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The paper presents the results of community-based participatory action research that evaluated the quality and extent of resident participation in community development projects initiated by a network of non-profit and public agencies in a lower-income, racialized neighbourhood in Toronto. The paper examines dynamics of community engagement and volunteer participation in relation to the socio-political context of neoliberal urban development within which they unfold. Against this backdrop, the paper discusses processes of normalization and the mainstreaming of a technocratic or instrumental approach to community engagement. The paper argues how this instrumental approach extracts volunteer participation from residents to meet short-term organizational targets while offering no genuine opportunity for residents to co-create long-term, meaningful solutions to community needs and priorities. Such short-term, 'band-aid' community engagement and capacity building projects contribute to a crisis of trust between residents and the non-profit agencies. The paper presents a community engagement continuum mapping indicators for technocratic and extractivist community engagement in contrast to indicators for transformative and empowering processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food sovereignty movement is a global alliance of peasants aiming to create democratic, sustainable, and decentralized food systems. The radical strategy of the movement, aimed at promoting a global peasant identity and collective action for food systems' transformation, is a community development endeavour that encompasses processes of social learning, community building, and community organizing. The food sovereignty movement provides relevant insights about the ethical challenges involved in building and mobilizing transnational solidarity. This paper explores the global food sovereignty movement of La Vía Campesina and two cases of local, farmer-led movements in India, namely Navdanya and The Deccan Development Society, through a constructivist qualitative case study methodological design. The paper analyses the ethical challenges experienced and explores the roles and responsibilities that community development workers play in facilitating transformative social change in the food systems. This paper demonstrates that the main challenge of building solidarity involves reconciling multiple visions and practice frameworks, through the respect of diversity and democratic choice. Finally, the paper highlights ethical considerations (such as overcoming binary logics), the crafting of community-led discourses, and pedagogical practices (such as Wisdom Dialogues), as key elements to guide community development workers to aid the facilitation of processes for identity building, conscientization, and collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social clinics are grassroots health initiatives characterized by the development of mutualist practices of healthcare provision and the articulation of their action at territorial and community level. The present paper explores the development and implementation of community participation practices across three social clinics in Europe: social clinic of solidarity KIA in Greece, Village2Santé in France, and Microclinica Fatih in Italy. Drawing on findings collected through qualitative methods, our paper reflects on three overlapping themes of community participation highlighting its collective and eminently political character. Inspired by the frameworks of health promotion, comprehensive Primary Health Care and community development, we analyze three levels of community participation in the social clinics: participatory medical practices, the co-creation of health services, and the connection with broader social movements. Our paper contributes to the literature on community development by stressing the urge to reimagine the principles and practices of community participation through the creation of alternative forms of organizing and of radical empowerment. At the same time, it can inspire practitioners in experimenting with community participation initiatives from a more critical perspective, resisting the worst elements of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and surfaced long-standing inadequacies in the country's health and social systems. In response to the Philippine government's inefficient and ineffective COVID-19 response and their dismissal of the calls for accountability, Filipinos at the barangay level organized community pantries to respond to the needs of the community. Using WHO's Framework for Community Health Engagement, this study positions community pantries as a unique health phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic within the Philippine context. This study explores the ways that the Maginhawa Community Pantry—the critical case study—addresses both emergent and pre-existing health needs among Filipinos during the COVID-19 pandemic. By examining community pantries from the perspective of the Maginhawa Community Pantry organizer, this paper elucidates how community pantries engage in diverse initiatives that: (1) mobilize the community for health, (2) improve access to healthcare, (3) ensure community collaboration and (4) call for collective action for systemic issues. The findings of this paper highlight the capacity and potential of community pantries as a health response beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and address gaps in the Philippine healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Community Development occupying a marginal and uncertain place in Social Work education. Topics include attempting to engage groups and communities in processes of social change; across the five continents grappling with the effects of neoliberalism on Social Work; and important issues into relief containing democracy versus authoritarianism and personal freedoms versus public safety.

This paper attempts to understand and narrate the experiences of Shivashaktis, a gender transgressive community from Southern India, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Shivashaktis' gender transgressions and embodied ritual power allow them to intercede between the human and the divine. This secures them religious sanction and legitimacy and offers a source of income for them. They are engaged in several livelihood practices that are associated with ritual practices such as performing oracles, laggams (deity marriages), joggu, etc. Their embeddedness in heterosexual family structures, however, hinder their access to benefits that are allocated for the transgender community through the state and non-state policy programmes. During the pandemic, with the state-announced lockdown across the nation, and particularly in Telangana, Shivashaktis were pushed further into precarity, burdened by economic, psychological and community disruptions. Within this context, the paper critically engages with the impact of COVID-19 that brought the entire relational world of the gender transgressive Shivashaktis to collapse rigorously, affecting their livelihood and sense of being and belonging in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the new phenomenon of writing centres being made a part of universities, particularly the liberal arts private universities, in India, as growing in a way that lends it to consciously choosing queer pedagogy and to building it as a politically queer space. While some aspects of the queering of writing centres mirror the invisibilizing and the burden of proving the worth of their existence in the way queer communities are, other aspects build on what queer theory enables in terms of understanding what it takes to build communities where what is normative will continually shift what it excludes. Queer theory reminds us of the fluid and constantly reconstituting nature of identity formation whether it is based on non-binary gender identity or identities caught in the debilitating intersections of class, caste, religion, ability and sexuality. This has led to a recognition that communities formed around the learning of reading, writing and thinking, as writing centres are, are predisposed to shift focus from product to process as a move in the practice of teaching writing because it considers the individual reading-and-writing-selves present in the classroom as subjects-in-formation. This paper argues that writing pedagogy is creating queer communities because it invites and supports unsettled subjective selves to the process of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the Indian Supreme Court passed the landmark NALSA v. Union of India judgment that not only granted transgender persons the right to self-identify their gender but also recognized their right to equitable and accessible education. Further, in 2018, the apex court passed another landmark judgment in the case of Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. v. Union of India , reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, and, therefore, decriminalizing consensual adult homosexual sex acts. In the backdrop of these landmark judgments – i.e. in post-NALSA and post-377 India – identity and community questions pertaining to transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary persons' access to and presence in educational institutions in India have intensified. Focusing on science institutions, this paper attempts to delineate the ways in which proximal and distal networks of caste-class and gender shape transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary persons' exclusion from and belonging in science collectivities. Further, this paper also investigates how transgender persons' sense of belonging to certain communities speaks to their shifting epistemic dispositions. Finally, contextualizing transpersons' negotiations in science communities and individual and collective scales as 'unstable and hybrid assemblages', this paper demonstrates the ways in which trans collectives in science institutions radicalize community building and development in these institutional spaces by interrupting dominant institutional cultures and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Familial acceptance of queer relationships has long been at the centre of the same-sex marriage discourse in India. This is no coincidence since in India family as an institution represents caste, religious, class and other social privileges. Developing on Bordieu's work on family, this paper examines three Hindi films— Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga (2019), Shubh Mangal Zaada Savdhaan (2020) and Badhaai Do (2022)—to formulate the 'ideology of familialization' as the basis of the queer narratives in these popular film texts. Through narrative analysis of these texts, this paper argues that these narratives function at two levels: one, at the level of inducting the erstwhile subjects of developmentalist economy into the neoliberal economy; and two, they selectively transform the familial space of these subjects to make it conducive to integrate LGBTQ persons. The narratives perpetuate a consensus about the importance of selective co-option of queer individuals within the socially dominant traditional families, to keep the cycle of social privilege undisturbed by producing what Bordieu calls 'unproblematic inheritors'. This, I argue, prevents the individual queer characters from building a modern queer community, a radical collective with intersectional politics at its heart, at the cost of alienating those who do not come from such caste/class privilege. This serves the interest of both the neoliberal market/State and the Hindu upper caste dominated social, perpetuating the Ideology of Familialization which eventually has the power to function as a governmental tool of transforming the 'deviant' lovers into 'model' queer citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gandhi and Ambedkar offer a fascinating picture of community organizers fighting against caste oppression and caste discrimination. Both were committed to transforming the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions of 'Dalits'†. They claimed that only through social action could societal transformation take place. As a result, they placed a strong emphasis on mobilizing the public against untouchability. They envisioned the removal of untouchability through popular struggles and popular participation. Not only did Gandhi and Ambedkar undertake popular campaigns, but they also saw them as necessary and beneficial. This paper explores the implications of integrating the constructs of the Gandhian and Ambedkarian models to tackle the problem of untouchability. It re-reads the Constitution of the Anti-Untouchability League (AUL) which was prepared by Gandhi himself in January 1935 in conjunction with a comprehensive letter penned by Ambedkar in November 1932, containing a plan of action for the AUL to carry out for the uplift of 'Dalits', to shed light on the lessons that are still important for the modern-day community organizers in India. The paper argues that synergizing Gandhi's and Ambedkar's emancipatory discourses can enrich the present-day activism for social action combatting untouchability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns have emerged of how the professionalization agenda in the development sector may water down the 'spirit of volunteerism' that thrives on community initiative, informality, and flexibility. This paper explores the role of literacy and learning practices in the bureaucratization of community development drawing from an ethnography of local volunteering in the Philippines. Through literacy practices such as preparing community health classes, making budget plans, and writing to government institutions, volunteers were inducted into 'bureaucratic' ways of working that, at times, clashed with their expectations and practices of volunteering that were founded on community building, solidarity, and agency. While volunteering could be seen as a means for community participation in development, findings in this paper signal that the formalization and bureaucratization of grassroots volunteer groups may shift the intended community dynamics and volunteers' expectations, practices, and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the selection of peer researchers influences and shapes peer research projects. It draws on two empirical studies formed from two community action projects in England. Peer research is a method for involving young people as coresearchers within their community or in specific settings such as educational environments and the two projects recruited school children of different ages and ethnic backgrounds; in both cases they were representative of the potential participant population. One project (Community House) was based in a junior school setting and concentrated on evaluating a community centre project. The second project (Knife Angel: Hear My Voice) was a youth work setting and brought together a group of young people to explore an intervention aimed at impacting crime and violence in the local community. This paper discusses how the demographic characteristics of the peer researchers shaped, influenced and impacted the success of both community action projects. We discuss how children and young people bring their unique skills to preparing the questionnaire and dissemination. Using researcher reflexivity, we consider the methodological implications of the findings and contribute to theory building about community action and the impact of participatory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to respond to oppression are often framed as strategies of 'resistance' or 'liberation.' This paper uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the assumptions implicit in these strategies and shows that they derive from a realism of 'normative adversarialism,' where confrontation is seen as a natural and inevitable approach for achieving social change. The paper then asks what an alternative conceptual lens might yield, where social transformation is reimagined as evolutionary, developmental and integrative. It concludes that, through such a lens, responding to oppression can be recast as an effort of 'constructive resilience.' Coined in relation to the systematic persecution of Iran's largest religious minority—the Bahá'í faith—this term describes a strategy of transcending years of state-sponsored discrimination through activities such as literacy and empowerment initiatives for children and youth in socio-economically marginalized neighborhoods, as well as through a home-based university initiative. Consequently, this paper introduces a shift from confrontation to cohesion as the main driver for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective Impact, a framework for improving social service provision first articulated in 2011, promises to improve efficiency while creating win–win cross-sector collaborations to solve the root causes of pressing community needs. This paper argues that in its current articulation, Collective Impact might deliver efficiencies but not transformative change. Positioning Collective Impact within the tradition of US democratic traditions, starting with Alexis de Tocqueville's observations about the importance of US civil society for building an engaged citizenry, highlights specific ways to augment the framework's transformative potential. In contrast to the neoliberal insistence that marketized social service providers are best suited for delivering efficient social service provision, this paper argues that Collective Impact leaders can take responsibility for strengthening civil society for real transformative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the formation of 'community' on a British council estate as a process of negotiation enacted within a 'contact zone', a social space defined by a struggle between different cultural values within asymmetrical relations of power. Building on a discursive turn within theorizations of class, the paper explores the mobilization of discourses of community as a process of making class on The Estate. Based on ethnographic research, the paper offers an analysis of the field dynamics of the Community Centre, where community is enacted, negotiated, subverted and critiqued. This paper shows how a focus on the dynamic nature of discursive reproduction enacted in everyday negotiations within the 'contact zone' moves our understanding beyond structural accounts of class, incorporating agentic responses and everyday resistances into an analysis of the formation of class and community on The Estate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory processes in housing policies and planning that engage urban poor communities through grassroots networks have been widely celebrated, but scholars have also scrutinized these policies for their limitations on the ground. Such scholarship has primarily focused on outcome indicators and local implementation, relegating the state to the background. This study focuses on everyday practices rather than outcomes and on multi-level rather than local-level implementation, using India's national Slum-Free City Planning initiative, Rajiv Awas Yojana, in the mid-sized, southern city of Madurai as a case study. This paper draws from development studies literature to 'bring the state back in' to critically examine participatory planning with India's urban poor. Findings illustrate how community participation ideals are sacrificed by different players for procedural expediency and bureaucratic convenience. We suggest that the deprioritizing of community participation is not an isolated deviation from policy, but it is shaped by two structural impediments embedded within urban housing policy mechanisms: the lack of federal constitutional mandates for housing and, in their absence, the proliferation of time-bound and project-based conditional grants through national housing programmes for the urban poor. Together, they result in an arbitrary policy environment and a push-pull of power between different levels of government, thereby sidelining community participation objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of current debates and themes in literature relating to place-based stigma, including a reflection on terminology use. Generally, we rely on Loïc Wacquant's framing of territorial stigma as a feature of advanced marginality. In this paper, drawing on my own research in Toxteth, Liverpool, I offer a critique of the Wacquantian approach, highlighting the limits of the advanced marginality framing of place-based stigma. The paper considers the global reach of placed-based stigma and the temporal aspect of stigma that must be taken into consideration when we consider how stigma is currently applied to communities. A key feature of this paper is the foregrounding of the concepts of 'core' and 'event' stigma, which have generally been a feature of literature in business and management. I argue that our understanding of how communities become stigmatized can be enhanced by framing place-based stigma in this temporal sense. Understanding how stigma becomes adhered to particular spaces, places and landscapes is necessary if we want to comprehend how this stigma transfers to the communities inhabiting these geographies. This paper suggests that we must look to the past, and to the voices who shape the past, in order to understand the present and to plan for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bologna, Italy, with its history of good governance, progressive welfare policies, community work, and participation has engendered powerful discourses informing policy and institutional innovation. Yet, a recent city-wide mixed-method action-research (AR) project, designed to document and tackle health inequalities, showed a significant North–South divide for a range of health indicators and an unequal distribution of social determinants of health across the most socio-economically deprived city areas. The AR project also examined the potential of the city's initiatives for community development and health promotion in addressing health inequalities. In this paper, we focus on a recent institutional innovation called 'Uffici reti e lavoro di comunità' (Network and community work units, NCWUs), established by the Bologna municipality in 2016 to promote the decentralization of powers, strengthen community networks, and foster the engagement of citizen organizations in taking care of the material and social living environment. The results of the AR project indicate that the NCWUs, whilst not designed as a policy initiative to reduce (health) inequalities, have a potential to do so by supporting more effective community action to address the determinants driving those inequalities. Through a critical re-thinking of the concepts of power and participation, they also suggest promising directions to overcome some of the limitations of community development approaches in contributing towards greater well-being and equity for people and communities, underlining local learning which could be applied across different geographies nationally and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background There is a growing evidence base which shows that community development can make an important contribution to reducing health inequalities, but embedding community development as a mainstream approach into local systems is challenging. The literature relevant to the question of how to embed community development approaches is reviewed in this paper. Methods Using guidance from the Joanna Briggs Institute, a scoping review was carried out to identify relevant literature. Systematic searches were carried out across multiple databases, experts in the field were contacted and references of included studies were screened. Search results were screened against exclusion criteria. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research was used as a framework to identify factors hindering or supporting embedding. Findings The review identified thirty-five documents which described embedded, or attempts to embed, community development approaches in fourteen different countries. The most common community development approaches were strength-based or co-production. Four studies reported primary research on the embedding process or systems change. Several barriers and facilitators to embedding were identified including those related to funding arrangements, organizational and system culture, building trust with communities and the need for training and support for staff. Conclusion Using an implementation science framework, this scoping review has assessed the nature of the evidence base on how to embed community development. While the evidence base uncovered is currently limited, barriers and facilitators to embedding identified in the review can be used to both inform future attempts to embed community development and provide the building blocks for future primary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how global development projects implemented through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engage with the Sustainable Development Goals promise of ethnic inclusion. Using beneficiary representation as an indicator, we conducted Focus Group Discussions and interviews with non-profit sector practitioners in Pakistan. Responses show that NGOs often use practices that reinforce existing biases, including community outreach through public spaces, dominant languages and informal social circles. Such practices lead to ethnic minorities being underrepresented. Furthermore, international actors have encouraged the non-profit sector in Pakistan to be more competitive, pushing resources away from community mobilization and rewarding efficiency over commitment. This shift from normative ideas of inclusion leads to selection practices that are cost efficient but not inclusive. Several recommendations are made in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a reflection on the relationship between community development and performing art. It discusses the possible effects of a community theatre with regard to social and cultural capital, social inclusion, and audience development in Turin (Italy). This form of artistic production can promote social ties and participation in cultural activities and increase social and cultural inclusion, key values in community development. We examine audience characteristics, development, and appreciation as the primary indicators of success, as perceived by selected stakeholders, within the context of a single case study. The intervention involved a heterogeneous audience of people who usually do not participate in neighbourhood activities and/or attend artistic-theatrical performances. As stated by the stakeholders, the project was appreciated and its impact on the citizenry was positive, particularly for the cognitive and emotional involvement and the heightened awareness of often hidden or unknown problems and resources. Limitations are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singing is a rich and dynamic part of South African cultural and national identity. The authors explore the identity of two choirs in the Cape Town metropole against the background of response to ongoing social change. The disparate yet similar choirs enhance the well-being of their members as communities and who sing for community. Community development as an outcome of community music is understood as process-driven. The Identity Process Theory serves as a useful integrative framework in which identity, social action and social change can be collectively examined with qualitative thematic analysis to code and analyse questionnaire and interview data (2017–2022). Three overarching themes are discussed, focusing on the experiences as perceived by research participants from the two choirs in relation to 'singing as a music community', 'having a place to belong' and 'singing during COVID-19'. The discussion highlights differences, similarities, challenges and opportunities for these choirs in relation to community musicians, identity and place. Although generalizations to other choirs cannot necessarily be made, recommendations are offered, both for further research and of a practical nature. This paper argues that diverse forms of communal singing continue to play an important role in South Africa's group identity for choirs, fostering hope for communities and their development. Notions of community development and community music should not become narrowly defined, excluding many choral groups and their contributions to society from the global conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses assemblage theory to consider the work that community does in a residential neighborhood in Toronto, Canada. It utilizes assemblage theory and connections between assemblage, affect, and emotion to advance an understanding of how community shapes capacity and action. The analysis shows how community has been enacted on the Islands, what actions and tendencies this assemblage makes possible or likely, and what it constrains. It also contributes to understanding what assemblage analysis can do. The mechanisms by which desire is channeled toward certain kinds of actions in the assemblage include the performance of community for self-preservation, the use of history and memory in the making of the community assemblage, and the role of territoriality, identity, and belonging in community-preserving actions. The analysis also reveals processes of stasis through reification of the assemblage and its interdependence with other processes like racial capitalism. Finally, I propose possibilities for shifting the assemblage, including telling different histories, and greeting emotional intensity experimentally. Seeing community through the lens of assemblage enables us to ask different questions, which may help us build the communities we need for a more just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive planting of exotic species under the so-called forestry model has dramatically transformed the landscapes of south-central Chile, replacing diverse agricultural, livestock and forest landscapes with forest monocultures, which are highly water-consuming and prone to massive fires. This has meant a productive simplification, and peasant communities have been displaced and stripped of their traditional ways of life. However, in this landscape of disaster, biotic communities of fungi have flourished, and with them human communities of collectors have learned to sustain themselves in a monocultural and privatized scenario. This paper is based on a multi-local ethnographic approach, built upon 26 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, social mapping, creating a calendar and a trend line. The text documents the processes of two communities affected by massive fires which have developed organization, agencies and practices. Mushrooms (callampas in Chilean Spanish) are claimed as a common good derived from the forestry model, claiming access to their use and usufruct of land belonging to forestry companies. They have also developed local governance systems for the care and better use of this new resource for common use. Forestry companies, for their part, try to subsume these practices in their territorial governance processes, disputing these commons' meaning and purpose. Both cases contribute to empirically address the central thesis of this article, according to which communalization exercises within contexts of capitalist expansion constitute responses of survival, resistance and adaptation in landscapes transformed and devastated by extractivist industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can community development learn from frontline community resistance to extractivism and the fossil fuel industry? In the global North, environmental governance often operates within the dominant mode of neoliberal 'environmentality' (Luke. 1999. Environmentality as green governmentality, in E. Darier ed, Discourses of the Environment , Blackwell, Oxford), conceptualizing environmental action in individualized and depoliticized ways. This is compounded by the discursive hegemony of the educated middle-classes, which frames environmental issues in ways that render invisible the concerns of marginalized communities and workers. In this paper, I present an activist ethnography and case study of Love Leitrim, a community group that played a crucial role in the successful Irish movement to resist fracking. I suggest that local environmental justice struggles point to the possibility of a 'liberation environmentality' (Fletcher. Environmentality unbound: multiple governmentalities in environmental politics, Geoforum , 2017;85, 311–315); which challenges capitalist modes of environmental governance that facilitate the exploitation of the environment for capital accumulation. The paper identifies how a combination of (i) relational local organizing; (ii) trans-local networking with other frontline communities and (iii) creative political engagement enabled campaigners to organize collectively around the environment, navigate power asymmetries and secure political change across spatial scales. I conclude by suggesting that Love Leitrim's frontline community struggle offers important insights for community development workers who wish to address the environment as a political issue and play a role in bringing about a just transition for marginalized communities and workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a rapidly changing and unpredictable global environment, there is new impetus to draw on community development approaches in the face of complex practice challenges that include the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As social work and community development educators in Ireland and Australia, the question becomes how can we respond in a time of major 'disruption' where there are both opportunities and constraints? This paper settles on this pause and uncertainty to seek new approaches to prepare social work students for changing conditions. Long-standing questions re-surface in relation to social, economic, political and environmental structures and conditions that are located in a neoliberal framework. The paper explores challenges and opportunities facing educators and social work students through a core set of principles—critical, relational and connected—that underpin our community development pedagogy. Within these themes, we explore teaching practices which seek to create a 'Community of Learners', generate a process of collaborative critical inquiry, engage students in reflective praxis enriched by contemporary theory and research, and foster a deep, connected and adaptive perspective on global and local issues. This stimulates creativity and meets the need for critical and adaptable practitioners capable of practical action through this period of disruption and crises of governance, climate and technologies of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary forced migration contexts of conflict, climate change and contagion present new challenges and opportunities for the ways in which community development is understood, practised and imagined. The accelerating trends of refugee persecution and high-impact weather events causing disasters now sit alongside the uncertainties of closed borders and rapidly evolving geopolitics. Despite these dislocations and constraints on human mobility and immobility, the possibilities for connection remain, although unevenly. Mediated predominantly through the smartphone, social media offers new opportunities, cautions and ethical considerations for the circulation of care, intimacy and trust. These flows can now significantly inform and shape everyday lives, political action and how 'community' is envisaged and enacted. In the ongoing context of dislocation and separation, this paper presents a longitudinal digital ethnography that examines how people from refugee backgrounds practise transnational connection and community when physical reunion is not possible. These online spaces represent opportunities to explore the implications for community development and more broadly social work education. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of the social organization of difference and its associated domains of encounters, configurations and representations, this paper articulates the possibilities and challenges for community development and more broadly social work education and practice when opportunities for physical co-presence are highly constrained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper explores pedagogical interventions that can be applied to social change centered youth leadership programs. It specifically focuses on two interventions, Image Theatre and autonomy promotion ; the former is a pedagogical tool while the latter is a pedagogical approach. These interventions are vital for social change centered youth leadership programs because they allow facilitators to account for participants' sense of agency and determination while concurrently engaging them in critical social analyses necessary for the advancement of community development and well-being. This paper presents a description of Image Theatre and autonomy support as well as a discussion of how facilitators can apply these interventions to youth leadership programs. The theoretical tenets that inform the aforementioned pedagogical interventions, theory of self-determination and critical consciousness, respectively, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the complex practices of development, ethical decisions are continually demanded of practitioners. This paper addresses the process of teaching ethics, within a framework of applied ethics and with an emphasis on the development of an understanding of ethics-in-practice in current and future practitioners. Building on recent work in the area of ethics in development and humanitarian practice, it addresses approaches to teaching professional ethics in community development and other fields, and debates about the value of teaching ethics. In particular, this article discusses how students develop what we call 'ethical capability'—the cognitive and emotional resources needed to negotiate the contradictions and dilemmas of everyday practice, and to apply ethical decision-making models. Analysing a current post-graduate applied development ethics course and experience of similar courses in undergraduate business, we investigate how these can prepare students for the messy reality of community development practice. With very few courses teaching ethics in development, we propose that it is important to enhance ethical capability in community development students and practitioners, and that doing so supports their work and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically considers the ethics of conducting community-based participatory research, which engages community members, including young people, as active participants in research about them, in the context of the protracted armed conflict and crisis of the Lake Chad region. We highlight the intersection of cultural practices and religious belief systems prevalent in this context, which further deepens the complexities arising from researching populations experiencing protracted armed conflict and crisis. This raises the possibilities of understanding research ethics in such contexts via the lens of a postcolonial frame. Using participatory photography allowed engagement in face-to-face collaborative data collection. In doing so, the research team was able to pay attention to verbal and non-verbal dimensions arising from community engagement, which supported learning about the community's positions and needs as a resource for thinking about how these might need accommodation in the project. It is not straightforward to lead this kind of project as researchers based in the Global North in terms of deciding what is right and what research practices would be considered just, compassionate, and trustworthy in these contexts. The approach taken was to distribute leadership in the project to include local actors such as NGOs working at local levels, community leaders (traditional and religious), as well as to draw on in-country research teams and the members of each of the participating communities. We argue that a more nuanced understanding about how to mitigate identified ethical concerns has implications for enhancing community-based research, especially when researching similar populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study engages critically with the challenges of integrating research into an international development programme. Recognizing knowledge production is currently dominated by western and colonial systems of meaning–making, the case study also explores how development research can be less extractive and how it can promote more equitable forms of knowledge production. This is explored and illustrated through the ethical challenges raised in the Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) programme. This was a four-year programme, funded by the UK Government, and delivered through a consortium of nine partners led by Christian Aid, and implemented by in-country partner organizations in Myanmar, Nigeria and Zimbabwe during 2019–2021. The article begins by contextualizing the ECID programme within the wider research environment and within the Nigerian country context (which is given particular focus). It then explores the ethical challenges that emerged from the programme and how these were addressed. The paper concludes by offering an innovative model for shifting power in development research and doing research ethically with communities in a development programme. This requires thinking about how ethics in development research and practice can be reviewed in organizations, which typically do not have their own ethics review boards, and in ways which do not reproduce western hegemony in relation to whose knowledge and ethics count in research practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between territorial stigmatization and community work in Denmark. In the paper, we firstly explore territorial stigmatization, relating it to the Danish context. We show how territorial stigmatization in Denmark happens via a complex amalgamation of bureaucratic practices which identify particular areas as problematic 'ghettos', and how this leads to top–down interventions upon many local residential areas, including local community work. Following this, we draw on participant observations in practices of local community work, and interviews with local community workers, to explore how they practically negotiate these particular political constructions of their work. We argue that local community workers come to take on interstitial roles—that is, they come to be in-between the state and authorities and the local communities themselves. This complex double role is what we call an interstitial position, meant to signify how Danish local community workers are both part of territorial stigmatization and simultaneously trying to escape from and undo this very role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is a process of conscious or unconscious becoming, individually and/or collectively. The more conscious I am/we are of the process, the higher the possibilities of learning for action/reaction and change. This is consistent with an Afrocentric view of learning. In the research context, the researcher creates a conscious learning 'space' through research design. Key to this paper is a research design that created multiple humanization learning 'spaces' for all participants including the researcher. Juxtaposed to these learning 'places' in an Afrocentric research design (ARD) are traditional and hegemonic validity or trustworthiness issues. Based on an empirical study, this paper presents and reflects on an ARD. It asks the question: To what extent did the research design facilitate Afrocentric values through the action of research - for the researcher within himself, between the researcher and the research participants as well as among the research participants, while at the same time remaining true to the rigour of traditional research protocols. This paper concludes firstly that like any qualitative research, the choice of an Afrocentric research paradigm and approach/ method has a direct impact on research design, the nature of engagement and the consequences thereof and that Afrocentrism still has major contributions to make particularly in the context of marginalization and exclusion. Secondly, that observation of trustworthiness protocols by an ARD does not mean compromising foundational values but rather enhances the quality of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on the social sustainability of renewable technologies has focused on local acceptance issues, community benefits from exogenous developments, and matters related to the planning and development process. Grassroots-initiated wind energy schemes as a form of rural enterprise have received less attention, especially in the Irish context. Using a case study approach, this paper analyses the challenges and opportunities faced in progressing community wind energy projects in rural Ireland. Such an analysis is especially relevant given Ireland's commitment to developing a fair and sustainable society as advocated in its Sustainable Development Framework. With the decline of agriculture and considerable outmigration from rural areas, wind energy represents an opportunity to revitalize rural economies. More generally, as opposition to wind turbines and associated infrastructure is common in Ireland, it is clear that the relevant authorities must engage local stakeholders more meaningfully in the planning and development process. In this vein, community energy initiatives have the potential to boost rural economies, enhance acceptance, and develop knowledge networks at the local level. Drawing lessons from a community wind energy case study, it is argued that community projects can be nurtured in Ireland by (i) engaging communities, especially weak stakeholders, in both agenda setting and the planning and development process for individual projects, and (ii) ensuring that technical and financial support is available to communities, while (iii) being careful to apply the 'community' label only to initiatives that can meet the expectations of such a project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a historical study of community renewal, as it was articulated and operationalized in NSW, Australia in the period 1999–2006 to improve conditions on public housing estates. The key argument is that community practitioners need to pay closer attention to the power relations involved in actual interventions that claim to empower others. Further, it is argued that such an analysis is a crucial aspect of developing critical, reflexive and innovative forms of practice which have the potential to reconfigure power relations and open possibilities for new understandings of community. Case examples of the implementation of community renewal are included to show the tensions involved when practitioners engage in empowerment practices that are coercive in that they include the exercise of regulatory and disciplinary power. It is incumbent upon community work practitioners and those who educate aspiring practitioners to understand that policies and programmes utilizing community as a solution to social problems are not benign, nor are they necessarily solely politically expedient, although the dangers lay in conceiving and enacting them as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mongolia is a vast landlocked, sparsely populated, country which shares borders with China and Russia. Two decades of democratic government has coincided with rapid cultural, social, environmental and economic change marred by increasing inequality. Addressing the challenges of inequality demands meaningful engagement between state and non-state actors in the emergent democracy of Mongolia. This article focuses on research with Citizens' Groups, semi-formal grassroots groups involved in community development in ger districts of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city. Drawing on research undertaken in 2017 with members of Citizens' Groups and employed staff of Non-Government Organizations it explores the interaction between government (in the form of local government or Khoroo) and civil society (in the form of Citizens' Groups). Data was collected via interviews, focus groups and site visits with over thirty people. Accordingly, the paper continues a focus on emerging community development practices in East Asia, a region both benefiting from and challenged by urbanization from rural to urban settings. The paper concludes that Citizens' Groups are key to realizing the Government's commitment to building social capital, social innovation and the social economy. To realize this goal, however further work is required to promote a democratic political culture, expand citizen participation and strengthen co-operation between the State and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the theoretical framework of queer necropolitics indicating the negation of subjecthood to trans-queer of colour while assimilating white privileged gays through homonormative gestures like marriage and domesticity in the USA, the paper compares the diverse reactions of the Indian 'urban corporate gay' constituency and the marginalized transgender communities following the legalization of 'homosexuality' in India recently. Through an analysis of social media texts from the former and reflections of the latter, I propose a 'critical intersectionality' to politicize the idea of queer community mobilizations in India. While critically reflecting on the limits of 'consumer citizenship' of the privileged gay, the paper attempts to foreground the voices of transgender 'counterpublics' to draw attention to and problematize the idea of 'community' (re)iterated through popular and legal discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As pressure increases to support social justice, coalitions try to understand their role in oppression while implementing practices to create equitable environments. Twenty-six education-focused community coalitions in the United States participated in the study. Coalition interviews and membership rosters are used to evaluate the degree to which these coalitions engage in community engagement practices conducive to empowerment. Involvement practices emphasize communication strategies and participatory design structures. Systems change practices emphasize agenda-setting processes and a level of awareness of structural sources that create social marginalization. This work investigates how these two practices create empowerment. This study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the impact of community poverty, coalition age, government representation, coalition size, school district size, and coalition governance on involvement and systems change practices. The results demonstrate combinations of these conditions in four mutually exclusive solutions for involvement practices and two mutually exclusive solutions for systems change practices. The paper ends by identifying cases that coincide with these solutions and how communities thoughtfully configure their collaborations to coincide with empowerment theory. Additionally, we identify potential trade-offs between involvement and systems change practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence is a central concept in epistemology, and good evidence is essential for developing effective community development programs. There is a range of theoretical approaches for helping to understand and ensure program effectiveness, but none uses evidence as a central pivot, and they may be difficult for the managers of community development programs to apply. An evidence-focussed theoretical framework and tool could help build the evidence literacy of communities and their advocates, assist community groups and members that struggle to gain representation, and help ensure that community development programs are inclusive, efficient, and effectively improve health and wellbeing outcomes. This paper presents an eight-step evidence cycle conceptual framework for helping communities ensure evidence is foundational to all stages of their programs. The steps are recognize , gather , appraise, integrate , use , create, manage , and share evidence. Each step is described, and example approaches applicable to both descriptive and intervention evidence are provided. A tool (specifically, a rubric) for program managers to self-assess their work against the cycle, informed by UK-based development network, Bond's five principles for evidence use in community development (voice/inclusion, appropriateness, triangulation, contribution, and transparency), is also provided. The approach, which is applicable to all stages of a program, has the potential to not only increase managers' and participants' evidence literacy, but to also facilitate attention to evidence throughout the life of a program and beyond, leading to better results for community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective impact is increasingly being adopted as a systems-based approach for addressing complex social problems. Yet one of the critical components, shared measurement, remains challenging to implement (Hanleybrown, Kania and Kramer, 2012). Based around a common set of metrics, shared measurement is foundational to offering multi-organizational initiatives ongoing feedback that can allow them to share the lessons learned, make adjustments, and document the outcomes of their joint efforts. This paper examines the lessons practitioners have learned as they applied shared measurement strategies across diverse initiatives. We scrutinized food systems initiatives, in particular, hypothesizing that the complex, adaptive nature of food systems makes it more challenging to apply a commonly agreed upon set of measures in comparison to other sectors. Through seventeen semi-structured interviews, we found that interviewees shared similar perceptions about the multiple benefits of shared measurement whether they worked in food systems or other fields. Based on the major challenges they encountered, three primary lessons emerged about what it takes to establish a successful shared measurement system: trust across collaborating organizations, a streamlined process, and sufficient funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including orientation of the Asian governments in welfare provision for the poor, community development practice in China, and migrant labor in Singapore.

Community work and empowerment are contested concepts that have been co-opted for political purposes. With the rising focus in welfare provision for older adults in light of the ageing population worldwide, there is a need to understand the current forms of empowerment in community work with older adults. This review plugs the research gap by reviewing studies of community work with older adults in the social work field. An electronic search of studies published between 2009 and 2019 on three major databases for social science research was conducted. Eleven papers were included in the review and compared through a coding frame. The conceptualization of empowerment, the theoretical framework, approach to community intervention and the nature of the intervention was examined. Most of the reviewed interventions involved social planning where the participation of older adults was enlisted to address a problem identified by professionals, but there was little theoretical overlap in the studies. The findings underscore gaps present in the theoretical understanding of empowerment and how the well-being of older adults is advanced through community work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on extensive fieldwork in two rural villages, this paper qualitatively examines how social mobilization initiatives influence local government (LG) performance in Nepal. LG mobilized community people to empower them for their effective participation in local planning and decision-making processes. Comparing with the prior period of mobilization, evidence demonstrates that mobilization promises to boost LG performance through empowering communities to enhance their agency and entitlements, promoting democratic and effective citizen participation, and strengthening LG responsiveness and social accountability. But these connections are not straightforward, as there appeared discrepancies in parallel in recognizing equal participation rights of disadvantaged groups and equitable distribution of public resources among social groups. The findings imply that mobilization can be an effective strategy for tackling many challenges of participatory institutions, as it tends to create social pressures for making participatory institutions more democratic and changing the local power dynamics in favour of disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community development lacks a proper theory. This paper postulates that the reason for this intolerable state being that community development has been hijacked by charity organizations and politicians with 'do good' intentions, simply because it lacks proper scientific theory that offers some element of prediction in the outcome. Current development approaches are revisited and the basic needs theory proposed as a useful theory that takes community development beyond just various 'approaches'. It merges the complexities of the community development concept into a distinct scientifically based theory that includes an assessment technique (Priority Index), which makes it possible to identify and prioritize the basic or 'true' needs in a community. The theory equates addressing the basic community needs with the 'art of timing', which means doing the right thing at the right time is the only real solution to trigger the upward development spiral. In doing so, the basic needs theory postulates that once the identified basic needs in the target community are brought within their locus of control, the upward development spiral is triggered and a predictably new set of 'higher level' needs will emerge. This process is essential to the change principle inherent to the community development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Newman and Goetz's call for 'a critical turn in community development practice and research' and Fursova's call for 'community development as a critical practice aimed at advancing the commons', this paper argues for a critical community development praxis around gentrification that emphasizes anti-displacement policy. It is more important than ever to look beyond market-friendly strategies and the site of the neighbourhood to shape municipal policy in favour of the 'right to stay put'. As city governments begin to take the loss of affordable housing in urban centers more seriously, community developers can use vital, localized knowledge to strengthen legislative outcomes. I use a case study of a faith-based community development conference circuit to highlight and analyse the limitations of market-based community development and the promising possibilities of anti-displacement policy advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a case study of a community-based organization working with marginalized Muslim women in London from refugee and migrant backgrounds. The organization delivers a model of practice that involves English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes, practical/informative workshops, and social integration in a women-only community space rather than these elements being accessed separately in often formal spaces. The article draws on data collected as part of the first year of an evaluation of a three-year funded project to engage the women. The data include registration information about the participant group, a bespoke workshop evaluation form completed by the women each month, and interviews with beneficiaries, volunteers, and staff. Our research finds that an integrated, bottom-up approach is successful in engaging isolated women and impacts on their lives through increased well-being, knowledge and skills, empowerment, and freedom. Whilst asset-focused interventions have become dominant in community development, there is a danger that a deliberate focus away from the needs of vulnerable groups may cement rather than tackle inequalities, and collude with a political and neoliberal agenda that promotes individualism and austerity. We argue it is necessary to develop interventions that respond to the needs of marginalized groups before building on people's strengths to address them. Our case study offers evidence for this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an urban regeneration project in the Changsin-Sungin Area (CSA), Seoul, by drawing on the current debates on post-political urban policy. Adjacent to Dongdaemun Fashion Market (DFM), the K-fashion hub, the CSA is known for the clustered sewing factories embedded in residential housing. In 2014, the CSA was selected as a test-bed for the implementation of the new policy called the Urban Regeneration Programme (URP). This new scheme is publicly funded seeking continuity and civic participation in urban regeneration. The CSA-URP contrasts with previous schemes in Korea, in which private developers, with state support, were the main drivers of massive demolition and reconstruction. In order to promote participation, the city government has created an intermediary for public–private partnership and adopted the public contest for the distribution of resources. Significantly, this new model has shifted its focus of regeneration from housing to public space, from entitlement to participation, and from proprietorship to cultural capital. This has also raised new queries about whether the new model effectively promotes residents' bottom-up participation or manages consensual atmosphere. By contemplating Seoul's latest urban regeneration experience, this paper examines whether the CSA-URP offers corrective forces to capital-led and top-down urbanization or it depoliticizes the political. Thereby, the paper aims to contribute to the critical understanding of post-political urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to an increase in life expectancy and other demographic factors, there is now a larger number of older men and women in our society. At the same time, loneliness and social isolation are increasing. This article draws upon a research project undertaken in 2014 to explore existing services for socially isolated older men in Belfast, and outlines key messages. Firstly, the paper highlights some of the experiences of isolated older men in one region of the UK. Secondly, it provides a review of service provision, providing 'expert' knowledge about how these services can affect men's lives in different ways. Finally, the paper offers recommendations for enhancing the provision of services for socially isolated older men, based on the information gathered throughout the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether the act of articulating and claiming the human right to water can be described as a process of commoning. By considering short-case studies of water justice campaigns from Johannesburg, Michigan and Dublin, this paper will argue that the act of claiming the right to water is often an act of resistance to capitalism's process of accumulation by dispossession. It will also highlight the mobilizing and transformative effect of right to water activism, particularly amongst working-class communities, and the way that this activism has acted as a gateway to further counter-hegemonic political engagement. In this context, this paper argues that the right to water is not a claim to an individualistic right, but rather to a right of community resistance. This way of conceptualizing campaigns for the right to water challenges the idea that it is necessary to choose between a rights-based approach to water justice and one that focuses instead on reclaiming the commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]