40 Critical Thinkers In Community Development

40 Critical Thinkers in Community Development

Understanding Phenomenological Reflective Practice in the Social and Ecological Fields

This book introduces social practitioners - community development workers, social workers, organisational change facilitators, social, ecological, cultural and political activists - to a phenomenological tradition of reflective practice. Critiquing reductionist, linear and ossified thinking in the social and ecological fields, the book offers an exciting new alternative that is honouring of the uncertainty of all living and therefore emergent social processes. Linking phenomenology and Goethe’s ‘delicate empiricism’, the book challenges practitioners to observe and work with living processes. As such, the book charts two stories, two inquiries. One personal and the other social. The first is the personal phenomenological inquiry into the author’s own practice, a search to make sense of the nuanced and subtle practice that he brings to the social world. The second journey is the inquiry into how this social practice, shaped as it is by a confluence of three rivers – dialogue and community, soul and depth psychology, Goethe and ‘delicate activism’, along with other thinkers on ‘observation’ and ‘aliveness’ – can be understood in the context of a wider phenomenological reflective practice. This second journey draws on years of experience and research in Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe. Presenting a philosophical, personal and practical analysis, it offers a new approach to observation and action, while working with aliveness and complexity within the social and ecological fields. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work and community development and particularly courses on social complexity.

Arts-based Research in Global Development

This book brings together a range of arts and development scholars and practitioners to explore the unique ways in which arts-based research methods can make a unique positive contribution to effective global development practice. Since the 1970s, global development has witnessed an increase in the use of participatory approaches to enable the world’s most excluded peoples to be actively involved in the planning and implementation of development projects that impact them. A range of participatory practices are now in common use, many of which use visual activities which enable fuller participation irrespective of literacy levels or social position. More recently, development practitioners with arts skills, along with a small number of professionally trained artists, have started engaging in a wider range of arts-based practices within this participatory development space, aimed at co-creating new knowledge with these communities. This book explores how the performing and visual arts provide spaces for the world’s most marginalised communities to articulate their development aspirations and co-create knowledge that contributes to development outcomes. It also highlights how arts-based research puts the power over development decisions back into the hands of ‘recipient’ communities. The book will be of interest to development practitioners and artists working with marginalised communities globally, policymakers in arts and global development, graduate students, and academics. The rich case studies provide many fresh ideas for arts and/or development practitioners wanting to utilise arts-based research, particularly with performing arts, in global development programming.