Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA23133 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 15 Feb 2001 02:08:19 GMT From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 20:11:53 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: South American Water-Boiling Message-ID: <3A8AE689.3934.1F9594@localhost> In-reply-to: <00b001c096e5$01720260$58b35140@proftim> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 14 Feb 2001, at 16:19, Tim Rhodes wrote:
> Joe Dees wrote:
>
> <<<Where can I find the article concerning some South American tribal
> peoples' reluctance to boil their water even though it helps them to
> avoid disease?>>>
>
> Chapter 1 of Rogers, Everett M. and Shoemaker, F.F. (1995) Diffusion
> of Innovations. A Cross-cultural Approach. 4th ed. Free Press: New
> York.
>
> (Quoted below)
>
> -Tim Rhodes
>
> ====================
> Water Boiling in a Peruvian Village:
> Diffusion That Failed
>
> The public health service in Peru attempts to introduce innovations to
> villagers to improve their health and lengthen their lives. This
> change agency encourages people to install latrines, to burn garbage
> daily, to control house flies, to report cases infectious diseases,
> and to boil drinking water. These innovations involve major changes
> in thinking and behavior for Peruvian villagers, who do not understand
> the relationship of sanitation to illness. Water boiling is an
> especially important health practice for villagers in Peru. Unless
> they boil their drinking water, patients who are cured of infectious
> diseases in village medical clinics often return within a month to be
> treated again for the same disease.
>
> A two-year water boiling campaign conducted in Los Molinas, a peasant
> village of 200 families in the coastal region of Peru, persuaded only
> eleven housewives to boil water. From the viewpoint of the public
> health agency, the local health worker, Nelida, had a simple task: to
> persuade the housewives of Los Molinas to add water boiling to their
> pattern of daily behavior. Even with the aid of a medical doctor, who
> gave public talks on water boiling, and fifteen village housewives who
> were already boiling water before the campaign, Nelida's diffusion
> campaign failed. To understand why, we need to take a closer look at
> the culture, the local environment, and the individuals in Los
> Molinas.
>
> Most residents of Los Molinas are peasants who work as field hands on
> local plantations. Water is carried by can, pail, gourd, or cask.
> The three sources of water in Los Molinas include a seasonal
> irrigation ditch close to the village, a spring more than a mile away
> from the village, and a public well whose water most villagers
> dislike. All three sources are subject to pollution at all times and
> show contamination whenever tested. Of the three sources, the
> irrigation ditch is the most commonly used. It is closer to most
> homes, and the villagers like its taste.
>
> Although it is not feasible for the village to install a sanitary
> water system, the incidence of typhoid and other water-home diseases
> could be greatly reduced by boiling the water before it is consumed.
> During her two-year campaign in Los Molinas, Nelida made several
> visits to every home in the village but devoted especially intensive
> efforts to twenty-one families. She visited each of these selected
> families between fifteen and twenty-five times; eleven of these
> families now boil their water regularly.
>
> What kinds of persons do these numbers represent? We describe three
> village housewives--one who boils water to obey custom, one who was
> persuaded to boil water by the health worker, and one of the many who
> rejected the innovation--in order to add further insight into the
> process of diffusion.
>
> Mrs. A: Custom-Oriented Adopter.
>
> Mrs. A is about forty and suffers from a sinus infection. The Los
> Molinas villagers call her a "sickly one." Each morning, Mrs. A boils
> a potful of water and uses it throughout the day. She has no
> understanding of germ theory, as explained by Nelida; her motivation
> for water boiling is a complex local custom of "hot" and "cold"
> distinctions. The basic principle of this belief system is that all
> foods, liquids, medicines, and other objects are inherently hot or
> cold, quite apart from their actual temperature. In essence, hot-cold
> distinctions serve as a series of avoidances and approaches in such
> behavior as pregnancy, child-rearing, and the health-illness system.
>
> Boiled water and illness are closely linked in the norms of Los
> Molinas; by custom, only the ill use cooked, or "hot" water. Once an
> individual becomes ill, it is unthinkable to eat pork (very cold) or
> drink brandy (very hot). Extremes of hot and cold must be avoided by
> the sick; therefore, raw water, which is perceived to be very cold,
> must he boiled to make it appropriate to consume.
>
> Villagers learn from early childhood to dislike boiled water. Most
> can tolerate cooked water only if a flavoring, such as sugar,
> cinnamon, lemon, or herbs, is added. Mrs. A likes a dash of cinnamon
> in her drinking water. The village belief system involves no notion of
> bacteriological contamination of water. By tradition, boiling is aimed
> at eliminating the "cold" quality of unboiled water, not the harmful
> bacteria. Mrs. A drinks boiled water in obedience to local norms,
> because she perceives herself as ill.
>
> Mrs. B: Persuaded Adopter.
>
> The B family came to Los Molinas a generation ago, but they are still
> strongly oriented toward their birthplace in the Andes Mountains.
> Mrs. B worries about lowland diseases that she feels infest the
> village. It is partly because of this anxiety that the change agent,
> Nelida, was able to convince Mrs. B to boil water.
>
> Nelida is a friendly authority to Mrs. B (rather than a "dirt
> inspector" as she is seen by other housewives), who imparts useful
> knowledge and brings protection. Mrs. B not only boils water but also
> has installed a latrine and has sent her youngest child to the health
> center for a checkup.
>
> Mrs. B is marked as an outsider in the community of Los Molinas by her
> highland hairdo and stumbling Spanish. She will never achieve more
> than marginal social acceptance in the village. Because the community
> is not an important reference group to her, Mrs. B deviates from
> village norms on health innovations. With nothing to lose socially,
> Mrs. B gains in personal security by heeding Nelida's advice. Mrs.
> B's practice of boiling water has no effect on her marginal status.
> She is grateful to Nelida for teaching her how to neutralize the
> danger of contaminated water, which she perceives as a lowland peril.
>
> Mrs. C: Rejector.
>
> This housewife represents the majority of Los Molinas families who
> were not persuaded by the efforts of the change agents during their
> two-year water-boiling campaign. In spite of Nelida's repeated
> explanations, Mrs. C does not understand germ theory. How, she
> argues, can microbes survive in water that would drown people? Are
> they fish? If germs are so small that they cannot be seen or felt,
> how can they hurt a grown person? There are enough real threats in
> the world to worry about--poverty and hunger-without bothering about
> tiny animals one cannot see, hear, touch, or smell. Mrs. C's
> allegiance to traditional village norms is at odds with the boiling of
> water. A firm believer in the hot-cold superstition, she feels that
> only the sick must drink boiled water.
>
> Why Did the Diffusion of Water Boiling Fail?
>
> This intensive two-year campaign by a public health worker in a
> Peruvian village of 200 families, aimed at persuading housewives to
> boil drinking water, was largely unsuccessful. Nelida was able to
> encourage only about 5 percent of the population, eleven families, to
> adopt the innovation. The diffusion campaign in Los Molinas failed
> because of the cultural beliefs of the villagers. Local tradition
> links hot foods with illness. Boiling water makes water less "cold"
> and hence, appropriate only for the sick. But if a person is not ill,
> the individual is prohibited by village norms from drinking boiled
> water. Only individuals who are unintegrated into local networks risk
> defying community norms on water boiling. An important factor
> regarding the adoption rate of an innovation is its compatibility with
> the values, beliefs, and past experiences of individuals in the social
> system. Nelida and her superiors in the public health agency should
> have understood the hot-cold belief system, as it is found throughout
> Peru (and in most nations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia). Here
> is an example of an indigenous knowledge system that caused the
> failure of a development program.
>
> Nelida's failure demonstrates the importance of interpersonal networks
> in the adoption and rejection of an innovation. Socially an outsider,
> Mrs. B was marginal to the Los Molinas community, although she had
> lived there for several years. Nelida was a more important referent
> for Mrs. B than were her neighbors, who shunned her. Anxious to
> secure social prestige from the higher-status Nelida, Mrs. B adopted
> water boiling, not because she understood the correct health reasons,
> but because she wanted to obtain Nelida's approval. Thus we see that
> the diffusion of innovations is a social process, as well as a
> technical matter.
>
> Nelida worked with the wrong housewives if she wanted to launch a
> self-generating diffusion process in Los Molinas. She concentrated
> her efforts on village women like Mrs. A and Mrs. B. Unfortunately,
> they were perceived as a sickly one and a social outsider, and were
> not respected as social models of appropriate water-boiling behavior
> by the other women. The village opinion leaders, who could have
> activated local networks to spread the innovation, were ignored by
> Nelida.
>
> How potential adopters view the change agent affects their willingness
> to adopt new ideas. In Los Molinas, Nelida was perceived differently
> by lower- and middle-status housewives. Most poor families saw the
> health worker as a "snooper sent to Los Molinas to ply for dirt and to
> press already harassed housewives into keeping cleaner homes. Because
> the lower-status house wives had less free time, they were unlikely to
> talk with Nelida about water boiling. Their contacts outside the
> community were limited, and as a result, they saw the technically
> proficient Nelida with eyes bound by the social horizons and
> traditional beliefs of Los Molinas. They distrusted this outsider,
> whom they perceived as a social stranger. Nelida, who was middle
> class by Los Molinas standards, was able to secure more positive
> results from housewives whose socioeconomic level and cultural
> background were more similar to hers. This tendency for more
> effective communication to occur with those who are more similar to a
> change agent occurs in most diffusion campaigns.
>
> Nelida was too "innovation-oriented" and not "client-oriented" enough.
> Unable to put herself in the role of the village housewives, her
> attempts at persuasion failed to reach her clients because the message
> was not suited to their needs. Nelida did not begin where the
> villagers were; instead she talked to them about germ theory, which
> they could not (and probably did not need to) understand. These are
> only some of the factors that produced the diffusion failure in Los
> Molinas. Once the remainder of the book has been read, it will be
> easier to understand the water-boiling case.
>
> This case illustration is based on Wellin (1955).
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
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>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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