Community Practice and Urban Youth: Social Justice, Service-Learning and Civic Engagement

Abstract

Book Reviews 149 Community Practice and Urban Youth: Social Justice, ServiceLearning and Civic Engagement Melvin Delgado (2015) Routledge, 248 pages. $44.95 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-13892-598-4 Melvin Delgado is a Professor of Social Work at Boston University and Co-Director of the Center for Addictions Research and Services. Through this work, he brings together important issues about Latino and other marginalized urban populations, youth development, and enhancement of community capacity. Delgado is a prolific writer with more than 20 books, including recent publications on Urban Youth and Photovoice: Visual Ethnography in Action; Asset Assessment and Community Social Work Practice; and Social Justice and the Urban Obesity Crisis: Implications for Social Work. His most recent work provides both a theoretical foundation for social justice and service-learning with a series of case studies and vignettes that exemplify these ideas. Case material is focused on civic engagement for food justice, immigrant rights, and environmental issues, with a focus on youth from low-income/lowwealth communities and youth of color. The book is extensively referenced, requiring more the 60 pages for its bibliography alone. Such a thorough yet practical guide will be useful to academics and practitioners engaged in servicelearning , community engagement, and social change. Initial chapters are organized to support a broad and deep understanding of youth in the context of shifting demographics in cities; social justice and rights; and community practice, service-learning, and civic engagement. As a practitioner and scholar of community engagement myself, I found the histories and frameworks of each of these subjects helpful and refreshingly clear in their purpose and raison d’etre. I can already see that the pages of this early matter will become well-worn, with foldings and jottings to enrich my own research and practice. The integration of social justice and a youth rights focus are particularly helpful in providing both an historic and contemporary context to the fields of service learning and community practice. Delgado then moves into “Reflections from the Field,” highlighting diverse ways youth activism and engagement has enhanced immigrant rights, environmental justice, and food justice. These case examples are expertly developed, both because of their critical contemporary importance and theoretical framing, and because of the complexity and “significant, but not insurmountable” challenges these particular issues pose. The book concludes with emergent themes and trends. For experienced practitioners, this may be the most significant section of the book. In it Delgado raises important questions about advancing critical service-learning to the next level. As youth engagement gains momentum worldwide, these questions will become central to refer to again and again, to ensure ethical practice and social equity. Among these questions are: will youth remain subjects of [community- Book Reviews 150 engaged] research, or will they also play a role in knowledge creation and dissemination? What roles and relationships are at play between adults and youth in community-engaged endeavors? What roles are technology and social media playing in advancing youth activism? In this discussion, Delgado cautions that “the concept of participation plays an influential role in service-learning and civic engagement. However, the degree to which youth participate in an active and meaningful manner is open to interpretation. In essence, the ‘devil is in the details’” (p. 167). Meaningful participation has, in fact, been identified as a significant issue for many decades, receiving extensive attention from the fields of children’s geography, environmental design, and urban planning. Delgado does not give the same thoroughness to his review of this literature as to other subjects of the book. Many authors have critiqued and developed ideas of meaningful participation for youth in as extensive a form as Delgado does his own subjects (e.g., Lynch (1977), Chawla (2002), Driskell (2002), Hart (1997), Percy-Smith and Thomas (2009), as well as recent volumes by Wyn and Cahill (2015) or Gal and Duramy (2015)). Indeed, the field of participatory practice with children and youth is a rich and contextualized ally, and a missed representation in this book. In fact, some of the questions Delgado poses—children as generators of knowledge, or roles and relationships between adults and youth in processes of engagement—are addressed very well in the literatures of participatory...