Communal work

Harambee (Swahili: [hɑrɑˈᵐbɛː]) is an East African (Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan) tradition of community self-help events, e.g. fundraising or development activities.

[2] An alternative, more recent, definition describes naffīr as 'to bring someone together from the neighborhood or community to carry out a certain project, such as building a house or providing help during the harvest season'.

For example, the term was used to refer to النَّفِّير الشَّعَبِي an-Naffīr aš-Šaʽabī or "the People's Militias" that operated in the central Nuba Mountains region in the early 1990s.

[7] The village's public facilities, such as irrigation, streets, and houses of worship (mosque, church or pura) are usually constructed through gotong royong, where the funds and materials are collected mutually.

Paul Michael Taylor and Lorraine V. Aragon state that "gotong royong [is] cooperation among many people to attain a shared goal.

"[8] In a 1983 essay Clifford Geertz points to the importance of gotong royong in Indonesian life: An enormous inventory of highly specific and often quite intricate institutions for effecting the cooperation in work, politics, and personal relations alike, vaguely gathered under culturally charged and fairly well indefinable value-images—rukun ('mutual adjustment'), gotong royong ('joint bearing of burdens'), tolong-menolong ('reciprocal assistance')—governs social interaction with a force as sovereign as it is subdued.

[9] Anthropologist Robert A. Hahn writes: Javanese culture is stratified by social class and by level of adherence to Islam.

Pottier records the impact of the Green Revolution in Java: "Before the GR, 'Java' had relatively 'open' markets, in which many local people were rewarded in kind.

Citing Ann Laura Stoler's ethnography from the 1970s, Pottier writes that cash was replacing exchange, that old patron-client ties were breaking, and that social relations were becoming characterized more by employer-employee qualities.

John Sidel writes: "Ironically, national-level politicians drew on "village conceptions of adat and gotong royong.

Governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, spoke of a desire to reinvigorate urban areas with village sociality, with gotong royong.

[18] The term bayanihan originated in the practice of volunteers from a community helping a family move by carrying the house itself, a tradition which remains the classic illustration for the concept as a whole.

In computing, the term bayanihan has evolved into many meanings and incorporated as codenames to projects that depict the spirit of cooperative effort involving a community of members.

Women played a big role by knitting warm clothes, making foods, sewing new uniforms or religious accessories.

[20] For example, if a couple is getting married, villagers participate in the overall organization of the ceremony including but not limited to preparation of the celebration venue, food, building and settlement of the new house for the newly weds.

The voluntary nature might be imaginary due to social pressure, especially in small communities, and one's honour and reputation may be severely damaged by non-attendance or laziness.

For instance, elderly neighbours or relatives can need help if their house or garden is damaged by a storm, or siblings can agree to arrange a party for a parent's special birthday as a talkoot.

Typically, club houses, landings, churches, and parish halls can be repaired through a talkoot, or environmental tasks for the neighborhood are undertaken.

The parents of pre-school children may gather to improve the playground, or the tenants of a tenement house may arrange a talkoot to put their garden in order for the summer or winter.

[25] Andecha (from Latin indictia 'announcement) is voluntary, unpaid and punctual aid to help a neighbor carry out agricultural tasks (cutting hay, harvesting potatoes, building a barn, collecting apples to make cider, etc.).

The work is rewarded with a snack or a small party and the tacit commitment that the person assisted will come with their family to the call of another andecha when another neighbor requests it.

[30] Historically, the word referred to a labor gang of men and/or women working together for projects such as harvesting crops or tending to gardens of elderly or infirm tribal members.

Zapoteca Mink'a or minka (Quechua[32][33] or Kichwa,[34] Hispanicized minca, minga) is a type of traditional communal work in the Andes in favor of the whole community (ayllu).

Before the Inca conquest of around 1450, the Aymara kingdoms practiced two forms of communal work – Ayni, which refers to work undertaken for one's own local community, or Ayllu with many tasks subdivided according to gender roles (Chachawarmi), and Minka, which refers to communal work taking place across different Ayllus such as building work or work undertaken during seasonal migrations such as the Aymaras from the Altiplano i.e. areas of the Andes mountains at too high an altitude for agriculture, migrating with their camelids to agricultural areas in the Precordillera, and then to the forests that were once present in today's Atacama Desert and finally helping build boats with the Chango peoples in the sea area near present-day Arica or Tacna, in return for fish which has been found in the stomachs of mummies found at said high altitudes such as around lake Titicaca[35] The Inca added the practice of Mita (forced labour for the empire, e.g. silver mining) and the Yanakuna who are skilled individuals forcibly removed from their Ayllus to perform a task for the empire, for example as architects/builders.

[36] Mutirão [pt] is, in Brazil, a collective mobilization to achieve an end, based on mutual help provided free of charge.

Currently, by extension of meaning, mutirão can designate any collective initiative for the execution of an unpaid service, such as a joint effort to paint a neighborhood school, clean a park and others.

The same Tupi term gave rise to several other spellings, all currently in disuse (motirão, muquirão, mutirom, mutirum, mutrião, muxiran, muxirão, muxirom, pixurum, ponxirão, punxirão, putirão, putirom, putirum, puxirum).

[38] In Chiloé, mingas took the form either of días cambiados (tit for tat exchanges of labor between neighbors) or large-scale work parties hosted by a particular family, accompanied by food and drink, and often lasting several days.

In rural Panama, especially in the Azuero peninsula region and its diaspora, it is common to hold a junta party[40] as a communal labor event.

One of the earliest documented occurrences is found in the Boston Gazette for 16 October 1769, where it is reported that "Last Thursday about twenty young Ladies met at the house of Mr. L. on purpose for a Spinning Match; (or what is called in the Country a Bee).