Revisiting 'community' in community-based natural resource management

This article is concerned with the diverse nature and interestin the concept of ‘community’ and especially asit applies to community-based natural resource management projectsthat have grown in emphasis during the past twenty years. Despiteall the rhetoric about community and its reference in a ritualisticmanner in projects and policy documents, often contrary experiencesand mixed results in the field have started stirring negativereactions from various quarters. This article delves into thechallenges and dilemmas, which the focus on ‘community’,with its lack of specificity, has conjured up for practitioners,policy-makers and academicians alike.     

New information communication technologies and the development of a children's 'community of interest'

This paper is concerned with the potential of new InformationCommunication Technologies as a means of furthering a children’s‘community of interest’. A ‘community of interest’is taken from Raymond Williams’ concept of people formingcommunities not around place but around specific ‘interests’.I wish in this paper to explore the forms and tensions of achildren’s ‘community of interest’ that mightbe facilitated around ICTs in general and the Internet in particular.The paper draws on community development literature around thepotentials and use of ICTs as a means of developing communities.The paper highlights these potentials but also investigatesthe obstacles that a children’s online ‘communityof interest’ may confront.     

Campaign for education in democratic citizenship, Guadalajara, Mexico

Since the time of the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910(views on when it finished vary between 1917 and 1940) Mexicohad been ruled by the same, single political party, the PRI(the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, meaning the ‘InstitutionalRevolutionary Party’), until it finally lost a presidentialelection in 2000 to the right-wing Party of National Action,after seventy-one years in power. The PRI had stayed in powerthrough a mixture of ‘clientelism’, ‘populism’,‘corruption’ and the rigging of elections and helda tight control on the whole of Mexican society. In its effortsto bring about social change, from the 1990s onwards Mexicansociety began to concentrate its efforts on challenging thedominance held by the PRI at the national, federal level. Adebate on the ‘transition to democracy’ took offin both academic circles and social and civil organizationslooking for ways to create a new and different kind of relationshipbetween government and society. It was in that context that,as with many other civil organizations in Mexico, we in IMDEC¹considered how we might best open up more spaces for the cultureand practice of democracy and motivate citizens to activelycampaign on those issues impacting on their daily lives. Theissue, however, was how to engage this participation differently,in a more festive atmosphere, breaking with formal traditions,in such a way that people would feel better motivated to becomeinvolved in actively addressing the problems that surroundedthem. In this article, I want to share an experience, whichtook place between April and August 1994, before the local electionsof that year, based on a Campaign for Education in DemocraticCitizenship.     

Participatory Citizenship: Identity, Exclusion, Inclusion

Representative, deliberative or participatory democracy? Whatform of government, or governance, is most suited to the challengesfaced by individual citizens, communities and nation statesin the globalized economies of the 21st Century? Mohanty andTandon stress the importance of addressing these issues at anumber of levels, drawing on theoretical and practice perspectiveswithin the context of the Indian sub-continent – whilstbeing mindful throughout that the emerging lessons, debatesand thinking presented by contributors to ‘ParticipatoryCitizenship’ have a much wider relevance. The editors and their contributors never refer directly to communitydevelopment. This is, in itself, interesting. In the contextof ‘developing countries’,     

Community development and the politics of community

In a context in which ‘community empowerment’ isvirtually government policy, it is hardly surprising that thereis almost no area of social policy that is immune from the communitytreatment. Of course, this is not new, despite the zeal withwhich each new initiative is ‘rolled out’. In fact,sometimes it seems that policy development needs to reinventthe wheel of community every decade or so. The question, therefore,is what this ideological recycling of community tells us: first,about the meaning of the term itself; second, about its contemporarysignificance within the wider politics of the state. This articleargues that we need to draw on those historical and theoreticalresources which help us to think our way through to the contemporarycontext. Only an active and engaged recognition of the politicsof community will enable us to get to the root of the problematicyet promising nature of community development.     

New Labour's appropriation of the concept of community: a critique

This article analyses the ways in which ‘community’,one of the most important yet ill-defined concepts in SocialSciences, has been ‘appropriated’ in the discourseof the UK's New Labour government. It argues that the highlystrategic ways in which the term is used leads to associatedmeanings that neglect the intrinsically complex nature of theconcept and risk essentializing group identities, thus adverselyaffecting the most deprived sections of society.     

Looking inside public involvement: how is it made so ineffective and can we change this?

Communities and community groups across Britain are faced withever-increasing opportunities to ‘participate’,yet such engagement is widely viewed as ineffective and themotives behind it viewed with suspicion. This article suggeststhat ineffectiveness is often at least partly the result ofdecisions that are taken within the wider policy-making processesthat develop and surround public involvement, and presents away of analysing such management. This analysis also pointsto a strategy for being more effective, through attempting tobecome more active players in the larger policy-making ‘game’.     

Methods for Development Work and Research: A New Guide for Practitioners

From the outset, Britha Mikkelsen is careful to identify thelimitations of this rather detailed and extensive book (345pages). We are appropriately cautioned that it does not tryto do everything: it is a ‘guide’ ‘to a varietyof field study methods from which the reader may combine her/hisown mixture to suit the problem, time and resources available’(p. 23); ‘it is not a cookbook for the study of all developmentissues’ (p. 28) and it can be read selectively; and ‘itdoes not replace more elaborate texts, but will serve as a supplementto the basic methodology texts of sociology, anthropology...’(p. 46). Despite these protestations, it is a     

Are We Thinking Straight? The Politics of Straightness in a Lesbian and Gay Social Movement Organization

Daniel Cortese's book, ‘Are we thinking straight: Thepolitics of straightness in a lesbian and gay social movementorganization’ examines the political strategies of theUSA organization, the Straight and Gay Alliance (SAGA), andits efforts to promote ‘safe schools’ for lesbian,gay, bisexual and trans youth (LGBT). The book's main focusis on how SAGA deploys the involvement of ‘straight’or heterosexually-identified individuals as part of SAGA's publicpolitical agenda. As a national organization with numerous localchapters across the United States, SAGA encourages parents,teachers and students to work together to ensure that schoolsactively protect LGBT students from homophobic     

Using a 'domains' approach to build community empowerment

This paper provides two case study examples of how communityempowerment can be better conceptualized, planned and appliedwithin a programme context by using a ‘domains’approach. What is new about this approach is that it does notstart with a blank slate onto which participants inscribe theirown problems or needs but provides a predetermined focus througheach of nine ‘empowerment domains’: Improves participation;Develops local leadership; Increases problem assessment capacities;Enhances the ability to ‘ask why’; Builds empoweringorganizational structures; Improves resource mobilization; Strengthenslinks to other organizations and people; Creates an equitablerelationship with outside agents; and Increases control overprogramme management. The importance to community developmentpractice is that the approach provides a more systematic meansfor community empowerment in a programme context.     

The historical context of community development in Aotearoa New Zealand

Community development in Aotearoa New Zealand can be conceptualizedas three concurrent processes such as (1), statutory work undertakenby the State through central government departments and localauthorities (consisting of a system of legislation, fundingassistance to individuals, groups and organizations and theprovision of social services), (2) social change processes undertakenprimarily through the collective action of individuals, groupsand organizations that give voice to marginalized groups andcommunities and (3) the forces of change within Tangata Whenuacommunities working for tino rangatiratanga, self determination.Three time-periods are identified to help structure the discussionthat begins from 1840, the time of the signing of the Treatyof Waitangi between the Queen of England and Maori, the indigenouspeoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, signalling the birth of modernAotearoa New Zealand. This paper argues that community developmentas policy and the practice (methodology) of social change throughorganizing, coordinating and initiating activities that enhancethe wellbeing of individuals, groups and communities is morethan ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ and, therefore,cannot be conceptualized simply in terms of ‘resistance’.It is a holistic process of transformation encompassing socio-economic,political, cultural, environmental and spiritual dimensions.     

Legislators of the world

In ‘The Defence of Poetry’ 1821, Shelley claimedthat ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of theworld’. This has been taken to suggest that simply byvirtue of composing verse, they exert some exemplary moral power,in a vague unthreatening way. In fact, in his earlier politicalessay, ‘A Philosophic View of Reform’, he had writtenthat ‘Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged’,etc. The philosophers, he was talking about, were revolutionary-minded:Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition, Shelley was, no mistake, out to change the legislationof his time. For him, there was no contradiction between poetry,political philosophy and active     

Empowered or over-powered? The real experiences of local participation in the UK's New Deal for Communities

The notion of ‘participation’ has growing currencyat many levels of social policy in the UK where the Labour governmentuses it to denote the engagement of ‘local people’in decision-making about the services and structures which affecttheir daily lives. In particular, local participation is givenas the distinctive feature of the UK government's flagship initiativefor neighbourhood renewal, the New Deal for Communities, butthere is little known about what this means in practice forthe ‘local’ people it affects.     

Community-managed water supplies in Africa: sustainable or dispensable?

Over the past two decades, community management has become theprevalent model for management of rural water supplies throughoutsub-Saharan Africa. Despite its widespread popularity amongdonors and implementing agencies, low water supply sustainabilitylevels throughout the sub-continent indicate that it is notthe panacea it is often presented to be. There is a strong needto distinguish between ‘community participation’which is a prerequisite for sustainability and ‘communitymanagement’ which is not. If community management systemsare to be sustainable, they require ongoing support from anoverseeing institution to provide encouragement and motivation,monitoring, participatory planning, capacity building, and specialisttechnical assistance. If such support is not available, alternativessuch as household water supplies and private sector servicedelivery should be considered.     

On Past and Future of Community: A Pragmatic Analysis

Charles Sanders Peirce proposed a semiotic that directed attention to the person or people who are providing interpretation, making place for the social and cultural. Following Peirce, we consider the meanings and consequences the term “community” has in an international context. We argue that English affords a richer set of meanings to community, which was not paralleled in the languages of Southeast Asia. The encounter between English and Southeast Asian languages has lexical consequences, but more momentous are the cultural changes they index. In Southeast Asian cultures, there is less need for “community” to take on broader meanings, since those cultures assume social relationality. Thus, the spread of English “community” could be associated with a rise of individualism in these other cultures, but it could also impoverish the Anglophone West, which would be denied alternative frameworks in which associational and affective meanings of community are unnecessary.     

Editorial

Publication of these conference papers on the theme of communitydevelopment in the ‘new’ Europe comes at a particularlysignificant moment as the people of different ‘old’European nation states     

A New Deal': art, museums and communities re-imagining relations

‘A New Deal’ argues that engaged or participatoryart practice can be shown to be central rather than marginalto the meaning and value of art in the ‘story’ ofhuman society, but only if we take a long view and change theposition from which we read and understand received history.It also argues that new models of art and institutional practiceare needed in the present, which foreground and validate participation,engagement and commonality – the reconnection of artistand community within social space. These new models are neededif we are to generate the new art forms that emancipate ratherthan disempower the citizen and which are not defined by thecul de sac of commodity and consumerism.     

Raising expectations or dashing hopes?: Well-being and participation in disadvantaged areas

The idea of ‘well-being’ has emerged as a centrallens through which to understand people and places in socialpolicy terms. At the same time, ‘participation’has become central in debates and practices about communitylife in general and neighbourhood renewal in particular. Thisarticle explores the relationship between well-being and participationin disadvantaged areas. Drawing on primary research in two NewDeal for Communities (NDC) areas in the United Kingdom, I explorehow local people's expectations of participation in NDC aredisappointed and how that disappointment may pose a key riskto well-being. I propose, therefore, that experiences of participationin areas of neighbourhood renewal threaten levels of well-beingin the very disadvantaged areas where it is most needed.