a big one as in a metaphor by Buckminster Fuller
where he compared his practice to a “trimtab”; a
small piece of the rudder that manages to turn a large
ship around.
Fuller referred to the function of a trimtab in nauti-
cal and aeronautical design to demonstrate how
small amounts of energy and resources applied pre-
cisely at the right time and place can produce the
maximum advantage in a change.
When a large ship, such as a tanker, moves through
the ocean, it has great momentum and a considerable
amount of effort is required to turn the rudder and
change the direction of the ship. However, turning
the trimtab, the trailing edge of the main rudder, cre-
ates a small turbulence allowing the main rudder to
turn with less effort, thus slowly pulling the whole
ship around.
When most change is usually conceived by trying to
turn the ship by pushing the bow around, Fuller tried
to create change by acting in the small turbulence at
the rudder.
I saw that by being all the way at the tail of the ship,
by just kicking my foot to one side or the other, I
could create the ‘low pressure’ which would turn the
whole ship. If ever someone wanted to write my epi-
taph, I would want it to say ‘Call me Trimtab’. (Fuller
1972)Truly, this is a small change initiative, and perhaps
naïve in its challenge, but Fuller also suggested prac-
titioners should “dare to be naïve” (Fuller cited in
Zung 2001: 60).
This naivety must not be an immature blindness
where everything should only happen in the small
scale and where it is only the small scale that counts.
The small must deliberately be matched with the big,
the big scale and the big change. The small must co-
exist in the framework of the big. The small change
must allow, embrace and support the big politics to
be done. But the small change efforts must also de-
mand from the big to be allowed room to navigate,
to take own initiatives and try out unconventional
methods.
This does not mean that the naivety proposed by
Fuller is a form of tunnel vision. Instead it is a new
form of critique allowing for more experiments, and
it is supportive more than subversive. It is a naïve
critique of many YES and MORE rather than a pre-
determined NO. This requires new alliances and new
forms of connecting the big politics with the poetics
small change, new ways of intersecting the cathedrals
and bazaars.Small Change, according to Hamdi, is a decentral-
ized practice of enablement and empowerment
building capacity instead of providing finished pack-