Is there a Community Development community? - Reflections on a Community Development Exchange event in London 31st January 2008

I attended the CDX and Change Up London Regional Consortium’s Workforce Development Sub Group meeting to see if London Community Development workers could clarify for me just what they mean by community.

The meeting confirmed three concerns of mine that can be summed up as follows:
The problem with the term community is that most of the time when we use it we don’t really “mean” it
Community Development workers frequently refer to “the community” when no such community exists
If these real communities did exist then we wouldn’t need community workers.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not against some types of community development work, especially where it sees its purpose as to explain and confront inequalities in the structural, economic and power relations of a locality or a social group. I am, however, left totally mystified by the woolly, hazy and cosy sense in which “the community” gets referred to not as something contested and difficult to achieve but rather as something essential and given. Community development workers often use the term community as though it is an unalloyed good thing. The word is clearly a “word of power” for some activists who seem to use it with a high degree of numinosity. There is an almost religious assumption by activists that appeals to community actually describe reality and that we all understand in some basic, shared and unconscious way what we mean by it.

Participants at the CDX event seemed to find no problem describing the area around the conference venue (the Nags Head area in Islington) or other similar inner urban localities as “the community” when anyone who knows the area knows that they can’t really mean this. There is no one “the community” in this area and it is not even accurate to say there are a number of different “communities” in the locality - the sense in which the different people in the area interact (if at all) is not in any practical way determined by a notion of community or communities.

Community is a very meaningful word. It does indeed have a powerful force and it carries with it an inherent sense of approval in such a way that the use of it bestows a force of approbation on what it purports to describe. In other words using the term “community” is not (just) descriptive it is actually performative. The use of the term (quite literally) commends itself.

Unfortunately “reality out there”, the state of affairs that “community” is normally used to describe (or misdescribe) is usually not in such a good, happy and cohesive state. For the many years I have known the Nags Head area I would never accuse it of this! In this sense then we almost always use the term in such a way that we do not really mean it. “The community” is often the site not of inclusion and coherence but of exclusion, inequality and discrimination. (See a longer discussion posted at http://communityconfusions.blogspot.com/ )

A Community of community workers?

One of the purposes of the day conference was for community workers to discuss the need for better and more standardized training for community development workers in London. Currently there is very little opportunity for community development learning in the capital. Accredited training would allow the discipline to be properly recognized and improve its quality and outcomes as well as its career pathways. It was clear that participants thought that such a conference was long overdue and many were happy to declare that they felt empowered and validated by such a meeting.

An interesting sub text of the meeting was around the issue of whether community development workers employed in and by local authorities should actually be considered sufficiently independent to be considered bona fide activists and therefore eligible to be members of the “network” or “collective”. Criteria for admission to this “community” of community development workers was left open for further discussion, but the strong feeling was given that there was a core type of community activism which had to be independent of local power structures and authorities. Those without this level authenticity must have felt rather excluded from this inner community.

At this point it struck me forcibly that I might be witnessing the birth of a new “community”. This emerging group wanted to define itself more clearly and have some potential say about who is in membership and who isn’t and who has or can get power within the group. All of the other characteristics used by communitarians to define “a community” were also present. Clearly the group allowed its members to gain status and resources and to network so as to develop bonds of reciprocity. There was a palpable shared interest and identity – their profession. As far as I could discern the group’s beliefs it was clear that “community” is a thoroughly good thing and that we all need more of it. Indeed there was a powerful sense at times that the group needed to “commune” more actively and often so as to further the interests of “the community”.

However, I rather expect that the participants would have been somewhat wary of being described as a community. After all, describing a group of people as a community is what they do – they don’t like it so much when it is done to them! Community is something that tends to be ascribed to others rather than oneself – and here lies another danger in the way the term is often used. Community usually has to be something to do with the people “out there” (see above blogspot for a further discussion of this). Indeed it is often used to exoticise and objectify others from a privileged position - a bit like the one that I have myself so arrogantly been adopting in this paper!


Responses from other participants:

From: Simon Vincent [mailto:simon.vincent@barnardos.org.uk] Sent: 04 February 2008 15:29To: Andy Gregg: RE: Community Development Work and Leanring in London - conference notes

Hi Andy

I agree with most (if not all) of your paper. In my experience these kind of points are regularly made in discussions between community workers, but a kind of shorthand assumption that we know what we mean by ‘the community’ tends to take over in gatherings such as last Thursday’s – though personally I didn’t hear much of that. I wouldn’t assume that community workers don’t recognise both the contested nature of many geographical (and identity/interest) ‘communities’, nor that they aren’t aware of the negativities inherent in most if not all real communities. I’m sure most of us bemoan the way the word ‘community’ gets co-opted as a ‘hurrah’ word to tack on to (national and local) government initiatives… and then we go on to do the same! Community is an aspiration rather than a reality, and a dynamic term rather than a static, closed one. As such we need to spell out what this community is that we aspire to. And yes… I think there really is a spiritual/religious dimension to it, as there is to anything that relates to what it means to be fully human!!

All the best
Simon


Hi Simon

Thanks for this. I really liked your statement that community is “an aspiration rather than a reality, and a dynamic term rather than a static, closed one”. The problem is when it is used by communitarians like Tony Blair or Hazel Blears it becomes very much part of the problem rather than the solution

Also I have no problem either with the notion that there is “a spiritual/religious dimension to it, as there is to anything that relates to what it means to be fully human!!” After all, one of the most totalising expressions of a religious community is the Muslim notion of the Ummah – the transnational, transracial "community" of believers. This clearly is a powerful motivating concept (in positive as well as negative ways).

It is clear that the term community does harp back to (or at least is redolent of) the notion of “communion” (cf Schmalenbach). However the baggage carried along with this use is a bit cumbersome when applied to a local authority estate!

All the best

Andy Gregg