IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/comdev/v55y2024i3p325-336.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The seven deadly sins of community development

Author

Listed:
  • Charlie McConnell
  • Paul Lachapelle

Abstract

As a result of our experience and, at times, frustration with the field, we offer “seven deadly sins” of community development. We believe that community development work remains undervalued and underinvested across the world in part because of its own sins, and we maintain that unless we address them, it will remain so. We share our perspectives on the “darker side” of community development by exploring and critiquing the following issues: anti-expertism, localism, and self-help, an overemphasis upon social capital, an over-righteous non-governmental (NGO) sector, and an overemphasis upon collectivism, discipline capture, and self-effacement. Our aim is to challenge readers to reject lazy groupthink and encourage more critical thinking and reflection. We surmise that our field risks further marginalization unless we address these.

Suggested Citation

  • Charlie McConnell & Paul Lachapelle, 2024. "The seven deadly sins of community development," Community Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 325-336, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:comdev:v:55:y:2024:i:3:p:325-336
    DOI: 10.1080/15575330.2023.2217883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15575330.2023.2217883
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/15575330.2023.2217883?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:comdev:v:55:y:2024:i:3:p:325-336. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RCOD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.