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Tensions and dilemmas in community
development: New discourses, new Trojans?
Sue Kenny
Keynote speech
Abstract
While community development is always full of issues, there are new and perhaps
more perplexing sets of tensions and dilemmas facing community development
practitioners at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This paper begins by noting
the range of contradictions and dilemmas facing those in community development
today. It then draws on research into the operating frameworks that set the backdrop
for much current community development activity in formal and semi-formal
organisations. It notes the inconsistencies and consistencies between different
operating frameworks and the pressure points and dilemmas for community
development practitioners. The final sections of the paper deal with the issue of how
to respond to the new discourses that have fused community and enterprise lexicon,
and what the new constellation of operating frameworks and discourses can mean for
activism in community development today.
Introduction
The back-drop to this paper is the tensions in community development practice.
While community development is always full of issues and dilemmas, there is a whole
new range of complexities affecting community development practice today. This
paper concentrates on two interrelated issues of concern to practitioners. They are the
contradictory expectations of community development practitioners in their everyday
work and the issue of how to respond to the new discourses, such as capacity building
and social entrepreneurship.
In this paper I want to unpack these issues by referring to the shifting contexts in
which community development operates. The analysis presented is part of a project
analysing the trajectories of community organisations and community development. I
will be drawing on findings of research into what I call operating frameworks in
community organisations. The focus of this work has been a comparative study of
community organisations in Australia, Sweden and Russia (1), and more recently the
U.K. It is anticipated that during 2001 researchers in Argentina, Indonesia and Japan
will join the research project. In this project I have been particularly interested in
mapping the spaces in civil society in which community development can manoeuvre.
Contradictory expectations of community development practitioners
A persistent concern in the comments made by those working in community programs has
been how to deal with the inconsistent requirements of their work and the shifting contexts in
which they operate. Many practitioners have been trying to make sense of the daily
frustrations and dilemmas arising out of contradictory aims and practices in their
organisations. For example, on one hand, community development workers are told that good
community development requires change, innovation and creativity, while on the other hand
they are required to bureaucratically account for all their actions in increasingly restrictive
auditing regimes. Workers in long-standing activist organisations have commented that more
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 2
and more time is spent on paper-work, whether it be in terms of financial reporting
requirements for local government funders, monitoring and evaluation requirements for
international aid agencies, or democratic accountability procedures required by membership
organisations. These reporting requirements mean less and less time for social action.
Tensions arise when workers involved in advocacy work have to do more and more service
provision as agents of government, in order to subsidise their major commitment to ‘give
voice’ to the views and needs of disadvantaged groups. Sometimes the very commitment to
‘giving voice’ can be problematic, such as when the sentiments of the voices are patriarchal or
racist. For example, indigenous community development workers in indigenous activist
organisations have commented on the tensions between commitment to voice based on the
authenticity of ‘traditional values’ which can also embody patriarchal social relations, and
their commitment to gender equality based on human rights discourse.
The ‘professionalisation’ of community development work also impacts significantly upon
community development workers. Unpaid workers interviewed in our research have
commented that although lip-service is paid to ‘organic’ workers who have not ‘lost touch’
with the grass-roots, in practice there is a strong ‘credentiallist creep’ where those with formal
educational qualification, rather than the grass-roots representatives, are the ones listened to
and offered paid work. Increasingly many international community development programs,
particularly those concerned with international aid, have developed a ‘commercial arm’ of
credentialled and highly paid business professionals whose role is to fund raise rather than
undertake community development work.
Yet another tension is evident in the use of unpaid workers or volunteers in community
development organisations. On one hand there is concern about the use of volunteers as
unpaid workers who are recruited on the basis of their charity-based or ‘rent-seeking’
attitudes. On the other hand there is no such concern about drawing on volunteers as unpaid
activists who are recruited on the basis of willingness to be involved in political struggle.
Finally, community development work is premised on a commitment to change and self-
determination. On this premise, community development should embrace the new discourses
if social entrepreneurship and capacity–building. Yet there is ambivalence in the field about
how to respond to such new discourses.
Operating rationales and frameworks
In order to understand these contradictory contexts and requirements we have developed the
concepts of operating rationales and operating frameworks. The idea of operating rationale
refers to values, assumptions and principles underpinning organisational forms, everyday
activities, practices and social relations. Operating rationales provide organisational logics
and are manifested in specific discourses. Operating rationales, organisational forms and
everyday practices, processes and social relation’s come together to constitute an operating
framework. It is important to understand that the frameworks are not exclusive and they can
operate concurrently. They often overlap in inconsistent and incongruous ways. A
community organisation can function on the basis of a range of different operating rationales,
organisational forms and everyday practices or it might be dominated by one operating
framework. We have identified four different operating rationales in which community
development practitioners work, the charity, welfare state industry, activist and market. Each
framework is linked to, or affects community development in different ways.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 3
The charity framework
The charity framework is organised around three thematic discourses. First, empathy,
virtue and compassion; second, moral discipline and service; and finally, discourse
constructed around ideas of dependency and patronage. The charity framework
rejects structural or collectivist solutions to risks caused by disadvantage, social
justice and inequality, in favour of ‘relief from poverty’ based on patronage of
individuals. The individualist approach to welfare inscribed in the charity framework
means that it is the individual who is the locus of the resolution of the social risk
attached to social problems such as poverty. The charity framework is essentially a
Western construct, which has found strongest force in English-speaking societies.
The distinction between deserving and undeserving poor and the discourse of moral
discipline provide the historical basis upon which the charity framework was formed.
In Australia, moral judgements about industrious habits, destitution, frugality and
philanthropy were imported from Britain during the 19th century by working class
migrants and the philanthropically minded bourgeoisie (Beilharz et al., 1992).
There are mixes of obligation and compassion in community organisations in Russia
and Sweden similar to those existing in charity organisations in Australia. Overall,
however, only a few of the elements of the charity model can be found in Sweden and
Russia. While the origins of poor relief in Sweden, like in the Anglo-Celtic world, lie
in the activities of the church in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the tradition
of individual patronage, moral discipline and the redemptive power of charity giving
did not continue much into the twentieth century. In fact, the Swedish notion of
charity (valgorenhet), which has a narrower meaning than its English counterpart, has
strong negative connotations, resulting from the idea of aid being bestowed to the
poor and helpless by a patronising and sometimes capricious upper class (Lundstrom
and Wijkstrom, 1997). Neither charity nor poor relief were looked upon favourably,
for they were seen as manifestations of the asymmetries of class society.
The English distinction between deserving and undeserving poor and the Western
Christian discourse of moral discipline do not exist in Russia. In an interesting
parallel with Sweden, charity and poor relief in both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia
were signs of the inequality of class society, or more specifically from the Soviet
perspective, bourgeois class power in capitalist society. Rejection of the notion of
individual patronage in regard to social protection has been part of the legacy of
Soviet communism, although of course, political patronage was a central part of the
Soviet political system. Recently elements of the charity framework have appeared,
as new power elites embrace some of the ideas of charity practices in the English–
speaking world, particularly those constructed around the distinction between the
provider and recipient of welfare services and notions of patronage through
volunteerism.
On the whole charity based organisations provide hostile environments in which to
practise community development. Charity organisations do not see their role as
resourcing and empowering disadvantaged groups to facilitate their self-
determination, and the recipients of ‘relief’ do not see themselves as participating in
‘communities of choice’. Yet in Australia and other parts of the English-speaking
world the charity framework is being re-assembled within the context of the rhetoric
of individual empowerment, self (meaning individual) determination and mutual
obligation, a rhetoric that at face value might seem to be congruent with the
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 4
community development. However, it is telling that this so–called ‘empowering’
lexicon is now bureaucratically administered (for example, through the administrative
apparatus of church based charity organisations) and it is still constructed within the
discourse of moral discipline, asymmetrical power relations and individual patronage
based on the duty of the giver. Indeed we are now witnessing renewed attempts to
redevelop armies of volunteers to ‘help the poor’ and a new strand of charity in some
aspects of corporate citizenship, where business is cajoled to fulfil its citizenship
obligations or moral duty to assist the poor.
From a community development perspective these new constructions of the charity
framework have strengthened the avoidance of structural analysis of disadvantage and
rendered the structural side of the structure /agency couplet, which was central to the
development of the tenets of community development, redundant (see Shaw and
Martin, 2000).
The welfare state industry framework
This framework underpins the operations of community organisations that see their
role as substitutes or agents of the state. The operating rationales of the welfare state
industry are constructed around two normative principles. The first principle is that it
is the role of the state to intervene in both civil society and the workings of the market
to ensure certainty and stability in people’s lives. The second premise is that this
intervention should be based on the principles of social rights, social justice, social
equality and redistribution. Formal equality is manifested in structural features such
as standardised rules and procedures and the standardisation of programs; and in
distributional features, such as equality of rights to entitlements and equality of
welfare delivery practice. Of course the extent to which these principles are applied
varies according to socio-political context.
Within the welfare state industry framework welfare needs inhere in both
communities and individuals, and it is the role of welfare professionals to define,
respond to, and treat communities and individuals. Communities, as both sites and
forms of association, are reified, classified (as suitable objects for treatment, for
example), and monitored. They ‘become transformed into various categories of
disadvantage, and the main symptoms of their disadvantage become strategically
defined as needs, to be managed through the welfare system’ (Everingham, 1998:38).
In the welfare state industry framework in English-speaking countries, a legacy of the
charity discourse exists in the treatment of individuals through case-work and case-
management and through residues of the distinction between the deserving and
undeserving poor. These residues are expressed in the language of genuineness and
fraud (as expressed in the ideas of welfare cheat and dole-bludgers) and in the
construction of a hierarchy of ‘genuine needs’. It maintains the asymmetrical
relations between provider and recipient, but now using a professional disguise. In
the professionalised relation, subjects become more than dependants. Subjects now
also become objects of study and treatment. Finally, a system of paternalistic or
authoritarian protection operates, which can involve a contradictory role for the
welfare professional, as both an advocate (and as such sometimes called a community
development worker) who ‘speaks for’ a client, as well as a regulator who disciplines
the client.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 5
The term used in Sweden to refer to community organisations delivering welfare is
frivilligsektor. Lundstrom and Wijkstrom (1997: 260) point out that historically
community organisations have not been against, and even encouraged, the shifting of
many of their activities to the state. Historically, because of the commitment to the
state providing welfare, community organisations have had a limited role to play in
direct service delivery, focussing instead on advocacy and representation. Recently
however, the role of the welfare state has been slightly less secure. For example, the
view that centralised paternalism undercuts active citizenship has emerged. There has
been some interest in devolution of state social service activities to community
organisations
In Russia in the Soviet period autonomous community organisations did not exist.
There were organisations that delivered welfare services, such as women’s
organisations, but these were clearly agents of the state. In keeping with official
views of social protection, state agencies were constructed upon commitments to
equality and standardised services. In practice of course, there was not equal access
or equal standards of service. Elites had special social protection privileges and
welfare was distributed through informal networks. Yet unlike Western, and
particularly Anglo-Celtic approaches to state welfare provision, the Soviet model did
not carry with it the distinction between the disadvantaged and needy members of the
population and the trained welfare professional. Today there is some scope for
autonomy from state control. However, many current community organisations had
their roots in party sponsored and controlled organisations established during the
Soviet period. These organisations often have continued strong ties with local
government officials and, like welfare state industry organisations in Sweden and
Australia, some work very closely with government departments concerned with
social protection.
From a community development perspective the history of the welfare state has
involved the expansion of the networks of administrative state power into civil society
and the rationalisation of services, through formal and impersonal administrative
structures and procedures. Moreover despite the rhetoric of social rights these rights
have been contained within asymmetrical power relations. The welfare state industry
does nothing to resource people to identify their own needs and work out ways of
responding to or satisfying these needs. It does not open up public space in civil
society, which people could enter voluntarily, to articulate their views and deal with
disagreements.
Given the stinging community development critiques of the welfare state, one would
expect community development practitioners to celebrate the erosion of the welfare
state industry. Interestingly, the community development response has been quite
circumspect. This is possibly because, in the light of what is seen to be replacing it,
namely the market framework, the welfare state industry framework at least pays lip-
service to social and welfare resources as a right, and not a commodity. We discuss
the market model and the challenges it throws up to community development below.
But first, we will consider that framework that is identified as that which fits
community development most neatly, that is the activist framework.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 6
The activist framework
It is the activist framework that is most commonly invoked in the discussions of the
organisational settings of community development. In this framework community
organisations are organised around the discourses of mutuality, empathy, trust,
solidarity and organisation oriented to social change. Community organisations
operating within an activist framework can be issue based, in the sense that they are
organised around social, cultural and environmental orientations and concerns, such
as a forest action group or a human rights organisation. They can be member serving
with a mutual aid function, such as a tenants’ association or a self-help group.
Activist community organisations can also be public serving, by undertaking pressure
group functions or offering specific services to the general public, such as legal-aid
and consumer advocacy, or to special interest groups, such as women victims of
torture.
The social change rationale of activist community organisation is constructed around
the importance of community participation or control in social organisation and a
commitment to social change. This rationale draws on the emphasis on mutuality,
civic virtue, trust and moral obligation and the activist logic of political mobilisation
and resistance. Political mobilisation provides a way of giving organised expression
to solidarity, advocacy and self- determination. Empowerment takes place as groups
and communities are resourced to take control of their own destinies.
Social change occurs at three levels. First, at the structural level, whereby
oppositional and political mobilisation strategies shift control of resources and power
to the community sector; second, at the ideational level, where participants come to
understand their interdependence and the value of mutuality, reciprocity and
compassion; and finally, at the level of skills, where citizens become skilled in
participating in articulating concerns, identifying needs and resolving conflicts, and in
so doing, become active agents in their own destiny.
Activist community organisations have a broad concept of welfare, as embracing a
whole range of activities that can enhance well-being, including activities organised
around cultural development, international aid, race relations, environmental matters
and disability issues. Welfare services are distributed on the basis of mutuality,
compassion, equality and social justice. In the discourse of activist community
organisations, community has been identified as the site for forming identities and
fulfilling social needs. Community reinforces the mutuality of social relationships
and the social ontology of individuals being constituted and defined by their social
attachments. In euro-centric organisations community is a foil against abstract
individualism, rational egoism and the instrumental conception of human
relationships (Friedman,1989).
In Sweden and Australia activist organisations are linked closely to social movements,
in both their traditional form, such as the old labour movements, and ‘new social
movements’ such as the women’s movement. In Sweden activist organisations are
often identified as popular mass movements, or folkrorelse. As Lundstrom and
Wijkstrom (1997) point out, there is an emphasis on membership, voluntary activity
and democratic organisational forms in Swedish folkrorelse. While cells of activism
were abundant in pre-Soviet and Soviet Russia, activist organisations as we know
them today did not exist. Since the early 1990s older activist organisation have begun
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 7
to operate legally, and a range of new activist groups organising around such areas as
environmental, women’s and minority group rights have been established.
From a community development perspective there is considerable appeal in the
activist framework of community organisations. This framework ensures that the
realm of politics is extended beyond governments, political parties and experts. It
defines politics as a process which stretches from the level of micro-politics, such as
the daily experience of ordinary life, to wider questions of resource allocation
(Cochrane, 1986) and the self-determination of communities. Activist community
organisations mediate between the individual, the state and the market on behalf of
communities. They have appeal to many in the Left because they provide forums
where the interests of working class, women’s and disadvantaged minorities can be
articulated. Their interest is in providing a space for the development of oppositional
interpretations of interests and needs, where the voices of those who are excluded
from the dominant discourses can be listened to. Through their participatory
processes, activist community organisations can provide organisational forms for the
development of individual autonomy, where self-determining moral agents, capable of
resistance are formed, (Franklin, 1998). They are unique in opening up sites for the
celebration of difference and micro-political resistance. The operating rationales and
organisational forms of activist community organisations offer a way of holding back
the logics of administrative and economic mechanisms in favour of the logics of
social participation and self-empowerment (Cohen and Arato (1992).
Notwithstanding the general endorsements of activist community organisations by
those who are committed to strengthening community development and civil society,
the activist rationales and operations have been subjected to a significant body of
critique and a number of debates have ensued. These debates have been constructed
around the issue of whether activist community organisations do provide appropriate
sites for participatory action oriented to social change. They centre on several
concerns. One debate revolves around the critiques of the community location and
orientation of activist community organisations. This debate was first launched in the
1970s, when Marxist and feminist analyses identified community as an ideological
construct. A more recent version of this debate has been articulated through the
critiques of communitarianism. The emphasis on community is seen as a
manifestation of the nostalgia for the closed self-referential social relations of the past.
A community development concern focuses on the extent to which community life
and democratic activities are circumscribed by the solidaristic tendencies and
concealed authoritarianism in activist organisations. Activist community
organisations with a strong strategic instrumentalist agenda carry dangers of
intellectual and organisational imperialism in the sense that in their passion to achieve
change, activist leaders can impose their perceptions upon both other participants and
the community. Young (1990), critiquing both the nostalgic yearnings for community
and the authoritarian tendencies which are found in the solidaristic forms of
community participation and activism, argues that the ideal of community privileges
unity over difference and sympathy over the recognition of the limits of one’s
understanding of others from their point of view.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 8
The market
The market framework is constructed around the discourses of individual self-interest
and self-help, private initiative, enterprise, and competition. To make sense of market
discourses we need to locate them in the context of the ascendancy of the principles of
neo-liberal economic theory. From a neo-liberal perspective, optimal output and
efficiencies are not possible when there is state control and management of society’s
resources and instrumentalities. It is necessary to transfer activities from the state to
the private sector, or at least re-orient state activities to ‘the logic’ of the private for-
profit sector. Commitment to ‘the logic’ of the for-profit sector is manifested in the
establishment of a new mode of welfare governance which is organised around two
legitimating themes, devolution and marketisation.
Devolution occurs when responsibility for and ‘ownership’ of activities and processes
are passed from high levels of power to lower ones, often identified as the ‘local
level’. The dominant form of devolution in community organisations occurs when the
state remains the funding body and retains policy control, but shifts the service
delivery and day-to day responsibility to a community organisation. This form of
devolution involves the establishment of a contractual relationship between the
government (as purchaser of the service or program activities) and the provider of
activities. This separation is often known as the purchaser/provider split or the
steering /rowing distinction. Osborne and Gabbler (1992) argue the need to ‘re-
invent’ government, so that overall policy and strategic control remain with what they
identify as mission driven governments, and day-to-day functions are transferred to
the private sector. This arrangement is generally based on a contractual agreement,
and it has come to be known as contractualism. Marketisation occurs through the
establishment of competitive behaviour and (quasi) market operations (Alford et. al.
1994).
For all the talk about marketisation the development of the contractual model of
governance is of course only a quasi-market system. Why is this? The reason is that
the market relation between the contract state and providers of services is a limited
one. While both the government and the tenderer for the contract are free to enter, or
not, into the bidding and contract arrangement, the government has a choice of
contractors, the contractors have only one purchaser of their service. Governments
purchase on behalf of clients or consumers. While there might be some choice for
consumers in welfare services their consumer sovereignty is circumscribed by their
relatively powerless position in society and their inability to sample the programs or
demand recompense for poor service. Constructed as they are as individual welfare
dependants, lacking power, resources and status, and given the asymmetrical power
relations between welfare consumer and the government, welfare recipients are
reluctant to complain about unsatisfactory programs.
Of the countries we have studied so far, Australia and the UK. have the strongest
commitment to the introduction of market logic and mechanisms into community
organisations. The competitive contracting regime has involved the re-ordering of the
priorities of service oriented community organisations from a concern with social
rights and distributive justice to a focus upon the discipline of competition is the
method used to ensure efficient program delivery. The euro-centric source of much
international funding for NGOs, together with the dominance of the neo-liberal
economics being promoted by English–speaking countries, has meant that the market
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 9
model now appears to be on the ascendancy globally. Certainly Western funding
bodies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme,
require at least lip service to market operating principles when they fund programs in
Russia, Indonesia and other modernising countries.
The market framework signals some profound changes in social relations within
community organisations. The objective of enterprise culture is to introduce an ethos
that emphasises a concern with resources, results and efficiency. This ethos requires
clearly focussed, instrumentally based interactions, rather than social relations based
on political solidarity, civic virtue or dependency. The contracting regime sets up
different types of relations between community organisations, welfare recipients and
the state. For example, in the place of mutual social relations based on horizontal
reciprocity, which feature in the activist framework, and the relations of service and
vertical reciprocity in the charity and welfare state industry frameworks, comes a
narrow contractual reciprocity based on an individualistic and instrumentalist
approach to social relations.
Marketisation, in emphasising the importance of individuals taking responsibility for
their own affairs, developing personal enterprise, and making choices, promises to
empower citizens. Yet success in the market place requires cultural and fiscal capital,
and for those who lack these forms of capital, self-determination is a shallow promise.
In the drive for efficiency the market model excludes the possibility of the
development of the ‘inefficient’ processes of measured democratic decision-making.
The market model is also based on the commodification of activities in ways that set
up narrowly instrumental relations; hardly a sound basis for the establishment of
communities of choice, mutuality and trust.
If we consider all the issues in the application of the market framework to community
organisations, it is clear that the view that marketised community organisations
develop empowered and active citizens is fraught with problems. Indeed, the rhetoric
of devolution can conceal the development of a new form of disciplinary state power,
which is exercised through new funding mechanisms based on contracts, competitive
tendering and new monitoring techniques based on auditing principles and
performance appraisal (see Power, 1997). Moreover, for all the promises of
diminishing state intervention, markets need a strong interventionist state to protect
markets and corporations (against labour collectivities, for example). The
configuration of market rationales and structures which operate in community
organisations may be after all just a new form of state control in disguise.
‘No wonder community development practitioners are perplexed’: Explaining
contradictory expectations
Analysing the ways in which the various operating rationales and frameworks are
manifested and the ways in which they are brought together can help us to understand
some of the contradictory expectations of community development workers. For
example, the prerogatives of competition characteristic of a market framework are
being placed upon the prerogatives of collaboration, which are characteristic of
welfare state industry and activist frameworks. Both the activist and the market
frameworks sit uneasily with professionalisation discourse, which is characteristic of
the welfare state industry framework.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 10
The market commitment to innovation and creativity can be undermined by the
welfare state industry commitment to accountability, bureaucratic administration and
auditing. Activist commitments are overshadowed by welfare state industry
commitment to service provision and satisfying external funding agencies reporting
procedures. Commitment to diversity and ‘giving voice’, that is found in activist
frameworks, can undermine the commitment to standardised universal services based
on social rights discourse that underpins the welfare state industry. Both the activist
and the market frameworks sit uneasily with professionalisation discourse, which is
characteristic of the welfare state industry framework.
All of these frameworks pose difficulties for community development practitioners,
although some more than others. Understanding the ways in which each framework
can hinder or facilitate community development work can assist us in making sense of
the contexts in which we work.
‘Putting people first, protecting the environment and rebuilding local economies’
When we put this conference’s theme over the different rationales we can draw out
some curious challenges. In contrast to the welfare state industry and market frame-
works, the charity framework is people oriented, but through some interesting lenses.
The lens of empathy and compassion can be read as consistent with community
development notion of ‘putting people first’. However, compassion and empathy are
also constructed as sympathy, confirming the asymmetrical power relations between
giver and receiver that characterise charity work. The lenses of moral discipline and
service, too, are people-oriented, but they must be seen in the context of the moral
‘high-ground’ and patronage that is also embedded in asymmetrical power relations.
The lack of ideas of self-determination are indicative of the lack of commitment to
local economies, and yet ideas of ‘deserving poor’ (those who can pull themselves out
of dependency) can have some resonance for local development. The welfare state
industry framework, based on ideas of social equality and social rights, claims to be
‘people oriented’ but of course, is constrained by bureaucratic and procedural
apparatuses. Welfare dependency undermines self-determined economic develop-
ment. The activist model is based on ‘people-power’ but in the their urgency for
radical action, ‘the people’ can sometimes be forgotten by the ‘leaders’, and of course
the interests of the people and the environment do not always coincide. The market
model encourages local economic development, but again local economic
development can work against both people’s interests and environmental interests.
The new fused discourses
One of the interesting developments in the shifting constellations of operating
frameworks has been construction of a whole range of concepts that draw on the
different operating rationales discussed above. These concepts include social capital,
mutual obligation, social entrepreneurship, self-determination, capacity–building,
community building and third way politics. It is beyond the scope of this paper to
trace out in detail the sources of the fused discourses. However it would be useful to
indicate some of the ways in which different lexicons are brought together within one
concept and how the meaning of a concept itself might shift, depending upon which
discourse it is located in.
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 11
For example, the concept of social capital involves the fusion of the different lexicons
drawn form the market (and enterprise lexicon) with the lexicon of inclusion,
empowerment, mutuality and community. Social capital draws on the market
principle of the importance of exchange relations and emphasises the accumulation of
social/community assets through social exchanges (networks, reciprocity, mutuality)
(2). It also draws on the activist rationales of mutuality, empathy, trust and solidarity.
Mutual obligation is constructed differently, depending on the dominant operating
rationale it is located in. In the welfare state industry rationale mutual obligation
means an obligation of welfare recipients to the state, to undergo ‘work for the dole’
for example. In the charity framework it means that a charity recipient must be
‘deserving’ and that the charity donor sees her/his contribution within the context of
service to the community.
Self-determination can be read in the activist framework as collective struggle to take
control of a community’s destiny , or a market framework where individuals must
learn to be self-sufficient and resilient. Capacity can be defined by external bodies
(such as the IMF) within the framework of economic restructuring to compete within
capitalist markets, or it can mean self- determination in the activist framework as
noted above. Third way politics mixes and matches different aspects of all four
frameworks, emphasising the market rationale of private initiative and enterprise, the
activist rationale of mutuality and trust, the welfare state industry rationale of a state
safety-net for those who ‘cannot help themselves’ and where necessary, bureaucratic
regulations and the charity concern with the ‘deserving poor’ (see for example,
Giddens, 1998).
Our research reveals several responses to these fused discourses in community
development circles. First, there are those who have embraced fully the new lexicon.
They reflect on way in which ‘the social’ lost ground or had been ignored in national
and international political agendas in the 1980s and argue that the mixing and
matching of the discourses can assist in the rehabilitation of ‘the social’ in new and
innovative ways that ensure that community-building, trust, mutuality and
collaboration, were legitimate concerns for all public policy and business
development. The market emphasis on enterprise, self-determination and innovation
means that the shackles of passive welfare and elitist professionalism can be thrown
off and replaced with the concept of dynamic self-determining communities.
Second, there are those who invoke the new fused discourses for strategic reasons,
such as demonstrating a commitment to innovative projects and gaining legitimacy in
funding submissions (Hooper, 1997). The strategic embrace appears to be the
dominant response in Australia and the UK. Third, there are a number of community
development workers who see the new discourses as Trojan horses. The rehabilitation
of community and ‘the social’ enables the market to gain a foothold in community
organisations. In Russia, for example, there is growing suspicion of the requirements
of Western aid organisations for community organisations to be run in a ‘business-
like’ fashion. From this perspective non-profits are ripe for take-over as for-profit
businesses through gaining lucrative government contracts for such activities as
‘meals–on-wheels’, or providing training programs (building capacity) for ‘nonprofit
management’. This response has been expressed in Sweden, where hostility to the
undermining of the welfare state remains strong
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 12
Finally that are those who argue for a ‘proceed with caution’ approach. This camp
rejects the ‘crisis narrative’ that is part of the trajectory of strong left approaches to
community development. It sees a return to the community development precepts of
the 1970s difficult and yet identifies profound problems with an uncritical embrace of
the fused enterprise and community lexicon and practice.
In concluding this section, our study suggests that community development
practitioners are facing a range of new challenges arising out of the contradictory
environments in which they work and the new fused discourses that are changing the
intellectual landscape. At the time of writing this paper there is no easy way of
finding our way through these challenges and identifying the opportunities for
community development. However, it is my view that while there is no ‘once and for
all’ way of dealing with the shifting frameworks in which we operate, continued
critical analysis and activist endeavour is essential if community sector organisations
are to withstand capture by the state and the market. It is also my view that
community sector organisations are continuing to provide appropriate venues from
which to launch symbolic, ideological and micro-structural challenges to both the on-
going subjugation that occurs in everyday life and concentrated power that occurs
locally and nationally. The challenge is to identify ways of effective challenge
globally as well as nationally and locally. Understanding the shifting frameworks and
fused discourses is a step in identifying forms of effective challenge.
In conclusion, our study suggests that community development practitioners are
facing a range of new challenges, arising out of the contracdictory envoronments in
which they work and the new fused discourses that are changing the intellectual
landscape. At the time of writing this paper there is no easy way of finding our way
through these challenges and identifying the opportunities for community
development. However, it is my view that community sector organisations continue
to provide appropriate venues from which to launch symbolic, ideological and micro-
structural challenges to both the on-going subjugation that occurs in everyday life and
concentrated power that occurs globally and within state and class structures and
institutions. It is also my view that continued critical analysis and activist endeavour
is essential if community sector organisations are to withstand incursions by the state
and the market. Rather than positioning community sector organisations at either the
centre or the margins, they should operate across the levels endeavouring to maintain
an innovative and activist edge at all levels. But, of corse, community development is
not about finding easy recipes to the complexities and challenges (another word) of
struggle and change.
The scope for activism
In this final section of the paper I want to comment briefly on whether this mixing and
matching of the operating frameworks and the introduction of the new discourses has
meant to erosion of the activist strand in community development. Our research
indicates that the environments in which community development operates today are
complex and contradictory. These environments pose new challenges to community
development practitioners at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We need to
strive continually to understand where contraints upon our activities and where the
strategic opportunities for action lie. Activism is based on the divide between
existing dominant power structures and opposition to these power structures. Thus
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 13
the activist is the ‘other’ to those who hold power. Here power is conceptualised as
embodied in structures, such as the state; institutions, such as the church; groups, such
as a company board of directors or a union secretariat; and individuals, such as
politicians. Activism involves activities that challenge dominant power structures.
Activism as a process involves activities of protest, such as a march, a demonstration,
a sit-in or picket line, or a sabotage of power utilities, which are explicitly constructed
to draw public attention to an issue. These activities are often known as social or
direct action. And of course, they may or may not be illegal. Whatever the context of
activism, it is premised on the assumption of the efficacy of human agency and the
possibility of desired changes resulting from agents’ actions.
In this paper I want to argue that activism is a process consisting of three moments,
the moment of awareness, the moment of action and the moment of effect. The
activity of conscientisation and the reciting of subversive poetry are moments of
awareness, but they do not, in themselves, constitute activism. Activism requires
concrete activities which are deliberately directed to some form of change in the
dominant power structures and relations. These concrete activities must have an
element of deliberation. For example, Bayat (2000) in a recent article, points out that
in Cairo or Teheran, many poor families tap electricity and running water illegally
from the municipality, but not as a deliberate act of resistance.
In regard to the moment of effect, while I accept the Foucauldian corrective to the
centring of power in the state and the zero-sum notions of struggle, I agree with Bayat
when he argues that
although power circulates, it does so unevenly - in some places it is far
weightier, more concentrated and ‘thicker’ (and within the Foulcouldian
framework) …the acts of resistance, cherished so dearly , float around
aimlessly in an unknown, uncertain and ambivalent universe of power
relations, with the result of an Unsettled and tense accommodation with the
existing power arrangement’ (2000:545).
If an act of resistance or opposition does not change power structures and relations,
and its effects are, for example, symbolic, is this act still activism? My answer is yes.
What constitute activism are the intention and the action of opposition, resistance and
subversion. But there are further complications here which can be illustrated by the
example of an ‘activist’ working in an organisation that has won a competitive tender
for a service-delivery contract. What if ‘the activist’ has the intention of subversion
and practises both working within the terms of reference of the tender and at the same
time against the asymmetrical power relations embodied in the tender, but the result
of her work is to strengthen the dominant power relations? My response to this
example is to accept the complexity. The activities are both activist and they support
as the activities support dominant power relations.
Let us now return to the responses to the question ‘What are the possibilities for
activism in community development now?’ One obvious answer is to respond by
reference to the diversity of settings in which community organisation and activities
take place and to argue that this question can only be answered in reference to
cultural, regional and national specificity. While this is an appropriate response I
think that we can draw out factors that exist at regional, national and global levels that
allow a degree of generalisation. In this context the negative response to the question
Tensions and dilemmas in community development 14
reflects on the increasing loss of grand narratives, the fragmentation of identity, the
colonisation of community organisations by the state and the market, the mixed
messages of the fused market/community lexicon and the collapse of the legitimacy of
socialism (the lost legitimacy of the efficacy of alternatives) and sees little scope for a
strengthening of activism, other than at the level of internecine struggles that are
based on the hot solidarity (Turner,1999) of pre-modern resistance that have little to
do with community development.
The positive response is based on an analysis of the objective conditions of the global
economy in which the gap between the rich and poor is widening, and a re-
examination of class, gender and race inequality. In Western societies, as the welfare
state is undermined, so too is the class compromise on which it was constructed. With
the unmasking of the pretence of regional, national and global harmony we find the
development of new subaltern politics based on giving voice and recognition of
difference. We find the introduction of new organising methods based on global
communications that are enabled through the internet, new alliances between research
activists and street activists and renewed cross-class alliances around such issues as
environmental destruction and reconciliation. But what empirical research do we
have to support these different points of view. The study I have referred to in this
paper has collected some limited data on practices and attitudes to activism in
community organisations in three countries. Qualitative research involving
participant observation and in-depth interviews in three countries indicates a
continuing commitment to activist rationales and practices.
Endnote
This study has been a collaborative effort involving Bryan Turner, Cambridge
University, Kevin Brown, Susan Kenny, John Prince, Lauren Howe and Wendy
Taylor at Deakin University, Sebastien Chartrand, University of Stockholm and
Leonid Reznichenko, Institute of Employment Studies, Moscow. This paper draws on
the work of all the members of the research team. It is based on analysis of
qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews. The Australian research is
reported in the book Rhetorics of Welfare: Uncertainty, Choice and community Sector
Organisations, by Kevin Brown, Susan Kenny and Bryan Turner (Macmillan,
London, 2000). Much of the discussion in this paper is based on analysis of
qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews.
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The Author
Sue Kenny is the Director of the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, Deakin
University. Email suek@deakin.edu.au
