Community development practice in a bicultural context: Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Community development as an academic discipline is concerned with the critical examination of how the forces of structural change, economic inte- gration, institutional development and renewal impact on the capacity of individuals, groups and communities for self-determination. As an area of professional practice, community development intervenes through distri- butive and collective strategies to enhance social justice and economic equity between groups and communities locally, nationally and internation- ally. These are achieved through development strategies that seek to increase the skills and capabilities of people to act on their own behalf to transform their communities through participation in economic, sociopoli- tical and institutional developments. For community development inter- vention to be effective, transforming and sustainable, it must be participatory; the process must be collaborative with members of the client community defining what their needs and issues are, what they con- sider to be their well-being and what processes would work best within their context. The need for community development intervention to ensure social justice and economic equity is particularly critical in societies where indigenous people and other minority ethno-cultural communities are marginalized by socio-economic and political processes such as coloni- zation, globalization and political and economic restructuring. The concept of 'community' used in the papers for this special issue of the Community Development Journal reflects the variety of settings and the diver- sity of community development practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. At one level, 'community' is used to refer to geographical locations such as rural and urban communities and, more specifically, neighbourhoods, but may also relate to a whole town or even region; whereas at another level it