What is Community Development?

2.2.1 What is Community Development?

First, it is necessary to outline descriptions and definitions of the CVS in general, and also to provide a working definition of the community sector ‘element’ or

‘sub-sector’ of it, in particular. The dearth of literature on the subject makes this a necessarily limited exercise but international definitions are drawn on in order to help elucidate the topic. Questions relating to the nature of community development, and the role of community groups/the community sector element of the wider CVS are considered and a number of definitions of community development are offered.

Pyles (2014) argues that the very task of ‘trying to force a definition [of community organising, a term broadly analogous with community development] and attempting to include some activities and exclude others [is]

difficult and ultimately, a false construction’ (p.8). Nonetheless, she suggests some parameters that are useful and offers the following definition of community as:

a group of people with a common affiliation, identity or grievance that may be geographically or non-geographically based (ibid., p.9).

Popple (1995) argues that ‘community’ here exists ‘not only in a geographical and material sense but also reflects people’s thinking and feeling as to where

against the use of place as a proxy for community and says that an understanding of community that ‘transcends all connections with place’ (for example, the Black community or the Jewish community) is required (p.11). She maintains that the concept of solidarity, comprising shared identity and norms, unites these two different understandings of community and thus defines community development as:

the pursuit of solidarity and agency by adhering to the principles of self-help, felt needs and participation (ibid., p.5).

This definition with its focus on both community as place and as shared interests is useful, as is her attention to the concept of agency. She argues that community development, in order to promote agency:

aims at generating critical consciousness, addressing problems that the affected people "own" and define, and take active measures to solve (ibid., p.13).

She suggests that, by implication, weak solidarity and low levels of social capital

‘diminish the potential for collective action’ and that neighbourhood organising is necessary but, alone, is insufficient (ibid., p.17). Influencing change at other levels such as the region, state and internationally on issues such as housing, education and employment is also required (ibid.). By contrast, Robson’s (2001) idea of ‘community’ is one which ‘masks a deeply conservative ideology in which [such] developments have exposed to full view many coercive tendencies within government’ – or, put another way “community” is in, whilst “class” is out’ (p.222). However, this perspective appears to lack appreciation of the multiple meanings different actors can bring to the concept of community.

Pyles (2014), drawing on the work of Alinsky (1971) and others, suggests four elements of community organising that are helpful in thinking about community development, whist noting that that not all of these elements will necessarily be emphasised: ‘self-organization, confronting power, building community, and transforming oppression’ (p.10). A somewhat simplistic, though none the less useful, differentiator is to consider voluntary

organisations as being more focused on delivery of services whilst community organisations are more concerned with, as Pyles describes it, ‘helping people help themselves’ (ibid., p.10), notwithstanding the blurred distinctions in practice. Of course, voluntary organisation delivering services can conceivably do so in ways ‘with a strong social change or activist orientation’ and, as Pyles notes, often people in local communities ‘do not have the luxury to ignore services and just focus on organising’ (ibid., p.11).

A more local definition of community development is offered by Belfast City Council in its recently published Community Development Strategy 2012 - 2015 which defines community development as enabling people to come together to:

influence or take decisions about issues that matter to them and that affect their lives; define needs, issues and solutions for their community;

and take action to help themselves and make a difference. It is a long-term, value-based process which targets positive social change (Belfast City Council, 2013, p.7).

Although the language may be slightly different this definition does not differ hugely from one offered in the early 1980s by Deane (1981) - ‘[people wanted]

to take control over the decision-making in their own lives and to reject centralised control’ (p.9). The reference in this to power, through the use of the term ‘centralised control’, suggests a more critical perspective in the earlier definition. Pyles (2014), writing in the US context, describes community organising as that which ‘works towards the liberation of oppressed and marginalized individuals and the transformation of social systems that perpetuate the oppression’ (p.20). She further suggests that organising for social change is a process with activities that have fairly broad goals:

[it encompasses] both an empowerment element and a social change element: it leaves open the possibility that the goal may be to pass a piece of legislation and get new programming or funding, or it could be developing leadership, creating a new way of living, a new community, such as a community-based, cooperative business venture that is

Therefore, whilst the aim is social change, this can be pursued through an extensive range of activities. Taking an equally wide perspective, Lister (1998) suggests that community development can be understood as an expression of citizenship in action – its importance lies ‘not only in what it achieves in terms of practical outcomes for disadvantaged communities but also in the process of involving the members of those communities in working for change and the impact this involvement can then have on those individuals' capacity to act as citizens’ (p.229). Both these definitions adopt a critical, though nonetheless, pragmatic perspective. Powell and Geoghegan (2004) reference Popple’s (1995) work in attempting to define community development. They focus in particular on the distinction between a democratic pluralist model, which is broadly opposed to ideological politics, seeing these as too concerned with political abstractions, and emancipatory political traditions which seek the

‘fundamental transformation of the social, political and social order, based upon the principles of equality, solidarity, social justice and human rights’ (Powell and Geoghegan, 2004, p.19). This is a useful definition, especially the distinction between ideological and other politics, and has resonance in a Northern context where many disadvantaged communities have strong and active links with parties which were once on the margins of electoral politics and are now in Government.

Schwabenland’s (2012) description of voluntarism captures the plurality of views about its role and potential impact:

The phenomenon of people coming together voluntarily to create institutional arrangements to alleviate some social ill is immensely potent. This phenomenon is variously seen as the guarantor of democratic society, the means to include the excluded by increasing participation from marginalised groups, the way to restore or preserve our sense of communality with others, the best hope for the regeneration of deprived and despairing neighbourhoods and the enemy of corrupt and self serving government (p.6).

All these definitions are sufficiently broad to leave room for a variety of

interpretations and, as such, are not hugely helpful in delineating the boundaries of community development for the purposes of research. Lister’s (1998) description is useful in that it marries the immediate, pragmatic goals of community activism with broader, less tangible outcomes relating to citizenship and change. Similarly, Pyles (2014) introduces an explicit reference to empowerment and tags it pragmatically to everyday community development activities. When studying whether and how community development promotes progressive social change within disadvantaged communities in Belfast, these different lenses guide us to understand ‘community’ as constituting both place and shared interests, and the possibility of community development and social change being pursued through a broad range of activities. As such, they will help illuminate the linkages between theory and practice of community development on the ground.

Community Development in Practice

How do definitions of community development play out in practice? As noted in the introductory chapter, concerns have been expressed over the last 30 years about the co-option, as some would see it, of the community sector by the state.

Writing about community development in the 1970s, Deane (1981) describes a dialectic between community development as, on the one hand, a means of relatively powerless people and communities taking control of their own lives and, on the other, the State and other institutions seeking to control communities. Or as Frazer (1981) puts it, community work had become

‘primarily a means of controlling local protest and not a means of promoting radical social change’ (p.20). This tension has continued in the intervening years and central questions about the potential of community development remain contested among practitioners and academics alike: is community development a locally owned response to disadvantage and oppression or a strategy by the state to maintain control over local communities?

Ife (2013) provides a useful framework of perspectives on social justice as a foundation for a model of community development and how these result in

Table 3. Accounts of Social Issues (Source: Ife, 2013, p.59)

Ife (ibid.) contends that community development, as traditionally practised, has been largely concerned with the institutional reformist and structural perspectives, although in a Belfast context some community development practitioners can be seen operating at least sometimes from an individual perspective. Working from a social justice paradigm, he goes on to suggest that while the postmodern perspective has influenced the thinking of community development workers since the 1990s with its focus on power and disadvantage, it has been criticised for having ‘relatively little to say about what one should actually do about it’ (ibid., p.62). Nonetheless, he argues for its importance in allowing ‘space and legitimacy for alternative voices to be heard and validated, and for alternative discourses to emerge as part of a development process’ (ibid.). He also suggests that a post structural perspective is useful in conjunction with a structural understanding of class, race and

Perspective Source of

gender and it helps us ‘understand how those oppressions are defined and reinforced through changing discourses of power’ (ibid., p.62). This conjoining of different perspectives is useful as it draws on an understanding of the multiple dimensions of disadvantage as well as narrative construction, both of which are within the critical paradigm which underpins this study, an issue returned to in Chapter Four.

Co-option of the sector?

Concerns regarding the sector’s co-option by the state are ones which are frequently articulated in any discussion of the role of the CVS, in Ireland and further afield (Acheson, 2013; Birrell and Williamson, 2001; Lovett et al., 1994;

Robson, 2001; Rooney, 2002). Writing in a UK context, Milbourne (2013), identifies a number of specific challenges for community organisations involved in collaboration and partnership work, including: representing community voices and maintaining alternative approaches ‘which may be perceived as counter-hegemonic’; and the suppression of ‘cultural alternatives in favour of dominant or more prevalent models of operation, a process of institutional incorporation masquerading as network governance’ (p.125). She questions the ongoing role of the VCS, and particularly its ability to remain autonomous and distinctive and ‘retain social and philanthropic values against diverse pressures for change’ (ibid., p.24). Similarly, Ledwith (2011) argues that community development has become distracted from its commitment to social justice by

‘allowing its radical agenda to be diluted by more reactionary theories that lead to ameliorative rather than transformative approaches’ to practice (p.32).

Writing in a local context, Acheson et al. (2004) suggest that voluntary action in NI ‘is now largely incorporated as part of the system of public administration, operating in a sphere whose parameters are determined by state patronage’

(p.223). This, they argue, is in part due to Government remaining ‘the main purchasers of voluntary sector services’ and the sector functioning ‘as an extension of state welfare either by providing similar services to hard-to-reach sections of the population or, perhaps more typically, providing different but complementary services’ (ibid., p.221). Alongside this, the rhetoric of

involvement is evident in many Government polices ¹⁹. Some theorists put it even more strongly, describing community interventions as being driven by the needs of the state and that too often they compromise on issues of importance – Robson (2001), as noted earlier, suggests that the discourse surrounding the very concept of ‘community’ acts as a ‘denial of class as a motor of political and social transformation’ (p.221). This issue of co-option is a critical one and it will be important to see whether and how it manifests in the community sector in Belfast.

Whilst relatively little local research has been carried out in this area, Acheson (2010) notes the shift in emphasis from CVS organisations working in partnership with the state, to public procurement whereby CVS organisations are increasingly being contracted to deliver services for state institutions, in effect, to earn their funding (my term). He also suggests that public policy has resulted in the voluntary sector’s (of which the community sector is a part) role changing, from that of being a key player in the peace process to being a provider of modernised public services, and argues that there is little interest in resourcing a broader civic role for the sector (ibid.). Current state funding of the sector(s), which is based increasingly on procurement of services, would certainly seem to support this hypothesis but the impact at grass roots community level remains to be understood more clearly. The tensions within the sector are framed, somewhat starkly, by Morrissey (2012) in his assertion that ‘when the global economy is beyond reach and Government policy is part of the problem, community organisations are caught somewhere between a subordinating competition for diminishing funds and repetitive, but powerless, protest’ (p.4). The current research explores these tensions and attempt to identify where space for protest may lie and what forms it may take.

19 For example, the Department of Health Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) Departmental Business Plan 2011 – 2015 describes one of its priorities as ‘[improving] the design, delivery and evaluation of health and social care services through involvement of individuals, communities and the community, voluntary and independent sector’ (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, 2014, p.2).

Some theorists do not have a positive association with the idea of community activism, or community development, as it has increasingly come to be called and have drawn attention to it as a political response to colonial needs in African countries after World War Two, whereby programmes of development based on forms of ‘community’ education were developed (Frazer, 1981;

McVeigh, 2002; Robson, 2001). These programmes were, it is argued, more to do with securing political stability than with empowering local communities, and some writers question whether it is ever possible to bring about real change through a process of community development (Robson, 2001). McVeigh (2002) argues that the notion of community development has been distorted ‘to the point where it has been excised of the radical and transformative qualities it once possessed’ and, in critiquing the ‘hegemony of the community relations paradigm’, suggests that what is needed instead is ‘equality and justice, not

‘relations’ or ‘development’ (p.57). These views challenge assumptions about the positive role and benign nature of community development.

Community development, then, it appears can take very different forms and play entirely different roles. It has the potential to be a catalyst and support for radical, ground-up transformative action; or, it can in effect act as a quasi state service provider and controller of specific populations. These very different views on the role and function of the CVS in general and community development in particular are to be found within the community sector and among community practitioners in the North, and lead to a central question:

how great is the gap between pragmatism and radicalism – or between community development’s transformative potential and its transactional bind?

This research aims to investigate the experience of community development in Belfast, and whether and how it promotes progressive social change within disadvantaged communities. In particular, the research aims to explore whether views on leadership are influenced by participants’ broader perspectives about the nature of community development and whether these fall along transformational or transactional lines.