Becoming Critical: Community development as practice for social justice

Margaret LedwithEmeritus Professor of Community Development and Social JusticeUniversity of Cumbria, UK

Community Development

Community development is about social justice and environmental justice

Twin world crises of social justice and sustainability

New ideas: new policy

Social exclusion due to personal deficits

‘De-emphasises’ poverty and redistributive justice (Tett, 2006)

Erodes collective responsibilityGives rise to povertyism: poverty as

a personal problem (Killeen,2008)

EVERY CHILD MATTERS!Or do they?

State of the world’s children 2005: Childhood under threat (UNICEF, 2005): one in every two children of the world in poverty

UNICEF report (2007) on child well-being in rich countries: UK bottom of 21 countries

Troubled times: child poverty in Black and White,Moss Side, Manchester, UK, 2008

‘The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born’ (UNICEF, 2007: 1).

Who is poor? Racist dimensions of UK child poverty

27% of children from white families36% Indian 41% Black Caribbean 47% Black non-Caribbean69% Pakistani and Bangladeshi

Source: Child Poverty Action Group (2008) Child Poverty: The stats, London:CPAG

A divided world

Widening gap between poverty and prosperity

Polarising social divisions within and between countries

Acceleration of globalisation – profit imperative exploits people and environments

Same structures of oppression – class, ‘race’, gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, faith, ‘dis’ability… reproduced on global scale

World in crisis offers new possibilities!

Problematising Katrina:a politics of disposability

Practical theory in action Begins in stories of everyday life Values: equality, respect, dignity, mutuality,

trust… Teaching to question the taken-for-grantedness of

everyday life Re-experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary Understanding local lives as politically

constructed across difference Dialogue: creating critical dissent Praxis: theory/practice, action/reflection,

thinking/doing Conscientisation: becoming critical Collective action for change: local to global Worldview based on cooperation, not competition Participatory democracy

Culture of silence

Respectful encounters: listening to everyday stories

Problematising: re-experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary

Teaching to question:Who? Where? What? Why? How? In whose interests?

Dialogue: connected knowing across difference

Action/reflection:generating practical theories

Creating critical dissent dialogue:challenging the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life with carnivalesque in the public square

Scholes Community Garden:replacing dereliction with beauty

Local action: carnival as dissent

Local to national action:Migrant Rights Centre Irelandcampaign for policy change on work permits

Local to global action: women of the world unite, Beijing 1995

Where to from here?

Michael Pitchford (2008): CD is distracted, lost our overarching purpose, colonised by top-down policy ‘herding communities into structures and forums they neither own nor relate to’

CD about deepening democracy: critique, dissent, vision are foundation of social justice praxis!