Peace, reconciliation and a shared future: a policy shift or more of the same?

Developments in the late 1990s, including paramilitary cease-firesand the advent (albeit, short-lived) of devolved Government,offered a new dispensation from which to appraise the communityrelations problem in Northern Ireland and advocate policy action.This paper considers an emergent policy framework entitled AShared Future. Drawing on the experience of delivering betterrelations through education in Northern Ireland, it argues thatwhilst A Shared Future reflects progress in how the problemof community relations is defined, many uncritical assumptionsare made about the potential of suggested actions to addressproblems of intergroup fear, mistrust and hostility.     

Social capital, the social economy and community development

Social capital is increasingly used in the field of communitydevelopment and the social economy. This article describes someof the results to emerge from a three-year research project(CONSCISE Project), which looked at the contribution socialcapital can make to the social economy within local economicdevelopment. Following the definition of social capital, thearticle examines how it can be assessed and then goes on tolist the main findings on the significance of social capitalin the understanding of the social economy and community development.It concludes with a number of policy implications on how socialcapital can be used within the context of community development.     

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.     

Non-formal education and community development in Senegal

Given the often limited capacity of most African states to addressthe needs of their populations, local communities must findways to tackle many development challenges. For example, inSenegal, villagers have had to ensure a steady supply of water,construct health huts, and dispose of waste. As these problemshave become more acute, new practices and structures are required.To effectively address different issues and problems requiresa high level of community cooperation. This article exploresthe factors that give rise to community participation and specificallythe role of non-formal education.     

Promoting economic development amongst rural communities

Various attempts at rural community economic development in the west of Ireland are reported and analysed in this paper. The efforts of one particularly interesting rural community to establish a knitters' co-operative are reported on in the first part of the article and a variety of initiatives undertaken by twelve other communities under the auspices of a Community Enterprise Programme operated by the Shannon Free Airport Development Company are then examined. The total set of experiences provides valuable insights into what communities can do to promote local development and the manner in which this task might best be undertaken. The development of community capacity to function effectively on a self-help basis over a protracted period is identified as a necessary precondition for the establishment of successful community business.     

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.     

Strengthening communities through women's self help groups in South India

This article reports on an evaluation of women's Self Help Groups(SHGs) in an area in south India. Groups were evaluated, notin terms of their success as microcredit schemes, from a financialperspective, but in relation to their contribution to genderdevelopment. Evidence emerged that women perceived changes intheir identity towards working collectively to influence forchange at the village and panchyat levels. They engaged in communityand social action programmes, both at the local level and byjoining with issues beyond the local. When considered withinconstructs of empowerment, capability poverty, citizenship,and participation in democratic processes, such SHG outcomes,and the community development processes that accompany theirwork, can be seen to make a modest but significant contributionto broader transformations of oppressive structures.     

Organised Voluntarism in Ireland

Historically Irish society has had a long tradition of grass roots voluntary community work. However, with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s, the Irish community and voluntary sector became increasingly subjected to government controls and restrictions. As a result, voluntary community work became more formally organised, centrally regulated and depoliticised. Such ‘organised voluntarism’ (Fye and Mulligan in Prog Hum Geogr 27:397–413, 2003) has since become part and parcel of contemporary community development initiatives in Ireland. While some UK research has explored the impact that this discursive and policy shift is having on volunteering, there is a dearth of Irish literature on this issue. This article presents an account of how and why this form of voluntarism took hold in contemporary Ireland. The establishment of Family Resource Centres in Ireland will be recalled and assessed to further illustrate the observations being made about organised voluntarism in Ireland.     

Migrant employment and the recession--the case of the Irish in Britain

"The past decade has witnessed a substantial contraction in the size of the Irishborn community in Britain. This paper uses shift share analysis to assess the extent to which job losses amongst the Irish in Britain over the years 1971-1977 may have induced return migration to Ireland. The article concludes that such 'push' factors are likely to have been relatively weak in comparison to the 'pull' of an Irish economy considerably more buoyant than that of Britain."     

Symbolic violence and the neighbourhood: the educational aspirations of 7-8 year old working-class girls

This article focuses on the experiences of 7-8 year old working-class girls in Belfast, Northern Ireland and their attitudes towards education. It shows how their emerging identities tend to emphasize relationships, marriage and motherhood at the expense of a concern with education and future careers. The article suggests that one important factor that can help explain this is the influence of the local neighbourhood. In drawing upon Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic violence and habitus and Elias' notion of figuration, the article shows how the local neighbourhood represents the parameters of the girls' social worlds. It provides the context within which the girls tend to focus on social relations within their community and particularly on family relationships, marriage and children. It also provides the context within which the girls tend to develop strong interdependent relationships with their mothers that also tend to encourage and reinforce the girls' particular gendered identities. The article concludes by arguing that there is a need for more research on working-class girls and education to look beyond the school to incorporate, more fully, an understanding of the influence of the family and local neighbourhood on their attitudes towards education and their future career aspirations.     

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     

I wouldn’t mind moving actually: Exploring Student Mobility in Northern Ireland

This article examines orientations towards future geographical mobility amongst young people in Northern Ireland presently studying at third level educational institutions. Following contextualisation of youth mobility as pertaining to students in this region, the results of recent quantitative and qualitative research are discussed. Over half of these young people, 55 per cent, see themselves living outside Northern Ireland at some point in the future. Furthermore, in response to a number of statements on family relationships, peer associations and community attachments, young people with mobility intentions are found to be more likely to have families who support migration intentions. These potentially mobile young people also tend to have peers and siblings with prior experience of geographical mobility and show signs of being less deeply attached to their local communities and/or local identities. A number of qualitative case studies further illustrate the diversity of mobility orientations within the sample, ranging from those positively predisposed towards migration to those more averse to such movement.     

Editorial

This issue brings together a number of articles concerned withextending theoretical understanding of community developmentrelated issues alongside those that examine key factors forsuccessful organization building and community mobilization.In doing so, it again highlights the significance of women'sinvolvement in community initiatives, local economic developmentand poverty alleviation. It begins with an article by Fred Powelland Martin Geoghegan who attempt from the perspective of partnershipgovernance within Ireland to locate community development withinwhat they see as a new world order. They argue that communitydevelopment remains the embodiment of a strong participativedemocracy, re-inventing politics     

Changing Practice and Policy to Move to Scale: A Framework for Age-Friendly Communities Across the United States

A new body of work has emerged under the category of creating age-friendly communities. This article briefly reviews the current state of the work and discusses a potential framework for moving to scale. Based on an understanding that the majority of the local challenges to aging in community stem from state and national policies and practices, the article calls for a measure of “creative destruction” in local efforts. That is, dysfunctional state and national systems should be boldly marked for demolition. Local age-friendly community work must be conceived of and positioned to engage larger policy issues, identify problems, and be part of a process of reinventing larger federal, state, and local policies and practices.     

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.     

An Investigation of Religious Support of Public and Private Agencies in One Community in an Era of Retrenchment

This article examines the ways in which religious congregations in Greensboro, North Carolina support the efforts of local social service agencies. Findings from a survey of 147 agency directors, 2 focus groups (one with congregational volunteers, and one with clergy and agency directors), and extensive interviews with 6 agency directors, are reported. It is noted that the religious community and the social service community broadened their relationships as a result of the Reagan administration's domestic policies and that there is a surprising set of interconnections between the two systems.     

Combating Racial Inequity Through Local Historical Analysis: A Community-Informed Social Studies Unit

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a dynamic social studies unit that reveals the role of local history and community activists during the national Civil Rights Movement. As an example within the unit, we present a local, historical narrative that describes the activism of three local Black teachers in Palm Beach County, Florida, whose efforts in the 1940s significantly impacted the foundations of what was to become the Civil Rights Movement. We then present a multicultural social studies unit developed from this local history and guidelines for teachers to enact their own locally informed social studies unit. This content will help teachers expose students to the rich history of their community’s past by sharing ways that teachers can incorporate culturally relevant instruction of racially charged topics into the classroom.     

Gympie’s country music Muster: Creating a cultural economy from a local tradition

This paper provides an historical analysis of the National Country Music Muster, a country music festival held in a forest outside of Gympie, a town in rural southeast Queensland, Australia, between the period 1982 and 2006 (the first twenty-five years of the event). This article analyses the origins of the Muster, demonstrating how local events are often developed as a result of regional traditions and assets, or ‘countryside capital’ (Garrod et al., 2006). While this countryside capital was used to develop the Muster, this paper will demonstrate the event created its own capital, which the Gympie community has then utilised. The Muster has enabled the development of community capacity in three key ways: community not-for-profit groups have received increased income through participation as volunteers at the Muster; collaborative efforts between groups have developed senses of community on site; and the Muster has fostered social capital development by encouraging volunteer groups to work on site, all of which, of course, ensures the Muster continues to operate. Additionally, the Muster has provided the impetus for the creation of two country music focused cultural institutions in Gympie, as well as several spin-off events, which seek to capitalise on the increased traffic through town during the Muster period. Each of these institutions and spin off events has helped embed country music within Gympie’s cultural economy. Further, they provide a clear demonstration of a rural community actively and creatively deploying its cultural capital in order both to buttress itself against fluctuations in the town’s fortunes and to assert a locally relevant country identity.     

Cruising,space and surveillance: decolonizing sexuality in Singapore

ABSTRACT

The policing of homosexuality in Singapore through legislation and public policy are imbued with colonial legacies that have enshrined heteronormative values within its public sphere. However, communities within new online spaces in Singapore disrupt the heteronormative surveillance efforts deployed by the state within public, family and political landscapes. Through an analysis of a local online forum dedicated to cruising this article unpacks how local gay men resist, negotiate and deploy surveillance techniques to navigate these heteronormative structures and cruise safely in Singapore. This article demonstrates how online spaces have become part of an everyday resistance that characterize modern-day efforts to decolonize sexuality in Singapore.     

Confucius Institute in the Sino-Thai relations: A display of China's soft power

The establishment of Confucius Institutes (CIs) is a great endeavor by the Chinese government to spread Chinese language and culture in neighboring countries. It is commonly regarded by foreign countries as part of China's soft power initiative. With the implementation of BRI, it becomes a platform to promote systematic connections with countries along the route. Based on the examination of CIs’ programmes run in Thailand, this article finds that CIs made extensive efforts in these respects and garnered the support of the Thai government, Thai royal family and local business. In this sense, CIs also serve as a soft power for the Thai government and royalty to cement their Sino-Thai relationship. Within the local community, there are varying voices. While some supported the Chinese language and cultural programme, others have expressed some dissatisfaction over the role of the CIs in the community.