International Community Development Ideas Changing

International community development became a popular notion in the mid-1950s, urged on by some United Nations work. In those early days of defining what later became something of a discipline, action was preferred over theory by a wide margin. People did what worked.

It's an idea I wish more people around the world would heed. Indeed, it's the seed idea behind this website, as in "let's be useful." It's important for those interested in urban issues to start paying attention to what works on a more universal scale; for the first time in history, the majority of humanity lives in urban areas.

Key Concepts of International Community Development Practice

Nevertheless, internationally when community development is discussed, a few key ideas are usually lurking behind the individual actions:

• The notion of community itself is important enough that building or developing community is seen as an important enterprise. If only tribes exist, community development doesn't become an issue. When groups try to form themselves into a unit to share a common infrastructure (roads, water sources, leadership) and to devote themselves to one or more types of income-producing activity (as opposed to finding or growing daily sustenance), there is a geographic community. When the geographic community begins to influence individual destiny for good or ill, there is an opportunity for community development.

• People have a right to self-determination. This idea led to overthrow of colonialism, nation-building, attempts at democracy, and continuing efforts to organize nations and alliances along cultural, ethnic, and religious lines.

• Change is possible. It seems elementary, but when people are so downtrodden by poverty, disease, war, desertification, extreme isolation, enslavement, or oppressive government that they cannot see this point, it's very unlikely that any type of international community development will occur.

• External agents are necessary before community development can occur. Whether you believe in benevolent change agents or not, there is a tendency in international community development discussion to believe that "help" from the outside is needed. That might include financial assistance or technical assistance in the form of advice and technique learning, but this is often a core belief in the crowd that discusses such issues.

• Everything is connected to everything else; thus a holistic approach to international community development is necessary. Professionals who identify with the community development label think this way, and indeed in past decades it was popular for them to identify with systems theory or other attempts to describe nearly everything. But ordinary citizens don’t necessarily think this way. So it's very common for volunteers, untrained leaders, and governments to adopt piecemeal approaches. Of course, piecemeal is also easier politically, financially, and logistically.

• Any citizen participation that is encouraged or permitted—and international community development professionals are big on citizen participation—aims toward community improvement. While this statement might seem a truism, actually many citizen participation activities are undertaken for the purpose of legitimizing something that a government or other types of rulers and leaders would like to legitimize.

Examining the Validity of These Assumptions

After some decades of experience in international community development, I think it's time for a revamp. It will be easy because of the tendency of community development officials who identify primarily with the international scene to borrow already in a very eclectic fashion from many different disciplines.

But on the other hand it will be difficult, of course, because institutions, individuals, academics, and governments are entrenched in their own particular pet ideas about what works. They claim to be pragmatists, but the reality is that the practices of these groups and individuals are highly value-laden.

While it's well beyond the scope of this particular website to do so, it would be very worthwhile to begin an open international examination of what has actually raised the level of performance and satisfaction of various societies. Our Western bias toward what's important has led to many, many missteps as we have tried to impose our particular concepts of democracy, human rights, citizenry, economic progress, happiness, cooperation, progress, negotiation, and nuclear family on others.

Probably the economic meltdown in the U.S. and then Europe will shake up our thinking about who's leading whom. There's a real possibility that it will be the increasing capacity and growing middle-class consumers of the emerging market nations that will allow the "developed" markets to reinvent themselves enough to survive.

Another positive spin on the Atlantic nations' recession is that the world can begin to question free market capitalism, at least in its most excessive forms.

As we see in China, extreme capitalism and self-determination in matters such as where you live and what job you do don’t necessarily have to go hand-in-hand with a very successful approach to business.

So perhaps there are many more possible blends of these Western values with non-Western values that can be successful in generating successful lives around the world. Of course the very idea of successful is pretty subjective and culture-laden. For all these reasons, international community development is headed toward new and more fragmented theory, and with that the already abundant variety of definitions of community development will become even more pluralistic.

If you live outside the U.S. and Europe, especially, please contact us with your commentary on these topics.

Even the notion of community is being called into question in a radical way because of the development of virtual communities. While some people want to insist that a permanent, place-based, geographic, and potential face-to-face relationship is necessary for community, what's happening electronically is pretty interesting, don't you think?

Next Steps

My own personal favorite is the Millennium Promise global poverty site, which we think is backed by a sophisticated but practical analysis of what is required to lift people around the world out of extreme poverty. And it's just an opinion, but it seems to us that extreme poverty has to go away before many other international community development issues can be resolved. Simply looking at the Maslow hierarchy of values, people who aren't eating and who are disease-ravaged are unlikely to invent the battery that stops climate change in its tracks.

Another good resource is Britain’s Overseas Development Institute. Isn't it wonderful that ordinary folks can now “talk” to people around the world, and make more realistic determinations about "what works?" Let’s do more of that.

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