Self-reliance and autonomous development

The impact of the global financial crisis of 2007. led peripheral communities in the USA and in the UK such as Cleveland and Preston to adopt community wealth building (CWB) as a new, fundamentally different local development strategy. This book chapter argues that CWB shows interesting parallels with historical debates and practices of ‘self-reliance’ which different actors developed from the 1960s to the 1980s (mainly) in the Global South. Thus, it examines to what extent CWB resembles older self-reliance approaches and how community wealth building could benefit from engaging with the theoretical foundations of the earlier debates. The central thesis is that the actors associated with CWB could benefit from engaging with the legacy of self-reliance to complement the theoretical foundation of their approach. Methodologically, the book chapter draws on policy document analysis, newspaper articles, and the insights from four exploratory interviews with policy advisers and politicians involved with CWB.