Re-gilding the ghetto: community work and community development in 21st-century Britain

This chapter examines the nature of ‘community work’ and regards ‘community development’ as one of several approaches to community work. It considers Marjorie Mayo’s conclusion that community development as an intervention has limited radical potential, and argues that this conclusion is equally valid thirty-five years later, as the more radical ‘community action’ approaches to community work have been marginalised and community development has become mainstreamed within policies and practices concerned with promoting citizen participation and neighbourhood renewal. The chapter also offers examples of locally based action for political change (based on community organising and critical pedagogy), which keep alive the radical community-work tradition. The focus is on community work as an occupation and set of practices in Britain, where it has developed separately from social work.