1. Community Development: Placatory
practice or transformative practice?
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
Human rights analyses

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

4. Values frame the quality and
purpose of CD
Ideology of equality
Trust
Dignity
Respect
Reciprocity
Mutuality
Cooperative not competitive worldview

5. 1995: National Occupational
Standards for CD
Based on structural analysis:
Equality and Anti-discrimination
Social Justice
Collective Action
Community Empowerment
Working and Learning Together – questioning
answers not answering questions

6. Placatory practice is
decontextualised practice!
Bailout of banks
Global recession
Countries in crisis: USA, Eurozone
Austerity measures hit poor hardest
TUC ‘women and cuts toolkit’

7. Poverty
Is UK poverty a human rights issue? (Killeen, 2008)
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

8. Human rights
Dignity and worth of every individual
Regardless of race, gender, language,
religion, opinions, wealth or ability
Apply to every human being everywhere
1989 UN Convention on Rights of the Child
What a child needs to survive, grow,
participate and fulfil their potential
Every child, regardless of who or where

9. August 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

10. CHILD POVERTY:
A yardstick for social justice
z ‘The true measure of a
nation’s standing is how
well it attends to its
children – their health
and safety, their material
security, their education
and socialization, and
their sense of being
loved, valued, and
included in the families
and societies into which
they are born’
(UNICEF, 2007: 1).

11. Poverty discriminates
Lone-parent households
Low paid households
Households without an adult in paid work
Minority ethnic families
‘Dis’abled children or those with a
‘dis’abled parent
Looked after children

12. EQUALITY:
Does every child matter?
27% of children from white families
36% Indian
41% Black Caribbean
47% Black non-Caribbean
69% Pakistani and Bangladeshi
Source: Child Poverty Action Group (2008) Child Poverty: The stats, London:CPAG

13. POVERTY KILLS:
Making critical connections!
Low birthweight, infant death, childhood
accidents
Underachievement at school, truancy or
exclusion
Low self esteem, low expectations
Teenage pregnancy
Youth suicide
Malnutrition
Unemployment and low wages
Homelessness
Long-term illness (morbidity)
Premature death (mortality)

14. Reflection and dialogue
What does the statement ‘placatory
practice is decontextualised practice’
mean to you?
How do you see this in relation to your
own practice?

15. 2: Key concepts of Paulo
Freire

16. Listening from the heart

17. Culture of silence

18. False consciousness
Cultural invasion
Dehumanisation
Horizontal violence

19. Conscientisation
Magical consciousness
Naïve consciousness
Critical consciousness

20. Education is never neutral
Domesticating or liberating
Banking approach
Teaching to question
Passive objects or critical subjects

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

22. Dialogue: Questioning the taken-for-
grantedness of everyday life

23. Becoming critical

24. Collective action for change

25. Global action for social justice:
Occupy Manchester Peace Garden

26. Reflection and dialogue
What theory underpins your practice?
How do you see the potential for
collective action in your practice?
Share your thoughts with the person next
to you.

27. 2: Community profiling
Working with not on people!
People researching their own
community
Working with CD values
Giving voice to local people

28. A Freirean approach
Listening
Problematising
Teaching to question
Critical dialogue
Collective action
Gathering people and information
Cycles of action and reflection

29. Critical connections
Individual
Group
Community
Structural analysis
Regional
National
Global

30. Presenting the profile
Life-changing experience – proud and empowered
Owned by the community
A community launch
Provokes wider critical thought
Weaves a unity of theory and practice
Involves more people in CD
Determines next stage

31. Reflection and dialogue
How does community profiling offer an
opportunity to develop transformative
practice rather than placatory practice?