INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 22, NO.

6 (NOVEMBERDECEMBER 2003), 580596

Community development as citizen

education

RUUD VAN DER VEEN

Columbia University, USA

Everyday professional discussion often refers to the idea that community development is
essentially a learning process. This article sketches a comprehensive theory of community
development as citizen education by following the different traditions in community
development and by defining the educational aspect of each tradition. Among the traditions
described here are traditional community organizations as a social work method, the radical
community organization of Alinsky, the neo-Marxist approach of community action, and the
settlement movement. The resulting theoretical framework defines community development
as an alternative route for the education of citizens with low levels of formal education in the
same way as labour unions and churches often are alternative routes towards active
citizenship for low-income groups. Next, three forms of education are singled out within
community development: first, education as training of local leadership; as an action-oriented
and on the job learning process supported informally by the community worker. This form
of education resembles the informal vocational education in which an experienced
craftsman trains his pupils on the shop floor. Second, education as consciousness raising, which
reverses the sequence of learning processes: in this case it is not action which leads to
education but education that hopefully leads to action by citizens. There is a whole range of
providers of such consciousness raising activities, such as community development
organizations, local centres for adult education, churches through their celebrations and
adult education classes. A recent development is the new localism in social movements,
such as the environmental movement, emphasizing consciousness-raising activities in the
local community. Third, education as service delivery: here education is a service for the
community in the same way as community development can deliver other services to a
community such as affordable housing and health centres. Partly these educational services
are survival education, such as job readiness training programmes and literacy pro-
grammes; partly they are leisure education, typically blurring the borders between pure
education and recreational and social opportunities for residents.

Community development is, almost tautologically, the process by which active

citizens build their community, sometimes supported by a professional. The
literature often acknowledges that community development includes learning
processes, but there is a widespread confusion and much wishful thinking about
exactly what sort of learning takes place in community development, and how it can
or should be facilitated. This article attempts to develop a comprehensive theory of
community development as citizen education by following the different traditions

Ruud van der Veen is adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA in the
Adult Learning and Leadership programme. He has been for many years an associate professor in the
adult education programme at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

International Journal of Lifelong Education ISSN 0260-1370 print/ISSN 1464-519X online 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0260137032000138149
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 581

in community development and by defining the educational aspect of each

tradition.
My central argument is that community development constitutes an alternative
route for the education, training and learning-by-doing of citizens, in particular
citizens with low levels of formal education. Subsequently, I will single out three
forms of education within community development. Firstly, education as training of
local leadership, as an action-oriented on-the-job learning process supported
informally by the community worker. Secondly, education as consciousness-raising: in
particular, mobilizing residents through forms of education that will (it is hoped)
lead them to action. Thirdly, education as service delivery, where education is a service
for the community (in the same way as community development can deliver other
services to the community, such as affordable housing or health centres). But we
have to look firstly, in the next two sections, a little bit closer to what in these late
modern times concepts such as community and community development really
mean.

Indigenous and constructed communities

Particularly in the Anglo-Saxon literature, community is a magical concept, almost

as magical as democracy. The word community has not the same sacred character
in, for instance, French or German; indeed, it can even sound somewhat old-
fashioned in these languages. It is a clear example of how the use of another
language (English) comes with another way of thinking. Anglo-Saxon authors have
worked hard to find an adequate definition of community; an overview can be
found in Davies and Herbert (1993: 3338). Most authors try to find a definition
that transcends the traditional community and can also be applied to communities
in our own time. Many also try to formulate a definition that refers not only to the
local, territorial community, but includes categorical communities such as the
business community or the Greek community (people who not necessarily live
close together). Etzioni (1996: 127) delivers such a modern definition of
community, not limited to just traditional and/or local communities:

Community is defined by two characteristics: first, a web of affect-laden

relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often criss-cross
and reinforce one another (rather than merely one-on-one or chainlike
individual relationships) and second, a measure of commitment to a set of
shared values, norms and meanings, and a shared history and identityin
short, to a particular culture.

There is a typical tension between the idea of a community and the idea of
community development. On the one hand, authors (particularly sociologists)
think of community as something that exists and even speak with passion about
village communities, working-class neighbourhoods or ethnic communities. On the
other hand, community is often perceived as something rather weak, which must be
nurtured, supported, developed. Indeed, communities are often latent and it is
hard work to materialize them, to make them manifest. Communities nowadays are
sleeping beauties that need a kiss to be awakened. As Beresford (1996: 137138), an
Australian community worker, describes it:
582 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

After twelve years of professional work, I felt the need to get honest; my
community-based organization didnt have a community, in any meaningful
sense, and neither did most of the many other established associations I was
in contact with at that time. It seemed that anything could be called
community but that no one could point to their community. . . . Yet clearly
there were times and places where community spirit and community action
appeared strong. At certain times and in certain places people gathered
around issues, and in these cases they owned the means of addressing their
collective need for a time. People at these times and places related to each
other and to the world differently than either members of a formal
association or people in society at large normally do. But the impression was
fleeting: the focus seldom lasted. Community appeared to be a now you see
it and now you dont phenomenon.

I tend to take this definition one step further. It makes little sense in late modern
societies to romanticize indigenous communities. It is much better to analyse
precisely how local leaders develop communities and how professionals can
support the implicit learning processes. Of course, there is nothing wrong with
developing a community by using indigenous resources such as a local tradition or
ethnic culture or to build a community organization as an umbrella of existing
associations (an organization of organizations). For instance, late modern
communities developed in the context of local welfare policies are such
constructed communities. There could be in advance a web of affect-laden
relationships (see Etzionis definition above) between some of the members, but
more often these relations are constructed or deepened within rather specific
projects, where implicit shared values, norms and meanings (again citing Etzioni)
are articulated for a particular purpose.
Such constructed communities can have all sorts of functions. I disagree with
Beresford, cited above, that the only condition for such community forming is a
conflict situation, where the community stands up in opposition to others. Beyond
advocacy you see typical educational projects, for instance literacy projects and
projects that deliver basic vocational training. There are also self-help and
encounter groups for truly disadvantaged people. These we shall revisit later.

Conservative and emancipatory approaches

In the section above, I described community as it is in late modernity. What about

community development? How can we define it for the late modern situation?
Community development is not only an enormous technical challenge. Interwoven
with the technical challenge there is a normative discussion. Community
development often has, now and in the past, a dark conservative undertone. Such
a conservative perspective sees community as something that is threatened,
something that should be restored. What is at stake for these authors is the social
cohesion of society, particularly on the local level (city, village or neighbourhood).
The most recent example is the rise of the communitarian movement in the 1990s
in the USA (McIntyre 1981, Bellah et al. 1985, Etzioni, 1998)
In the community development literature, there are also approaches that follow
this conservative idea that the traditional community should be restored. Such an
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 583

approach tries to develop professional methods and techniques to support this

restoration movement. A typical example is the traditional community organiza-
tion approach developed in the mid20th century within social work. The origin
of this tradition is an attempt in the USA, from the 1930s, to form local community
councils consisting of officials and professionals in the social sector (Lane
Committee Report, in Dunham 1958: 6070). During the 1950s, there was a
growing tendency to include local leaders, often representing voluntary organiza-
tions. This has been described in the community development literature as the
participation or process approach (Ross 1955: 2224). In this form, community
development also spread quickly in Europe in the 1950s. A typical method within
this tradition is the community self-survey. The idea is that the community council
organizes a local survey to make an inventory of social issues, on which action
should follow. Famous examples were the self-surveys in Northtown, focusing on
discrimination (Wormser 1949) and Salem, focusing on health issues (Hunter et al.
1956).
On the surface, nothing seems to be wrong with these integrated, social cohesive
communities, particularly if they stand against racism or take care of the
disadvantaged. But in the 1960s and 1970s we learned there was something wrong.
The way these community councils cared for the disadvantaged was paradoxical.
On the one hand, they really reached out to the disadvantaged; on the other, they
strengthened the dependent position of the disadvantaged. For instance, repre-
sentatives of the disadvantaged in the community councils would hold token
minority positions, and the disadvantaged themselves were perceived as victims. A
new era of community development started in the 1960s; an era of self-organization
of the disadvantaged, of segregation instead of integration, of social conflict instead
of collaboration. All of this comes together in the idea of an emancipatory
community. In the USA, it was the era of Martin Luther King (1958), but also of
Saul Alinsky (1946/1969). In Europe, the 1960s and 1970s were the era of the neo-
Marxists (Giesecke et al. 1970, Offe 1971). We return to their ideas on political
action and political learning in a later section.
In the meantime, the swing of history has swayed again in the other direction.
The tide of radical action receded. The rise of a communitarian sentiment resulted
in a new emphasis on collaboration and avoiding political conflict. Sites (1998:
5758) describes it as follows:

Yet much of community development practice in the United States is

premised, though not always explicitly, on a central strategic implication of
communitarianism: rebuilding community is a social process of co-ordina-
tionone that seeks to develop cohesion and internal resources within a
communityrather than a political process of mobilizing members to initiate
conflict in order to advance demands based on rights. . . . Communitarian
theory suggests a primarily non-political approach towards the rejuvenation
of a democratic political culture. . . . This emphasis stands in notable contrast
to more explicitly political approaches to community building, a process of
organizing interests, mobilizing constituencies, and making claims within a
polity (Alinsky).

The rise of the communitarians can be easily explained as a backlash of

conservatives, sick of the conflict and violence of the 1960s and 1970s, oppressing
584 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

loud mouthed emancipatory community organizationsbut that is a little too

simple. From the strategic perspective of an emancipatory organization, it is also
important to handle carefully the delicate balance between the tendencies within
a community to integration and segregation. In an integrated community, an
emancipatory organization may win something by fierce oppositional techniques,
but as the integrated community itself dissolves, or under such pressure just loses
its interest in emancipatory issues, the disadvantaged lose their battle too, but now
in a different way. What conservative and emancipatory community organizations
share is a battle against anomie and apathy. However, if a majority is willing to
change, it makes sense to discuss how much a minority organization can win by a
good balance between collaboration and open conflict.

Education and participation

So far, we have introduced the concepts of community and community develop-

ment. In the latter section, we mentioned in passing the concepts of leadership and
participation. But we should pause here for a moment, because the idea of
community development as the development of leadership and participation is
closely connected with the idea of community development as citizen education. It
leads directly to the central argument of this article, that community development
constitutes an alternative route for the education, training and learning-by-doing of
citizens, in particular citizens with poor formal education.
Social research on political and social participation makes crystal clear that
active citizens have a much higher socio-economic status than the average citizen.
Verba et al. (1995: 335368) prove convincingly that this effect can be traced back
to the central role of education. It is not so much that active citizens have a higher
level of formal education than average citizens, but that formal education also gives
them access to other opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills (Verba et al.
1995: 416460). For instance, a person with a higher level of formal education has
access to higher-level jobs. Such a job gives this person extra opportunities to
develop his knowledge and skills. Ultimately, both his education and his experience
on the job lead to a greater competence for political and civil leadership (Verba et
al. 1995: 309316). In our research project Education and Training for
Governance and Active Citizenship in Europe (ETGACE), we found telling stories
about how skills developed in one domainwork, civil society or politicsare
applied in other domains. This leads to an accumulation of knowledge and skills
over these active citizens lifetimes (Holford et al. 2003).
All of this poses a central problem for community development practitioners.
However, they try to involve ordinary citizens, they run again and again into the
upper and middle levels of well-educated and better skilled citizens. Perhaps this
is not so much a problem for the more conservative approaches in community
development, such as the traditional community organization focussed on local
social planning and the recent communitarian movement. However, it is a
serious problem for the advocates of emancipatory self-organization of the
disadvantaged. Their problem is that there are few educated and skilled leaders
in such disadvantaged communities. For them it is a functional necessityand
at the same time, an educational missionto recruit and to train new
leadership.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 585

This sets the scene for the whole discussion about community development and
education. The challenge is not just, with the help of professionals and established
leaders, to build all sorts of provisions and services for the community (job training,
housing, safe environment). There is a longer term and more difficult, but equally
important challenge: to create an alternative route for the training of citizens with
poor formal education. This is a difficult but not hopeless goal. It has been done for
instance, in both the past and the present, by labour unions. Verba et al. (1995:
320330) demonstrate that, in the USA, Afro-American churches also offer such an
alternative educational route towards leadership. Although the role of community
development in this respect may be more modest, it is nevertheless worthwhile and
respectable.

How community organizations, corporations and initiatives became

different things

Let us continue for a while with our narrative about the recent history of community
development, in order to formulate more precisely the challenges facing such an
alternative route for education of active citizens. To this end, I must now introduce
the reader to specific semantics of the American community development
movement, which makes a fundamental difference between three concepts:
community organizations, community corporations and community initiatives.
I will pick up the story line in the 1960s, when a movement emerged aimed at the
community organization of the poor. The name of Saul Alinsky has been mentioned
already. In fact, he established his institute Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) for the
creation of neighbourhood unions much earlier; his first book about his work is
from 1946. But it is in the 1960s that this type of community development became
prominent. At the IAF, Alinsky trained professional activists to organize poor
neighbourhoods, and with these neighbourhood organizations to initiate conflict
strategies to improve the living conditions of the poor (Alinsky 1972). Two famous
neighbourhood organizations in this tradition have been described in detail, both in
Chicago. One was the Temporary Woodlawn Organization, organized by Nick von
Hoffman (Fish 1973) and the other, the Organization for a Better Austin, organized
by Tom Gaudette (Bailey 1972). Alinskys style of community development became a
model for much more community organizations after the 1960s, financed by federal
programmes such as the Community Action Programme, private foundations or just
independent organizations. The model has proved inspiring. The IAF itself is also
still active in this tradition. Another strong federal network that works in this
tradition of community organization is ACORN (Delcado 1986). Alinsky also had
great influence in Europe from the 1960s, although often in a mixture with neo-
Marxist notions (see below).
In the meantime, we see the growing influence of another trend in American
community development, community development corporations, which deliver
specific services to poor communities. Most corporations develop housing projects
but some are also active in job creation and job training. There are currently about
2000 community development corporations in the USA. Their money comes from
federal funds, mixed with funds from state and local authorities and private
foundations. (For an overview, see Stoutland 1999.) Although here and there in
Europe an example modelled on the American experience can be found, these
586 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

community corporations remained a typically American phenomenon. American

community corporations fulfil functions that in Europe are often still fulfilled by
public institutions.
Thus, generally speaking, while traditional conservative community development
in the USA follows a strategy of collaboration through non-political boards and
councils, Alinsky style organizations thrive on conflict strategies, and corporations
establish a service strategy for poor communities. Zooming in, as it were, one sees a
rather more complex situation. Firstly, the conservative backlash in the USA after the
1960s led to an increase in the status and power of traditional community boards and
councils. This is hardly documented in the community development literature,
because the community development movement itself concentrates on their work in
the communities of the poor. Secondly, the same conservative backlash also forced
radical community organizations to follow a more cautious path. They now use a mix
of strategies, sometimes collaboration with local authorities and traditional
community councils and sometimes conflict and negotiation strategies. Thirdly, part
of community organizations more cautious mix of strategies is that they are
sometimes also involved in creating community corporations to stabilize their gains in
conflict and negotiation. But to have their hands free for conflict strategies, such
community organizations sometimes avoid having representatives on the boards of
these corporations they have created.
The latter has to do with some specific characteristics of community corporations.
Since they are dependent on external funds, they are more vulnerable and reluctant
to bite the hand that feeds them, even if the meal consists mainly of scraps from the
corporate or government table (Dreier in Weir 1999: 179180). Corporations shirk
away from political action and political coalitions that could harm their funding.
Another problem is the power shift within the corporation. Compared with
community organizations, the board of a community corporation depends on the
expert knowledge of its professional staff in dealing with complicated financial and
technical actions, such as for renovation and building of affordable houses. The
professional staff, rather than the corporation board of community leaders, is
dominant within the corporation. Corporations also sometimes have problems with
their clients, the neighbourhood residents. For instance as the owner of apartment
buildings they may have problems and conflicts with tenants similar to those any
landlord encounters.
Finally, the 1980s and 1990s brought another new trend in community
development, often referred to as community building or community (building)
initiatives. These differ from community organizations because they avoid tactics that
could be disruptive or confrontational. They also differ from community corporations
because they avoid the latters professional character. Although community-building
initiatives are sometimes active in the hard core of housing and job training, they are
more prominently active in soft activities such as childcare, youth work, literacy
programmes, health education, cultural projects and activities for senior citizens.
(For a more detailed description, see Halpern 1995: 195217.)

Education as training

The development of communities of the poor as described above, in each of these

subdivisions (organizations, corporations and initiatives), is a clear example of the
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 587

first type of citizen education within community development, which could be

called citizen education as training for citizenship. This specific type of citizen
education is action-oriented. Action comes first; learning and training follows that
action. My description below is mainly based on handbooks for community
organization in the 1970s and 1980s (Brager and Specht 1973, Thomas and
Henderson 1981, Kahn, 1982) and on evidence found in case studies I conducted
in the Netherlands and the USA (Van der Veen 1982, Van der Veen in Nauta and
Schuyt 1986: 5285).
Such action-oriented community development and in-built training of residents,
starts with setting up an organization or group that wants to change a particular
policy or to establish a particular service. The initial responsibility of the
professional or the indigenous leader is to get the work started. Therefore, he or
she has to recruit residents to form a board or committee, and later on to form
subgroups for specific tasks and train all the newcomers to do their work effectively.
This is hard work. An initial success, winning a conflict or getting a small grant, can
boost the recruitment in the early months. But it often takes two or three years to
consolidate the organization or the initiative, to make progress in expanding the
number of smaller actions and to find and to train residents motivated to stick with
the organization for a longer period.
A closer analysis of the role of the professional (or indigenous leader) shows that
the relation between action and learning can have three different forms: (1) the
professional acts on behalf of the group (2) the professional supports residents
informally in their action or (3) the professional instructs residents in more formal
sessions. Typically, the initial stage of action-oriented community development is
the first form, where the professional acts on behalf of the group. But it is equally
important that at an early stage the professional starts to delegate some tasks to
active residents, leading to the second situation of informal support of learning of
residents. If the professional does not do so, the organization or initiative will
remain dependent on him or her, and there will not be much learning among
active residents. Occasionally, you find the third form of more formal instruction
where a professional or hired instructor trains for particular skills or instructs
residents in particular knowledge. Gradually, but this can takes a couple of years,
the residents should learn to run their organization or initiative independently of
the professional. It must be said that even in the most successful organizations the
professional often remains active in the background for many years as a consultant
and trainer.
Over the years, I have found a marked resistance among adult educators to this
role for the professional. It scares them that the adult educator has to take so active
a role in the early months, and has to remain rather active in the organizations
activities for several years. Many adult educators feel more confident in the role of
facilitator, supporting but not themselves getting dirty hands. Maybe an example
from another field of education will help. For centuries, vocational training has
been built on the same model of delegation, with growing independence of the
trainee. The master craftsmen trained his apprentices in the same way. They all
started as assistants, got gradually more responsibilities until they could do the work
on their own. In fact, human resource development has recently rediscovered this
type of informal learning on the shop floor.
For this informal learning strategy in community development to succeed, it is
crucial that the professional makes clear from the very outset that it is a real
588 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

learning and training situation. Residents must realize that local leaders must
manage the organization themselves and that the professional will leave the
organization after a few years. My case studies have often shown a tragic
misunderstanding where the professional thought about his relationship with
residents as one of trainer-trainee, while the residents were completely surprised
when it came up laterand then often resisted the idea that they should become
gradually independent.

Resource mobilization and cognitive approach

Education as training is not the only form of education in community develop-

ment. The limited character of education as training arose for instance when, at the
end of the 1960s, the literature on American radical community organization came
to Europe. A discussion ensued about the differences between the US style of
community organization and the neo-Marxist strategies of the student movement.
Neo-Marxists were rather unhappy with the pragmatic and ad hoc character of
American community organization. Neo-Marxists tried to build coalitions between
broader social movements and community organizations. In addition, education
connected to community organization, according to the neo-Marxists, should not
only be directed toward skill training but also toward development of the
participants social consciousness. Offe (1971) refers to this double strategy, of on
the one hand coalition-building and on the other hand consciousness-raising, as
the necessary horizontal and vertical consolidation of citizen action. Negt (1971)
developed his exemplary method for consciousness-raising in unions that became
also popular as a method in community organization.
The discussion can be better understood when we consider a broader theoretical
debate that started in the 1970s on the mission of social movements in general and
not just the community development movement. On the one hand, there is the
resource mobilization approach (Zald and McCarthy 1979). Within this approach,
a social movement is seen from a technical perspective. Zald and McCarthys
central question is how social movements can succeed by an adequate accumula-
tion of resources. As they write in the introduction of their book reader, the
resource mobilization approach examines the variety of resources that must be
mobilized, the linkages of social movements to other groups, the dependence of
movements on third parties for success, and the tactics used by authorities to
control or incorporate movements. This fits still with the recent definition of
American community development as asset building that improves the quality of
life among residents of low- to moderate-income communities (Ferguson and
Dickens 1999: 36). According to these authors, such assets take five basic forms:
physical capital in the form of buildings, tools, etc.; intellectual and human capital
in the form of skills, knowledge and confidence; social capital such as norms,
shared understandings, trust and other factors that make relationships feasible and
productive; financial capital (in standard forms); and political capital, which
provides the capacity to exert political influence.
On the other hand, there is the so-called cognitive approach, which
concentrates on the purposes of social movements instead of the technical means
to realize these purposes. Eyerman and Jamison (1991: 15) argue that social
movements are forms of activity whereby activists create new kinds of social
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 589

identities not only for themselves but also for society at large. In this approach, social
movements are in the first place a cognitive praxis that emphasizes the creative role
of consciousness and cognition in all human action, individual and collective. This is
not only closer to the neo-Marxists, but also close to the early formulation of
perspective transformation of Mezirow (1978: 101102). Perspective learning is
described here as learning how we are caught in our own history and at the same time
as learning to become critically aware of the cultural and psychological assumptions
that have influenced the way we see ourselves and our relationships. As an example
Mezirow mentions consciousness-raising in the womens movement. Through small
groups fostering intensive self-examination, often without a formal leader, women
have come to see themselves as products of previously unchallenged and oppressive
cultural expectations and prescribed sex roles.

Education as consciousness raising

So much for our excursion into social movement theorylet us now return to
community development. The most common word for such a cognitive praxis in
community development is consciousness-raising, although comparable terms such
as sensitization or politicizing are also used. Consciousness-raising can be of
course a factor or element in community development training practices as
described above. For instance, Alinsky (1972: 1018) emphasizes that his work
should in the end contribute to the building of democratic personalitiesechoing
the ideas of Dewey (1938). Another example is the habit of ideological training for
a hard core of activists in a (neo-)Marxist approach.
However, there is another somewhat different practice of consciousness-raising,
namely consciousness-raising as a separate, autonomous activity in the form of an
educational campaign, a discussion group or even a course. This autonomously
organized consciousness-raising forms, I suggest, a second important type of citizen
education within community development practices. It is also often different from
training in the sense that the sequence action/learning has been reversed. While
education as training follows the action, education as consciousness-raising
generally precedes possible actions.
There is a whole range of providers offering such autonomous consciousness-
raising activities. A community development organization or initiative may use it as
an outreach technique to involve more residents. A typical example is a community
development organization that sets up a public hearing or an exhibition to discuss
a particular community problem. The purpose of such consciousness-raising
activities for a broader public is often both to recruit new activists and to build of
support and consensus in the broader community for the community organiza-
tions activities.
Another typical provider is a local adult education institution. Apart from
regular programmes of courses, such institutions often promote monthly or
seasonal events to raise consciousness on particular political and community issues
for a broader public. But there is also a difference between consciousness-raising by
a community organization and by an educational institute. While the community
organization promotes its own view and actions, the educational institution is often
more distanced, trying to create a neutral forum for debate. I shall return to this
shortly.
590 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

A third example of a typical provider of such consciousness raising activities is

the local church that invites its members to think about their social responsibilities.
On Sundays many churches organize, in addition to the service, an adult
education class to reflect on the Christian mission, the development of a truly
Christian perspective on the world. But, of course, churches have many more ways
to raise critical consciousness and to foster its members to live true lives of believers
who also practise their belief. Similar courses are to be found linked to mosques in
Islamic communities.
A quite interesting development is the new localism in global social movements
such as the environmental movement, the Third World movement and the anti-
globalization movement. The central idea is that global developments create local
problems and therefore action should start with local groups. One of the first
examples is the booklet of Morris and Hess (1975), who defend localism and
describe their own initiative of a neighbourhood centre for environmental
education. More recently, Finger and Asun (2001: 137170) sketch the path from
consciousness-raising towards action for local groups in three steps: (1) becoming
aware of the fact that economic development and social justice are no longer
connected; (2) a process of conceptual clarification; and (3) developing alter-
natives. During the last five years, a couple of books have been published about this
type of consciousness raising (Coben 1998, Foley 1999, Mayo 1999, Holst 2002).
Much of this work is still inspired by Freire but there is also an amazing revival of
interest in Gramscis theory about ideological hegemony.
A central problem over the years in citizen education as consciousness-raising
has been the question of how directive an adult educator should be. Where does
education stop and manipulation begin? Rothman (1969: 264265) makes a
distinction between four degrees of directiveness in community work that can be
easily specified for education as consciousness raising:

(1) Channelling (strongly directive). The educator asserts a particular point of

view with supporting arguments and documentation.
(2) Funnelling (considerable directive). The educator gives a range of possible
choices and subtly funnels thinking in a given direction by asserting his
preference for a particular goal and the rationale of that choice.
(3) Scanning (mildly directive). The educator scans the range of possibilities,
presenting them impartially and on the basis of parity. He provides an
orientation to selection, setting out the boundaries within which possible
selections may take place.
(4) Non-directive. The educator lends support to various opinions or sentiments
that arise. He stimulates community morale and activity through his
presence, his encouragement and his indications that he is aware of the
communitys problems and sympathizes with its attempt to cope with
them.

In solving this puzzle, I tend to make a distinction between two situations. In the
first situation, the educator represents a social movement or a partisan institution
that is well known to the resident as defining a particular point of view. It could be
an institution for environmental or peace education. In such a situation, funnelling
or even channelling seems to be appropriate, because the participant knows in
advance that the educator is starting from a particular point of view, and the
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 591

participant is particularly interested in learning more about this. In the second

situation, the provider is a public centre for education or in another way committed
to an open discussion of the topic. In this situation, the educator is limited to a
strategy of scanning or even a non-directive strategy (although one may wonder
whether a strict non-directive strategy is possible).

From settlement houses to local education

We still do not have a complete picture of community development as citizen

education. One remaining piece in the history of community development should
be incorporated. It starts with the neighbourhood settlement houses in the
nineteenth century. The mission of these houses could be described as cultural
democratization. Middle-class volunteers offered education and cultural uplift
programmes for low-income immigrant families, and guidance about family
problems (Briggs and Macartney 1984, Davis 1984). Nijenhuis (1987) wrote a
detailed history of the remarkable and still vital tradition of club and neighbour-
hood homes in the Netherlands.
Trolander (1987) traces the historical line from these settlement houses to
neighbourhood centres in the USA today. This book is particularly interesting
because it describes in detail the fundamental discussion between community
organizers from the sixties with their focus on conflict strategies, and settlement
houses with a long tradition of consensus building. Ultimately, the settlement
houses revived after the 1960s by transforming themselves into institutions led by
people from minority groups themselves but sticking to their tradition of delivering
educational, cultural and recreational services.
A comparable tradition is community education in Great Britain, although it
refers to quite different activities (Armstrong 1977). In the context of community
development, the most important branch of this movement is the outreach work of
centres for adult education in low-income communities. An excellent more recent
model for such workcharacteristically not called community education but local
educationhas been published by Smith (1994) based on his work in East
London. Unlike many earlier works, this book is not a summing up of examples of
good non-formal education, but concentrates on informal education. Smith (1994:
4061) describes informal education as a practice of conversations, a concept
drawn from Gadamer, which is a less political and less pretentious alternative to
Freires concept of dialogue. Smith (1994: 86107) gives also an excellent detailed
model for the organization of professional work to facilitate such informal
learning.
Another comparable and equally interesting development is the French
movement of social-cultural animation, sometimes translated as social-cultural
community development (Simpson 1978). The concept arose in France for the
first time in the fifties and referred at that time to a progressive movement in
adult education and youth work, but in the seventies it became the dominant
approach (Poujol 1978). A typical aspect of this movement is its interest in
community arts. Animation as a movement is critical about the democratization
of culture in the sense of the dissemination of the haute culture, instead it
fosters regional cultures, cultures of ethnic groups and the culture of the working
class. It is also not just organizing non-formal courses to learn to write poetry or
592 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

to paint, but also a deliberate attempt to express the central narratives and values
of these minority cultures through artistic means. Dario Fo won his Nobel Prize
partly for the stage plays he developed as a cultural animator in Italy, working
with poor peasants.

Education as service delivery

Education in this tradition is neither the first type of education mentioned above
(the training of activists) nor the second (consciousness raising in the community).
This education is of a third type, which can be described as a service for the
community in the same way as community development can deliver other
servicessuch as affordable housing, health centres, childcare, and so forthto
communities of the poor.
Partly this third type of education is survival education. For instance,
neighbourhood centres throughout the USA and Europe have, since the 1970s,
been rather active in setting up alternative routes for job education for the
dropouts of formal vocational education. Dickens (1999) makes an interesting
comparison between different strategies of community development to fight
unemployment in an inner city neighbourhood. On the one hand, there are the
activities of community corporations and community organizations (types of
community development we already have discussed above). These corporations
and organizations try either to bring jobs to the inner cities or to organize transport
for inner city residents to industrial areas outside the city. Dickens (1999: 392394)
final assessment is that these strategies were not very effective in helping people to
find work. On the other hand there is the type of community development we
discuss here which offers non-formal training for unemployed residents: this
appears to be rather successful. Dickens (1999: 418423) concludes that job
readiness training is particularly successful. Job readiness training programs teach
people how to write a resume, where to look for jobs and how to present themselves
at job interviews, along with encouragement to keep looking [for work] in the face
of repeated failure (Dickens 1999: 410). According to Dickens, these programmes
are even more successful when coupled with job placement programmes
agreements with employers to hire unemployed people who have successfully
followed a job readiness training programme.
Another example of community development as a provider of educational
survival programmes is literacy programmes. This tradition goes back to settlement
houses and neighbourhood homes at the beginning of the twentieth century, but
remained vital throughout the century in language courses for immigrants.
Moreover, in Europe, neighbourhood homes and community education centres
were very active in the movement in the 1970s, which re-discovered illiteracy among
native speakers. Within this literacy movement, community workers, following
Freire (1976: 4158), experimented with problem-posing literacy methods. In fact,
this was an attempt to combine consciousness-raising, mentioned above as the
second type of education in community development, with this third type that
delivers a concrete educational service. Although neighbourhood centres still often
have literacy groups, most of the work has now been incorporated into formal adult
education institutions, which apply more traditional methods and provide
certification and secondary education follow-up.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 593

However, community development as provider of educational services is often

not just survival education but also leisure education that serves the cultural and
personal development of community members. There is a typical blurring of
boundaries between leisure education and many non-educational activities such
as recreation and opportunities for informal contacts between residents. Some-
times this leads to conflict, when adult educators want to protect their profession
by distancing themselves from such informal activities in the community. For
instance, in the 1980s, there was a tragic conflict in the Netherlands around
community arts. Initially, the national umbrella organization for institutions of
art education had welcomed experiments with community arts in neighbour-
hood homes. However, gradually they took the view that such art education was
not sufficiently serious and professionalmore a form of recreationand the
national agency as well as many local institutes for art education withdrew their
support for community activities.
I see such emphasis on the pure character of education as dysfunctional. In
fact, recreational and social opportunities for residents are excellent outreach
techniques in communities where were many poorly-educated residents have
troubled relations with educationwhich taught them mostly that they could
not learn, or at least that they could not learn in the way traditional schools and
courses expected. Through this third form of education in community develop-
ment, community workers can make contacts with residents that would not arise
spontaneously in education of the first (community development as informal
training) or second (consciousness raising as an autonomous activity) types.

Conclusion

So far, I have described how community development functions as an alternative

route of citizen education, mainly for those who have not had the good fortune
to enjoy careers in formal education and well paid jobs. Three specific types of
education have been described. First, education as training, the transfer of skills
and knowledge, which is often embedded in the community action itself;
second, education as autonomously organized consciousness-raising, such as a
community campaign or discussion group; third, education as service delivery
for residents with poor education, an educational service often interwoven with
outreach activities that in themselves are only marginally educational. Together
the three types form a powerful method to empower a community, its leaders
and its residents. So, if an integrated approach is possible, why is it that in
practice community development is tragically divided between several traditions?
Even worse, why is there often rivalry between the different community
development traditions?
One reason seems to be that the different theoretical traditions in community
development are at the same time the foundations of different professions that
compete for the scarce resources for professional work. There can indeed be
fierce competition in the community for money. Professionals in action-oriented
community development (community organization, corporations and initiatives)
compete for funds with those who define themselves as real educators, engaged
in consciousness-raising (community education centres, churches, environmen-
talists). Both look with suspicion on professionals in social cultural work
594 RUUD VAN DER VEEN

(settlement houses, neighbourhood centres and professional animators) with

their soft activities. It is easier to develop a comprehensive theory of commu-
nity development for citizen education, as I have attempted above, than to unite
these different professional traditions in one new comprehensive profession.
Moreover, there is a typical tendency in adult education to legitimate its
profession by concentrating on pure educational activities that are not mixed
up with other types of professional work. Unfortunately, as we have seen, each of
the three forms of education in community development asks educators to get
their hands dirty. Let us summarize briefly: first, action-oriented community
development asks educators to take a leading role in the action itself and
training comes mainly alongside this role as an activist. Second, consciousness-
raising can be more effective by engaging in a partisan social movement, but the
channelling and funnelling of information typical of that type of education has
often been seen, from a pure educational viewpoint, as manipulation. Finally,
social-cultural work in neighbourhood centres mixes educational work with less
serious activities such as cultural events, recreation, and opportunities to meet
in informal ways in neighbourhood centres. Again, as with professionalization in
general, it is a big step from an adult learning theory that acknowledges
informal and incidental learning to a profession in which education is really
only a part of a broader range of activities.
I see these separate traditions in theory development and professionalization
as tragic. I am strongly in favour not just of the construction of a comprehensive
theory for community development, but also of an integrated professional
education for community development that will end these dysfunctional distinc-
tions. A comprehensive approach in local community development provision
would also make it possible to offer residents a wide range of activities, and for
residents to built their own education by a combination and sequence of
activities that best fit their own lifelong learning. As long as we are not able to
constitute such an integrated approach we shall see, as a result of the
competition for funding, professional rivalry, and other irrelevant and accidental
factors, big differences between neighbourhoods in the variety and richness of
educational provision through community development.

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