by Daniel Lim
Four Tiers of Attitude about Social Change
September 3, 2010 Topic: Social Change Theory
In the years I have been involved in social change work, starting as a college student (now, graduate student) and as just a person alive on this planet, I have had the fortune of witnessing activism of many different scopes and levels of impact. Activism takes place in community-based organizations enabling the chronically unemployed to get livable wage jobs. It thrives in national organizations lobbying for earth- and human-healthy agricultural policies. It flourishes in individual thinkers offering alternative global visions to capitalism. It can even be found pulsating silently in the hearts of spiritual leaders, often left out of the social change discourse, who are helping people create change in their daily lives. As I discover more and more social change activists and organizations and learn about the work that they do, I find myself subconsciously grouping them in different tiers based on their worldview and operating mission. What I have developed as a result of this largely subconscious judgment is a rough model for categorizing different social change projects as a tool to predict their long-term contribution to creating sustainable, equitable and happy societies.
I call my model the “four tiers of attitude about social change”. I am explicitly using the word “tier” because I am with no doubt judging some forms of social change activism as better than others and placing them on a higher tier than the others. I am also targeting attitude about social change and not social change work because I ultimately believe that it is the attitudes and beliefs that activists or organizations carry in their work and not the work itself that best determine their long-term positive contribution to social change.
