Heading South: Time to Abandon the ‘Parallel Worlds’ of International Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and Domestic Third Sector Scholarship?

Since third sector research emerged as a full-fledged interdisciplinary academic field during the late 1980s, a separation has usually been maintained—in common with many other social science disciplines—between communities of researchers who are primarily concerned with the study of the third sector in rich Western countries and those who work on the third sector in the so-called developing world. Whilst internationally focused researchers tend to use the language of ‘non-governmental organizations’, those in domestic settings usually prefer the terms ‘non-profit organization’ or ‘voluntary organization’, even though both subsectors share common principles and are equally internally diverse in terms of organisations and activities. Whilst there has long been common-sense logic to distinguishing between wealthier and poorer regions of the world based on differences in the scale of human need, the ‘developed’ versus ‘developing’ category can also be criticised as being rather simplistic and unhelpfully ideological. As the categories of ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries become less clear-cut, and global interconnectedness between third sectors and their ideas grows, this paper argues that we need to reconsider the value of maintaining these parallel worlds of research, and instead develop a more unified approach.     

Adult Literacy Education and Community Development

SUMMARY

This article responds to the concern that low-literate community residents often are marginalized in community development processes. They are unable to give voice to their concerns, interests and their vision for their community. Perspectives and approaches in the fields of adult literacy education and community development are explored to determine how adult literacy education might be used to further the goals of community development. While there are parallels between these two disciplines, there are also barriers to overcome if an integrated approach to dealing with community issues is realized. This article reflects an interest in advancing a comprehensive approach to community development in communities with limited economic resources, low-level literacy and limited access. It seeks to address the issue of whether adult literacy education programs have a meaningful role to play in community development. The strengths of participatory approaches such as community-based literacy, and community development principles such as collective action, shared values, participation, social justice, political awareness and action, comprehensiveness, empowerment, and learning and reflection, facilitate an interdisciplinary approach.     

Assessing small community groups

Many community groups in the UK do micro-project work to help families and young people in low-income neighbourhoods. This paper establishes a common set of criteria for assessing the effectiveness of small community groups and uses these as basis for developing an evaluation tool for community groups and those working with them. It draws on the literature to identify those factors that are seen to be important to the functioning of community groups, where necessary adapting these to smaller groups. These criteria are then ‘tested’ on a small number of community groups across the UK, using a participative approach and questionnaire to explore these issues with each group. Our framework appears to capture all the key aspects of the groups we visited, although some of the assessment criteria need to be interpreted carefully, helping to refine our own understanding of what makes a good community group. This approach is a useful way for community groups to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and, if developed further, has potential applications in the evaluation of capacity-building schemes.     

THEORYCRAFTING

This article investigates theorycrafting, a cultural practice of gaming communities, to analyse the differences in participation, knowledge production and dissemination and to show the effect that this has on the community itself. Theorycrafting describes a process of reverse engineering, a process of extracting design ‘blue prints’ to understand a technology better, whose design is not accessible. The ‘design’ not accessible in this case is the game algorithm. The concept of scientification of gameplay is used to highlight the scientific approach of theorycrafters to their gameplay. Their ‘scientific’ approach is described by using Aristotle's concepts episteme, techne and phronesis. His concepts have been chosen as they help us to analyse the different layers of the meaning of ‘theory’ in theorycrafting. This article investigates which understanding of theory and science is central in the practice of theorycrafting. How is a specific concept of science part of mechanisms of participatory surveillance? Theorycrafting can be understood as the desire of players to gain control over the game and share this knowledge with other players. The production of knowledge for the community leads to formulas that are used to improve playing skills, but through the spread of add-ons and forms of social control, it can also be described as a tool for surveillance.     

Earning Their Keep and Keeping What They Earn: A Critique of Organizing Strategies for South Asian Women in the Informal Sector

It is now widely understood that the needs of women workers in the informal sector are not met by the conservative practices of labour organizations and trade unions. While the contribution of women to the economies of developing countries is critical, women rarely find employment in the regulated unionized sectors of these countries, and are found instead in overwhelming numbers in the sector that is variously termed ‘unorganized’, ‘unprotected’, ‘unregistered’ or ‘informal.’ This article addresses the situation of women in the informal economy in South Asia. The author explores the major challenges and opportunities facing women in their efforts to organize and mobilize for change. She also provides a critical analysis of the different types of interventions adopted by the state and civil society organizations in South Asia to empower women in the informal sector. The author concludes with an attempt to identify the mix of interventions and strategies most needed for different social, political and economic circumstances.     

Authenticity and community process

How does community process constitute an opening to an authentic existence? Martin Heidegger suggests that authentic Being-in-the-world is rooted in self-reflection and isolation from others—far from the public realm. Conversely, Mary Parker Follett argues that collaborative processes embed action with meaning that have far-reaching implications for individual development as well as for democracy. Drawing on classical political philosophy’s public space and citizenship, this research maintains that community process enhances authentic, self-aware participatory practices—fundamental for one’s full development and practical democracy. Public and nonprofit administrators working in community-based or oriented organizations ought to cultivate opportunities for such development.     

Spread the Magic: Second Grade Students Engage with the Community

Second grade students learn about philanthropy by creating projects where they work through an inquiry process. Each student works with a group to create community-based projects that support existing local non-profits to enrich the quality of life in an area. Student action is visible through an authentic assessment event that allows students to showcase their achievements in front of the extended school community. The event demonstrates that students participate in civic education at a developmentally appropriate level. Teachers work within a yearlong theme to help students learn civic participation.     

From the Third Sector to the Big Society: How Changing UK Government Policies Have Eroded Third Sector Trust

This article draws on concepts of trust to analyse recent policies affecting public/third sector relationships, examining competition, ‘command and control’ mechanisms and the community turn in shaping cultures of relationships. Drawing on examples from empirical studies in two English inner-city areas we explore ways in which power and controls exerted through dominant organisational cultures and arrangements undermine independent approaches, innovation and organisational learning across sectors. State bodies have taken trust in their actions as given while shifting responsibilities for service delivery and risks of failure to others. We argue that increasing market cultures and regulation have damaged cross-sector trust promoting divisive interests and risk-averse behaviours, restricting the local autonomy, innovation and community action presumed in the Big Society agenda. We conclude by highlighting issues that need to be addressed to ensure future collaboration with community-based providers; these include a focus on the processes and relational spaces which enable alternatives.     

Talking with the Experts: A Social Justice Approach to Homelessness in Regina

Abstract

Homelessness is a difficult phenomenon to measure. At risk populations can view intrusion from government officials with scepticism and resistance. Also the fluid nature of a homeless population (as individuals move in and out of ‘homelessness,’ and/or homeless situations) makes it difficult to generate accurate understandings of homelessness and the circumstances associate to becoming homeless. In this study researchers engage in a series of consultations/conversations with Regina based respondents over the realities of homelessness. The consultations are heard from various degrees of ‘otherness,’ are representative of members of community, and span a diverse background of ethnicities, situations and ages. Promoting a social justice approach to homelessness the authors advocate that homelessness in Regina must be understood within, definable material and cultural specificities, inaction and inefficiencies on the part of state and community agencies, and neo-liberal management technologies which thwart meaningful redress. Within the highly racialized and classed realities of Regina life amelioration represents a serious policy response, one moving beyond existing mechanisms of remedy. Reformulation then must first examine the phenomenon of homelessness as dimensionally a community challenge petitioning a community response. The project examines avenues of action in focusing and implementing this response.     

Social and family responsibility or self-interest?

Mothers’ increasing labour market participation is posed as a key aspect of a growing trend towards individualization — both for ill and for good. In ‘for ill’ versions, mothers’ employment is regarded as undermining commitment to family relationships and leading to a loss of community. In ‘for good’ versions, family and community relationships become contingent upon values of equality and respect. ‘Preference theory’ modifies the individualization thesis, with a posited distinction between mothers in full-time employment with ‘work-centred’ identities and those with part-time work who want ‘adaptive’ or ‘home-centred’ identities. This paper examines such issues, drawing on qualitative case study research on mothers employed full and part time in a hospital and an accountancy firm in the UK. It considers how the variable work ethos of organizations, and the ways mothers engage with these, can interact with their engagement in family and community relationships. In particular, it suggests that employment can be as much about social obligation in a local community, and commitment and obligations to family, as about individualized self-provision and options.     

Deinstitutionalisation: What Went Wrong

‘Deinstitutionalisation’ has been the twin policy to ‘community care’ and has been a key welfare strategy in Britain for some 30 years. In the 1980s considerable political and professional activity was focused upon the shortcomings of community care, but relatively little attention was paid to the failure of ‘deinstitutionalisation’. Why has it proved so difficult to close long-stay hospitals? This article examines the gulf between official strategies on closure and the reality of continuing institutionalisation. It seeks explanations not only in terms of funding crises, but also in inter-professional, inter-organisational and inter-governmental relations. It concludes that the problems are deeply entrenched and that if deinstitutionalisation is to succeed, a major new initiative will be needed at the central level.     

The Crafting of Community: Recoupling Discourses of Management and Womanhood

The construction of organizations around images of masculinity makes the position of ‘women managers’ a problematic one which calls for ‘remedial work’ (Gherardi 1995). Women managers have sought to reconcile their dualistic positions by deploying various individual and collective coping strategies typically articulated within the boundaries of their organizations. In contrast, we research a group of senior women from a British city in the Midlands who attempt to renegotiate their conflicting identities as ‘female’ and ‘senior managers’ by creating a collective forum outside their organizations. Through the construction of a ‘learning set’, they created a space where members could explore their terms of participation, as women and as managers, in their respective work organizations and in the local community. This space was articulated implicitly and explicitly around values typically associated with ‘community’ (e.g. sharing, support, trust, loyalty), a controversial concept in feminist politics. The article documents the (fragile and contested) processes by which these women mobilize the imagery of community in order to create a safe space where ‘remedial work’ could be performed. The conclusion stresses the ambivalent effects of the learning set in both reproducing and transgressing gendered positions.     

Bridging the Fragmented Community

ABSTRACT

In the global era, with the retrenchment of welfare states, people have to turn to their community, a major component of civil society, for support. In this paper, a fluid concept of community is proposed in response to the fragmentation and diversity caused by globalization in the local community. It is argued that to bridge different interests in the community, settlement houses, as a third sector organization in the community, is an effective community-building mechanism. This paper provides a brief history of the success of the settlement house in building solidarity and generating social capital in the local community. The author identifies implications for the role of the social work profession in revitalizing the settlement house as a community-building approach.     

Rowing ‘at home’ and ‘away’: sport,heritage and identity in the Malay world

This paper is grounded in a comparison of the cultural identifications that accompany Sambas Malays’ participation in rowing competitions ‘at home’ and ‘away’. Sambas Malays are Indonesian citizens from the regency of Sambas, who ethnically identify as Malay. There, rowing competitions provide the sociocultural infrastructure for developing local and translocal cultural identifications. Two related, yet distinguishable, cultural identifications are evident, each associated with a specific rowing infrastructure. When contests occur ‘at home’, rowing is steeped in local Sambas Malay culture and heritage. However, contests ‘away’, in areas loosely identified as ‘Malay’, generate identifications with a regionally based Malay culture and consociality. Utilizing a non-positivistic conceptualization of ‘border’, this paper considers the intersection of culture, politics, economy, geography and mobility in everyday bordering practices producing two overlapping cultural identifications.     

Improving citizens’ online engagement via community managers: an explanatory study

The role of community manager is gaining importance as the proper usage of social media becomes a key factor for achieving more active involvement of citizens in social and political issues. Focused on Spanish local governments and in line with the literature of Excellence Theory, this paper aims to analyze whether some characteristics of the community manager function are determinant in their fostering of citizens’ online engagement via social media. In particular ‘independence’, ‘having access to the dominant coalition’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘continuous training’ and ‘culture of the organization’ are the characteristics considered in this paper. As to the main findings, this study confirms that community managers have not as yet achieved their goal of embedding the use of social media by citizens as a means of establishing more direct contact with their local governments. Moreover, in line with Excellence Theory, community managers of local governments should be aware of the importance of having direct access to key managers of the organization in order to better achieve the objectives of the organization and, more specifically, to increase citizens’ engagement. Furthermore, continuous training in issues related to social media truly helps develop the skills and potential of community managers. Likewise, an excellent communication department should rely on good professionals no matter their gender, and, in this sense, the gender of community managers is not a significant factor in their performance. However, the results of this study also reveal that in the case of public sector community managers, an authoritarian culture seems to be a determining factor for obtaining better results in enhancing citizens’ engagement.     

Building a community-based culture of evaluation

In this article we argue for a community-based approach as a means of promoting a culture of evaluation. We do this by linking two bodies of knowledge – the 70-year theoretical tradition of community-based research and the trans-discipline of program evaluation – that are seldom intersected within the evaluation capacity building literature. We use the three hallmarks of a community-based research approach (community-determined; equitable participation; action and change) as a conceptual lens to reflect on a case example of an evaluation capacity building program led by the Ontario Brian Institute. This program involved two community-based groups (Epilepsy Southwestern Ontarioand the South West Alzheimer Society Alliance) who were supported by evaluators from the Centre for Community Based Research to conduct their own internal evaluation. The article provides an overview of a community-based research approach and its link to evaluation. It then describes the featured evaluation capacity building initiative, including reflections by the participating organizations themselves. We end by discussing lessons learned and their implications for future evaluation capacity building. Our main argument is that organizations that strive towards a community-based approach to evaluation are well placed to build and sustain a culture of evaluation.     

Good girls don't comment on politics? Gendered character of online political participation in the Czech Republic

The article aims to contribute to the still relatively unexplored area of the relationship between gender and online political participation. Using two complementary methods – a representative, post-election survey of the adult Czech population and a content analysis of communication on the selected Czech political parties’ Facebook profiles during the campaign for the 2013 Parliamentary Elections – we attempt to challenge some established assumptions regarding the allegedly equalizing effect of the Internet and social media on participatory behaviour of men and women. While survey data discovered subtle yet statistically significant differences between men and women in some online expressive activities on Facebook, mainly commenting on other users’ statuses, content analysis further revealed that there are not only notable gender gaps among the Facebook users who commented on the campaign, but also differences in the tone of communication produced by the respective gender groups, with men posting more negative comments addressed to parties as well as to other Facebook users. We suggest that these results question the prevailing perception about the narrowing of the ‘gender gap’ in the online environment and call for a more nuanced methodological approach to different forms of online political expression.     

Finding Our Way

Abstract

In the fall of 1992, a community needs assessment on the problem of family violence was completed in the Aboriginal community of Conne River, Newfoundland, Canada. This article reports both the process and findings of the study which was guided by two important principles. First, community participation was a critical component of all aspects of the assessment and, second, the assessment was based on multiple sources of data.

The data were collected from face-to-face interviews with key informants (community experts) and consumers/potential consumers of services, focus groups with youth and women, and informal contact and discussion with interested members of the community, some of them professionals.

The findings indicate that the people of Conne River are knowledgeable about the types of family violence that occur in the community and the various sources of support and help. There was also a high level of interest in the topic and a genuine concern that some positive action would result from this assessment.

The assessment identified the need for more supports for women with families in crisis, not just crisis intervention during incidents of violence but a more holistic network of supports. These supports need to be community-based, operating within existing agencies. The study identified the need for a community-based committee to undertake the planning of emergency services for women and families in crisis and long-term planning for a support network and/or community centre for women.     

Experiences of adolescent participation in a four-week community-based workshop designed to improve psychosocial skills: what are the key benefits?

The present study sought to explore the experiences of young adolescents who participated in a community-based workshop designed to improve psychosocial competence. The workshop involved 14 adolescent children aged between 10 and 14 years, who lived in socially disadvantaged areas of Liverpool, UK. Focus groups were employed to assess whether participation in ‘Skills for the Street’ workshops improved adolescents’ psychosocial functioning and personal development. A number of themes were identified in the analyses, including increased confidence, increased self-awareness, admiration and team building. These themes are discussed, and we argue that the findings attest to the benefit of community-based approaches for young people living in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK.