” heralding a new economic era for social change.
- Location 845
-

Assumptions held by social change practitioners include many if not all of the following: government is incompetent and should rather be led by privately run, “socially entrepreneurial” initiatives; organizations must compete in a “marketplace of ideas” for funding; policies and practices should be based exclusively on scientifically generated, quantitatively proven evidence; advocacy and activism are activities that are largely compatible with philanthropic funding; and civil society is a “service provider” to the public, accountable to taxpayers and “social investors” by the hurdles of measurement and “impact” assessment.
- Location 860
- capitalism,

Policies increasingly use “nudges” and “incentives” to drive individual behavior change from those who are in positions of least power,
- Location 867
-

“Outcomes-based funding” and “social impact bonds” seek to predict desired social behaviors several decades from now, largely in line with economics that are friendly to financial investors.
- Location 870
-

The core premise of this book is that neither the institutionalized, government-driven approach nor the fragmented, private-sector-led approach that emerged out of the post-war environment will get us to the more peaceful and just world that we seek to create. These approaches have resulted in unparalleled prosperity for a lucky few, but they have not generated the widespread equality of opportunity and sense of community and security that results in broad societal flourishing.
- Location 890
- favorite,

If we hide behind the overly simplistic conclusions of “it worked” or “it failed,” we miss an opportunity for meaningful learning, which, as we will discover, is a fundamental part of systems work.
- Location 895
-

the RF program proposed the simple solution of growing more food. Yet, simple solutions for complex problems can reap terrible unintended consequences. The Green Revolution was a harbinger of a bigger agricultural revolution which fundamentally transformed the global food system. And like most revolutions, the transformation that this approach unleashed is far from complete eighty years later.
- Location 905
-

We generally think that the biggest risk of social change is maintenance of the status quo. We believe it’s better to “do something” than to do nothing at all. However, the choice to “do” comes with risks in both directions.
- Location 918
-

Chumani wasn’t simply protesting the apartheid system which had created oppression for his parents and grandparents; he was fighting against those who had tried to change the system and come up short.
- Location 973
-

Our traditional guideposts for progressive change have been largely tangible: the end of apartheid; winning the vote; the passage of marriage equality; substantial increases in longevity, literacy, and living standards. These are significant markers of change, but they can also give us a false sense of accomplishment.
- Location 982
-

social change is an infinite symphony,
- Location 987
-

Systems Work Terms 6: Complexity, scale, and depth complexity systems that are comprised of many variables interacting with each other, yet functioning as a whole scale in its most elemental form, how a system responds when its size changes (West) depth the issues that arise when deeply-held beliefs, values and assumptions no longer
- Location 998
-

Predicting the behavior of “complex adaptive systems” is a sort of gamble: you can plot and calculate probabilities of known variables, but at the end of the day, your outcome is at best an educated guess.
- Location 1016
- complexity, complex adaptive systems,
- [note::How true is this? Is there any research on how historically accurate various models of complex adaptive systems are? 🤔]

As the number of people has increased, so have the potential channels of interacting with one another.
- Location 1020
- communication, coordination, collaboration,

the interactions per relationship have not stayed static,
- Location 1023
-

Much like the difference between hub-and-spoke versus point-to-point transportation systems, efficiency and complexity act as trade-offs.
- Location 1033
-

The late Brenda Zimmerman, a zoologist turned accountant turned complexity theorist, likened complex problems to the challenge of raising a child.
- Location 1037
-

complex adaptive systems are constantly changing and learning, success with one problem gives no assurance of success the next time around
- Location 1040
-

complexity is arguably one of the most groundbreaking, interdisciplinary fields in science. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine called this “the beginning of a new scientific era” where “we are observing the birth of a science that is no longer limited to idealized and simplified situations but reflects the complexity of the real world.”
- Location 1044
-

Our views of the world are not only restricted to the data we can access, but to our interpretations of that data.
- Location 1050
- viewpoint, perspective, reality, bias,

We can build models that incorporate complexity to the finest degree possible, narrowing our risk of uncertainty to rare instances and outliers. Many complexity theorists are following this path, working diligently to “decomplexify complexity,” and this is certainly an area of exciting scientific discovery, particularly with technological advances incorporating big data and artificial intelligence.
- Location 1053
- complexity, forecasting, information science, social change,

complexity means we are fallible in all of our attempts to know and understand, and rather choose a different path altogether.
- Location 1056
-

Rather than adhere to one approach or the other, we have to learn to hold both at the same time.
- Location 1064
-

this ripple effect across populations is often referred to as scale—a term which implies that the intervention and its intended effect are the same, only amplified across a broader group. The aim of social change, according to this way of thinking, is to “scale what works,” identifying and isolating the element of change that contributes to positive impact and replicating it far and wide. The promise of this approach is appealing to funders and policymakers: it signifies that a solution grounded in evidence can be delivered both reliably and effectively across populations and geographies. It also corresponds with our best business thinking frameworks, which aim to maximize return on investment by creating “economies of scale,” essentially getting more bang for our collective buck.
- Location 1085
- social change, context, scale,

our expectation is that we can achieve marginally higher impacts by increasing throughput in a system. As one of the executive directors that we worked with put it, “we want social welfare to be like McDonald’s.”
- Location 1094
- adaptability, scale, social change,
- [note::(but this exectation is not in tune with reality)]

we do not really have a good grasp of how scale works in social systems: “Even more challenging and of perhaps greater urgency is the need to understand how to scale organizational structures of increasingly large and complex social organizations such as companies, corporations, cities, and governments, where the underlying principles are typically not well understood because these are continuously evolving complex adaptive systems.”
- Location 1105
- favorite, scale, organizational structure,
- [note::This could be a great research topic or foundation for writing a book]

Systems scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam writes, “As one might expect with a uniform approach to a complex problem, initially there are likely to be misleading successes…At first, the large-scale approach seems to be working and its impact may be felt, but over time it fails in the details, piece by piece. Over time, these pieces add up to form a disastrous failure.”
- Location 1110
-

For problems that can be addressed effectively by consistent, large-scale actions, mass intervention is entirely suitable and welcome; these are like the equivalent of a farmer sowing seed by scattering over large areas. Initiatives that emphasize once-off operations—single-dose vaccination campaigns and post-disaster relief efforts, for example—are likely to be solved with large-scale efforts backed by significant capital. However, social change efforts dealing with challenges that exhibit high contextual variability require sustained intervention and more nuanced tactics. In these instances, the social change practitioner is not just responsible for planting the seed, but also for gaining access to land, cultivating the soil, remaining vigilant for pests and disease, and trusting that optimal weather conditions will materialize for that seed to grow. Ultimately, the conditions are far out of the hands of a single farmer, and will largely rely on the broader ecosystem in which the planting takes place.
- Location 1114
- social change, impact, context,

Alinsky would go on to write the bestseller Rules for Radicals,
- Location 1134
-

these pervasive norms and beliefs calcify into values that no longer work for us, or prevent us from assuming new ways of being and behaving that will work better for our societies as they evolve and change. They create cultures of exclusion and derision, and bolster prejudices and injustices. Our institutions fail us when they entrench our beliefs and behaviors to the extent that we cannot only not change, we cannot even imagine change.
- Location 1148
- change, culture, favorite, prejudice, impact,
- [note::"Imagine change" is the key phrase here. Democracies crumble when people are unable to even imagine the change needed to bring about a better world.]

“getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is ok after all.”26 We are both the architects and victims of our social constructs.
- Location 1152
-

decision-making power, is the most obvious and public-facing. This is the type of power which confers the ability to make, alter, and assert decisions. Decision-making power is exercised when laws are passed, regulations enforced, and wars declared.
- Location 1166
- decision-making, power,

non-decision-making power, is more under-the-radar but no less important. This power constitutes the ability to “set the agenda” and guide the conversation. Ultimately, this second face of power asserts itself through inclusion and omission; the choice of whether to bring an issue forward or place it at the back of the queue provides significant influence.
- Location 1169
-

which he named ideological power—is, in fact, the most subtle and insidious. In this dimension, powerful actors insert their interests into the minds of those less powerful. Ideological power asserts itself in situations where people’s preferences are shaped by a world that has already been molded by those who are in power.
- Location 1178
-

Real, systemic change can only occur when these structures are altered and power dynamics are reconfigured, offering a chance for new actors to step into positions of power and decision-making.
- Location 1187
-

Rather, the most successful examples of social change focus on the process itself, ensuring that systems become responsive and representative, with learning at the heart of the change process.
- Location 1199
-

This was a reminder to the Unit how managing large funders was critical: they tend to signal to the rest where to invest.
- Location 1225
- social change, funding,

By focusing their resources on these key individuals—positioning them to respond to the unique needs of each community and county context—the program gained better traction.
- Location 1261
-

Finally, by shifting more power to the county executives and channeling significant resources to the Unit through the new excise tax, the system was reconfigured in an enduring way.
- Location 1263
-

Systems Work Terms 7: Connection, context, power connection new relationships that promote continuous learning context the particular circumstances or conditions that form the geographic instance of a social issue power the ability to make decisions, set agendas or create ideologies that influence others’ capacity to determine their own actions
- Location 1265
-

He stressed that it was the simple things that made all the difference: the camaraderie built while sitting in the “bull pen” of an open-plan office, a workplan that everyone developed together, and the recognition that accountability goes hand-in-hand with experience. He said that he was conscious of the fact that, for all their informed pre-planning, the project had a life of its own and they had to align the project with practical realities and powerful agendas—almost on a daily basis.
- Location 1273
-

Most of all, Kisimbi emphasized how much of his and Salim’s work was spent in relationship-building. The ultimate test of their effectiveness in strengthening Kenya’s health system was not their expertise, skillful analysis, or political prowess—but rather their willingness to become part of the system itself.
- Location 1277
- relationships, stakeholder engagement, buy-in,

systems work is less about ambitious outcomes and more about setting up the process through which further adaptation can happen.
- Location 1288
- systems change, system structure,

organizations ensure that primary actors—those fully immersed in a system—feel a strong sense of connection, creating new relationships that foster continuous learning. Secondly, they position these actors so that they can act dynamically, solving real time problems in context, and sharing this knowledge across the system so that others, including supporting actors, can learn from their activities. Finally, such organizations reconfigure power dynamics so that these primary actors are able to take up strong decision-making roles and have the resources to continue their activities.
- Location 1289
- management, leadership, collaboration, favorite, organizational effectiveness, startups, power, autonomy, organizational structure,

By contrast, for the organizations we profile in this book we believe the surrender to uncertainty is, in fact, a key aspect of their work. These organizations hold understanding and unknowability simultaneously, and are constructed so that learning and responsiveness are central to their organizational design.
- Location 1305
- adaptability, uncertainty,

“You can’t really change a country as the old saying goes, one person at a time. Success comes when expectations are changed within an entire community.”
- Location 1315
- culture, social change, movements, system conditions,

They found that building a sense of solidarity among a group of people, changing how they perceive themselves as a group, could create far more powerful and enduring effects. In the case of FII (and now CII), families self-organize into peer support groups to champion financial goals to remove themselves from poverty. Through these groups, families are able to respond to their daily challenges and ultimately increase their income and self-sufficiency. In similar fashion, RLabs builds a sense of camaraderie among disaffected youth in communities where joining a gang is seen as the only viable path to adulthood. By introducing technology entrepreneurship as an alternative to gang membership, the organization creates a sense of belonging, inspiring young people to embark on different futures.
- Location 1319
- belonging, community, social dynamics,

As he began to delve deeply into the youth movements erupting across Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, he began to see a different set of motivations driving these young activists. They were not organizing around their interests as classes or professions or even a lack of political power, but rather on emerging ideas of who they were as a group. These shared identities were often a construction of their own making and were linked to broader cultural values that transcended traditional class lines. He coined the term “collective identity” for this new way of organizing for social change.
- Location 1334
- collective identity,

contemporary social movements are based on a group-constructed sense of “we-ness” that is both intentional and ongoing. He believed that constructing a shared identity is, in fact, the important and primary work of social movements—even more so than the protest and political force traditionally associated with movements. All of the activities that get poured into creating a “we” ultimately build an “action system” which becomes the foundation for broader social change.
- Location 1339
-

In several of the organizations we studied, experts and outsiders still have a critical role to play, but they step into the systems that they seek to influence, acting as a “host” rather than a “hero.”6 These host organizations foster belonging, provide space for gathering, and keep participants engaged, so that collectives can stay together through the learning process, adapting and experimenting continuously.
- Location 1359
-

Organizations working in systems embrace context, equipping primary actors to respond to day-to-day complexity, dynamically adapting as the context requires.
- Location 1364
- adaptability, context, systems,

Increasing interdependence and rising complexity have made it difficult to address issues in locally isolated ways. Yet, the ways in which scale is often approached—through replication, partnership, and sharing across networks—too frequently result in diminished quality or unintended consequences.
- Location 1368
- replication, adaptability, scale,

Often, in the early stages of a pilot program, thoughtful and caring practitioners make modifications at the “grassroots” level to enhance the efficacy of interventions. These often small and inconspicuous modifications to a program—frequently invisible to funders and head offices—are part of the critical elements that create a successful social intervention. However, after proof of concept is obtained, many programs are encouraged to implement “efficiencies,” which in fact remove the contextual variation that is delivering local results.
- Location 1378
- tailoring, social interventions,
- [note::Really interesting - the act of tailoring interventions to specific contexts is lost when they are scaled up in a cookiecutter fashion. Put another way: the little bits of ingredients a chef adds during cooking are essential to make a great dish. Without those little adjustments, you might not always come out with the perfect dish even though you're following the recipe to a "T". In the kitchen, it's often a grave mistake to assume the food you're cooking with is the same or similar to the food you cooked with last time (see: the concentration of acid in a given lemon). In the same way, it's silly to assume the context of a social intervention will be the same across all instances.]

Less and less attention is paid to the granular detail that is often poured into the pilot project, with the expectation that a top-down approach will garner more results, faster.
- Location 1384
-

mothers2mothers, a global health organization operating across sub-Saharan Africa is built on this premise: mothers living with HIV are positioned as frontline health workers in communities and clinics serving pregnant women and new mothers. Although trained to support healthcare providers and patients diagnosed with HIV in the management of their disease, their conversations with women living with HIV are far from scripted; their ability to connect and discern the needs of their clients derives from their intimate experience of being in the patient’s place themselves.
- Location 1392
-

Equally, the Colombian education nonprofit Fundación Escuela Nueva applies this principle to rural and urban education contexts, positioning students as primary actors in their own education. Learning in Escuela Nueva classrooms takes place in small groups of students, with teachers acting as facilitators. At the same time, student-elected leaders and parents are actively engaged in the running of the schools, thereby enhancing learning opportunities.
- Location 1396
-

One of the organizations that we studied, Buurtzorg, recruits highly skilled nurses who develop autonomous neighborhood teams that become integrated into the communities in which their patients live. Although these nurses are not necessarily members of the neighborhoods where they work, they become fully immersed in the daily happenings and web of relationships in the community.
- Location 1401
-

In each context, there are abnormalities and responses to these abnormalities. As these aberrations and improvisations add up, they create patterns that are rooted in the context within which they are happening. For social change practitioners, these subtle modifications are the oil that greases the wheels of a program; they are quite often the very actions that make a program effective.
- Location 1408
- adaptability,

contextual variability becomes an asset rather than a curse.
- Location 1413
-

Organizations working in systems reconfigure power, putting decision-making and resources in the hands of primary actors, ensuring that social systems fully represent the people who live in them.
- Location 1415
-

the depth of social problems is largely derived from the “stickiness” of power. Power is the ultimate positive feedback loop: simply put, people in positions of power use their positions of privilege to stay there.
- Location 1417
- power, leadership, self-preservation,

Patterns of behavior, and the motivations and circumstances which drive these patterns, are circumscribed by social norms, values, and beliefs that often go unnoticed and largely uncriticized. Unwittingly or not, the powerful set the parameters within which these norms are followed. In other words, they set the temperature of the water in which everyone must swim.
- Location 1421
- values, beliefs, leadership, power, norms, hierarchy, influence,

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, institutions and long-standing social norms often influence our beliefs and behaviors to the extent that we cannot only not change, we cannot even imagine change.
- Location 1454
-

While Villanueva reminds us that complex, large-scale, and deep issues require us to work together, RLabs illustrates that groups can be purpose-built to forge new relationships, building connections that nurture a new way of seeing the future.
- Location 1524
-

In our research, we came to recognize a clear pattern: while many organizations (or their founders) started out trying to influence the behavior of individuals, they soon found themselves working in the other direction—intentionally creating new groups to connect individuals to one another.
- Location 1527
-

too often, social change practitioners, particularly those with an industrial approach to social change, are focused on the outcomes of the practice rather than the process itself.
- Location 1533
- social change, impact,

This process requires time and trust, surfacing the mental models that drive our most deeply held beliefs and engaging in conversations that may feel uncomfortable, especially when awareness of an issue begins to shift to a new perspective. Once a new collective consciousness is borne, truly effective organizations can then harness this collective energy to engage with other groups—often across diverse geographies and cultures—building communities that stretch beyond the initial core collective. As we’ll see in the subsequent chapters, this expansion is tricky, since it can move a group from the safe “fringe” to the center, but when done attentively, it can create the prospect of learning across many groups, triggering wholesale change in systems.
- Location 1541
-
- [note::Are there best practices for communicating one or more ideas that strikes a good balance between speed of communication/effort required to communicate and communication fidelity?]

Collectives are built on a common sense of identity, the traits and categories that we use to make sense of who we are in the world. Collective identity is different than a common vision or purpose; it is the sense of “we-ness” that emerges when a group of people develops a sense of belonging with one another over time. This common identity establishes a sense of trust where people—in many cases including those who have been previously marginalized—can explore common experiences as well as their differences. Together, groups probe current problems, often raising their awareness and seeing a situation in new ways. As sociologist Alberto Melucci theorized, out of this emerging awareness an action system is conceived for new possibilities to emerge.
- Location 1563
-

Importantly, the process of forging collective identity enables those with lived experience of a social issue to become primary actors in the change process. Often, those who are most affected by a social issue are isolated, with few opportunities to set the rules by which society operates. People who live in conditions of poverty, ill-health, or poor education are unlikely to be in the drivers’ seats of economic, health, and education systems. Those who are young, female, of color, or of different sexual orientations or gender preferences are often sidelined by decision-makers. When systems no longer serve people, new collective identities can emerge at the boundaries of social systems (see fig 4.1). People who no longer feel that the status quo is working for them then migrate to these “fringe groups” to consider new identities that serve them better. Fig. 4.1 Collective identity and action systems Source: Authors.
- Location 1575
-
- [note::Love the figure called out here - it seems to be a good model for explaining how EA emerged.]