Abstract

This chapter reviews how two organizations within civic society—LiKEN in Appalachia and FUNDAEC in rural Colombia—are building solidarity and countering the space-time frames of global capitalism by engaging in spiritual pragmatism. Both organizations cultivate fluency in their work addressing human needs and the real-world consequences of human actions. Following this is an analysis of the creative tension that exists between structure and agency, and a beginning theoretical account of how social entities, like LiKEN and FUNDAEC, generate the coherence and the capacity for transformation that is needed to address problematic power complexes and global contradictions. Improvement in social and systemic integration achieved by these organizations emerges relationally, out of the interaction between the causal powers of agency and social structure.