Opinion-based groups and the restoration of civil society

Civil disorder, military disaster, and natural disaster all produce changes in the world that demand responses from the people affected and those who witness it. Restoring civil society is a complex and collaborative adaptation to those changes that itself demands social change action. We have argued that in order for those responses to be effectively implemented they need to be coordinated, that this rests on united action by those who desire improvements, and that this can be brought about through the dynamic crystallization of opinion-based group identities. The opinion-based group interaction method (Thomas & McGarty, 2009) provides a useful conceptual bridge to models of deliberative democracy, but the processes of forming opinion-based groups and using themto achieve and reduce change are all around us, all of the time. We believe that there is no substitute for creating positive social change other than for the people who desire change to form groups with others who want the same thing. Opinion-based group memberships provide the conceptual tools for us to understand how people do that, while drawing upon and going beyond existing social categories.