Below are the abstracts of the presentations from the recent Community Capitals Framework Institute. I will be following up with notes and comments.
Session 1: Focus on Climate ChangePresenter: Kurt Mantonya, Heartland Center for Leadership Development. “Utilizing the Community Capitals Framework in an Ethnohistorical Context.”
The Community Capitals Framework is a versatile tool that can be used to map community assets, analyze how communities work, assess community capacities, plan programs and evaluate those programs. The framework can be used to help map community capitals in an historical contest and explain how societies such as the ancestral Puebloan cultures in the American Southwest collapsed due to the loss of certain capitals that could not be replenished. This presentation is an attempt to place the community capitals in an ethnohistorical context and compare with contemporary native peoples to show the strong reliance of one community capital upon the others. Looking at past systems and societies and how they utilized their capitals may improve our community development work today.
Keywords: Historical applications, ethnohistory, societal collapse, Chacoan Anasazi
Presenter: Victoria LeBeaux, Iowa State University. “Missions, Visions and Goals: Community Capital Aspirations of Rural Development Intermediaries in Central America.”
In Central America there is an urgent need to integrate rural livelihoods into value-chains in order to promote sustainable land use. Factors contributing to this need for an emphasis on sustainable rural livelihoods include sustained incidences of high poverty rates and food insecurity. The problems of poverty are exacerbated by the region’s high level of vulnerability to natural disasters, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change.
Key Words: Central America, sustainable rural livelihoods, intermediaries, content analysis
Session 2: CCF and Mapping ImpactPresenters: Debra Kollock, Doreen Hauser-Lindstrom and Rayna Sage, Washington State University. “Mapping Community Impacts Using the Community Capitals Framework for Washington State Horizons Program.”
In this presentation, evaluators from Washington State University Extension will present their Community Impact Mapping results utilizing the Community Capitals Framework. The Washington State University Horizons team wanted to fully identify and analyze the unique ripple effects that the educational capacity building Horizons Program had on each community and develop a comprehensive, documentation of statewide impacts.
Key Words: Community impacts, mind mapping
Presenter: Mary Emery, Iowa State University. “Mapping Results in an Integrated Multi-state Project on Social Capital and Youth Engagement.”
Session 3: CCF and the Practice of Community DevelopmentPresenters: Julie Weisshaar, Iowa State University, and Wayne Pantini, Union County Development Association. “CCF and Leadership Development.”
A common challenge faced by communities is how to effectively encourage citizens to fill leadership roles. In 2009, the Union County (Iowa) Development Association facilitated the formation of a grassroots leadership development program unlike any experienced before by its steering committee members – one that uses the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) as its backbone. This presentation will show how the High Lakes Leadership Initiative (HLLI) utilized the traditional leadership development treadmill in creative ways to implement a successful new program and support system. HLLI’s curriculum, which merges interactive CCF learning, leadership skills training, community meaning making and social media, will be shared.
Key words: leadership, leadership development, Community Capitals Framework.
Presenters: Rachel Johansen and Stephen Gasteyer, Michigan State University. “Capital Safety: CCF and Urban Neighborhood Security in Flint, MI.”
This paper explores the use of the Community Capitals Framework in an urban setting. The city of Flint, once known as one of Michigan’s industrial hubs, is now characterized by extreme blight and crime and in recent years has been touted as the poster child of a “shrinking city.” In an ongoing project to measure the social impacts of neighborhood based turfgrass management in Flint; we utilize the Community Capitals Framework to help residents identify neighborhood assets and challenges. The authors have used CCF as a framework for visioning neighborhood improvement and measuring the impact of interventions over time. This paper will address the methodological issues of using CCF in an urban neighborhood context for visioning and to indicate change over time. The paper will discuss initial findings from secondary data analysis, strategic visioning sessions, participant observation and surveys.
Presenters: Kala Shipley, Catherine Lillehoj and Jane Schadle, Iowa Department of Public Health. “Identifying Community Wellness Grant Assets.”
This abstract explores the relationship between health and the community capitals in the context of rural Iowa. Developing community capitals in rural areas has been shown to be essential for continued health and vitality.
Session 4: Bioenergy and CCFPresenter: Timothy Collins, Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs. “An Examination on Illinois Industrial Biofuels Plants: Using the Community Capitals Framework for Case Study Analysis.”
The rapid emergence of biofuels production in the past several years has already altered numerous rural communities across Illinois. This area of the economy is expected to continue to change and expand, and there is a need to examine how and why communities have decided to enter the new "green economy."
I will discuss five case studies of Illinois communities that tried to join the green economy with biofuels production. The Community Capitals Framework informed the research and interview analysis. I will discuss how CCF can be used to analyze interview data to compare and contrast communities.
Presenters: Jessica Jane King and Stephen Gasteyer, Michigan State University. “Are Community Bioenergy Facilities Resilient? Modeling Community Resiliency in the Context of Biofuels using CCF.”
Biofuel facilities are now a frequent part of the US Corn Belt landscape. This paper aims to use the Community Capitals Framework to model the resiliency of these facilities. The authors will discuss the use of secondary data analysis, survey data and telephone interviews in the creation of depictions of and impacts on communities that have established bioenergy facilities. We will discuss the limitations to each of these approaches, as well as the possibilities for cross disciplinary work in modeling interactions among the capitals. Key in this discussion will be the need to better articulate feedback effects at multiple temporal and spatial scales—specifically to indicate the relationship between policy and social processes and decisions, economic, and biophysical outcomes.
Session 5: Theorizing with CCF and Complexity TheoryPresenters: Mary Emery, Iowa State University and Stephen Gasteyer, Michigan State University. “Are Capitals Evil? Exploring the Dark Side and Light Side of the Community Capitals.”
It has been well-documented that social capital can have positive and negative attributes. The Mafia, after all, might easily be described as an example of all that is wrong with bonding social capital. But could this be the case for other capitals. Emphasis on built and financial capital can be ruinous to community cohesion. Political capital can leverage resources that undermine community initiative and inclusiveness. Cultural capital can be a positive worldview and recognition of community attributes, or it can be the element that undermines community initiative. While much of the literature on capitals has simply argued that we measure the extent of their existence, this paper theorizes that there is a “dark and light side” to all capitals. The authors argue that, while much of the attention in the CCF literature has been on social capital as a key variable, that social capital may not be as critical to how the stocks of capitals are leveraged as cultural capital – the underlying world view of the community. The authors will use case studies to flesh out this perspective—arguing that the capitals may need to be assessed from an evaluative perspective.
Session 6: Respondent PanelsRespondents: Milan Wall, Heartland Center for Leadership Development, and Isabel Gutierrez, CATIE: “Insights and Implications for Practitioners.”
Respondent: Cornelia Flora, Iowa State University. “Insights and Implications for Research.”
Respondent: Jan Flora, Iowa State University. “Insights and Implications for Theory Development.”
