Introduction

This chapter offers a critical overview of the main theme of the volume: the complex and constant interplay between the processes of community development, politics and power. After discussing in turn the contested concepts of ‘community development’, ‘politics’ and ‘power’, we discuss particular challenges for the global practice of community development in an increasingly neoliberalised context. Against the dominance of managerialism and the fracturing of solidarity between citizens, we highlight the importance of a critical vision of community that supports diversity while promoting dialogue across distance and difference. This chapter also introduces and summarises the varied perspectives offered throughout the volume, which draw on experiences from around the world. We conclude by reasserting our hope that despite, and maybe even because of, its critical orientation this volume can prove to be a politically useful and emboldening resource for its readers.

United and divided by a common language

Given its disparate provenance and contested history, it is hardly surprising that the concept and practice of community development has been subject to much interpretation over time and place. Changing political, economic, cultural and social conditions, which are played out locally and globally, mean that the expectations and aspirations invested in communities change over time. The concept of community itself is nebulous and difficult to trace. ‘Community’ embodies conflicting ideas and emotions: evoking notions of place, identity and interest; and drawing potency from nostalgia, romanticism, solidarity, fear, frustration and hope. It is not always apparent whether community is something that we already have or that we want to build; whether it is a prescription for ourselves or for others. As a political idea ‘community’ chimes with concepts of democracy, mutuality, autonomy, but it is just as likely to manifest as exclusivity, surveillance or control (Bauman, 2001). In this respect, O’Carroll (2002: 15) finds within it ‘an inflexible notion of boundary between similarity and difference’. Ultimately, as Plant (1974) proposes, it may only be possible to figure out what community is by analysing the specific ways in which the term is deployed in different settings, and from that to extrapolate its meanings and its functions within the wider socioeconomic context.

Inherent ambiguities and contradictions notwithstanding, an interest in communities is a continuing focus of public and social policy worldwide: indeed, its very plasticity might be what renders the idea of community so appealing across time, context and space.