TY - JOUR
AU - Lohman, Kirsty
AB - ‘The rage is relentless/We need a movement with a quickness/You are the witness of change/And to counteract/We gotta take the power back’. (Rage Against The Machine, 1992) This latest issue of the Community Development Journal (CDJ) is a testament to the enduring energy and commitment of practitioners and researchers in the face of unfair systems and entrenched inequalities. It can be easy to feel that we are caught in an endless cycle of struggle, as old problems persist and take on new forms. However, our repertoire of knowledge for tackling these problems continues to grow. Year on year, decade on decade, we develop new skills, theory, and modes of practice; we document these through books, articles, public talks and workshops, art, and culture. In this archive of past knowledge, we see hope for a better present and future. As we write this editorial in July 2022, we—the co-editors of this journal—are looking forward to attending one such celebration of past knowledge: a Rage Against The Machine concert. Through a (once) innovative fusion of funk, rap, hardcore and heavy metal music, this US band are known for tackling themes of racial injustice, economic inequality and unaccountable political systems: all extremely relevant to the present moment. We both became fans as teenagers in the early 2000s, after the band initially broke up, and never expected to see them live. This is an exciting moment for us as fans; but also a moment for pause and reflection, as we prepare to pay an enormous fee to witness a supposedly anti-authoritarian performance in Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre. The Rage Against The Machine reunion is part of a wider trend in mainstream Western culture, in which a succession of musical groups, television shows, film and comic franchises are endlessly resurrected, rebooted, reused and recycled. This is the cultivation of nostalgia for the purpose of renewable profit. Old fans flock to old favourites—perhaps that which they missed the first time around—and new fans are drawn into the franchise. Nostalgia culture provides a safer financial bet compared to investment in new talent, new ideas, new forms. It also serves to blunt critique of the present, as once-radical works and artists are folded into the cultural establishment, to the exclusion of new forms of challenge. Yet, this is the kind of contradiction that always faced ‘successful’ progressive artists, as well as community development practitioners and researchers. How best to work within as well as against the machines that they (we) critique? How to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world, holding onto existing wisdom while also forging new knowledge and ideas? Platforms such as the Royal Highland Centre, a major recording label, and indeed a university publisher offer access to a wider audience. Co-operation with local and national governments, mainstream institutions, corporate and philanthropic funders can enable (sometimes professionalized) community development workers to access more resources and achieve greater reach. However, co-operating comes with a risk of co-option, of ‘community development’ ultimately taking place in the interest of the powerful, rather than the powerless. It is incumbent on us to reflect on how best to navigate within, against or beyond these systems, while ensuring that our work remains relevant to the urgent problems that motivated it in the first place. In contrast to the contemporary Western culture industry, the international profit models of academic publishing and neoliberal Higher Education institutions are driven by the impetus of the new, of the innovative, of the original. In countries such as Iran and India, academics struggle under huge institutional pressures to publish widely, leaving them especially vulnerable to exploitation by predatory journals (Ebadi and Zamani, 2018; Patwardhan and Nagarkar, 2021). In the United Kingdom, the Research Excellence Framework—a national performance monitoring exercise—prioritizes ‘world leading’ research, which breaks new ground: at the expense of evaluative or confirmatory work, academics’ mental health and a more honest assessment of the research environment (Watermeyer and Derrick, 2022). In fields such as psychology, the drive for endless novelty has contributed to a ‘replication crisis’, in which researchers are effectively discouraged from testing others’ findings by the pressure to publish novel work (Everett and Earp, 2015). We at the CDJ do not wish to find ourselves caught up in empty nostalgia (especially given the colonialist histories of our field and the historic complicity of the academy), nor to lose sight of old approaches, fetishising the ‘new’ for the sake of it. We see the dangers of this in work such as Naganika Sanga and colleagues’ (2022) observations in this very issue, on how new federal funding pots in India regularly require ‘new’ participatory processes. This highlights the drawbacks of failing to offer time—and money—for proper engagement and the development of deep working relationships. Similarly, just as Rage Against the Machine’s core messages remain relevant, so too do many past theories, modes and models of community development. This, indeed, is a key purpose for a publication such as ours, with our nearly 60-year archive providing an important resource for reflection and dialogue between eras. We propose to holistically engage with visions of possibility, learning from the old while retaining keen attention to the new, and retaining a constructive, critical attitude to both. For example, Rosie R Meade’s Classic Texts essay “How I Became A Socialist’ by William Morris’, which opens this issue, presents a critical re-evaluation of Morris’ life, art and writing. Meade draws out specific lessons that remain relevant to community development today, whilst contextualising some of Morris’ more romanticised understandings of past, present, and future. From Covid-19 to climate chaos, international crises, and resurgent domestic fascism, these are frightening times. What we are effectively fighting against are old problems—capitalism, colonialism, socio-economic inequalities, racist border regimes—in new forms. The sociologist Jason Arday (2019, 2021) argues that in response to such problems, progressive (particularly anti-racist) movements must be ‘agile’: that is, aware, politically responsive, and vigilant. Or as Rage Against The Machine (1992) put it: ‘We need a movement with a quickness’. Through remaining sensitive to the lessons of the past, and aware of the complexities of the present, we must be vigilant to the possibilities of the future. This issue of the CDJ aims to be agile. Authors in this issue suggest practical models for community workers to adopt in navigating social, economic, governmental, and administrative systems. Some authors reflect on, recommend, and/or critique examples of good practice. Others base their suggestions on evaluations of how specific communities might achieve empowerment in the future. Across the whole issue, the authors interrogate knowledge both old and new in seeking to achieve positive change in, with, alongside and against dominant systems. This approach is exemplified in the first full article, ‘The tree of participation: a new model for inclusive decision-making’. Authors Karen Bell and Mark Reed present a new model of participatory community development processes, developed both through surveying contemporary practitioners, and evaluating 70 years of existing knowledge and theory. Their Tree of Participation presents the necessary interventions that must take place before, during, and after a participatory process, in addition to acknowledging the wider socio-political context in which participatory processes take place. This article therefore builds actively on existing knowledge, while providing a helpful new framework with practical relevance to practice and research. The following four articles offer empirical perspectives on participatory programmes. Practical challenges to participatory community development are interrogated in ‘Top-down processes derail bottom-up objectives: a study in community engagement and “Slum-Free City Planning”’ by Naganika Sanga, Odessa Gonzalez Benson, and Lakshmi Josyula. In this article, the authors capture the complex everyday interactions and relationships between Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and government at national, federal, local levels in the city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Considering India’s federal ‘RAY’ programme for ‘slum-free cities’, they argue that, despite (or indeed, because of) attempts to enforce particular forms of best practice, the scheme suffered from vertical, top-down coordination, and lack of trust on all levels. As one community development practitioner explains to a researcher while literally wading through sewage, there will always be a problem if government schemes fail to engage with the substantial existing knowledge of local workers. Meanwhile, local authorities understandably focused on the rapid preparation of project proposals to access temporary federal funding. To actually enact ‘deep democracy’, time is required for experimentation and grounding. Sam A. Kasimba and Päivi Lujala similarly evaluate the pitfalls of poor implementation in participatory community work, in ‘Community based participatory governance platforms and sharing of mining benefits: evidence from Ghana’. They find widespread community and NGO dissatisfaction around the spending of ‘trust fund’ money by platforms created as part of mining companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. The article recommends clearer processes of participation in decision-making, plus better inclusion and training of all stakeholders and participants. In contrast, Ana Margarida Esteves examines an attempt to undertake community development work outside of the systems of government and capital. In the Editor’s Choice selection for this issue, ‘“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”? Information technology, in-person relationships and normative regulation in an ‘integral cooperative’, Esteves analyses the ongoing work of the Cooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC) in Catalonia. Mobilising information technology such as communication platform Telegram and ‘green’ cryptocurrency FairCoin, the CIC is theoretically intended to be a self-regulating platform for trade and community building within a circular economy. In practice, it seems that social, economic, and governmental power has been accumulated by a small core group of ‘professional activists’. However, Esteves argues that the strength of in-person relationships within local hubs may offer a way forward for the model. In ‘A capability approach to evaluating the social impact of music residencies and touring in remote Australia’, authors Gillian Howell and Brydie-Leigh Bartleet utilise the capability approach to undertake evaluation, centring the actual choices and opportunities people have available to them. They show how a participatory approach was used to evaluate engagement with a touring music residency that works with both First Nations and non-Indigenous locals in rural communities. In outlining their design process, Howell and Bartleet highlight the importance of basing evaluation on needs, interests, and cultures of the communities in question. They argue that evaluation must be an ongoing process, rather than one-off conversation. The capability approach is also employed by Abdur Rehman Cheema and Mehvish Riaz in their article, ‘Community-based paralegals to build just societies: insights from a legal empowerment project in Pakistan’. Cheema and Riaz interviewed participants and organisers from a project in Punjab, where community activists and volunteers with a basic understanding of legislation, legal proceedings and human rights were recruited to volunteer as paralegals. Through working to ensure that legal systems are more accessible and accountable for ordinary people, these community-based paralegals increased community members’ legal knowledge, in ways that helped to protect their rights and access basic public services from which they would otherwise be excluded. This was especially beneficial for women; with the caveat that legal challenges alone cannot overturn deeply ingrained patriarchal systems and norms. The authors therefore conclude that while paralegal assistance can be deeply beneficial, it is no substitute for deep structural reform of unjust social and economic systems. The next article, ‘Rohingya refugee resettlement as a community of practice’, applies the ‘community of practice’ theory to model community work with resettled people in Ireland. In a case study of community development with Rohingya refugees in Ireland since 2009, authors Morgan Cawley Buckley, Helen Maher and Stephanie McDermott critique the ill-defined United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) measure of ‘independence’ as a marker of ‘successful’ resettlement. Echoing Manish K Jha’s (2022) observations in the April issue of this journal regarding the exceptional vulnerability of Rohingya refugees, they highlight the benefits of defining developmental goals within a community of practice, including Rohingya people and practitioner networks. This experience of resettlement therefore arguably represents a case of successful interdependence, rather than independence. Further considering issues of displacement and resettlement, in the context of people moving across the border from Bangladesh to India, is Anindita Chakrabarty and Manish K Jha’s article ‘Social construction of migrant identities: everyday life of Bangladeshi migrants in West Bengal’. In this article Chakrabarty and Jha critique the manner in which upper caste migrant communities tend towards organising on the basis of self-interest, in ways that may disavow or work against other, less privileged refugee/migrant groups. In this, we see another angle on the operation of systems of power within as well as between communities. In tackling a different form of displacement in the Canadian context, Naomi Nichols, Kaitlin Schwan, Stephen Gaetz and Melanie Redman propose a model for evaluating community development work with homeless young people. In ‘Enabling evidence-led collaborative systems-change efforts: an adaptation of the collective impact approach’, they assess an initiative that brings together researchers, academics, policy workers, activists, community workers, advocates, and community members who work around issues of youth homelessness. In adapting the ‘collective impact’ approach to fully contextualise broad, collaborative and qualitative findings, they deeply interrogate the way in which every day interpersonal experiences affect systems-change work. A range of recommendations are provided that will be of interest to community development workers and stakeholders. The final original article in this issue, by Teshanee Williams, Jamie McCall, Maureen Berner and Anita Brown-Graham, explores social capital’s importance to community development work. In ‘Beyond bridging and bonding: the role of social capital in organizations’ they assess the role, and successful development of social capital within and between multiple organizations, stakeholders and funders, in North Carolina, United States. They show a lack of investment in the development and maintenance of social capital, arguing that foundations, governments, and other funders should work to support this. The reviews section further develops this issue’s themes of participation, evaluation, and navigating systems of power. In his long-form review article, ‘The capability approach (CA) and a prefigurative politics of social policy and community development’, Mick Carpenter appraises the 2019 book Social Policy and the Capability Approach: Concepts, Measurements and Application, edited by Mara A. Yerkes, Jana Javornik and Anna Kurowska. This sits in dialogue with Howell and Bartleet’s application of CA to the assessment of music residencies in Australia, and by Rehman Cheema and Riaz’s use of CA to understand the work of community-based paralegals in Pakistan. In his review, Carpenter suggests that criticisms of CA can be addressed by a ‘radical synthesis’ between CA, social policy and community development. Following this is Tina Cook’s review of The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences and Challenges, edited by Katherine E. Smith, Justyna Bandola-Gill, Nasar Meer, Ellen Stewart and Richard Watermeyer. This addresses the issues associated with evaluatory metrics for research, focusing as an example on the aforementioned ‘Research Excellence Framework’ in the UK. In Cook’s summary of the book, she argues that forcing academic research to focus on ever narrower sets of questions that fit prescribed models poses a danger to community development work, which relies on the challenging of hegemonic thinking. Finally, Mandy Wilson notes the passing of former CDJ editorial board member David Marsden in 2021, whose work informs her review of The Impact of Community Work: How to Gather Evidence, edited by Karen McArdle, Sue Briggs, Kirsty Forrester, Ed Garret and Catherine McKay. Wilson describes the book as a largely practical and accessible guidance, of relevance across academic and practitioner groups and highlights the interplay between theory, method, evidencing of and impact of community work. However, drawing on Marsden’s observations, she argues that more could be made of the importance of participation, and the necessity of taking time for engagement: themes extremely pertinent to the whole of this issue. Author Biographies Ruth Pearce is a Lecturer in Community Development at the University of Glasgow, UK. Her research explores themes of inequality, marginalisation, power, and transformative political struggle from a trans feminist perspective. She is the author of ‘Understanding Trans Health’ (Policy Press, 2018), plus co-editor of ‘The Emergence of Trans’ (Routledge, 2019) and ‘TERF Wars’ (Sage, 2020). She shares as much of her work as possible for free on her website: http://ruthpearce.net. Kirsty Lohman is a Surrey Research Fellow with the Sex, Gender and Sexualities Research Group, in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK, where they are conducting research on queer and feminist communities in London. Lohman’s work tackles issues of place, space and subculture, working historically as well as with the contemporary world. Lohman writes and talks about musical and cultural participation (particularly through punk), gender, sexuality, feminism, and community engagement. For more details, see: www.kirstylohman.com. References Arday , J. ( 2019 ) Cool Britannia and multi-ethnic Britain: Uncorking the champagne supernova , Routledge , London . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Arday , J. ( 2021 ) Race, education and social mobility: We all need to dream the same dream and want the same thing , Educational Philosophy and Theory , 53 ( 3 ), 227 – 232 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Ebadi , S. and Zamani , G. ( 2018 ) Predatory publishing as a case of symbolic violence: A critical English for academic purposes approach , Cogent Education , 5 ( 1 ), 1501889 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Everett , J. A. and Earp , B. D. ( 2015 ) A tragedy of the (academic) commons: Interpreting the replication crisis in psychology as a social dilemma for early-career researchers , Frontiers in Psychology , 6 , 1152 . Google Scholar PubMed OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Jha , M. K. ( 2022 ) ‘Stateless’ Rohingyas: persecution, displacement and complex community development , Community Development Journal , 57 ( 2 ), 192 – 212 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Rage Against The Machine ( 1992 ) Take The Power Back, Rage Against The Machine [Vinyl] , Epic Records , New York . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Patwardhan , B. and Nagarkar , S. ( 2021 ) The UGC-CARE initiative: Indian academia’s quest for research and publishing integrity , First Monday , 26 ( 10 ). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i10.10349. Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Sanga , N. , Gonzalez Benson , O., Josyula , L. ( 2022 ) Top-down processes derail bottom-up objectives: a study in community engagement and ‘Slum-Free City Planning’ , Community Development Journal , 57 (4). Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Watermeyer , R. and Derrick , G. ( 2022 ) Why the party is over for Britain's Research Excellence Framework , Nature . https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01881-y. Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal 2022. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal 2022. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Old problems, new forms
JO - Community Development Journal
DO - 10.1093/cdj/bsac024
DA - 2022-09-10
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/old-problems-new-forms-f5Y7c9yMmb
SP - 581
EP - 588
VL - 57
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -