Search

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]

The purpose of this paper is to provide an interpretation of programme experiences in the visual representation of strategies used to build community capacity. The paper first discusses the definition of community capacity in a programme context and describes different approaches for the visual representation of the evaluation of community capacity. What is new about this paper is that it provides a discussion about the interpretation of community capacity and in particular the use of the spider web configuration (so called because of the shape it resembles). This is illustrated by three examples taken from two different community development programmes, the first of which is in Fiji and the second in Kyrgyzstan. The paper concludes with a discussion about the implications for the community development practice of using visual representations of community capacity, including the difficulties, for example, of mapping changes in community capacities over time, and the benefits, for example, of promoting a free flow of information between stakeholders. The paper will assist practitioners to better plan for, evaluate and visually represent the findings of strategies used to build community capacity in community development programmes. [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]

This paper examines the role of rural Palestinian women in the South Hebron Hills (SHH) in fighting back against both Israeli settler colonial practices and environmental destruction resulting from such practices. We contend that Israel is waging a war on the environment as a tool to deprive Palestinians in Area 'C' of what sustains life, land and natural resources. Through their everyday practices of defiance, we argue that, rural women wielding an indigenous lifestyle of farming in the SHH create an agro-ecological structure of sumud, or steadfastness through their domestic everyday practices, where they strengthen their attachment to the land and regenerate the environment. [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]

This article begins by outlining some of the challenges and opportunities for community development theory and practice today. Some of these have been present from the 1960s and 70s, some have been evident for several decades, others are new and some demand urgent attention. The second part of the paper notes three types of responses to the challenges. It argues the case for embracing one specific response, namely a deepening of a cosmopolitan outlook in both the theory and practice of community development. While acknowledging that community development is in some ways already a cosmopolitan endeavour, the paper concludes with a call for exploration of the ways in which embracing a broader and deeper cosmopolitanism might enhance community development as it responds to contemporary challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Sue Kenny on four sets of operating rationales and operating frameworks for community development in the context of globalization, one by Anne Jennings on the impact of external economic forces on small rural communities in Australia, and one by Jessica Goldsworthy on ways of integrating casework community development and social action.

Social work has always recognized the importance of community development as a key element in intervention and social change. Even so, the neoliberal context currently affecting the reality of most of the countries in the Global North is directly influencing the weakening of community actions and is reinforcing more individualistic positions. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the extent to which neoliberal policies are impacting on the teaching of community development content on social work programs in Spain and to study the impact of this reality on the implementation of community plans and projects in Catalonia. The methodology used was qualitative and was based on a systematic review of institutional documentation, community programs and specialized literature. Likewise, the study plans of the 32 universities currently teaching the social work degree in Spain were carefully reviewed to identify and analyze the subjects that focus their primary content on community development. We highlight the purpose of public and private institutions to maintain and promote community development plans and programs and the need to broaden and promote the community development approach in social work study plans. Finally, we present recommendations on how to promote social intervention and community development as key elements in both the training and practice of the social work profession. [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]

This paper focuses on the issues raised by a redevelopment project currently taking place in an 'urban village' in Seoul, Korea. The paper examines the urban villagers' diverse community activities and responses to the redevelopment project. Furthermore, it explores how place attachment and communal feeling among neighbours have not only played an important role in creating emotional alliances for resistance against the redevelopment project, but have also helped residents to keep their property rights. This paper ultimately stresses the contradictions of the Hapdong redevelopment system through examining long-term residents' responses in the topography of conflict over the redevelopment project, and argues that this system is no longer fit to serve the needs of the urban ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the failure of top-down initiatives to bring about community development (CD) in many developing countries, attention is switching to bottom-up approaches, one of which is to use community-based organizations (CBOs) as the conduit through which CD may be achieved. This paper compares the effectiveness of traditional CBOs and modern CBOs in fostering CD in eight communities in Ogoniland, Nigeria, where there is a long history of neglect and underdevelopment. The paper was based on extensive fieldwork carried out in eight Ogoni communities during 2013-2014, which involved 101 telephone interviews with residents, 67 face-to-face key informant interviews, 189 survey questionnaires, and 3 focus groups discussions. The two main conclusions reached by this paper are that despite some praise expressed by respondents for their CBOs, the fashionable belief that CBOs are strong agents of bottom-up CD is not borne out by this study; and there is little difference between respondents' evaluations of the contributions to CD made by modern CBOs and the much vaunted traditional CBOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community development is a process where people concerned with social and environmental justice act together as engaged and active citizens1 to change their collective circumstances. A concern to deliver change through these processes raises the questions: How do we know if our work is effective? What do we mean by and how do we assess outcomes? What 'evidence' will help us articulate and improve how we do our work? Over the past decades, there has been a growing trend globally towards evaluation to understand and improve practice. Nevertheless, there is a lack of clarity about, and application of, appropriate frameworks for community development evaluation (Motherway, 2006; CDF, 2010; Whelan et al. , 2019). Drawing on current practice, this paper explores challenges, principles and methods for evaluation in community development. We argue that 'measurement' requires a clear understanding and agreement of community development purpose and processes, including recognition of community as within and beyond place. Drawing on international evaluation criteria and models, we conclude that community development work could learn from these, as long as communities are in central decision-making roles. We offer suggestions for principles to inform evaluation efforts in community development, suggesting that good community development processes and associated outcomes represent in themselves a theory of change. [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]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Neeta Gathiram and David Hemson on the transformation of welfare in South Africa, one by Ambe J. Njoh on the water project in Cameroon, Central Africa, and one by Deirde Heenan and Rory McLaughlin on the role of credit unions in community development in Northern Ireland.

How do communities understand the highly abstract process of housing financialization? In this paper we argue that walking tours offer the capacity to develop new forms of mobile, public education to learn about the capitalist urbanization process, especially as the financialization of housing accelerates. Based on walking the city of Manchester we show that this type of learning may improve public literacy concerning the opaque and extended ways in which housing in central areas has increasingly been shaped by new types of real estate finance. Although many people in Manchester have understood the outline of these dramatic transformations, and could connect the new skyscrapers to their struggles for everyday survival, there remained a gap in detailed literacy of the actors, finances and dynamics that had changed the city so quickly. We contextualize the rapidly changing global landscape of housing since the global financial crisis of 2008 before showing how these transformations have reshaped housing in Manchester. We then describe the motivations for developing the tour, and the details of the walk itself. We conclude by suggesting that the walking tour offers new types of possibility in necessary learning and subsequent action to address capitalist urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the importance of emphasizing the agency and the initiative of community voluntary associations in relations of shared governance with the local state. This is intended to counter what the author sees as a current over emphasis on government-initiated, -directed, -guided or -administered forms of collaboration. Dangers documented by other scholars of this kind of collaborative governance include cooptation, placation, lack of real authority, absence of diversity and overall lack of parity with government. Based on a larger qualitative study of a mid-sized city near Boston, MA, the paper describes associations which choose to act (i) in opposition to local government as a path towards parity in shared governance, and (ii) in parallel with but separate from local government as a way to influence that government. The author argues that when associations exercise their agency to choose when and how to work with government (and when not to), this preserves associational independence while at the same time allowing for beneficial forms of state-associational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International development workers have a long history of using photography to document their actions in the field. While this is ostensibly a laudable goal, our paper examines how the use of photography could reproduce and reinforce the existing imbalances between countries of the North and global South. We present a critical analysis contending that the assumption of the photograph as a document of reality has long been used to support imperialist, colonial and neocolonial agendas. We argue that this trend continues unabated in most instances of Canadian international development work. We make use of four recent pictorial examples from annual reports of international development agencies that we feel represent a particular reading of the dominant discourse, namely that Northern agencies are generous and engage in ‘civilizing’ behaviour when doing work in countries in the global South. We conclude with some specific recommendations for development workers on the use of photography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Malawi, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of foreign companies looking to invest in the mining sector. However, in a country where mining sector regulations are woefully inadequate but where the government seems determined to attract overseas investors, it is important to adopt approaches which ensure that the benefits of mining are maximized and that its adverse community-level impacts are minimized. Focusing on the experiences of the Kayerekera Uranium and Chimwadzulu Ruby projects, this paper critically examines how the rapid increase in mining activities in Malawi is affecting local livelihoods. In doing so, the paper explores how civil society has influenced the development of the corporate social responsibility strategies of incoming companies and how well the needs of communities are being met. Given the inadequacies of mining regulations, greater participation from civil society actors and the communities themselves in decisions pertaining to mine development is a key to effective community development in emerging mineral economies such as Malawi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sustainable mining has become a paradigm that mobilizes companies, governments and community groups. The struggles between an expansive mining sector and a significant part of the rural population for access and control of land and water show that the association between large-scale mining and rural livelihoods faces a number of challenges. This paper analyses changes in rural livelihoods associated with the expansion of mining in the Andes. Framed within the sustainable livelihoods approach and the role of institutions, in particular property rights, in development, it argues that: (i) change in livelihoods respond to a broad set of factors that include but are not limited to the influence of mining; (ii) the presence of mining accelerates such change and introduces inter-generational distribution effects; (iii) institutions governing land and water rights play a significant role in the power relationships between companies and communities. The paper concludes by suggesting a role for social policy and corporate social responsibility in supporting positive and sustainable changes of rural livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the claim that ideas and practices of international development, including community development, are embedded in Western notions of how to organize society. It elucidates some of the main precepts of the westernization thesis, and drawing on several studies of community development projects in Indonesia, it investigates what elements might be considered as ‘Western’ and whether the adoption of so-called Western ways is the result of the dominating power of international agencies or a pragmatic choice of active agents. The paper argues that the westernization thesis is problematic and does little to help us understand the complex interactions involving change at the community level. From a community development perspective, the question of whether the themes of westernization are appropriate is not a matter of the views of outside experts, but whether they are of use to the people at the grassroots in their collective endeavours. [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]

There is increasing evidence that the lack of access to information and communication technology (ICT), or the ‘digital divide’, severely limits education, employment and economic prospects. An individual's ability to use and access computers and the internet is vital to schooling and education generally, to their ability to participate effectively in the economy, and in many cases, to access everyday services. This paper utilizes the context of an innovative ICT project in the heart of Melbourne to discuss the challenges of partnering disadvantaged communities both in project development and in this evaluation of case project. The efficacy of the project, though not under discussion, was important because it provided the evaluation with a credible vehicle in which to establish community discussion with people from a diverse range of age groups and backgrounds. Their engagement was essential not only to the research but to the overall success of the project. In a community with very low social capital, engagement in a community project takes time, commitment and good community development practice. The paper describes the process of the research in this community, reminding us that community goals can only be met if we engage the stakeholders in enacting community change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Distance from markets and from the mental maps of urban-centric policy-makers means that small, remote settlements do generate economic practices locally. This paper draws on two case studies to argue that remote sustainability requires an emphasis on the local economy (the settlement and multi-settlement region), and that long-term strategies held at the local level by locals are most favourable to both economic and social life. While some settlements are clearly better positioned in terms of natural resources and opportunities, all settlements need access to supportive policy and infrastructure at national and regional levels. The paper argues that current economic policy facilitates national prosperity to the detriment of local economies. It points to the necessity for desert regions, of developing an internal economic agenda held by a local agency, in ways that bring both Aboriginal and settler cultures into economic expression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Towards the end of the 20th century, a range of western sociologists and cultural theorists were arguing that the word ‘community’ had outlived its usefulness, yet use of the word has certainly not diminished in either popular or academic discourse. Indeed, this paper follows writers such as Bauman (2001) and Delanty (2003) in suggesting that there has been a ‘turn’ to community in the conditions of global flux and uncertainty. However, western conceptions of community are often inadequate for describing dynamic social formations in societies of the global south and this paper takes a dynamic and multilayered conception of community that has been developed by the Globalism Research Centre at RMIT in Melbourne to apply to community formation in Ecuador and Malaysia. The paper compares this way of thinking about local communities in Australia with very different local contexts in Malaysia and Ecuador. The paper adds to Delanty's conception of community (2003) and adds a new typology of contemporary communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on recent research conducted in Brazil on young people's understanding and practices of public action. The research examines some of the initiatives in which young people today participate: community organizations, cultural groups and social movements, and asks what this engagement means in their day-to-day lives. The paper also examines the historical processes that have come to shape this present field of public action and identifies the emergence of new forms of political engagement through cultural forms which provide a key entry point for young people's participation. The paper provides an analysis of the ways in which young people often come to be engaged in forms of public action through cultural forms, such as music, dance, cinema, theatre, photography, which are used by a number of groups as tools for critical reflection, or conscientização, and as a means for personal and community development. The paper explores these processes and goes on to identify a genealogy in the non-governmental sector of an alternative pedagogy that was much influenced by Paulo Freire but which gains new forms through the use of various elements of contemporary popular culture and different types of information and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite overwhelming interest in the role of social capital in international development, attention to the interplay of community-based development aid with local collective-action dynamics in Central Asia and particularly Tajikistan has remained limited. This paper investigates donor-induced local institutions for collective action in rural Tajikistan with a focus on the introduction of a community-based health insurance. Social capital and collective-action theories are used to interpret results from qualitative research in two Rushan District villages in the Gorno-Badakhshan region. By highlighting the role of donor embeddedness, and the perceived legitimacy of different decision-making structures, the article contends that the perception of such externally-induced change depends on the community's capacity to reach beyond the intra-communal solidarity network through bridging and linking capital. The findings suggest this can be fostered by addressing trust, and the role of effective development brokers, with due attention to power relations within communities and towards external agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of well-being is part of an inter-disciplinary agenda for health improvement and human flourishing, critiqued as a superficial 'solution' to structural inequality (Friedli, L. (2003) Mental Health Improvement 'concepts and definitions': briefing Paper for the National Advisory Group , Scottish Executive, Edinburgh; White, S. C. (2010) Analysing wellbeing: a framework for development practice, Development in Practice , 20 (2), 158–172). This article discusses an evaluation of three health promoting community projects, over a two-year period. The study identifies important features for understanding well-being at grassroots, community and practice levels. Local people had viable and holistic perceptions of well-being that helped them reflect on their current contexts. Practitioners tended to have a more limited conceptualization by associating wellbeing with mental health or community safety. Consideration of findings identified five conditions of wellbeing for community development practice: creating a sense of community; strong volunteering ethos; networking and partnership working; positive language; enhanced relationships. Applying these findings in practice helped to create a new reflective grid, incorporating seven elements of well-being. Participants found this grid easy to use and affirming in facilitating reflection on their personal well-being. This was also beneficial for community practitioners, who were not clinically qualified, to facilitate reflective learning at grassroots level. Analysis of this research enables a conclusion to be drawn to suggest that well-being is a valuable construct in unifying community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of resilience is now routinely put forward by both policymakers and social activists as a way for communities to use and develop their resources and respond positively to change, including decarbonization to address climate change. The extent to which a community is able to utilize all its resources depends on the extent to which it feels empowered to take action and is a major determinant of its resilience. A narrative of community empowerment has recently emerged from Scottish Government, driven in part by the situation in Scotland, in which a skewed pattern of landownership and distant structure of 'local' democracy combine to disempower communities by disconnecting them from local resources and local representative democracy. Recent Scottish legislation appears to provide new opportunities for community groups to gain control of local assets, become more financially sustainable, undertake climate-related mitigation actions and overcome some of the current local democratic deficit. At the same time, an increasingly well-organized and networked community sector and some within the Scottish Government are actively exploring new ways to enable public participation and deliver public services. This paper analyses the current Scottish policy framework and aspirations for community empowerment and, through interviews with stakeholders, assesses the potential, this may provide for communities to become truly resilient and to actively engage with transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a move towards partnership working across the global north and south but there remain questions about how to do it most effectively. This paper reports on the findings from a project that built a partnership between women in Scotland and India in order to transfer knowledge about Indian Self Help Groups. By creating peer to peer relationships that challenged traditional roles of 'teacher' and 'learner', the project was effective in transferring learning from south to north and generating meaningful outcomes for those involved. Despite the contextual differences, the successful transfer of key components of the model, savings, and loans, has led to a sense of empowerment in the Scottish women that is comparable to their Indian counterparts. As the project continues, it will be important that the dialogue between the partners continues, so there is ongoing learning as the Scottish groups expand and develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about what builds and what blocks pathways to accountability in South African townships could be strengthened by better understanding the role of intersectionality in these settings. This article describes our use of a novel hand mapping method to explore identity and inequality among a collective of community members from the township of Delft in Cape Town. We share new insights about the effect of intersecting inequalities on the capacity of activists and concerned young citizens to take part in building accountability for safer spaces in South Africa. Although we gained a deeper understanding about some of the ways that intersecting inequalities play out in the lives of Delft residents, we also learnt lessons about the limits to facilitated accountability struggles. Some of these struggles relate directly to the inequalities that this study has highlighted, and some reflect the highly fluid socioeconomic and political environment in which our work was situated. This article is divided into eight main sections. We begin by introducing the theory of intersectionality and provide a rationale for using participatory visual methods as tools for intersectionality research. We then summarize the study context and describe the hand mapping method that was used. The following four sections present our results through discussions of identity and personal experiences of inequality, unpacking intersecting inequalities, the possibilities and constraints of advancing accountability, and balancing accountability with the conditions of collective action. The paper ends with a summary of the insights and conclusions we have reached through facilitating this action research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Echoing the call to incorporate the intersectionality framework into studies of gender structure, this paper applied the framework to re-analyse the quantitative and qualitative findings of an evaluation study on a women empowerment community project in Hong Kong. This effort revealed the importance of the gender structure's dimension of sexual division of labour and the intersectional effects of gender, race and class in explaining the mixed traditional and progressive views in different items within a domain and across different domains of the gender division of labour, specifically the marital, parental, employment, social activities and education domains. The low-income migrant women have upheld different traditional ideas in these domains. However, in contrast with the richer and local women who also shared these traditional views, low-income migrant women in this study questioned some prevailing ideas in these domains, due to their need to survive the conditions defined by the intersection of gender, race and class. The findings of this study, despite being preliminary and limited, demonstrate the significance and feasibility of studying gender structure adopting the perspective of intersectionality. Arguably, this lack of understanding of the intersectional effects diminishes the effectiveness of community intervention. In light of the paucity of research adopting the intersectionality framework in the community development field in general, and a similar deficit in the feminist and community development fields in Hong Kong in particular, the failure to adopt the intersectionality framework by the community project under consideration is understandable. It is likely that as this framework becomes more prominent in the future, given its potential to offer deeper insight into the dynamics of gender structure, community interventions for women of different identities could be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on lived experiences of De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribe (DNT) population groups with a focus on the challenges faced in efforts towards collectivizing these diverse identities into a 'community'. In this participatory action research process, people were involved throughout; including in finalizing research objectives and defining a set of indicators for the data collection process. The data were analysed through a Ground-Level Panel—a collective analysis process using in-depth discussion and participatory tools. The process aimed to test out a model for participatory monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals, which would in turn strengthen 'social accountability' systems for those most marginalized and facing multiple inequalities. Throughout the research it became central to understand the kind of challenges that arise from building a collective identity. It was found that so-called communities are often diverse 'within' not only in terms of marginalization but also in terms of ideologies; this hinders any strategic engagement in collectivizing under a common banner. These fissures within the communities and under-representation in positions of power, further deny DNTs equitable opportunities to access entitlements, which reproduces the vicious cycle of marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delivery of projects for the coproduction of services raises multiple questions about how different structural barriers prevent and hinder the participation of various sectors of the population. Intersectionality theory provides a critical lens to examine the delivery of such coproduction projects to refine any strategies to include vulnerable perspectives or perspectives that get silenced by existing hierarchies. This paper presents an intersectionality-led analysis of the delivery of a project to improve public safety in Pakistan. The project mapped existing concerns about urban violence of different groups of the population. The project used a multilayered approach to facilitate the engagement of excluded views, both in the constitution of the research team and in the involvement of communities. An intersectionality framework is applied to analyse the deployment of the project in terms of design, innovation, planning, and signification. The analysis shows that there are limitations to how far coproduction exercises can challenge existing social structural barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Third Way community programmes produce practice opportunities that appear familiar to community development workers, they also produce a play of power that is significant in the delivery of some crucial neoliberal shifts in governance and subject constitution. This paper juxtaposes current theorizing of how power works within advanced liberal polities with stories of local practice in urban and community renewal sites. The argument is that practice stories are often positioned in relation to a narrow spectrum of power relations, and this obscures the ways we are currently governed or exercise power in relation to ourselves and each other. A narrow gaze may point to successful outcomes of an immediate kind, yet contribute to wider agendas that more broadly undermine local people and processes. The question posed by the paper is not whether to engage in renewal activities, but rather how to interrogate the power dynamics of such engagements in the stories we tell of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a community development strategy to empower rural women through educational and small-scale household economic activities. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods were used to assess the impact of a community development project launched in a remote hill district of Nepal. Focusing on two project components, the paper concludes that a functional literacy programme is a good start, which has revealed its dynamism with practical extensions in a post-literacy period. On the other hand, group savings and credit programmes provide the driving force to help illiterate rural women start small-scale economic activities that are effective in absorbing the female workforce in these communities. Community development programmes should be ready to meet changing needs of the target population to make them truly self-reliant after the completion of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Treaty of Waitangi is widely recognized as the founding document of New Zealand. While the Treaty has constitutional and legal status, its meaning and application in contemporary New Zealand society is the source of great debate. This paper unmasks the increasingly dominant and problem-saturated narrative of Treaty Fatigue circulating in public discourses in New Zealand and proposes an alternate inspiring narrative of Treaty Hope. In so doing, the paper examines the application and relevance of narrative ideas and practices in forging a preference for Treaty Hope and in fostering Treaty-based policies and practices in the work of government, and considers how community development practitioners in post-colonial settings may engage with New Zealand's experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the politics of community work by examining four basic community participation approaches. Moving from the right of politics to the left, it overviews some of the different theoretical orientations, goals, processes and recruitment practices that are commonly used but not always recognized to constitute different forms of community participation. Offered primarily to ‘lay’ community members, students and beginning practitioners, the paper is intended to clarify some of the differences that emerge when participation projects are designed, and to stimulate discussion about community participation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the potential of new Information Communication Technologies as a means of furthering a children’s ‘community of interest’. A ‘community of interest’ is taken from Raymond Williams’ concept of people forming communities not around place but around specific ‘interests’. I wish in this paper to explore the forms and tensions of a children’s ‘community of interest’ that might be facilitated around ICTs in general and the Internet in particular. The paper draws on community development literature around the potentials and use of ICTs as a means of developing communities. The paper highlights these potentials but also investigates the obstacles that a children’s online ‘community of interest’ may confront. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on UK fieldwork in the West Midlands, Manchester and Liverpool and London, the paper explores the impacts of asylum-seeker dispersal on the formation of refugee community organizations (RCOs). An outline of policy precedes discussion which demonstrates how dispersal has consolidated a solid core of established RCOs in London, whilst stimulating a regional periphery of volatile semi-secure and insecure RCOs competing for shrinking financial support. The main part of the paper challenges the prevailing paradigm of RCOs as formally constituted organizations of social capital which crucially mediate the process of integration. This traditional role and rationale has been sacrificed for largely short-term, defensive tasks in a hostile policy environment. Despite their proliferation, RCOs resist institutionalization within both the state apparatus and their community networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underpinning philosophy of community development and spirituality is the connection of the individual to the collective, acknowledging that the well-being of the individual influences and is influenced by the wellbeing of the community. The central tenets of this philosophy are the promotion of fairness, social justice and access to community resources to create responsible well-being. This paper explores the links between spirituality and community development. We argue that the six dimensions of community development, namely economic, social, political, spiritual, cultural and environmental (Ife, 2002; 1995) are strongly informed by spiritual values of holism, sustainability, diversity, equilibrium and social justice. Case studies of community development practised by different faith-based groups are presented and critiqued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK ‘New’ Labour Government has introduced a number of regional, local and neighbourhood initiatives. These claim to share similar characteristics based upon the concepts of ‘partnership’ and ‘multi-agency’ cooperation. New structures to ensure the accountability and the delivery of these new forms of governance and service delivery have been established. Local Strategic Partnerships, with an emphasis on community ‘capacity’ building are the latest policy response. This paper, drawing upon research in Manchester and Glasgow, suggests that whilst these initiatives use a new language, they are steeped in old practices. Changing structures does not, of itself, alter the power differences inherent in local neighbourhoods where community groups are cast as ‘dependent’ by regeneration managers seeking to meet performance targets. The paper seeks to identify ways in which this relationship can be altered to enable local groups to negotiate a new agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Academic researchers in developing countries are increasingly called upon to gear their research efforts towards solving contemporary social problems. The dominant research paradigm in their academic institutions is however not conducive to such endeavours. This paper proposes a participatory paradigm, based on the principles of activity theory, as a basis for community development work. The paper elaborates on the process needed to develop a participatory research project and presents two examples to illustrate the characteristics of such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]