Permaculture, Final Capstone Paper 5-26, Hope - Never Ending Food

Marian Zeitlin’s (1990) pioneering and extensive observations of PD behavior among
Yoruba and Javanese families and their relation to children’s nutrition, reintroduced the assetsbased
approach to development with a well-honed methodology. Jerry and Monique Sternin,
colleagues of Zeitlin and founders of the Positive Deviance Initiative, have built upon Zeitlin’s
work with their own projects in Vietnam and have since made the most influential contributions
to the amplification of Positive Deviance as a tool for inquiry and development.
FIGURE 2: TERMS ASSOCIATED WITH POSITIVE DEVIANCE
Definition of the Positive Deviance Approach in Development:
A development approach which helps a community and its members find existing, sustainable
solutions to community problems today through the presence of positive deviant individuals
within the community.
Definition of a Positive Deviance Individual:
A Positive Deviant is someone whose special practices of behaviors enable him/her to
Overcome a problem more successfully than his/her neighbors who have access to the same
resources or are affected by the same constraints.
Definition of the Positive Deviance Inquiry:
The Positive Deviance Inquiry is the tool used to discover the positive deviant's successful or
desired practices.
(Sternin, in Clawson, 2002, p. 3)
Lapping, et al. (2002) suggests that the Positive Deviance Approach (PDA) differs from
the widely employed needs-based approaches to developments which are aimed at identifying
what resources communities lack. Rather, PDA is an assets-based approach that “focuses on
individuals who have ‘deviated’ from conventional societal expectations and explored—though
perhaps not openly—successful alternatives to cultural norms, beliefs, or perceptions in their
communities” (PROWID, 1999, p. 1). Monique Sternin (in Clawson, 2002, p. 3) provides the
most thorough definitions of terms associated with Positive Deviance (Fig. 2).
Many whose development work has included positive deviance activities (Wishik and Van
der Vynckt 1976; Cederstrom 1999; Berggen and Wray 2002; Lapping et al., 2002; Marsh,
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