The Handbook of Community Practice

Marie Weil, Michael S. Reisch, Mary L. Ohmer

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781452289977
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Trabajo social

The Second Edition of The Handbook of Community Practice is expanded and updated with a major global focus and serves as a comprehensive guidebook of community practice grounded in social justice and human rights. It utilizes community and practice theories and encompasses community development, organizing, planning, social change, policy practice, program development, service coordination, organizational cultural competency, and community-based research in relation to global poverty and community empowerment. This is also the first community practice text to provide combined and in-depth treatment of globalization and international development practice issues—including impacts on communities in the United States and on international development work. The Handbook is grounded in participatory and empowerment practices, including social change, social and economic development, feminist practice, community-collaborative, and engagement in diverse communities. It utilizes the social development perspective and employs analyses of persistent poverty, asset development, policy practice, and community research approaches as well as providing strategies for advocacy and social and legislative action.

The handbook consists of forty chapters which challenge readers to examine and assess practice, theory, and research methods. As it expands on models and approaches, delineates emerging issues, and connects policy and practice, the book provides vision and strategies for local to global community practice in the coming decades. The handbook will continue to stand as the central text and reference for comprehensive community practice, and will be useful for years to come as it emphasizes direction for positive change, new developments in community approaches, and focuses attention on globalization, human rights, and social justice. It will continue to be used as a core text for multiple courses within programs, will have long term application for students of community practice, and will provide practitioners with new grounding for development, planning, organizing, and empowerment and social change work.

PART I

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The Context of Community Practice

Part I of the handbook presents essential contexts of community practice from both global and local perspectives. In the introduction (Chapter 1), the editors pose particular social, political, economic, and environmental contexts and challenges that community practitioners face the world over. Values and ethical perspectives related to justice, human rights, and social change are noted, along with challenges to education for community practice.

History is the backdrop of our practice and continues to affect the ways we work. In Chapter 2, William G. Brueggemann takes on the daunting task of pulling together the histories of community organization, social planning, community development, and social action in the United States. He highlights central trends in each practice area from the early colonial period through the first decade of the 21st century. Building on the essential formative period of the Settlement House and Charity Organization Society movements, he provides information on central institutions and practice directions in the shifting political and social contexts of each era.

Michael Reisch formulates the global focus of the handbook in Chapter 3 through careful analysis of community practice challenges in the global economy that are inextricably related across industrialized and developing nations. He illustrates the struggles between efforts to establish new political democracies and workable national economies in the developing world in the face of increasing concentration of power in the global market, aided by major international institutions. The social and economic consequences of these market and power shifts, coupled with the worldwide financial crisis, have had the triple effect of severely inhibiting development in nonindustrialized nations, greatly increasing worldwide economic migration, and weakening social safety nets in industrialized nations. Reisch identifies the growing inequality between rich and poor people—and rich and poor nations—as the central challenge facing community practitioners. He analyzes potential practice strategies to support and foster community development, including nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—particularly international NGOs and international social action organizations—which can work to build a consensus strategy to promote sustainable human development.

Chapter 4 moves the global discussion of community practice into the critical arena of social justice and human rights—the central value perspectives that unite practitioners across the world. Michael Reisch, Jim Ife, and Marie Weil seek to present these issues in ways that move beyond the Western historical perspective that has dominated political and social discourse to formulate these issues and create inclusive typologies that can be adopted and fought for by community practitioners in many regions and nations. The histories of and distinctions between the concepts of social justice and human rights are documented and critiqued, and movements to promote rights and justice are highlighted. In the face of historical and current debates, the authors cite the critical need to address structural inequalities as well as community issues in both areas. Ife’s typology, which asserts seven categories of human rights, is proposed as important for community practitioners. The International Federation of Social Workers Statement of Ethical Principles is referenced, and a specific set of ethical values and principles is proposed for community practitioners.

In Chapter 5, Robert J. Chaskin examines theories of community that underlie practice and assesses their relevance. He notes the universality of community as a concern and diverse definitions of the concept. He interrogates and compares current conceptions of community as a political, social, or spatial unit and the resulting differences posed in relation to people, institutions, and networks. The discussion and examples stress differences in perceptions and rationales when community is considered as a context for practice, as a target for intervention, or as a unit of identity and action that can build capacities for community development, social action, and social change in light of shifting political and economic conditions.

The final chapter in this first section is a companion piece to Chaskin’s “Theories of Community.” In Chapter 6, Marie Weil and Mary L. Ohmer address the multiple types of theory and means of applying practice theories in community work. They identify levels of theory needed to address the complexities of community practice, including explanatory and structural theories that relate to understanding and interpreting society and social change. They briefly examine the range of critical theories that interrogate previous approaches in relation to power and oppression, including critical race theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial and postmodern theory. Promising perspectives of anti-oppressive and antiracism theories that call for examination of what we think we know, as well as confirming the energy of human agency, are presented. Empowerment theory is discussed as an approach that can ground and guide numerous practice approaches. Self- and collective-efficacy theories are explored in relation to their focus on developing mastery and building confidence in groups’ abilities to solve problems and make positive community change. Task group, organizational, and interorganizational theories are linked to practice methods at these scales of intervention. Essential points of community development, social planning, and organizing theory are used to guide readers to deeper discussions of these areas in later chapters. Finally, approaches for moving theories into action are illustrated as a means of grounding practice in theory.

1

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Introduction

Contexts and Challenges for 21st Century Communities

MARIE WEIL, MICHAEL REISCH, AND MARY L. OHMER

In the 21st century, community practitioners around the world face extremely complex and serious challenges. Some of these entangled issues, such as the persistence of poverty, are ancient; others, such as the economic, demographic, and social consequences of globalization, have become more pressing and intertwined in recent decades due to the transformation of the market economy. Community practitioners must now confront the combined effects of escalating poverty and inequality in both the Global North and South in the context of persistent economic stagnation and calls for cutbacks in social welfare programs. Other challenges include addressing the needs of economic refugees and internally displaced persons; responding to the increased political and social tensions that have emerged in multicultural societies; and finding ways to end slavery, the acceleration of human trafficking, and the widespread problems of ethnic, racial, religious, and gender discrimination. In addition, environmental degradation and climate change will have major impacts on food supplies, available water and arable land, and the overall health of vulnerable communities.

For three decades, in established Western democracies of the Global North, increasingly polarized politics, a single-minded emphasis on economic growth and fiscal austerity, the focus on terrorism and security, the undue influence of mega-corporations, and the persistence of narrow neoliberal ideologies have produced inequitable responses to the needs of the excluded and the poor, resulting in the subversion of the essential features of democratic societies. More recently, the ongoing global financial crisis has wreaked havoc with the lives of many previously middle-class families, eroded long-established social safety nets, and placed the poor at even greater risk in the United States and throughout the European Union. The failure to develop effective policy responses to this crisis threatens the stability and legitimacy of economic and political institutions throughout much of the Global North.

In the Global South the effects of the worldwide financial crisis and recession jeopardize the existence of fragile social institutions and nascent democratic governments. Growing trade imbalances, the environmental and social impact of foreign-owned extractive industries, and the imposition of mono-crop agricultural systems on former subsistence economies exploit the vulnerability of developing nations and threaten their national sovereignty through a 21st century version of colonialism. This intersection of social, economic, political, and environmental issues offers new challenges for community practice, from the grassroots level to the highest circles of international policy development. Both domestic efforts to promote greater democratization and effective cross-national coalitions are needed.

As the speed of communication and access to information reach unprecedented levels, committed, proactive work is needed at the local, state, national, and international levels to apply these technological advances to the strengthening of civil societies and the creation of new, more responsive institutions. By mobilizing geographic communities and communities of identity and interest, practitioners can help address this complex nexus of challenges by promoting sustainable social and economic development, organizing more effective and responsive services, engaging in planning and policy development to solve old problems in innovative ways, and advancing human rights and social justice through political and social action. As both the historical record and contemporary developments demonstrate, community practitioners can achieve these goals and create more socially just communities and a more socially just world. Difficult struggles will be required to achieve these goals, but as our past accomplishments indicate, they are certainly within our grasp.

GLOBAL CONTEXT FOR COMMUNITY PRACTICE

To meet the challenges confronting community practitioners in the 21st century, it is essential to understand the global context of local issues and problems. Over the past several decades, globalization has not only exacerbated the poverty of marginalized groups but has contributed substantially to a widening of the gap between rich and poor, within nations and between the Global North and the Global South (Lightman, Mitchell, & Herd, 2008). Globalization has altered the nature of welfare provision in industrialized and developing nations alike (Lyngstad, 2008; Olsen, 2007) and has led to an increase in transnational migration around the world (Chandler & Jones, 2003; Kim, 2009). As a result, the social work profession’s historic commitment to social justice is imperiled (Polack, 2004) and issues such as immigration, public health, environmental protection, and economic well-being can no longer be understood or addressed without a global perspective (Xu, 2007).

Globalization has also transformed the nature of urban areas—a long-standing area of concern for community practitioners—as well as the relationship of cities to one another and to their surrounding regions (Mahutga, Xiulian, Smith, & Timberlake, 2010). This rapidly changing political, social, and ideological environment compels community-based nonprofit organizations to reassess their roles, develop new survival strategies, and create innovative approaches to the attainment of social justice goals in an environment of increasing economic, fiscal, and political uncertainty (DeFilippis, Fisher, & Shragge, 2009).

These changes have also intensified the stresses community residents experience, increased competition and conflict at the community level, and multiplied the pressures on community practitioners to produce new responses (Gonzales, 2007). In addition, they have affected the politics of social work practice in numerous ways. They have undermined the historic mission of nonprofits, transformed the nonprofit sector’s relationship to the state, subverted long-standing interorganizational relationships, and altered the daily interactions of practitioners and constituents (Reisch, 2012).

We contend that in the 21st century community practitioners must understand the processes of globalization and confront its multiple consequences in order to serve communities effectively and to preserve the policies we espouse (Barbera, 2006; Dominelli, 2007; Lyngstad, 2008). One specific response to these developments that is particularly relevant to community practitioners is to redress and prevent the further imposition of Western norms and values on international social work practice and social work education (Askeland & Payne, 2006). Another is to overcome the impression that globalization is a remote process in order to educate others about its direct and indirect effects on basic aspects of human well-being, including living conditions and the nature of work in both rich and poor nations (Lyons, 2006).

SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: GLOBAL GLIMPSES

Since the publication of the first edition of this text, social work educators in the United States and other industrialized nations have made considerable strides to expand classroom and experiential content about international issues. These include the creation of short-term field experiences, longer-term internships, cross-national university and agency partnerships, and the creation of more “globalized” curricula that infuse international content in courses and expand the profession’s long-standing commitment to social justice (Barbera, 2006; Collins, Kim, Clay, & Perlstein, 2009; Meyer, 2007; Rotabi, Gammonley, Gamble, & Weil, 2010).

During the past 50 years the development of social work education and practice has accelerated rapidly in the Global South. Numerous schools have been created that focus on both rural and urban issues, and more practitioners are entering the field. In some nations of the Global South, however, social work education has been long established. As Healy (2007) notes, social work education programs were established in Chile in 1925 and initiated in India by 1936. In Latin America there is a particularly strong tradition based in the extensive research of “dependency theorists” (see Chapter 8) who documented the continued exploitation of Latin American nations by North Americans and Europeans in the modern trade system. This perspective provided the conceptual framework for locally grounded, independent social work curriculum development in Latin America and has influenced practice and education for more than 30 years.

Argentina, for example, has strongly rejected the application of theories and methods from the United States and Western Europe and created a unique Argentinian social work ideology and approach to practice (Healy, 2001, p. 98). In the face of military repression and the apathetic responses of political leaders, social work faculty “struck out on their own and adopted popular education and social development theories and practice” (Garber, 1997, p. 164). They placed major emphasis on work at the community level and on social change while reducing attention to “individual and clinical interventions which were the preferred approaches of the established sectarian services” (p. 164).

Unfortunately, today, at the prompting of social work scholars—largely from the United States—a number of schools in Latin America are again adopting clinical methodologies o...