Recent debates about sustainable development have shifted their focus from fixing environmental problems in a technocratic and economic way to more fundamental changes in social-political processes and relations. In this context, participation is a genuinely transformative approach to sustainable development, yet the process by which participation leads to transformation is not sufficiently understood. This book considers how the act of participating in sustainable development projects can bring about social transformation that is considered to be fair and just by the participants and non-participants in a broader societal context. Drawing on ideas from social theory and applied anthropology, the book proposes a reflexivity-based framework to analyse participation as a type of social action underpinned by primary experience. Development projects have a transformative effect when participants are given the opportunity to reflect on their experience, share the reflection with others, and open new space for collective deliberation and change. The book applies this framework to assess community-based participatory projects in the Amazon, African slums and rural settlements, and disaster stricken areas in Japan. It also outlines potential institutions of governance to institutionalize the change by referring to current food governance, drawing out lessons with international relevance. This book will be of interest to students of sustainable development, environmental policy and development studies, as well as practitioners and policy-makers in these fields.

Training for Transformation is an approach to community organization that enables people to “read their reality and write their own history” using a combination of group processes, socio-economic analysis and organizational development processes. Since its inception 40 years ago, Training for Transformation has been put into practice in over 60 countries globally. But how have people been using these materials in their communities over this period? Training for Transformation in Practice brings together the experiences of activists who have adapted these materials to their own social and cultural contexts. The book describes the roots of Training for Transformation in people’s struggles in the global South to gain political and economic independence and to overcome poverty. It outlines the theoretical origins of the approach and also includes Impact Assessment Tools, developed by activists who have used the training in their work. The book is inspiring reading for students of adult education and community organizers.

Product Description: As communities face new social and economic challenges as well as political changes, the responsibilities for social services, housing needs, and welfare programs are being placed at the local government level. But can community-based organizations address these concerns effectively? The editors and contributors to Mobilizing Communities explore how these organizations are responding to these challenges, and how asset-based development efforts can be successful...read more

Product Description: Community participation has long been recognised as an effective means of helping rural and urban people focus energy and mobilise resources to solve their health, environmental, and economic problems. This book presents international research on issues dealing with this unifying problem...read more

Product Description: Communities worldwide act on their own initiative, drawing on their own resources of leadership and solidarity, and in spite of poverty, to achieve their own goals. Development practitioners have too often viewed poor communities as helpless and disadvantaged, and have encouraged their dependency...read more

Product Description: This full-color celebration of citizen artists revitalizing their communities profiles 10 exemplary grass-roots arts projects. Stories range from children building a mud façade on their Oregon school to an annual blessing procession and festival in north Philadelphia that brings to life dozens of the most derelict blocks in urban America...read more

Product Description: Each title in the Allyn & Bacon Johnson & Grant Casebook Series presents three to four in-depth cases in a different topic area, prefaced by an introduction to generalist social work practice. Allyn & Bacon Casebook Series for Community Organization, First Edition by Jerry Johnson and George Grant provides students with personal and intimate glimpses into the thinking and actions of experienced practitioners working with clients and communities...read more

Throughout the 1980s there have been calls, often from development organizations of global repute, for the incorporation of social science perspectives into the design and management of sustainable development programmes. Practising Development is the first collection to offer first-hand critical assessments of the success and failures found within actual responses to these calls. By combining academic and practical experience from anthropology, development and aid organizations the contributors examine the processes of intervention, the methods by which this intervention can be assessed, and explain the socio-economic and political worlds within which intervention and development evolve.

Product Description: Logan Dangerfield, head of one of Australia's most affluent families, had severe doubts about Dana Barry's motives. Offering comfort to Logan's niece kept Dana on his cattle station, but could she hide the fact that he was the only Outback man she had ever loved?.

Product Description: The 1990s have been marked by a wide-spread awareness of the convergence of environmental, economic and social problems and issues. Many local workers have begun to recognize that severe setbacks or even collapse of their local economy is strongly related to environmental problems: either to the depletion of local resources (such as timber, fish, or minerals) or to severe pollution and degradation of the local ecosystem...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Mary Lean shows how ethics and spirituality have made a significant impact on community development in post-industrial cities and in the villages of developing countries.Readers enter poor cities and villages to meet Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders who, with their driving spirit, seed the community with their energy and vision...read more

Product Description: 'This book is both sad and refreshing. Sad that a book has to be written for a society acknowledged for a sentimentality that runs little more than skin deep. Refreshing that a clutch of practitioner professionals can come together to mull over issues which can improve the lot of children...read more

Product Description: Throughout the 1980s there have been calls, often from development organizations of global repute, for the incorporation of social science perspectives into the design and management of sustainable development programmes. Practising Development is the first collection to offer first-hand critical assessments of the success and failures found within actual responses to these calls...read more

Product Description: This text presents both theory and examples of social intervention. Sixteen authors offer their views from various disciplines, including psychology, law, and sociology.