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This article focuses on the broad and challenging question of how to resource transformative grassroots organizations. These organizations not only carry the grievances of women, immigrants and workers, but build collective action, support the emergence of leadership, and connect to larger social movements. We explore how the resourcing and democratic legitimacy of such grassroots movements transgresses presumed boundaries between popular politics and manipulated participation and whether diversifying funding sources helps make genuine community organizing more or less likely. We ask how these organizations pay staff, support education, and continue to survive while also challenging power. In addition, how do they contend with forms of state support that privilege very narrow and depoliticized agendas? We conclude that there are radical grassroots organizations that have, to a limited degree, successfully negotiated these tensions. Our examples from England and Quebec, along with our wider analysis, provide a snapshot of the possibilities of diversifying funding for community organizing by adding public funding to the mix. But our critical perspective also highlights the values, infrastructure, and scale needed to advance community organizing and related social movements beyond these examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anne O'Donnell and Lydia Sapouna, based in Scotland and Ireland, respectively, are activists and writers who have made long-standing contributions to the debate about mental health and recovery. In this dialogue they exchange analyses of the achievements and lessons to be learned from mental health activism that has resisted dominant narratives of mental illness and that has created innovative, collaborative and critical spaces for the exchange of ideas, experiences and enthusiasms. The dialogue seeks to evoke the distinctive styles of activism adopted in each context, the successes engendered and the kinds of dilemmas and tactical choices navigated. Ann and Lydia have initiated a process of reflection and exchange, and out of this they have constructed a dialogical piece that highlights key organizational issues for mental health activists and for community based social movements more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to identify and explore the convergent features of social movements and community development, arguing that they already share a distinctive, if uneasy, alliance around what might be called the politics of democracy. Exploring connections, as well as points of difference, this article suggests that a critical dialogue between the two might, in the longer term, contribute to a positive realignment between social movements and community development groups. In our view, social movement praxis has much to offer community development in reviving and reasserting its more radical potential, by offering untapped opportunities for building community, forging collective identity and imagining political alternatives. Specifically, the article explores why and how protest tactics matter: their political significance and the dilemmas and possibilities they present both for movement participants and community development practitioners. The article, while recognizing the often complex and constraining contexts within which it is deployed, also identifies particular features of community development that may contribute to the building of more grounded and participatory movements. In highlighting the overlapping and progressive commitment of social movements and community development organisations, we recognize the acute challenges involved in building support and forging solidarity among disenfranchised peoples. In the final section, we highlight and explore potential sources of and approaches to solidarity, assessing their relative merits for a more politically engaged community development practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including a critical dialogue between social movements and community development, agrarian politics and land struggles against corporate development opportunities in Northern Uganda and the possibility of autonomy within historical-geographic circumstances.

In this article, we explore the philosophical conflict between, on the one hand, a community development politics centred on forming race and gender neutral alliances to promote pragmatic economic advance, and on the other, one focused on recognizing the perspectives and practices of people of colour, women and other groups who are often excluded from grassroots movements. Using the United States as an example, we argue that a politics for social welfare is essential to create a movement in opposition to the devastating impacts of neoliberalism. Defending and reconstructing the American welfare state requires a politics which articulates (i) a theory of justice, (ii) an understanding of the nature of social reforms, (iii) a critical analysis of the state and (iv) an appreciation of the limits of the welfare state in the context of the political economy of advanced capitalism. We conclude with a set of questions which we believe practitioners, activists and scholars should address if we are to win victories while fostering the inclusion, leadership and participation of those groups who have been systematically marginalized in community development politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Transition Town (TT) movement has grown to become a global phenomenon aimed at assisting towns and communities to envision sustainable and self-reliant futures post peak oil. Arguably, this movement offers an exciting alternative to traditional notions of growth and development. This paper explores the rise of the TT movement focusing particularly on the processes involved in establishing a ‘TT’ raising questions pertaining to governance and to notions of participatory democracy within the movement. [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]

This article charts the development of social organization in Bolivia and considers some key factors that brought indigenous and poor people and their organizations from marginalization into the corridors of power. The author identifies indigenous collective practices, participation in the miners' union and participation in local politics as critical in the transformation of Bolivian social movements. These factors contributed to a coordinated resistance to the neo-liberal reforms introduced in the 1990s and a new, proactive and political role for social organizations. The author recounts how this resistance led to the ousting of the incumbent president and the rise to power of an indigenous leader. Finally, the article considers what role the social movements play in the process for change currently underway in Bolivia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that the concrete practice of autonomy by social movements is deeply embedded in socioeconomic and political contexts, and as such involves a contested relationship in and against the state, the market and hegemonic discourses on development. The task is then to explain and learn from this contested character of autonomy in each context, the processes by which social movements' autonomous practices remain vibrant, how they engage with the state, how they become institutionalized (if so) and the implications of such ‘contested institutionalization’ for social movements and the state. This argument is explored through the case of the Argentina unemployed workers or Piqueteros movement, taking the specific example of the municipality of General Mosconi. The ability of the unemployed workers to force the state and local enterprises to adapt to their demands and to give support with minimum intervention is seen as an example to other parts of the world of how autonomous community processes can both engage with the state whereas retaining their own dynamics and control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impact of the arrival of refugees and other immigrants in areas previously considered culturally homogeneous has influenced the school community. It has created an awareness of new needs and stimulated the development in both pre- and in-service teacher training. The ability to adapt to societal transitions is a skill to be developed in teachers. Rather than working for the socialization of students into the status quo, schools can educate students to be proactive agents of social change. Volunteer educators have participated in workgroup consultations to create appealing and realistic training that captures teachers' and student teachers' interests and enhances the creation of diversity-positive learning environments. A two-pronged approach is needed that promotes the world citizenship education of all students and meets the life long needs of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case for the opening up of new spaces for citizen voice in local governance, through synergy between political party leaders and social movement leaders. Through case study evidence from two municipalities in Nicaragua, it is found that where the relationship between political party and social movement leaders has been very close, the potential for disadvantaged citizens to have voice in local governance is diminished. A key factor that emerges is that citizens should have unmediated access to such new arrangements for local governance, with social movements and political parties playing a facilitative role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significant growth of community development in Ireland. It provides an overview on the history of community development in the country, wherein the principle of self-reliance and local initiative is advocated to bring a better condition in life. It describes the current contexts for the country's community development in which the commitment to a more open and accountable government is developed, as well as the current issues and trends of community development that include the program approach to support development, the term of the program and the growth in the number of community development managers. The challenges that community development is facing, which include management of political priorities and maintaining a social change analysis are also discussed.

This article assesses the impact of the World Health Organization's strategy of Health For All by the Year 2000 (HFA2000) as a global strategy initiated from above, shaped by the 1970s world-wide challenge from below. While having been partially successful, the grand aims of Alma Ata have not been realized. Pressing new problems such as AIDS have emerged, health inequalities widened, and economic globalization has impacted negatively on health policy. The article concludes by suggesting that HFA2000 remains a relevant vision, and draws hope from the fact that a new global strategy for healthy development is emerging from below out of the campaigns of Global Social Movements (GSMs) against the neoliberal system of global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Creating organizations through which the poor could have a voice was the primary goal of the anti-poverty movement in Montreal in the early 1970s. Through confrontation politics, it made claims on the state and mobilized those traditionally excluded from the wider political process. Its most significant impact was to transform those on welfare from a marginalized group into active citizens. In this article, we examine an English speaking anti-poverty movement in Montreal during the 1970s. We discuss its vision and strategies, as well as some of the conflicts within the organization, particularly as these shaped the possibility of the poor 'speaking for themselves'. Throughout, we show that the movement propelled a new form of citizenship for poor people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social movements are manifestations of and facilitate human 'agency' (LaClau and Mouffe, 1987; Touraine, 1998). The past 20 years reveal a burgeoning number of service and advocacy organizations which focus on the specific needs, interests and issues of minority members of our society. In some cases these minorities represent a significant sector of the population yet continue to be regarded as minorities, as others, as less than full citizens. Full citizenship appears to be conferred differentially. Conceptually, citizenship reflects the idea that citizens act in the public sphere, they contribute to, and shape the discourses which, in turn, and in part, structure our society. All of the members of the society are, conceptually and theoretically, entitled to this participation. Practically, however, citizenship appears to be increasingly exclusively conferred. This paper explores these issues theoretically and conceptually, first examining the relationship between civil society and social movements and the public sphere; how these realms might be understood to intersect and interrelate. In short, the paper explores the question of whether the actions and agency of citizens in civil society effects the public sphere. Whether these persons and their activities contribute an alternative discourse which is a discourse of the public, or only of a marginal realm, is a question critical to understanding the relationship between community development, civil society and social change. While this paper can not claim to answer this question, it explores these ideas and our contemporary experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present interest in new commons is a very welcome development. It shows that more and more people understand that our present capitalist world system cannot solve any of the problems it itself has created. Most people who want to create new commons are looking for an altogether new paradigm of economy and society. Yet I think it is necessary to look more critically at the main concepts and arguments used in the contemporary discourse on ‘the commons’. Today there is a new hype about the ‘new commons’, including myths about the Internet as a commons and that it has created new communities. In this article I ask: what do we mean when we speak of ‘new commons’? What can we learn from the old commons? What has to be changed today? Is there a realistic perspective for new commons? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A commoner's Bildungsroman, this article narrates the intellectual development of a radically rooted intellectual, through reflections on dominant explanatory frameworks, evoking through that journey, the real-life personal and conceptual implications of the pursuit of understanding the world, and the desire to change it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The research reported here explores a community that amassed social capital in effective and diverse ways, enabling it to fight a corporate giant and protect critical, large watersheds. We explore how the dynamic interaction between network formation and network structure augmented community social capital, particularly bridging, for increased access to human and economic capital. Network structure(s) can create enabling conditions for the mobilization of social capital within communities and for people to feel empowered to act. The research suggests that there is an opportunity for policy-makers to learn what kinds of policies can enhance or destroy existing social capital in a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]