Mutual aid as community development : accessing potable water in rural El Salvador

Abstract

This study looks at the potable water problematic in the rural Salvadoran community of Delicias in the department of Cuscatlán. It proposes a new approach to community management of a common-property resource (CPR) like potable water by focusing on the cooperative aspects of human nature hardwired into us by natural selection. This cooperative instinct was initially referred to as Mutual Aid by Russian evolutionists, and was introduced to the English speaking world by Peter Kropotkin in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century. Although the Western obsession with practicality competition and conflict in the sciences and social sciences, known as the "English doctrine", has resulted in a serious neglect of this cooperative evolutionary perspectives, in recent years scientists have begun to re-evaluate the value of cooperation in the evolutionary process. In this study we will look at how this re-emerging area of study can inform community development thinking and practice.