The Short Guide to Community Development

Gilchrist, Alison, Taylor, Marilyn, Alison Gilchrist, Marilyn Taylor

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781447360735
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica sociale

The only up-to-date, accessibly written short guide to community development, this third edition offers an invaluable and authoritative introduction. Fully updated to reflect changes in policy, practice, economics and culture, it will equip readers with an understanding of the history and theory of community development, as well as practical guidance on how to do it.

This is a key text for all students and practitioners working with communities. It includes:

• a broad overview of core themes, concepts, basic practices and key issues in community development;

• an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on community life and well-being, along with the implications for longer-term community support;?

• additional brand new content on the pressing issues of?democratic decline, social fragmentation and isolation, social care pressures, technological developments and climate change.

1

Introduction

‘Community’ is a concept that seems always to be in fashion with policy makers. In some quarters, the existence of community is seen as a natural and enduring facet of society; others lament its decline. One of the primary purposes of community development is to boost the effectiveness of community action and build grassroots capacity. As such it has been repeatedly ‘discovered’ by governments worldwide as offering ways to ‘restore’ community, to enhance democratic participation and to tackle poverty, alongside other seemingly intractable social problems.

Not everyone sees the necessity of strategic interventions to promote community development. Indeed, the term itself is problematic, with the approach also being called social development, popular education, critical pedagogy, community organising, community engagement, neighbourhood renewal and community education, for example. In the UK some prefer the term ‘critical community practice’ (Butcher et al, 2007), which describes a broader approach to working with communities. Nonetheless, internationally, community development is commonly adopted as a means of developing infrastructure, local economic initiatives and good governance. But governments have also been confronted by communities who have decided to mobilise for themselves, organising services, protest actions and self-help movements to improve living standards and claim important civil and human rights. This is also a form of community development.

In the 1950s the United Nations defined community development as ‘a process designed to create conditions of economic and social progress for the whole community with its active participation’ (United Nations, 1955, p 6). The International Association for Community Development (IACD) has adopted the following guiding principles for working with communities.

Box 1.1: IACD’s understanding of community development

“Community development is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, economic opportunity, equality and social justice, through the organisation, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.”

iacdglobal.org/about

This emphasis on professional status is contentious (Kenny, 2018) and IACD’s (2018) standards document qualifies this stance by stating that it sees community development as being ‘carried out by people in different roles and contexts who seek to apply community development values and adopt community development methods: by people called professional community workers (and people taking on the same role but with a different job title); by professionals in other occupations; … and by people active in their own communities’.

However, there is still some debate over whether community development represents a process, a set of practices, an approach, an occupation, a movement or even an academic discipline (Kenny, 2018; Banks, 2019). Is it a profession pursued by specialist workers or does it simply indicate a particular way of working in or with communities? Is it about the creation of resources, capacity, infrastructure and leadership for communities to use in whichever ways they choose? Or is it a set of techniques that can be used to accomplish externally defined objectives? Is it a movement for social change? Or maybe community development is simply about the development of ‘community’ itself?

This guide acknowledges that the term ‘community development’ is contested and compatible with a range of political ideologies (Meade et al, 2016a). In this edition we use the term ‘community worker’ to cover everyone working to co-ordinate and facilitate the contributions of community members, whether they are in paid roles, resident activists, leaders, active citizens or community-oriented volunteers.

As we shall consider more closely in Chapter 4, for some people, a sense of community supplies both the focus and the motivation to take action and press for change. The function that community plays in people’s lives and in policy will be a theme that we return to throughout the book, examining how community development skills and support are understood and applied by activists, professionals, policy makers and philanthropists to tackle the many challenges that face so many post-industrial societies.

A brief history

In the UK the fortunes and status of community development have waxed and waned. As an external intervention, it was initially used by philanthropic bodies (for example, the university settlements) to bring adult education and capacity building to disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as the London Docklands. Local authorities and housing trusts later employed officers in new towns and estates to encourage residents to set up groups and associations for various leisure and civic purposes in order to generate ‘community spirit’ and promote self-help.

For a long time, community development raised for policy makers the spectre of the Community Development Projects of the 1970s (Loney, 1983), a government-sponsored programme whose Marxist critique of capitalism – despite striking a chord with many practitioners – was not quite what the politicians had in mind when they allocated funding to its 12 ‘deprived’ areas. Official thinking at the time imagined that community development could be used to address ‘deficits’ through targeted interventions that focused on externally defined problems rather than community-determined priorities. Since then, a more anodyne version of community development has been adopted by successive governments, designed to build ‘community capacity’, ‘active citizenship’ and ‘collective resilience’, as well as to support ‘community engagement’ or ‘social enterprise/investment’ for addressing persistent local problems.

Recent changes

Global inequalities continue to rise, and progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has stalled. Action is certainly much needed after a tumultuous period of increased destitution, polarisation and most recently the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has convulsed lives and livelihoods on an unprecedented scale. The negative effects of the pandemic, and consequent economic recession, have fallen disproportionately on women, Black and minority ethnic communities, young people and disabled people. Widespread hardship and uncertainty have generated stress and fuelled social tensions. Successive clampdowns on social interactions have had drastic effects for millions of people, causing unwanted social isolation and stifling many aspects of community life. But we have adapted to online networking, using different technologies to stay in touch, organise meetings and social activities to maintain groups, make decisions and access learning. The internet has enabled rapid access to reputable sources of knowledge and increased global solidarity and co-operation, potentially widening the scope of community development to combat the spread of misinformation and divisive conspiracy theories.

Awareness of the impact of globalisation is also reflected in widespread recognition that climate catastrophe could be imminent. Communities across the world are responding with innovative schemes to generate renewable energy, cut down waste and pollution, protect the habitats of endangered species and combat the complacency of politicians.

Ingrained inequalities have widened over recent years (Dorling, 2018) due to the long-term impact of austerity, and have been further exacerbated by the economic downturn induced by the pandemic and the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Notwithstanding the stark realities of income differentials and the seeming impregnability of super-rich elites, advances have been made on other fronts. Recent years have witnessed a growing acceptance of diversity and more nuanced debates about the mutability of identity politics, particularly with regard to intersectionality and transgender issues (Morgan et al, 2020). We have been learning from much-needed discussion about the complicated nature of ‘race’ and the cumulative effect of unacknowledged privilege in people’s lives (Bhopal, 2018). Public conversations are more relaxed and better informed, with ideas from queer theory and anti-colonialist struggles infiltrating mainstream discourses. There is greater recognition of the systemic interplay between structural disparities, institutional discrimination and the unconscious stereotypes that are woven into the fabric of everyday life (Eddo-Lodge, 2017).

Nonetheless, the upheavals of recent years have left many people feeling insecure. While some embrace the cosmopolitan tide of different ethnicities, aspiring to notions of global citizenship and universal solidarity, others yearn for the ‘good old days’ of traditional communities and a stable, homogenous society. Generalised discontent, floating anxieties and resentments in significant parts of the population have focused on the establishment in the guise of elected politicians, elites and experts. In the UK discord lingers between ‘remainers’ and ‘leavers’ in the aftermath of Brexit, fuelled by xenophobia and the incitement of so-called ‘culture wars’ that distort debate and ferment mutual suspicion. Disgruntlement has festered over how the different parts of the UK have fared with respect both to Brexit and the pandemic. Populism and corruption are advancing in several countries, undermining democratic governance and posing a threat to governing structures and social stability (Kenny et al, 2021).

Luckily, these tendencies to blame and shame (O’Hara, 2020), to ‘divide and rule’ and to condemn outsiders are countered by currents flowing in the opposite direction. An epidemic of loneliness is being met with a surge in kindness, with assorted lockdown ‘bubbles’ forcing an acknowledgement of non-nuclear, non-traditional families. Awful as the coronavirus emergency has been (and we shouldn’t downplay some of the social schisms that appeared), many of us have been stirred to think beyond our immediate household to express collective responsibility and heed public health guidance. As we will examine in Chapter 3, there were many silver linings, including the spontaneous appearance of mutual aid groups and a heightened sense of neighbourliness. Many discerned a renewed sense of community and increased voluntary action, which reinforced people’s appreciation of local spaces and networks (Wyler, 2020). This has highlighted the importance of community-led infrastructure to co-ordinate people’s efforts and maintain links with local statutory services and voluntary sector agencies (Wilson et al, 2020).

All these changes and achievements make community development as important as ever, as a means to protect what has been gained but also to tackle continuing injustice, protect local services and improve local conditions. Many definitions stress the need to work with the assets, strengths, knowledge, resourcefulness and experience that communities already have, rather than starting from the deficit model that policy makers tend to assume. At the same time, we should not underestimate the struggles facing people, especially in ‘left-behind’ areas, and their ongoing need for practical support and solidarity.

Defining community development?

Community development is not a phrase that necessarily travels well. A mapping study by the IACD (2015) found a plethora of terms that seemed to cover a core understanding and noted significant differences in practice between countries on different continents. In the global South, community development retains its colonial associations, often devoid of the political content that characterises popular education movements there, for example, in Latin America (Pearce et al, 2010). However, the term maintains its currency in the US and in a number of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, such as Australia and Canada.

A quick review of definitions developed over the years by scholars, practitioners and institutions concerned with community development yields a number of common themes around social change, social justice, collective action, equality, mutual respect, enabling participation and changing power relationships. One US text echoes the analysis of the Community Development Projects in the UK, arguing that: ‘Community development occurs when the conditions of surviving and thriving in a place are not being supplied by capital.’ This highlights the need to connect geographical communities to the ‘far greater resources, opportunities and power that lie outside [them]’ (DeFilippis and Saegert, 2012, p 6). Descriptions from elsewhere in the world emphasise the need to develop political awareness alongside skills, confidence and resources developed through popular education and social movements (see Ledwith, 2020). Readers may find it a useful exercise to come up with a definition that reflects their own experience and circumstances, and to compare this with other descriptions.

Overview of the book

This Short Guide starts in Chapter 2 by reviewing a range of understandings of community development, describing different models and how they compare with related approaches and concepts. The next two chapters look at context and theory. Chapter 3 lays out the policies and other factors that have shaped community development over the years, and the policy themes that it is expected to address. In Chapter 4 we review some of the theories that can help inform community development practice, focusing particularly on theories of community, identity, the state, collective organisation and power. Chapters 5 and 6 come back to the practice of community development. Chapter 5 considers the skills, values and techniques that constitute ‘good’ community development practice: how to do it, why certain principles work best and what kind of infrastructure is needed to support it. Chapter 6 describes how it can be applied in different policy fields, including a commitment to incorporating equality into all aspects of the work. The final two chapters explore the challenges that face community development. Chapter 7 examines various issues and dilemmas that are inherent within the practice and politics of community development, while Chapter 8 looks at external trends that are likely to affect its future prospects.

The Guide is written from a UK perspective. However, we have referred to experience and debates elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US, and we believe that many of the issues raised have a wider relevance. We end by welcoming the increasing willingness of community workers in the global North – and policy makers too – to learn from practice in the global South.

Some thoughts on terminology

This last comment raises some language issues. Most of the terminology that distinguishes between different regions of the world is problematic: how do we describe the distinction that used to be made between the developed and developing worlds? With apologies to Australasia, we have chosen to use the terms ‘global South’ and ‘global North’ to refer to countries with emerging economies that tend to be in the southern hemisphere, compared to the politically dominant nations of the north. We recognise that these terms are awkward but acknowledge that community development is a global movement with plenty of scope for cross-border exchanges, co‑operation and comparisons, as captured in several international readers and the work of the IACD network.

The terms used for different identity groups are subject to constant debate and so acceptable labels are constantly changing. In particular, the word ‘Black’ was preferred in anti-racist networks as a common reference point for everyone experiencing racism on the basis of skin colour, including those of Asian origin. But this inadvertently excluded other minoritised groups, such as Gy...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables and boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. What is community development?
• 3. The changing policy context
• 4. Theoretical concepts
• 5. Effective and ethical community development
• 6. Community development in action
• 7. Challenges for practice
• 8. Future prospects
• References
• Index