Good afternoon
I hope I can relate well with technology
because I always have problems with it…
...this is one of the problems of being an anthropologist:
we are pretty useless with technology.
Well, I guess you're a bit tired,
I can see it on your faces.
So I thought we could do something fun.
For example, we could do a test for the driving license. Will you join me?
[The informal power. Reciprocity, social innovation lever]
Just kidding...
But the truth is that the process of obtaining a driving license certainly lacks innovation...
Obviously we will talk about social innovation.
And when we talk about social innovation,
what usually comes to mind is the idea of innovation,
which means something new,
and also the social idea, therefore, something for citizens, for people.
So we are talking about education, health,
healthcare, etc.
The problem we usually have is that when we think about social innovation
we do it within a fairly restricted framework.
We could take the analogy of the Highway Code,
which fully determines the way we perceive, think, act and drive.
But today I will not speak about that.
Precisely, my point today is to show you another reality,
one that stays away from the well established and formal codes.
And we are going to talk about informal power:
about reciprocity as a lever for innovation.
But I have to say that even in closed systems such as the Highway Code
there is also room for improvisation.
And this is what we will speak about today.
When we think of social innovation,
we usually think of a solution
for people who have some kind of dependence,
elderly, chronically ill -as it has been discussed in previous papers-,
immigrants, etc.
I love this photograph,
it’s from a fieldwork that we did during a project in which we were innovating
for the elderly.
It shows a town in Italy, and I love it because I think
it conveys a sense of wellbeing
that goes beyond the material dimension,
and I think that this is an important aspect.
In several towns in Italy, but not only in Italy
we found this existential dimension, moral,
linked to the benefits for retired people,
for dependent people.
And in this case, the square served as a meeting place,
a space of relations and exchange,
an informal exchange among the neighbors in the village
where services, companionship or assistance was exchanged.
And where the community had this sense of helping one-another
and an obligation to correspond.
And this dimension is something that we found
in many cities and in many other countries.
The problem is that when we deal with an issue of social innovation,
when we think of innovating social services,
we usually completely ignore the moral dimension,
the values that people have,
this idea of reciprocity, of exchange.
And we simply relegate to what formal logic is:
we see the dependent as a receiver,
as someone who only needs to be provided for by a punctual service,
and we think just from an operational, functional point of view.
And we forget completely that existential dimension that exists in all of us.
And this is one of the most important challenges that exist in social innovation.
The key question is:
How to respond to social innovation?
How to innovate services,
and how to do it in a deficit -budget cuts, etc.- environment
where it seems that we want to consign this social dimension to oblivion?
So, there is bad news, but there is also good news.
Some facts: here, we can see life expectancy.
This is great news; we are the first generation in history
that has extended our life expectancy.
And here you can see that. In countries like Spain, United Kingdom, Italy ...
we are positioned around 80 years or over 80 years,
and this is great news.
Obviously, the bad news is that all projections indicate
that in these countries the majority of the population over 65 years
will be over 100% in these growths.
And if we make it specific to a country like Spain,
according to official data,
we see that we are immersed in what experts call the demographic investment:
i.e. there are more people over 65 years than young people.
And obviously this has great impact,
not only on social services but also, as discussed above, in support services.
That is: as we live longer,
we will also get more chronic diseases,
which implies that support services (hospitals, etc.)
will see a great impact of people
who will need to be attended to for different types of diseases.
And the most important problem,
and we see it every day in the media,
is that at the governmental level,
the only response we're perceiving
is a total cut of budgets;
reducing everything to a purely monetary point.
From the point of view of governments,
who are increasingly reducing budgets,
my view is pessimistic.
But I have to say that it is very optimistic
when I look from the perspective of civil society, people.
We've seen cases here today
-and I think especially the last one, Patricia’s, is an example-
where Governments cut budgets,
but it is also true that more and more people want to get involved,
to participate, and to fight to solve these problems.
And this is great news,
and it’s something that we have found
in many of the projects we have worked in.
Let me share some examples from projects we have worked on:
A small village in Tuscany:
Sofia, 62
From the window she has access to the neighborhood.
The neighborhood is the center from where she can receive any assistance,
from getting some company to doing the shopping...
from the window, with the greengrocer across the street, and so on.
That is, the neighborhood has become a center of support
beyond what was purely formal support.
Reciprocity, the informal economy, informal exchanges worked.
This dimension has also been found in other countries
where we have been working.
In Senegal we also saw this dimension of reciprocity,
this informal power between people.
And in Senegal there is even a word,
teranga,
meaning the obligation to share,
the obligation to cook every day one portion more
in case someone unexpectedly arrives to your house
and you have to give him food.
In fact, as we were visiting one family,
Mr. Badji appeared, the man with the blue shirt, a traveling salesman.
He joined us and we all ate together.
That is,
in families that have less than three euros to live on each day,
we also see this aspect of reciprocity.
We also found this in Mumbai.
We were there with Karan, in the center of the photo,
an urban immigrant
who moved to Mumbai and who,
with his group of other urban migrants,
shared and helped each other.
They helped by lending each other product stocks
or attending to the selling when the other had to run an errand,
or they helped each other when one would go to visit his family,
in the village,
and acted like a messenger that carried information, money,
so on to the rest of the families.
We also found this power of sharing in Spain.
Here is Claudia, a dependent person
(she has bipolar disorder)
who has some abilities:
she likes to make dolls.
And she exchanges these dolls for services
within the community,
the neighborhood in the city.
As you can see,
this informal power knows no age;
here we have the case of Maria, 72,
who became the cook at the law firm
of the building she lived at.
The lawyers received healthier
and more affordable food every day,
and Maria received not only economic support
but also emotional;
someone to talk to
and obviously, as they were lawyers,
at the time she needed some information
about a legal process,
she received professional support too.
But what struck me the most
is that she felt she was useful.
This was the most important value of this informal power,
this informal exchange market
beyond our formalized one.
Now I ask you to think for a moment
about the force that lies
within this informal power,
in the informal network,
in reciprocity.
Think for a moment about its potential impact
in welfare policy,
assistance, education, etc.
And this power of reciprocity
is something that we considered when at one point
turned to us asking to help
to innovate the future of social services
in an autonomous community.
From the fieldwork we did,
and from the implication with various agents involved
not only in the fieldwork but also
in the cogeneration of ideas and solutions,
we learned a great lesson:
that it was possible to incorporate
this existential and moral dimension
that exists in the exchanges.
We must think that the exchange, the reciprocity,
exist in all societies in all parts of the world.
The only thing is that from the economical
and the formal logic of the market,
they have made us think that it does not exist.
But it does,
and we can reincorporate it.
And this was the objective we set for ourselves
when we started working on this project
“to define the future of social services“.
And we saw that there was an important challenge:
to incorporate the informal power of innovation
as a lever to innovate the future of social services.
Although the purpose of today
is not going into any details,
here you can see a summary
of what we did:
we built a platform,
a facilitator of social services
that tried to recover this existential dimension
that exists in the exchange,
this dimension of reciprocity,
and we facilitated the contact and the interaction
between what we called action communities,
which are basically friends,
family, neighborhood, the city...
We didn’t focus beyond the city
because proximity was an important aspect.
The platform, on the other hand,
helped to stimulate some action principles
that we sometimes forget:
experimentation, participation and reciprocity,
and established contact with several agents.
It even had a job centre
because it allowed people with disabilities
who were able to do any kind of work
to be hired by the hour.
And this was also an important aspect of the solution:
to focus not on people's disabilities,
but precisely in the potential.
As the example we have seen before
of the 25 year old girl, with bipolar disorder,
who during certain hours a day,
when she was not affected,
could do any type of job.
Ultimately, this is what we proposed through this platform.
You can see a brief example of how it works,
but the most important thing today
is not this explanation.
Today what matters is to transmit our experience.
And I think we have a historic opportunity.
We can totally reinvent the future of social services,
we can innovate in the social,
that's a great opportunity.
The welfare state,
so questioned now,
was not a reality for many centuries.
It was invented in the twentieth century.
And now we have a great opportunity
to reinvent the new welfare state
incorporating this existential dimension,
these moral values,
this reciprocity potential...
which all of us have and we share,
and which we have seen here today
in many presentations with real cases.
And we are a great example.
I firmly believe that we have a big challenge
and that this is a great opportunity for social innovation.
And I hope and desire that is the case for you all.
Thank you.