Theorising the Practice of Community Development

A South African Perspective

Peter Westoby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472423092
• eBook ISBN: 9781317010982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Based on 25 years of community development practice, six of which have been lived in South Africa, Peter Westoby's ground-breaking monograph moves away from dominant normative accounts of community development to provide an appreciative and critical analysis of concrete examples of community development theory and practice. By examining community development stories as experienced on the ground, Westoby is able to show how the poor are organising themselves using various forms of community development as well as demonstrating how the state and non-state actors are attempting to organise, engage or accompany the poor through community development. The book also breaks new ground in theorising the practice of community development, drawing inductively from the stories analysed. The diversity of South African contexts and the proliferation of different kinds of community practice, make this a hugely difficult task. Despite this, Westoby argues it is one worth undertaking given the seriousness of the challenges facing the poor and progressive social change agents within South Africa. In this undertaking, Westoby draws upon a unique analytical framework to help illuminate current community development policy and programme challenges, along with practice dilemmas and wisdom.

PART I
Approach to the Research Project

Part I of the book consists of chapters 1–2 and lays the foundation for the research monograph. Chapter 1 discusses the approach to theorising and practice within this book. As per the title, the focus of the book, whilst wanting to provide an appreciative and critical analysis of community development within South Africa, focuses more particularly on the theorising of practice that emerges from that appreciative and critical analysis.

Chapter 2 outlines the multiple methodologies employed in this research and also discusses my horizon as a researcher. The first part of the chapter discusses both the overall frame for the research methodology, namely bricolage, and also the more orthodox social science methods that are utilised. The second part of the chapter discusses my horizon as researcher and author ensuring that the reader is aware of my perspective.

Chapter 1
Theorising the Practice of Community Development

Considering the title of the book, this chapter briefly discusses what ‘theorising’ and ‘practice’ mean as they relate to community development, orienting the reader to a particular set of perspectives. Both are considered in turn.

On Theorising

In the same way that the analytical framework described within the Introduction is indebted to Chabal and Daloz’s Africa Works (1999), this section is highly indebted to both the philosopher H.G. Gadamer’s work and also Chabal’s thoughts from The End of Conceit: Western Rationality after Postcolonialism (2012).

My first comment is that being aligned to a dialogical tradition, my task of theorising, researching and writing is primarily hermeneutical. This is understood as an interpretive process of seeing and understanding the field of community development writing and practice within South Africa. The research project has in no way set out to use a universal scientific method to examine or research community development within South Africa, thereby creating the theory of community development as per Weyers (2011). Instead, a theoretical attitude (Gadamer, 1998: xxix) towards the idea of ‘community development’ as a whole has been applied, trying to make sense of the experience and observation of community development, whilst also recognising that ‘making sense of’ requires a philosophical and historical approach. In a sense then the theorising alludes to Gadamer’s notion of ‘bearing witness to’ practices of community development, combined with the equivalent of ‘contemplation’ (Gadamer, 1998: 21). Within this two-step frame, community development practice is theorised through ‘bearing witness’, that is, getting close to people doing it, and getting close to stories accounting for the practice, and then writing carefully about it – ever conscious of the language used as an interpretive tool. The ‘contemplative’ dimension recognises that, as researcher, a distancing is also needed, requiring a critical and reflective pause. In research practice this means not simply taking what people say or do at face value, but recognising that their saying and doing itself represents a limited perspective – a horizon so to speak.

However, the research perspective offered in this book goes a step further, arguing that the theorising is also informed by the notion of a ‘theory of uncertain theories’ (Chabal, 2012: 255), whereby the theorising task works on an assumption that community development only works under certain conditions, whilst also understanding that we rarely can know or replicate those conditions. What remains is a theorising exercise that is ever-contingent, only enabling people to ‘muddle’ along in their community development practice even if ever conscious of useful theory. Hence, a researcher–writer can only have limited goals in theorising community development practice within South Africa (or anywhere for that matter). While the research recounted within this book should illuminate much practice wisdom, it will not answer questions such as ‘how do we ensure community development is effective?’ (a question many people like to ask – remember the MIT professor?). It can only illuminate that, under certain conditions, combined with particular practices, community development efforts are more likely to lead to outcomes that people seek.

The theorising also ensures that a more inductive approach is brought to the research. The research has not started with a set of hypothesis that has then been tested (deductive), albeit some of my assumptions and subjectivities are made (or will be made) transparent. Instead an inductive approach has been foregrounded, building a theoretical architecture from the careful examination of some community development practice. Put another way, the research work has aimed for a ‘thick description’ of community development practice (alluding to Clifford Gertz notion of ‘thick’ analysis).

Despite these caveats on theorising, I do hope to help policy makers and practitioners alike to be clearer about what inputs, conditions and practices are more likely to see community development efforts among the poor succeed in achieving particular goals – with full awareness that the goals themselves are one of the most historically and contextually constructed, and therefore, contested elements within that hope. I am also ever conscious that uncertainty remains due to the impossible number of contingent variables at work in any social situation that community development work occurs within. So, I am not making a case for evidence-based practice – bolstering the arsenal of results-oriented managers and policy makers. Instead a case is being made for a community development practice that is conceptualised as conscious-as-possible muddling-along, always responsive to the situation at hand while cognisant of the theories that might help.

Finally, in my reflections on theorising, Chabal’s four dimensional framework of how social science can be reimagined are attended to. Firstly, my assumptions are made explicit. This was initiated within the introductory chapter but is expanded upon within Chapter 2. Secondly, my inevitable subjectivities are also elucidated. If not clear yet, I am a white middle-aged male, English born, but Australian by citizenship (my family migrated there when I was 13 years old). I have worked on and off within South Africa over a 20-year period whilst also working in myriad other contexts, including Australia, Vanuatu, India, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. Additionally, I bring a background of having been a community practitioner for 18 years prior to engaging with academic endeavours (which I have been now doing for the past several years). And my aspirations are to write a book that contributes to the kind of practice wisdom alluded to above. Thirdly, there are clear limits to the theorising this book hopes to achieve. Without repeating what has already been stated, the limits are those of social science as a whole – to construct a contextually, historically and contingently understood notion of South African community development practice. Fourthly, the choice of language is central to this project. The earlier discussion on double stories itself alludes to the power of language in interpreting what is seen in the field. Does a researcher see suffering or resilience; does a researcher see success or failure? Whatever is seen is then written or spoken about using language that itself moves with history. For example, doesn’t Max-Neef’s notion of poverties as opposed to poverty not shape the very nature of investigation? Of course, for although the two words are essentially only different grammatically – plural and singular – that difference is powerful in shaping research and then writing. Therefore, this theorising project attempts to become attuned to the language deployed to understand and talk about community development practice within South Africa.

On Practice

Attention to practice is also crucial to this research project. Again, stating my subjectivity upfront, practice in its most obvious and simple form is what people do – but I like to think of it ideally as ‘skilful means’. Ideally it is not just what people do but also what thoughtful and empathic people using community development theory reflectively and reflexively do in subtle and skilful ways.

However, at a more complex level, practice for community development, like practice in many people-centred ‘professions’, requires more substantial thinking. To do this I have engaged with the work of Dublin based academic-philosopher Joseph Dunne, with a particular emphasis on his notion of ‘professional wisdom’. In my following reflections about the practice of community development I am either explicitly or implicitly drawing on some of this work.

Firstly, like Dunne, when using the notion of practice I allude to what can be understood as a MacIntyrean perspective (1984). Drawing on this lineage, Dunne (2011: 14) refers to practice as:

… a more or less coherent and complex set of activities that has evolved cooperatively and cumulatively over time, and that exists most significantly in the community of those who are its practitioners – so long as they are committed to sustaining and developing its internal goods and its proper standards of excellence.

Nevertheless, I would add the above refers to an ideal of practice. Such a definition of practice suits community development alluding to a long ‘tradition’ of practice that has accumulated knowledge and skills (depositories of knowledge would include journals, web-sites; and skills would include those acquired at workshops, university courses, on-the-job and so forth), and also to various forms of ‘communities of practice’ such as associations, co-operatives, standard bodies, networks, and professional bodies.

Returning to the definition above, by internal goods Dunne means both: (i) the ‘desirable outcomes characteristically aimed at through a practice’ (ibid.: 14). For example, and related to community development, they might include: collective processes of social change, increased confidence and capacities for a group, further achievement of human rights, and a project initiated to the satisfaction of the participants (and one can see that the issue of desirable outcome is one of the most contested and complex issues within community development theory and practice); and, (ii) the kinds of internal goods that ‘reside within the practitioners themselves’ (ibid.: 14), such as the competencies of a community worker, and also the kinds of virtues required of the practitioner (such as patience, humility, tenacity and care). For Dunne, while such internal goods are the constitutive core of a practice, there are also external goods, mainly to do with pay, standards, recognition, or what a colleague and I have previously called the ‘architecture of the profession’ (Westoby and Shevellar, forthcoming). It should be noted that at its best, the external goods, or institutional structures of community development, can serve the practices’ internal goods. However, there is often substantial compromise as the former colonises the latter.

Such a conceptualisation of ‘practice’ can also be distinguished from Aristotle’s original notion of praxis, which Dunne argues refers to:

the open set of activities through which one strove to live a worthwhile life in the light of some conception of the overall human goods, or of flourishing as the ultimate goal of all one’s living; and one did this precisely not as an expert in any particular field – and, if in any role, simply as a citizen … (Dunne, 2011: 15)

It’s of importance to say here, that within the field of community development practice can be understood to instantiate both of these senses of practice: on the one hand, as an enclave of specialised community development theory and practice; and on the other hand, as an enclave of non-specialist human endeavour to bring social change through citizen effort. I have in previous writing alluded to community development as both a professional and citizen project to encompass this full and inclusive understanding of practice (see Westoby and Dowling, 2013). Within this book an inclusive framework is also utilised recognising the role of both professional community development workers and also citizens who understand themselves as community workers, but the focus of the research task was primarily on professional community workers.

Secondly, practice of community development needs to be informed by a clear notion of the kinds of knowledge that people-oriented practices ideally embody. For Dunne, such people-oriented practices primarily draw on ‘practical knowledge/rationality’ and contrast it with the acquisition and use of technical knowledge (see Westoby and Shevellar, 2012: 19). He refers to it as ‘practical wisdom’ (Dunne, 2011: 17), a topic that will be explored more in the Conclusion chapter of this book.

Finally, practice drawing on theory can be imagined ideally as both reflective and reflexive. It is reflective in the sense that a practitioner is able to pause and contemplatively check as to whether what they are doing is what they intended to do. Questions can be asked: ‘is the practice what I intended it to be?’; ‘is space opening up for diversity and plurality?’; ‘am I responding carefully to this unanticipated event?’ Moreover, practice that integrates a theoretical attitude is also reflexive practice, understood as going that one step beyond theory–practice congruency (a question of intention and reflective capacity), and adds to the process a questioning of theoretical assumptions – such as awareness of the eventful-like and story-like realities of a community development process.¹

However, and this is the crux of it, researching community development practice entails observing the potential for such ideal practice, but also incorporating, or seeing what people actually do, and even being open to the possibilities that the ideal type discussed above is constricting. In this sense, theorising the practice of community development, with a focus on South Africa, also alludes to some deeper challenges of practice. For example, as will become clear within this book, much of South African community development practice is deeply influenced by the ‘external goods’ of practice, particularly the institutional and organisational structures that shape the work. The institutional structures – government monitoring regimes, donors’ requirements of evidence and results, the motivations of joining the community development profession as a career move – lead to a practice regime that does not necessarily embody the kinds of practical wisdom, or reflective/reflexive practice described above. Practice can quickly be reduced to practices of compliance, of recipes and procedures, whereby the particular is subsumed within the general, and practice-proofed practitioners are sought and rewarded! Theorising the practice of community development then becomes a fraught exercise, influenced by my own subjectivities and perspectives on what, for example, makes a desirable end for community development work.

Such a sentence provides an apt spot to turn to the next chapter, one that explores both the methodology of the research and also explicates some of my subjectivities and perspectives.

1 It should be noted that the idea of reflexive is used in different discipline fields in completely different ways. For example, psychology often uses the idea of reflexive to mean action without reflection, driven by patterns/complexes and so forth.

Chapter 2
Research Methodology and the Researcher Horizon

Introduction

As articulated within the Introduction the primary research questions are, ‘how are the poor organising themselves using various forms of community development?’ or, in some cases, ‘how are state or other non-state actors attempting to organise, engage or accompany the poor through community development?’ and ‘how is the practice of community development theorised inductively, drawing on answers to the previous question?’ In exploring these research questions within a hermeneutical tradition, the idea of bricolage was utilised to provide the overall frame, alongside more orthodox research methods.

Bricolage

An idea popularised by the great French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, bricolage is associated with the bricoleur, ‘a tinker, an improviser working with what was at hand, cobbling together solutions to both practical and aesthetical problems’ (Wilcksen, 2010: 249). The idea accurately and aptly describes how I have approached the overall task. Bricolage as a method rests on the epistemological assumption that no single body of data can provide the ‘truth’ about community development within South Africa. That is, within South Africa there can be no exactitude when thinking about, or researching community development theory and practice. Ultimately there is no agreed upon definition of community development, nor is it necessarily helpful to try to find one. From a researcher’s perspective, what is more important, or more interesting, is how community development theory and practice is deployed as an idea, and in action.

Community development, as should already be clear from my writing, eludes definition because it takes a variety of forms, and draws on various traditions, traces and frameworks. Furthermore, community development operates in the world of dreams and aspirations as well as materiality and action. Community development then needs to be understood historically, discursively and materially and in terms of the latter, it might be best to think about community development, like Brent (2009), as ‘being conjured’ and as per comments in the concluding chapter, as a story and an event. Such an approach builds on the thinking of several key theorists. For example, Wittgenstein (1976: 41) argues that, ‘[inexact] does not mean unusable’. It is not inexactitude that gives words or ideas their meaning, but their use and the practices enveloped within that use. In a similar vein, Young argues that it is often a Western desire to conceptualise things ‘together into a unity, to formulate a representat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword by Frik de Beer
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I APPROACH TO THE RESEARCH PROJECT
• PART II CONCEPTUAL LENSES FOR ‘READING DEVELOPMENT WITHIN SOUTH AFRICA
• PART III COMMUNITY-BASED PRACTICES AN STORIES OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
• Interlude The Process of Community Development: In Dialogue with Es’kia
• PART IV EXPLORING STATE-LED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
• Conclusion
• References
• Index