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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]

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]

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]

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]

This paper evaluates critically the socioeconomic and spatial implications of conceptualizing the different forms of community involvement as a hierarchy rather than a spectrum. Drawing upon evidence from the UK, where government policy views participation in community-based groups as a ‘mature’ form of involvement and one-to-one aid as ‘simple’ and ‘immature’, such a hierarchical representation is revealed to privilege the participatory cultures of affluent over deprived populations. Based on this recognition of how participatory cultures differ, the paper thus concludes by calling for the different forms of community involvement to be reconceptualized as a spectrum and the adoption of a variegated policy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable interest in the research of sustainable cities in developing countries such as Malaysia. This paper will review urban residents' perceptions of the ways that sustainable cities are being planned and produced in Malaysia. In particular, this article analyses urban residents' perceptions of planners' roles in the context of diverse aspirations for sustainable cities. Data collected from in-depth interviews and survey revealed that the communication between urban residents and planners tends to be 'one way' and there are 'too many' unnecessary political intervention in planning for sustainable cities. Although public participation allows urban residents to participate in the planning process, the residents' opinions tend to be ignored as there is a minority but a powerful and affluent group that dominated the process. Our data also revealed that neighbourhood planning tends to include 'everything' under the umbrella of sustainability, but with little practical execution on the ground. Thus, we can conclude that the implementation of sustainable development is still a challenge in Malaysian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe women's role with active participation in waste management within their communities. The environmental awareness education of citizens combined with the application of the '4Rs' principle (reduce, reuse, recycle, and replant) is necessary to develop waste banks to resolve the issue of waste. Waste bank management is predicted to be the best solution for the municipal waste management and increases the public's awareness of recycling household waste as a waste management strategy. An increase in awareness begins at the community level. Women can be as social capital in community with the capacity to move the community through their active role in waste management activities. This study considered citizens in Karang Resik, Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia and used the emancipatory participation methods of counselling, educating, and training. The results showed that the presence of a waste bank educated residents to be disciplined in managing their waste and provided extra income from waste collection. Moreover, it strengthened the social cohesion for women within the community. This study shows that local female administrators in family welfare empowerment programmes can be used as role models for other women and can provide a significant impact on waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy language of recent UK governments in relation to 'activating' communities has drawn on images of 'community' as coherent constructions - communities of place - recognizable to their members who are capable of concerted action. From this conceptual basis, localities identified as 'ineffective' are encouraged to become 'successful, integrated communities' through government action such as New Labour's Working Together neighbourhood policies and the more recent Big Society initiatives of the Conservative-led Coalition Government. The shared fallacy is that individuals are policy-receptive actors with the potential to engage in community life 'successfully' (consensually) once 'empowered' to do so. This paper questions the efficacy of applying politically neutralized values of empowerment, community and participation in government policy to 'real world' communities by applying the lessons of a case study of the lived experience of community action in the late 1990s, during an arguably golden policy era of government sponsored community participation. In this study, the work of Georg Simmel was used to highlight the dynamism of human associations and the co-presence of apparently contradictory currents of conflict and co-operation. Qualitative network analysis illustrated the webbed intricacies of participating in 'community' and the importance of recognizing conflict as an element of the whole process of participation - which should not be elided by policy makers. The paper concludes that conflict has a positive role to play in sustainable community processes: it is both an undeniably inherent element of participation and a democratic imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1950s, China developed an urban governance system, which always had a dual function: providing community services and exercising sociopolitical control, to ensure stability of an organized society. The economic reforms of the late 1970s, however, made the system obsolete. In 2000, China adopted a community-building policy to renew its urban governance system, in which residents' committees (RCs), self-governing mass organizations, have been assigned a major role. However, as the base of the system, RCs have been overburdened by numerous administrative responsibilities. Over-administration consequentially challenges their self-governing mandate. To resolve these double predicament, community work stations (CWSs) are being tried. This paper examines four CWS models and discusses the impacts of CWS on RCs and on the urban governance system. The paper argues that as an incremental policy response in a social engineering process, the role of CWSs in China's urban governance system is yet to be decided, particularly when they may pose challenges to the original policy intent of the community construction policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much emphasis has been placed on designing development projects to include community participation (CP), which is normally seen as a way of ensuring project effectiveness, but less attention has been directed to identifying households that exclude themselves and their reasons for doing so. This paper uses household-level survey data from twenty-nine African and Latin American communities to show the extent to which some socioeconomic characteristics of a household influence the members' willingness to participate in community development (CD). It provides answers to the question, ‘in what ways do income, education, security of tenure, household type and household size correlate with variables that are measures of CP and management?’ From the findings, the paper concludes that income levels and housing status have positive correlation with factors influencing CP and management. On the other hand, educational level, household size and family type have no significant correlation with CP and management. Two lessons are drawn from the study. First, efforts to promote CP as a useful approach to CD require a sociological study of household characteristics. Prior information about a community's household set-up can help project organizers and outsiders to develop realistic expectations about CP. Second, the findings that certain groups of households do not participate while others are more likely to play a leading role have implications in terms of the distribution of the benefits of community intervention programmes. Those who play leading roles will not only capture the benefits but will also translate their dominance into unequal power relations at the community level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study highlights methods supporting critiques of the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) technique stating that participation is most successfully achieved through a thorough understanding of community heterogeneity. Findings outlined in the paper demonstrate that this can be achieved through a two-stage approach: (1) the identification of varied heterogeneous groups and (2) through a process of ‘social inclusion’ of potential community leaders. The paper presents an understanding of community heterogeneity in the context of construction and management of community water supplies in Angola, South West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's western society is characterized by a transition towards self-organization by citizens in communities. Increasingly, societal problems are addressed by groups of citizens who take action to find concrete solutions. A second feature of western society is that it is an information society in which information and communication play a key role. In this paper, we analyse how these two societal trends come together at the community level. Applying a relational and contingent perspective to how green urban citizens' initiatives develop, we look into the role of information in their interactions with other people, organizations and institutions. We analyse the mechanisms whereby information plays a role in the citizens' initiatives. This leads to the conclusion that informational capital is fundamental to the realization of citizens' initiatives and that informational capital is generated, identified, used and enlarged through the relational strategies of bonding, bridging and linking. It is a process that works in both ways and reinforces citizens' initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of inclusive community development and its relevance to the ethnogenesis and empowerment of Gypsy and Traveller communities. Critics have asserted that such an approach can hold the danger of encompassing an assimilationist agenda, that seeks to ‘civilize’. The paper argues that community development can be community-driven but ideally should be a gradual process, delivered in stages where external and outsider assistance can in fact be of use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes an eight-month community-based participatory research project to introduce and evaluate the implementation of an asset-based approach to Tuberculosis (TB) leadership groups in three villages in Flores Island, Indonesia. An asset-based intervention that emphasized discovering, mobilizing, and strengthening the capacities of local communities was conducted. Asset-mapping workshops aimed to shift the TB leadership groups' capacity to work differently by focusing on their strengths rather than their problems or needs, to enable them to manage their own TB program. Monthly visits, home visits, informal discussions, and group discussions with TB groups were carried out to provide support to groups or leaders and to monitor and evaluate the project. The intervention successfully generated significant changes in the TB groups' view of outsiders and their relationship with the villagers, built dialogue between the group members, strengthened local initiatives that could reduce the rates of TB and encourage early diagnosis and therefore treatment, and encouraged community engagement. The approach enabled TB leadership groups to be more confident and capable in managing a local TB program that was formulated by themselves for themselves to achieve their own goals. The approach and techniques demonstrated in this study may represent an effective method and deliver outcomes that could be generalizable to similar settings and other health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing communities' participation in development processes has been the subject of both policy aspiration and scholarly critique. This paper explores the implications of a critical perspective on the ‘elusive goal’ of participation for community development practitioners. Drawing on insights from a range of scholars, this paper poses a practical challenge to professionals who work with communities: to name and challenge deeply embedded assumptions about expert knowledge and formal institutions, to recognize the role of those who ‘translate’ between community and external organizational spaces, and to integrate community knowledge and community institutions into participatory development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and extent of women's participation in the internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Darfur. Community leaders and committees always play a key role in the implementation of humanitarian assistance in Darfur; but women, the majority of the population in the camps, are often underrepresented in community participation and leadership. This is due to the influence of traditional patriarchal structures and compounded by the approach of some service providers and other institutions which often rely on existing and customary structures. This fails to acknowledge or promote the real and potential role of female leadership and equal participation and often reinforces exclusion based on gender. The paper analyses the potential offered by conflict to transform traditional gender roles and emphasizes the importance of ensuring that humanitarian response international NGOs acknowledge the often ignored role of traditional female community leaders and support women's leadership opportunities more broadly. The paper concludes by highlighting the positive impact of women's wider role in the community and the potential for long-term change this brings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community development practitioners are required to work in diverse environments, and the climate and culture in which they work shape their practice. The influence of climate and culture on practitioners is, however, rarely theorized in community development literature. Recently, a study conducted into cross-cultural community development work in the tropical Kimberley region of northwest Australia found that climate and culture were key contextual issues for practice. A model derived from this remote tropical region shows how these variables add a climatic dimension to theory. This paper argues that trainers, practitioners and planners will prepare and act in unique ways when they include the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions and influences in the checklist for worker survival and long-term effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Urban space has the potential to shape people's experience and understanding of the city and of the culture of a place. In some respects, murals and allied forms of wall art occupy the intersection of street art and public art; engaging, and sometimes, transforming the urban space in which they exist and those who use it. While murals are often conceived as a more ‘permanent’ form of painted art there has been a trend in recent years towards more deliberately transient forms of wall art such as washed-wall murals and reverse graffiti. These varying forms of public wall art are embedded within the fabric of the urban space and history. This paper will explore the intersection of public space, public art and public memory in a mural project in the Irish city of Cork. Focussing on the washed-wall murals of Cork's historic Shandon district, we explore the sympathetic and synergetic relationship of this wall art with the heritage architecture of the built environment and of the murals as an expression of and for the local community, past and present. Through the Shandon Big Wash Up murals we reflect on the function of participatory public art as an explicit act of urban citizenship which works to support community-led re-enchantment in the city through a reconnection with its past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper locates responses to the 2011 Tottenham riots within a historical analysis of planning, regeneration and the politics of community participation in the London Borough of Haringey. It examines understandings of the role of such participation and related recommendations within three 2012 reports: North London Citizens, an alliance of mostly faith organizations, The Tottenham Community Panel established by Haringey Council and the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel set up by Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multicultural participation, a process in communities whose identity groups recognize their differences and collaborate across boundaries, has potential in democratic societies whose populations are becoming more diverse. This paper examines multicultural participation in a neighborhood in Israel, whose people live in continuous international conflict. It raises questions about an approach which might contribute to diverse democracy and international relations, if multicultural principles prevailed and the neighborhood were a unit of solution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite an increase in community development initiatives in refugee contexts, there is a lack of evaluation frameworks to assess the effectiveness of interventions in the recovery of refugee communities. In response to this gap, the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma has developed an evaluation framework in consultation with refugee client groups and agencies' staff members. This paper contextualizes the goals, principles and strategies of services implementing community development initiatives with torture and trauma survivors and describes the process of developing the framework within a participatory action approach. Both outcome evaluation and process evaluation are discussed, and examples of the framework are presented. Community development agencies and professionals working with survivors of torture and trauma can play a significant role by fostering community empowerment through evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, there has been a general trend in democratic societies to develop and exploit social capital. Reflecting this trend, a recent policy programme for Northern Ireland, A Shared Future, emphasized the importance of relationship building, both within and across communities, and between communities and statutory organizations. The research presented in this paper explores the potential of social capital as a policy concept and the value of the concept for interpreting community dynamics, devising strategies to enhance community relations and development and ultimately building a more sustainable society post-conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A classic part of the community development process is people facing an acute economic or social problem connecting with others specializing in conceptual solutions. For example, South Asian villagers confronting chronic poverty may work with non-governmental organizations offering micro-credit schemes. These are two sides of the development relationship, the doers and the helpers. While the doers face problems that are unique to themselves, the helpers offer solutions that tend to be generic, applicable to a variety of contexts. In this paper we seek to bring some conceptual clarity to the relationships between doers and helpers in development, with a focus on the social sector that operates between business and government. We present a typology of the organizational forms involved in development, and then look at the gaps between helpers and doers and the approaches used to bridge them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The transformation of welfare in South Africa is examined through a survey of welfare agencies in KwaZulu‐Natal. Under apartheid, race was employed as an instrument of control and community work had a ‘group’ character. Post‐apartheid welfare policy seeks to increase community participation and eliminate the historic racial character of agencies. Social policy also places the burden of delivery on the voluntary sector. In this paper the age, gender, and racial characteristics of the boards and management of agencies are assessed. Measured by these and other criteria it is concluded that transformation has yet to be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers how well two rural traditions of Irish community development, one based on community councils the other on community cooperatives, conform to models of radical and pragmatic populist‐type collective action. Two simple models of radical and pragmatic populist‐type collective action are first outlined. We then explore the initial appearance of our two traditions, their ideologies, their organizational cultures, the sort of tactics they have relied on and how well they have fared in realizing their concrete aims. Each of our traditions is shown to gravitate more to pragmatic populist‐type collective action, though this is not unequivocally so across the board. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following recent proposals from the EC Commission and UK Ministers for a policy emphasis on integrated rural development, this article begins by noting some key elements within a model of endogenous rural development, including the role of partnerships, community involvement, animation and capacitybuilding. The paper focuses on four key questions that we argue are central to attempts to operationalise integrated rural development, drawing on recent practice in Scotland and Northern Ireland. These are: the legitimacy of rural development partnerships and local governance; the goals and processes of rural development, the time allocated for pre‐development and the articulation of integrated rural development programmes with other programmes. Finally, we suggest some conclusions for future European and national rural development policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The principal aim of this community study was to devise a model – to be employed by a Council in the east of Scotland – for engaging local people in the identification and assessment of expressed need and unmet need in relation to early years services. A collaborative approach with community members was used to identify issues, and to devise and partially pilot a model for future use in creating a 'dialogue' between the Council and its constituents. This paper outlines the methodology of the model and focuses on the successful aspects of the methodology and the obstacles encountered. The findings can be extrapolated onto many contexts where there is a desire to move towards developing an authority–community approach and, as such, will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners alike. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The mining sector revenues of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have significantly increased proportionally to mining production. Unfortunately, the increase in mining production has not translated into benefits for affected communities, given that revenues have not been sufficiently invested in the fostering of economic diversification or oriented toward projects that can sustain economic growth and thus improve the population's socioeconomic status and welfare. The Mining Code revision of 2018 was supposed to tackle these problems and has not yet come to fruition. Moreover, it is a common fact that mining has failed to alleviate poverty in some mineral resource-rich countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa, a region to which the DRC belongs. This work aims at increasing the mining industry involvement in the development of local communities. It analyses the behaviour in the production of copper and cobalt over more than a century and its incidence on the country economic status and the population welfare, as reflected by evolution in the Gross Domestic Product and the Human Development Index. It addresses the issue of mining and the development of local communities and finds that their welfare needs to be improved. The work puts an emphasis on the effective implementation of the new Mining Code and presents a framework for increasing the mining industry involvement in the welfare of affected communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many attempts to institutionalize community-based natural resource management have focused on mechanisms to secure accountable representation through participation. Within the framework of co-management, negotiation has become a prominent strategy for dealing with conflict. Using a case study of the negotiation of the social responsibility agreement for acquisition of timber rights in Ghana, the paper explores citizen expectations of participation compared with reality and the factors influencing citizen preference. Specific lessons learned were the need to be sensitive to opening social and political spaces for citizen participation, flexibility to allow dynamic interplay between the influencing factors and the representation process, and some empowerment interventions to create civil consciousness to ensure demand for downward accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the January 2011 issue of "Community Development Journal" is presented. Articles discussed include "In-Active citizenship and the depoliticization of community development in Ireland," by Niamh Gaynor, "Multicultural participation in an Israeli neighborhood," by Barry Checkoway, and "Fostering neighborhood viscosity: does design matter?" by Susan Mason and Elizabeth Fredericksen.

This study assessed sustainability of small town and rural water services in northern Ghana using lessons from Jirapa Municipality. A case study design, deploying mixed methods, was employed. Data were obtained from household questionnaires administration and in-depth interviews with community leaders and institutional stakeholders in the water sector. The results revealed that, though access to potable water has increased since the introduction of community-management of water services in Jirapa Municipality, there are still difficulties in terms of adequate water supply. Sustainability challenges revealed by the study are managerial and technical, including ineffective water-management committees, inadequate operations and maintenance capacity, inadequate funds to maintain facilities and lack of continuing support. The study concludes that the apparently improved access to potable water in the Municipality may be short-lived. To improve and sustain water services, water-management committees should be established and trained in administration, operations, maintenance and tariff setting. Also, innovative ways, such as establishing a 'water-management fund', should be used to provide continuing support to communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses the 2001 Citizen's Participation and the New Europe conference, the state of community development in Bulgaria, Romania, and the Czech Republic, and the issue of diversity and difference called the northern riots in Great Britain.

This study examined perceptions on the effectiveness, attendant challenges and remedies of community media for effective acculturation in Nigerian languages. The qualitative survey design was adopted with focus group discussions and key informant interviews of 50 purposively chosen informants. It was perceived that community media could serve as veritable platform for effective acculturation in Nigerian languages since they would engender the setting of acculturation in Nigerian languages as national objective or goal. It was further held that the strengths of community media for acculturation were in being goal-defined, ensuring local content and diversification. The study identified that as palatable as the proposal for community media for effective acculturation in Nigerian languages is, it would be fraught with some set-backs or challenges that were very much surmountable. Perceptions pointed towards transient nature of community media and funding as challenges as well as multibased funding as one remedy. Immediate establishment of community media for the purpose of acculturation in Nigerian languages was recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this qualitative study was 2-fold: to explore, in the context of young people's civic engagement in Sweden, (i) how adult leaders perceive social factors of youth mental health and (ii) how adult leaders handle such social factors within their organizations. Interviews were conducted with leaders engaged in various civic organizations that provide leisure activities for young people. Using thematic analysis, three themes were constructed. Firstly, the social landscape of youth mental health described how adult leaders perceived the social factors of youth mental health within the context of civic engagement. Secondly, the organizational structures developed by adult leaders illustrated the organizing forms that leaders created for young people's civic engagement. Thirdly, adult leaders' strategies for addressing the social factors of youth mental health reflected the strategies developed to handle e.g. stress and achievement pressure. The adult leaders recognized the importance of their organizations and their huge potential to have a positive impact on youth mental health. However, some participants also saw limitations in terms of their own resources and competence. They found themselves having to address the complex issue of social factors of youth mental health regardless of whether they felt competent and prepared to do this or not. Our findings contribute to the existing knowledge on youth and community development via the role of adult leaders in promoting young people's mental health by highlighting the organizational structures and leadership strategies developed by them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the ways the Latin American concept of Buen Vivir has been discussed by postdevelopment scholars as a possible alternative to development that goes beyond the traditional anthropocentric development model towards sustainability and wellbeing. Instituted as a reaction to the need for development to consider the biophysical limits of the environment, sustainable development (SD) critics argue that it has not achieved its aims of ensuring social wellbeing and protecting the world's natural resources for future generations. There is now an impetus towards alternatives to the status quo. Rather than becoming a radically opposing ideology, Buen Vivir provides the opportunity to meet the core aims of SD through a plural, yet alternative approach. This conceptual article is a critical review of academic, policy and popular discourse on the concept of Buen Vivir as an alternative to development. It analyses its strengths and weaknesses as an alternative to SD discourse, examining its core principles and contested definitions, discussing its viability to translate from an emergent alternative discourse to a plural and practical resource for communities to achieve the common aims for sustainability and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to identify academic sources by which to explain the practice of community potential mapping as a guideline for the community development process in Malaysia. This article aims to describe the practice of community potential mapping and explain the potential for community development in Malaysia. The study participants comprised 33 people from top-down and 283 people from bottom-up groups from 33 different villages. The data were collected by implementing the nominal group technique, and the nominal technique through an open-ended questionnaire. The study describes the flow of community potential mapping and identifies seven clusters of community potential in the community. In addition, different views and levels of awareness among the community members are highlighted with respect to the potential of their community, depending on which group they belong to (bottom-up or top-down). This reveals the importance of determining the right group of people from which to gain information about a community's potential, and also the need, as a first step, to involve both groups of people in the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates a multipronged community development initiative in Buffalo, NY, United States. Specifically, the city's community-based 'clean sweep' programme deploys teams of public servants to distressed neighbourhoods to enhance public spaces and engage residents in discussion and/or action. Statistical analyses of a pivotal year of the programme show that property owners on targeted city blocks appeared significantly less likely to violate property codes after the intervention, relative to remaining owners in two separate study areas. These results suggest that the actions that constitute a 'clean sweep' might make for effective community development in some distressed urban locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research on local siting conflicts are primarily about environmental threats. Following a boom during the two last decades of the 1900s, research on community opposition to the establishment of human services is a shrinking field with inadequate articulation and comparisons of various approaches. The aim of this research review is to critically scrutinize the first wave of research on local protests against human services and expose and contrast later approaches in order to lay the necessary groundwork for synthesis attempts. The first wave approach is characterized by its far-reaching generalization claims; all local protests against perceived social threats were seen as instances of Not In My Back Yard protests and as a function of general, hierarchically arranged attitudes toward client groups. By contrast, in later attempts to shed light upon neighbourhood protests, real life protests against the establishment of human services - not general attitudinal data - are focused upon. But the degree of contextualizing varies greatly within this more protest-centred research. The indirect approach is based on data that are collected in interviews with human service administrators and concern the extent and duration of neighbors' protests, while in the direct approach the protests are studied as such, and especially issues having to do with the local protests' ability to generate public support. In this article, the alternatives to the first wave of research on siting conflicts have been demonstrated for the first time and contrasted with each other. This is a necessary requirement and a first step for efforts to provide the syntheses that this research area so sorely needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous contributors to the CDJ have already critically appraised tensions within the Transition approach by examining its tacit assumptions about community (Transitioning communities: community, participation and the Transition Towns movement, Community Development Journal, 46(4), pp. 558-572.) and its political economy (The political economy of localization in the Transition movement, Community Development Journal, 50(2), pp. 213-326.). We add to this work by analysing how the movement's cultural politics frames its pedagogical approach. We analyse the Transition movement's pedagogy in the wider context of theoretical arguments about 'post-politics'. Its pedagogy aims to mould new subjectivities that are commensurate with the energy descent plan of the movement. Central to its approach is the way in which its collective identity has been carefully crafted as distinct from the wider environmental movement in order to generate public appeal. The movement's focus on local community as a site of consensus rather than conflict, descent rather than dissent, resilience rather than resistance, are central to its curriculum. In this respect, the Transition movement builds on what can be useful and valuable in the language of 'community', whilst at the same time embodying, or perhaps even amplifying, its limitations and omissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a paucity of studies on factors that influence the performance of community-operated urban-based water schemes in developing countries. Consequently, there are gaps in knowledge of these factors. The study reported here is intended to contribute to efforts aimed at bridging these gaps. It does so by employing the constant comparison analysis technique to assess the impact of community participation on the performance of four community-operated water schemes in urban informal neighborhoods in Kisumu Kenya. Based on our results and as compared to previous studies, the following two factors stand out as unique contributors: (i) provision of yearly dividends to the beneficiary community and (ii) extent of institutional formalization. These findings promise to be of utility not only for community development scholarship but also for urban water development policymakers in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the development and continuing work of the Community Mobiliser Service in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. It presents selected findings from two qualitative evaluation studies. The findings suggest that the Milton Keynes approach has much to offer as a community development initiative, having successfully stimulated community mobilization and participation on several estates in Milton Keynes for nearly ten years. This article presents a snapshot of the service from the perspectives of parents, young people, and other community members. It is shown that the service has been instrumental in supporting individuals and groups of community members to strive towards personal goals, develop community-based initiatives, and reduce dependency on services. This article concludes by outlining elements of effective practice in building communities collaboratively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ubiquitous yet amorphous concept of participation has resulted in much critical debate on its impact and outcomes at both micro (project) and macro (policy) levels. In highlighting what some have termed the ‘tyranny’ of participation, these debates have also provided valuable insights into how participative spaces might be rendered more transformative. But to what extent have these contributions informed policy and practice on the ground, most particularly within agencies and among practitioners supporting so-called participatory initiatives? Drawing on field research conducted in 2011 on local governance in Burundi, in this article I argue that the lessons and contributions from the literature have failed to impact upon international support to local governance developments in Burundi. Findings on direct and representative participation in local governance structures together with public and official understandings of what such participation means show continuities with the top-down, hierarchical and ultimately marginalizing practices of the past. I conclude with some lessons aimed at realizing the transformative potential of the opportunities offered by the reforms currently in place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Decentralized cooperation provides a favourable climate in which to implement alternative development strategies, for example those suggested by the Local Human Development approach. Within this approach, gender equity and community participation are central elements in the creation of endogenous change. By analysing a decade of experience in three Latin American countries (Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru), we discuss some key questions in the construction of alternative models of cooperation. These models stress the need to construct participatory processes on different scales and at various levels of society and assign most importance to those which originate from the base of communities (‘bottom up development’). The models also prioritize the multidimensional empowerment of women in all their roles, including those which determine overall power in society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a critique of research conducted in communities which fails to include communities in its design and undertaking. In parallel, academic research is increasingly being measured according to its benefit to the wider society. Co-productive research is a response to these challenges which offers a way of recognizing the resource contribution of communities to research and emphasizing the conduct of research ‘with’ communities rather than ‘on’ communities. This article identifies the reliance on ‘text’ in the research process as a barrier to delivering meaningful co-productive research with communities. ‘Beyond-text’ tools are emerging across academic disciplines and include story-telling, performance, art and photography. Recent research emphasizes the empowering potential of these methods by facilitating greater reflection on the lived experience of those involved. This article looks at examples of research which have employed ‘beyond text’ methods to consider their potential to deliver co-produced research with communities. It also asks whether it is the application of specific technical approaches and methods, or the underlying ethos within which research is conducted that is most critical to challenging unequal power relationships. It argues that beyond-text methods need to be applied within a wider set of values which re-conceptualize the role of the researcher working with communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research project explores the concept of ‘agency’ in the context of sustainable community development and the involvement of citizens in achieving social change and social innovation in their communities around community development issues. The concept of agency is normally understood as a noun – a team or structure of people performing specific tasks for a specific purpose Barber, 2001. However, according to Bhaskar (1994) it can also be a verb, describing an action or process that results in a new ‘state of affairs’. This notion of agency can be held either by individuals or groups. Agency in this context, therefore, refers to an individual, an organization, networks or a community that can enact a process that drives change – either in the context of an individual who effects change within a community or a group that collectively does the same. It is our assumption that the presence or absence of agency is the key indicator of a group's ability to respond and identify cohesive solutions to sustainable development challenges ( Newman and Dale, 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In spite of the significant government focus on community engagement, there is some question as to how effectively community views are incorporated and heard by government. In exploring these concerns, we suggest that it is more effective to consider the issue from the perspective of communities engaging government rather than government engaging community. In doing this, we have developed a methodological approach that focuses on building the capacity of community to more effectively engage government in an effort to strengthen their own community in ways that are meaningful within that community. We illustrate this process with a case study of government engagement undertaken by representatives from the small rural community of Tara in western Queensland. While the case study focuses on community engaging government, this approach could be equally well applied to other forms of non-government institutional engagement that are relevant in other community settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador over the past fifteen years has experienced failure of the ground fish industry, high unemployment, eroding infrastructure, and ensuing high levels of out-migration falling upon an already small population spread over extensive geography. These factors have resulted in the ‘leaving behind’ of those with the least capacity to relocate and market themselves in more economically viable areas. Most vulnerable are the youth left behind in rural and remote areas of the province, suggesting a focus on community capacity building as an apt response to this phenomenon as a means to maximize the sustainability of such communities into the future. The article describes a two-phase research project undertaken by three faculty members at the School of Social Work at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in partnership with several youth-serving agencies and funded by the federal government. On the basis of the belief that augmenting youths' understanding of the role and shaping of social policy can increase their capacity for future meaningful community participation, the purpose of the research was to advance knowledge about factors that influence engagement of youth in community-based social policy activity. Analysis of the findings is presented in terms of the factors that impede youth engagement in the social policy life of their communities and those observed to encourage engagement. The article concludes by noting some positive outcomes for youth participants and suggests directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the author discusses the stabilization of Somalia through the integration of community-driven safety with socio-economic development. He notes that Somalia has gained international attention as a result of piracy and terrorism by Somalis. He argues that piracy and terrorism are the consequences of underlying problems that need to be addressed in order to combat them and discusses ways in which the international community can engage in Somalia to stabilize the country.

This article draws on research conducted with South Asian women working in a variety of organizations ranging from those that provide specialist services to training and anti-racist work. It is argued that despite stereotyping, these women have shown agency through involvement in civic organizations which has been crucial in understanding issues that are specifically relevant to South Asian women, for example, forced marriage and honour killings. The article also engages with feminist debates around the construction of political agency and its role in influencing social change and transformation within the South Asian community. The empowerment of women is discussed with reference to its central role in enabling them to take control over their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The concept of capacity building is often discussed in the literature and represents a central aim of many development projects around the world. Indonesia has been a recipient of many programs of this type, and the nation's agencies and organizations of all kinds have taken up the idea of capacity building as a major goal of development. Despite this, the meaning and nature of capacity building is not well understood in Indonesia, even by those directly involved, and differs considerably from its generally accepted sense in the west. This article considers the meaning and nature of capacity building as it is used in Indonesia, including the ways in which Indonesians perceive the concept. This will provide better insights into the whole question of capacity in that nation and will serve to inform future aid and development efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]