Community development research: Merging (or submerging) communities of practice? A response to Van Vlaenderen

A response to Van Vlaenderen (2004) is needed both as a correctivemeasure and as a stimulus for debate. This article argues thatVan Vlaenderen incorrectly draws on the theory of ‘communitiesof practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1999; Wenger, 1998) anddiscusses the conceptual and political implications of suchincorrect usage. The article contends that the merger of communitiesof practice that Van Vlaenderen describes using two case examplesis unlikely to have occurred and that presenting such transactionsas mergers can be unhelpful to the community development fieldin that they mask important status and power asymmetries thatexist within and between communities. This latter argument issupported by a discussion of the concepts of participation,participatory process, power, and empowerment. Van Vlaenderenappears to have written about joint activity between communitiesrather than the merger of communities of practice.     

What next? Volume 1. Setting the context. Special issue of development dialogue

In 1976, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation sponsored a symposiumresulting in the publication titled What Now? Another Developmentthat presented diverse, authoritative, critical perspectiveson the ways countries, organizations, and individuals in theindustrialized world could foster social and economic developmentin less wealthy countries, most of them in the South. The suggestionswere striking for their emphasis on large development projects,encouragement of development of civil society and democratizationof societies, and centralized interventions. The present volumeprovides a follow-up on this first effort thirty years later. One of the most striking ‘findings’ of the presentvolume is how misguided the earlier volume seems from the standpointof a similar panel of experts today. What Now? was built ona model of exporting social, political, and     

Assumptions, Motivations and Neutrality in Rural Development: The Portuguese Paradigm

Development agents need to examine their underlying assumptions,motivations, neutrality, and their terminology, which is oftenimprecise and misleading. In addition, development is frequentlycharacterized by self-created dichotomies that obscure the veryproblems that need to be solved. The combined cooperativistand constructivist approach has proved itself successful inovercoming these problems. "A lady once said to him, ‘My maid must be pleased, Igave her my dresses.’ ‘That's nice’, he replied,‘does she give you hers?" Jean-Paul Sarrte, Saint Genet "You name it, you claim it." Max Roach, Black American jazzmusician, referring to whites, and jazz.     

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’,     

Participation and accountability in corporate community involvement programmes: a research agenda

Corporate community involvement (CCI) is catching up among businessesoperating in developing countries under the wave of corporatesocial responsibility (CSR). Significantly, CCI discourse theworld over is shifting from ‘involvement’ to ‘investment’,the latter advancing the business case. This shifting paradigmdepicts a calculative approach to CCI based on costs and benefits,revealing reciprocal yet unequal corporate–community relationships.This approach when implemented in already disadvantaged communitiesraises fears of exploitation rather than community empowerment.This article critiques the predominant approaches applied inCCI and their implications towards poverty reduction and sustainablecommunity development efforts in developing countries.     

Strength Broadsides from Disability on the Arts

This book is a deeply personal treatise connecting experienceto the very tangible social constructs around Dis-Ability. We are writing as what Masefield calls TAP s – temporarilyable people – with experience of working in communitydevelopment and community arts: his own life exemplifies this.Masefield was a respected and successful theatre director andcommunity arts manager when, at forty-four, he developed a debilitatingand devastating myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which renderedhim speechless and almost immobile. Indeed, one of the mostpowerful parts of the book is where he describes his own transitionfrom able to disabled like ‘trying to run a car on a torchbattery’. A very useful ‘way in’ to all ofthis     

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.     

Measuring Left-Right Political Orientation: The Choice of Response Format

Although left–right items are a standard tool of publicopinion research, there is little agreement about the optimalresponse format. Two disputes can be identified in the literature:(1) whether to provide respondents with a small or large numberof answer categories, and (2) whether or not to administer theresponse scale including a midpoint. This study evaluates theperformance of the 101, 11, and 10-point left–right scales,which directly speak to the two disputed aspects of measuringthe left–right dimension. Drawing on data from a splitballot multitrait multimethod experiment carried out in a methodologicalpretest to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the analysisshows that the choice of a response format makes a differencein terms of data quality: the 11-point left–right scaleproduces the highest validity of left–right data closelyfollowed by the 10-point scale. Moreover, an application fromelectoral research illustrates that the choice of response formatsaffects substantive interpretations about the nature of theleft–right dimension. Since all three scales perform aboutequally well in terms of reliability and the ease of administration,the findings suggest that the 11-point left–right scaleshould be used in survey research.     

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.     

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.     

The Polls Trends: Public Reactions to Global Health Threats and Infectious Diseases

Over the past two decades, newly emerging infectious diseaseshave developed into major global health concerns, sparking intensemedia coverage, and triggering fears of a global outbreak amongpublic health experts and authorities. This article focuseson trends in American attitudes toward these newly emerged infectiousdiseases by analyzing poll data over the past 6 years aboutissues relating to avian flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome,West Nile virus, and anthrax. The polls show that Americans’attention to news coverage seemed to be event driven, peakingwhen there were new human or animal cases, and decreasing rapidlywhen the diseases seemed to have been contained. Americans’perceptions of threats were usually the highest in the earlystages of major outbreaks. The public became more complacentwhen the outbreaks seemed to be under control. Both behavioralchanges and general knowledge remained largely constant, suggestinga limited impact of the various informational and awarenesscampaigns by governmental agencies in the wake of these pandemics. Abbreviations: ABC, ABC News • ABC/WP, ABC News/Washington Post • AP/IPSOS, IPSOS-Public Affairs for Associated Press • CBS, CBS News • CBS/NYT, CBS News/New York Times • GALLUP, Gallup Organization • GALLUP/CNN/USA, Gallup Organization for CNN/USA Today • HARRIS/TIME/CNN, Harris Interactive for Time and CNN • ICR/HARVARD, International Communications Research for Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security • ICR/HARVARD-RWJF, International Communications Research for Harvard School of Public Health Project, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation • IPSOS/DC, IPSOS-Reid for Dittus Communications • NORC, National Opinion Research Center • OD/FOX, Opinion Dynamics for Fox News • PSRA/KAISER, Princeton Survey Research Associates for Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard School of Public Health • PSRA/NEWS, Princeton Survey Research Associates for Newsweek • PSRA/PEW, Princeton Survey Research Associates for Pew Research Center • PSRA/PMFMI, Princeton Survey Research Associates for Prevention Magazine/Food Marketing Institute     

Editorial

After forty successful years of publishing and supporting otherrelated activities, the Community Development Journal remainsat the forefront within the field of community development.Its coverage of material from the north and south as well aspractice and theory ensures that the Journal continues to commanda unique position among academic journals. The recent introductionof online advance access publishing and e-letters ensures theJournal reflects the best in publishing. This issue begins with an article by Glen Laverack, in whichhe introduces the concept of the ‘domains approach’to community empowerment, which is illustrated by a case studyfrom Kyrgyzstan. Extrapolating from the community developmentliterature, Laverack identifies     

SELF-INTEREST AND PUBLIC OPINION TOWARD SMOKING POLICIES; A REPLICATION AND EXTENSION

Numerous studies report that self-interest has a non significantinfluence upon various political and social attitudes. In contrast,a recent article by Green and Gerken (1989) reports a Californiastudy showing that cigarette smokers are significantly moreopposed than nonsmokers to public smoking restrictions and tobaccosales tax increases. The present article replicates and extendsthis analysis with data from two different states—Illinois(in 1984, N=458)—and North Carolina (in 1985, N=488)—andusing analysis techniques that differ from and expand upon theCalifornia study. Despite these methodological differ ences,self-interest is again shown to have a significant influenceon opinions concerning public smoking restrictions and taxation,as well as on several additional issues relating to smokingand tobacco.     

Errata

In Table A of Werner Cohn's comment (POQ 48:661) on the articleby Himmelfarb, Loar, and Mott ("Sampling by ethnic surnames:the case of American Jews," POQ 47:247–60), there is amissing minus sign: item 15 in the DJN column should read -.18. Harold Himmelfarb points out that in the response to Cohn(POQ 48:664–65), this error makes questionable the interpretationby him and his coauthors (p. 665). In "Taking Note: Bibliographies," in Book Notes (POQ 49:141),the number of pages given for the Guide to the Bureau of AppliedSocial Research, edited by Judith S. Barton, was erroneouslygiven. The book has 202 pages.     

Four different approaches to community participation

This paper explores some of the politics of community work byexamining four basic community participation approaches. Movingfrom the right of politics to the left, it overviews some ofthe different theoretical orientations, goals, processes andrecruitment practices that are commonly used but not alwaysrecognized to constitute different forms of community participation.Offered primarily to ‘lay’ community members, studentsand beginning practitioners, the paper is intended to clarifysome of the differences that emerge when participation projectsare designed, and to stimulate discussion about community participationmore generally.     

Wage-Poor Mothers and Moral Economy

"You have to choose ... and what mother's choosing this jobover her child?"

This article explores the subaltern work andfamily care practices of 300 low-wage women. Although US welfarereform enforced the labor market as the sole route for familysupport, many, often single–mother, families remain wageimpoverished. Their work habits orbit around keeping childrensafe and defy market norms. Furthermore, in wage-poor Americaand beyond, this defiance is understood as morally legitimate,representing a hidden challenge to an economic ideology thatsubordinates humanity to the market.     

Affirming, Transforming, or Neglecting Gender? Conceptualizing Gender in the Pension Reform Process

This article analyzes the gender visions adopted by policy actorsin pension reform debates. Based on the work of Fraser (Fraser, N. 1994."After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State."Political Theory 22 : 591–618; Fraser, N. 1995. "FromRedistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’Age." New Left Review 212:68–93), four gendered visionsof public pensions are introduced and then applied to pensionreforms in Belgium and Sweden. In line with international trends,both cases seek to integrate women within a pension system thattreats men and women the same regardless of their nonmarketactivities. However, in both cases, some compensation is introducedto acknowledge the caring functions performed mainly by women.Based on Fraser's typology, this arrangement leads to one ofthe worst-case scenarios since it legitimizes pension systemsthat are predominantly geared toward full-time contributorsand penalizes those individuals most likely to spend sometimesaway from the labor market. The Belgian case emphasizes thenegative role of the EU in retrenching pension rights and benefitsfor women. The Swedish case is interesting because of the scopeof its reform and the fact that women in the service sectorend up supporting the principle of tying benefits to contributions.     

Editorial introduction to the Special Issue

In March 2004, a major conference on community development inthe ‘new Europe’ was held in Budapest, Hungary,to mark the accession of a further ten nation states, most ofthem in the east and central European region, to the EuropeanUnion. The conference was sponsored by the International Associationfor Community Development (www.iacdglobal.org), in conjunctionwith the Combined European Bureau for Social Development (www.cebsd.org),the Hungarian Association for Community Development (kofe@kkapcsolat.hu),and the Community Development Journal (www.cdj.oupjournals.org).The initial outcome was the Budapest Declaration, the text ofwhich was included in the CDJ issue of October 2004 (39(4),423–429 – copies