COMMUNITY HEALTH STUDIES VOLUME X I I I , NUMBER 1 , 1989

THE LIMITS AND POTENTIAL OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Jane Dixon

PO Box 566, Barhursr. 2795

Abstract Some health and welfare workers are making

claims for community development which are both unrealistic and misleading. By tracing the history and public policy use of community development and by defining its characteristics, much of the mystique which surrounds this intervention is eliminated. Community development is revealed in this paper to have potential in the areas of personal and planned social change. However, community development's contribution to fundamental social change is circumscribed by the nature of government sponsorship and by its very process which emphasizes parochialism and the generation of self reliance.

Introduction In the search for strategies which 'strengthen

community action", identified as one of five challenges for health promotion in WHO'S 'Ottowa C h a r t e r for Heal th Promotion',l heal th professionals have been examining approaches which have their origins in fields other than health. Currently, a most popular approach with community health and health promotion workers is that of 'community development'. Of a total of one hundred and twenty papers and workshops presented at the 1988 Australian Community Health Association national conference, no fewer than fifteen per cent encouraged a community development approach.*

In many cases, however, this attempted translation of an approach from agricultural extension and adult education to social welfare to health, has led to claims being made for community development (CD) which are both unrealistic and unrelated to its history. In particular, claims about CD's contribution to social change ignore a century of experience with this particular intervention. Such oversight is particularly evident in the Working Paper of the Community Development in Health Project.' Herein, the claim is made that"community development is about social change; changing the outside world, changing ourselves and changing ourselves in relation to the outside world".

It is the aim of this article to clarify the history and nature of the C D process. in order that a more

informed debate about the possible potential of a CD approach to health promotion and community health may take place. Emphasis is placed upon the potential of C D for personal and social change.

Social change and CD defined Unrealistic, even extravagant, claims for

community development are possible for three reasons. First, one of its constituent parts 'community' continues to be uncritically acclaimed as an answer to the problems of a complex society? The Weberian notion that communities can be defined in terms of conflicting interest groups and the Marxist argument that worker-based organizing, not community-based organizing, will result in the redistribution of power have done little to dull the shine of the concept.5 Nor have community studies which reveal the parochialism, control by local elites and national economies, and resistance to change, endemic to locality based communities.6

Second, the C D traditions are ignored by health and welfare commentators who have been redefining community development to mean anything that is not one-on-one, or institutional, care.' To further confuse, community development is all too often made synonymous with community involvement: or is used interchangeably with the process of par t ic ipat ion-in-planning a n d participation-in-service d e l i ~ e r y . ~ In this article C D will refer to the ongoing process of developing self reliance, both in terms of personal and social group capacities.

The third reason for the exaggerated claims made for C D involves the concept of 'social change'. Social change may refer to revolutionary change, to the natural progression of events or to the introduction of planned social change. It may refer to improvements to the status quo or to a n evolutionary feminist-socialist state. Without commentators specifying their particular meaning for social change it is possible to infer social change potential which is incongruous with the change method itself. Or conversely, it becomes possible to criticize the lack of revolutionary change potential when personal change and limited social change are

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more clearly the intention, For the purposes of this article 1 will distinguish

between 'planned social change' and 'fundamental social change'. Bennis et al. trace the origins of the first term to 1958 and the work of Lippett and others, when it was used to describe the work of anyone engaged in planned, as opposed to spontaneous, social change.10 'Change agents' was the term given to politically neutral workers attempting to facilitate planned change, which was defined as "a relatively modest response" to changes in demography and changing values regarding family formation and the introduction of automation.!]

Planned change efforts were posited by Warren as a reaction to social changes which resulted from new technologies and inevitable progress. Warren and other planned change theorists were markedly influenced by the work of social psychologists in the US National Training Laboratories, who emphasized the importance on the shaping of interests, not of political and economic forces but, of community and informal networks. In this sense 'community' was one means for change and a possible by-product of groups co-operating to cope with progress.

In contrast, 'fundamental social Change' refers to the ongoing class, race or gender struggles to transform the existing economic and power structures. It denotes the desire for a society which is based on totally new social relations, not improved social relations. Wearing has fleshed out the type of society which is desired by radical and socialist feminists,'* and there is an ongoing attempt around the world to define socialism which makes sense of contemporary conditions. One such formulation of a democratic socialist society has recently been put forward by the Australian New Left Party steering group.''

Using the concepts defined above I intend to explore two propositions which have a bearing on community development's inclusion in community health and health promotion programs. The first is that community development is useful in the promotion of personal and planned social change and has little to do with fundamental social change. The second is that the sponsorship of community development is the key to its potential in personal and planned social change. Before addressing the community development potential 1 locate community development in two contexts: an historical context and a public policy context and then I elaborate upon the traditional understandings of community development.

The community development tradition The term community development was first

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officially defined in 1948.14 A decade later Sanders described it as a process, a method, a program and a social movement.15 A further decade on, community development was juxtaposed against two other forms of locality-based intervention, social planning and social action.16 However, each of these quite significant debates, which will be described later, are the outcome of a rich history which has too often been ignored.

Community development, according to English language accounts, had its beginnings in the US at the end of last century. After the Civil War, in an effort to defeat southern Democrats, the Republican Party sponsored black self-help projects which "were designed to develop agricultural productivity and a better skilled and disciplined black industrial labour force."17 The Republican Party's strategy of social control coincided at the time with the efforts of Booker T. Washington, who ran a teacher trainer college for blacks in Alabama, to assimilate blacks and whites by educating the blacks for menial work. As Mayo reports, Washington received widespread establishment support after delivering a speech which contained the statement that the "wisest among my race understand that the agitation for social equality is the extremest folly."17

A central plank of the US Department of Agriculture's agricultural extension project with poor rural dwellers was adopted from Washington's training institute.

Called the community school, which operated from a wagon, it provided trained demonstrators to teach women in health matters, home economics and housecraft and men in techniques of animal husbandry, crop storage and farm repairs.I4 So successful did the United States consider this method of agricultural extension that Africans were invited to visit and to adopt these methods of adult education. Brokensha and Hodge stated that the

. . example of American-Negro education and of its foremost innovator, Booker T Washington at Tuskegee Institute, greatly influenced education- based community development in some of the colonies of Africa. . ..'I4

Thus, at the turn of the century, community development was synonymous with particular agriculture extension methods - the aims of which were expressed in the following passage. "To bring technical knowledge to the farmer; encourage him to grow more of his own food; help farm families appreciate country life; train rural youth for its place in the farm society; promote the social, cultural. recreational, intellectual and spiritual life of rural people; develop native talents and build a rural citizenry proud of its occupation, constructive in outlook, self reliant and imbued with a love for home and country."l4

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Sanders, writing in the journal Rural Sociology, reflected that the origins of this method of intervention also lay in the need for economic development. For him community development was the byproduct of not only agricultural extension but of the need for economic planning and rural reconstruction.15

This harnessing of C D to the cause of building economies, and not simply in advancing adult education and facility development, was appropriated by colonial governments, keen to maintain control over their colonies in the inter-war years. Mayo has argued, with an account of the events prior to 1952 and the British Community Development Programme in India, that community development was borne out of the dual needs of colonizers "to 'civilize' while exploitingn.17 Mayo and Mowbray argue that after the Second World War community development programs which could enhance self-sufficiency were also used to limit the spread of communism.18

The use of C D to strengthen capitalist democracies was clearly evident in Australia. Community development first sprang to national prominence here with the endorsement by the Departments of Post War Reconstruction and Education of a unique and spontaneous set of events in the South Australian country town, Nuriootpa. From a number of ad hoc and unrelated incidents, dating back to 191 1, the residents of Nuriootpa had achieved without outside assistance the rerouting of a proposed railway line, the establishment of a high school and a town park, the erection of a Methodist Church with an adjoining kindergarten and the purchase of the Nuriootpa Hotel. This last venture, as with similar community hotels around the Upper Murray, became the source of finance for further town improvements and collective actions throughout the twenties and thirties. The Nuriootpa energy and actions were taken up by an Adelaide- based group of academics, businessmen and trade unionists (who) *. . . began a campaign aimed at giving substance to the communal spirit produced by the war effort and converting it into a programme of postwar reconstruction."~9

They called their campaign "Common Cause" and produced a pamphlet entitled 'A Township Starts to Live". The ABC widely promoted what was happening in Nuriootpa in a booklet entitled "The Community Can Do It". Mowbray reports on how the Commonweal th Office of Educat ion enthusiastically took up the Nuriootpa example extolling the virtues of community and arguing "the importance of community centres and community development" as a "training ground for democrats within a pluralist society".*O

The community centre movement crumbled with

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the demise of its major protagonist the Department of Post War Reconstruction. However, the interest in community development was kept alive internationally by the United Nations and by the British government for use in colonial settings. In 1948, a t the Colonial Office initiated conference "The Encouragement of Initiative in African Society", community development was first defined. It was described as a: ". . . movement designed, to promote better living for the whole community with the active participation, and, if possible, on the initiative of the community, but if this initiative is not forthcoming spontaneously, by the use of techniques for arousing and stimulating it in order to secure its active and enthusiastic response to the movement."~4

This statement includes the very important distinction between self-initiated and other-initiated community development. The Nuriootpa and upper-Murray self-financed ventures being rare examples of the former.

On the basis of a further Conference recommendation a Community Development Clearing House in the University of London w a s established and in 1950 at the same University Dr. T.R. Batten commenced the first British-based community development training courses, the content of which apparently reflected Batten's use of educational techniques in the colonies.21 Previously any training for colonial administrators was undertaken in Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Kenya.

Up until 1950, the community development process was generally characterised by government intervention with a view to teaching 'backward people" better techniques for managing their land and their health or to overcome "the inadequacies of colonial services in the fields of education, health and welfare"." Whilst self-help was stressed within the process, self-determination was not on the agenda and community development, it appears, was wittingly and unwittingly used to create dependency on the sponsoring body rather than independence from this body. This is not the case of the few examples of non-government sponsored community development projects: the London Council of Social Services experiment on London housing estates in the fifties22 and the Australian Geelong and District Community Chest's innovative social services planning and provision.23 Although self-sufficiency in social services may have been the result of both of these instances, fundamental social change was anathema to the sponsors.

In stark contrast to the government and non- government agency C D projects, self-initiated collective actions were evident in the US during the fifties. Specially trained community organisers,

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using confrontational strategies popular with socialist activists and labour organisers, were employed by working class neighbourhoods.24 This early brand of social action had a similar purpose to community development: to secure improved standards of living for the poor without challenging capitalism.25 However, not only were the strategies more contestual than those under CD, the redistribution of power, albeit not control over the means of production, was sought as the principal means of improving living standards.

The sixties, or “the time of ferment”,26 saw a host of US and U K government programs which were intended to interweave the features of a geographical concept of “community” and a liberal ”interest group” ideology of “participation”. Consensual strategies based on a partnership between different levels of government and non-government organisations first reasserted themselves under the aegis of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ urban renewal programs of the early and middle sixties. Programs such as Model Cities and War on Poverty, legitimised a welfare and C D approach to problems of inequality and powerlessness. Community development was endorsed where the stress was on offering opportunities for local initiative and “maximum feasible participation” of service recipients in program decision-making.2’

Under the US Economic Opportunity Act, nine hundred Community Action Programs (CAPs) “composed of community residents who would design and carry out comprehensive programs to eliminate poverty” were established.24 CAPs were all federally funded which prompted Moynihan to note “a new institution of sorts has been added to the system of American local government”.24 Mayo went so far as to describe this period of renewed government interest in community development as the popularization of “community psycho- therapy”.l7 Dearlove too, roundly condemned this period and commented that previously militant groups eschewed conflict strategies in favour of appeasing government sponsors. He said in respect of the CAPs: “. . . when conflicts have occurred, the consequences have not been beneficial to the poor. The resolution of such conflicts seems invariably to be in the direction of the dilution of socialactionand a regression toward less abrasive community organization, particularly toward, a substitution of social services for community action.”28

Encouraging citizen participation was also a popular strategy with the British government at this time. Best known through its National Community Development Project, 1969-1974, urban renewal and employment generation were the generally desired 0utcomes.2~ The CDP’s failure to achieve these outcomes illustrated for many the tensions

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between harnessing CD for planned social change and for fundamental social change.z9

The subsequent substitution by governments of the more easy to contain participation-in-social planning approach, whilst calling this approach community based, has compounded the confusion surrounding the CD- social change nexus. Public policy approaches to social problems which incorporate community involvement more appropriately come under the banner of the decentralisation of services or of consultation. However, even in the specialist community work literature like the Community Development Journal (CDJ) and the Community Work series published by the British National Institute of Social Work the blurring of the C D tradition, outlined in this past section, with community involvement strategies in planning and policy making has been very much in evidence for the last decade. For instance, in a recent edition of the CDJ a whole issue was devoted to decentralisation of government programs in Britain, arguably more suited to a public administration journal.10

Community development as reflected in Australian public policies

Despite the poor results overseas of CD as an approach to urban renewal and poverty alleviation, the Australian Labor Party, which came to power in 1972, saw it very much as one means to promote equality, that is to bring about more than planned social change.]’ Through programs such as the Area Improvement Program, Australian Assistance Program (AAP), Disadvantaged Schools Program and Community Health Program (CHP) the identification of needs by communities and the communities’ subsequent action to meet their own needs was enshrined. One strategy for involving the community in this last matter, particularly within the CHP and AAP, was the government financing of community group projects at local and regional levels.

Indeed these programs resuscitated the post-war concept of regionalism. Regionally based and not State based programs were supposed to enable the inclusion of ‘all Australians’ in the decision-making process, thereby increasing equality of opportunity. However on the basis of his evaluation of the AAP, Jones made the comment, which could be applied to all the programs mentioned above, that it was “in keeping with the earliest Australian welfare tradition of community volunteerism”.]*

The Social Welfare Commission which had responsibility for the AAP contributed significantly to the local community development literature by issuing such discussion documents as ‘Community Development. The Process and rhe People:

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‘ Comm unity Development . Controversies and Issues; ‘Community Development and C0mmunit.v Development Training ’. This literature was replete with questions and cynicism about the method of intervention - surprising perhaps when issued by its sponsor. From one of these documents came statements which criticised the Government’s and professionals’ enthusiasm for adopting CD. The “. . . growing affection f o r communi ty development by professionals with a service delivery history is not unconnected with the ostensible failure of casework and ‘problem’ oriented approaches to significantly affect social relationships in the broad.”33

Graycar estimated that six hundred community workers were employed nationwide by the end of 1975.31 However their motivations were questioned further in one of the SWC documents. “Some here adopted [planned community development] as an alternative to casework in dealing with problems, others as a means of challenging planning decisions, others as a means of generating self-help and yet others, as a way of quelling dissatisfaction and co- opting communities.~4

As in Britain some confusion amongst the practitioners, if not the policy makers, surrounded the C D and social planning interventions. It would appear that Australian policy makers conceived designated community development officers (CDOs) as facilitating social planning, through organising local input, and then assisting with the establishment of organisational structures by which local solutions could be put in place.35

Some years later in reviewing Australia’s experience of community development, the Social Welfare Policy Secretariat commented that “. . . one approach can be seen as ‘emerging from below’ (community development), and the other as ‘imposed from above’ (social planning). Both approaches have their merits. For example, the first approach is likely to take into account local needs; the second approach may overcome possible vested interests inherent in the first approach and may help reduce regional inequalities.”zh

By ignoring the role of government sponsorship the statement about “emerging from below” misrepresents CD. In contrast to much of the current enthusiasm for C D though, the SWPS inferred in this passage that social planning is the social change strategy whilst C D is the mere responder to local needs.

The widespread employment of generalist community problem solvers, “animateurs” or CDOs, as in the 1972-1975 Labor Government days, seems to have passed. Most workers who still have the title “CDO”, (at least in NSW), are employed in drug and alcohol services, on new housing estates

and as community centre workers. Generally they have to combine their C D with a planning, service delivery and co-ordination role. Occasionally local government community services employees, Home and Community Care workers and health educators use a C D approach when they feel a commitment to its philosophy and when it complements their primary tasks.

The enshrining of community involvement, and sometimes CD, in public policies extends back for fifteen years now in this country. A number of trends can be discerned which suggest that this direction will continue. First, educated and relatively affluent groups see it as one means to obtain greater social democracy through counteracting the impact of electoral politics and bureaucratization. Distrust of this last element is shared by oppressed groups who have formed action committees, welfare rights groups and even social movements to demand greater control over, or input to, government and charity sponsored services. These citizen initiated demands coincide with government imperatives to reduce the size of expenditure on social services, including health. Efficiency and equity criteria, occasionally incompatible, seem to be inexorably producing public policies characterized by cen- tralized policy making, decentralization of services, community participation and ‘privatization’ through the community management of services.

The Health For All Australians Report contains a rationale for community participation built upon the moral, consumer-group pressure and efficiency arguments mentioned above. To these arguments is added one of political pragmatism: a “strong and cohesive consumer voice could prove a powerful ally in some of the difficult policy issues looming on the h~r izon .”’~

Community development conceptualised Sanders, who was referred to earlier, developed a

theory of community development which encompassed four ways of viewing this method of intervention. He contended that C D was a process, or a progression of steps; a method, or a means to an end; a program, as in a time-limited set of activities; and a movement. A description of C D based on his and others’ work follows.

C D as a Process According to the Biddles, a process refers “. . .

to a progression of events that is planned by the participants to serve goals they progressively choose. The events point to changes in a group. . . that can be termed growth in social sensitivity and competence . . . process has not genuinely started until the participants begin to assume responsibility to direct and keep it going.”jx

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The traditional C D process was formulated on the basis of social group work and adult education theories and anthropological techniques used in the introduction of innovations. The stages in the process have been described as reading like maxims: establish felt needs, use local leadership, foster self help and follow up with an institution to carry forward the gains because the gains need to be re- experienced through routinization.39 Translating from approaches in the anthropological tradition Walker has described the centrality of a "contact dialogue" between sponsor, indigenous leaders and their followers. The dialogue between people who want action, donees, and the group which can assist with resources or facilitating the action, the donor, is ideally initiated at the behest of the people. The dialogical process continues with indigenous leaders consulting their rank and file in order to return to the donor with certain requests based on their own assessment of felt needs. The process continues until the people have achieved their objectives.

In a manual for working with Aboriginal groups and communities, Gluck has emphasized not the contact dialogue but the process of analysis of the community." The analysis of local power structures, economic and social relationships etcetera is conducted simply through sitting, listening, watching, and talking. Sophisticated data collection and analysis methods are not mentioned. Sharing the results of the analysis with those being analysed becomes the springboard for action. Thus, if having heard about their interrelationships strikes a receptive chord, motivation to change some of these relationships, in other words to introduce change, may be forthcoming. It is possible to conceive the analysis, often called a community study, as provid- ing the basis of the contact dialoguedescribed above.

CD as Method As a method C D has been contrasted with social

planning, and in particular with social action. For Jack Rothman, (1968, 1987) who used the term "locality development", C D goals are those of self help unlike "the shifting of power relationships and resources" characteristic of social action.4' "Building community capacity" has been recently revived as another CD goal, by more recent community development exponents like John McKnight, an influential figure in the community mental health movement in the US.42

The basic C D change strategy isolated by Rothman involves a "broad cross-section of people . . . in determining and solving their own problems", based on the assumption that common and reconcilable interests exist. Whether this trait t ranslates t o the oft-cited dis t inguishing characteristic between social action and CD, as the

presence or absence of contestual or consensual strategies is a matter for conjecture.43 Margaret Norris has documented the situation where C D can use either form of strategy." She proposed that a more accurate demarcation between C D and social action lay in the adherence by the practitioner to directiveness - non/ directiveness. Thus, a community developer listens to others' aspirations and is led by them in terms of the strategies to adopt, unlike the 'activist' who encourages particular solutions and strategies.

The repetitive themes in C D are democratic procedures, voluntary co-operation, self help, development of indigenous leadership and educational objectives - not conflict or consensus. These terms would be more usefully employed to denote the sorts of social theories to which practitioners subscribe.

CD as Programs Programs which include any of the themes

mentioned above and which embody citizen involvement, localism and gradualism have been described by Kinkhuda as C D programs." Examples of C D programs can be found in the preceding sections.

CD as a Movement Referral to a philosophy or to a movement is a

recurring undercurrent in C D and was a feature of the 1948 definition. The philosophy is what makes the intervention attractive to so many touched by the peace, women's and ecological movements over the last two decades.

Sanders, who alerted us to this dimension of C D described what he meant in the following terms: ". . . a crusade, a cause to which people become committed . . . It is dedicated to progress, as a philosophic and not a scientific concept, since progress must be viewed with reference to values and goals which differ under different political and social systems."l5

Gluck has expressed the philosophy as "people working together, sharing each other's problems and challenges, and celebrating progress that is defined by their perception of their community and its wider environment".40 The charter, for want of a better term, contained in his C D manual, which operationalizes this philosophy is set out at the end of the article.

Discussion Through tracing its history, C D is revealed as

having been most widely used by governments, when the national interest is at stake and for the introduction of innovatory ideas, practices and technologies. Even when adopted by non-

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government agencies CD has been generally an intervention imposed from outside for the good of those inside - it has been a paternalistic intervention.

In public policy terms CD has, since the sixties, been a popular means of fostering participation in local area service delivery, of obtaining the views and compliance of local leaders through consultation, and of encouraging self-help, volunteerism and cost- saving decentralization. More recently, the securing of a sense of ‘we- feeling’to counteract the problems of powerlessness and anomie, and to propel groups to collective action has been highlighted as valuable in the fields of local economic development, community mental health, adult education and social welfare.

In the specialist community work literature, C D has been distinguished conceptually from other forms of locality activism, like social planning or social action, on the basis of several so-called unique characteristics. First, C D is perceived to be based on an egalitarian, and therefore non-elitist, philosophy. This means that any intervention must ‘start from where the people are at’. In other words the community developer does not impose his or her values on the community. This normative proposition leads to a second commonly identified characteristic, the emphasis upon process and not ends. In particular, the process of identifying where people are a t in terms of their needs and aspirations is compared favourably to the social planning approach in which the planner has expertise which the people lack. A third characteristic is that of an approach which enables the indigenous leadership to control the pace and nature of any outside intervention. The enabling, facilitating and empowering role of the community developer is contrasted with the community activist who assumes a leadership role.

However, the government’s traditiopal support of C D suggests t h a t the potent ia l f o r operationalizing all of these C D characteristics is circumscribed. In addition, the goals of local self reliance and enhanced community capacity d o not logically engender changes which transcend localities. Some, and not all, of the anomalies or contradictions which exist between the C D philosophy, method and process and government- backed C D programs are now discussed.

The first contradiction concerns the limited potential for government sponsored workers to be the non-directive servants of the people. They after all are generally not invited into communities (as in the early social action days) but are placed there by government departments to accomplish certain tasks and perform particular functions, for example to establish community management committees, to

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co-ordinate a communitycare service, or to undertake a community profile and make recommendations for improved services and facilities. Gone are the days when community developers took their mandate from the community. The Social Welfare Research Centre has clearly dismissed this notion in its account of funding body expectations towards funded bodies.& Gone too are the days in which community groups forwarded submissions which identified needs from their perspective. Needs-based funding determined by central bureaucracies has largely replaced citizen determined projects.

In a well illustrated paper, Minkler has argued that many ethical dilemmas arise for community organizers, including health educators, as they attempt to reconcile their mandate from both their employers and their c ~ m m u n i t i e s . ~ ~ She stated that adopting “. . . the principle (of starting where the people are) may cause serious moral dilemmas for the health educator caught between the sometimes conflicting agendas of the community and a health agency employer.”7

A second contradiction involves the emphasis upon a process which accepts and does not challenge the existing local power relations (and indeed makes use of them). This situation denies, in all situations except where there is an already politically active constituency, the potential for fundamental social change. Even in situations where new organizations or associations are formed in the pursuit of particular interests the beneficiaries are most likely to be middle class groups who can contest the power of bureaucrats, developers and other identifiible groups with power. The C D process, beyond the undertaking of a community study and the establishment of a contact dialogue, necessarily remains captured by local ruling elites. Indeed, community work case studies are starting to reveal the limited contributions to social change of CD.

In a critical self-evaluation, Mary Lane, community work teacher and practitioner, described her years of work in WesternSydneyasa CD0.4RT~ achieve her priorities Lane emphasized a community education strategy. For her, community education encompassed consciousness-raising and skills training with residents. Despite her systematically applied community development practice Lane concluded somewhat pessimistically that an “extension of community participation in local neighbourhood affairs had not led to an increase in [the residents] power to influence the wider political arenaW.4R Lane pointed out that many of the outcomes of her work contributed to the maintenance, not the change, of the status quo.

In another critical self-analysis, six Western Sydney community workers collaborated to write

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about the place of community work in counteracting problems caused by structural variables, for example State power, capitalism, gender relations.49 Their report “The Proofs in the Pudding”contained an insightful discussion of the strategic importance of community groups which were said to be: “. . . one of the few forums which have the potential to raise issues of everyday life in the suburbs. [They] also are an opportunity to ‘learn by doing’. For people with no power, organising in groups has the potential for them to experience some power and an opportunity to see that change is possible and desirable and overcome the conservatism of isolation.”9

Yet the examples of ensuing community group activity, namely a tenants’ association, a battle over an occasional child care centre, petitioning Council regarding the siting of a community centre, the acquisition of skills through management committee participation, contribute to what has been defined as planned social change. The residents exhibited little desire to connect their local campaigns to broader campaigns for increased child care generally or for social justice for public housing tenants. In other words the community workers had no mandate for fundamental social change.

Both the case studies reported above demonstrate clearly the limitations of locality organising for problems created at national and international levels. The fundamental social change component, which Lane and Falappi and others stated as necessary, was put on the back burner because of the nature of the workers’ mandate and because of their commitment to working with ‘community’.

By placing the often very conservative and uninspiring aspirations of communities centre stage and making use of the often oppressive local power relations, the C D method can result in changes meaningful to participants. However these developments are never towards ‘fundamental social change’. In its very strength for responsiveness to local needs, that is parochialism and starting where the people are at, lies the weakness for fundamental social change. As Kinkhuda put it, the -. . ,

besetting limitation of community development as a strategy for social change is its psychological rather than socio-economic approach to social problems. Community development programs . . . are concerned with people’s psychological capacity to make decisions, not with their economic power to d o SO.''^

From her research with a small group of community health workers in Britain, Kilian highlighted Khinkuda’s assertion. She found that self-empowerment, so often mentioned as part of the CD process employed by many of the workers, did

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not lead to actions necessary to alter power arrangements. lndeed Kilian argued that the psychological basis of many empowering strategies had the effect “of blaming the victim, fostering illusions and confusing the issue of power.’w

Likewise the argument from Jackson and others that community development is on a continuum with developmental case work confirms the educational and psychological components of community development.51 From learning and sharing in a one-on-one situation Jackson and others say it is possible for ‘clients’ to proceed to collective action of the C D kind. Such action undoubtedly has the potential to not only enhance personal development but may enable planned social change.

CD’s strength lies in the realms of behaviour change and inter-organizational co-operation. A return to the traditions of C D would ensure a salient process for the introduction of new ideas and practices. C D does start where the people are at and remains where the people are at - it is not about the redistribution of power, even within an area, although less powerful members may benefit from the innovation or new service.

Another potential use for C D ties in its ability to strengthen a sense of ‘we- feeling’. The C D process can lead to a situation in which residents or consumers identify with one another such that a ‘community’ is created. This is the use to which Hetzel and McMichaePz put C D when they invoked wittingly or otherwise one of the earliest formulations of the concept of community.

This is the Tonnies dichotomous formulation of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft.53 The former refers to the sort of interpersonal. caring arrangements of feudal and rural communities, whilst the latter denotes the impersonal and fragmented arrangements of complex societies.

In describing, with guarded optimism, the features of hunter-gatherer societies Hetzel and McMichael contrasted the incidence of stress- related illnesses in contemporary societies. They hypothesized that stress has increased as a result of the loss of ”a sense of involvement, purpose, belonging, comradeship, . fulfilment and social identity” - in other words the movement towards gesellschaft. They added that ”these are the same values that we hanker for when we talk about the need for ‘community development’ within Western urban society.-* C D is portrayed here as a means to provoke the desire to capture a sense of meaning in one’s life.

Conclusion The historical and public policy material on C D

reveals a major dilemma as to whether the C D

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philosophy of local self-reliance can ensue when bodies outside the community sponsor the process. The most common conceptualisations of community development likewise reveal the improbability of C D being the appropriate means for fundamental social change but point the way to its application in planned social change.

Unless CD is redefined, so that it approximates political action, or unless community group sponsored projects establish themselves, as they did around the Upper Murray in the twenties and thirties, the sponsorship arrangements and the necessary ingredients of parochialism and self- interest will repeatedly doom C D to disappoint in terms of fundamental social change. CD’s contribution undoubtedly lies in the ability to meet actual service and personal development needs thereby not wasting resources, to enhance the expertise of community members by their community management and volunteerism activities

and to engender a sense of ‘we- feeling.’ Once CD is put back into perspective, more

rational debates can be had regarding the role of citizens in health policy development, and the nexus between health and social change. One scenario under discussion is that citizen involvement in the public policy process is a valuable means to build a constituency committed to social change. Through collective action together with equitable State policies social change may result.54 An alternative is that community involvement of the C D kind is the precursor to social change.’ In the first scenario State action, with community support, is the motor for change while in the second the community, with State support, is the motor for change. A long wait lies ahead if this latter course becomes the preferred change strategy. On the other hand, planned social change as a result of a partnership between elements of the community and the bureaucracy can become a reality if history is any guide.

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Acknowledgement 1 would like to thank Colin Sindall, Director of

Health Promotion, Central West Region, NSW Department of Health, for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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