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Academic researchers in developing countries are increasingly called upon to gear their research efforts towards solving contemporary social problems. The dominant research paradigm in their academic institutions is however not conducive to such endeavours. This paper proposes a participatory paradigm, based on the principles of activity theory, as a basis for community development work. The paper elaborates on the process needed to develop a participatory research project and presents two examples to illustrate the characteristics of such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses attention on the ways in which knowledge operates to structure and limit what can possibly be done in community-building initiatives. Specifically, we devote attention to the forms of knowledge either categorized as ‘local’ or ‘expert’. This paper draws out a theoretical basis to understand how community-building as a process, and professional community-building practitioners themselves, often create, maintain, and police these epistemological boundaries, and through case studies illustrate how this impacts people's access to putting knowledge into action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the three concepts of agricultural education, women empowerment and sustainable rural development are examined, and the strategies of agricultural education for women empowerment and sustainable rural development are discussed. While it can be argued that women are best placed to empower women, others have presented a view that men have a role in their empowerment. Since women in Nigeria make up more than half of the nation's population, their empowerment educationally, socially, politically, and economically would seem to command the efforts of all for a sustainable rural development. Recommendations for a massive agricultural education campaign are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the state increasingly embraces the community and voluntary sectors in coping with spatial change, urban policy has become more difficult to disentangle and evaluate. This paper is concerned with two valid, but different, interpretations of policy evaluation. 'Instrumental' techniques have been primarily concerned with performance measures and indicators of efficiency in public spending. 'Interpretative' approaches have stressed the need to explore power relationships, impact of policy on community competencies and self-learning. The paper uses a case study of evaluation of urban policy in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland to show how specific techniques can reconcile this duality in evaluation design. It concludes by reflecting on the importance and power of knowledge for communities involved in urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the capacity of local communities and subnational governments to influence patterns of tourism development, within the context of a globalizing economy. Through a comparison of the contrasting examples of Hawaii and Queensland, the paper indicates the consequences of different approaches to land use regulation. It points to the importance of planning and policy processes that integrate community interests, in order to achieve long-term, sustainable tourism development. Effective regulation of development can minimize the social and environmental impacts of tourism. The paper illustrates how community organizations and sub-national governments can articulate local interests, despite the global demands of investors for more deregulated markets in land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community empowerment is central to community development and yet making this concept operational in a programme context remains elusive. Based on doctoral work, this paper identifies and interprets nine organizational ‘domains’ for community empowerment. These organizational domains are not absolutes rather they serve as a point of departure for further discussion about straightforward ways to define and measure community empowerment as a process. This paper is seen as a step toward clarifying and making this concept operational to guide practitioners who wish to apply and measure community empowerment in a programme context. The implications for community development and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews the use of 'networks' in community studies. The author refers to the nebulous meanings attached to the term and likens its omnibus application to that of the concept of 'community'. In the literature, a mode of intercommunication, whether technological, organisational or inter-relational or merely social is described as 'a network'. To date, its widespread usage is unquestioned in academia and community development practice. However, this paper demonstrates that the concept of network is a metaphor which is only valid when referring to formal modes of communication and relationships and not when referring to informal connections, such as within self-help or user-led groups, or relationships between kin, friends or neighbours. The author makes the sociological point that network as a metaphor cannot be used to denote both the formal and informal, because conceptually they are opposites. Social scientists are mixing their metaphors. The author also evaluates the mathematised uses of network analysis, concluding that 'circle' is a preferable less mechanistic alternative when referring to the informal domain. The usage of circles in community development studies is illustrated in selected empirical research programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the light of high unemployment in deprived neighbourhoods, this paper considers whether community exchange is being used as a coping strategy. Examining its current magnitude and character as well as the barriers to participation in a particular deprived neighbourhood, this paper finds that community exchange currently reinforces, rather than mitigates, the plight of the poorest in this deprived neighbourhood. In the absence of any likelihood of a return to full employment in such areas, this paper asserts that unless action is taken to re-build community exchange, these populations will continue to be unable to satisfy their basic needs and wants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent years have seen increasing participation in short-term international volunteering. These volunteer teams usually engage individuals from high-income countries to travel and provide charitable services for host communities in low- and middle-income countries for a period of 3 months or less. The economic impacts arising from this phenomenon often vary; while volunteers introduce a new revenue that may support local job creation, they may also inadvertently disrupt the local workforce with their contributions, and thereby drive up unemployment. In addition, there may be a shift of economic focus towards attracting and supporting volunteers, rather than developing meaningful capacity in needed developmental areas. There also exist expected tensions with the direct and indirect goals and impacts of visiting volunteer teams, such as intended evangelism, unintended cultural colonialism, or education over service. Weighed against the desirability of additional community revenue, these tensions raise numerous ethical concerns. This paper examines a medium-sized city in Latin America, which receives many well-meaning international volunteers annually, who serve disadvantaged local populations. Specifically, this paper examines a faith-based volunteer team that was primarily composed of non-skilled youth. Using participant observation and interviews with relevant stakeholders, we identified an unsustainable growth model in place at the local hospital, which directs resources to support and promote the flow of foreign volunteers despite ethical concerns around perpetuating poverty, skills mismatch, and limited beneficial impacts on the target population. We highlight future concerns for this community associated with a financial dependence on international volunteers, and present solutions to potentially mitigate this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of village savings and loan association (VSLAs) programmes in several African countries portray these initiatives as spaces that increase financial access for the poor, improve livelihoods, and provide members with social capital. Little is known, however, about their impact beyond increasing financial access. This paper shows that the benefits that accrue (or do not) from membership in VSLAs are mediated through networks of friendships and other social relations that predate the introduction of VSLAs. Based on ethnographic research on VSLAs conducted between 2012 and 2014 in Luwero District, Uganda, this paper examines women's experiences in VSLAs, how social networks influence their decision to join a VSLA, and how VSLAs provide women an opportunity to exercise agency through utilizing their social networks in their community. In this way, they are able to challenge structural barriers to financial autonomy and control at the household level. This research shows that female participants utilize two kinds of networks in VSLA spaces: 'silence-in' and 'silencethrough' networks. The findings underscore the influence of friendships and family relations in shaping the impact of externally initiated microlevel programmes such as VSLAs beyond financial inclusion, livelihood, and poverty reduction. The decision to join a VSLA, the desire for financial autonomy, the struggle against power dynamics, and unintended consequences are all negotiated within the VSLAs space through social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial growth in Internet use in the 1990s resulted in many digital pioneers viewing new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a means to radically empower people through new global connections and extensive social capital. This has extended into an interest in exploring how ICTs can contribute to international development, and particularly in the field of ICT for development (ICT4D). Evidence from the minority and majority worlds has tempered some of this initial enthusiasm and visions of technological determinism. This article is structured around a piece of coproduced writing to reflect on a project in a deprived neighbourhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, to empower a community through new technology and digital art. The approach involved social history in the form of an archive of images of the neighbourhood, a blog and Facebook page, and a range of physical outputs including social history walking guides and a digital totem pole. The article sets the coproduced paper in the broader literature on ICTs in community development to draw out lessons on the challenges and also the strengths of using novel methods to engage communities. While ICTs cannot develop extensive social capital within deprived neighbourhoods, it was clear that they can offer low-cost ways for institutional social capital to be developed improving partnership working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various topics published within the issue including one on community development, one on social welfare, and one on the responsibility of the government in assuring the welfare of the public.

Social movements are manifestations of and facilitate human 'agency' (LaClau and Mouffe, 1987; Touraine, 1998). The past 20 years reveal a burgeoning number of service and advocacy organizations which focus on the specific needs, interests and issues of minority members of our society. In some cases these minorities represent a significant sector of the population yet continue to be regarded as minorities, as others, as less than full citizens. Full citizenship appears to be conferred differentially. Conceptually, citizenship reflects the idea that citizens act in the public sphere, they contribute to, and shape the discourses which, in turn, and in part, structure our society. All of the members of the society are, conceptually and theoretically, entitled to this participation. Practically, however, citizenship appears to be increasingly exclusively conferred. This paper explores these issues theoretically and conceptually, first examining the relationship between civil society and social movements and the public sphere; how these realms might be understood to intersect and interrelate. In short, the paper explores the question of whether the actions and agency of citizens in civil society effects the public sphere. Whether these persons and their activities contribute an alternative discourse which is a discourse of the public, or only of a marginal realm, is a question critical to understanding the relationship between community development, civil society and social change. While this paper can not claim to answer this question, it explores these ideas and our contemporary experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the role of the boxing training and mentoring in the context of the change processes for participants engaging in a twenty-week community based integrated fitness and education substance use rehabilitation programme. The study took place in an urban community in Dublin, Ireland within the context of neo-liberal systems of regulation and control of community based organizations. Focus group interviews with participants were carried out at midway (n = 17) and on completion (n = 14) of the programme and with practitioners (n = 8) midway and on completion of the programme. Transcripts were coded and themes associated with the participants' experience of the programme and its interface with the wider community context: building relationships; physical and emotional impact of boxing skills training; boxing skills training and gender; understanding the mentoring role. The positive attributes associated with the 'boxer' identity has the potential to provide an alternative to 'the addict' identity within socially disadvantaged communities. It is argued that the boxing gym, particularly when nested within a range of educational and emotional supports, can become an empowering setting within a community. The coaching approach has the potential to challenge gendered norms in relation to sport and fitness, while also supporting participants to utilize their physical bodies with intent and focus. The inclusion of programme mentors is an important consideration for substance use rehabilitation programmes, especially within communities characterized by exclusion and isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of 'the arts' in community development is increasingly being recognized. This paper contributes to emerging insights on the various impacts of the arts on communities by highlighting when and how they can have binding and dividing effects on a community. We draw on a participatory research project conducted in Pingjum, a village in the Netherlands that hosts many cultural activities and in which many artists live. We discuss how the arts in Pingjum influence the community in the village. In our discussion, we pay attention to the sense of community that the arts generate, the meeting opportunities they provide and how the community is engaged by some artists. Our study shows that the influence of the arts is context-dependent, with the arts having both binding and dividing effects on the community in Pingjum. In terms of the value of the arts for community development, we emphasize three key issues: that the arts (i) do not have only advantages for a community; (ii) do not engage the entire community; and (iii) could potentially contribute to community fragmentation. Given these issues, we argue that the arts should be considered as one of several supportive means in community development processes. Ideally, they are integrated into a wider community development strategy and planning, and exist alongside other associations and activities in a community. In this way, the arts can contribute to the robustness of a community and assist it in developing the capacity and resources to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's western society is characterized by a transition towards self-organization by citizens in communities. Increasingly, societal problems are addressed by groups of citizens who take action to find concrete solutions. A second feature of western society is that it is an information society in which information and communication play a key role. In this paper, we analyse how these two societal trends come together at the community level. Applying a relational and contingent perspective to how green urban citizens' initiatives develop, we look into the role of information in their interactions with other people, organizations and institutions. We analyse the mechanisms whereby information plays a role in the citizens' initiatives. This leads to the conclusion that informational capital is fundamental to the realization of citizens' initiatives and that informational capital is generated, identified, used and enlarged through the relational strategies of bonding, bridging and linking. It is a process that works in both ways and reinforces citizens' initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban neighbourhoods are home to complex social interactions, cultural traditions and historic built environments that have accrued over time. Many community development corporations (CDCs) in the United States work in older, inner-city neighbourhoods, setting the stage for a possible alliance with historic preservation. This paper explores the intersection of community development and historic preservation, asking: In high-growth contexts, how do community developers working in neighbourhoods with strong cultural and ethnic identity use historic preservation? What are their motivations? And, how do they define, use, and/or adapt preservation to address the needs of their target communities? The article chronicles the Seattle Chinatown-International District Preservation Development Authority's (SCIDpda) efforts to reverse neighbourhood decline while preserving the International District's significant history, fostering its continued future as a Pan-Asian community, overcoming persistent barriers to development, and mitigating high growth pressures. The findings show that for community developers, preservation can serve as an oppositional strategy to demolition and incompatible new development, helping to attract outside financial resources, and providing a means to assert local symbolic ownership over neighbourhood space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, Newmont, a multinational mining company, invested in a large-scale 'open-pit' gold mining operation near a cluster of villages in the Paramaca Maroon community in Suriname. Mines are considered stressors that engender ecological, social and economic disruption. It is vital that place-based communities are resilient to the impact of this disruption. Resilience theory provides an applicable framework for studying how systems respond (i.e. cope, adapt or transform) in the face of exogenous stressors and disruptions. The Photovoice study presented in this paper, using the community capitals (CCs) framework, explores in a holistic and systemic way the CCs that exist in a Paramaca Maroon village, and how such capitals contribute to resiliency. The methodology assumes that people are experts regarding their own lives, and can voice their experiences, concerns and views of both the past and the future through imagery that speaks through and for them. This study shows that participants focus on the lack and erosion of CCs, yet, despite this, the Paramaca society displays resiliency. The Paramaca Maroon community is able to articulate its demands within the corporate decision-making process on sustainable community development, primarily by adapting their political organization to the new reality and by mobilizing their intangible capitals, such as social, cultural, human, political capital, in the face of exogenous stressors and disruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community development is related to ecological restoration in several ways. Degraded ecosystems have driven economic decline in communities. Developing institutions for managing and restoring community land bases has long been a strategy in community development. More recently, ecological restoration has been pitched to extraction-dependent communities as part of a 'just transition' to a low carbon economy. In this paper, I think across literatures in geography, ecological restoration and environmental politics to theorize a politics of ecological restoration that resists neoliberal co-optation while supporting Indigenous resurgence. I probe resonance and dissonance among three concepts that have been recently employed to theorize more-than-human relations in the face of extraction, climate change, neoliberal privatization and other Anthropocene phenomena. These concepts are: (1) the commons, one institution for managing land bases as well as an insurgent imaginary of post-capitalist governance; (2) precarity, an idea usually applied in urban settings to describe the late capitalist position of people, usually workers and (3) the more-than-human, an ecologically rooted theoretical perspective that thinks through social dynamics as imbricated with relations among species and entities living together. In my earlier work with a rural settler community trying to restore salmon stream habitats and runs, the idea of a multispecies commons emerged in interviews with residents and restoration workers, and inspired new watershed stewardship practices. Dené scholar Glen Coulthard's critique that commons discourse often erases Indigenous land claims and relations inspired me to think more-than-human commons more deeply, drawing on interviews from beaver-assisted river restoration sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates how movement-based practices activate and embody a sensibility and awareness of how water moves both inside and alongside the human body. This approach troubles the mainstream understanding of water as commodity or external force. Following and troubling ideas from new materialism and (hydro)feminist theories, Neimanis and Haraway in particular, this paper offers a theoretical framework on a practice-as-research based community project, Global Water Dances (GWD) (http://globalwaterdances.org/). This work connected a local Cork based group (which involved children, professional dancers, a teenage youth theatre group, and international students and local community members) within the project to over 100 communities around the globe. GWD seeks to connect specific local communities and issues with a larger scale global sensibility by raising awareness about water issues through dance as a shared expressive form. The event allowed us to focus our concerns in response to particular protests around austerity and water rights current in Ireland and local flood management issues while also allowing us to connect this water rich and overflowing country in counter-point to a number of global sites and issues. Our aim was to think and move with water and each other and to contribute to a shifting sensibility about water as central to issues of social justice as much as an issue of environmental concern. This essay offers a range of registers to evoke how we live in common with water; alongside a discussion of a global-scale community arts event, and theoretical framework, there are a range of images and passages which record and foreground daily and local ways of being with water. This approach developed from movement practices in the performing arts; these practices extend into a writing practice which seeks to move performatively with water, to see what it does with us, to ask where and how we are water made, water marked and water moved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to austerity-led reforms of the Irish water sector implemented in 2014, a broad-based, popular movement mobilized and ultimately forced a reversal of these reforms two years later. At least in the formal, public debates, the main contention centered on how water services should be financed and controlled. This is not unique to the Irish case. As campaigns across the world testify, debates over ownership, financing, control and ultimately access to water services are often at the heart of water politics. Without sidelining these important campaigns and movements, this paper calls for other ways of imagining and doing water politics that begin by paying greater attention to water and our complex, uneven, and damaged relations with it. The article draws on inputs and discussions that arose during the day-long 'Thinkery' that gave rise to this Special Issue (organized in June 2017 in the University College Cork), as well as ongoing research with rural Group Water Schemes (GWSs) in Ireland. The non-spectacular forms of activism practised by some GWSs invites a form of hydropolitics that doesn't shy away from the toxic legacies that accrete and materialize (unevenly) in different water bodies. Drawing on the important contributions of Chas Jewett in the 'Thinkery', the terms trauma and healing take on an important force for re-directing the energies, assumptions and intentions of more familiar forms of water politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a flurry of research activity surrounding the Transition Movement, yet no previous inquiry has examined the movement's political economy. This investigation fills this gap in scholarship by analysing the movement's localization agenda and gives particular emphasis to the implications for political relations between community members and with local governments. Through direct participation with the movement and interviews with Transition activists in the United States, a theoretical picture of an economically and socially localized future is offered. However, when theory is translated into practice, a point of internal tension--functional independence versus government institutionalization--is created in the movement's development strategy. The paper identifies and evaluates a politically active subset of the movement that is seeking to more effectively accelerate and expand the localization process by directly influencing policy making and implementation though local governments. Whereas this heightened level of political activity suggests that some Transition groups are being drawn towards institutionalization, it creates new areas of potential tension. Specifically, if the Transition Movement continues to integrate its political economy into the local community through institutionalized policy making and implementation power, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain and justify its traditional identity as a non-political and socially inclusive movement that avoids divisive political conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing development inputs like electrical energy is a formidable task in many parts of the developing world. The generally rural nature of developing countries makes it necessary to devise innovative ways of getting electricity to the non-urban majority. It is also imperative that adequate and productive electrical power is made available, for sustainable development to be achieved by rural communities and by extension the national economies. Therefore, institutional and other innovations are being continuously mooted to meet the challenges; and it is in this context that rural electricity co-operatives have been introduced to developing countries. The co-operatives are promoted largely because of their social strengthening characteristics. However, questions arise as to whether social capital upon which the co-operatives are based is a facilitator or an impediment to the co-operatives, and the sustainable development that is ultimately targeted. It is argued in this paper that rather overstretched virtues of social capital mask undesirable elements of the capital. Importantly, organizations like co-operatives that depend on it can fail because of the neglected dark aspects. Empirical evidence from Kenya is used to support the contention. It is concluded that electricity co- operatives could remain a far-fetched possibility, unless desirable and undesirable characteristics of social capital are carefully taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the commitment of the "Community Development Journal" to the publication of papers and commentaries which increase understanding of community development and the effect of bottom up approaches that involve local people. It notes the acceptance of the journal of papers from academics, practitioners, and policy makers that write on the subject of community development. It mentions the need papers that are submitted for consideration to be normally 3,000 to 4,000 words long which should include an abstract of not more than 100 words and identify approximately five italicized key words.

Enhancing inclusion and self-reliance at community level is gaining ground in policy terms, due – in part – to the need to increase the efficiency of public spend, associated with the global financial crisis. Within Scotland, this shift is manifested through multiple policy and community interventions seeking to enhance resilience of communities. Measuring community resilience remains challenging as there is a lack of practical tools and assessment methods to capture aspects of ‘change’. The research presented here is based on the ‘Capacity for Change’ programme, which, through community engagement and empowerment, seeks to enhance the capacity of rural places and develop inclusive communities. The paper presents (i) an evaluation model for measuring community resilience and (ii) empirical findings that derive from deploying the model in a real-life scenario. Based on 155 face-to-face interviews with inhabitants from rural communities, resilience is revealed as being multi-scalar and interdependent, indicating the importance of ‘unpacking’ resilience by exploring different levels of its social and economic components. The findings indicate the significance of inter-connectivity of local and regional, and those less and more resilient areas. In addition, it shows that locations with more diversified services and resources are reported by their residents as being more resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the past ten years, much attention has focused on the contribution of co-operatives in satisfying the socially relevant needs of communities. The number of co-operatives has voluntarily increased to attract and network local stakeholders as key players in various regions in South Korea. This paper aims to explain how and to what extent stakeholder involvement in these co-operatives has been successful or limited to meeting new socio-economic needs by focusing on two case studies – namely, Wonju and Ansung cities, which are considered to be relatively successful cases. The paper provides a brief overview of South Korea's development of the social economy; the two case studies reveal how stakeholder involvement contributes to social innovation in Korean co-operatives. It is obvious that co-operatives are already embedded in Wonju and Ansung and stakeholder involvement contributes to meeting new social needs in both cities. Existing co-operatives and activists have played a considerable role in bridging public, private, and non-profit organizations as well as in facilitating the social innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the concept of inclusive community development and its relevance to the ethnogenesis and empowerment of Gypsy and Traveller communities. Critics have asserted that such an approach can hold the danger of encompassing an assimilationist agenda, that seeks to ‘civilize’. The paper argues that community development can be community-driven but ideally should be a gradual process, delivered in stages where external and outsider assistance can in fact be of use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Poetry, among the arts, remains understudied as a means for community development. To address this scarcity, this paper considers the use of poetry as a community development tool and discusses its uniqueness in this role. It offers a description and analysis of an exploratory, qualitative research study carried out with twelve respondents in Montreal, Canada, who participated in community-based creative writing groups. Evaluation suggested that, overall, the poetry groups made a positive contribution to community building and development. This paper locates the study in the context of community development and the arts and includes references to poetry therapy and social action-based creative writing. It also raises questions as to why poetry has not found its place on the agenda of arts-based community development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The social economy is a third sector of the economy, besides the public and private sectors, that provides critical social and economic services to society. Though there is broad recognition that both society and economy are dependent on functioning and healthy ecosystems, theories and definitions of the social economy rarely include reference to environmental and conservation-focused activities or outcomes. This paper empirically situates the concept of an eco-social economy within the context of a community conservation initiative. Through a case study of the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation and the Thaidene Nene Protected Area in northern Canada, this paper demonstrates that: (i) for indigenous people, conservation is as much a social, economic, political, and cultural endeavour as it is about the protection of nature; (ii) outside environmental non-governmental organizations are also aligning their conservation mandates with the broader social, economic, and cultural goals of northern indigenous communities; and (iii) local social economy organizations are emerging to advocate for conservation as a means to achieve social and economic development ends. These examples compel us to envisage a social economy that incorporates environmental organizations and conservation initiatives and movements and that makes explicit a distinct eco-social economy. This theoretical concept has global applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Martin Geoghegan and Fred Powell on the relationship between community development and neoliberalism and another by Colin Williams on the nature of local community exchanges in England.

A group of women in the rural Eastern Cape Province of South Africa earns a living collecting scrap metal and paying to transport it for sale in Durban. The sustainability of their livelihood is in question because of an ever-shrinking supply of recyclable metals, fluctuating commodity prices, and the logistical difficulties of transporting the materials to buyers further along the recycling value chain. Using the sustainable livelihoods framework, this paper highlights the opportunities and challenges facing these informal recyclers. It shows how the women have fashioned a livelihood practice in the context of widespread rural poverty, isolation from recycling markets, and limited community assets. Implications for community development include the need for a participatory sustainable livelihood analysis to evaluate ways to counterbalance the instability and uncertainty involved in informal recycling and to raise the incomes of the women involved in this activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in how civil society can contribute to the renewal of welfare states. Civil society and grassroots' initiatives and organizations played a central role in the original establishment of welfare states, but gradually the roles of civil society in welfare decreased. In Norway, there is still a high level of civic participation, but engagement is strong in the fields of culture and leisure, especially in children's leisure activities in communities. In current public debates in Norway, as in many other European countries, the potential roles of civil society in the welfare state have been high on the agenda. Starting from studies of Norwegian white papers and official reports, in which civil society is increasingly seen as an untapped resource for ideal welfare production, coproduction between sectors, social innovation and entrepreneurship, voluntary sector and advocacy, the article will discuss how key values and practices in community work can add to or challenge this endeavour. The example of Norway is used with some comparative references to other countries. The article highlights not only the economic preconditions for future development for welfare, but also structural preconditions for a renewal of community work and possible new collaborative relations between civil society and the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an eight-month community-based participatory research project to introduce and evaluate the implementation of an asset-based approach to Tuberculosis (TB) leadership groups in three villages in Flores Island, Indonesia. An asset-based intervention that emphasized discovering, mobilizing, and strengthening the capacities of local communities was conducted. Asset-mapping workshops aimed to shift the TB leadership groups' capacity to work differently by focusing on their strengths rather than their problems or needs, to enable them to manage their own TB program. Monthly visits, home visits, informal discussions, and group discussions with TB groups were carried out to provide support to groups or leaders and to monitor and evaluate the project. The intervention successfully generated significant changes in the TB groups' view of outsiders and their relationship with the villagers, built dialogue between the group members, strengthened local initiatives that could reduce the rates of TB and encourage early diagnosis and therefore treatment, and encouraged community engagement. The approach enabled TB leadership groups to be more confident and capable in managing a local TB program that was formulated by themselves for themselves to achieve their own goals. The approach and techniques demonstrated in this study may represent an effective method and deliver outcomes that could be generalizable to similar settings and other health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores emerging contradictions in community development, a subset of non-profit sector, within the context of neoliberalization. I examine non-profit sector as a site that has a potential for articulating counter-hegemonic discourse alternative to neoliberalism. Conversely, non-profit sector itself has been subjected to neoliberal co-optation and restructuring that resulted in restricted autonomy of the sector and decreased capacity to advocate for progressive social change. Drawing on my experience as a community engagement worker in one of Toronto's neighbourhood improvement areas, I problematize community development, posing questions about the role of the non-profit agencies in the production of specific socio-economic configurations that may, albeit inadvertently, support neoliberal discourse. Through an example of local community campaign for increased access to public space and services, I highlight options to enhance counterhegemonic potential of community development as a critical practice aimed at advancing the commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displacement by development projects jeopardizes welfare of people living at its periphery. The acquisition of land for large industries, mines, or special economic zones gives rise to the livelihood insecurity of the poor and less privileged people. Displacement from the original habitations often means not only the physical relocation but also the loss of livelihood derived from the subsistence resources offered by the local environment. Due to displacement, people lose common property resources like forests, rivers, fields, and grazing grounds. It is estimated that some 3-5 million people have been displaced since 1950 in Odisha on account of various development projects, of which more than 50 percent are tribals (Haan, A. D and Dubey, A. (2005) Poverty, Disparities, or the Development of Underdevelopment in Orissa, Economic and Political Weekly, XL(22-23), 2321-2329). The involuntary displacement has brought imbalances in possession of land in various districts of Odisha. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore further the impact of displacement on livelihood of tribal and non-tribal communities of Odisha. It may pinpoint key challenges faced by them due to development-induced displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities are increasingly encouraged to become more resilient, be more active and proactive, adapt to economic and social transformation, and possess the ability to change. Many initiatives aim to enhance community resilience, however there are few effective measurement tools which identify the influence of these initiatives on the resilience of participating communities. Our paper proposes a model for measuring community resilience combining both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. We utilize a hybrid evaluation approach which links existing international research with findings from an empirical study. We test our Capacity for Change community resilience model using findings from a longitudinal study including 292 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews. Our research contributes new learning on resilience measurement, and draws conclusions for practitioners, policymakers and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, community organizing has been initiated by different government and non-government organizations in corruption prevention through creating social awareness and motivation. The question arises: Can community-based organizations or community organizing empower people to raise their voice to prevent corruption? Based on empirical evidence, this research argues that engaging the community in anti-corruption initiatives can be an effective way to avert corruption and empower people's voice. The finding shows that anti-corruption initiatives through spontaneous individual and collective involvement at the local level have an impact on creating accountability and transparency. Despite several challenges, these group and individual efforts have had significant results in promoting anti-corruption efforts in Bangladesh. Effective anti-corruption initiatives in engaging the community need 'spontaneous' participation by individuals or groups. As such, the government should give primacy of these individuals and groups and use them to create more formalized corruption watchdog bodies at the sub-regional level and make it a stronger National Integrity Systems foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia is the highest per capita emitter of mercury pollution in the world. Ground-level concentrations of atmospheric mercury from small-scale mining in Antioquia, Colombia, are so high that experts fear an environmental health crisis worse than any caused by mercury since Minamata, Japan, in the mid-twentieth century. Gold mining is Colombia's fastest growing industry. While foreign direct investment in gold mining is projected to increase exponentially over this decade, small-scale mining is the major force in the gold sector, generating 50–70 percent of national gold production, 70 percent of which comes from Antioquia. Federal and departmental law calls for miners to curb public exposure to mercury by removing processing activities from urban environments, but the laws are not enforced. This paper examines the political and historical obstacles to enforcing these laws, and explores the dilemmas of solving acute environmental health crises in places where violence, social exclusion and state-failure have crippled institutional legitimacy and authority. The paper addresses uncertainty around whether environmental health and sustainable resource extraction can be vehicles for progressive processes, or if instead, the increased economic emphasis on mining is inseparable from the social and political afflictions that impede environmental policy enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines perspectives on the recent proliferation of sargassum (free-floating seaweed) in the oil-producing region of Ghana. The shores of many fishing villages surrounding Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field are now covered with decomposing sargassum, which, in addition to releasing offensive smells, clogs the fishing nets and boat engines of local fishermen, in turn, disrupting livelihoods considerably. Fishermen from villages such as Cape Three Points have linked the ‘blackened’ colour of rotting sargassum to the recent commencement of oil production, calling on the government to discipline Tullow, the main company operating in the Jubilee Oil Field, and to compensate them accordingly. Representatives from the government and Tullow have countered by stating that the growing presence of sargassum, which is an important source of food for numerous aquatic species, has more to do with local fishing habits: that it is a result of overfishing, not oil production. Whether this phenomenon is coincidental or not, the response of both policy-makers and government officials to mounting grievances over sargassum has been woefully inadequate, and fairly symptomatic of the approach being taken overall to foster development in communities affected by oil production in Ghana and the wider sub-region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relationships between the extractive industries, society and development are often symbolized by unfulfilled expectations and even conflict. Poor, rural, politically marginalized and indigenous communities are often significantly impacted by the extraction of fuel and non-fuel minerals. This paper explores the challenge of resource-led development in Zambia's ‘New Copperbelt’ (i.e. the Northwestern Province). It explains how Kansanshi, a mid-tier mining company, has struggled with various community development aspects, including resettlement and compensation, hiring and employment, the maintaining of local government interactions and formulating a coherent corporate social responsibility (CSR) and infrastructure project strategy. Findings suggest that community capacity to hold Kansanshi and local government to account is relatively weak. Recommendations include aligning CSR strategies with district, regional and national development objectives, as well as building linkages between local civil society organizations and national/international non-governmental organizations. This would enable communities around the mine to share experiences, lessons learnt and effective company and local government engagement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The challenges of participatory development suggest an explicit role for community development practitioners as ‘translation agents’ across different institutional contexts. This paper illustrates this role in three case studies of rural community development projects in post-war Ethiopia. The case studies highlight the value of local community knowledge and institutions in tackling key development issues: from small-farm productivity, to water access, to animal health. They also demonstrate the frequent need for translation and mediation between community knowledges and institutions and those of outside organizations and professionals. This paper analyses the case studies to show how community development practitioners working in the field can play a central role in creating truly participatory development spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on a range of agreements between Indigenous people and extractive industries suggests that equitable benefits from such activity on Indigenous land are rare. In Central Australia, the Central Land Council has piloted a new approach to generating benefits from land use agreements by establishing a community development unit and encouraging Indigenous traditional owners to apply some of the income from land use agreements with mining companies and similar parties to community development activities. This paper discusses the variety of community development projects this unit is undertaking with traditional owners and Aboriginal community members, and the challenges it is facing as it tries to utilize community development principles in its projects. It indicates some of the issues that may need to be considered in government policy which seeks to assist Indigenous landholders gain optimum benefit from land-related payments. In particular, the paper demonstrates that the priorities of Indigenous people to support and promote social and cultural activities, including maintaining micro-communities (outstations) on homelands, may conflict with government views as to how to ‘optimize benefits’ from land use agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the way in which service providers in East Anglia, a region of the United Kingdom, in 2002–2003 represent asylum seekers as problematic, isolated, and largely vulnerable dependents. In doing so, support organizations assume an exclusive position of expertise and knowledge of asylum seekers' predicaments. This exclusivity can be understood as the ‘official explanation’ [Spivak, G. C. (1987) In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Methuen, New York/London, p. 114] put forth by organizations in order to ensure that they maintain a degree of influence in government policy, as well as to ensure a competitive edge in the arena of service provision, and to lobby and advocate the needs of asylum seekers. This paper explores the paradox of an organized system of support that works to assist asylum seekers to be independent and yet in doing so represents asylum seekers as dependent and excludes them from decision-making processes. However, by considering asylum seekers' speech-acts, we can recognize that what they talk about is in itself a strategy employed to push the boundaries of their predicament and to negotiate a possible future. In doing so, the development of an active dialogue between asylum seekers and the services that assist them can be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contributes to a small but growing body of thought that has questioned the hegemony of capitalism by revealing the persistence of multifarious economic practices in everyday community economies. To further advance this school of thought, first, a conceptual framework is developed to map the diverse economic practices used by communities and second, this is applied through a survey of 600 households in Ukraine. The outcome is to reveal that just as multifarious economic practices prevailed under state socialism, the same applies in societies in transition to capitalism, suggesting that there are alternative futures for community economies beyond market hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the limited conceptual focus of community development activity in the United Kingdom. It argues that workers need to equip themselves with a broader theoretical understanding of the world. Currently, Freire and Gramsci provide a theoretical underpinning for critical community development practice. However, it is argued that this takes us only so far. The paper suggests that community development workers could usefully apply ideas drawn from ‘theories of everyday life’. To explore how this might work in practice six, short case studies are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last few years, there has been a tendency to consider group approach in gender entrepreneurship and the creation of networks among women as an important factor to improve the conditions of rural women and enhance their development. Consequently, elements such as caste, class, ethnic and religious hierarchies that lead to diversities among the different groups of women have been underestimated by the schemes of non-governmental and governmental organizations. This paper examines GMCL (Gram Mooligai Limited Company), an Indian community-based enterprise led by women which is formed by a network of self-help groups. By individuating the main challenges, the paper argues that while the ‘group’ and social forms of entrepreneurship have inherent benefits, it must never be allowed to become the paradigm in developmental policies for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing communities' participation in development processes has been the subject of both policy aspiration and scholarly critique. This paper explores the implications of a critical perspective on the ‘elusive goal’ of participation for community development practitioners. Drawing on insights from a range of scholars, this paper poses a practical challenge to professionals who work with communities: to name and challenge deeply embedded assumptions about expert knowledge and formal institutions, to recognize the role of those who ‘translate’ between community and external organizational spaces, and to integrate community knowledge and community institutions into participatory development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research to build concepts about Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and community functioning that might be useful in community development. Three groups of inter-related concepts are presented in this paper; achieving social cohesion, managing community affairs, and imaging a community future. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understandings of community and community functioning differ from Western understandings and there is an imperative to use this knowledge if we are to properly address the serious challenges facing the development of communities. The concepts outlined in this paper are a first step in the development of more refined indicators of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature and extent of women's participation in the internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Darfur. Community leaders and committees always play a key role in the implementation of humanitarian assistance in Darfur; but women, the majority of the population in the camps, are often underrepresented in community participation and leadership. This is due to the influence of traditional patriarchal structures and compounded by the approach of some service providers and other institutions which often rely on existing and customary structures. This fails to acknowledge or promote the real and potential role of female leadership and equal participation and often reinforces exclusion based on gender. The paper analyses the potential offered by conflict to transform traditional gender roles and emphasizes the importance of ensuring that humanitarian response international NGOs acknowledge the often ignored role of traditional female community leaders and support women's leadership opportunities more broadly. The paper concludes by highlighting the positive impact of women's wider role in the community and the potential for long-term change this brings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]