COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD VISTON, ANALYSIS AND PRACTICE JIM IFECommunity Development in an Uncertain World Vision, analysis and practice Community Development in an Uncertain World provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to modern community development. The book explores the interrelated frameworks of social justice, ecological responsibility and post-Enlightenment thinking, drawing on various sources including the wisdom of Indigenous peoples, Recognising the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the times in which we live, Jim Ife promotes a holistic approach to community development and emphasises the different dimensions of human community: social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, spiritual, personal and survival ‘The first section of the book examines the major theories and concepts that underpin community development. This includes a discussion of core principles: change and wisdom ‘from below’, the importance of process and valuing diversity. The second section focuses on practical elements, such as community work roles and essential skills. The final chapters discuss the problematic context of much contemporary practice and offer vision and hope for the future. Written in Jim Ife’s characteristic engaging and accessible style, Community Development in an Uncertain World is an essential resource for students and practitioners — now more than ever. Emeritus Professor Jim Ife holds adjunct positions at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University, Perth, at the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights at Deakin University, and at Victoria University, Melbourne.Community Development in an Uncertain World Vision, analysis and practice Jim Ife CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107628496 © Cambridge University Press 2013 This publication is copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published by Pearson Education as Community Development in 1995 Second edition 2002 First published by Cambridge University Press as Community Development in an Uncertain World in 2013 Cover design by Marianna Berek-Lewis Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt Ltd Printed in China by Print Plus Ltd A catalogue record for this publication ts available from the British Library A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the catalogue of the National Library of Australia at www nla,gov.au ISBN 978-1-107-62849-6 Paperback Reproduction and communication for educational purposes ‘The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers if) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact: Copyright Agency LimitedLevel 15, 233 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000 Telephone: (02) 9394 7600 Facsimile: (02) 9394 7601 E-mail: info@copyright.com.au Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.Contents List of figures and tables Acknowledgements Introduction 1 The crisis in human services and the need for community ‘The crisis in the welfare state and the emergence of neo-liberalism Away forward Commumity-based services as an alternative ‘The missing ingredient: community devel opment ‘The next steps 2 Foundations of commumity development: An ecological perspective Crisis Environmental responses and Green responses ‘Themes within Green analysis An ecological perspective An ecological perspective: is it enough? 3 Foundations of community development: A social justice perspective Approaches to disadvantage: the limitations of social policy Empowerment Need Rights 4 Foundations of community development: Beyond Enlightenment modernity ‘The Enlightenment Beyond the Enlightenment Indigenous understandings Conclusion 5 A vision for community devel opment Why each perspective is insufficient unless informed by the others ‘The promise of integration Community Development Community-based human services An alternative vision: grounds for hope 6 Change from below Valuing local knowledge Valuing local culture Valuing local resources Valuing local skills Valuing local processes Working in solidarity Ideological and theoretical foundations for change from below Conclusion 7 The process of commmity devel opment8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Process and outcome ‘The integrity of process Consciousness-raising Participatory democracy Cooperation ‘The pace of development Peace and non-violence Consensus Commumity-buil ding Conclusion ‘The global and the local Globalisation Localisation Protest Global and local practice Universal and contextual issues Colonialism, colonialist practice and working internationally Guarding against colonialist practice Working internationally Community devel opment: Social, economic and political Social development Economic development Political devel opment Community devel opment: Cultural, environmental, spiritual, personal and survival Cultural devel opment Environmental development Spiritual development Personal devel opment Survival development Balanced development Principles of community development and their application to practice Foundational principles Principles of valuing the local Process principles Global and local principles Conclusion Roles and skills 1: Facilitative and educational With head, heart, hand and feet ‘The problem with ‘cookbooks* Competencies Practice, theory, reflection and praxis ‘The language of roles Facilitative roles and skills Educational roles and skills Roles and skills 2: Representational and technical15 16 Refer Index Representational roles and skills Technical roles and skills ‘Two special cases: needs assessment and evaluation Demystifying skills ‘The organisational context Managerialism Responding to managerialism: community development as subversive Introducing community devel opment processes: the power of the collective Conclusion Practice issues Practice frameworks Categories of community worker Values and ethics Professionalism Education and training ‘The use and abuse of power Internal and external community work Long-term commitment Support Passion, vision and hope encesFigures and tables Figure 5.1. The vision of community devel opment Figure 10.1 Integrated community development Figure 10.2 Social devel opment Figure 10.3 Community economic development Figure 10.4 Political development Figure 11.1 Cultural development Figure 13.1 Commumity work practice roles Figure 16.1 A framework for community workers Table 2.1 Schools of Green thought Table 2.2 An ecological perspective Table 3.1 Accounts of social issues Table 3.2 Perspectives on power Table 3.3. Empowerment Table 3.4 Types of need statements Table 16.1 Categories of community workersAcknowledgements ‘The ideas represented in a book like this have many sources, and it is impossible to acknowledge — or even remember — them all. I have never been comfortable with the idea of ‘intellectual property’, as ideas can never be owned, but are shared, and are constantly being reconstructed in dialogue with a wide range of people. This book has been influenced by a large number of colleagues, friends, students, community workers, activists and authors at various times stretching back over more than 40 years of involvement with community work. I began working on the first edition of this book some 20 years before the publication of this fifth edition, so there have been many influences on its ongoing development. The book has been an evolving project, and many people have, knowingly or otherwise, contributed to it along the way. ‘There are some people who have contributed significantly to this book, and who need special acknowledgement. First, my wife, Dr Sonia Tascon, has been a continuing source of support and inspiration at both a personal and an intellectual level; I owe her a tremendous debt, and her presence in this bookis strong. It is important to acknowledge Dr Frank Tesoriero, who took over the third and fourth editions of this book while my academic and practice interests moved more into the field of human rights. I am grateful to him for undertaking this work, and also feel a sense of sadness that circumstances have dictated that he can no longer be involved with the project. It is important to point out that this edition contains only material from the first and second editions (for which I was the sole author) together with substantial additions and alterations I have made to bring it up to date. It contains none of the material that Frank added in the third and fourth editions, and hence it is published with my name as the sole author. I am also gratefull to the many colleagues throughout Australia and overseas who encouraged me to take up this project again and to commit to a new edition. Other people I wish to acknowledge, whose influence on the early editions and/or on the present edition has been particularly important, are, in alphabetical order, Jacques Boulet, Linda Briskman, Ingrid Burkett, Love Chile, Phil Comors, Jo Dillon, Wendy Earles, Erica Faith, Lucy Fiske, Vic George, Amanda Hope, Adam Jamrozik, Sue Kenny, Nola Kunnen, Mary Lane, Louise Morley, Robyn Munford, Rob Nabben, Jean Panet Raymond, Stuart Rees, Gavin Rennie, Monica Romeo, Dyann Ross, Rodney Routledge, Evelyn Serrano, Pat Shannon, Joanne Stone, David Woodsworth and Susan Young. The section in chapter 4, on Indigenous contributions to community development, was read by Auntie Sue Blacklock, Gillian Bonser, Carmen Daniels, Paula Hayden, Helen Lynes and Cheryl Kickett Tucker, who provided important feedback. Their contribution is particularly valued. I wish also to acknowledge the generosity of students and colleagues at the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, and Victoria University (Melbourne), who over the years have sharedideas and helped to create enriching climates to explore issues of community development. Beyond the traditional university, Borderlands Cooperative is a special place of shared scholarship, learning and activism, with a wonderful community development library, which has provided me with a particularly stimulating environment in which to develop ideas for this edition. Earlier editions were particularly influenced by friends and colleagues at the Greens (WA), Amnesty International and the International Federation of Social Workers. ‘This edition is published by a different publisher, and I am gratefill to Pearson Education for their generosity in releasing the copyright of the first two editions so that they could be incorporated in this new edition. I am also grateful to Isabella Mead, publisher at Cambridge University Press, for her enthusiasm for the project, and her support throughout the process. My association with Cambridge University Press goes back over 15 years now, and it has been a very professional, positive and trouble-free relationship that I have come to value highly. Finally, this book is dedicated to my grandchildren, Ben, Emma, Joe, Hamish and Phoebe. It is, I hope, a small contribution towards creating a better future for them and for all those who will inherit the world that my generation has so comprehensively trashed and stripped of its communitarian traditions. Jim Ife Melbourne, 2013Introduction Despite the formidable achievements of modern, Western, industrialised society, it has become clear that the current social, economic and political order has been unable to meet two of the most basic prerequisites for human civilisation: the need for people to be able to live in harmony with their environment, and the need for them to be able to live in harmony with each other. If these two needs cannot be met, in the long term, the achievements and benefits of modern society will be transitory. The inability of the dominant order to meet these needs can be seen in the crises currently facing not only Western industrialised societies but all societies. The world is characterised by increasing instability — whether ecological, economic, political, social or cultural — and existing institutions seem only able to provide solutions which in the long term, and even in the short term, only make things worse. Those were the words that introduced the first edition of this book, published in 1995. Eighteen years on, they are as true today as they were then, if not more so, and the justification for this book remains the same. Many things have changed in those 18 years, but the above paragraphs also remind us that many things — the most important things — have not. The world is still on a course that is headed for major crises — environmental, economic, social and political — and despite the fact that many more people are now aware of, and concerned about, the parlous state of the world and its very uncertain future, governments are still showing themselves unwilling or unable (or both) to do anything significant about it. There have been great disappointments in those 18 years: the failure of the Copenhagen summit on climate change in 2009, the inability to respond to the Global Financial Crisis in any way except by bailing out the banks and propping up global capital, the resulting austerity measures, the draconian response to the threat of terrorism since ‘9/11°, which has served only to heighten global tensions and make a terrorist response more likely, ongoing tension and conflict in the Middle East, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as continuing conflicts in parts of Affica, the widening gap between the increasingly wealthy global elite and the rest of the world, the inability to meet the modest Millennium Development Goals, the hardening of attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers, the emergence of right-wing and racist political groups in many countries. These suggest that the current structures of national and global government are utterly unable to meet the pressing global problems that threaten the future of human civilisation. The words that immediately followed the above 1995 passage — ‘In this context, the need for alternative ways of doing things becomes critical’ — now seem almost an understatement. There are, however, signs of hope. The continuing demonstrations against globalisation, culminating in the Occupy movement of 2011, suggest that there are many people who are seeking an alternative. The widespread disillusionment with mainstream political parties, caused by the perceived irrelevance of mainstream politics and meaningless elections that fail to address many ofthe major issues facing the world, can also lead to people seeking a new form of politics, although it is yet unclear how this will evolve. Social media and the internet have made possible the documentation of human rights abuses and the mobilisation of opposition in the so-called Arab Spring and in other protest movements. Campaigning groups such as GefUp! and Avaaz have successfully mobilised large numbers of concerned people to oppose oppressive legislation or to struggle for environmental and social justice, Latin American social movements and progressive governments have been developing inspiring commmmity-based alternatives: the Zapatistas in Mexico, the community response to the oil crisis in Cuba, the popular governments of Chavez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia, the education demonstrations in Chile, the ‘horizontalidad’ movement in Argentina. Despite their inevitable problems, facing the hostility of global capital and conservative media interests, these represent bold initiatives towards an alternative future that are an inspiration to the world. It is in this context, both of impending crisis and of new signs of hope, that commmnity development can play a crucial role. There has been increasing interest in development at the community level as potentially providing a more viable and sustainable basis for the meeting of human need and for interaction with the environment, and it is not surprising that the Latin American examples above all include a strong component of alternative commmity development. Among activists concerned with both environmental and social justice issues, the establishment of viable community-based structures has become a key component of strategies for change. Community development represents a vision of how things might be organised differently, so that genuine ecological sustainability and social justice, which seem unachievable at global or national levels, can be realised in the experience of human community. This book represents an attempt to articulate that vision, and to provide a theoretical framework for commmmity development that will relate analysis, context and action. In the years since the first edition, the organisational context of practice, dominated by managerialism, has become less conducive to good community development, as discussed in chapter 15, but nevertheless the need for, and the continuing interest in, community development remains strong, This is particularly so among those concerned for social justice and ecological sustainability, as community development is seen as a potential alternative way to organise human society; if indeed there are to be economic, political and ecological crises, as now seems inevitable, it will be our ability to work at community level that will determine the capacity of human civilisation to survive. However, the interest in community development is also driven by a belief that human community is important, and that strong communities will enrich our lives and provide a positive context for human interaction and for the meeting of human need, especially given the continuing erosion of the welfare state. ‘This ongoing interest in community devel opment is shown by reaction to the earlier editions of this book, which have had a wider appeal than first imagined. This wider appeal has been evident in two directions. One is the embracing of community devel opment by a wide range of occupational groups, not merely the human-service professionals and community activists that one might expect, and who were implicitly the readership for which the first edition was intended, I have discovered a muchbroader range of occupational and interest groups who feel that community development is important in their work, and this has underscored the power of the comnumity development perspective. The other is the way the book has been found usefull in different cultural contexts. Although the book is written from the perspective of a white Australian male, earlier editions have resonated with workers in different cultures, and it has been translated into several different languages. This inevitably raises questions about colonialism, a topic that is covered in chapter 9, but it also emphasises that the concerns of community devel opment are universal, and many of the broad principles discussed in this book (such as wisdom from below, the importance of process, interdependence, participation, empowerment and so on) apply across cultural boundaries, although the way they are constructed and applied will differ significantly in different contexts. For readers familiar with earlier editions, it is important to outline some history of this publication to avoid any confusion as to authorship. This is the fifth edition of this book, although it is the first to be published by Cambridge University Press. Iwas the sole author of the first two editions (1995 and 2002), but the third and fourth editions were prepared by Dr Frank Tesoriero; our names appeared as joint authors for the third edition (2006), and he was the sole named author of the fourth edition (2010), although much of the content was continued from the earlier versions. Sadly, Frank is no longer associated with the project, and this current edition contains none of the material he added for the third and fourth editions. It does contain material written for the first two editions, together with a good deal of new material; there are 16 chapters, compared with 11 in the first edition and 12 in the second. However, the overall trajectory of the book remains the same. ‘The first five chapters lay the foundation for a vision of community development, Chapter 1 examines the crisis of modern Western societies and the crisis of the welfare state, and argues the need for community development. Chapter 2 explores the ecological crisis and its imperatives, in the light of Green political theory, developing an ecological perspective for community development. Chapter 3 outlines a social justice perspective, including discussion of rights, needs, equity, justice, empowerment and so on. It explores issues of class, gender and race/ethnicity from both structural and poststructural perspectives. Chapter 4 outlines elements of a post-Enlightenment position, including ideas of postmodernism and relational reality. A particularly important section of this chapter discusses Indigenous cultures, and the significant contributions they can make to community development, Chapter 5 then seeks to integrate the perspectives of the previous three chapters, in a vision for community development and for community-based human services. ‘The next two chapters explore two significant principles of community development. Chapter 6 is concerned with change from below, valuing the wisdom, expertise and skills of the commmity, and the importance of decentralisation and community control. Chapter 7 discusses the processes of community development, including the primacy of process over outcomes, and the issues of participation, democracy, consciousness-raising, peace and non-violence. Chapters 8 and 9 outline a more global, or international, perspective. Chapter 8 is concerned with globalisation and understanding commmity development in a globalising world, while chapter 9 explores the important issue of colonialism, which can affect all community development practice,and considers issues around working internationally. Chapters 10 and11 outline eight dimensions of commmity development: social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, spiritual, personal and survival. Practice in each of these eight areas is discussed, with various issues identified in relation to each. The approach taken is one that emphasises the importance of all eight, in a holistic and integrated understanding of what community development means Chapter 12 seeks to summarise the ideas of previous chapters in a series of practice principles. ‘There are 30 principles discussed altogether and, although there is little in this chapter that has not been covered in previous chapters, readers have found such a summary at this point to be particularly usefill as a way of encapsulating the principles of community devel opment. ‘The remaining chapters are concerned with issues of practice. Chapters 13 and14 discuss the various roles taken by community workers, and identify the skills needed to fill those roles. In doing so they discuss issues of practice/theory, the problems with prescriptive ‘cookbooks’, and the ways in which community workers can develop their skills. Chapter 15 is concerned with the managerial environment in which many community workers have to practice, and which is hostile to community development principles. It outlines some approaches community workers can use either to adapt to, or to directly challenge, managerialism. Chapter 16 discusses a number of other issues relating to practice, such as professionalism, value conflicts, ethics, support for workers and so on. ‘The book moves, in a general way, from more theoretical to more practical considerations, but it is far from a simple linear development. Indeed, part of the discussion in the earlier chapters emphasises the need to reject linear thinking, so the reader is encouraged to ‘jump around’ and not necessarily read the book in the order in which it is written, The book does attempt to follow a logical sequence, but there are other equally valid logical sequences that could have resulted in a very different order of the material. Although I have attempted to make the ideas accessible to a wide readership, it has been necessary to make some assumptions about the background of those for whom the book is written. I have assumed that the reader has some familiarity with basic social and political ideas, such as social class, power, the division of labour, Marxism, feminism, socialism and so on. This is not to say that detailed or expert knowledge of such topics is necessary; completion of first-year university study in sociology, anthropology, politics or some other social science discipline, or alternatively a comparable understanding gained from general reading, should provide the reader with a more than adequate background. Ihave updated the references to incorporate contemporary sources; a lot has been written since 1995. However, I have also included a number of older sources for the earlier editions where I believe they have something important to say. In this age when the ‘here and now’ is so valued, and where history is often marginalised, it is important that we challenge this by listening to the voices ofthe past as well as the present, and there is much of value to community development in earlier literature. ‘This book makes frequent use of a number of terms that have been grossly overused and misused in recent years, such as community, empowerment, development, sustainable, ecological, Green, social justice, community-based, holistic, participation, consciousness-raising, non-violence, and participatory democracy. Although these terms have been overused, they still represent powerful ideas; indeed, their very popularity is a testament to their power and their perceived relevance. They have an important contribution to make to the vision and the practice principles of this book the aim of the book is to clarify rather than obscure these ideas, and to reinvest them with some substantive meaning for community workers. Throughout the book, the terms community development andcommunity work have slightly different meanings. I have used the former to refer to the processes of developing community structures, while the latter refers to the actual practice of a person (whether paid or unpaid) who is consciously working to facilitate or achieve such development. Ihave opted for the most part to use the terms the South and the North rather than developing nations, Third World or other similar terms and their opposites. None is wholly satisfactory, and living in Australia the South offends one’s geographical consciousness but, as in other ways it is the least offensive term, it is the one I have chosen. The term Western (or the West) similarly takes liberties with geographical principles, particularly for an Australian. The term is nonetheless a useful one, and in the context of this book it refers primarily to Western culture, whereas the terms North and South are used more in an economic context; of course the distinction is not always clear-cut, as economics and culture are themselves inextricably entwined. It should, however, be noted that there is no necessary single antithesis of Western in cultural terms, whereas the economic constructs of the North and the South are not only opposites but also in such a structural relationship that neither could exist without the other, and each serves to define the other. Ihave used the term Aotearoa rather than New Zealand, as a deliberate political and cultural statement; I only wish that Australia had a similarly accepted Indigenous name Throughout the book there are a number of tables and diagrams that illustrate in summary form the ideas discussed in the text, culminating in figure 16.1 (see page 366), which ambitiously attempts to summarise the entire framework. They are included with mixed feelings: several readers have commented that such tables and diagrams are helpful in obtaining an overview and in seeing how the material fits together, but this needs to be balanced against the dangers of categorisation and oversimplification. Tables and diagrams can have the effect of imposing a false sense of order on a complex and chaotic reality and, hence, of inviting simplistic solutions to complex problems. To represent complex concepts by a few words in a cell of a table is to change the very nature of the content itself, and invites a dangerous reductionism. A too-rigid interpretation of such tables is antithetical to the holistic approach advocated in the early chapters, and the reader is cautioned to remember that the boundaries of the tables do not represent rigid distinctions or impermeable barriers. If the tables and diagrams are regarded as an aid to comprehension but not as rigidcategorisations or definitions, they will have served their purpose. While this book has a practical application, and attempts to incorporate both theory and practice, it does not provide simple prescriptions of how to ‘do’ community work. The reasons for rejecting such an approach are given in chapter 13. A number of principles of practice are outlined, but the way in which they are translated into practice reality will vary from community to comity, and from worker to worker. Commmity work is, at heart, a creative exercise, and it is impossible to prescribe creativity. Rather, one can establish theoretical understandings, a sense of vision and an examination of the nature of practice, in the hope that this will stimulate a positive, informed, creative, critical and reflective approach to community work. That is the aim of this book1 The crisis in human services and the need for community ‘There is no clear agreement on the nature of the activity described as community work. Some see it as a profession; some see it as one aspect of some other profession or occupation such as social work or youth work, some see it as anti-professional; some see it as people coming together to improve their neighbourhood; some see it in more ambitious terms, of righting social injustice and trying to make the world a better place; some see it in terms of social action and conflict; some see it in terms of solidarity, cohesion and consensus; some see it as inherently radical; some see it as inherently conservative; and so on (Butcher et al. 2007, Chile 2007b, Kenny 2010, Ledwith 2005, Craig, Popple & Shaw 2008). Not only do people's understandings of community work differ but also the terminology is similarly confused, The terms community work, community development, community organisation, community action, community capacity-building, community enterprise, community practice andcommunity change are all commonly used, often interchangeably, and although many would claim that there are important differences between some or all of these terms, there is no agreement as to what these differences are, and no clear consensus as to the different shades of meaning that each implies. There is similar confusion about the idea of community-based human services. The term comiaunity-based is used in a variety of contexts, and often has little substantive meaning beyond a vague indication that the service concerned is somewhat removed from the conventional bureaucratic mode. There is, however, considerable interest in the development of a community-based approach to the delivery of human services such as health, education, housing, justice, childcare, income security and personal welfare, and a belief that this represents an important improvement over the current mix of welfare state and private market (De Young & Princen 2012, Clark & Teachout 2012). This book is an attempt to make sense of community work and community-based services. It is based on the premise that the main reason for much of the confuusion, and the seeming inadequacy of what passes for community work ‘theory’, is that community work has often not been adequately located in its social, political and ecological context, or linked to a clearly articulated social vision, in such a way that the analysis relates to action and ‘real-life’ practice. Many of the stated principles of practice are fragmentary and context-free, and often the goals of commmmity work remain vague, uncharted and contradictory. Similarly, the literature on community-based services is often rhetorical rather than substantive, and often does not relate specifically to relevant social and political theory. ‘This book attempts to remedy that deficiency. It seeks to locate community work and community- based services within a broader context of an approach to community development. This latter term is seen as the process of establishing, or re-establishing, structures of human community within which new, or sometimes old but forgotten, ways of relating, organising social life and meeting human need become possible. In this context, community work is seen as the activity, or practice, of a person who seeks to facilitate that process of commumity development, whether or not that person is actually paid for filling that role, Community-based services are seen as structures and processes for meeting human need, drawing on the resources, expertise and wisdom of the community itself‘The starting point for this exploration will be the crisis in the contemporary welfare state and the emergence of neo-liberalism, alongside the recurring interest in developing some form of “community-based? alternative. It is from examining the shortcomings of many attempts to move to a community-based model, and the identification of what is missing from these attempts, that the vision ofa more viable alternative can begin to emerge. The crisis in the welfare state and the emergence of neo-liberalism Contemporary community work must be seen within the context of the crisis in the welfare state, and the erosion of government and popular support for continued growth in welfare state provision. The crisis in the welfare state became evident in the 1980s, as the ‘new Right” ideology and economic theory of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher began to influence government policy and public opinion. This was the beginning of the era of neo-liberalism, an ideology that had its origins in the philosophy of Friedrich Hayek and the economic theory of Milton Friedman, emphasising the primacy of individual freedom and the superiority of the private market as the best way to allocate wealth and resources. In such a world view, public, or state, provision plays a secondary role, and indeed should be reduced to a minimum. The belief in the superiority of the unregulated market and private initiative leaves little room for the state. This ideology challenged the previous ‘postwar consensus’, which defined a central role for government in the meeting of human need and the creation of a fairer society. This earlier view was exemplified by the Beveridge Report in Britain, which laid the foundation for the postwar British welfare state, and the social policy writing of Richard Titmuss and T-H. Marshall. Similarly Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ in the USA in the 1930s had identified a strong role for government in lifting the nation out of economic depression, Welfare states were also established in most European countries following World War IL, and in other so-called developed nations (such as Canada, Australia and Aotearoa) whose economies were able to afford significant public expenditure on the provision of health, education, housing, income security and personal services. These welfare states took different forms — some were more extensive and well developed than others, and some were more dependent on a social insurance model — but they all accepted the notion that a major role of government was to provide for the needs ofits citizens. This view was challenged by neo-liberalism, which emphasised the importance of individual responsibility rather than state provision, and saw government’s role as to support the market and to “get out of people’s lives’ (Harvey 2005, Saad-Filho & Johnston 2005, Honeywill 2006, Beder 2006, Beck 2012, Kempf 2009, Panitch & Gindin 2012). Under neo-liberalism, the termnanny state became a popular epithet for the criticism of the idea of a welfare state, and government expenditure moved from being seen as positive, enhancing the common good, to being seen in negative terms as a drain on the productive economy; governments were elected on promises to do less rather than more, and to reduce taxes rather than to expand services. In this context, it has become common for many commentators to deride a ‘culture of entitlement’ and to encourage individual autonomy and ‘independence’ (we shall see in later chapters that ‘independence’ is a nonsense). With the end of theCold War around 1989, and the consequent delegitimising not only of communism as it had been manifest in the Soviet bloc but also of Marxism more generally, and even of socialism, there was no effective opposing ideology to capitalism, and so neo-liberalism — essentially an extreme form of unregulated capitalism — could reign supreme (Harvey 2005). This, of course, has exacerbated economic inequalities, as the welfare state and strong government regulation — mechanisms for reducing inequality and ensuring a reasonably equal sharing of available wealth and opportunity — were simply not available. Neo-liberalism, indeed, accepts inequality as both necessary and desirable, if economic growth and individual prosperity are to be maximised. Since the arrival of neo-liberalism as a mainstream ideology, it has become clear not only that the welfare state is unable to meet fully the needs of citizens but also that there is a strong belief among many political and opinion leaders that it should not attempt to do so, as this would reduce incentive and encourage ‘dependency’. But neo-liberalism is not alone in its criticism of the welfare state. There is now almost complete agreement about the inadequacy, instability and uncertainty of the contemporary welfare state and its apparent continuing inability to meet the full range of human needs. Even critics from the political Left have been forced to admit that a centralised welfare state is unable to meet all our social needs, and can be dehumanising and alienating because of its inhumane bureaucratic structures. One of the important characteristics of neo-liberalism is that its emergence coincided with, and embraced, globalisation. This became possible initially because of the increased availability of global travel and then with the coming of the computer age and the possibility of instant communication on a scale previously unimaginable, making possible new global networks of power (Castells 1996, 1997, 1998), Hence neo-liberalism became a global force, and the markets became globalised, and were thus beyond the capacity of national governments to regulate, even if they had wished to. Governments had to take careful note of the requirements and preferences of global markets, if they did not want to face sudden and dramatic withdrawal of capital and corresponding economic collapse. What became known as ‘globalisation’ was effectively the globalisation of the economy and of markets, together with a form of ‘cultural globalisation’ so that the purchasing choices of consumers became as similar as possible (e.g, in clothes, entertainment, food, cars, etc.) (Niezen 2004, Castells, Caraga & Cardoso 2012); it is easier to produce for a market if everybody wants to buy more or less the same things. We did not see a corresponding globalisation of social or environmental concerns. This difference is seen in the relative lack of mobility of labour as opposed to the instant mobility of capital, and the strength and power of those international mechanisms established to serve the global economy (e.g. the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization), compared with the weakness of international structures (through the United Nations or international NGOs) to achieve social justice or environmental sustainability at a global level (Beder 2006, Satz 2010). Globalisation will be discussed in more detail in chapter 8. ‘The effects of the crisis in the welfare state and the rise of neo-liberalism are clearly visible at the level of service delivery. Continuing cutbacks in public services, lowering of the quality of service as overburdened workers are urged to ‘do more with less’, longer waiting lists and waiting periods, lack of access to health care (except for those who can afford private insurance), the deterioration ofthe public education system, poor staff morale, and a general lack of confidence in the capacity of the public system to cope, are all familiar themes in many Western societies. Policy responses have tended to reflect neo-liberal orthodoxy, through privatisation, the creation of quasi-markets (e.g, in health care with different ‘providers’ competing with each other), the role of government as a purchaser of service rather than as a provider, and encouraging the private sector to be involved either through public/private ‘partnerships’ or through total privatisation and the principle of ‘user pays’. Other policy options, requiring increased taxation and spending, are simply unacceptable in the neo-liberal world. ‘The neo-liberal perspective is not always readily accepted by the people, as can be seen in the reactions of people in the European region to the ‘austerity measures” imposed on them by neo-liberal orthodoxy following the Global Financial Crisis (Castells, Caraga & Cardoso 2012). In this regard, the people of Europe are sharing the experience of the people of other regions, such as Latin America and Africa, who have had to face the hard edge of neo-liberal policies for decades (Klein 2007). Hence many governments feel powerless to address significant problems — from unemployment and substance abuse to climate change and land degradation — while still retaining some measure of popularity with voters. One consequence can be the substitution of public relations spin for policy, and several policy techniques have become depressingly familiar as strategies to give the impression that much is being achieved, One is the production of glossy publications full of rhetoric about ‘steps forward’, ‘new initiatives’, ‘social advantage’, ‘social dividend’, ‘equity and access’ and other high- minded goals. Another is an apparently perpetual succession of task forces, working parties, summits and commissions, which can take up a good deal of time while giving the impression that ‘something is being done’. A third is organisational restructuring, which is a time-honoured way of appearing to take ‘decisive action’. A fourth is the repackaging of already existing programs under new, catchy titles; publications about ‘family policy’, for example, are notorious in this regard. Thus, if one asks a government representative about the policy on a particularly problematic issue (e.g. domestic violence, youth homelessness or unemployment), one is likely to be handed a slick publication full of rhetoric, and to be told about a significant new task force that has been established to deal with the problem, within a newly restructured government department. Such responses have become apologies for genuine policy, and represent a tacit admission that many of the problems with which governments are required to deal are in fact insoluble within existing social, political and economic constraints. ‘The situation is indeed grim, with inadequate human services, rising inequality and a declining resource base, made worse by the economic instability now affecting or threatening most countries in the ‘developed’ West. Various alternatives have been proposed by those concerned for social justice, the three most common being: (1) seeking to defend and re-establish the welfare state, (2) moving towards a more ‘corporatist’ state, where a consensus is sought between the various interests such as capital and labour, and (3) a more radical socialist alternative with human need being given highest priority, bolstered by a strong regulatory state. Each of these has some advantages, but they also have significant drawbacks and seem to have little likelihood of success in the current social, economic and political context. Defenders of the welfare state have found it difficult to counter the criticism that large, centralisedbureaucratic structures, which seem to be an inevitable consequence of a traditional welfare state system, are neither effective nor efficient in the delivery of human services, and that they dehumanise, alienate and disempower those whom they purport to serve. In addition, the weak theoretical foundation of the social democratic approach to welfare (Taylor-Gooby & Dale 1981) has left the advocates of the welfare state open to attack from both the Right and the Leff; it can be argued that it was only in the era of the postwar consensus that the ideological foundations of the welfare state could remain intact, and this consensus has long gone. Corporatism is subject to significant criticism on the grounds that it represents an artificially manufactured compromise between essentially competing interests, such as capital and labour, so that at best it can be only a short-term and inevitably unstable arrangement. It can, perhaps, succeed only under certain specific economic and political conditions (e.g, relatively stable economic growth and prosperity), which cannot be expected to last indefinitely. Another criticism of the corporatist approach is that it requires trade-offs to be made at the level of peak organisations representing particular sectors of society and the economy. This militates against democratic or participatory forms of policy- and decision-making, and serves to reinforce the power of existing elites. ‘The socialist alternative, while arguably resting on a much stronger theoretical and intellectual base than the other approaches, also fails to take account of the alienating and dehumanising effects of state bureaucracies and central planning. Despite the rhetorical ideals of a truly socialist society, the imposition of communism in practice has been accompanied by extremely repressive measures. While it can be argued that this need not be the case, the experience makes it difficult for Marxists to gain significant legitimacy within contemporary social and political debate. As will be evident in the following discussion, a Marxist analysis has much to offer in developing an alternative, but the classical Marxist solution of state socialism does not seem a credible alternative at this time. ‘The problems of these responses have been exacerbated by the success of neo-liberal ideology in dominating public discourse. Neo-liberalism is presented as natural, and it is assumed that indeed there is no practical alternative. Thus it has come to be regarded by many people as the natural order of things, and the role of governments has been reduced to one of managing and supporting the capitalist system, rather than seeking alternatives. Government intervention in the market is assumed to be negative, hence any proactive government policy is viewed with a mixture of scepticism and alarm, as is only too clear to those who have so desperately sought government action to avert serious climate change. A way forward The above very complex issues deserve more thorough treatment than can be covered here. The purpose of this quick — and inevitably superficial — discussion is simply to highlight some of the specific objections to each of the three conventional responses to the crisis in the welfare state and the emergence of neo-liberalism. For the purposes of this book it is significant to concentrate on one overriding objection to all the above responses to the crisis, which can be summarised as follows:The crisis in the welfare state, and the tragedy of neo-liberalism, are the result of a wider crisis of a social, economic and political system which is unsustainable, which has reached a point of ecological crisis, and which is only exacerbated by the neo-liberal agenda. Each conventional response to the crisis in the welfare state and the emergence of neo-liberalism is itself based on the same unsustainable, growth-oriented assumptions, and is therefore itself unsustainable. This objection to the traditional policy responses to the crisis in the welfare state and to the emergence of neo-liberalism is the basis for the remainder of the book, which aims to develop an alternative approach to human service policy and practice that is more consistent with a truly sustainable society. Therefore it is appropriate to consider this objection in more detail. As Marxist writers have pointed out since the 1970s (e.g, O’Connor 1973, Offe 1984), the welfare state has grown alongside industrial capitalism, and must be seen as an integral part of the existing social, economic and political order. The state provision of such public services as health, education, housing and welfare has not been simply the result of altruistic views of benign and caring governments but has been necessary in order for industrial capitalism to grow and flourish, and as a means of establishing and maintaining social control. The Marxist analysis has been particularly significant in demonstrating this, and sees the welfare state as being in a symbiotic relationship with advanced capitalism: each is necessary for the other’s survival. Thus modern capitalism would not be possible without some form of welfare state in order to meet human need, to maintain stability and security and to keep the workforce healthy, happy and ‘appropriately’ educated so that the key processes of production and reproduction can be maintained (George & Wilding 1984). Such an analysis, which developed in the social policy literature of the 1970s and 1980s, before the fill emergence of neo-liberalism, means that the welfare state must be seen within the context of, and not as separate from, advanced capitalism, While capitalism, in its present form, cannot survive without some form of welfare state, the corollary is that the welfare state in its present form cannot survive without the industrial capitalist economic order within which it has developed. There is now ample evidence that this existing order is unsustainable, as the contradictions of the system (of which the contradictions of the welfare state are only a part) become more apparent (Homer-Dixon 2006, Castells, Caraga & Cardoso 2012). The system is based on continued growth, which is having disastrous effects on the global environment. As the ecological and human costs of continuing growth and ‘progress’ become more evident, and as the warnings that the global industrial and economic system is reaching the limits to growth are more clearly recognised (Shiva 2005), the urgency of the situation is highlighted. Western governments are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain economic development, standards of living and full employment (by whatever statistical artifice that is measured). The conventional economic solutions do not seem to work very well, and are at best short term. The inequities and limits of the global economic system, to which all Western economies are now inextricably linked, are becoming more apparent. Increasing numbers of economists and other commentators are reaching the conclusion that the major economic and social problems facing modern society can no longer be solved from within the existing system, and that a radical change is necessary —to a quite different society, based on different economic principles (Quiggin 2012, Ekins& Max-Neef 1992, Doorman 1998, Greco 2009, Boulet 2009, Honeywill 2006). This change would clearly include the welfare state. ‘The argument thus far is in many ways consistent with a Marxist analysis; indeed, Marx and his successors have clearly identified the contradictions of capitalism, and have similarly suggested the need for a radical reformulation, However, there is a findamental difference between the Marxist position and the alternative “Green” position on which this book is based. Marxists have still assumed that continuing economic growth, with a corresponding increase in productivity, wealth and personal income, is not only possible but also desirable (and, one might argue, necessary). In this they are in agreement with other ideological positions, including both neo-liberalism and social democracy. Itis common in elections to hear parties from many differing ideological positions, including the Leff, assuming that the way out of current economic problems is to step up economic growth and to argue about the best way this can be achieved, Over the years, in a remarkable case of language slippage, the idea of ‘sustainable development” coined in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987) has morphed first to ‘sustainable growth’, then in the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ of 2012 into ‘sustained growth’. An alternative ‘Green’ position, however, maintains that economic growth is at best a doubtful benefit, in that it causes more problems (including environmental, social and economic problems) than it solves. Indeed, in a finite world, it is clearly ludicrous to assume that growth can continue indefinitely, and there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the effective limits to growth are being reached (Hamilton 2003, De Young & Princen 2012). It is thus necessary to seek a system that breaks the cycle of growth and is not dependent on continuing growth for its maintenance (in contrast to the existing form of industrial capitalism, as well as the Marxist socialist alternative). This requires a genuinely ecological perspective incorporating a notion of sustainability, and this will be explored in chapter 2. It is worth noting, however, that in this context sustainability represents a more significant departure from existing practices than is implied by many contemporary politicians and public figures, given the current trend to justify virtually any policy under the now almost meaningless term ‘sustainable development’, or the blatantly self- contradictory ‘sustainable growth’. From this perspective, the crisis in the welfare state cannot be satisfactorily resolved using any of the four policy strategies outlined above. The existing growth-oriented social, economic and political system, within which the welfare state is located, is clearly unsustainable in anything other than a very short time span. The welfare state, certainly in the form to which we have become accustomed in the West, seems unlikely to last much longer, and as the structures of society change (as from the ecological perspective they nuist), different structures and services for the meeting of human need will have to be developed. This should not be a surprising conclusion: the modern welfare state, although its origins can be traced back several hundred years (de Schweinitz 1943), is essentially a creature of the twentieth century and of the affluent West. Throughout all but a hundred years of history the human species has been able to survive without the welfare state, and even in this hundred years its supposed benefits have been enjoyed by only a minority. The welfare state is not a permanent fixture, nor is it necessarily a natural component of human civilisation.Community-based services as an alternative ‘Throughout history, there have been different institutions and mechanisms for the meeting of human need. At different times and in different contexts the extended family, the tribe, the village, the Church, the market and the state have all been seen as playing critical roles in this process, often in combination. Each institution has had a dominant role in the meeting of need, yet as society has changed each has proven to be by itself inadequate for the needs of the new order, although each has retained a lesser role in subsequent times. The crisis in the welfare state is simply another of these historical transitions, where the nation state, for which such great hopes were held, is demonstrating its inadequacy as new forms of social, economic and political structures emerge. From this perspective it is inappropriate to put too much energy into defending or strengthening the welfare state. A more useful direction is to ask what might be an alternative form of social provision that would be consistent with the newly emerging social and economic order. Many of the policy prescriptions that enjoy contemporary popularity represent an attempt to reinstate some of the earlier forms of the meeting of need, principally through the market and the family. Historically, the limitations of both of these have become apparent, and are even more evident within the contemporary social and economic system, where the market is again proving its inadequacy to meet human need equitably, and where the family is under continuing pressure and is increasingly fragmented (Jamrozik & Sweeny 1996); there is a crisis in the institution of the contemporary family that renders it utterly incapable of meeting the demands of social care with which some seek to burden it. Within this context, there is an increasing interest in community-based programs as an alternative mode for the delivery of human services and the meeting of human need (Wheatley 2009, Wheatley & Frieze 2011, Ball 2011, Bauman 2001, Block 2009, De Young & Princen 2012, Clark & Teachout 2012). After the family, the Church, the market and the state, it may now be the turn of the ‘community’ to carry major responsibility for the provision of services in such fields as health, education, housing and welfare. The idea of commumity is a central theme in much of the Green literature (Hopkins 2008, Pahl 2007, Vanclay 2006, Harding 2011, Manzini 2011, Wheatley 2009), and at first sight it may seem that a community-based approach to human services is consistent with the idea of a ‘post-welfare state’ system based on principles of sustainability. Later chapters in this book will explore the potential of such a community-based approach as the next stage in service provision ‘beyond the welfare state’, and will discuss how such a system might operate and what it would mean for those ‘doing’ community work. As already noted, the terms community and community-based are highly problematic, and mean different things to different people. The approach to community work and commmmity-based services developed in this book is not necessarily consistent with the frequent usage of the terms in government policy discourse, where they have come to have as little substantive meaning as the word sustainable. Before outlining the community development approach on which this book is based, itis necessary first to identify some of the significant problems often associated with approaches to human services that are labelled ‘commmity-based’. Only then will it be possible to attempt to develop anapproach to community development that overcomes these difficulties and has the potential to become the basis of a system of human services in a future society based on principles of sustainability. Problems with conventional approaches to ‘community-based services’ Policies of community-based human services have the potential for both progressive and regressive change. Although such an approach may provide an opportunity for the kind of radical developments outlined in later chapters of this book, it has also been criticised for its inherent conservatism, on a number of grounds. This is not the place to explore these criticisms in detail, yet they need to be summarised and specifically acknowledged. Later chapters seek to describe an approach that overcomes these objections to community-based social provision. 1 Reducing the commitment to welfare In an era when governments are seeking to reduce expenditure on human services, community-based programs provide an expedient way for this to occur, and represent a form of ‘services on the cheap’. This is particularly true of the move from institutional care to community care, where the high costs of institutional care can be reduced, but it is also true of other ‘community-based’ options, in that they tend to rely more on the use of volunteers and on staff who are paid lower wages than those in the public sector. The practice of tendering, increasingly popular with governments, can lead to a ‘race to the bottom’ where agencies try to outbid each other as to which can provide the cheapest service. Such cost-cutting is a frequent result of moving to community-based services, and has a tendency to become the de facto justification for such a move. In addition, for a government intent on cost-cutting, it is often easier to reduce funding for community-based programs than to reduce funding for an equivalent service provided by the state. This is because the hard decision to reduce services is made at community level, usually by a local management committee, so it is not as readily seen as the fault of the government, even though it directly flows from a reduction in government funding. The community management committee can in this way easily be set up as the scapegoat for the withdrawal or reduction of public services Thus community-based services can readily serve the political agenda of a government that is committed to reducing public expenditure, and can facilitate the reduction in the share of the nation’s wealth going to human services. 2. Covert privatisation Another way in which community-based services can serve a conservative political agenda is by providing a rationale for the withdrawal of government responsibility and a corresponding move to a market-based approach. By simply withdrawing from service provision, loosely using the thetoric of “community responsibility’, a government can allow the private market to move in to fill the gap. This can result in a community-based project being operated by a market-driven philosophy with the goalof maximisation of profit rather than the meeting of human need, Thus the terms community and market can become synonymous. This is not necessarily so; the community development approach outlined in later chapters foresees a reduction in direct government activity but does not imply an increased reliance on the private market, at least in its large-scale manifestation, 3. The family Just as the rhetoric of ‘commumity-based services’ can be used as a justification for a retun to reliance on the market to meet human need, so it can be used to support a system where the family accepts a greater burden of care; as with privatisation, this is simply seeking to return to an older form of service provision, which is inappropriate for the contemporary context. Such a trend is particularly seen in the field of ‘commumity care’. This often does not imply that some form of local autonomous community will accept responsibility for a person’s care (as would be the case with a genuinely community-based system), rather that the person concerned will be cared for ‘in the community’ by members of their nuclear or extended family, usually women. It can therefore have the effect of placing extra burdens on family members, especially on women, while not acknowledging the pressures already placed on family structures and the breakdown of the traditional ‘family’ in contemporary society. 4 Gender A move to commumity-based services can place a disproportionate burden on women, both because of their traditional role as primary caregivers and because of the higher level of participation by women in the community sector. Within contemporary society, strongly influenced by economic rationalism and neo-liberalism, caregiving and involvement in commmmity activities are not highly valued, as they are not seen as creating wealth or improving productivity. Hence those who do the caring are devalued, and community-based services can help to marginalise women and reinforce dominant patriarchy. As will be discussed in chapter 3, the oppression of women is one of the fundamental forms of disadvantage in contemporary Western society, and community-based services need to be designed in such a way that they challenge rather than reinforce this disadvantage 5 The tyranny of locality Personal mobility is a characteristic of modern Western societies, and it has become accepted, even valued, that people should travel long distances to meet their needs for social interaction, entertainment, education, social services and so on. A community-based approach can be seen as restricting people to their local community when they may prefer to seek man services elsewhere, either because of a belief that a better service is available in another location or because of a wish for anonymity and a desire to avoid gossip and intrusive neighbours. 6 Locational inequalityBecause some communities are better resourced than others, a move to a commmity-based approach could simply reinforce existing inequalities between communities, often based on class lines. Communities with more resources would be able to provide higher levels of service, and disadvantaged communities might be further disadvantaged by being denied support from a strong central administration. The above criticisms of a community-based approach to human services are powerful. Taken together they suggest that community-based services can be profoundly conservative, and they explain why a community-based approach has been popular, at least at the rhetorical level, with conservative governments. While the rhetoric might appear progressive, or even radical, a commumity-based strategy can be used to reinforce traditional conservative understandings of the family, privatisation, government cutbacks and class and gender inequalities. It is hardly surprising that some critics have demonstrated a cynicism about community-based services — at least as understood within conventional policy discourse — and have been critical of their potential to present a truly radical alternative. ‘The approach presented in the following chapters seeks to overcome these objections, and to demonstrate how a community development approach need not be conservative but could challenge such conservative ideas, and could help to initiate an alternative society based on social justice as well as on ecological sustainability. The missing ingredient: community development ‘The criticisms above relate to a strategy of community-based services developed within the existing social, economic and political order. Such a strategy has a fundamental weakness, namely it assumes that there is an entity called ‘commmmity’ within which human services can be based, This assumption is problematic, given the lack of strong commumity structures in contemporary Western society. The history of industrial society — and indeed of capitalism — has been a history of the destruction of traditional community structures, whether based on the village, the extended family or the Church. This has been necessary for the development of industrial capitalism, which has required a mobile labour force, rising levels of individual and household consumption, increased personal mobility and the dominance of an individualist ideology. This is even more the case in the current experience of industrial and postindustrial capitalism, driven by neo-liberal ideology and global markets. While there remain some elements of traditional community structures, especially in rural areas, and while some community bonds are maintained through non-geographical commumities (e.g. ethnic communities), it is nevertheless true that community in the traditional sense is not a significant element of contemporary Western society, especially in urban or suburban settings. For this reason, the development of commumity-based structures seems somewhat contradictory, and it is little wonder that commmity-based services have proven problematic, as suggested by the criticisms in the previous section. The central issue can best be expressed as follows: how can therebe commumity-based services if there is no community in which to base them? The primary assumption of community-based services must surely be that there are community structures and processes that can take over all or some of the responsibility for the provision of human services. Although for centuries traditional communities performed these roles, more or less adequately, it is much more problematic in a society where the dominant social and economic order discourages the establishment of community and undermines community soli darity. Thus, a strategy of community-based services will not be effective unless steps are taken at the same time to reverse the trend of the erosion of community structures, which has been an integral part of capitalist industrial development. Community-based services therefore need to be accompanied by a program of community development that seeks to re-establish those structures. Such a program goes beyond the specifics of a particular commuity-based program, such as community-based childcare, education or health, It needs to encompass all aspects of human activity and interaction, and amounts to a radical restructuring of society. This might sound like a tall order but, as will be demonstrated in later chapters, there are grounds for believing that we have reached a point in history where such a transformation will not only become possible but also in fact be necessary for survival. The promise of community Despite the problems associated with commumity development, and the factors working against community in modern Western societies, the idea of community remains powerful. Many people feel strongly the oss of community’ or ‘loss of identity’ in modern society, and see rebuil ding community structures as a priority for the future (Bauman 2001). The power of the idea of commumity has long been recognised, and is seen in the tendency over the years for governments to use the term liberally in titles, speeches and so on, often with little substantive meaning, in 1981 Bryson and Mowbray famously described conmmmity as a ‘spray-on solution’ (Bryson & Mowbray 1981), and this has resonated with many writers since then. However, despite the problematic nature of the word, the power of the idea is significant as a basis for the organisation and development of alternative social and econoniic structures, as outlined in later chapters. It has served as a powerful vision for a number of writers in the field of commumity work (Block 2009, Butcher 2007b, Ingamells 2009, Ingamells et al, 2009, Ball 2011, Wheatley 2009, Chile 2007b, Kenny 2010, Campfens 1997, Kelly & Sewell 1988, Craig, Popple & Shaw 2008, Westoby & Dowling 2009, Clark & Teachout 2012). ‘The feeling of loss of community is often interpreted as nostalgia for an ideal that never really existed, and advocates of community development have been accused of idealising the ‘village community’ whose reality was in many instances oppressive. This is an important criticism, and it is essential that the notion of community be based on more substantial grounds than simply an ideal, even though the power of that ideal, and the importance of vision, must not be underrated. The chapters that follow seek to provide such a foundation. Social capital and civil societyThe ideas of social capital and civil society have become central to many understandings of community development. The idea of social capital is that one can ‘invest’ socially as well as economically, and that while the economic capital of a society may be increasing, if this is done at the cost of social capital it is a false gain (Putnam 1993a, 1993b, 2000; Field 2003). Social capital might be seen as the ‘glue’ that holds society together: human relationships, people doing things for each other out of a sense of social obligation and reciprocity, social solidarity and commmmity. Some commentators (Cox 1995, Winter 2000) have argued that the social capital of modern Western society is eroding, as purely economic market criteria are applied to transactions between people, and as individual achievement replaces community and social solidarity as the perceived priority for human action, Itis argued that it has become necessary to reverse this trend, to prevent the further erosion of social capital at the expense of monetary capital, and to invest in programs aimed at building social capital throughout society. Part of building social capital is the strengthening of ‘civil society’. Civil society is the term used for the formal or semiformal structures that people establish voluntarily, on their own initiative, rather than as a consequence of some government program or directive. Civil society includes the ‘non-government sector’ or ‘third sector’ (Earles & Lynn 2012), the ‘first two’ being the state and the private-for-profit sectors, where non-government agencies of many varieties have been established to help meet the needs of individuals, families and communities. But civil society is also broader than this, It includes service clubs — Rotary, Lions, Apex and so on — and incorporates social and recreational organisations: football clubs, tennis clubs, choral societies, walking clubs, cultural ‘groups, amateur dramatic societies, school ‘parent and citizen’ associations, book clubs, youth clubs, in fact any voluntarily formed association of people with common interests or purposes. Itis, in other words, the collective society that citizens have themselves chosen to form as a way to pursue their own interests. In an important research study, Robert Putnam (1993a) demonstrated how economic performance of commmities was directly correlated with the extent of civil society activity: a strong civil society not only strengthens social capital, it also strengthens economic performance. Part of the erosion of social capital in the West is the erosion of civil society. As the demands of the workplace grow, those in employment are finding they have less time and energy to participate in civil society, and many commmmity organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit members and volunteers. For those who are unemployed, participation in civil society is often not valued by others; it is not seen as ‘work experience’ or as being relevant in the search for employment. And for those who have retired from the workforce, retirement is often constructed as a time to enjoy private ‘lifestyle’ pleasure and individual consumption, rather than as an opportunity to contribute skills and experience to the community. The erosion of civil society and of social capital represents a major problem for Western societies, and reduces the quality of life of those living in them. Community development is an obvious approach to seek to reverse this trend, both in the formalised structures of civil society and in the more wide-reaching idea of social capital, and this has been another important reason for the recent upsurge of interest in community devel opment.The danger of a neo-liberal vocabulary The idea of ‘social capital’, and the continuing research in this area by Putnam and others, is important. However, the use of the term social capital should give cause for concern. In adopting this language, Putnam and other writers were trying to make their argument in such a way as to appeal to economists, managers and others operating from within a more or less neo-liberal paradigm. But by doing so, adopting the vocabulary of economics, there is a danger that the idea of community — and of community devel opment — will also be seen from this perspective. Following ‘social capital’, there emerged ‘social enterprise’ (Klein 2009, Social Enterprise Alliance 2010), ‘social entrepreneurialism’ (Bornstein 2007, Nicholls 2006), ‘social marketing’ (a term now more commonly used to describe marketing using social media), and similar terms, each effectively defining community devel opment in a language that accepts and validates the neo-liberal discourse. Important successes have undoubtedly been achieved by programs using this language, but there is areal danger in using such vocabulary to define community development. As will be shown in later chapters, the approach to community development taken in this book stands against the principles and assumptions of neo-liberalism. It is based on the premise that neo-liberalism does not adequately meet human need or achieve the ends of social justice, human rights and environmental sustainability, but rather works against them. There is a need for an alternative to the neo-liberal world view, and community development, as outlined in subsequent chapters, represents a way towards such an alternative. From this perspective, to adopt the language of neo-liberalism is also adopt some of the tenets of neo-liberalism, and to accept at least part of that world view. For this reason, the language of social capital, social enterprise and so on will not be used in this book. Another term that has become widely used, especially in the context of international development, is capacity building. While the idea of commumity capacity building does not carry with it the same neo-liberal assumptions as ‘social capital’ or ‘social enterprise’, it nevertheless does not convey the meaning of community development outlined in later chapters (Craig 2007). The very idea that communities lack something called ‘capacity’ sets up a deficit approach to commmnity development, defining a community in terms of its weaknesses, rather than the assets-based approach, which will be discussed in later chapters. It also raises the questions of who has defined capacity, and capacity for what? These tend to be defined by people external to the community, rather than by the community itself, as a community development approach requires. There is no space here for a fuller critique of community capacity building, but the reader is referred to Kenny and Clarke’s book, Questioning Community Capacity Building (2010) for a more detailed discussion. The ‘needs of strangers’ With the breakdown of traditional communities and the development of modern industrial society, a fundamental change took place in the nature of human interaction, which in his classic sociological work has been described by Ténnies (1955) as the change from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. While Tonnies’ analysis is complex, for present purposes his distinction can be summarised (and grosslyoversimplified) by saying that in Gemeinschajt society people interact with a relatively small number of other people, whom they know well, in many different roles, whereas in Gesellschaft society one has interactions with many more people, but these interactions are limited to specific instrumental activities. Thus, in Gesellschaft society we do not know most of the people with whom we have contact except in their specific roles of, for example, shop assistant, teacher, client, bus driver, customer, nurse or secretary. Our communication with them is limited to a discrete transaction, and any knowledge of them beyond their capacity to fill the particular role is considered unnecessary, irrelevant and an intrusion into their private affairs. There is a clear understanding of what constitutes legitimate business in our dealings with another person, and any attempt to cross the boundary into other aspects of human life can result in being told ‘It is none of your business’. In Gemeinschaft society such distinctions are not important, or are non-existent. People know each other well, although in smaller numbers, through a variety of different transactions. The ‘public’ and the ‘private” are not separated, and individuals are known to each other as people rather than roles. In such a society, ‘comity’ is a much richer, deeper and more real experience, and forms the basis for all social interaction, With the transformation from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, human services, like other social interactions, have become based on instrumental relationships, with the service provider and the consumer knowing each other only in those specific roles. From the earlier approach of meeting the needs of one’s neighbour, we have moved to a system based on meeting the ‘needs of strangers”, as described by a number of writers (Titmuss 1970, Ignatieff 1984). This is a fimdamental change, and requires a different moral justification, different ethical principles and, above all, different structures. ‘The whole apparatus of the modern welfare state has been constructed on the basis of the ‘needs-of- strangers’ approach, and with it have come large bureaucracies and an increasingly professionalised approach to human services. Instead of having a responsibility to meet the needs of one’s neighbours, the responsibility of the citizen is to pay taxes so that somebody else (usually a professional ‘expert’) can be employed to do the job. Direct responsibility for human services thus moves from the citizen to a team of experts employed by the state, leaving the citizen free to pursue their private ends unencumbered by the needs of others, except in terms of financial obligation. Some people, of course, choose for their own reasons to become involved in helping others through voluntary activity, but this is seen as a matter of individual choice rather than a responsibility of citizenship, and voluntary work is often regarded as auxiliary to the ‘main’ work of those employed by the welfare state to deliver human services It should be noted that a private market approach to human services also incorporates the needs- of-strangers model. Here the private citizen is absolved of the responsibility to meet the needs of others even through the payment of taxes, and individuals are expected to look after themselves through purchasing services in the marketplace, possibly with the help of insurance (again purchased in a market). This form of market transaction in modern society involves limited instrumental relationships, and hence it implies, in common with the welfare state, a needs-of-strangers approach, ‘A move to commmity-based services and structures, as advocated in subsequent chapters, essentially seeks to reverse the dominant trend towards the needs-of-strangers model, as epitomisedby the modern welfare state. It suggests that this approach to the meeting of human need has not worked well and that, on balance, its disadvantages have outweighed its benefits. It is necessary therefore to examine some of the advantages claimed for the welfare state in order to see how strongly they represent objections to the development of a more community-based approach, It is the contention of this book that these benefits are more apparent than real. ‘The ideal of the social democratic welfare state assumed the superiority of the needs-of-strangers model, for several reasons. It was argued that this would ensure an adequate minimum standard for all; that it would help to produce a society based on social justice; that it would be impartial and work ‘without fear or favour’; that it would ensure confidentiality so that consumers could be assured of their secrets being kept; that it would ensure anonymity of service, thereby preventing stigma; and that it would ensure proper accountability through the public processes of parliament and the bureaucracy. Each of these claimed benefits will now be briefly considered. 1 Adequate minimum standards ‘The aim of achieving adequate minimum standards (of health, housing, education, income security etc) rests on two assumptions: namely, that the attainment of uniform minimum standards is possible, and that it is desirable. Both of these assumptions can be questioned. Itis difficult to define minimum standards in complex modern industrial societies. In many nations, regional and cultural diversity means that what is an adequate minimum in one setting may be far from adequate in another, and more than adequate in a third. In housing, for example, the definition of an adequate minimum is heavily influenced by both climatic and cultural factors: what will suffice in one setting will not in another. Similarly, cost of living and hence a minimum standard of income varies significantly across regions because of different costs of basic commodities, different transport needs (in some Locations car ownership is a necessity whereas in others it is not), differing climates (in some locations heating costs are significant) and so on. The idea of a universal minimum standard is difficult to accept and almost impossible to define in other than very basic instances, such as protection of basic human rights and dietary intake (this exception, however, is very important (Doyal & Gough 1991), and will be discussed in chapter 3). Most conventional minimum standards, such as the poverty line, are therefore only approximations, and are crude measures indeed of the effectiveness of social policy. But even if such minimum standards were feasible, it could seriously be questioned whether they represented an appropriate goal for the welfare state. As will be seen in chapter 2, an ecological perspective encourages the valuing of diversity, whereas the imposition of a universal minimum standard encourages uniformity, and does not value the significance of ethnic, cultural and regional differences. An exception might be made in such areas as basic human rights (see chapter 3) but, at higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow 1970), the very idea of universal minimum standards must be questioned.In any case, as was pointed out earlier, the research evidence suggests that the modern welfare state has been only minimally successful in meeting acceptable minimum standards of provision (George & Wilding 1984). The need for the maintenance of minimum standards is as a result a weak justification for the continuation of the welfare state and the needs-of-strangers model. 2 Social justice The definition of social justice is a complex question, and outside the scope of this chapter; it will be explored in more detail in chapter 3. But whatever one’s definition, it is not easy to make a strong case for the continuation of a needs-of-strangers approach based on social justice. The welfare state has not been successful in significantly reducing social inequalities, although it did play some role in preventing inequality from becoming even greater (George & Wilding 1984), as is seen by the widening of inequalities as the welfare state is eroded in the name of neo-liberalism (Jeter 2009). Despite the best efforts of the welfare state, structural disadvantage across class, race and gender lines is clearly maintained, and the welfare state has offen acted to reinforce rather than challenge these forms of structural disadvantage (Williams 1989, Jamrozik 1991, Rodger 2000). Itis a mistake to assume that the welfare state alone is an adequate mechanism for bringing about a fairer society; much more fundamental structural change is necessary, and the welfare state can really only ameliorate the worst effects of structural disadvantage. 3 Impartiality Partiality and discretion are present at all levels of the human service bureaucracy. Indeed, the nature of human interaction and human problems is such that some administrative discretion is required if welfare state systems are to continue to operate, as emphasised in Lipsky’s classic study of ‘street- level bureaucracy’ (1980). This discretion will inevitably be somewhat arbitrary, given human values and the need for the individual bureaucrat to survive in the bureaucracy. Although impartiality is an ideal of the welfare state, and large volumes of rules and regulations are produced and constantly modified in pursuit of this ideal, in practice it is always necessary for workers to exercise a degree of discretion, whether officially acknowledged or not, and this results in consumers not being treated with ‘equal’ respect and dignity. The ideal of impartiality has not been achieved by the modern welfare state, and the inevitable partiality has resulted in differing levels of access to services and varying quality of services. These differences have tended to reinforce the class, race and gender inequalities mentioned above. ‘The implications of this argument are significant, and will be taken up in more detail in later chapters, where the commmmity-based alternative is spelled out in more detail. But for present purposes the point is simply that impartiality has not been a feature of the modern welfare state, and that it represents a weak justification for the needs-of-strangers approach. 4 ConfidentialityOne of the advantages claimed for the needs-of-strangers model of the modern welfare state is that it is able to ensure confidentiality for consumers, whereas smaller, more locally based structures could lead to private information being divulged to other people as part of a local ‘gossip’ network. Unfortunately, this aim of the welfare state is more apparent than real. The fact that the welfare state is, apparently of necessity, a large and complex bureaucratic structure means that information has to be shared, commumicated and stored in databases. Reports have to be written and filed, decisions are made in teams, and specific cases are discussed in meetings, consultations and professional supervision. Some are written up as case studies or used for educational purposes. As well as this large commmmication network, there is the tendency for workers to gossip, and there are also the inevitable security breaches, misplacement of documents and coincidences of recognition, Hence the assumption of confidentiality cannot be made in one’s dealings with the welfare state, and sharing one’s needs or problems (however intimate) with the welfare state is almost a guarantee that they will be known by a large number of people and recorded for posterity. 5 Anonymity The service structures of Gesellschaft society are based in part on the assumption of a ‘right’ to anonymity; namely the right of a person to receive services from a stranger and to avoid sharing their problems with someone who is known personally. This right can be seen as an advantage of the welfare state, but it can also be seen as a manifestation of the anomie and alienation of contemporary society. Services that guarantee anonymity only tend to be depersonalised, and a preference for anonymity makes sense only in a society where problems are seen as individual private concerns, and where social interaction beyond fragmentary instrumental relationships is seen as deviant or dangerous. The commumity-based approach, discussed in later chapters, advocates the reverse: namely, that services for people might in fact be more appropriately designed and delivered by those who know those people personally, and who understand their needs, culture and lifestyle, In another era such an idea would have been regarded as so obviously true as not to need stating, and itis only in the context of Gesellschaft society, and the needs-of-strangers approach, that it is seen as a radical and almost revolutionary notion. Rather than being a reason to preserve the needs-of-strangers model, the anonymity of the welfare state can instead be regarded as a good reason for seeking a more community-based alternative. 6 Accountability Another argument put forward for the needs-of-strangers welfare state model is that, through the structures of government and the state, public accountability can be maintained. Thus consumers and society in general have access to mechanisms by which they can question those who plan and provide services, and can hold them accountable for their actions. The citizen has recourse to various complaints and appeals tribunals, to bodies such as human rights commissions, to administrative appeals tribunals, to an ombudsman and directly to parliament through an elected representative. While these accountability mechanisms may be present in theory, the experience of those whowork in the welfare state is that they often do not work well, particularly for the relatively powerless and inarticulate consumer. Sophisticated mechanisms have developed within bureaucracies to minimise the effects of accountability mechanisms, and indeed the bureaucracy needs such mechanisms for survival. ‘The current climate of economic rationalism and managerialism has highlighted only one direction of accountability: namely, accountability ‘upwards’ to management. More important, from the perspective of this book, is accountability ‘downwards’ to the consumer or ‘outwards’ to the community, The welfare state may be moderately effective at ensuring upward accountability, but it is hard to mount a justification that it has been at all successful at supporting and encouraging accountability downwards or outwards; in fact, its bureaucratic structures militate against this. It should be noted, indeed, that the common usage of the words upwards and downwards in this context simply reinforces the dominant view, which sees the manager as in the important, superior position while the consumer is kept firmly at the bottom; the approach proposed in this book seeks to establish the reverse. Space does not permit a full outline of the objections to the needs-of-strangers approach characteristic of the modern welfare state, but the above discussion should at least be sufficient to demonstrate that the main arguments in support of such a model are not necessarily very strong. They should not therefore be seen as significant impediments to the development of a community-based model. Some of these issues will be explored in more detail in later chapters, to the extent that they inform the approach to policy and practice devel oped in this book. The next steps ‘This chapter has identified, inevitably briefly, some of the problems facing the modern welfare state, and has suggested that the welfare state is not sustainable in the long term. Many of the conventional policy directions proposed as a response to the crisis in the welfare state are also unlikely to be sustainable, but a community-based approach does, at first sight, seem to offer more promise. For this to occur, however, it will be necessary to base it in a much more thorough and wide-ranging analysis of change in the social, economic and political order. Community-based human services will need to be located within a broader program of social change based on a philosophy of sustainability, social justice and commumity devel opment. In order to develop such a program, and to see what community-based services might look like and how they might operate within a sustainable society, it is thus necessary to embark on a wider analysis. The next four chapters therefore will seek to develop a vision of a future society that is ecologically feasible, is based on principles of social justice, and reflects more recent thinking about alternatives to Enlightenment modernity. Following this, the focus will revert to commmity development, and to the development of community-based alternatives consistent with such a vision, before moving in later chapters to more specific issues of the ‘practice’ of community work.2 Foundations of community development: An ecological perspective ‘The approach to community work developed in this book rests on three principal foundations. The first is an ecological perspective, which is the subject of this chapter. The second, a social justice perspective, will be discussed in chapter 3. And the third, a post-Enlightenment perspective, will be discussed in chapter 4, Each perspective has been influential in stimulating commumity-based solutions to problems and in promoting community development practice. The extent to which the three perspectives are conceptually distinct is an interesting point for discussion. This will be taken up in chapter 5, where the three perspectives are considered together, leading to a vision of an alternative society in which the concept of commmmity and the process of community development play a major role The ecological perspective outlined later in this chapter derives from the Green critique of the current social, economic and political order. This critique represents a powerful and fimdamental challenge to many of the accepted norms of social and political discourse. Itis a challenge that, in the twenty-first century, can no longer be ignored, and which will inevitably play a major role in the shaping of a future society. Crisis ‘The threat of impending crisis has always been a part of the human condition. Such threats constantly remind us of the precariousness of human existence. Religious prophets have frequently foretold the end either of the world, or of ‘civilisation as we know it’, based on anything from personal revelation to the reading of sacred texts, to the interpretation of signs and portents in the natural world. In this they have been joined by others who fear that the world that they cherish and value cannot Last, and who see only a bleak future. Indeed, a very human response to change, of whatever sort, is to seek to hold on to the familiar and to fear the loss of things we value, Nostal gia for ‘the good old days’ and a concern about future threats are not confined to the present, but have been a part of the human experience throughout recorded history. Sometimes people’s worst fears are realised, and a crisis has proved to be real and serious: war, economic collapse, natural disasters and so on. At other times, especially with millenarian prophecies, fears prove to be unfounded, and this can then lead to complacency as in the phrase ‘Don’t worry, it'll never happen’. Although it appears that a fear of crisis is always with us, there are three reasons why the current crises facing humanity are particularly significant and require serious attention. The first is that, unlike the various millenarian prophecies, the threats we currently perceive are foretold not by religious prophets but by scientists, on the basis not of religious insight or divine revelation, but rather as the result of painstaking and extensive research. They demand to be taken seriously, and cannot be simply dismissed as the work of ‘prophets of doom’, despite the rhetoric of climate-change deniers and others who seek to minimise the serious crises facing the contemporary world. Thesecond reason for particular concern is that we are facing not one single crisis but several. Not only is climate change a major threat but so also is the impending food crisis, the crisis of inadequate water supply, desertification and deforestation, topsoil erosion, the over-fishing of the oceans, the continuing poisoning of the biosphere through air, water and soil pollution and food additives, species extinction, mass movements of people (the ‘refugee crisis” seems sure to escalate), the resource crisis including ‘Peak Oil’, and other pressures of over-population. With these crises will come three associated crises — an economic crisis, a political crisis and the threat of nuclear warfare — as the institutions of government, global capital and civil society find they cannot cope with the demands on them and that ‘business as usual” is not an option (Shearman & Smith 2007, Hamilton 2010). ‘There will be some disagreement about the significance and severity of some these crises (e.g, the debate about ‘Peak Oil”), but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that by the middle of the twenty-first century the world will be affected not just by one crisis but by a ‘perfect storm’ of multiple crises that will serve to reinforce each other, resulting in the deaths of many millions (if not billions) of people, and in poverty, dislocation and misery for many more. The threat of these multiple crises is overwhelming; while humanity may be able to cope effectively with one or even two of these, it is surely too much to expect that we will be able to address them all. ‘The third reason for particular concern is that we have been repeatedly warned, yet our political leaders refuuse to act. The institutions that were established to regulate human activity have proved to be unwilling or unable to act in the collective interests of humanity, the response has characteristically been ‘too little, too Late’, Policies aimed at addressing climate change, for example, are grossly inadequate (Spratt & Sutton 2008, Kolbert 2006), and are set alongside policies that encourage economic growth and the continued depletion of resources, such as the repeated assurances of the Australian Government that ‘the Australian coal industry has a bright future’. Whether it is through reluctance or impotence, the inability of political leaders to act effectively on the major crises facing humanity has resulted in a disillusionment with traditional politics and a lack of confidence in both the political process and politicians. ‘These impending crises have led Green thinkers to seek radical alternatives, and these crises also give the Green position a sense of urgency and inevitability. From a Green perspective, change is not a luxury that can be postponed until the time is right; the problems are urgent and immediate, and failure to act could place the future of human civilisation, and indeed the very survival of the human race (as well as many other species), at risk. At different times, and in different places, different problems assume importance in popular consciousness. In the 1970s, for example, the resource crisis was of major public concern, and the need for nuclear disarmament was a major issue in the 1980s. From the late 1980s, problems of changing the ecological balance received more attention, and global warming dominated the debate in the 2000s, at least until 2008 when the fragility of the global financial system became evident. In places like Tasmania and British Columbia, loss of wilderness always seems to be an issue of public significance, although it waxes and wanes elsewhere. Yet despite the vagaries of public awarenessand media coverage, all these problems are still with us, and the indications are that each is getting worse. Each is sufficient to cause major concern, and requires immediate and significant attention at local, national and global levels. They potentially threaten the long-term, or even medium-term, survival of the human race, or at the very least of ‘civilisation’ (Homer-Dixon 2006). Taken together, they indicate an overall crisis of enormous magnitude, and it is only when they are considered together that the seriousness of the coming period of crisis can be fully appreciated. Environmental responses and Green responses In considering the responses to these crises, an important distinction needs to be made between what will here be referred to as environmental responses and Green responses. Other writers have used different terminology, such as light green anddark green (Dobson 1995) , environmental and ecological (Bookchin 1991), or deep and shallow ecology (Fox 1990). Environmental responses to ecological problems have two important characteristics. First, they seek to solve specific problems by finding discrete solutions, Thus, the problem of global warming is to be solved by reducing greenhouse gases; problems of resource depletion by alternative technologies; problems of pollution by anti-pollution technology; problems of population by family planning programs; problems of loss of wilderness by creating protected areas; problems of species extinction by endangered species programs, and so on. Each problem is isolated, and a specific solution is sought. Such an approach is characteristic linear thinking, which has played a dominant role in the Western world view within which industrial and technological ‘progress’ has developed (Saul 1992, Postman 1993, Torgerson 1999, Macy 2007). ‘The second characteristic of environmental responses is that they seek solutions within the existing social, economic and political order. It is not seen as necessary to change the nature of society in any fundamental way, but rather the existing order is seen as capable of solving the problem through the application of technical expertise. This normally involves a reliance on technological solutions, and in an era where technological progress and expertise are so highly valued it is not surprising that sophisticated new technology should be expected, often implicitly, to solve all problems. This faith in technology and expertise is seen at its most extreme form in the reaction to the threat from nuclear waste, one of the most concerning pollution problems of the postwar era. It is still considered, by many, quite acceptable to continue to operate nuclear reactors producing highly toxic waste, because it is assumed that eventually the problem of long-term waste disposal will be solved through some technological innovation. The possibility that such an answer may not be found because it does not exist, and the dire consequences of such an eventuality, are not seriously entertained. Similarly, coal- mining and coal-fired power stations continue to operate largely because of the belief that effective “carbon capture and storage’ technology will be developed and utilised, even though that technology has yet to be demonstrated and, at the time of writing, its implementation is many years away. This is, effectively, gambling the future of the planet on the ability of technology to solve all problems that may eventuate.By contrast, the Green response to environmental problems takes a more fundamental or radical approach. It sees environmental problems as being merely the symptoms of a more significant underlying problem. They are the consequence of a social, economic and political order that is blatantly unsustainable, and hence it is the social, economic and political order that needs to be changed (Dobson 1995, Carter 1999, Torgerson 1999). Conventional, linear, technological solutions to environmental problems may be adequate (and indeed essential) in the short term, but in the long term they will prove inadequate unless more fundamental social, political and economic change occurs. Thus, the Green position sees environmental problems not as separate individual problems but as related, in that they are all consequences of the major underlying problem; namely the unsustainability of the existing order. It seeks to apply ecological principles to the solving of environmental problems, which inevitably requires a more holistic perspective than the conventional linear approach. If environmental problems are seen as the result of the social, economic and political system, the nature of the problem fundamentally changes. Conventional approaches to the environment see the problems as physical problems, to do with air, water, pollutants, chemical reactions, soils, climate, ‘ecosystems’, temperature and so on, thus requiring essentially physical and technical solutions. ‘Therefore the physical sciences are seen as the major disciplinary base for dealing with these problems; the physical sciences form the basis of most courses in ‘environmental science’, and physical scientists are seen as the ‘experts’ in environmental issues. The Green perspective, by contrast, sees environmental problems as essentially social, economic and political problems. They are caused by the kind of society we have developed, and to understand and deal with environmental problems we must seek wisdom and expertise from the social, economic and political sciences, rather than merely from the physical sciences and technologies, which are really able to deal only with the symptoms. ‘The perspective of this book accepts the Green, rather than the environmental, view of ecological problems. If the ecological crisis is to be effectively resolved, it will be through social, economic and political change, rather than through scientific and technological progress. Community work is potentially one of the most effective ways to develop a more sustainable society, and is thus directly relevant fo a Green analysis, The expertise of community workers, in terms of both knowledge and skills, has much to contribute to the Green movement; it is therefore not surprising that the Green movement has been one of the forces behind an upsurge of interest in community devel opment. Themes within Green analysis While the Green perspective accepts the fundamental social—economic-political basis for the ecological crisis, and the need for fundamental change, there is some disagreement in the Green literature about the basic analysis, or exactly what it is that needs to change. Not surprisingly, Green literature reflects the divisions that can be found in broader social science writing, and different perspectives that have been brought to bear on other social problems are reflected in the definition and analysis of issues raised by the ecological crisis. Some of these different perspectives areoutlined briefly below, but space restrictions require that these will be discussed only superficially and inevitably oversimplified (see table 2.1, overleaf). Table 2.1 Schools of Green thought Stream of Green thought Eco-socialism Eco-anarchism Eco-feminism Eco-Luddism Anti-growth Green ‘economics Work and the labour market Global development Eco-philosophy New paradigm thinking Perception of major problem Capitalism Hierarchy, government, bureaucracy Patriarchy Technology Growth (economic, population, consumption, etc) Conventional economic theory Definitions of work, relance on the labour market as distributive mechanism Dominance and exploitation of South by the North, global inequity, ‘development’ Anthropocentric world view Newtonian-Cartesian world view, linear thinking Proposed solution Socialist society Decentralisation, local control, absence of centval government Feminist revolution, valuing women's attributes, ending gender oppression Low-level human-scale technology, ending mindless technological ‘progress’ No-growth society 1 Sustainable economics, including externalities 2 Decentralised economics New definitions of work and leisure, guaranteed basic income Global equity, appropriate development Ecocentric world view Holistic, systemic paradigm Eco-socialism Eco-socialists argue that the ecological crisis is essentially the consequence of capitalism. In an extension of a Marxist analysis, the growth and industrialisation that have accompanied the development of capitalism are seen as having resulted in waste, overconsumption and pollution, together with a lack of responsibility for the health of the planet. The environment, as well as an oppressed and alienated workforce, has paid the price for capitalism's successes, The ideology of capitalism has emphasised individualism and an exploitative relationship not only with the working class but also with the land and natural resources.From this perspective, the solution to the ecological crisis lies with a form of socialism. Adequate protection for the environment, and conservation of resources, can be more easily achieved through a collectivist or communist system. The need for a transition to a socialist society is therefore given added urgency by the gravity of the ecological crisis. Eco-socialism suggests that it is only through the elimination (or at least reduction) of private property and capitalist ownership of the means of production that the social and collective values inherent in a sustainable society can be realised. Eco-anarchism ‘A somewhat contradictory position to eco-socialism is taken by the eco-anarchists. They maintain that the ecological crisis is a result of the structures of domination and control exemplified by government, business, military forces and other forms of regulation. To anarchists, these structures deny human freedom and the potential to enjoy nature. They limit genuine human interaction and human potential. They have alienated human beings from the natural world, as a result of which people have developed ecologically disastrous practices, Eco-anarchists therefore seek a society where there is minimal (or no) central control, where decisions are taken by individuals or in small localised community groupings. Instead of hierarchical forms of social organisation, they prefer decentralised, autonomous and local forms of organisation, based on ecological principles, or ‘social ecology’ to use the words of Murray Bookchin (1990, 1991), perhaps the most influential eco- anarchist writer. ‘There is a long history of anarchist writers showing a concern for the natural environment, and a longing to ‘get back to nature’, in their quest for freedom from oppressive structures (Marshall 1992a, 1992b). For example, the work of Thoreau (1854), writing in the nineteenth century, would not be out of place in a collection of contemporary Green writing, There is indeed an element of anarchist thinking in much of the current Green literature, specifically in the rejection of the dehumanising and alienating characteristics of large centralised government (and non-government) structures, and in the advocacy of a ‘small is beautiful’ philosophy. Eco-feminism While eco-socialists see the problem in terms of capitalism, and eco-anarchists see it in terms of structures of domination and control, eco-feminists see the problem of an ecologically insane world primarily in terms of patriarchy and its consequences (Mellor 1992, Plumwood 1993, Salleh 1997, ‘Warren 2000). From this point of view, patriarchal structures of domination, oppression and control have resulted in a competitive, acquisitive and exploitative society. A patriarchal society has ultimately proved to be unsustainable, and is causing environmental disasters from which it is proving incapable of extricating itself Thus, the change that eco-feminists perceive as needed is the change embodied in the feminist movement, whereby patriarchal structures are challenged, dismantled, deconstructed and replaced. Of course the feminist movement, like the other movements described in this section, has different andconflicting strands and emphases, and there is not space to explore these in detail here. Liberal feminists who simply argue that women should be encouraged and supported to ‘compete’ effectively with men within existing structures do not qualify for inclusion in the eco-feminist movement for the purposes of this analysis, as they are merely reasserting the value of the existing social, economic and political order. Of greater significance is the work of structural feminist writers, who argue that a feminist analysis requires the development of a society based on different organisational principles, seeking to replace competitive structures with cooperative structures, to replace individualism with genuine collective decision-making, and to value all people rather than to support the domination, control, oppression and exploitation of some by others. Poststructural feminism emphasises discourses of oppression, the way patriarchy has dominated discourses of power, and seeks to deconstruct such discourses and to validate the voices of the marginalised. Some feminist writers also recognise the importance of characteristics traditionally ascribed to women, such as nurturing, caring, sharing, commmity and peace as at least as important as (if not more important than) characteristics traditionally ascribed to men, such as individual competition, aggression, domination, exploitation and a war-like nature. Eco-Luddism Another strand within Green writing is the critique of technology, arguing that unbridled technological development, far from bringing boundless benefits for humanity, creates more problems than it solves, and is largely responsible for the problems of the world today. Using the term Luddism to describe this position is not intended to be derogatory; although the word Luddite has become a term of abuse levelled at people who mistrust new technologies, it can also be argued that a healthy mistrust of new technologies is precisely what has been lacking during the period of industrial capitalism. ‘The Luddites of the early nineteenth century, and other anti-technology movements that both preceded and followed them, were in effect articulating a simple but extremely significant view: namely, that social goals must not be subordinated to economic goals, and that technological development can have negative human consequences (Harrison 1984, Hobsbawm & Rudé 1969). This strikes at the very core of the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, and questions its fundamental assumption that technological development is for the good of all. It is small wonder that the Luddites and those in related movements were ruthlessly repressed by the authorities. Because these were essentially working-class movements, without the ‘benefit’ of literate and articulate representatives who could express their views in the respectable vocabulary of social and political philosophy, it is easy to dismiss them as ignorant and ill-informed, not deserving serious consideration. Their message, however, is profoundly relevant today, and at Last is falling on more sympathetic ears. In the late twentieth century, the cause of the Luddites finally found its intellectual champions, in such writers as Hlich (1973), Schumacher (1973), Postman (1993) and Mander (1991). These writers argued that the popular view of technology as ‘value-free’ is a myth. The issue has become still more critical in the early twenty-first century, with the explosion of computer technology to include social media, dramatically affecting the social interactions of billions of people (Manzini 2011, Harding 2011, De Young & Princen 2012). There is also the dramatic increase in the use of surveillancetechnology, such as CCTV cameras, which are typically used to reinforce powerful interests and to exert additional control over the most vulnerable. We have developed technologies with effects we do not understand, and unsustainability and uncertainty are consequences of our rapidly evolving technological society. Such a view relies heavily on the analysis of Ivan Ilich, who has argued that technologies in a number of areas — medicine, transport, education — have developed to the point where the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Other writers (Bowers 2000, Baym 2010, Bauerlein 2011, Turkle 2011, Carr 2010) have applied a comparable critique to computers, information technology, the internet and social media, pointing out that we are so excited about the advantages that we lose sight of the negatives: the devaluing of any human ‘knowledge’ or ‘experience’ that cannot be reduced to digital impulses; the increasing individualisation as people retreat into cyberspace and no longer interact with other human beings; and the way in which information technology is redefining the dominant culture in ways that have received little critique. From this perspective, the traditional ‘environmentalist’ response to ecological problems, namely to seek a technological solution, is self-defeating, Advanced technology is seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Further technological research and development, while undoubtedly providing some benefits, will do so only at increasing social and environmental cost, and there is likely to be a net cost rather than a net benefit to humanity. Such a position advocates lower rather than higher levels of technology as the answer, seeking to develop technologies that are on a more ‘man scale’, being able to be used and controlled by ordinary people, and directly related to their wellbeing. Anti-growth Some writers in the Green movement perceive growth to be the major problem. The existing order is premised on the desirability and inevitability of growth, including economic growth, population growth, the growth of urban areas, the growth of afiluence and the growth of organisations. Bigger is equated with better, and one of the major criteria for success and quality is for things to be growing. Economic growth is regarded as a primary goal of economic policy, and as the mechanism by which “full employment’, prosperity and community wellbeing will be maintained. It is assumed that cities will continue to grow, and planners are required to determine how cities will ‘cope with’ growth in terms of transport, housing, land use, water, pollution and so on. The health of a business is measured by its growth in size, turnover and profit, and the ‘success stories’ of business are of small businesses that become big businesses. The assumption of the value of growth, and of bigger being better, is so ingrained that it is barely questioned. Everything is expected (indeed required) to grow, whether it be economies, cities, businesses, community organisations, professional football leagues, universities, resource consumption or tourism. ‘The problem, of course, is that we live in a finite world. Growth cannot continue for-ever, as the finite nature of the earth limits both the resources available and the extent to which the costs of growth can be borne. Such writers as David Suzuki (Suzuki, McConnell & Mason 2007) have argued that there are clear signs that the natural limits to growth are being reached and that growth cannot continue, The environmental crisis is the result of growth having outstripped the earth's capacity tocope with its consequences This critique of growth is closely related to the concept of sustainability. The existing system is seen as unsustainable, and further growth only makes it more so. Hence, an alternative based on principles of sustainability is advocated. This alternative would effectively limit growth and would ensure that, as much as possible, resources are used only at a rate at which they can be replaced, and that output to the environment is limited to the level at which it can be absorbed. The concept of sustainability is central to a Green perspective, and will be discussed later in this chapter. Alternative economics Another strand of Green analysis, closely related to the ‘no-growth’ position, is alternative economics, This perspective sees the major problem as being the economic ‘wisdom’ that has developed within industrial capitalism, as it has encouraged overconsumption, waste, growth and the devaluing of the environment. It thus seeks to develop a new economics, based on ecological principles. ‘There are two main streams within alternative ‘Green’ economics. The first seeks to redefine conventional economic analysis to incorporate the concerns of environmentalists. Conventional analysis, in calculating costs and benefits, has treated environmental factors as externalities, and therefore has not included them in the comparison of costs and benefits, Thus, an industry that discharges toxic waste into the environment has been able to do so without cost, and the cost to the environment is not included in the calculation of the nett benefit of this industry to the economy. There is, of course, a cost associated with having to clean up the environment, but this is not borne by the industry concerned so it is not considered part of its profit or loss. Indeed, environmental costs are often borne by people or governments far away from the source, as is the case with acid rain or nuclear fallout. Similarly, social costs tend not to be included in conventional economic calculations. The social costs or benefits of a particular industry or activity, like the environmental costs, are notoriously difficult to measure (some would say impossible), and the response of conventional economics has been to treat them as externalities and therefore to leave them out of the calculation. A related problem with conventional economics is its definition of value in terms of economic productivity or market price. That such phenomena as wilderness, native forests, peace, security and endangered species can have intrinsic value is not acknowledged in conventional economic calculations. Thus, in an example often cited by Greens, conventional economics dictates that a standing tree has no value; it is only when it is cut down and becomes a ‘resource’ that it can be regarded as valuable. In this way, conventional economics can fly in the face of what, from an ecological perspective, is self-evident. ‘The existing system, adopting conventional ‘economic wisdom’, effectively acts to reduce or destroy things of value such as beauty, peace, wilderness, security, endangered species and community, while at the same time creating undesirable outcomes such as pollution, overcrowding,congestion, health problems, stress, ugliness and overconsumption. A number of Green economists are seeking to develop an alternative economics that does take account of these environmental and social factors, by developing ways in which they might be measured and incorporated in an economic analysis that more truly reflects ecological and social reality (e.g. Jacobs 1991). ‘The second main strand of alternative Green economics seeks a more fundamental change, beyond merely redefining the way economic equations are calculated, Hazel Henderson (1988, 1991), Paul Ekins (1986, 1992) and Manfred Max-Neef (1991; see also Ekins & Max-Neef 1992) were particularly significant writers in establishing this perspective. They argued for a fundamental paradigm change in the way economic and social phenomena are described. Their vision of economics is embedded in a broader vision of a change of human values, incorporating many of the other perspectives described in this chapter. Another important alternative economic perspective, which, like Henderson, Ekins and Max-Neef, goes further than the redefinition of economic equations, is proposed by those who seek a more decentralised and commmity-based economic system. For them, the main problem with conventional economic activity is that it is out of the reach of ordinary people, who are disempowered and impoverished by transnational capitalism. This transfers profits from poor areas (whether countries in the South or ‘economically disadvantaged’ communities in the North) to richer areas, thereby increasing economic inequality and inequity. It also contributes to ecological destruction by promoting economic activity that is not closely related to the lives and experiences of ordinary people, and which takes no account of environmental sensitivities. This analysis leads to the advocacy of localised alternatives: local employment generation, community banks and credit schemes, micro-finance, barter systems, local currency systems (often known as LETS) and so on (Shuman 2012, Hallsmith & Lietaer 2011, Cortese 2011, Greco 2009). This, of course, has particular relevance for community development, and will be taken up further in chapter 10. Throughout this literature on Green economics the perspective of EF. Schumacher, who helped to popularise the maxim ‘Small is beautiful’, has been particularly important. Schumacher sought to articulate alternative, human-scale approaches to economics and technology, and was a pioneer in the alternative economics movement (Schumacher 1973, Lutz 1992). His work is also relevant in the critique of technology, described above in the section on eco-Luddism. Work, leisure and the work ethic ‘The nature and definition of work is fundamental in modern industrial society. The labour market is the primary mechanism for allocating financial resources to individuals and families, and hence for giving people the capacity to participate in the economic and social life of the commmnity. Itis also a significant means of allocating status within society and, through the trade union movement and various forms of industrial welfare, a mechanism for determining social rights. Paid labour is seen as the primary way for most of society's social and economic goals to be achieved, despite the fact that muuch socially necessary and usefull work is unpaid; this especially applies to work traditionallyundertaken by women. A clear distinction is made between work (whether paid or unpaid) and leisure, although there is also a recognition that what is work for one person may be leisure for another, and many human activities typically belong in both work and leisure categories (e.g. community service, playing football, gardening and making music). It must be emphasised that the way in which work is understood is historically a recent phenomenon, and is a product of the development of industrial capitalism (Weber 1930). Working hard has not always been highly valued, and is not necessarily valued in non-Western cultural traditions, but this value has been an essential part of capitalist development. Similarly, the distinctions between paid work, unpaid work and leisure have not always been so clear as they are today; in feudal society, for example, these were understood quite differently. From a Green perspective, it can be argued that understandings of work and leisure, the role of work, the division of labour and the labour market are part of the problem that has caused the ecological crisis now facing the world, Certainly the world of work and employment is undergoing major changes, and is likely to continue to do so. Unemployment (and underemployment) is one of the major social problems of modern societies, and conventional economics seems unable to deal with it effectively without promoting levels of economic growth that are ecologically unsustainable. The neo-liberal trend towards casualisation of the labour force, and the continued demand from managers for more ‘flexibility’, have resulted in increasing insecurity for many. Some Green writers therefore have suggested that radical reformulations of work and leisure are fundamental to a successfull Green alternative. This critique is closely associated with those of the eco-socialists and with the writers in the area of alternative economics. ‘The work of André Gorz (1983) has been particularly significant in this regard. Gorz suggested that economic and technological progress need not result in increased consumption and unemployment, but rather in shorter working hours and improved quality of life for all. This requires social rather than economic criteria to be paramount in the determination of how jobs are to be defined and distributed. It is an indication of the dominance of the neo-liberal narrative that such an obvious idea has not been taken seriously in the three decades since Gorz was writing. The distinction between work and leisure would also be less marked in a future Green society. This would be achieved partly by making work more community-based, and partly by seeking other forms of meeting people’s basic income needs than through the labour market, for example through a guaranteed minimum income scheme, thereby allowing people to derive status from unpaid as well as paid activities. Global development Another strand of analysis that has been significant in the development of the Green perspective has been the work done on global development, by such writers as Robert Chambers (2005), Ted Trainer (2010a , 2010b), Susan George (2004, 2010) and Vandana Shiva (2005). Many of the worst environmental problems occur in nations that are characterised as ‘the South’, where there are highlevels of pollution in urban areas, land degradation on a massive scale and high levels of population growth, and where wilderness areas such as rainforests are being rapidly destroyed. Much of this environmental destruction is the result of governments of the South seeking to promote economic development, through developing industry, more ‘efficient’ land use and the exploitation of natural resources. It is important to emphasise that these governments are merely seeking to emulate the economic success of the more ‘developed’ nations, which followed a similar route to economic prosperity through the process of industrialisation, and which were often able to profit from the exploitation of their colonies, now the ‘underdeveloped’ nations of the South, Often they are merely following the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, which typically places neo-liberal requirements on governments seeking financial assistance. Thus, they are understandably resentful of criticism from environmentalists in more affluent nations, arguing that they should not be denied the same opportunities for economic development, and that it was the colonialist exploitation of the countries of the North that has led them to be disadvantaged, The problem, of course, is that it is becoming clear that the world is unable to support the affluence of the North for very much longer, and if the whole world were to develop to the same level as the industrialised North there would be rapid escalation of the ecological crisis. The economic development of nations of the South therefore is simply hastening the coming of the ecological Armageddon. ‘This analysis creates a moral problem for environmentalists of the North. Clearly governments of the South should be opposed in their ecologically disastrous policies of dam-building, timber-felling, land-clearing, nuclear power development, encouragement of high-polluting industry and so on, for the sake of the planet. However, to do so means that, given the current economic and political system, those nations will be denied access to the economic benefits that societies of the North (and their environmentalists) enjoy. Such an argument cannot be justified on the grounds of global equity, which leaves Northern environmentalists open to the charge of using the environment to perpetuate colonialist domination. ‘The way out of this dilemma is for Northern environmentalists to accept that the responsibility for change, and for showing how to develop ecological sustainability, lies with their own societies (Trainer 2010a, 2010b). This means that those in the industrialised world have to embark on a program of dramatically reducing consumption, as it is still the North that is responsible for the bulk of pollution, waste and overconsumption of resources. Thus, the North, rather than the South, as the beneficiary of the supposed benefits of industrialisation, has the responsibility for demonstrating that quality of life need not be equated with an economically defined ‘standard of living’, and it is unreasonable to expect nations of the South to follow such a path without the North showing a lead To use Trainer’s words, ‘The rich must live more simply, so that the poor may simply live* (1985 64). The inability of the North and the South to reach agreement on climate change is a clear example of the way such thinking has yet to be adopted by political leaders. It can also be argued that the environmental problems of the South should not be held to be the responsibility of governments in those regions, because they are the consequence of the policies of theNorth. Global ‘development’, according to the analysis of such writers as George (2004, 2010), Norgaard (1994), Hurrell & Woods (1999) and Shiva (2005), has not primarily served the needs of people in the countries being ‘developed’ but rather the needs of transnational capital, and has effectively supported the afiluent lifestyles of the North, This approach to development has been dictated by ‘authorities’ from agencies based in the North, and has operated in favour of the interests they represent, It has been supported by the actions of such bodies as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, as well as by military force. Thus, the North can be seen as being directly responsible for the environmental problems of the South. This is another powerful argument why change in Northern societies is essential if ecological sustainability is to be achieved at a global level ‘The vast differences between the ‘developed’ North and the ‘underdeveloped’ South are a clear indictment of the inadequacy of the global capitalist order to bring about global equity. From a Green perspective, there are two significant points to be made. The first is that responsibility for change to ecological sustainability in the South requires fundamental changes in the North, The second is that the holistic and systemic approach of the Green position emphasises that we live in one finite world, and that all people are interconnected in terms of their current existence and ultimate fate. Human civilisation will survive only if there is a radical change to ecological sustainability in both the North and the South. Thus, the oneness of all people transcends national and cultural boundaries, and the social and environmental policies of other nations are the legitimate concern of all. Not only is it legitimate for environmental activists in the North to pressure countries of the South to adopt better environmental practices but also it is just as legitimate (if not more so) for people of the South to pressure Northern governments to mend their ways. (See chapters 8 and9 for a fuller discussion of global issues and colonialist devel opment.) Eco-philosophy ‘The strand of Green thought described as eco-philosophy seeks to establish a philosophical basis for environmentalism. Central writers in this area have been Robyn Eckersley (1992), Joanna Macy (2007) and Warwick Fox (1990). They have identified the essentially anthropocentric nature of the dominant ‘Western’ world view, which sees humans as in some way special and different from other living beings (Huggan 2010). From this perception has developed the view that the human species can and should dominate the world and subordinate the interests of other species to the interests of humans. This essentially exploitative stance is also applied to the non-living world. Therefore human action is evaluated in terms of its impact on other humans rather than on other species or the planet as a whole, and humans are not seen as part of the complex web of interactions that is the ‘natural world’. Such a world view is deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition, and is reinforced by the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition (see Marshall 1992b). ‘The connection between such a world view and environmental destruction is obvious, and Fox, Macy and Eckersley argue the need to develop an alternative philosophical framework as a justification for action. Each develops an approach characterised by eco-centrism (as opposed to anthropocentrism), in which humans are not treated as special when compared with other livingbeings, but rather it is the entire ecosystem that is ascribed primary value. This leads to the allocation of intrinsic value to the natural world, instead of simply judging it in terms of its instrumental value to the human species. This, it is argued, is necessary if the changes required to bring about ecological sustainability are to be achieved. It would, for example, provide a philosophical justification for the alternative economic views discussed earlier. This perspective has been given an added dimension by the contribution of Indigenous writers and teachers. Indigenous People around the world have maintained a holistic eco-philosophy, emphasising the interconnectedness and interdependence between people and the natural world. Their life is based on an ecocentric world view, whereby people’s relationships with the land, animals and plants can be as important as relationsips between people themselves (Diamond 2013, Turner 2010, Wallace 2009, Sveiby & Skuthorpe 2006, Mander & Tauli-Corpuz 2006). The Indigenous contribution to ecocentric thinking, and to community development, will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4. Such an analysis is also used to justify the animal rights movement and vegetarianism, causes that are espoused by many (although not all) in the Green movement, with varying degrees of commitment. To some, these are essential components of being Green; to some they are important ideas but not central; while to others they are largely irrelevant. Whether such views are an essential part of a Green position is an interesting area for debate, although somewhat outside the boundaries of this book, so it will not be pursued here. The issue will, however, re-emerge in the discussion of ethical issues in chapter 16. The field of deep ecology also needs to be mentioned at this point. At the risk of gross oversimplification, deep ecology can be described as an approach to ecology characterised by a profound integration of social, economic, personal and spiritual values within an ecocentric perspective. It emphasises personal development and growth as well as a broader analysis, also personal oneness with, and hence identification with, the natural world. When argued by its leading exponent, the Norwegian ecologist Ame Naess (1989, 2008), it is a serious, thoughtful and challenging perspective that has a lot to offer in terms of understanding the consequences of a genuinely integrated and holistic position. It can be regarded as the logical outcome of the ecocentric analysis of Fox, Macy and Eckersley. Unfortunately, deep ecology has been adopted by various ‘fringe’ and ‘new age’ writers, who use the analysis in a more superficial way to incorporate various ‘fads’ in a Green position. It has also led to the argument that says, ‘To change the world you must begin with yourself’, simplistically seeing personal growth as the solution to all the world’s problems. While personal growth is certainly important and an essential component of community development (see chapter 11), the danger of such a perspective is that it readily accepts dominant discourses of power, ignores the important structural factors that both cause and perpetuate the dominant social, economic and political order, and leads people to believe that simply by meditating, wearing crystals, reading Tarot cards or undergoing body therapy they can change the world (Tacey 2000). This is not necessarily to deny the value of these activities in themselves — many people find them important in helping to give meaningand purpose to their lives — but rather to emphasise that while personal growth may be desirable, and indeed necessary, it is certainly not sufficient for effective social change. New paradigm thinking ‘The terms paradigm and new paradigm were overused in the 1980s and 1990s, and have somewhat dropped out of usage since, but the concept of a new paradigm is important in understanding the Green perspective. In this context, paradigm means the world view within which theory, practice, knowledge, science, action and so on are conceptualised, The paradigm is the set of assumptions, ideas, understandings and values (usually unstated) that sets the rules of what is to count as relevant or irrelevant; what questions should and should not be asked; what knowledge is seen as legitimate; and what practices are acceptable. Acceptance of a paradigm is normally a matter of unstated, and often unconscious, consensus. For example, the dominant paradigm for scientific research and practice accepts objectively measurable and verifiable phenomena as proper objects for study, but rejects phenomena that cannot be thus characterised; hence astronomy is a ‘proper’ science while astrology is not, ‘real’ medicine includes drug therapy and surgery but not magic or faith healing, and so on. It is the paradigm, in other words, that defines what is ‘proper’ or legitimate knowledge and activity. TS, Kuhn, who argued the importance of paradigms in The Structure of Scientific Revoluitions (1970), described how scientific activity takes place within a certain paradigm that, after a time, proves to be inadequate as a framework for new knowledge. As a result there is a ‘revolution’ resulting in the development of a new paradigm, and a reorientation of scientific thought within a new world view. The transition from Newtonian physics to the physics of relativity and quantum theory is a clear example of such a paradigm shift (or ‘scientific revolution’, to use Kuhn’s terminology). Although Kuhn applied the notion of paradigm to scientific endeavour, the idea has been applied much more broadly, Writers from a variety of disciplines suggested that many of the problems facing the world can be understood as resulting from the inadequacy of the ‘dominant paradigm’, which is variously defined as Western, industrial, Cartesian, Newtonian, Enlightenment, mechanistic, modernist and a number of other ways (Saul 1992, Hind 2007, Nicholson 1999, Capra 1982, Henderson 1991, Omstein & Ehrlich 1989). They suggest that this particular paradigm, or world view, while it has had undoubted benefits for immanity, has now reached a point where it is increasingly dysfunctional, and that we will be unable to solve the pressing problems of the day unless we develop an alternative. Although not all such writers would identify themselves as ‘Green’, new paradigm thinking has been central to the Green movement and incorporates many of the views described earlier in this chapter. ‘There are many strands of new paradigm thinking, seeking to challenge the dominant world view that has led the world to the brink of ecological catastrophe. These will be picked up and discussed further in chapter 4, which considers post-Enlightenment ideas as a basis for commmmity development. An ecological perspectiveIn the midst of this diversity, is it possible to identify a central core of Green social and political theory? The diversity itself need not present a problem, as from a Green perspective there is value in diversity, and a degree of theoretical and ideological pluralism is an advantage; indeed if one were to accept a postmodern Green view, such diversity would be essential. But if indeed the Green perspective is to provide a conceptual basis for commmmity development, it is important to identify some core ideas that can be used as a basis for further discussion, although these may be contested and will be contextualised in different ways. It is also important from the point of view of the Green movement itself, Many of the above strands of thought reflect familiar strands in conventional social and political discourse: socialism, feminism, anarchism, alternative economics and so on. If the Green movement is to offer something new, it is essential to focus on what makes the ‘Green’ forms of these intellectual positions distinctive. What is the difference between eco-socialism and conventional socialism, between eco-feminism and feminism? What does the prefixeco- signify, other than an attempt to appear relevant to the needs of the day? The strands of Green analysis described above are not by and large mutually exclusive, and adoption of one does not exclude the adoption of another. There is no logical reason why a Green position could not be developed that incorporated some elements of most, if not all, of the perspectives outlined in this chapter. Indeed, many of the perspectives reinforce rather than contradict each other. In developing a characteristically Green position, there is a significant problem regarding the definition of what is central to a Green perspective and what is peripheral. Many positions are claimed as part of the Green world view, some of which are quite extreme and which would be rejected by many people in the Green movement. Such views can also retard the cause of the Greens, by inviting negative publicity and providing ready ammumition to the Greens’ political opponents. The question, then, is how to determine the core of a Green position that will be internally consistent, will incorporate the central views of most people in the Green movement, will provide a coherent framework for action and will exclude the “baggage” such a movement inevitably attracts. For the purpose of the remaining chapters of this book and the approach to community development they describe, the core of the Green position is understood in terms of some basic principles of ecology, on the grounds that it is essentially an ecological perspective that turns socialism into eco-socialism, feminism into eco-feminism and so on. Because it relies on ecological principles, this perspective will be referred to as an ecological perspective rather than a Green perspective, even though it is grounded in the above discussion of Green political theory. This ecological perspective uses as unifying themes five basic principles of ecology; namely holism, sustainability, diversity, equilibrium and interdependence (see table 2.2). These are fundamental to any ecological approach, and apply both to the natural world (in traditional ecological environmental studies) and to the social, economic and political order, which is the concern of this book. From these five principles, many of the analyses and prescriptions of the strands of Green writing described above emerge as natural consequences. This perspective contains a degree of internal consistency and represents a position that would probably be accepted by most Greens as legitimate, and as at the core of Green philosophy, although there would be differences of emphasis. It also incorporates most of the thinking outlined earlier in discussion of the different streams of Greenthought. Table 2.2 An ecological perspective Ecological as Consequences 1 Holism Ecocentric philosophy Respect for life and nature Rejection of linear solutions Organic change Relational reality 2 Sustainability Conservation Reduced consumption No-growth economics Constraints on technological devel opment Anti-capitalism 3 Diversity Valuing difference No single answer Decentralisation Networking and lateral communication Lower-level technology 4 Equilibrium Global/local Yin/yang Gender Rights/responsibilities Peace and cooperation 5 Critique of the ideology of ‘independence’ Importance of Interdependence relationships Analyse relationships, not component parts This perspective does not incorporate some elements that a number of Greens take for granted, specifically those dealing with social justice issues such as inequalities of gender, class and race. These are dealt with in different ways by socialism, feminism and other approaches discussed above, but are not necessarily a part of the ecological framework, which is suggested here as a way to integrate the overall Green perspective. These need to be justified on different grounds, which will be the task of chapter 3. Ecological principle 1: holism ‘The principle of holism requires that every event or phenomenon must be seen as part of a whole, and that it can properly be understood only with reference to every other part of the larger system. This is opposed to linear thinking, which is a characteristic of the ‘dominant paradigm’ of Western thought. Thus, problems do not characteristically have ‘simple’ or linear solutions but must always be understood as manifestations of a wider system, as exemplified by the distinction between ‘ecological’ and ‘Green’ approaches outlined at the beginning of the chapter. The interdependence of phenomena is therefore critical (see below) and from this perspective is derived the classicecological dictum “You can never do only one thing’: whatever one does will have ramifications throughout the system, often unanticipated. Therefore everything nuist ideally be understood in terms ofits relationship and interaction with everything else. There is no beginning and no end to processes, and there are no clear boundaries; instead phenomena (both physical and social) must be seen as part of a seamless web of complex interconnecting relationships. Rather than differentiation and classification, which have been characteristic of Western forms of analysis, integration and synthesis become findamental. From this principle, a number of further principles can be derived. The interconnectedness of the holistic world view leads naturally to ecocentric rather than anthropocentric perspectives, as argued by such writers as Fox (1990), Eckersley (1992), Macy 2007) and Naess (1989, 2008). Respect for all life, the intrinsic value of the natural world and, hence, a strong conservationist ethic follow naturally, Holism values generalist rather than specialist approaches to problems and their solution. It also values organic change; attempts to bring about radical change to only one part of a system while ignoring the remainder are almost certain to fail, and will bring about negative consequences elsewhere (a lesson evidently yet to be learned by many conventional economic and social policy- makers and critics). Change should proceed cautiously, in small steps but on a broad front, if it is to have any chance of success. This perspective sounds a note of caution about too strong an attachment to any of the streams of Green thought that see the ecological crisis in simplistic terms, and ascribe responsibility to a single ‘evil’, whether it be capitalism, patriarchy, technology, growth or the work ethic. A successfull Green strategy would accept the legitimacy of most or all these analyses and seek strategies that recognised complexity and interdependence. ‘The holistic perspective also requires integrative links to be made between phenomena that have characteristically been regarded as distinct, such as knowledge and action, theory and practice, fact and value. Such dualisms are a part of the dominant positivist paradigm of the Western intellectual tradition (Fay 1975) and discourage the integrative approach required by the holistic perspective (Plumwood 1993). This is particularly important in thinking about community devel opment work, and will be taken up again in subsequent chapters. A holistic perspective also emphasises the importance of relationship. By emphasising that everything is related to everything else, relationship becomes a central concern. There is an important school of thought that understands reality as relational (Gergen 2000, Spretnak 2011), which will be discussed further in chapter 4. This is a more profound understanding of holism and holistic thinking, butit is central to the ecological approach to community development described in later chapters. Ecological principle 2: sustainability ‘The principle of sustainability means that systems must be able to be maintained in the long term, that resources should be used only at the rate at which they can be replenished, that renewable energy sources should be utilised, that output to the environment should be limited to the level at which it can adequately be absorbed, and that consumption should be minimised rather than maximised, Inevitablythis would require a ‘no-growth’ approach to economics and social organisation, as well as the obvious environmental controls and conservation strategies (Mulder, Ferrer & van Lente 2011). It would require a radical reformulation of economic policy and social organisation, as it would involve a system where becoming bigger was discouraged rather than valued. The concept of sustainability was emphasised by Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), also referred to as the Brundtland Report, which is seen as a landmark document in changing environmental awareness. Unfortunately this report stopped short of explicitly developing the concept of sustainability in the above terms, and sought to define it within more traditional economic parameters, allowing conventional perceptions of the desirability of growth to go unchallenged (for a fuller critique of the Brundtland Report, see Ekins 1992: 30-4). Sustainability was defined in the report within the concept of sustainable development, and as the notion of development is so closely linked in the public consciousness to the idea of growth (the two are often equated, at least implicitly), this has effectively diluted the meaning of sustainability, and allowed it to be used in such a way as not to challenge the centrality of growth. Like the word conimunity, sustainable is a word that has been so abused that it is in danger of losing its substantive meaning, to the point where the blatantly self-contradictory term sustainable growth can be unapologetically used by politicians, business leaders and commentators. If understood within its proper ecological context the concept of sustainability is very powerful, and requires a radical transformation of the existing, blatantly unsustainable order. Not only are unbridled growth and unnecessary consumption unacceptable but also the concept of sustainability clearly attacks the fimdamentals of traditional capitalist economics, which is predicated on growth and capital accumulation. The same is true of conventional socialist economics, which has tended to accept the desirability of continuing growth. It can, however, be argued that there are varieties of each form of economics that are not incompatible with sustainability, and these tend to be the smaller- scale, decentralised versions. In the case of capitalism, this takes the form of the localised market economy; in the case of socialism, it takes the form of decentralised democratic socialism. ‘Thus, the ecological principle of sustainability is readily compatible with some of the arguments of the eco-socialists and the eco-anarchists. It even has a clear link with the views of the eco- Luddites, as it can be suggested that unbridled technological development is also unsustainable, Such arguments would not necessarily invalidate technological development per se, but would require that such development occur for socially and environmentally determined reasons and be constrained by the need to develop sustainable rather than unsustainable technologies. This is in contrast to the perspective of technology within the dominant paradigm, which perceives technological development itself as worthwhile and which allows the technology to determine social and economic interaction (Postman 1993). Ecological principle 3: diversity The principle of diversity is another fmdamental aspect of the ecological perspective. In nature,diverse organisms and systems evolve to meet the needs of particular circumstances, and it is through diversity that natural systems are able to develop, adapt and grow. With diversity, a setback to one system or organism does not necessarily mean disaster for the whole. For example, a diversity of species of wheat means that a disease may strike one or two but is unlikely to affect all. A diversity of cultures means that some at least will prove to be adaptable to new circumstances. Uniformity is a recipe for ecological disaster. If there are effectively only two or three species of wheat in the world, a new disease will potentially wipe out all crops. And uniformity of culture may turn out to be uniformity of a maladaptive or destructive culture, resulting in the breakdown of human civilisation; indeed it could be argued that this is the current experience of cultural globalisation (see chapters 9 and 11). The principle of diversity has not emerged only from a Green, or ecological, perspective. Postmodernist writers have argued that single modernist frameworks, or meta-narratives, are no longer credible or viable in an era of postmodernity, and that the ‘death of the meta-narrative’ (Lyotard 1984) allows for, and even requires, the emergence of alternative narratives and discourses. Postmodernism both promotes and celebrates diversity. Similarly, feminism and the movement for gay and lesbian rights have emphasised the importance of diversity, and have seen diversity as something to be celebrated rather than as something to be stamped out through rational planning and imposed conformity. ‘The principle of diversity maintains that there is not necessarily just one answer, or one right way of doing things, and so encourages a range of responses. It is in sharp contrast to, and much more modest than, the characteristic modernist tendency in Western societies to seek the right answer, then impose it on the whole system — even the whole world — whether that answer is the ‘best’ strain of wheat to replace all others, the ‘best’ form of economics, the ‘best’ new technology, the English language or a uniform culture. The assumption that there must be one best answer is deeply ingrained — perhaps most clearly exemplified in the idea of ‘best practice’ — yet it is this assumption that is questi oned by the principle of diversity. Diversity proceeds in a much more modest way, not arrogantly defining the “best” answer and imposing it, but encouraging a variety of ways of doing things, so that people can learn from the experience of others and so that change can proceed cautiously on the basis of a variety of accumulated wisdom. There is no such thing as ‘best practice’, and difference, rather than uniformity, is valued. This essentially pluralist approach may be criticised as conservative in that it mistrusts ‘radical’ change, and indeed a Green position inherits a good deal from a classical conservative ideology (as opposed to the radical right). Conservatives of this type value what has evolved through natural processes, and warn that attempts to ‘improve’ on it are only likely to make things worse. This is also typical of a conservationist position (it should be noted that the words conservative and conservation have the same root), and many Green causes can be justified by what is essentially conservative rhetoric: the preservation of wilderness, Indigenous land rights, the preservation of species, natural beauty, heritage buildings and so on (Goodin 1992) ‘The principle of diversity rather than uniformity is consistent with a major tenet of Green politicalthought, namely decentralisation. If diversity is valued, then people should be allowed, and encouraged, to find their own local solutions and ways of doing things. Centralised structures tend to create uniformity through bureaucratic control and regulation, and a diverse system is much more easily achieved with maximum decentralisation of decision-making, control over resources, economic activity and so on. Many Green writers (e.g, Trainer 2010a, McIntyre 2011, De Young & Princen 2012) have made decentralised systems a major component of their vision for a Green future. Contrary to Goodin’s suggestion that this is not a necessary consequence of a Green position, if the ecological principle of diversity is included as a major focus, decentralisation in some form becomes inevitably part of a Green political agenda. Ina decentralised system, which values diversity, there need not be isolation of one decentralised community from another. Indeed, from a Green perspective, it is through horizontal communication that experience can be shared and lessons can be learned, far more effectively than from central bureaucratic forms of communication. Thus, change emerges from below, from the day-to-day experiences of ordinary people participating in decentralised structures, and change is organic rather than centrally planned. Such a view sits comfortably with the eco-anarchist position discussed earlier. ‘The question of decentralisation is, however, problematic for the Greens. Unless one takes an extreme anarchist position, there is a clear need for some form of centralised coordination, and perhaps even control, resulting from the interconnectedness that is emphasised by the holistic perspective. Diversity may be valued, but this does not necessarily mean that local bodies can ‘go off and do their own thing’, which may affect others negatively. An interconnected world requires some form of coordination. This issue will be taken up in later chapters, but it also relates directly to the next ecological principle, that of equilibrium. Ecological principle 4: equilibrium Equilibrium emphasises not only the importance of the relationship between systems but also the need to maintain a balance between them. In the natural world, this occurs through dynamic equilibrium, where changes are naturally monitored and alterations made so that balance is maintained. Potentially conflicting systems have their interactions controlled in such a way that they are able to coexist, and even become dependent on each other. This applies to animal populations, vegetation, climate, atmosphere and so on. It is essential if systems are to survive in the long term and hence be sustainable (Suzuki, McConnell & Mason 2007). An ecological perspective therefore values balance, harmony and equilibrium. Under a Green scenario, more attention would be paid to ensuring that different aspects of the social, economic and political system maintained such a balance. This naturally leads to a concern for peace and the non- violent solution of potential conflict, which will be taken up in chapter 7. Mediation, conflict resolution and the building of consensus therefore have an important place in Green thinking. The development of cooperative rather than competitive structures is valued, and the assumption thatcompetition is inherent and intrinsically valuable is seriously questioned (Sullivan, Snyder & Sullivan 2008, Argyle 1991, Craig 1993). Another issue that is addressed by the ecological concern for equilibrium is the capacity to incorporate apparently opposing positions, and to accommodate dialectical relationships (Plumwood 1993), Thus, dualisms — such as male and female, yin and yang, competition and cooperation, global and local, theory and practice, mind and body, personal and political, fact and value or subjective and objective — are not seen in ‘all-or-nothing’ terms but rather are integrated within a perspective of dynamic tension. It is the balance between them that is important, and which must be maintained, For a system to lose equilibrium is to risk ecological failure. Therefore one of the problems of the present order is seen as the way in which balance has not been maintained, for example in terms of gender, where the domination and exploitation of women by men has led to imbalance, oppression and the devaluing of women and their consciousness. Similarly, the issue of balance between conflicting cultures has not been adequately addressed, for example the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, which has been one of colonial domination and oppression rather than one of balance and mutual respect. ‘Thus, the ecological principle of equilibrium incorporates a number of the concerns of the Green writers discussed earlier, and relates to issues of gender, culture, peace, conflict and so on. Ecological principle 5: interdependence Dominant social, economic and political narratives value independence. If someone is seen to be “dependent that is a deficit, and there are policies and programs to encourage that person to become more ‘independent’, While the idea of independence makes some sense from a neo-liberal capitalist perspective, from an ecological perspective it is nonsense. An ecological perspective maintains that there is no such thing as independence; we are all dependent on each other, on our families, on our friends, on institutions, on the economy, on our employer, on the shops where we buy food, on the farmers who produce that food, on cars or public transport, and so on. The human being simply does not live in splendid isolation, but in reality is always dependent on others. Even those from powerful elites, who are often the strongest advocates for ‘independence’, are themselves highly dependent on the stock market, on their secretaries or personal assistants, on their wives/husbands (usually wives), on their computers, on their personal contacts, on their credit cards, on their accountants, on their lawyers, and on their bank managers. Dependency is the norm, and the idea of ‘independence’ makes no sense. This applies also at the international level; to pretend that nations are ‘independent’ flies in the face of reality, as nations are dependent on each other (¢.g. for trade and for the flow of information). History clearly indicates that a nation that seeks to be truly independent, to isolate itself from all forms of interdependency with the rest of the world, simply stagnates and does not survive. ‘Yet we perpetuate the myth of nations being ‘independent’, which is not a healthy stance from which to address global issues. ‘The fallacy of independence, of course, applies not just to human beings or to nations, but is alsoan important ecological principle throughout the natural world, The ecosystem can only exist because of a rich web of interdependence, whereby species and even non-living things depend on each other. Dependency therefore is both normal and desirable, and far from being condemned should be celebrated and encouraged, Building strong bonds of interdependence is important for all communities because, after all, a commmity is in essence a network of interdependence. The celebration of interdependence, so essential in human community, can also be a way of subverting the dominant discourse of ‘independence’ and asserting an alternative, more ecological, reality. The ecological principle of interdependence emphasises the importance of relationship, and suggests that relationships of mutual dependence are in themselves worthwhile. The emphasis on relationship was mentioned above, in relation to holism, and it will be discussed further in chapter 4 as part of the notion of relational reality. For present purposes, the important point to note is that the ecological principle of interdependence directly implies a concern for relationship. From this perspective, we analyse any situation not from the perspective of understanding its parts (as with the Enlightenment passion for classification), but rather of the web of relationships between them. An ecological perspective: is it enough? ‘The ecological perspective outlined above — based on the five principles of holism, sustainability, diversity, equilibrium and interdependence (and see table 2.2) — incorporates most of the concerns of the different strands of Green writing discussed earlier in the chapter. In addition, the emphasis on holism requires that there be some integration of the different emphases of Green writing; and, while there will inevitably be disagreement (which itself is valued, according to the principle of diversity), an ecological approach represented by these five principles represents a reasonable, consensus position that would be accepted by the majority of writers or activists identifying themselves as Greens. It will therefore serve as the ecological perspective for the model of community development, which is the focus of this book. Given the multiple crises facing the world in the twenty-first century, such a perspective is necessary in any model of community development (or of anything else, for that matter), But while it is necessary, it is not thereby sufficient. The ecological position does not specifically tackle a number of issues that are fundamental to community development, including equity, human rights, structural oppression or disadvantage and discourses of power (Adger et al. 2006, Smith 2006). While these concerns are not incompatible with a Green position, and are to some extent implied —for example in the commitment to balance, peace and harmony — this is a weaker implication than would be accepted by people working with disadvantaged groups who are concerned to bring about a fairer society. An ecological position may imply some degree of social equity, but this is not necessarily so. Indeed, a society based on authoritarian control and social or economic inequality could well be regarded as ecologically acceptable and as meeting the criteria of a Green political agenda. An eco-fascist system is in theory quite possible, and might be easier to implement than the alternatives, The resort to authoritarian and divisive solutions to ecological problems is an easy policy option in societies with traditions of power, hierarchy and control, and an ecological perspective could well be used tojustify such measures. For these reasons, a social justice perspective is also required, which deals with issues of social equity, oppression, human rights and so on. This will be the subject of chapter 3, after which the contribution of post-Enli ghtenment thinking will be considered in chapter 4. The three perspectives — ecological, social justice and post-Enlightenment — will then be integrated in chapter 5 as the foundation for a community development perspective.3 Foundations of community development: A social justice perspective Chapter 2 outlined an ecological perspective, based on a Green analysis, as one of the principal foundations for a model of community development. In this chapter a social justice perspective is developed, which will serve as the second principal foundation for community development. No attempt will be made to link the two perspectives; that ambitious but necessary task will be left until chapter 5 It should be noted at the outset that in this chapter the discussion of social justice takes place in the context of societies that can be categorised as Western (or Northern), industrial (or postindustrial) and advanced capitalist, such as the countries of North America, Europe and Australasia. This is not to deny that there are other forms of society, or that the interrelationship of societies at the global level is critical to a broad understanding of social justice. Global social justice issues, and their implications for social justice programs in the ‘developed world’, are considered further in chapter 8. The termsocial justice is pethaps as often used as the term Green, and results in a similar confusion of meanings. The social justice perspective developed in this chapter, like the ecological perspective of chapter 2, would not be universally accepted by those who use the term. There are, inevitably, different and conflicting social justice perspectives. As in chapter 2, it is hoped that the perspective derived here will nevertheless represent a position consistent with that of most community development workers, and will therefore provide a good basis for community devel opment practice Approaches to disadvantage: the limitations of social policy ‘The conventional place to start a discussion of social justice is with the theory of justice developed by John Rawls (1972). In this highly influential work, Rawls sought to determine the principles of justice that reasonable people, with no prior knowledge of their personal stake in the outcome, would seek to apply to a society in which they were to live. His argument is complex, but he concludes with three principles of justice he believes would satisfy his criteria. These are: equality in basic liberties, equality of opportunity for advancement, and positive discrimination for the underprivileged in order to ensure equity. It is hard to take issue with these principles; there would surely be broad consensus that they are highly desirable and important in any society concerned with justice, fairness or equity. The question is not whether these principles are necessary, but whether they are sufficient. A broader sociological treatment of social problems and social issues suggests that a wider ranging perspective than that of Rawls is required if we are to arrive at a position that will provide an adequate framework forunderstanding and acting on the social issues confronting community workers. ‘The significant point to note about Rawls’ principles is that they would normally be understood as applying to individuals. But analysis from an individual perspective is only one way of understanding social issues and social injustice. In political terms the individual perspective is essentially liberal in its orientation, and although this orientation has been central to mainstream Western political philosophy since Hobbes and Locke, it is a perspective that gives a limited and one-dimensional view of social phenomena and, if understood in isolation, can be criticised as being innately conservative. To move beyond the individual approach, we will consider four different ways of looking at social issues, building on the earlier work of Taylor-Gooby and Dale (1981). These four are the individual, institutional reformist, structural and poststructural accounts (see table 3.1) Table 3.1 Accounts of social issues Source of Perspective | ‘blame’ | Source of problem Solution Individual | Blame —_| individual pathology, psychological, Therapy, medical treatment, behaviour the biological, moral or character defect modification, moral exhortation, control victim Institutional Blame The institutions established to dea! with Reorganise institutions, more resources, reformist | the the problem: courts, schools, welfare more services, better training etc rescuer | departments etc structural | Blame | Structural disadvantage or oppression: Structural change, changing basis of the class, race, gender, income dstnbution, oppression, iberation movements, system. power etc. revolution Poststructural | Blame | Modernity, language. formation and Analysis and understanding of discourse, the accumulation of knowledge, shared access to understandings, challenging the discourse | understandings ‘rules’ ete The individual perspective ‘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 on the basis of individual treatment or therapy, such as counselling, moral exhortation, punishment, medical treatment or behaviour modification. 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 market-induced inequality, leaving such exploitative structures and discourses essentially unchallenged and focusing all attention on the individual. The institutional reformist perspective ‘The institutional reformist position locates the problem within the institutional structures of the society. Thus, the inadequacies of the justice system (courts, police, prisons etc) are seen as contributing to the problem of crime and delinquency, poverty is seen as the result of an inadequate or ineffective social security system, and so on. 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 rescuer’. Again, there is an element of conservatism, as this approach concentrates on the amelioration of social problems rather than on seeking to address their underlying causes. The structural perspective Structural accounts of social issues see the problem as lying in oppressive and inequitable social structures. This approach might be termed ‘blaming the system’, as it concentrates on such issues as patriarchy, capitalism, institutional racism and income distribution, and identifies oppression or structural disadvantage as the major issue to be addressed. Its prescriptions for change require major restructuring of the society, in that it sees social problems as embedded in the oppressive structures of that society, whether seen in terms of class, race or gender. Itis clearly a more radical approach to the analysis of social problems, which accounts for its relative lack of popularity among mainstream governments and media commentators. The poststructural perspective ‘The last category is poststructural accounts, At the risk of grossly oversimplifying highly complex literature, this perspective, following the work of such writers as Foucault (1972, 1973, 1979, 1980) and some postmodernists, can be characterised as being concerned with the ‘discourse’ associated with the particular problem. It sees the cause as lying in the use of language, the conveyance of meaning, the formation and accumulation of knowledge, and the ways in which this is used to control and dominate through definition of conformity, acceptable behaviour and so on. It is through language that we construct discourses of power, and it is in the construction of such ‘discursive power’ that oppression and disadvantage are perpetuated. This view rejects fixed and ‘objective’ realities as understood by many of the advocates of structural accounts, although is not necessarily inconsistent with some structural or quasi-structural positions, especially feminism (Clegg 1989). If blame’ is to be applied, this perspective might be called ‘blaming the discourse’. This leads to a practice involving deconstructing discourses of power and oppression and, through subsequent reconstruction,seeking understandings of shared knowledge and meanings, allowing people to help shape such alternative discourses. This approach seeks to uncover what are seen as constantly changing points of weakness within the dominant order that can be exploited for particular political ends. By validating alternative discourses, poststructuralism encourages a diversity of constructions of the ‘problem’ and of ‘solutions*; there is no one ‘right’ answer. It is important to recognise that there can be some value in all four of these approaches, Each identifies particular aspects of social issues and social change, and it is not realistic or appropriate to concentrate on one to the exclusion of some or all of the others. Conventional social policy strategies, however, tend to focus on the first two, as they are relatively easy to change within the existing order and do not necessarily challenge significant interests or existing discourses of power and domination. For this reason the critical literature, seeking more radical alternatives, has tended to concentrate on the third and fourth, seeing the inability of social policy to take account of a structural and/or poststructural analysis as being a primary reason for its failure to address social issues and social problems adequately. Community development, as traditionally practised, has been largely concerned with the second and third of these perspectives on social problems; namely the institutional reformist and structural perspectives. Most community work has focused either on ways to develop better programs, services and facilities for people at a community level, or on attempting to bring about structural change towards a more just society. The individual perspective is more typically the province of the individual service worker, namely the counsellor, therapist, caseworker or psychologist. The poststructural perspective, however, has affected the thinking of commmmity development workers since the 1990s. The idea of discourses of power, of deconstructing and reconstructing discourses, and of the legitimation of diversity, is seen as potentially empowering and as contributing to the ‘bottom-up’ perspective of community devel opment, this will be considered in more detail in chapter 6. One criticism of the poststructural perspective is that while it provides an interesting analysis of power and disadvantage, it has had relatively little to say about what one should actually do about it, and so has little relevance for a community development worker. However, this is a limited understanding of the potential of a poststructural approach. The importance of poststructualism is that it allows space and legitimacy for alternative voices to be heard and validated, and for alternative discourses to emerge as part of a development process, and in these terms, although it may not provide the neat prescriptions of a structural account (e.g. smash capitalism, dismantle patriarchy), it does provide a perspective on community work that can be very powerful and can strengthen the process of community empowerment. This will be explored further in chapter 4. ‘The social justice perspective of this book, while acknowledging the usefulness of the individual and institutional approaches, is primarily located within the structural and_ poststructural perspectives. While changes to the individual and to organisations are important, unless changes are made to the basic structures and discourses of power and oppression, which create and perpetuate an unequal and inequitable society, any social justice strategy will have only limited value. Hence, allprograms that claim a social justice label need to be evaluated in terms of their relationship with the dominant forms of structural oppression, particularly class, gender and race/ethnicity (but also including age, disability and sexuality), and in terms of their role in either perpetuating or challenging dominant discourses of power. A society based on social justice principles could adequately be justified only if these forms of oppression were addressed. ‘The approach to community work that informs this book therefore seeks to incorporate both the structural and the poststructural perspectives. It is not necessary to see these two as inevitably in opposition: the prefix ‘post-’ does not necessarily imply ‘anti-’, Rather, it carries the sense of ‘beyond’. Thus a poststructuralist perspective can still accept the usefulness of a structural account of class, race and gender oppression, but asserts that one also needs to move beyond that to understand how those oppressions are defined and reinforced through changing discourses of power. This position maintains that either the structural or the poststructural perspective is insufficient by itself, and that each needs to be enhanced and reinforced by the other. ‘The question of which dimension of structural disadvantage — class, gender or race/ethnicity — is ‘stronger’, or more ‘fimdamental’, can be cause for considerable disagreement, and will not be pursued here, Such debate, indeed, can be counterproductive, in that it can divide rather than unite potential allies in the struggle against oppression and in the promotion of social justice. The important point, for present purposes, is not whether any one of class, gender and race/ethnicity transcends the others, but that each is a fimdamental dimension of structural disadvantage, and each must be addressed in any social justice strategy. Because of the dominance of class, gender and race/ethnicity as forms of structural disadvantage, any social or political program that does not specifically question or challenge them is likely (albeit unintentionally) to reinforce these forms of oppression by accepting the dominant order that supports them. In the words of a common saying among activists, ‘If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem’. Thus, a specific commitment to addressing the inequalities of class, gender and race/ethnicity must be a fundamental component of any social justice strategy, and any existing or projected program should be evaluated in terms of its implications in this respect. This also applies to a poststructural analysis of discourse; it is very easy unwittingly to acquiesce to, and reinforce, dominant discourses of power and oppression. One needs to be able to deconstruct dominant discourses, and challenge their taken-for-granted views of ‘reality’ and the ‘natural order of things’; again, if you are not part of the solution, you will be part of the problem. Empowerment ‘The notion of empowerment is central to a social justice strategy, although empowerment is another word that has been overused and is in danger of losing any substantive meaning. It is central to notions of community work, and many community workers would choose to define their role in termsof an empowerment process. Simply put, empowerment aims to increase the power of the disadvantaged. This statement contains two important concepts, power and disadvantage, each of which needs to be considered in any discussion of empowerment as part of a social justice perspective. Power However one looks at empowerment, it is inevitably about power: giving power to individuals or groups, allowing them to take power into their own hands, redistributing power from the ‘haves’ to the ‘have nots’ and so on. It is therefore of concern that some writers on empowerment and many practitioners who say they use an empowerment model do not give the concept of power much attention (see Rees 1991). Power is a complex and contested notion, and there are varying views of power that have been identified by social and political theorists (Mitchell 2002, Butcher 2007a, Clegg 1989). Political perspectives on power, which are concerned with trying to understand the nature of power in modern societies, can be divided into four categories, although each of these itself contains a number of diverging views, and space limitations do not allow a detailed analysis of the varying views of the many writers who have addressed issues of power (for a detailed account, see Clegs 1989). The four categories are pluralist accounts, elite accounts, structural accounts, and poststructural accounts, Each involves a different perspective on the process of empowerment. The pluralist perspective ‘The pluralist perspective on power is associated with the work of Dahl (1961), among others, and has been influential in a good deal of conventional political science that has sought to study power as an ‘objective’ phenomenon. This perspective emphasises the various individuals and groups within society that are competing for power and influence, and visualises the political system as a competition between such groups (e.g. unions, pressure groups, employer bodies, non-government organisations, professions, media, consumer groups) and between individuals (e.g, business leaders, politicians, lobbyists, power brokers’, advocates, activists, community leaders). Power therefore arises from one’s capacity to engage in this competing system, to know ‘the rules of the game” and to be able to exert pressure and influence. The pluralist view is related to a particular perception of democracy, where everyone can have their say, all people have equal opportunity to participate, and no one is all-powerful because power is distributed among a number of different and competing groups. Itis a perspective that is inherently conservative, in that it accepts and legitimises the system as it is, and simply encourages people to be better ‘players’ in the ‘game’, Indeed the language of pluralism often relies on the metaphor of sports and games: players, stakeholders, winners and losers, the rules of the game, neutral umpire, level playing field and so on. It is in other perspectives that more emotive words like struggle, oppression, domination and powerless tend to be used. From a pluralist perspective, empowerment is a process of helping disadvantaged groups andindividuals to compete more effectively with other interests, by helping them to learn and use skills in lobbying, using the media, engaging in political action, understanding how to ‘work the system’ and so on. The work of Saul Alinsky (1969, 1971) in empowering Afro-American communities in the USA was premised on a pluralist assumption. Alinsky, one of the most influential figures in community work, did not set out to change the American political system, but simply aimed to teach Afro-American communities how to work more effectively within that system, and to become more skilled at competing with other groups for power through social action, political pressure, covert threats, publicity and so on. Thus, although Alinsky’s methods and tactics may appear radical (largely because of their novelty), and he freely used the term radical in his writing, his political position is basically conservative, in that fundamentally it accepted the structures of American society, and saw the solution for black commmities as simply to help them to be more politically sophisticated. The elite perspective Elite views of power acknowledge that politics is not a ‘game’ in which all ‘players” have equal opportunities to ‘win’. It identifies particular groups that have more than their ‘share’ of power, and which exercise disproportionate influence over decision-making. The discussion of such elites is associated most strongly with the sociologist C. Wright Mills (1956). Elites are able to perpetuate themselves through such mechanisms as private schooling, service clubs, informal networks and contacts (the ‘old boys’ network’), political parties and professional associations; they also have control of or access to disproportionate shares of the nation’s resources. Itis these elites that exercise power in a society, through their capacity to control key institutions (the media, education, finance, political parties, public policy, the bureaucracy, parliaments, corporations, the professions). Thus, society is seen as hierarchical, with certain groups exercising power and control. From this perspective, empowerment requires not only learning the ability to compete for political power by ‘playing the game’; the rules of the game, after all, have been determined by the power elites so they are likely to be in their favour. As well as learning political skills, itis necessary to do something about power elites. One way is to join them with the aim of changing or influencing them (e.g, the activist who joins a mainstream political party with a view to influencing its policy, or who joins Rotary in order to have some involvement in and influence over local decisions). Another way is to seek alliances with powerful elites to pursue one’s own ends, for example by enlisting the help of the legal profession in pursuing issues of human rights or anti-discrimination legislation and practices. A third way is to seek to reduce the power of elites through more fimdamental change, for example attempting to limit the power of professional monopolies by legal challenge. The structural perspective ‘The structural view of power identifies the importance of structural inequality, or oppression, as a major form of power. It draws on a range of writing, most particularly Marxist and feminist analysis (Mullaly 1993, Williams 1989). While acknowledging the importance of the elites described above, the structural perspective maintains that those elites also act as representatives of dominant groups, and reinforce the structural inequality that results in the unequal distribution of power. That theseelites are predominantly made up of white, wealthy men is not coincidental; it indicates the underlying importance of class, race and gender, and it is these fundamental issues that have to be acknowledged in dealing with power in contemporary industrial (or postindustrial) society. From this perspective, concentrating on the elites themselves, or on individuals or groups acting in competition (the pluralist view), is to miss the point. By ignoring findamental structural inequalities one is reinforcing the structures that determine power relations of dominance and oppression. From this structural perspective, empowerment is a much more challenging agenda, as it can effectively be achieved only if these forms of structural disadvantage are challenged and overcome. Empowerment therefore is necessarily part of a wider program of social change, with a view to dismantling the dominant structures of oppression. Political education and working with elites is not sufficient (although it clearly has its place), and is likely to be effective in bringing about a real change in power relationships only if it is part of a broader agenda specifically addressing such structural issues as class, gender and race/ethnicity. The poststructural perspective ‘The poststructural view of power, like the poststructuralist view of social problems, concentrates on the way in which power is understood, the use of language in defining and reinforcing relations of power and domination, the definition and accumulation of knowledge and how it is constructed, and the subjective experience of power rather than its ‘objective’ existence. It rejects both the positivism of the pluralist theories and the mechanistic perspective of more simplistic structuralist accounts. It relies particularly on the work of Foucault (1973, 1979; see also Rouse 1994), who traces the ways in which ideas, language and the definition of knowledge have been used as a major mechanism of control. From this perspective, empowerment becomes a process of challenging and changing discourse. It emphasises people’s subjective understandings and the construction of their world views, and points to the need for the deconstruction of these understandings and the establishment of an alternative vocabulary for empowerment. This can be achieved by validating other voices than those currently dominating the discourse, and by allowing those alternative voices to be heard. The poststructural perspective thus emphasises understanding, analysis, deconstruction, education and participation in the discourse(s) of power, and sees a simple concentration on action alone as inadequate. ‘This survey of different views of power has been necessarily brief, and has glossed over major differences within these categories. Other writers (e.g. Clegg 1989) have proposed other categories, and it would be wrong to assume that table 3.2 represents the ast word’ on the subject of power, or that there would be wide agreement on its content. It does, however, indicate some of the complexity of the concept of power, and provides a useful framework for thinking about power in the context of an empowerment model of community work. From the point of view of a community worker seeking a model of empowerment, there is undoubtedly some value in each of the four perspectives. To the extent that pluralist and elite views are probably the dominant perspectives within the society, and shape most of the debate on power and political action, it would be counterproductive to ignore themor assume they had no value. Indeed, many of the strategies derived from these perspectives will be of considerable value to a community worker in day-to-day practice. However, the structural and poststructural perspectives, based on a more thorough conceptual foundation and with the potential for more radical and fundamental change, hold particular promise for an empowerment approach that can be effectively incorporated in an overall social justice strategy. This book assumes that the dismantling of the dominant structures of oppression, and the reconstructing of dominant discourses of power, must be at the centre of any program of progressive social change and community development, and hence strong structural and poststructural perspectives are essential. Table 3.2 Perspectives on power Perspective | View of society | View of power Empowerment Pluralst Competing interests; groups and | Capacity to compete | Teach indviduals or groups how individuals successfuly, ‘winners and | to compete within ‘the rules losers’ elite Largely controlled by Beercised largely by elites. | Join and influence elites, form self-perpetuating elites through ownership and alliances with elites, confront and contiol of dominant seek to change eltes institutions Structural | Stratfied according to dominant | Exercised by dominant Liberation, fundamental forms of structural oppression: | groups through structures | structural change, challenge class, race and gender of oppression oppressive structures Poststructural | Defined through constructed | Exercised through control | Change the discourse, develop meanings, understandings, of discourse, construction | new subjective understandings, language, knowledge accumula- | of knowledge etc validate other voices, liberating tion and control education If these are the different views of how power operates in the society, there still remains the question of what sort of power is involved in the term empowerment; that is, what kind of power is it that we wish to enhance? This is clearly a value question, Some kinds of power, presumably, would not be sought as part of empowerment, such as the power to exploit others, the power to wage war or the power to destroy the environment. For the purposes of community devel opment, we are concerned with forms of power that are emancipatory; that is, that are concerned with allowing people to transform their lives, grow and free themselves from their experience of disadvantage. We are not concerned with forms of power that involve power over others, the power to dominate or the power to oppress. ‘We can think about power in different ways: power over, power to and power with. The idea of “power over? suggests forms of domination and hierarchy. Even in phrases like ‘power over resource decisions’ or ‘power over need definition’, the very use of the word over suggests a form of agency that is dominating, and it is only a short step to ideas of power over other people or groups.Reframing ideas of power as ‘power to’ places the emphasis on action and the opening up of possibilities, The third approach, ‘power with’, emphasises the important community devel opment principle that we do not act alone but together in solidarity, and opens up the possibility of collective, rather than individual, power. Hence it is ideas of ‘power to” and ‘power with’ that are important in any understanding of empowerment in commmity devel opment. We will consider seven kinds of power as being involved in community-based empowerment strategies, although it must be acknowledged that these overlap and interact in often complex ways, and other categories could easily be added. These are all discussed as forms of ‘power to’. Ideas of ‘power with’ will emerge in later chapters, in discussion of community devel opment processes. 1 Power to make personal choices and determine life chances Many people have little power to determine the course of their own lives — to make decisions about their lifestyle, where they will live or their occupation, Also included in this category are choices about one’s own body, sexuality, health and so on. These choices are commonly affected by structural factors. Thus one of the major consequences of poverty is that people have little choice or power to make decisions about their own lives. Patriarchal structures and values often restrict the power of women in making personal choices, and racial oppression works to reduce this power for Indigenous People and members of ethnic minorities. Cultural norms and values, perpetuated by dominant discourses within the culture, can also restrict people’s power to make personal choices, irrespective of class, race and gender. An empowerment strategy therefore would seek to maximise people’s effective choices, in order to increase their power to make decisions involving their personal futures. 2 Power to define need One of the characteristics of modern society is the ‘dictatorship over needs’ (Feher, Heller & Markus 1983, Marcuse 1964), in that needs are often determined and defined not by the person who is supposedly experiencing them. In some instances, particularly in socialist regimes, the state has assumed responsibility for defining people's needs (Feher, Heller & Markus 1983). In other cases, it is professionals such as doctors, social workers, psychologists, teachers and managers who have become the experts in the definition of need (Illich et al. 1977, Wilding 1982). In either case, this can be seen as disempowering, and an empowerment perspective would require that people be given the power of defining their own needs. Because need definition also requires relevant knowledge and expertise (see below), such an empowerment process requires education and access to information. 3 Power to think ‘Whether one takes a poststructuralist view of the importance of language and discourse, or a Marxist view of hegemony and the control of the dominant culture, ideas are undoubtedly powerful and of critical importance in either maintaining or challenging the dominant order. An empowerment process should incorporate the power to think autonomously and not have one’s world view dictated either byforce or by being denied access to alternative frames of reference. It should also legitimise the expression of these ideas in a public forum, the capacity of people to enter into dialogue with each other and the ability of people’s ideas to contribute to the public culture. This approach to power also emphasises the educational (in its broadest sense) aspect of empowerment. 4 Power to address institutions A good deal of disempowerment comes from the effect of social institutions, such as the education system, the health system, the family, the Church or other religious institutions, the social welfare system, corporations, government structures and the media. To counteract this, an empowerment strategy would aim to increase people’s power to address these institutions and their effects, by equipping people to use them, to influence them and, more fundamentally, to change these institutions to make them more accessible, responsive and accountable to all people, not just the powerful. As indicated in chapter 1, a community-based strategy is potentially very significant in this respect. 5 Power to access and utilise resources Many people have relatively little access to resources, and relatively little discretion as to how those resources will be utilised, This applies both to financial resources and to non-monetary resources such as education, opportunities for personal growth, recreation and cultural experience. However, in a society where economic criteria and rewards are so significant, power of access to economic resources and transactions is particularly important. An empowerment strategy would seek to maximise the effective power of all people to access and use resources, and to redress the evident inequality of access to resources which characterises modern society. 6 Power to engage with the economy ‘The basic mechanisms of production, distribution and exchange are vital in any society, and to have power in a society one must be able to have some access to, and capacity to utilise, these mechanisms. This power is unequally distributed in modern capitalist society, and this is a cause of significant disempowerment. An empowerment process would therefore seek to ensure that the power of economic activity was more evenly distributed. 7 Power to control reproduction ‘Marx emphasised that, alongside the mechanisms of production, the mechanisms of reproduction were crucial for any society, and control over the process of reproduction has been a significant issue for femini st critique. Included in the notion of reproduction are not only the processes of birth and child- rearing but also education and socialisation: the mechanisms by which the social, economic and political order is reproduced in succeeding generations. Power to control reproduction is unequally distributed in contemporary society, and again gender, class and race differences are critical. Although this category closely relates to power of personal choice and power of ideas, as discussedabove, the reproductive process is sufficiently important for it to warrant a category of its own. The disadvantaged If, as has been suggested, empowerment is about increasing the power of the disadvantaged, it is necessary to look not only at what constitutes power but also at the nature of disadvantage. Class, gender and race/ethnicity are the most commonly discussed dimensions of disadvantage. All three can be seen as fundamental, in that they are all-pervasive and identifiable in most, if not all, social issues, social problems and inequities. These three forms of oppression obviously interact and reinforce each other; thus, to be an Indigenous woman in poverty is to be trebly disadvantaged. In any other form of disadvantage we might consider, women, Indigenous People, members of minority ethnic or racial groups, people in poverty, the working class and the unemployed are likely to be worse off than are men, people of Anglo-Celtic background, those with access to wealth or members of the professional and managerial classes. There are other groups, of course, that are also disadvantaged. These include people with disabilities (physical and/or intellectual), gays, lesbians, bisexual or transsexual people, and people who are isolated or living in remote areas, There are also those disadvantaged by the vulnerabilities and prejudices of age, namely children and people in old age — these are different from the other categories, in that they can apply to all of us, at different points in the lifecycle, Although these forms of disadvantage may not be as all-pervasive as class, gender and race/ethnicity, the disadvantage suffered by people in these groups is can be just as debilitating, painful and disempowering, People in these groups constitute some of the most disadvantaged in society, and must clearly be considered in any empowerment strategy to counter disadvantage. Discussing the disadvantaged purely in terms of groups can disguise the fact that people can also be disadvantaged as a result of personal circumstances. Grief, the loss of a loved one, problems with personal and family relationships, identity crisis, perceived sexual inadequacy, loneliness, shyness and a number of other essentially personal problems can result in disadvantage and disempowerment, sometimes only for a limited period but still important for the person concerned. Although these problems can (and do) affect everybody (even the most ‘advantaged’ will suffer grief at the loss of a loved one), they still interact with other forms of disadvantage such as class, gender and race/ethnicity, which means that some people will have access to more resources to deal with their problems than others. Achieving empowerment ‘The above discussion has highlighted the complexity of both power and disadvantage, each of which is central to an understanding of empowerment. The notion of empowerment therefore is itself complex, as has been pointed out by such writers as Rees (1991) and Friedmann (1992). Before leaving the concept of empowerment, it is worth briefly mentioning the various strategies that have been proposed in order to achieve the empowerment of disadvantaged groups. These can be broadlyclassified under the headings policy and planning, social and political action, and education and consci ousness-raising. Empowerment through policy and planning is achieved by developing or changing structures and institutions to bring about more equitable access to resources or services and opportunities to participate in the life of the community. Policies of affirmative action or positive discrimination acknowledge the existence of disadvantaged groups (sometimes expressed specifically in structural terms), and seek to redress this disadvantage by ‘changing the rules’ to favour the disadvantaged. Using economic policy to reduce unemployment might also be seen as empowerment, in that it enhances people’s resources, access and opportunities. Providing people with adequate and secure resources is an important empowerment strategy, and thus policies to ensure adequate income could be said to be empowering, Similarly, the development of mechanisms for consumer input, locating services and facilities within easy access, establishing appropriate and accessible consumer appeal mechanisms, and other planning decisions can facilitate the empowerment of the disadvantaged. The concern for notions of access and equity in social policy can thus be justified on empowerment grounds. Empowerment through social and political action emphasises the importance of political struggle and change in increasing effective power. How this is applied depends on one’s understanding of power in the political process (pluralist, elite, structural or poststructural). But it emphasises the activist approach, and seeks to enable people to increase their power through some form of direct action, or by equipping them to be more effective in the political arena. Empowerment through education and consciousness-raising emphasises the importance of an educative process (broadly understood) in equipping people to increase their power. This incorporates notions of consciousness-raising: helping people to understand the society and the structures of oppression, giving people the vocabulary and the skills to work towards effective change and so on. ‘These forms of empowerment, summarised in table 3.3, will be elaborated in later chapters, as they provide the basis for an empowerment approach to community work practice. At this stage it is time to leave the notion of empowerment and consider other aspects of a social justice perspective that are important in commmity devel opment. Table 3.3 EmpowermentToincrease the | primary structural disadvantaged cass power of groups the poor the unemployed low-income workers. welfare beneficiaries gender: women race/ethnicity Indigenous People ethnic and cultural minorities other disadvantaged groups: the aged children and youth people with disabilities (physical, mental and intellectual) gays, lesbians, trans- and bisexual people ‘the isolated (geographically and socially) etc the personally disadvantaged those experiencing grief, loss, personal and femiy problems etc. to make choices and determine life chances define need think engage with institutions access and utilise resources engage in economic activity control reproduction through policy and planning social and political action education Need Social justice principles are often expressed in terms of need. The notion of need is findamental in social policy, social planning and community devel opment. There are two ways in which need is seen as basic to social justice and community development: first, a belief that people or communities should have their needs ‘met’; and second, that people or communities should be able to define their own needs rather than have them defined by others. Problems with conventional views of need ‘The notion of need is inherently complex. Traditional positivist conceptions of need discuss needs as if they have objective reality; that is, as if they exist and can be ‘measured’. Thus, ‘need assessment’is seen as essentially a technical exercise in methodology — measuring something that is already ‘there’. The emphasis on methodology, and hence on technical expertise, leads to a situation where needs can be adequately assessed and defined only by experts who are skilled in methodology. Therefore need definition is removed from the very people who are experiencing the need, and placed in the hands of professional need-definers, such as social workers, social researchers and psychologists. From the point of view of critics such as Ilich et al. (1977), this has resulted in the rise of professional power while consequently ‘disabling’ the bulk of the population. Conventional professional practice therefore is seen as based on assumptions of disempowerment, and serves only to reinforce the powerlessness of the oppressed, by denying them the right to define and act on their own needs. Such writers as Heller (Feher, Heller & Markus 1983) have seen totalitarian regimes as exercising a ‘dictatorship over needs’, whereby the state has taken over the role of defining people’s needs, telling them what they do and do not need and hence maintaining a powerful form of control and coercion. This is the anti-democratic form of state socialism, as experienced in the communist regimes of Eastern Europe from the 1950s to the 1980s, and is the equivalent at state level of Hlich’s views of professionalism. Marcuse (1964) drew an important distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ needs. The former are the needs people genuinely feel, which are required if one is to reach one’s full human potential and which people will articulate if they are free to do so. ‘False’ needs are those we are persuaded we have, as a result of the dominant ideology, the media, advertising, the education system and so on. Seen from these perspectives, and from the point of view of an empowerment agenda, ‘need’ is neither objective nor value-free. Rather it must be understood from a perspective that takes account of values and ideology, and which allows for notions of liberation rather than oppression. To do this, it is necessary to move away from the more conventional positivist accounts of ‘needs as objects’, which tend to treat ‘need’ as a single concept. At this point, Bradshaw’s typology of need must be mentioned, as this has become the ‘conventional wisdom’ on the subject of social need, Bradshaw (1972) divided need into four categories: (1) normative need, which is need as defined by some authority, in accordance with an accepted standard (e.g. poverty lines); (2) felt need, which is need as experienced by the people concemed (e.g. assessed through social surveys); (3) expressed need, which is need expressed by people seeking some form of service (e.g. assessed through looking at waiting lists, demands for services); and (4) comparative need, which is need inferred from comparison of service provision with national or regional norms (e.g, comparison of a region’s hospital beds per capita with the national average) An important aspect of Bradshaw’s model is that one form of need does not necessarily imply another — with the exception of expressed need, which must also be felt need. This model of need is usefill in that it breaks away from the view of need as a single concept; but it does not address theinherently disempowering nature of conventional need definition: all Bradshaw’s categories are still ‘measured’ by ‘experts’, and his conception of need remains essentially within a positivist framework. Need statements ‘An alternative approach, which does provide a framework for empowerment, can be developed around the notion of need definition. This sees the important factor not as the need itself but rather the act of defining need, or asserting that something is ‘needed’. A statement or definition of community need is clearly a normative, or value-laden statement. It implies certain views of people’s rights and entitlements, and contains an implicit notion of what constitutes an acceptable minimum standard of personal or commmity wellbeing, For example, claiming that a commmity ‘needs’ a childcare centre implies some assumptions about a parent's rights to a certain lifestyle or access to the labour market, children’s rights to a certain level of care, and the benefits to personal and commumity life that a childcare centre would bring. These rights are embedded in the need definition, although they are unstated and usually unacknowledged. To the extent that people will differ over these value questions, there will be differing views on the nature or strength of the need, quite apart from any methodological issues of need assessment. This link between needs and rights is critically important, as will be seen below. Using the language of needs can often obscure the political or ideological nature of an issue. Instead of focusing on a social problem, discussion of need can divert attention to the more technical (and safer) question of providing solutions. For example, a ‘problem’ of juvenile crime becomes a ‘need’ for more police, and this draws attention away from questions about why young people are alienated and instead focuses attention on recruiting and resourcing more police officers. A social problem can thus be depoliticised by using ‘need’ language, and in this way the very act of need definition can be seen as ideological. Although a need statement is clearly normative, it also has a technical component. In the above example, the claim for a need for more police is based on an assumption that more police will in fact solve the ‘problem’ of juvenile crime — an assumption that is, to say the least, questionable. Such assumptions, which are implicit in statements of comnmmity need, are essentially technical, and require some knowledge of the influence and effectiveness of particular services or programs. Need statements are also technical in that they are comparative in nature, Claiming that a community needs a particular provision can be seen as implying that this provision has a higher priority in the community than other potentially competing claims (e.g, if made within the context of a council budget committee), or that the community needs it more than other commumities do (e.g. if made within the context of government decisions on the distribution of childcare funding). In such cases, there is an assumption of knowledge about priorities within the commumity, or about the comparative situation in other communities, or both.A statement of need, then, is both a normative and descriptive statement, reflecting both the values or ideology and knowledge or expertise of the need-definer. This means that any typology of need statements must take the identity of the need-definer into account. Commonly, there are four groups of people who are involved in need definition at community level. These are: (1) the population at large; (2) consumers, or potential consumers, of the service or facility that is “needed”; (3) caretakers, namely those whose ‘business’ is comnmmity need, such as community workers, social workers, welfare workers, clergy, health workers and local politicians; and (4) the researchers and planners who infer need on the basis of statistics, survey results and other data. As a result, one can derive a typology of need statements based on these four groups of need- definers, which is a useful way of thinking about how need is defined in communities. This approach to need is summarised in table 3.4. Table 3.4 Types of need statements Need Values and interests statement | of need-definer Expertise of need-definer —_ Information base Population: | Perceived interests of community | Limited to knowledge Perception of community, defined available through media etc. experience of friends, social and personal contacts network Consumer- | Self-interest in need definition Personal experience of ‘Own experience, knowledge defined problem and its impact of others in similar circumstances Caretaker- | interests as service provider, Expertise according to Personal knowledge of defined commitment to the whole training and previous community, also ability to community, sel-interest (ob security) | experience take broader perspective Inferred | Varies according to politics etc. Expertise specifically in data Broad database, but unlikely analysis and interpretation _to have personal knowledge. of community It can be seen from table 3.4 that the four different need-definers have different interests, expertise and information on which to base their need judgements. For this reason, one would in practice expect these judgements of need to vary, and this is the common experience of community workers. It does raise the important question of which form of need definition is ‘better’ or more legitimate, which is of critical importance for community work. It raises the fmdamental issue of the nature of expertise, and whether it is appropriate for need definition to be handed over to the experts and thus taken out of the hands of the people. ‘There are three common approaches to this issue. One is to emphasise population-defined andconsumer-defined need, asserting the primacy of people being able to define their own needs, and seeing caretaker-defined and inferred need as disempowering and reinforcing the dominance of professional power. The second is to assert (usually implicitly) the superiority of caretaker-defined and inferred need, emphasising the technical and expert nature of need definition, The third approach is to work towards consensus among need-definers, by providing consumers and the general population with the expertise and resources to make more ‘informed’ judgements, by helping the ‘professional’ need-definers to be more sensitive to the perceptions and realities of the people directly concerned, and by establishing genuine dialogue among the various potential definers of need. From the perspective of this book, population- and consumer-defined are the most important types of need statement, and should prevail over the other forms of need definition unless basic human rights or other social justice principles are at risk An empowerment base for community development requires that people have the capacity to define their own needs, and to act to have them met. The role of professionals, community caretakers, researchers and planners must be to assist the community with its own need definition, possibly through helping to provide expertise where necessary and through facilitating the process, but their role is not to assume responsibility for need definition and thereby to deny the community the right to control its own destiny. Universal and relative notions of need One of the critical debates in the literature of social need is the question of relativism and universality. The above discussion of need, by rejecting the positivist formulation and emphasising an understanding of what actually happens in the act of need definition, might be seen as implying a purely relativist understanding of human need, namely that needs vary according to the circumstances of their definition, and that there is no such thing as universal human need. The universal position, on the other hand, holds that there are common needs possessed by all people, and that at least some universal statements of need are valid, This position is inherent in the work of the ‘classic’ writers on human need, such as Abraham Maslow (1970) and Charlotte Towle (1965). It has been strongly argued by Doyal and Gough (1991) not only that a universal understanding of basic human need is valid but also that a relativist approach, which denies the legitimacy of such a universalist position, is both morally questionable and politically dangerous. Abandoning a universalist position on human need allows repressive governments to justify policies of oppression, by invalidating any appeal to basic human rights. It is consistent with a neo-liberal ideology, which seeks to dismantle social policies based on commitment to universal principles of justice in favour of the mechanisms of the market. A relativist approach, by ignoring a structural analysis of inequality and oppression, also ignores the structural factors that perpetuate disempowerment. These factors structure people’s perceived reality, and lead to differences in need definition resulting from the need-definer’s relationship to the structures of power and domination. Thus, many need definitions should more properly be understood as reflecting either false consciousness or cultural hegemony.‘Thisis a very important critique, and relates to other critiques of the relativism that is implied by a good deal of postmodernist or poststructuralist thought. For this reason, it is essential that the above typology of need definition be seen alongside the other social justice perspectives discussed so far in this chapter, namely empowerment and structural disadvantage. It is particularly important in this regard to link needs with rights. As suggested above, this is a necessary connection, as statements of need imply corresponding understandings of rights, although these are usually unstated. Seeing need statements within a broader social justice perspective, which includes a commitment to universal (or at least quasi-universal) notions of human rights, can go a long way towards satisfying the concerns of Doyal and Gough, as it provides need statements with a universal moral underpinning. The way in which needs are defined or expressed may well be relative, because of cultural and other variations, but the human rights inherent in them can be claimed to be universal. One can think of need definition as being the way in which universal rights are defined within specific social, cultural and political contexts. In this respect, local definitions of need can be seen not as dangerous relativism but rather as an extension of the definition of universal human rights. Rights Social justice implies some view of fairness or equity, and the principles on which notions of fairness or equity are based generally involve some reference to rights. Hence, rights are fundamental to any understanding of social justice. Human rights have become a strong discourse of opposition to the dominant order, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when ‘socialism’ lost legitimacy. During the following decades, the dominance of neo-liberalism has silenced most alternatives, but human rights have remained a legitimate stance from which to critique power. Anti-globalisation protesters, for example, found it useful to show how globalisation has violated the rights of Indigenous and other communities, especially in the global South. Many community work practitioners would see human rights as an important part of their practice. Indeed, it can be argued that human rights require strong communities, and hence community development. Rights cannot be owned in isolation; the idea of ‘my rights’ makes sense only if there are others who can meet the corresponding duties, or responsibilities, so that my rights can be respected, protected and realised, For example, what is the point of a right of freedom of speech if nobody will listen, or the right to education if there is nobody to provide the resources needed, such as schools, books, computers and so on? The very idea of human rights requires that we belong to a commumity of rights and responsibilities, and hence community devel opment and human rights go hand in hand. The conventional discourse of human rights has been heavily influenced by Enlightenment modernity, which will be discussed in the next chapter. This has meant that the ‘human’ who has rights is often understood in Enlightenment terms, namely as an autonomous individual, separated from nature, in an essentially secular world ruled by reason and order, where scientific rationality takes precedence over the emotional, and where there is little room for the spiritual or the sacred. This is a limited view of humanity, which is consistent with neo-liberalism and its emphasis on theindividual passive consumer, but is rather at odds with the ideas devel oped in this book, where more collective, holistic and postmodern understandings of humanity are explored, The deconstruction and reconstruction, in community, of the idea of ‘humanity’ and ‘human rights’ is an important task facing those working for human rights, and community development is a powerful way to work towards a deeper, richer understanding of human rights (for a fuller discussion, see Ife 2010). ‘The conventional approach to human rights has been through the law: legislation, bills or charters of rights, United Nations (UN) conventions and the use of legal mechanisms to work for human rights protection. There is considerable value for community development in this conventional approach to tights, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the various UN conventions (e.g. on civil and political rights, economic social and cultural rights, the rights of the child, the rights of refugees, the rights of Indigenous People etc), and national or regional bills or charters of human rights can provide strong protection for vulnerable people or groups, and a powerful basis for advocacy. Knowledge of these various conventions, and how to use them, can be an important tool for a community worker, and indeed can be used to provide a strong value base for community devel opment. But this is essentially a top-down view of human rights, at odds with the perspective of this book. ‘Typically, our rights are defined for us by a small elite of those who draft legislation or UN documents: politicians, academics, lawyers, and a few human rights activists from such non- government organisations (NGOs) as Amnesty International. This elite is effectively telling the rest of us what our rights are, hardly a democratic process, and indeed a denial of our right to be involved in defining our rights. A community development approach, by contrast, would seek to engage people in a participatory process, defining rights from their own perspective at community level, then engaging with some form of dialogue with others about the meaning of rights. Human rights need to be exercised if they are to have any meaning. What is the point of having a right to freedom of expression if nobody bothers to exercise it? A society based on human rights is one in which people are not only aware of their rights but also are actively exercising them: a participatory society, which is also the aim of community devel opment. ‘The issue of universalism and relativism is as important in thinking about human rights as it is in thinking about human needs. The conventional view is to define human rights as universal, but this raises the problem of cultural difference, and the simple fact that humanity, and the rights of humans, will be constructed differently in different cultural contexts, and indeed also at different historical moments. There has been a strong criticism from some writers that ‘universal human rights’ are essentially a Western concept, reflecting a Western secular individualist view of humanity, and have been an instrument of colonialism (Aziz 1999, Bauer & Bell 1999, Pereira 1997). This is an important criticism, and the Western Enlightenment origin of contemporary human rights discourse means that such a limitation is inevitable. A naive universalism, simply imposing one version of human rights on everyone, is clearly unacceptable in a world that values cultural diversity, and valuing diversity is an important community development principle. However, a naive relativism is equally untenable, as it leaves one powerless to condemn cultural practices that may be demeaning or oppressive, and are clearly an infringement of basic rights; we need an approach to human rights that enables us to condemn the practices of the Taliban towards women in Afghanistan, for example,while at the same time being fully sensitive to cultural differences. One way around this difficulty was implied in the previous discussion of needs. We can understand human rights as universal at a very general level, for example the right to be treated with dignity and respect, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to housing and so on, while resisting the temptation to make these rights more specific (e.g. the right to schools, the right to medical clinics, the right to a three-bedroom house for each family). These more specific requirements will vary with context, as different cultures will embrace different forms of eduction, housing and so on, and are perhaps better understood as needs than as rights. Hence the universal right to education means varying contextualised needs, such as the need for schools, or for computers, or for teachers, or for libraries, or for spaces where elders can pass on their wisdom. Rights-based commumity development involves a ‘human rights from below’ approach (see Ife 2010 for a fuller discussion). This would require community processes to define rights, to think about important rights and what they mean, and to consider who is responsible for ensuring that those rights are protected or realised. It then requires community action to work towards the realisation of those rights, for community members and for others. In this understanding of human rights, we can see rights as located within communities, rather than within jurisdictions (the language of lawyers), and community work and human rights work effectively come together ‘There is another way in which human rights are important for community development. An approach to community development that does not take account of human rights can be dangerous. It could lead, for example, to a community worker asking a community what it wants to achieve, and being told that their aim is to prevent Muslims from settling in the commumity, or to stop young people from gathering on the streets. If that worker has a strong human rights perspective, they will obviously refuse such a suggestion, and work with the community to ensure that basic rights are protected. But without a human rights perspective, there is nothing to stop community programs encoraging exclusion and racism or, in more extreme forms, emulating the Hitler Youth, the Khmer Rouge or Mao's Red Guards. These are programs that engaged young people with a high level of participation and gave them a strong feeling of belonging (important goals of commumity development), yet the outcomes were clearly disastrous from a human rights perspective. ‘This chapter has identified four key components of a social justice approach to community work. ‘These are disadvantage, empowerment, need and rights. In each case, some conceptual frameworks have been identified that will, in later chapters, be used as a basis for a model of community development. These four are not independent. Clearly each is relevant to the others, and there are obvious links between, for example, needs and rights, empowerment and structural disadvantage. Indeed, it would be possible to develop a comprehensive social justice perspective using any one of these as a unifying principle, incorporating the others. Such a synthesis has not been attempted in this chapter, because the aim of this book is to integrate these social justice perspectives with the ecological perspectives discussed in chapter 2 and the post-Enli ghtenment perspectives discussed in chapter 4, as a foundation for community work. The integration, then, needs to be undertaken at a higher level, and this is the task of chapter 5.4 Foundations of community development: Beyond Enlightenment modernity The world view that predominates in Western societies — and indeed in the culture of global capitalism — is heavily influenced by the ideas of the European Enlightenment. It is important to understand how these ideas have shaped our understandings both of ‘community’ and of ‘development’, and how this has significantly limited community development in a postmodern world, In this chapter, after a brief discussion of the Enlightenment and its problems, a number of ‘post-Enlightenment’ perspectives that can contribute significantly to our understanding of community development will be considered. These will not be presented as a single post-Enlightenment tradition — to do so would be to fall back into Enlightenment thinking with its love of unity and order — but rather as several strands of thought, each of which can move us beyond the constraints of Enlightenment modernity. The Enlightenment ‘The Enlightenment refers to the period towards the end of the eighteenth century, when human reason and scientific objectivity became important in European thinking (Outram 2005, Stove 2003, Edelstein 2010, Hind 2007, Nicholson 1999). It was, in part, a reaction against the religious wars that had devastated much of Europe over the previous two centuries, as a consequence of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Instead of relying on differing views of divine revelation or biblical interpretation to determine morality and ideas about how people should live and how society should be organised, Enlightenment thinkers sought instead to use reason, and the ideas of such Western philosophers as Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, Mill and Bentham were given greater importance. Religion was seen as a matter of personal belief and spirituality, rather than as the central guiding force determining how the world should be ordered, With this emphasis on human rationality came a similar emphasis on tolerance and acceptance of different points of view, as evidenced in the famous statement by Voltaire, the quintessential Enlightenment thinker: ‘I may disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.’ With the idea of freedom of thought and freedom of expression came ideas of political freedoms, especially through the writings of such philosophers as Locke and Mill. Hence the modern idea of ‘human rights’ was founded in Enlightenment thinking (Hayden 2001). With the emphasis on rationality came an added importance given to science and scientific discovery. European scientists studied the world, through such disciplines as botany, geology, biology, astronomy and chemistry. These aimed to document and classify the world and the way it worked. The world was seen as an ordered system, and the task of Enlightenment scientists was to understand that order, and to classify. There was an imperative to fit the world into an ordered, stable, coherent, understandable, unitary model. Classification, with its attempt to fit things neatly into categories, brings with it a binary logic: something either belongs in a category or it does not. This is either/or thinking, rather than both/and thinking, and such binary divisions are characteristic of theEnlightenment way of viewing the world, With this search for order, and the emphasis on rational scientific discovery, the Enlightenment became a project of progress. Humanity was seen as progressing in knowledge and understanding and, as a result, improving society. This progress in science makes the world more understandable and more predictable, and hence increased knowledge enables more control of the environment, and the improvement of quality of life for humanity. Humanism thus became the dominant value of the Enlightenment. The human was valued as the highest form of creation or evolution and, in the philosophy of Kant, humanity was to be valued above all else. Scientific, rational progress was designed for the betterment of ‘humanity’, and it was at this time that the very idea of ‘humanity’ and human rights became significant (Hunt 2007). This humanism was in contrast to the religious world view of earlier centwies, where ‘man’ was seen as part of God's creation and subject to God's will; with the Enlightenment, ‘man’ took a more dominant position in relation to the rest of the world, and ‘man’s’ free will was supreme. ‘These ideas of free will, rationality, science, order, classification and progress are so much part of the modern Western world view that it is important to reflect that they have not always been so dominant; these were not common values in medieval Europe, nor are they necessarily reflected so strongly in the world views of contemporary non-Western societies. However, they are seldom questioned in the mainstream discourse of Western modernity. ‘The Enlightenment paved the way for modernity. It provided the impetus for the Industrial Revolution, which was based on developments in science and technology and their application in an organised, systematic and apparently ‘rational’ way. It promoted the idea of the ordered, predictable world, constantly being improved by human ingenuity and application. This is a world where certainty is valued, where planning is important, and where things are made to fit together in an ordered way. Enlightenment modernity is exemplified by the modern university: dedicated to ‘research’ to find out how the world works, to ‘technology’ that will apply science to practical use, and to a form of ‘education’ that will fit people into their roles in an ordered society. This is duplicated in the modern corporation, in government bureaucracies and in the development of policy. It is an ordered world, with ‘rational man’ at the centre, but also required to ‘fit in’ to the ordered system. The above is, inevitably, a superficial account of a major intellectual movement, which is considerably more complex than such a summary can portray. Readers wishing to know more should consult the extensive literature on the subject (e.g. Outram 2005, Stove 2003, Edelstein 2010, Hind 2007, Nicholson 1999). Problems with the Enlightenment legacy ‘The Enlightenment has certainly made major contributions to the human experience, at least in the European context, and has contributed significantly to the material quality of life of many people, particularly in the West. However, there have also been consequences of the Enlightenment traditionthat have proved to be more problematic, and which in recent decades have led to a questioning of the Enlightenment project. These have particular relevance for community development, and it can be argued that one of the legacies of the Enlightenment has been to impede, rather than to promote, the development of strong and sustainable commmities. Certainty ‘The Enlightenment seeks to define and understand a world of certainty. The aim of scientific research is to understand how the world works, and this should enable us to predict it and ultimately to control it. Certainty and predictability become important aims of the Enlightenment project, and much human activity is aimed at making the world a more certain and predictable place. This is seen in the resources dedicated to planning, management, organisational development and top-down policy; a world of certainty is clearly the ideal and the goal to be reached, This also applies to the way people are expected to live their lives. Life goals, career goals and the planned existence, with no surprises or unexpected crises, represent the ideal life. The more we have certainty, the happier we will be. But the human experience is one of uncertainty. However much we try to impose certainty on a world of chaos, there are constant surprises, unpredicted and unpredictable. Our lives do not follow predictable paths, and the same is true for families, corporations, governments and communities. A world view that seeks to impose certainty is hardly compatible with good community development, where uncertainty, rather than being a threat or a problem, creates possibilities for creative action, and where the spontaneous initiatives of community members are encouraged and celebrated, rather than being forced to fit into a strategic plan. Individualism ‘The Enlightenment defined humanity in terms of the autonomous human subject. The individual was at the centre of the Enlightenment world: it was individual achievement that was important and celebrated, it was the individual who was to be educated, fed, clothed and housed, it was the individual who was employed in industry, it was the individual (usually a man) who was paid for their labour, it was the individual who had a relationship with the state in the political philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and it was the individual who had moral responsibility in the ethical world of Kant. This individualism inevitably weakens more collective understandings of humanity and the human ideal, which are at the heart of our ideas of ‘community’. Asserting the importance of community is a challenge in a world view so heavily influenced by individualism, and has led to ideas of community as being an ‘optional extra’, something nice to be added on, rather than an essential basis for the human experience. Rather than promoting human community, the individualism of the Enlightenment is more conducive to the idea of human rights — as these have been understood largely from an individualist perspective. It is individuals who have rights, in the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in dominant Western formulations of the idea of rights. Collective understandings of rights sit less easily within the Western Enlightenment world view. Hence it has often proved easier forthose who are seeking a more just and humane world, in which the values of humanity are dominant and structures and discourses of oppression are challenged, to do so from within a framework of human rights, rather than a framework of human community. From a community development perspective, although human rights are critically important, they are insufficient, especially if framed within a conventional Western Enlightenment individualism. Gender ‘The Enlightenment tradition has been a tradition of men (Nicholson 2009). The ideal human, the autonomous human subject, is usually male, and human rights are referred to as ‘the rights of man’. ‘The major philosophers of the Enlightenment, mentioned above, were all men, as were most (although not quite all) of the Enlightenment scientists, and it was a man’s world they described. The participation of women was assumed to be confined to the domestic sphere, and therefore largely irrelevant to the grand project of scientific discovery and human improvement. Where women’s voices were raised (as for example with Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 book Vindication of the Rights of Women), they were viewed as marginal to the main game of progress ‘This has important implications for community devel opment. In many societies, not just the West, women play major roles in a community. It is often women who are nurturing and supportive, women who bring people together, who foster cooperation, and so on. Women seem to ‘do community’ better than men, although typically it is often men who will jump to fill the positions of formal leadership. This role of women, and of feminist perspectives, in creating and enhancing community is discussed in subsequent chapters, but here it is sufficient to note the patriarchal assumptions inherent in the Enlightenment world view and that it devalues the more organic understandings, typically associated with women, that are so necessary for community devel opment. The secular ‘The Enlightenment is a secular tradition. It emerged as a reaction to the world that had been torn apart by religious wars, and hence religion, and ideas of the sacred or the spiritual, were sidelined. This helped to establish a modernity where reason and science reigned supreme. One reaction against the Enlightenment was the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century, where poets, artists, composers and novelists sought to reinject ideas of human emotion, passion and connection with nature into the sterile rationality of the Enlightenment world view. Although Romanticism had, and still has, significant appeal to many people, who find that Beethoven, Wordsworth, Keats, Schubert, Goethe and others are saying very profound and moving things about the human condition (Bronk 2009), it is still too often seen as secondary to the ‘main game’ of science, economics and the more ‘rational’ world; as an example, one only need look to the place given to the humanities, compared with the sciences, in the modern Western university. ‘This secular tradition, where the sacred, the spiritual and the emotional are devalued, creates problems for community development. In many communities, religion is of major importance, and inmany other communities, while organised religion is not significant, many people will have strong comnections to ideas of the sacred or the spiritual, and to the expression of emotion. This is an important component of the human condition, although devalued by Enlightenment thinking, and it is important to find an approach to community development that includes it Different means unequal ‘The Enlightenment project of trying to fit everything into a single unified and orderly system has meant that whenever two things, people, events or actions are different, there is an immediate assumption that one must be better, or superior. The Enlightenment urge for classification has led to the obsession with ranking and ‘league tables’, when things are different they must be ranked in order, whether we are talking about schools, athletes, sporting teams, cars (‘car of the year’), cities (‘most liveable city’), paintings (art awards), novels (literary awards), films (the Academy Awards) and so on. This way of thinking creates seemingly endless awards, prizes, competitions and other attempts to rank things and decide which is the ‘best’. This in tum reinforces the idea that there must be one ‘right answer’, one ‘best practice’. In social policy, there is an assumption that, for example, there must be one ‘best’ way to organise a health service, and the result is a constant quest for what that one best way might be. In organisations, the obsession with seeking or defining ‘best practice’ is another example. From a more ecological perspective, this is nonsense. There is never one ‘best’ way to do something, one ‘right answer’, but different practices and different answers will be appropriate in different contexts, at different times and with different actors. The heroic quest for the right answer, or for best practice, is doomed to failure, and there are many right answers and many forms of good (rather than best) practice. The problem is exemplified by some forms of feminism; if men and women are different, then clearly one must be ‘better’, and in patriarchal societies it is clearly the men who are regarded as superior. This has led some feminists to minimise the differences between men and women, and to demonstrate that women can be just as ‘good’ as men. To emphasise the difference would be to admit the inequality, so the differences must be minimised or eliminated. However, other forms of feminism have challenged this view, suggesting that women do not have to be like men in order to be equal, that the “difference” between men and women should be celebrated, and that men and women can play complementary but equally validated roles (Irigaray 2005, Plumwood 1993). This notion of ‘different but equal’ challenges the ordered, ranked world of the Enlightenment. Just because two things, people, communities, practices or whatever are different, this should not imply that one is necessarily ‘better’ The Enlightenment difficulty with ‘equal but different’ is a major problem for community development. In the above example it was applied to gender, but it can also apply to race or ethnicity. The unspoken assumption, when we identify two different races or cultures, is that one will be somehow ‘better’ and is to be preferred, In this way the Enlightenment world view can readily foster racism and exclusion, often at an unconscious level, and can work against inclusive communities, built on diversity, as discussed in chapter 5Colonialism The very idea of ‘enlightenment’ results in the assumption that the Western world view, as ‘enlightened’ and constantly progressing, is therefore superior to others. If the West is more enlightened, then surely it has a justification, if not an obligation, to share that enlightenment with others, and hence the Enlightenment provided a ready justification for colonial expansion (Chowdhry & Nair 2004, Day 2005). The colonial imposition of seemingly superior Western ways on other cultural traditions became a sacred duty of the colonisers, as teachers, missionaries and others set out to ‘enlighten’ the rest of the world in the name of progress. Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of education: the content to be taught, and the way it was to be taught, were imposed by European colonisers, and Indigenous forms of knowledge, ways of knowing and ways of learning were actively discouraged. This continued with the pervasive trend for people from non-Western countries to aspire to a Western education, and for families to send their children to Western countries for their school and/or university education. Colonialism will be discussed in more detail in chapter 9, but for present purposes it is important to note that such a colonialist outlook, implicit in the Enlightenment project, is contrary to the principles of community development, as described in this book. Challenging colonialist practice is an important part of community development, and it is hard to do so from within an Enlightenment world view where the inherent superiority of Western ‘progress’ is taken for granted. Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution One important aspect of the Enlightenment was the emergence of capitalism, as described by Adam Smith, an important Enlightenment figure. Capitalism is a classic Enlightenment idea, with the notion that it is a ‘natural’ system, which works according to certain laws, that it can be studied in order to make it ordered and predictable, and that through the market a form of rationality will emerge. Capitalism is not seen as a God-given benefit, but rather as emerging from the aggregated ingenuity and application of individual human beings, making ‘rational’ choices in the marketplace. Along with the emergence of capitalism came the Industrial Revolution, as the drive and ingenuity of entrepreneurs were applied to the ‘rational’ scientific organisation of production in factories, foundries and workshops. This of course had a major impact on communities; traditional rural and town-based communities were dismantled as people moved to find work in the factories of the newly emerging industrial cities, and as the economic base of smaller towns and villages was threatened. ‘The erosion of traditional commmnity, and the transition to urbanised ‘mass society’, had begun. This was a major concern for sociologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Tonnies and Durkheim, who observed this change and its implications. The transition to mass society has meant the traditional idea of commmity is now problematic. Top-down expertiseA natural consequence of the Enlightenment world view is an emphasis on top-down expertise. The ordered world of the Enlightenment lends itself to hierarchical organisation; this was the basis of the classificatory systems of the sciences, which organised plants, animals, rocks and so on into species and subspecies, represented in a hierarchical diagram. It was therefore natural that this form of organisation should be replicated in workplaces and in the organisation of companies, government departments, and various other organisations. The popularity of the hierarchical organisation chart, used to describe an organisation, is testament to the power of the Enlightenment world view. With such hierarchy goes the assumption that superior wisdom, insight and power belongs with those at the top. If the world is best understood through objective scientific study, and through understanding the laws by which it operates, there is an important role for the ‘expert’ who best understands these laws, and the proper place for such expertise is at the top of the hierarchy, rather than at the bottom. Top-down practice, managerialism and bureaucratic control are therefore natural consequences of the Enlightenment world view (Weber 1970), and it is no surprise that such forms of organisation are so common in the Enlightenment world that it is very difficult to conceive of other forms of organisation Yet itis precisely the need for such other forms of organisation, validating bottom-up wisdom and bottom-up practice, that is at the heart of community development (Clark & Teachout 2012). From a community devel opment perspective, top-down structures and practices have proved to be alienating, disempowering and stifling of initiative and creativity. Commumity development seeks to establish alternative forms of organisation, which can break free from the disempowering constraints of the bureaucratic and the managerial. Chaos and messiness Despite the ideal of an ordered, rational, Enlightenment world, the reality of most people’s lives, and the reality of community, is one of messiness, contradiction, disorder and chaos, The Enlightenment world view seeks to impose order on this chaos, through organisation and management, but the overwhelming experience of people living and working in communities and organisations is that this heroic and well-intentioned endeavour is doomed to failure. Attempts to make people conform to neat bureaucratic categories and definitions only show that the variety and contradictory nature of human experiences makes such rigid classification impossible. A modern social security system is a good example; it is Enlightenment modemity at its strongest, setting up clear categories of people who are defined as in need, and targeting benefits for them. But however careful and detailed the definitions of who should qualify for which benefit, there are always people who do not quite fit the categories. Social security systems involve an army of bureaucrats and many volumes of regulations in order to make them work, but even so, many decisions are appealed and in many cases these appeals are upheld, suggesting that the categories are never watertight and are always open to interpretation. And after all the appeals there are always some people who fail to qualify although they are clearly in need, while there are others who do not