Books in our market-leading Community Development list explore and develop the various practices and systems that support communities to take control of their lives, services and environments. They offer essential reading for academics, upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level students in Community Development and related disciplines.
New titles are added to our Rethinking Community Development series every year, an international book series that offers the opportunity for a critical re-evaluation of community development.
Our Connected Communities series showcases collaborative research between universities and communities, seeking to understand the changing nature of communities and their role in addressing contemporary individual, societal and global concerns.
Community Development
You are looking at 61 - 70 of 1,483 items
This chapter contextualises some of the central themes of the book through an in-moment analysis of the Fridays For Future presence at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. It highlights the need for adults to be wary of creating heroic narratives of young people involved in environmental action. This chapter is a call to adults working with young people to support them by questioning their own role in reimagining the status quo. It argues that intergenerational solidarity for adults must entail using their knowledge and experience to bolster young people’s self-determination in reimagining the future.
This chapter explores how young activists have developed their agency and intersubjectivity together with migrants in Istanbul since the 2010s. It elaborates an account of the work of ‘thinking actors’ from Hannah Arendt’s phenomenological conceptualisation of politics and citizenship. It offers a perspective on the prefigurative practices of young activists in Istanbul, from the Migrant Kitchen, Migrant Network Forums and Migrant Letters, illuminating how coming into a web of relations at a shared table with migrants generates and enhances the possibility of enacting radical democratic participation. By illustrating the emancipatory and egalitarian potentials within work to erase hierarchies and inequalities between activists and migrants, the chapter also invites us to reckon with the challenges that could impede coalition-building under neoliberalism.
How can young people’s activism help us to rethink community development? This collection explores the critical role that young people are playing in building a more hopeful and democratic future. The book has three aims: to show how a focus on ‘youth’ can contribute to sharpening understandings of community development; to foreground conceptualisations of radical democracy within the rethinking of community development; and to link developments within new youth social movements to the work of youth workers and community development practitioners and thus contribute to rethinking this relationship. The collection includes chapters on the eco movement, the struggles of refugees and the Black Lives Matter movement, and on changing understandings of sexual citizenship, highlighting, above all, emancipatory struggles and gestures of solidarity. Some chapters come from a European context, but they are made more complete and complex by the presence of writers and practitioners whose lives began in the Global South in countries such as India, Kenya and Brazil. The rich accounts counter the individualistic nature of capitalist society and reject the view that there is no alternative. In varying ways, authors present prefigurative practices of hope as an essential element of social movements for rethinking community development. Above all, the book calls for us to act in alliance with young people who are at the forefront of radical democratic practices of community development all over the world.
How can young people’s activism help us to rethink community development? This collection explores the critical role that young people are playing in building a more hopeful and democratic future. The book has three aims: to show how a focus on ‘youth’ can contribute to sharpening understandings of community development; to foreground conceptualisations of radical democracy within the rethinking of community development; and to link developments within new youth social movements to the work of youth workers and community development practitioners and thus contribute to rethinking this relationship. The collection includes chapters on the eco movement, the struggles of refugees and the Black Lives Matter movement, and on changing understandings of sexual citizenship, highlighting, above all, emancipatory struggles and gestures of solidarity. Some chapters come from a European context, but they are made more complete and complex by the presence of writers and practitioners whose lives began in the Global South in countries such as India, Kenya and Brazil. The rich accounts counter the individualistic nature of capitalist society and reject the view that there is no alternative. In varying ways, authors present prefigurative practices of hope as an essential element of social movements for rethinking community development. Above all, the book calls for us to act in alliance with young people who are at the forefront of radical democratic practices of community development all over the world.
Young people are often at the forefront of democratic activism, whether self-organised or supported by youth workers and community development professionals. Focusing on youth activism for greater equality, liberty and mutual care – radical democracy – this timely collection explores the movement’s impacts on community organisations and workers. Essays from the Global North and Global South cover the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental activism and the struggles of refugees.
At a time of huge global challenges, youth participation is a dynamic lens through which all community development scholars and participants can rethink their approaches.
This chapter addresses the (re-)positioning of civil society within new structures of city region governance. Based on stakeholder mapping and semi-structured interviews with key actors operating across each city region, the chapter illustrates how this has created several significant tensions as well as opportunities for civil society actors. The chapter draws from four UK case study city regions and specifically looks at the ways city and devolution deals have impacted upon the positioning of civil society actors. Chapter 3 provides new insights into how civil society organisations have been seeking to respond to this overtly economic focus around the development of city regions that, to a certain extent, leaves such actors on the outside looking in. Beel et al’s new analysis shows how the institutional mechanisms associated with city regions are dominated by business interests and those that are already elected officials, thereby marginalising civil society. In this way the new governance arrangements are narrowing the interests of the local state towards more market-led interests and largely ignoring issues that are more community oriented and concerned with the social reproduction of the city region.
This book explores how the uncertainties of the 21st century present existential challenges to civil society. These include changing modes of governance (through devolution and Brexit), austerity, migration, growing digital divides, issues of (mis)trust and democratic confidence, welfare delivery and the COVID-19 pandemic and the contemporary threat to minority languages and cultures.
Presenting original empirical findings, this book brings together core strands of social theory to provide a new way of understanding existential challenges to the form and function of civil society. It highlights pressing social issues and transferable lessons that will inform policy and practice in today’s age of uncertainty.
This chapter explores emerging evidence as to whether, in contrast to statist and market-based ‘for profit’ service delivery, civil society is the answer to meeting modern welfare needs. It examines one of the most pressing welfare challenges of the twenty-first century: adult social care (ASC). Underlining this volume’s central theme of the uncertainties of the age, it examines the evidence on ASC delivery in the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–21. It uses a comparative case study approach focusing on policy and practice in the four nations of the UK. The dataset comprises over one hundred interviews with civil society policy actors and other stakeholders, complemented by analysis of parliamentary proceeding, policy documents and the ‘grey’ literature of civil society organisations. The core research questions are: according to the views of key stakeholders, how do the different territorial welfare mixes on ASC in the four nations of the UK compare in their effectiveness? Did the four mixed economy models provide an effective response to ASC delivery in the pandemic? Does the evidence presented in the chapter exacerbate civil inequalities and social stratification? Last, can non-governmental organisations beneficially replace or complement the work of state ASC providers?
This chapter explores civil society’s past and present role in addressing the existential threat facing two ‘minority’ languages, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. The new analysis in Chapter 5 highlights the key past role played by civil society organisations in staving off language death and reversing language decline in the two countries. This involved mobilisation, protest and civil disobedience and has resulted in new legal rights and a significant expansion of minority language education. The analysis also presents a series of new findings on the contemporary role of national festivals in seeking to promote minority language use in social contexts. This matters because while both languages have seen an increase in the number of speakers, much of the gain has been associated with formal state education. The wider literature warns us that a language which is confined to the educational sector is not a living language. Therefore, much depends on civil society organisations’ co-working with state agencies to promote language use in social settings. The case studies are the Eisteddfod Cenedlaethol (National Eisteddfod) in Wales and Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail (Mòd) in Scotland. The latter being an eight-day annual Gaelic language and culture festival.
This chapter considers the contemporary decline of political trust and the potential existential threat that it poses to democracy. Drawing on comparative analysis from the UK, France and Germany it examines governance-trust configurations and their likely propensity to foster co-production and co-creation between state and civil society. A key finding is the extent to which the development of trust within civil society varies as much within as between states. The analysis also highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the erosion of trust. The study argues that potential solutions for restoring political trust and reversing the perceived decline of democracy have civil society at their heart and include the adoption of more diverse and effective forms of citizen engagement. Yet the discussion also warns that this is fraught with difficulties. Notably, the adoption of co-creation or co-production to build trust with civil society actors is likely to be most challenging in new governance regions where a shared history or identity is largely absent.
