Margaret Ledwith Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice

1. What is Community Development?: Using participatory action research to change power, poverty and inequality Margaret Ledwith Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice University of Cumbria, UK

2. Epistemology and ontology • ‘…action research should aim not just at achieving knowledge of the world, but achieving a better world’ (Kemmis, 2009)

3. PAR research spawned radical community development • 1968: ‘revolt, reaction and rebellion’ • Urban Programme: response to social unrest • Community Development Project, 1969 • ‘Cycles of deprivation’ theory • AR exposed flawed analysis • Political/structural vs personal/pathological • Gramsci, Freire, feminism • Grassroots social movements – theory in action

4. CD Praxis: a contested space between top-down and bottom-up • CD principles: social and environmental justice • CD vision: just and sustainable world • CD values: ideology of equality • CD process: popular education for participatory democracy, practical projects and collective action for change • CD theory: analyses of power and discrimination

5. Power in the research process • Equalising power: outcome and process • Ideology of equality = mutual respect, dignity, trust, reciprocity in action • Dislocates researcher as external expert • Co-researchers in mutual inquiry • Researching with not on people • Process becomes participatory • Experience becomes empowering

6. Participation: a radical concept! My points: • A participatory worldview versus a competitive worldview • Transformative concepts - participation, empowerment, social justice – hijacked, diluted My questions: • What are the challenges that this presents in practice? • Swimming against the tide? • Movement for change?

7. Hegemony pathologises:Participation as empowerment

8. Becoming critical: ‘extraordinarily re-experiencing the ordinary’ (Ira Shor)

9. Creating critical dissent dialogue:‘questioning answers not answering questions’

10. Collective action in community:Scholes Community Garden

11. Collective action on policy:Migrant Rights Centre Ireland’s campaign for policy change on work permits

12. Local to global action:local projects link to movements for change

13. A better world is possible! My point: Unless PAR moves out in iterative cycles from the personal/local to the political/structural nothing will change. My question: What are the challenges to PAR to move beyond the specific to the general in iterative cycles of co-creating knowledge for collective action?

14. The true measure of a nation’s standing! • ‘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).

15. Child poverty: PAR contextualised in its political times • 1979-1997: child poverty increased from 1:10 to 1:3 in UK • State of the world’s children: Childhood under threat (UNICEF, 2005): one in every two children of world in poverty • UNICEF report (2007) on child well-being in rich countries: UK bottom of 21 countries

16. 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

17. EQUALITY: are all children at equal risk of poverty? • 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

18. POVERTY KILLS:And reduces life chances • 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)

19. From ‘no such thing as society’ to ‘the big society’ • ‘Poverty’ implies injustice • Child Poverty Act, 2010, embedded ‘pledge’ in law • Institute for Fiscal Studies: child poverty will rise by 2014 due to ‘big society’ • Higher in UK than comparable countries • Entrenched inequalities – wealth and power • ‘Povertyism’ pathologises poor people • Resistance to redistribution of wealth • Destroying the hopes and life chances of generations of young people

20. World crises of social justice and sustainability • Widening gap between poverty and prosperity within and between countries • Strange phenomenon of increasing poverty in rich countries • Globalisation – neoliberal free-trade principle prioritises profit over people and planet • Structures of oppression reproduced on global scale

21. Politics of disposability

22. Critique and analysis My point: ‘inadequate action research’ is decontextualised from social, economic, political structures’ Kemmis (2006) My question:How can we ensure that PAR is contextualised within the structures of power that it seeks to change?