Revisioning community development : a postmodern analysis of government community development initiatives from 1988-1993
Date
1997
Authors
Hume, Sharon Lee
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Abstract
This study explores the political roots of community development and how postmodern critical theory illuminates lessons from government sponsored community development initiatives.
The data for this thesis was gathered for an earlier research project. The purpose of my earlier research was primarily to describe the types of government initiative that had been funded between 1988 and 1993, for what purpose and with what result. Data was collected for the study through a content analysis of government documents, community development reports and interviews. From this data consistent themes about community issues were identified along with some lessons learned. The lesson learned were reviewed though a lens of postmodern political theory.
The reanalysis revealed the importance, for community development practitioners of the postmodern concept the politics of difference where multiple voices engage in political dialogue. Key to postmodern community development practice is the idea that no voice is privileged, that all voices and representations are considered equal.
This concept led me to understand how skilled community development organizers need to be to work with multiple, contested and contextual voices so as not to replicate or reinvent dominating practices. Perspectival dialogism and negotiated settlements, along with the notion of irresolvable difference, sharpen the focus of community development practice on conflict. It suggests that working with conflict through procedural norms and guiding principles is a way to structure discussion so that individuals can determine how best to meet their needs in relation to overlapping and multiple polities.
Postmodernism argues that the state is pulled between two contradictory forces; those of performativity and those of democratization. While performativity is a self legitimating system of power and knowledge, the emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness requires that the state be well informed about the needs of people its policies serves. Therefore, the state is open to community development activities through its need for information from its citizens; but only to the extent that it has enough information to reduce complexity and uncertainty through policy decisions that satisfy its contestants.