Appreciating assets: a new report from the International Association for Community Development (IACD)

Abstract

Readers of the journal may be interested in the recent Appreciating Assets report from the International Association for Community Development (IACD, 2011), in collaboration with the Carnegie UK Trust, which draws together the various strands of ‘asset’ approaches to community development that have become increasingly influential. These include approaches that focus on: the importance of the strengths and assets that people in communities bring to change processes, such as Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), strengths-based work and citizen-led development; the idea of assets as providing the basis of community capital, including human, social, built, political, cultural, natural and financial capitals; and the importance of asset ownership for building pathways out of poverty and exclusion, including asset transfer, asset-building and community-led management of assets. The Report is exploratory and aimed at practitioners and policy-makers, while this Reflections article develops more critical reflection on asset-based approaches and the challenges and opportunities they present for community development. The strands of asset approaches that are drawn together in ‘Appreciating Assets’ may not instantly sit comfortably together despite the shared concept. They do not represent a coherent body of work and are not entirely new. However, their roots and intentions link them in important ways, and they certainly relate local concerns to key global political and economic agendas. It is not altogether surprising that approaches built on economic discourses (i.e. assets and capital) gain popularity within policy frameworks shaped by neoliberalism, and could therefore easily be dismissed as simply products of their time. Certainly, these approaches throw up all the ideological tensions and polemics we by now expect within neoliberal frameworks – the more benign communitarian discourses that replace a focus on social justice; the agenda of self-reliance that challenges more structural responses; and the individualism and competition that contrast with collective action as a basis for social change. Unfortunately, these tensions are heightened because in some policy circles now, a distinction is made between asset-based approaches, which are seen either as ‘new’ or as more aligned with a ‘rediscovered’ community organizing process, and what is seen as ‘traditional’ community development. From this perspective, the latter is seen as ideologically driven, and aligned with a model of the welfare state which is not only under significant financial pressure, but also is being questioned on the grounds of effectiveness.