1. Community Development:
The practice of social justice
Margaret Ledwith
Emeritus Professor of Community
Development and Social Justice
University of Cumbria, UK

2. Community development
The practice of social justice
Contextualised in political times
Poverty analyses act as yardstick
Theory/practice unity of praxis

3. CD Praxis: a contested space
between top-down and bottom-up
CD principles: social/environmental justice
CD vision: just and sustainable world
CD values: ideology of equality
CD process: popular education for
participatory democracy
CD theory: analyses of power

4. 1995: National Occupational
Standards for CD
Community development:
challenges structural inequalities and
discriminatory practices
addresses structural disadvantage, exclusion,
discrimination and inequality
analyses situations and identifies change
through collective action
empowers individuals and communities
is about learning together from everyday life

5. 1: Power
Analyses of power: practice of
empowerment
Reframes CD skills
Personal as political
Speaking truth to power

6. Antonio Gramsci
Ideology as intellectual dominance
Critical education as a force for change
Hegemony
Role of the intellectuals

7. Paulo Freire
Process of critical discovery
Value base: respect, dignity, mutuality…
Conscientisation: critical insight
Collective action
Education is never neutral
Domesticating or liberating
Popular education: co-teacher/co-learner

8. Culture of silence

9. Popular education:
‘Questioning answers not answering questions’

10. Respectful dialogue:
Listening from the heart

11. Feminism and a politics of
difference
Personal as political
Feminism and Freire converge
Education for critical consciousness
Challenging dominant ideology
Collective action for a fair and just world
Diverge: patriarchy, racism, identity politics

12. Foucault
Metanarratives hide more than they reveal
Postmodernism fragments the collective
Foucault: power comes from everywhere,
above/below, in micro-relations of daily life
Calls for understanding race/gender
relations of daily life – see Peggy McIntosh!

13. PCS model (Thompson, 2006)
Personal
psychological
Community, cultural, commonalities,
Consensus, conformity
Structural power, social divisions,
Discrimination, poverty, privilege

14. Reflection and dialogue
In what ways do analyses of power
change the scope of your practice?
Has your understanding changed during
this talk?
Share your thoughts with the person next
to you.

15. 2: Poverty
Is poverty a human rights issue?

16. UNICEF
1979-1997: UK child poverty from 1:10 to 1:3
 State of the world’s children (UNICEF 2005): 1:2
children of world in poverty
Child wellbeing in rich countries (UNICEF 2007):
UK bottom of 21 countries
Is UK poverty a human rights issue? (Killeen,
JRF, 2008)

17. 1997: The Blair/Brown Promise
End child poverty by 2020!
Education, education, education!
Every Child/Youth Matters (ECM/YM)
Child Poverty Act, 2010

18. Human need v. human greed!
Bailout of banks
Global recession
Countries in crisis: USA, Eurozone
Austerity measures hit poor hardest
TUC ‘women and cuts toolkit’

19. Critiquing the Big Society
Strong on empowerment, weak on equality
No structural analysis of poverty
Charity not redistribution of wealth
Responsibility over rights
2020: absolute poverty for 800,000 more children
CPAG: Big Society unlawful re Child Poverty Act,
2010
Youth unemployment hit a million!

20. 1989: UN Convention on
the Rights of the Child
Right to survival
to develop to the fullest
to protection from
harmful influences,
abuse and exploitation
to participate fully in
family, cultural and
social life

21. Reflection and dialogue
In what ways do poverty issues affect the life
chances of the people you work with?
Is poverty a human rights issue?

22. 3: Inequality
How do power and poverty analyses help us
to understand inequalities?

23. Globalisation and the politics
of disposability

24. August 2011 Riots:
Criminalising children
UNICEF criticised UK judicial system for
locking up children
Breach international law on children’s rights
Children in custody most disadvantaged
Cuts in youth services

25. ‘A riot is the language of the
unheard’ MLK, 1965
Impossible to divorce riots from growing divide
Job prospects collapsed at bottom: through roof at
top
‘…a generation born of futility and resentment,
wholly unheard…seized opportunity to reclaim some
small and fleeting handful of power’ (youth worker)
Danny Dorling: ‘not the extent but direction of
inequalities that correlates with riot’

26. Decent childhoods for all?
Age 3: 7x serious socio-emotional problems
Early intervention vital
Gaps in policy and popular consciousness
Implications for human potential
Report on Decent Childhoods: need an economic
and social model with decent childhoods as aim
Wilkinson and Pickett: quality of life is now about
community and how we relate to each other

27. Fighting poverty, inequality and
injustice (Walker, Sinfield, Walker, 2011)
Deficit rhetoric: public spending is problem
Public sector: crucial bastion of social justice
Costs of deficit– poor pay 10x more than rich
Public sector can be reshaped not dismantled
Focus on poverty, inequality, fairness
Deficit discourse performs political function
Politics of the deficit: recast with public
investment as basis of social justice

28. Peggy McIntosh:
Invisible white power/patriarchy
46 invisible privileges:
I can be with people of my race most of the time
I can be sure my neighbours will be pleasant
I can shop alone, not followed or harassed
TV or newspapers represent my race positively
My skin colour will not work against my financial
reliability
I can be oblivious of the language and customs of
others
I can go home from meetings not feeling isolated,
out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a
distance or feared

29. Social justice framework
System of checks and balances at every
stage of the process
Placatory practice or transformative
practice?