Community Development in an Uncertain World

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Shona Gray VIC, SA E: sgray@cambridge.edu.au M: 0418 517 879

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD VISION, ANALYSIS AND PRACTICE 2ND EDITION

Your contacts at Cambridge University Press John Elliot NSW, ACT, WA E: jelliot@cambridge.edu.au M: 0458 913 645

Jim Ife

Kim Lingard QLD, NT, TAS and New Zealand E: klingard@cambridge.edu.au M: 0437 389 810

Explores the concept of community development on a local and international scale in the context of globalisation and postcolonial theory

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PUBLICATION DATE: September 2016 FORMAT: Paperback* ISBN: 9781107543362 *also available as an eBook

*Subject to meeting course requirements ABN 28 508 204 178

www.cambridge.org/communitydev

PUBLICATION DATE: September 2016 FORMAT: Paperback* ISBN: 9781107543362 *also available as an eBook

www.cambridge.org/communitydev

KEY FEATURES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR

• Offers a comprehensive coverage of theory in an accessible, engaging style • Encourages critical thinking and analysis • Considers community development from a social, economic and political perspective, as well as from the viewpoint of cultural, environmental, spiritual, personal, survival and balanced development • Uses language that is engaging and accessible for students and professionals in the human services

1. Crisis, transition and community 2. Alternatives and transitions 3. Foundations of community development: ecological and social justice perspectives 4. Foundations of community development: post-Enlightenment and Indigenous perspectives 5. A vision for community development 6. Change from below 7. The process of community development 8. The global and the local 9. Colonialism, colonialist practice and working internationally 10. Community development: social, economic and political 11. Community development: cultural, environmental, spiritual, personal and survival 12. Principles of community development and their application to practice 13. Roles and skills 1: facilitative and educational 14. Roles and skills 2: representational and technical 15. The organisational context 16. Practice issues

Jim Ife is Emeritus Professor at Curtin University, and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland. Although retired, he remains actively engaged with social work education, having held honorary positions at Deakin and Victoria Universities, as well as his current affiliations. He is a regular sessional teacher at Victoria University and at ACAP in Sydney.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD VISION, ANALYSIS AND PRACTICE 2ED In Community Development in an Uncertain World, Jim Ife draws on the principles of social justice, ecological responsibility and post-Enlightenment and Indigenous perspectives to advance new holistic approaches to community development.

The book explores the concept of community development on a local and international scale in the context of globalisation and postcolonial theory.

Students will gain the essential skills and practical understanding required to navigate the existing managerial environment and cultivate new community practices.

This new edition incorporates current research into community development and includes important new work on 'alternative visions' for a sustainable and just future. It introduces the foundational theories of community development and explains their importance in shaping solutions to uniquely modern issues.

Readers are encouraged to critically engage with the material through the accompanying discussion questions.

Written in an accessible, engaging style, this text is an essential resource for students and professionals in the human services.

NEW TO THIS EDITION • Includes important new work on 'alternative visions' for a sustainable and just future • New discussion questions, suitable for individual readers and for group discussion, address multiple chapters and encourage critical thinking • Incorporates the latest research in community development

Community Development in an Uncertain World Vision, analysis and practice

Second edition In Community Development in an Uncertain World, Jim Ife draws on the principles of social justice, ecological responsibility and post-Enlightenment and Indigenous perspectives to advance new holistic approaches to community development.

The book explores the concept of community development on a local and international scale in the context of globalisation and postcolonial theory. Students will gain the essential skills and practical understanding required to navigate the existing managerial environment and cultivate new community practices.

This new edition incorporates current research into community development, and includes important new work on ‘alternative visions’ for a sustainable and just future.

It introduces the foundational theories of community development, and explains Table 3.2 Accounts of social issues their importance in shaping solutions to uniquely modern issues. Readers are encourPerspective aged to engage critically with the material through the accompanying discussion

questions.

Source of ‘blame’

Source of problem

Solution

Blame the victim

Individual pathology, psychological, biological, moral or character defect

Therapy, counselling, medical treatment, cognitive behaviour therapy, moral exhortation, control

Blame the rescuer

The institutions established to deal with the problem: courts, schools, welfare departments etc.

Reorganise institutions, more resources, more services, better training etc.

Structural

Blame the system

Structural disadvantage or oppression: class, race, gender, income distribution, power etc.

Structural change, changing basis of oppression, consciousness-raising, liberation movements, revolution

Poststructural

Blame the discourse

Modernity, language, formation and accumulation of knowledge, shared understandings

Analysis and understanding of discourse, access to understandings, challenging the ‘rules’ etc.

Individual

Written in an accessible and engaging style, Community Development in an Uncertain World is an essential resource for students and professionals in the human services.

Institutional reformist

Jim Ife is Emeritus Professor and holds an adjunct position at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University, Perth.

The individual perspective on social issues locates a social problem primarily within the individual, and therefore seeks individually based solutions. For example, poverty, crime, suicide, depression and unemployment are seen as the result of some defect or pathology (whether psychological, biological or moral) in the individual(s) affected. Solutions are sought 7/21/16 10:31on AMthe basis of individual treatment or therapy, such as

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counselling, moral exhortation, punishment, medical treatment or cognitive behaviour therapy. Although it may well be true that in many cases individual factors are significant, a purely individual account can be criticised in that it fails to take account of external factors over which the individual has little or no control. It leads readily to the phenomenon known as ‘blaming the victim’, whereby the people who suffer the consequences of an unjust society are themselves blamed for their own inadequacies. Such an approach is inherently conservative in that it does not take account of such important causal factors as income distribution, racism, patriarchy and marketinduced inequality, leaving such exploitative structures and discourses essentially unchallenged and focusing all attention on the individual.

The institutional reformist position locates the problem within the institutional structures of the society. For instance, the inadequacies of the justice system (courts, police, prisons etc.) are seen as contributing to the problem of crime and delinquency and poverty is seen as the result of an inadequate or ineffective social security system. Proposed solutions to social problems therefore concentrate on reforming, strengthening and improving the institutions developed to deal with them, such as hospitals, schools, courts, clinics, welfare departments, charities and employment services. Instead of ‘blaming the victim’, this approach might be termed ‘blaming the

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