We form huge Community Development Initiatives in which people participate for development, change and better livelihood. We also find Social Activism that again mobilizes people for all these purposes. Is the difference only in semantics - just because two schools of sociologists used two different terms to mean the same thing?
Ferdinand Tönnies differentiated between community Gemeishaft and Society Geselshaft. Be aware that local development shouldn't be conceived regardless of State. Otherwise, some groups could act in their own ways in the name of local community.
Dear Abdesselem Mahmoud,
Thank you. Tonnies talked of Gesellschaft as meaning a structure organisation, something like a corporation or company. The structure of the company is tailor made to achieve definable objectives and definable interrelation between its members, both hierarchic and lateral. If we take this type of organisation into political/social arena perhaps Hitler's Nazi party would most appropriately fit the bill. Can community development organisation that have to per se involve the end beneficiaries - people - be fitted into such rigid structures?
Can we really define Social Activist groups as Gemein or Gesellschaft? These are some questions that call for some debate.
Please do share your thoughts.
warm regards.
I think the definition of terms such as " social activism " and " community development " is polysemous because their interpretation depends on the assumptions of the researchers/actors/stakeholders about the nature of "social justice" and vision of "good society" (teleology), the good life (definition of health), and the nature of man and society (eg functionalism and / or social conflict). They are , in my opinion , fundamentally ideological constructs .
I think these assumptions are critical in the conceptualization of social problems and strategies that must be employed to bring about social change . For example , the theoretical conceptualization of "empowerment" and "social capital" depends in part on how we understand the nature of social cohesion (eg social capital = Putnam vs Bourdieu).
An alternative perspective is pragmatic orientation (a good theory is a theory that works, radical empiricism + social constructionism ) . In this case, I think it is possible to understand " social activism " and " community development " as being heavily dependent on the context in which actors use these concepts and that what really matters is the construction of a common definition of the problem by multiple stakeholders.
Personnaly, I think that the impact of basics ideological and philosophical assumptions on practices goes beyond semantic because it change the way we understand social changes and define social problems, and how we (or try to) measure them (eg: consensus vs confrontation, definition of criteria for program evaluation).
Here are some interesting articles that feed my refection on this topic: ...
Weinstock, D. (2010). Health in political philosophy: What kind of a good is it? (Presentation summary). Montréal, Québec: National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy
http://www.ncchpp.ca/docs/Weinstock_HealthInPoliticalPhilosophy_AN.pdf
Values, assumptions, and practices: Assessing the moral implications of psychological discourse and action, Isaac Prilleltensky (1997), http://education.miami.edu/isaac/public_web/values.htm
Social capital and the third way in public health, CARLES MUNTANER* JOHN LYNCH† & GEORGE DAVEY SMITH‡ (2000) http://individual.utoronto.ca/cmuntaner/publications/2000/2000MuntanerCriticalPublicHealth.pdf
Emancipation or workability? Critical versus pragmatic scientific orientation in action research Anders W. Johansson Mälardalen , Erik Lindhult Mälardalen (2008) http://arj.sagepub.com/content/6/1/95.full.pdf+html
The key difference, to my mind, lies in the extent to which activism is willing to go beyond what is conventional in society in order to achieve its goals. Both are bottom-up but activism has a history of radical action-for much more detail pse see this book:
Laverack, G (2013) Health Activism: foundations and strategies. London. Sage Publications.
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