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While small communities in Third World countries usually seem at the mercy of central governments and foreign capitalists, local activists can help exploited peoples correct environmental abuses and social injustices and seize control of their own destinies. Kicking Off the Bootstraps is a powerful case history of such an effort. It describes a grassroots activist movement that emerged in the Puerto Rican community of Salinas to counter the poverty and economic dependence experienced by its citizens in the wake of "Operation Bootstrap," a post-World War II industrial development program. D#65533;borah Berman Santana examines the efforts of the community to develop its own economic strategy based primarily on environmentally and socially responsible uses of local natural and human resources.Berman Santana shows how local activists are seeking to empower the Salinas community to make decisions concerning economic development. She evaluates present-day efforts to develop positive alternatives, examining the motivations of the activists, the nature of their projects, their efforts to mobilize the community, their dealings with government and other organizations, and the obstacles they face. In a closing chapter, she addresses the potential roles of community leaders, outside activists, local businesses, and government in actualizing these alternatives.A testimony to one community's efforts to determine its own future, Kicking Off the Bootstraps deals with real issues such as control over productive resources, quality of life, and environmental health. It also extends an examination of community-directed activism to an exploration of policy implications for sustainable development. While this concept is often too vague to be applied to real strategies, the Salinas experience provides a clear idea of what sustainable development can--and should--mean in actual practice.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• List of Illustrations(p. vii)
• Acknowledgments(p. ix)
• List of Abbreviations(p. xi)
• Introduction: Why Salinas? Why This Book? A Personal Account(p. 3)
• 1 Searching for Alternatives(p. 8)
• 2 The Geographical Setting(p. 27)
• 3 Exploitation(p. 46)
• 4 Resistance(p. 78)
• 5 Beyond Resistance(p. 107)
• 6 The Obstacles(p. 144)
• 7 Lessons of the Salinas Experience(p. 162)
• Notes(p. 181)
• Bibliography(p. 193)
• Index(p. 207)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Santana (geography and planning, SUNY, Albany) combines microhistory with an analysis of grassroots activism, all within a broader concern with the critical need to find ways to define and create sustainable development in all its social, economic, and political dimensions. The people and ecology of Salinas, like many communities in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the less developed world, were used and then abandoned by a succession of multinational investors, leaving both in worse shape than before. Government efforts were ineffective in creating new initiatives to build the local economy, and at times it seemed government acted against local interests. Santana examines how local activists, many of whom had been educated in the capital but returned home to work, have begun to establish new, locally owned, small-scale industries that build on the community's skill base and on the local environment and its resources, but in a manner that is sustainable rather than hostile to water, air, and land quality and allows for a greater degree of local control over future progress. The level of detail in the history of Salinas and in the transformative work by local activists should be of great value to readers who might wish to see how grassroots initiatives progress over time. All levels. J. L. Dietz; California State University, Fullerton

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Déborah Berman Santana is assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Mills College.