ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that community development, as an ethical and democratic project, is in crisis. It locates community development in historical context, emphasizing its mediating position at the interface between institutions of the state and marginalized communities of place, identity and interest. It traces the competing rationalities for community development towards, and within, the neoliberal market state, and assesses its capacity to survive and sustain itself within a changing democratic imaginary. It examines the locus of the community development practitioner within a diversified and decentralized polity, and explores the implications of this for praxis. The possibilities of reframing the mediating position of community development to anticipate and address the contemporary politics of practice are a central concern. It suggests that this approach requires the capacity to practice a strategic politics of translation between powerful interests and disempowered communities and an inclusive politics of solidarity based on empathy and committed engagement. Reviving a democratic disposition that can negotiate strategically between the “invited spaces” of policy and the “demanded spaces” of politics could offer a much-needed model of critical agency. The chapter is based primarily on the UK context, although its insights may well be of relevance elsewhere.
