Fisher.building Consciousness - The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative

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Building Consciousness: The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative

Josh Fisher, High Point University

AbstractBased on ethnographic research conducted in

Nicaragua in 2007 during the early phases of thebuilding of an industrial cotton spinning cooperativecalled Genesis, this article recounts an implementa-tion of the Organization Workshop (OW), a large-scale enterprise-building and employment-generationworkshop based on the ideas of Brazilian scholar-activists Clodomir Santos de Morais and Paulo Freire.The story of the Genesis OW, however, is not one ofsuccess. In fact, following the 40-day conscientizat-

ion workshop, the cooperative entered into a periodof upheaval, ultimately leading to the ousting of thecooperatives leadership. As a way of explainingsome of the unexpected consequences of the OW,I point to the disjuncture between the actually existingsocial and organizational dynamics of Genesis beforethe implementation of the OW and the OWs modelfor them.

Keywords: consciousness, capacitation, coopera-tives, Organization Workshop, enterprise development

IntroductionRoger Durham grabbed his coffee mug, pushed

away from his computer, and, for the second time onthis particular October morning, began to navigatethe mossy stepping stones leading away from thesmall, three-room concrete building that is the mainoffice of the Center for Sustainable Development(CSD) in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua. A blue sedanpulled through the gate and parked next to an oldrust-hulk structure, which was at one point a 1987Chevy pickup truck. Shit, exhaled Roger, coming toa full stop. Hes early. As he started toward the car,a mustachioed man with a large, round face emerged,clutching a tattered leather briefcase, and Rogers de-

meanor suddenly changed. Through his white beardhe flashed a friendly and relaxed smile, bellowing innatural Nicaraguan Spanish without a hint of theNorth Carolina accent of his native tongue: Tobas,como te va, amigo? Were just arranging things in theoffice. Can I organize a cup of coffee for you in themeantime?

The Organization Workshop (OW) or, as it iscalled in Spanish, Laboratorio Organizacional del Terreno is a 40-day employment-generation and enterprise-building workshop that was born in Brazil in the

1960s, heavily shaped by Paulo Freires pedagogy,and that has since come to be widely implemented bydevelopment organizations as small as CSD and aslarge as the International Labor Organization (ILO)and the UN Development Program (UNDP). Despitethese credentials, however, the OW was not Rogershighest priority, nor even something that he knewvery much about. Rather, it fell under the heading ofdistracting side project, which, whenever possible,he and his organization attempted to avoid and cer-tainly would have in this case, too, if it were not for a

favor collected upon by a colleague who happened tobe invested in the model. Months before, CSD agreed toturn one of their main sustainable development initia-tives a burgeoning cotton-spinning cooperativeemploying 45 men and women called Genesis into atest case for the first OW in Nicaragua. Tobas arrivalmarked the workshops imminent inauguration.

Although the details of what, exactly, the work-shop was going to entail had long been lost amid a seaof emails and a carpet of sticky notes spread across theshared desk space in the small NGOs rather unpre-tentious office, the basic idea was clear enough. AsRoger had understood it, the OW is a workshop thatprovides training in the ideology and practice ofcooperativism by problematizing and dismantling theartisan consciousness (conciencia artesanal) of thecooperatives membership, equipping them insteadwith the more sophisticated and flexible workersorganizational consciousness (conciencia organizac-ional) defined, in contrast to the former, as thecomprehensive technical, social, communicative, andorganizational mentality that a group of people re-quires in order to work together and run a collectivelyowned enterprise. On the ground, this basic schematicideally translates into short-term, relatively large-

scale workshops that emphasize an interactive andpragmatic pedagogy, following Freire, in which par-ticipants learn by doing. Proponents of theworkshop claim that OWs method of organizationalconscientization often referred to as capacitation(capacitacion) during the workshop itself is not onlythe most compelling implementation of Freires ideaof conscientization to date, expanding its scope be-yond the limits of literacy into the vital realm ofeconomic development, it is also a proven (Carmen2000:47) solution for overcoming the many obstacles

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to a democratic organization of the workplace and forcultivating a cooperative culture of productivity(Porter 2000:25).1

To say that CSD staff members were unenthusi-astic about the project is perhaps an understatement.While the small NGO of only eight permanentstaff members welcomed experimentation with new,

alternative, and especially grassroots approaches toeconomic development, believing the developmentindustry to be highly problematic, at the same timetheir experiences in organizing and supporting anumber of cooperatives in Nicaragua over the previ-ous 15 years stirred in them a measure of skepticismtoward any approach promising to be a magic bullet.This, of course, included the idea of instilling con-sciousness. From the perspective of CSD, organizinga cooperative is a very messy task that involves deal-ing in pragmatic terms with all of the issues that canarise within a heterogeneous group of people, not tomention those that sneak up unexpectedly from the

outside. It was for this reason that Roger not-so-secretly expressed hesitation about the palabrera (hotair) of consciousness as the OWs object of develop-ment. As an adherent of sustainable communitydevelopment, it was not that he denied the impor-tance of an equitable and democratic workplace indeed, he and his associates often championedworkplace democracy as the only road to socialsustainability. The problem was that he simply didnot believe that it could be engineered by technicianswho did not count themselves as members of thegroup undergoing transformation. As an outsiderhimself, he believed his time would be much betterspent on the task of furnishing the cooperative withits own productive machinery (e.g., the cotton gin, forwhich CSD had for a solid year been trying to securefunding), without which even a democratic andworker-owned enterprise would still only exist as ashared idea. Thus, on the 1st of October 2007, asTobas pulled his car through the gates, it hardly cameas a surprise when, pointing to my higher tolerancefor abstractly academic pursuits, Roger soontracked me down to do some delegating.

This article is based on my experiences workingas the gerente tecnico (technical director) of the OW in

Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, a 40-day workshop inwhich the original, stated goal was to generate theknowledge, mentality, and spirit of cooperativismwithin the emerging industrial cotton-spinning coop-erative called Genesis. In the capacity of the technicaldirector, I was also solicited by the projects funders toconduct a formal assessment of the workshop, a taskthat I chose to approach using the ethnographic toolsof participant observation and focused individual andgroup interviews. Of course, one of the consequencesof my impromptu involvement with the OW was that

I could not go about the project with the kind of re-search design that many cultural anthropologists areaccustomed to having in place well in advance of theirfieldwork. I do not see this as a significant limitation.Rather, I learned about the model of the OW as coop-erative members did, and my research questionsemerged gradually from the numerous debates and

conversations that I witnessed (and sometimes insti-gated), as well as from the questions and concernsthat cooperative members themselves posed: Whatdoes a democratic and participatory enterprise anenterprise in which resources are held in common andgoverned in common need in order to succeed in thelong run? If organization is frequently a barrier tothe success of such enterprises, what is organizationalconsciousness that it can be instilled through aworkshop? And what does a workshop like the OWprovide that its participants are not already equippedto do on their own terms?

In the long shot, the OW belongs to a larger set of

projects of social transformation, often initiated fromafar, currently involved in organizing groups of peo-ple into collectivities for the purposes of specificsocial, political, and economic causes. While many ofthese projects have historically drawn on state re-sources, such as in the case of large-scale economicdevelopment, others have depended on the widereach of civil society initiatives like NGOs, and stillothers have taken the form of social movements,emerging from the level of the grassroots and callingto their aid shared identity or shared domains ofmeaning (Alvarez et al. 1998). Many of these projectsalso attempt, in one way or another, to intentionallymodify the subjective states, or mentalities, of par-ticipants, whether in terms of the market principlesof discipline, efficiency, and competitiveness (Ong2006:4), such as in the case of microlending (e.g., Kar-im 2008), or the cultivation of new politicalsubjectivities through activism (e.g., Brodkin 2007).The OW stands out among many of the more power-ful currents in contemporary politics and economicsas a project that focuses squarely on economic issuesof distribution, regardless of social identity, whileseeking at the same time to build a kind of collec-tive consciousness based in the management of

collective resources (Carmen and Sobrado 2000). Thisarticle focuses on the active role of consciousnesswithin the model of the OW as well as the complica-tions and contradictions that arise when the concept,successfully and unsuccessfully, gains traction in so-cial reality.

In the first part, I briefly summarize the princi-ples of the OW and its concept of consciousness thathave informed its implementation over the past 40years. In the second part, I move on to examine thebroader social and cultural context in which the

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Genesis OW was staged. In sharp contrast to theOWs presumption that identifiable mentalitiesof work form characteristic sets the world over,I show that Genesis cooperative members developedsocially, culturally, and historically particular organi-zational strategies their own organizational style in the early stages of the enterprises formation, well

prior to the OWs implementation of the paradigm ofartisanal and organizational consciousness. Finally, inthe third part, I give an ethnographic account of theOWs implementation, focusing especially on some ofits unintended consequences. In the months followingthe workshop, that is, the cooperative entered into aperiod of upheaval. Amid accusations of graft anddishonesty, a large faction of Genesis members mobi-lized to successfully oust the cooperatives leadershipwho had been charged with the task of administeringthe OW. These cooperative members pointed to theleaderships use of the terminology of the workshop,including the language of consciousness (conciencia),

as a wedge by which the leaders secured their statusover and above the collectivity.

Background: Consciousness and OrganizationalConsciousness

One question that has repeatedly vexed devel-opment specialists has been whether poverty allevia-tion initiatives should chart their course throughindividualist entrepreneurial activity or the morecomplex and demanding route of large-scale, collec-tive enterprises. In microcredit lending strategies, forexample, the individual is often hailed as a figurewho, but for lack of credit, could become a successfulentrepreneur, and access to credit has even been ele-vated to the level of a basic human right (Yunus 2006).Backed in recent years by the broad ideological shiftof neoliberalism, moreover, the notion that develop-ment is properly done by empowering individualsand families in the market is supported by the con-comitant drive to liberate development from theineffectuality of the state (Rocha and Cristoplos 1999;Snow and Buss 2001).

At the same time, however, development spe-cialists have also recognized the limitations of thesmall-scale lending model, incapable as it is of effect-

ing structural change or giving rise to formal-sectorenterprises that are large enough to carve out a com-petitive edge for themselves in the global marketplace(Gulli 1998). Some developers have therefore pre-ferred the route of cluster and cooperation initiatives,which instead emphasize the importance of enhanc-ing the position of whole groups (Colloredo-Mansfeldand Antrosio 2009). In microcredit, for example, de-velopment specialists work hard to establish grouplending rules, which in theory draw on the social tiesbetween borrowers in order to create stabilizing

structures of joint liability as group members exertsocial pressure on one another and ensure that pay-offs reach a greater number of people (Rahman 2001;Abbink et al. 2006).

In the broad spectrum of enterprise-buildinginitiatives, the OW is a model that emphasizes theimportance of large-scale firms. In fact, on the ground,

workshops enlist at the very least 40 people, havingno upper limit to the number of people who mayparticipate. This scale is not, however, at the cost of ademocratic methodology. Rather, the workshopsmethods register a general critique against main-stream development paradigms and the top-downorganization of power and authority. The roots of theOW harken back to Clodomir Santos de Morais, theoriginator of the model, who was the former prisoncellmate of Paulo Freire during the 1964 Braziliancoup. De Morais method, as reflected in the OW, isindelibly marked by the friendship that the two scho-lar-activists subsequently formed. Similar to Freire

(1970), who identified a problematic pedagogy as anoppressive instrument of consciousness, de Moraisargues that one of the central problems in the devel-opment industry has been the fact that developmentprojects are inscribed in concrete relations of powersuch that a privileged class of people (i.e., techni-cians or specialists) deprive target populations ofcontrol over the instruments of their own develop-ment (Carmen and Sobrado 2000). According tode Morais, following Freire, this is problematic be-cause the approach tends to reproduce the hierarchiesof the dominant social order hierarchies, moreover,that are largely responsible for the currently unequaldistribution of wealth and power in the world. With-out sustained intervention by technicians, de Moraisalso observes, development projects frequently failbecause the intended beneficiaries are either insuffi-ciently invested in the initiatives success or estrangedfrom the organizational know-how that would allowthem to sustain its success in the long term. Hence, themodel of the OW is premised on the idea that, whenpeople instead maintain control over the instrumentsof organization, they may themselves critically en-gage and transform the organizational conditions oftheir collective, working lives. They may undergo a

fundamental change in thinking, and they may expe-rience a renewed sense of ownership and control overtheir own futures.

Along the lines of Freires critique of the bank-ing concept of education (1970:58) the problematicdynamic in which the teacher is imagined to de-posit knowledge in the learner by process ofextension the OWs use of the terms capacitation (cap-acitacion) and conscientization (concienciacion) suggestthat real development cannot consist in a mere transferof skills (i.e., learning), capital (i.e., redistribution), or




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power (i.e., empowerment) from one party to another,whether by dint of social assistance or poverty allevi-ation. On the whole, these concepts form a set ofproblematic interventionalist, extensionalist, de-velopment-inducing strategies that Raff Carmen(1996) refers to as projectile projects. Development,in other words, needs to be reconsidered from the

ground up, and capacitation, for de Morais, reflectsthe idea that people may realize their own, heretoforeuntapped, organizational potential and take initia-tives toward finding solutions to their own problems.Real power, like real development, is about genuineownership, autonomy, and control, not only over themeans of production but also over the instrumentsof the consciousness of the group. In the OW,then, organizational consciousness is not instilled(i.e., transferred to the target population) so muchas it arises organically from the ideal conditions(Sobrado 2000:22) that the workshop creates.

This all makes more sense when one first con-

siders the notion of consciousness that is at work inthe OW. On the one hand, de Morais idea of con-sciousness is similar to a structural Marxist readinginsofar as it posits a nearly direct line of causationwith ones class position within a social formation. Infact, de Morais describes consciousness in terms of themental organizational structures, or habits ofthought, that one gains from the experience of onesdaily work activities, which form characteristic sets:artisans are accustomed to being self-sufficient andinvolved in the production of a particular good frombeginning to end; workers are accustomed to livingby some form of work that involves a more or lesscomplicated division of labor; and the lumpen neitherwork nor have the desire to work. Theoreticallyspeaking, de Morias typology is informed by the ideaof objective activity (Deyatelnost) first developedby the Russian social psychology school of Vygotsky,Luria, and Leontev, wherein consciousness is con-ceptually enclosed within a dynamic envelope ofsubject-object interactions with material reality,that is, the Object (de Morais 1987; e.g., Wertsch1981; Lave and Wenger 1991).

De Morais idea of consciousness is, in otherwords, very far from the kind of antireductionist

reading often embraced by anthropologists, such asthat of Thompsons (1966, 1991), which recognizes avery great degree of historical and cultural contin-gency. Rather, de Morais seems to glide over theexperiences of particular people with an attitude ofinevitability, treating the resistance of artisans, forexample, to the conceptual structures of the market astheir basic inability to adapt. In fact, the relevance ofthe OW, for de Morais, is that the peasants problem isthe very nature of their artisan (i.e., small produceractivities), the fact that the organization of their work

is habitually simple (i.e., noncomplex), isolated(i.e., nonsocial), and self-sufficient (i.e., according totheir own schedules). This kind of artisan con-sciousness would preclude them from running afactory even if they had at their disposal the necessarymeans of production, and so it follows that, in order tosucceed in the marketplace, these artisans universally

need to change their habits of thinking. The basicprinciple of the OW in this respect is that it is possibleto intentionally modify the consciousness of the peas-ant and thus enable the cross-cultural transitionfrom the artisanal (small producer) to the industrial(complex worker) mode (Sobrado 2000:23).2 On theground, the OW thus attempts to eliminate all ten-dencies toward the vices of individualism,spontaneity, self-sufficiency, and other artisanal be-havioral forms, inimical as they are to efficiency. Yet,following Freires pedagogy, the OW does not em-ploy teachers to impart such lessons. Rather, it is theobject (i.e., material conditions) which teaches and

makes participants organizationally literate. In thewords of Branco Correia, only in the total surrenderof the bicycle to the learner can the capacitation in bi-cycle-riding be fully achieved (2000:46).

On the one hand, it would seem that participantshave at their disposal the tools of their own liberationand, given a framework in which they may criticallyapproach the material and organizational conditionsof their existence, are perfectly capable of effectingchange in their own lives. On the other, however, italso seems to be the case that, according to de Morais,peasants are also somewhat antichange, trappedwithin the stubborn bad habits of thought andwork (cf. Lewis 1966; Leacock 1971). How this appar-ent contradiction has played out in the praxis of theOW is of course not knowable in theoretical termsalone. Over the past 40 years, the OW has been stageddozens of times in settings as diverse as Central andSouth America, Africa, and Eastern Europe and withthe active participation of international developmentorganizations such as the UN Food and AgriculturalOrganization, the ILO, and the UNDP (Carmen andSobrado 2000). Some workshops have resulted in no-table successes, such as Coopesilencio in Costa Ricaand the Guaymas complex in Honduras, as well as

many of the Landless Workers Movements (MST)claims in Brazil during the 1980s (Barrantes 1998;Sobrado 1999; Branco Correia 2000; Erazo 2000).Many other implementations of the OW have beendoomed to obscurity, making it difficult to discern thetrue contribution of the model in the world of devel-opment. Perhaps the most illuminating aspect of theGenesis OW, however, is not its success or failure,narrowly defined, but rather the unintended conse-quences that have originated in large part fromthe space between the actual existing social and




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organizational dynamics in the Genesis cooperativebefore the workshop, on the one hand, and the OWsmodel for those dynamics, on the other. Indeed, thelabel of artisan, like some Weberian ideal-type runamok, was never a good account of the mentalitiesor habits of these Genesis cooperative members,and it is doubtful that such simplistic categorizations

have ever related the complexities of consciousnessanywhere. Instead, much like the vulgar Marxisms,the Genesis OW tended to ignore these social, cul-tural, and historical specificities to flatten, in effect,the many historical dimensions of the interplay be-tween social, cultural, and material existence.

In what follows, I provide an ethnographic ac-count of the early stages of the Genesis cooperativestarting in 2006 with an eye toward accounting for theorganizational knowledge, even mentality that mem-bers gained. With this necessary background, I thenmove on to an account of the OWs implementation inOctober and November of 2007.

The Origins of Genesis

A spider conducts operations that resemble thoseof a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many anarchitect in the construction of her cells. But whatdistinguishes the worst architect from the best ofbees is this, that the architect raises his structurein the imagination before he erects it in reality.[Marx [1867] 1930:178]

Genesis is the second cooperative enterpriseproject initiated by CSD and based on the philosophythat the means of production should be democrati-cally held in common by its workers. From CSDsperspective, the principal and immediate objective ofthis project was to generate a sustainable, if relativelysmall, source of employment for the municipality ofCiudad Sandino.

When Genesis was formally inaugurated in De-cember 2006, it consisted of a group of 18 womenfrom Ciudad Sandino whom CSD had recruited to bethe founding members. Although the socias, as coop-erative members are termed, would eventually gainfull administrative control and ownership, the role ofthe NGO in the early stages of the enterprise was to

provide the necessary training, legal and organiza-tional support, and start-up capital in the form oflow-interest loans. Based on a constantly evolvingtemplate that was first generated in the NGOsoriginal cooperative project, an industrial sewingcooperative, CSD envisioned socias as doing the bulkof the legwork in building the cooperative from theground up, in the process of which the socias wouldlearn by trial and error, rather than simulation, todevelop effective administrative, managerial, and de-cision-making structures for their future cooperative.

This meant that, while the NGO established the broadguidelines and conditions for membership in the co-operative for example, that each hour of workwould contribute a predetermined amount of socialcapital toward the buy-in of US$500 the task ofconstructing the spinning plant facility fell to the so-cias themselves.

The original members of the cooperative com-prised a group of women ranging in age from 18 to 80who claimed a diverse range of political and socialidentities. They possessed various professional, pre-professional, and other specialized skills andexperiences. And, coming from many different socio-economic and class situations, they ultimately hadmany different reasons for wanting to be part of theproject. Even before they were part of Genesis, letalone participants in the OW, it is certainly safe to saythat they did not possess a consciousnesses that couldbe so narrowly defined as artisanal or individual-istic. For one, as mothers [and heads of household],

remarked Jasmine, a Genesis socia,

We know how to organize. We cook, we clean, wemanage the kids, and we try to make ends meetwhen we need to. You have to be organized inorder manage all of the tasks of the day. Some-times its impossible to do it all by yourself, soyou also have to find support in other people.

Other socias gained important organizationaland leadership knowledge while enlisted in theSandinista military during the 1979 revolution or thesubsequent Contra War, participating in workersunions during the 1990s, or, in the case of one mem-ber, employment as a lawyer for the national police.

The initial months of Genesis precooperativephase solidified that organizational knowledge whilealso creating ample opportunity for new organiza-tional experiences. While some of these may appear atfirst glance to involve the navigation of mundane,bureaucratic activities, as Weber (1978:956) pointsout, all are central to the operation of large-scaleenterprises in the political, administrative, and eco-nomic realm. The first steps in long, arduous processoccurred during the initial organizational meetings inJanuary of 2007, which covered the business of elect-

ing the provisional executive board (junta directiva),the purpose of which was to organize and direct thegeneral memberships efforts.

Recognizing that the cooperatives membershipwould eventually need to grow significantly to meetthe demands of a full-scale cotton spinning plant, thejuntas first act was to canvass for new members inCiudad Sandino. Lacking a central public forum,however, doing so required the organization of thegroups efforts to go door to door or to arrange groupinformational meetings. Although the tools for




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accomplishing this were only a white board and amarker, around which they gathered at one membershome, the act of drawing up a work plan while work-ing around the responsibilities of each socia to thecooperative and home life was an immensely compli-cated undertaking. Moreover, while the tasks of settingup and running meetings and evaluating and screening

prospective members were easy for some, others wereforced to deal directly with personal limitations such asa fear of public speaking. The coordination of the sumof these endeavors, and the recognition that each wasresponsible for communicating with the group insteadof making her own way, proved a valuable skill set asthe project moved along.

By the end of the month Genesis had expandedtheir membership to just under 50 socias, including anumber of men.3 Although the labor thus far contrib-uted toward each ones social capital (i.e., buy-in),they were nevertheless in the tenuous situation ofworking without direct remuneration. Socias there-

fore voted to form two shifts, each working half a day,to give individuals the flexibility to be able to tendto other business. With this organization of timeand with the junta coordinating the work dividedbetween the two shifts, they began the physically in-tense labor of preparing the grounds for the facility.They cut down or uprooted trees and bushes usingonly small hatchets and machetes, hauled off moundsof trash and rusty scrap metal, and set up a small of-fice and meeting place in the shade of a Guanacastetree. An ongoing project during this time was also toproduce the concrete blocks and losetas (long, concreteslabs) for the primary structure of the facility. Thistask was significantly aided by the infrastructure leftbehind by a now-defunct concrete block-making en-terprise (bloquera) that CSD had sponsored a decadebefore. Each of the two shifts divided up into threeteams and established a rudimentary bloquera pro-duction line. With a tractor and trailer loaned by CSD,one team made trips to a dry riverbed known as LaTrinidad, dug up sand, and hauled it back to theindustrial complex. Another group mixed the appro-priate proportions of sand, concrete, and water tomake the block mixture. And yet another groupoperated the bloquera, a startlingly loud machine that

compressed the mixture into eight-shaped blocks.Meanwhile, the junta performed the organiza-tional role of prioritizing tasks, constructing long- andshort-term work plans, and directing the groups ef-forts toward specific goals, making sure that the laborinvolved was divided up equitably. Yet, power oper-ated in the other direction as well. In constantdialogue with the general membership, and uponconstant (and publicly broadcast) threat of removal,the junta was not allowed to sequester themselves tothe office and send out directives. Rather, they were

required to work side by side with everyone else. Itis important to show that no one thinks of herself asmore important than the others, explained Laya, thetreasurer. We all do the same work and contributethe same amount.

If this physical labor had a clearly defined end-point, building the social structure of the cooperative

was significantly less straightforward. Those who hadnever before taken on leadership roles some ofwhom, in fact, had never held a formal job before found themselves directing the activities of 40 people.In so doing, they (successfully or unsuccessfully)learned how to be assertive without appearing offi-cious. Others, including the men, found themselves inthe unfamiliar position of taking directions from wo-men in their community, forcing them, to someextent, to cease treating their coworkers as womenand to understand them to possess a common mem-bership and equal status. Of course, this did not workout for everyone involved. Five members dropped

out during the first 6 months and three more wereejected for being disruptive and divisive.

Although there existed no single idiom in every-day parlance for the social transformation that theyboth initiated and experienced, socias frequentlycharacterized the feelings of mutual respect for oneanother, regardless of individual political preferences,religious identities, or interpersonal differences, interms of civic solidarity (solidaridad cvica). A groupinterview with eleven socias during August of 2007sheds some light on the idea. Cecilia explained,

The way we treat one another is based on mutual

respect and professionalism. We do not pour ourhearts out to one another or bring our problemsfrom home to work, even though weve all in-vested our lives in this project.

To this assertion Dalia responded:

Civic solidarity is how one aligns oneself (ali-nearse) and ones attitudes toward the group,recognizing that, regardless of disagreements wemight have, a common thread binds our fates to-gether. Sometimes that thread may be strained bydisagreements or outside factors, but wevelearned that in order to make it strong we need to

communicate and respect one another.

In contrast to many discourses of consciousness,civic solidarity for these socias is not some individua-ted substance to be gained or acquired. Rather, itis a matter of aligning oneself (alinearse), in the re-flexive sense of the word, so that ones relationshipsare built on mutual respect and ones attitudes andoutlooks are harmonious with those of others. AsCecilia pointed out, gaining a collective sense of ci-vic ethic is not enough for solidarity in its own right.




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Individuals also have to adopt as part of their con-ception of themselves, and thus in terms of theirorientation toward the group, a relational identifica-tion as a civic person: We each have our individualjobs in the cooperative, but we also have to under-stand that part of the job is a responsibility to otherpeople in the cooperative.

For many, the transformation of the landscapeserved as a symbol for the social transformation of thegroup. Out of a tangled, rubble-filled mess appeared aflat, dusty area bearing the promise of future con-struction. Alicia summarized some of the views of hercoworkers during a second group interview:

We could visualize where the factory was goingto be built . . . [pointing into the distance] the mainentrance over there, and the factory floor overhere. We are poor women, only a handful of ushave a high school diploma. Up until now, wenever thought it would possible to achieve such a

thing . . . a factory that we own . . . in our lives.

Echoes of Marxs architect abound in Aliciasimagination of the factory as well as their collectivecapacity to own and run it. But while an architect, byvirtue of self-consciousness, may erect a building inher imagination, realizing the building, giving it mat-eriality, is a different matter altogether. The work ofconstruction on the Genesis cooperative was an in-tensely social process that required a shared idea ofwhat is going on, an effective and fair division oflabor, an equitable scheme for remunerating labor, aswell as a common understanding of the conditions of

possibility, given resources like land and capital.Apart from the facility itself, the social experience oforganizing a cooperative was further complicated bythe drive to construct a democratic and participatoryadministrative structure based on an idea of commonmembership. Although the reality of the matter is ofcourse infinitely messier than can be easily summa-rized here, shot through with the many complexitiesand inequalities of everyday interaction, the model ofcooperativism embraced by socias is one that seeks toavoid the systematic alienation from decision makingand other creative activities that is so common forworkers in conventional enterprises. In effect, part of

becoming a cooperative member in this case, bycontributing the labor required for the membershipbuy-in is the primary social process by whicheach socia comes to understand that she is (sometimesquite literally) an architect of the project. As Arielatold me in an interview in August of 2007:

As a group, we are building our economic future.Everyone has the right to speak and be heard andmake her opinions known. And as cooperativemembers it is important for all of us to listen. We

must reach consensus, our visions must be inharmony with one another.

Organizing the Organizers: Constructing a ModelWorkshop

Roger and I greeted Tobas in the largest of the

three rooms in CSDs main office, where he wasawaiting the cup of coffee Roger had promised to himand carefully arranging his notepad, a stack of well-worn papers, and a blue binder on a wicker table witha thin, glass top. After some brief pleasantries, helaunched into what seemed to be a prepared lectureon the OW, the intention of which was to prime us onthe workshops philosophy, its basic set-up, and thehighlights of its implementation over the years, paus-ing only occasionally for questions. When weresurfaced 45 minutes later, it occurred to me thatRoger and the other CSD staff member who had beenin attendance at the beginning of the meeting had

both left the room to accept phone calls and had sub-sequently failed to return. Tobas and I chatted brieflyabout my role as the technical director, about thedifferences between the OW and the Grameen Bankmicrocredit model, and about the institutional biasesagainst small producers and individualized entrepre-neurial activity that make them untenable in the openmarket, and he repeated his position that the moreappropriate and effective solution to the structuralproblem of unemployment lay in the promise oflarge-scale enterprises. The Genesis cooperative, hecontinued, will provide a model case study for howconsciousness-building, capacitation, is necessary forsuch an enterprise to succeed.

Our next stop was the introductory meeting withthe Genesis socias, which Tobas titled Organizingthe Organizers (Organizar los Organizadores). Forreasons still unknown to me, this meeting invited theparticipation of only the 12 members of the junta di-rectiva, rather than the full membership of thecooperative. Under the tin roof of the bloquera, thejunta assembled their multicolored plastic chairs in asemicircle opening up toward Tobas, who signaledthe beginning of the meeting by opening up hisblue notebook and laying out the basic principles of

the workshop in much the same manner as he haddone for me: that the organizational reigns would behanded over to the workshops participants; that theobjective of the capacitation was open ended andwas open to participants definition; and that the roleof the facilitator was only to function as an interme-diary, encouraging the active and critical reflection ofthe participants.

Although the messages were clear in and ofthemselves, how they were communicated seemedquite contradictory. During the meeting or afterward,




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Tobas asked no questions about the Genesis cooper-ative or its history, nor about the specificorganizational experiences or skills that socias mayhave gained thus far. In other words, the concepts oforganizational consciousness and conscientizationwere imparted to the socias, who were in turn posi-tioned as possessing an artisanal consciousness, a

mentality, he explained, that is fundamentally resis-tant to adapt on its own to more complicated contexts.In contrast to the message that he was there only toencourage the participants, moreover, his presumedrole as an authority on artisan consciousness was fur-ther solidified when he proceeded to discuss hisexpertise in development, providing examples of the25 years worth of OWs that he had staged as a facili-tator. Taken as a whole, the rhetorical effect of thiscommunicative event was to subsume all of the vari-ous contingencies, particularities, and processes thathad thus far given form to Genesis under a modelOW.

Tobas then continued to explain that, as a mat-ter of precedent, the structures of model OWs havetypically broken down into one of two types. Thecourse OW, on the one hand, works best for masscapacitations, including large-scale employment gen-eration projects in urban communities. Theenterprise OW, on the other hand, is run in the caseof existing communities who seek organizationaltraining. Normal circumstances for the Genesis OW,given the cooperatives long-term goals, would ofcourse dictate the enterprise model. The problem,Tobas told the junta, recognizing that at least onecondition of the OW its timing was not within thepower of the socias to decide, was that the project wasin such an early stage that it did not yet even have thebicycle of production, as it were, upon which sociaswere to be capacitated. In a move that left very littleroom for participants creative problem solving, hethen proceeded to indicate that the course-style OWwas the only choice available. The socias complied,and within the next half hour, with hands shooting upin the air one after another like a classroom, the groupdecided upon 12 courses to offer as part of the OWand identified family members, friends, or acquain-tances whom they could hire with OW funds to teach

courses ranging from brick making to electricity, car-pentry, cooking, management, accounting, welding,design, beauty, and English language. These courses,they voted, would not only be open to the generalmembership of the cooperative but also to anyonefrom broader Ciudad Sandino community whowished to attend.

Last but not least, embracing Tobass entreatyfor them to become the organizers of the workshop,the executive board made themselves the de factoleaders of the OW. It was only when the results of that

meeting were reported to the General Assembly thefollowing day that most socias discovered, first, thatthe allegedly open-ended workshop had already beenorganized, and, second, that they knew almost noth-ing about it. The majority of this meeting was thendedicated to answering a handful of questions on theOW: why certain classes had been chosen and not

others, the relevance of the class to the cooperative,why the junta directiva did not consult the generalmembership, and who was going to be paid to teachthese classes.

Over the next 40 days, socias and communitymembers, side by side, took classes of their ownchoosing. The junta, meanwhile, continued to operateunder the now self-applied title of organizers,overseeing the implementation of these classes. Oneof many consequences of this sudden differentiationof roles was that the de facto nonorganizer sociaswere now grouped with the Ciudad Sandino com-munity members. They found themselves in the

position of being the recipients of lectures on thevices (vicios) of organization, the artisan mentality(conciencia artesanal), and of course the idea of gainingorganizational consciousness (conciencia organizacio-nal), now such a common term with the junta that itwas part of their role as organizers to instill (incul-car), stimulate (estimular), or raise up (levantar) all in the transitive senses of these words.

The OW also had disruptive effects in the ad-ministrative structure of the cooperative. Havingregarded transparency as an important component ofleadership, the junta had up to this point taken tospending the day working along the other socias, thenretiring to the meeting area at the end of the work daywhere they would detail a work plan for the followingday or week and discuss finances or any membershipissues that may have arisen since the previous meet-ing. Sometimes going on for hours, these meetingswere open to anyone who desired to bring an issue totheir attention, check in on the junta, or simply sit andlisten. As one socia put it, We watch them carefullybecause everywhere power breeds generalillos [littlegenerals] . . . in our cooperative, the junta is wherethey should be, with la asamblea [the general assem-bly], not above them. This changed once the junta

began to double as organizers of the OW. Per Tobasssuggestion, organizational meetings were closed tothe public in order to avoid, as he put it, the encum-brance of every dissenting voice of the wholegroup. What was to Tobas a matter of efficiency,however, was to others a sudden lack of transpar-ency. Indeed, as Mara put it, comparing the positionof the socias to the community members also takingthe OW classes, We have no more right to knowwhat is going on in our cooperative than anyone elsein Ciudad Sandino.




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In an ethnographic view, the discontentment ofthe socias with the junta directiva was nowhere morevisible than in the whispers of small groups whocongregated for lunch or those who walked hometogether, talking about their days encounterswith junta members. For many of these socias theterm organizational consciousness (conciencia

organizacional) as conciencia in Spanish means bothconsciousness and conscience was the topic of agreat many discussions and jokes. For example, theend of the OW was celebrated by a work fair (fera deltrabajo), in which class-goers were encouraged toshow off their new skills, such as being able to repairelectrical devices, to build a wooden table or chair, orto use a computer. Afterwards, I accompanied agroup to celebrate at the local cantina, and in whatturned out to be a late and drunken night, one sociawas inspired to parody the popular radio song, Con-ciencia, by the Bronx-based bachata band Aventura.The new version, which was widely and surrepti-

tiously repeated thereafter, reveals a measure ofdisdain for the language of consciousness and the per-ceived condescension of its use by the junta during theOW. The chorus line, Mi conciencia me domina, una voz am me dice que tu eres infiel (My conscience dominatesme, a voice tells me that you are unfaithful) became Miconciencia me domina, una voz a m me dice que somoslentos (My consciousness dominates me, a voice tellsme that we are slow-witted). Likewise, esa voz tambienme dice que mi vida es aburrida que cambie mi forma de ser(that voice also tells me that my life is boring, that Ishould change my way of being) became esa voz tam-bien me dice que mi vida es inefectiva, tengo que cambiar mi

forma de trabajar(that voice also tells me that my life isineffective, I have to change my way of working).

In the coming weeks, rumors of fraud and theftcame to a head. General Assembly meetings resumedwith the OWs conclusion, but, instead of being dedi-cated to planning construction, most of the discussionrevolved around nepotism in selecting and payingteachers as well as the lack of transparency in ac-counting for the OWs funds, which had amounted tonearly US$30,000. That discussion, however, was cutshort in early December of 2007 on a note of tensionand uncertainty when socias left for their scheduled

holiday vacation (which in Nicaragua is 4 weeks,covering La Pursima in early December and Christ-mas). When they returned to work in January, thejunta discovered that the comite de vigilancia (vigilancecommittee), a subcommittee within the General As-sembly, had mobilized a majority of the socias to voteno confidence in the junta and demand a financialaudit. The accusations of fraud and theft, even thoughthey were never really substantiated, compelled threemembers of the original junta to drop out of the co-operative altogether.

In the months following the OW, trying to cometo terms with the difference between the model OWand what had happened at Genesis, I decided to askmany of the remaining socias what they perceived thegoal of the OW to have been and to what extent theythough that it had succeeded or failed. The resultsdemonstrate the great degree to which the socias had

actually been dispossessed of the knowledge, lan-guage, and concepts of the workshop, thusempowering others to be its organizers. About halfunderstood it to be about generating employment inthe Ciudad Sandino community, the success of whichwas measured by the ability to take in some extramoney on account of the new skills. The rest under-stood the OW to be a basic organizational training forthe cooperative, but took issue with the distractionthat it represented from the primary goal of gettingthe cooperative on its feet. Perhaps most noteworthywas the change in these individuals attitudes towardthe cooperative, given the recent conflicts. Whereas

the general attitude the previous summer had beenquite optimistic, three-quarters of the socias now ex-pressed reluctance about either the organizationalmodel of the cooperative in general, or, that theGenesis cooperative in particular would fail beforeeven opening its doors a fear that was only exacer-bated by the delay in the construction schedule forwhich the OW was responsible.

With food prices on the rise in Nicaragua alarger event that was later termed the world foodcrisis Genesis socias were also feeling the pinch ofthe temporarily nonremunerative aspects of their co-operative work. In fact, in Ciudad Sandino markets,the prices of staples like rice and beans had doubled inonly a year, forcing many socias with only one otherstable household income to eliminate from their bud-gets nonessentials such as vegetables and fruit,laundry soap, or bus fare. In this context, workingwithout pay in the cooperative was a heavy burden.By May, several more socias dropped out to search forwork, while others decided to pursue outside worksimultaneously. For example, some decided to out-source their buy-in labor to family members,friends, or neighbors at a fraction of the normal socialcapital rate while they pursued work elsewhere, thus

allowing them to maintain their membership in theevent of its success. Another group decided to poolresources and draw on some of their newly mintedOW skills to start a small, informal bakery.

For the newly elected junta directiva, this was ofcourse a troubling development. Arguing that theprocess of being a cooperative member was as much asocial as an economic issue, they decided to require allsocial capital labor to be performed by the person himor herself. Consequently, socias were torn betweenwanting to maintain their membership in the cooper-




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ative but, economically speaking, not being able to. InJune of 2008, as a solution to that struggle, the juntaand the general membership together voted to peti-tion CSD, the funder of the project, to provide atemporary loan to match, in direct payment to the so-cias, any social capital value generated. As Hernan,the new treasurer of the cooperative, remarked,

People need stability to think and to focus . . . Nowthat people can eat, we can get on with aligning our-selves [alinearnos] as a cooperative.

ConclusionThe successful management of communal re-

sources is undoubtedly a central component ofdemocratic, economic development (McCay andAcheson 1987; Acheson 1989; Ostrom 1990; Agrawal2002). The question of how to do so, however hownot only to generate those collectivities, collective re-sources, and governance structures in the first placebut also to manage them in the long term is infinitely

more complex. As an answer, the OW suggests theconcept of organizational consciousness: that a groupof people may, by way of intense, critical reflection,come to an understanding about the social and mate-rial conditions of their existence and, in so doing,generate a mentality and according set of organiza-tional practices adapted to those conditions.

The question that I have posed in this article is, toput it simply, whether or not a workshop like the OWprovides its participants with something they are notalready equipped to do on their own terms. In so do-ing, it is necessary to ask: What is consciousness that itcan feasibly be instilled through a workshop? Or, al-ternately, what is consciousness that it can shape theway a group of people work together for a commongoal? Consciousness has enjoyed a great deal of ex-planatory power with regard to social movements(Alvarez et al. 1998) as well as economic transformation(Hobsbawm 1971), but at the same time it has un-doubtedly suffered from disproportionately little con-crete, critical definition. As such, is it simply a brickbat,or can it be made into a precise, conceptual tool?

The case of the Genesis OW demonstrates someof the consequences of the disjuncture between so-cially, culturally, and historically mediated narratives

of consciousness that cooperative members express interms of aligning oneself (alinearse), on the onehand, and the abstract concept of concept of con-sciousness mobilized by the OW occupying, as itdoes, the narrow space of objective interactionswith the material world on the other. In so doing,Genesis demonstrates that, while the language ofconsciousness may often function as a cornerstone ofa movement or project to form a collectivity, it is alsoeminently clear that there is more complexity in thesocial world than is dreamt of in any one philosophy.

In that light, perhaps it is also true that the OW couldbenefit from an expanded view of both organizationand consciousness, one that recognizes, in addition tothe specific habits of workers, the entrenched powerrelations between development agencies and targetpopulations as well as between the organizers them-selves. After all, there are as many ways to organize

and maintain collective enterprises as there are tocreate stable sociomaterial relations.

Notes

1 The Portuguese term conscientizac ao was introduced inFreire (1970) and has been translated to English as cons-cientization, which is the meaning intended here. TheEnglish term capacitation, likewise, derives from the Por-tuguese capacitacao, and it is de Morais meaning that I usehere (Carmen and Sobrado 2000).

2 De Morais is careful to point out that this is not to say that

the ideological structures of organization that are typicalto the small producer . . . [are not] excellent in their ownright and in a non-conflictual environment (Sobrado2000:17). Artisanal consciousness is only valued as badhabits, deviations, or vices when transferred to the to-tally different that is, complex social organization.

3 Spanish collective nouns are typically masculine whenthey contain one or more male subjects, even if there are50 females. I choose to use the term socias because coop-erative members refer to their collectivity in such terms.

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DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1417.2010.01043.x



Documents

Fisher.building Consciousness - The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative