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.     

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.     

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.     

Community media: local is focal

Given the limited nature of global media with its emphasis on‘infotainment’ driven by commerce, it has very littlerole in community development. We see the alarming and growingimpact of the global media on the socio-cultural life of differentcommunities in India. The rampaging growth of centralized distributionsystems has not only undermined local expressions but is alsoloudly proclaiming its sole legitimacy and relevance. Wheredoes that leave the diverse forms of local media that aboundin our cultural landscape? Abhivyakti Media for Development,a Nashik-based Indian development communication organization,believes that local media forms have a vital role in shapingcommunity life and its development. Abhivyakti has initiateda programme in the Maharashtra state of India that seeks toidentify those who are already using some media forms in orderto support them to participate in a loose informal network.This network mobilizes their creative energies to focus on thelocal and, in doing so, brings a host of diverse realities intopublic awareness and generates alternative nodal centres todistribute these voices and images. The programme is alreadyshaping different possibilities and allowing them to emergeas viable alternatives for community empowerment.     

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     

Editorial

This Issue begins with an article by Glen Laverack in an examinationof visual representations of strategies to build community capacity,which he sees as being closely aligned to the process of communitydevelopment. Drawing upon his experience in Fiji and KyrgyzstanLaverack assessing the value of using visual representationin what he describes as a ‘parallel-track’ approachin relation to capacity building and programme implementation.Laverack argues that the use of visual representations can beespecially beneficial to practitioners and the democratisationof information. Paul Henderson     

Editorial

The continuing struggle over the meaning and purposes of ‘community’is at the centre of this issue of the Journal. Practitionersand theorists of community development have for some time beencautious about the global resurgence of government interestin the concept and its potential for mobilization in the pursuitof a range of policies, including the re-invigoration of democracy.Typically the concern is the extent to which such policies thatpromote ‘community’ benefit the disadvantaged, excludedand minority groups or whether they signal a withdrawal of publicprovision and government abdication of responsibility for themeeting of basic needs and the incorporation of activists andorganizations concerned with social justice. Alternatively thereare those that continue to see the potential in such inclusivestrategies or those that promote ‘community’ provision     

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.     

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’.     

'If you could change one thing...' What community-based researchers wish they could have done differently

Community-based research (CBR) is rapidly gaining recognitionsas an important tool in addressing complex environmental, healthand social problems. CBR attempts to marry community developmentwith knowledge generation. However, little is known about theCanadian CBR context. This paper reports on the analysis ofan element within a web-based survey to investigate the statusof CBR in Canada. The survey included 25 questions. This paperfocuses on responses to one open-ended question (Q20): ‘Ifthere was one thing you could change about [your last CBR] project,what would it be?’ A content analysis approach guidedanalysis and responses were coded into main theme and subthemes.Our collective reflections offer other CBR practitioners anopportunity to more effectively plan future partnerships.     

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’,     

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.     

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.     

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     

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.     

Sustainability of community-based organizations of the rural poor: Learning from Concern's rural development projects, Bangladesh

Based on two decades of grassroots experiences, Concern Bangladeshhas developed a federation structure to ensure the sustainabilityof community-based organizations (CBO). Despite capacity-buildinginputs to all federations, only a few of them have been ableto operate without substantial external aid. This lack of progressrelates to a ‘one size fits all’ capacity-buildingstrategy and other sociopolitical issues such as the alienationof federations from the wider community and to political manipulation.Successful federations demonstrate that a committed leader whoensures participation, respects transparency and accountability,and promotes second line leadership can contribute positivelyto sustainability, even in an adverse sociopolitical context,and with limited capacity-building support.     

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     

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.     

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.