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Slide from Professor Margaret Ledwith's guest lecture to Social & Community Development students and staff at the University of Northampton on 2nd March 2010
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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!