Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures.

Daniel Taylor-Ide and Carl E. Taylor with Mabelle and Raj Arole, Abhay and Rani Bang, Zeng DongLu, Patricia Paredes, Robert Parker, Jac Smit, Betsy Taylor, Henry Taylor, and Miriam Were. 2002. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London in association with Future Generations. 368 pp. ISBN 0-8018-6825-4. (paperback) US$19.95.

At first glance, Just and Lasting Change, a recent handbook on facilitating community development and empowerment, seems to be a family affair. Many of the individual chapters are authored by members of the Taylor clan and refer to personal stories of this family's life as missionaries and doctors in India, China and the even more romantic lands abutting the Himalayas. In fact, I was very tempted, at the outset, to dismiss the book as an idiosyncratic, unscholarly text with religious overtones that made me uncomfortable and left me unimpressed. Surprisingly, however, by the end of the book, I had to admit that I had learned a great deal about places and experiments in community development and was left with a sense of admiration for the knowledge and experience of the primary authors and their many assistants in the compilation of this book.

The main authors, David Taylor-Ide and Carl Taylor, want this book to serve as a catalyst in the implementation of their vision of how to develop communities over time and space in a fashion that best meets the needs of society. They explicitly acknowledge that many believe it is impossible for the gap between the rich and the poor, the developed and the undeveloped, the strong and the weak, to diminish. They argue, however, that enough evidence has accumulated regarding "visible successes in villages, cities and jungles" (p. 20) to develop a model for future development efforts.

There are three main components of the book and each of these contributes to the argument that the Taylor family lays out in various forms here, a program for change which the authors have named SEED-SCALE. SEED stands for Self-Evaluation for Effective Decision Making which is part of a community's self-empowerment through choosing a vision of improvements based on community-specific data gathered by and for community members themselves. SCALE is short hand for Systems for Communities to Adapt Learning and Expand which the authors believe is necessary to long-term and widespread improvements in quality of life and should be actively pursued by all levels of government to promote successful initiatives of individual or small groups of communities.

The authors use the first portion of the book to introduce their vision of change and show how it should proceed in a biological fashion that "explores and experiments in one population unit to find a mix of actions suited to local circumstances and then provides an enabling environment for rapid growth and extension" (p. 56). The last third of the book, on the other hand, is a handbook complete with cartoon-style drawings of how to actually implement the ideas of SEED-SCALE in any given community and, eventually, country.

These two parts of the book would, I imagine, be of interest to activists, community planners, politicians and international aid workers because they offer very specific guidance regarding the philosophy behind the concept, the need for concrete and specific steps to implement the concept and a very clear and comprehensive set of guidelines and principles about what to do if one wants to begin a process of community change and improvement.

As an academic constantly searching for positive examples of development to use in my courses, however, the most interesting part of the book for me was the central portion of Just and Lasting Change. This section provides many examples of specific places and people who have initiated positive change over the last century using, according to the authors, many of the principles described by their SEED-SCALE methodology. The examples range from historical demonstrations in the Adirondacks to contemporary projects in Tibet. I found these ten or so examples to be very compelling and educational as well as excellent illustrations of the holistic and inclusive process that the book promotes. I was particularly struck by their emphasis on the environment and on finding solutions that protect the environment as well as offer residents the opportunity to continue to earn a living as part of the solution. As anyone who follows the literature on environmental protection in developing countries is aware, one of the key issues is how to protect unique habitats and natural resources without creating more problems for generally impoverished inhabitants who depend on those resources for their livelihoods.

Most of the examples have a health-focus because of the Taylors' experiences as doctors in Asia. While health is clearly a crucial issue in the creation of more empowered and productive communities, it is also true that improvements in community health are a lot easier to implement and monitor than, say, improvements in employment conditions and opportunities or income. On the other hand, there is no reason that such improvements cannot occur with enough time, funding support and a dedicated group of experts, community residents and government officials. Nonetheless, the book would have been more convincing if the examples had made more explicit economic suggestions as well as health and environmental initiatives.

Another small problem that I had with the Chinese and Tibet examples, in particular, is that the Taylors seem reluctant to comment on the political issues surrounding these countries. In essence, they ignore the political trauma experienced in these countries as a consequence of the Cultural Revolution or the Chinese occupation of Tibet. While I understand that the authors believe that any government can facilitate the adoption of SEED-SCALE, the lack of discussion around these topics gave me pause and more reason, if you will, to discount the perspectives of the authors. Their reluctance to comment seemed irresponsible although I recognize that they would like this book to be accepted everywhere no matter what the political context.

In summation, Just and Lasting Change is certainly worth reading for academics and policy makers, or anyone who is interested in participatory planning approaches to community development, particularly in the developing world. It is reasonably well written and full of fairly detailed and mostly unusual examples. It is less scholarly but more practical than many books on this topic and certainly makes for thought-provoking discussion.

Reviewed by Amrita Daniere, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A1.