Community development and class in the context of an East Asian productivist welfare regime

Abstract

This chapter argues that class analyses have been underdeveloped in community development studies in Hong Kong. Consequently, this has impacted on the ways in which community development services have developed. This paucity of class analysis is revealed through the findings of a study that the author conducted, exploring community development service organisations’ approaches to service planning and delivery. The scarcity of class analysis, under a context of worsening social inequality and declining welfare for the disadvantaged communities, reinforces the popularity of the consensus approach, and its implications in terms of the promotion of competitive tendering to provide services and the promotion of community mutual help initiatives. Even though the curricula in most of the community development training institutions in Hong Kong has included attention to class perspectives, the paucity of class analysis apparent in community development theory and practice deserves continual attention and further research.