Other Names: Uncooperative residents in community planning
Non-cooperative community groups
Nature: While development in small communities requires a spirit of cooperation among families and groups in order to actually get things done, in many communities efforts are conducted in a fragmented way. People feel that it is necessary to be independent and so each family strives to exist without helping or being helped by other families. Communities are often organized along family and ethnic lines. Resentment and suspicion bred of unfamiliarity build up borders between families, neighbours and interest groupings, creating baffling networks of 'we's' and 'they's'. No common structure exists for objectifying misunderstanding.
Incidence: Possible municipal improvements such as road surfacing, housing and recreation facilities, which necessitate a combined effort, are not pursued because individual citizens are unwilling to make personal contributions of time or money in such campaigns. Private owners restrict the use of park land. People with similar agricultural problems do not organize themselves to achieve their common objectives. Cases have been recorded where families without their own means of transport have been refused neighbours' cars in times of medical emergency. Children of different groups may never go to school together. Some families resent the greater income of other families. Party-line telephones are tied up for long periods of time, the resulting frustration being a measure of the depth of feelings involved in the whole issue of individual rights versus community cooperation.
Claim: Only when people in small communities find ways of working together towards their common good will their hopes for the future have a significant chance of success.
Problem Type: F: Fuzzy exceptional problems
Date of last update 08.06.1999 – 00:00 CEST