What is Community Development?: Using participatory action research to change power, poverty and inequality

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

Epistemology and ontology

‘…action research should aim not just at achieving knowledge of the world, but achieving a better world’(Kemmis, 2009)

PAR research spawned radical community development

1968: ‘revolt, reaction and rebellion’Urban Programme: response to social

unrest Community Development Project, 1969‘Cycles of deprivation’ theory AR exposed flawed analysisPolitical/structural vs personal/pathologicalGramsci, Freire, feminismGrassroots social movements – theory in

action

CD Praxis: a contested space between top-down and bottom-up

CD principles: social and environmental justice

CD vision: just and sustainable worldCD values: ideology of equality CD process: popular education for

participatory democracy, practical projects and collective action for change

CD theory: analyses of power and discrimination

Power in the research process

Equalising power: outcome and processIdeology of equality = mutual respect,

dignity, trust, reciprocity in actionDislocates researcher as external expertCo-researchers in mutual inquiryResearching with not on peopleProcess becomes participatoryExperience becomes empowering

Participation: a radical concept!

My points: A participatory worldview versus a

competitive worldviewTransformative concepts - participation,

empowerment, social justice – hijacked, diluted

My questions:What are the challenges that this presents in

practice?Swimming against the tide?Movement for change?

Hegemony pathologises:Participation as empowerment

Becoming critical: ‘extraordinarily re-experiencing the ordinary’ (Ira Shor)

Creating critical dissent dialogue:‘questioning answers not answering questions’

Collective action in community:Scholes Community Garden

Collective action on policy:Migrant Rights Centre Ireland’s campaign for policy change on work permits

Local to global action: local projects link to movements for change

A better world is possible!

My point: Unless PAR moves out in iterative cycles from the personal/local to the political/structural nothing will change.

My question: What are the challenges to PAR to move beyond the specific to the general in iterative cycles of co-creating knowledge for collective action?

The true measure of a nation’s standing!

‘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).

Child poverty: PAR contextualised in its political times

1979-1997: child poverty increased from 1:10 to 1:3 in UK

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

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

Poverty discriminates

Lone-parent householdsLow paid householdsHouseholds without an adult in paid

workMinority ethnic families‘Dis’abled children or those with a

‘dis’abled parentLooked after children

EQUALITY: are all children at equal risk of 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

POVERTY KILLS:And reduces life chances

Low birthweight, infant death, childhood accidentsUnderachievement at school, truancy or exclusionLow self esteem, low expectationsTeenage pregnancyYouth suicideMalnutritionUnemployment and low wagesHomelessnessLong-term illness (morbidity)Premature death (mortality)

From ‘no such thing as society’ to ‘the big society’

‘Poverty’ implies injusticeChild Poverty Act, 2010, embedded ‘pledge’

in lawInstitute for Fiscal Studies: child poverty will

rise by 2014 due to ‘big society’Higher in UK than comparable countries Entrenched inequalities – wealth and power ‘Povertyism’ pathologises poor peopleResistance to redistribution of wealthDestroying the hopes and life chances of

generations of young people

World crises of social justice and sustainability

Widening gap between poverty and prosperity within and between countries

Strange phenomenon of increasing poverty in rich countries

Globalisation – neoliberal free-trade principle prioritises profit over people and planet

Structures of oppression reproduced on global scale

Politics of disposability

Critique and analysis

My point: ‘inadequate action research’ is decontextualised from social, economic, political structures’ Kemmis (2006)

My question:How can we ensure that PAR is contextualised within the structures of power that it seeks to change?