Implications For Community Development Research Articles

Policing the Community or Community Policing: Implication for Community Development in Nigeria

Community policing is fast becoming a global trend, especially in the 21st century. But the key elements or core component of community policing is not foreign or new in Africa, for example, the pre-colonial Igbo society did not distinguish between policing or fighting crime with the overall role of the society. Consequently, the role of policing in the traditional Igbo society was diffused in that there was no specialized institution which specific role or primary purpose was to police or fight crime. It was the role of the entire society, thus, the saying that “elders do not allow goat to be strangulated by the forest”. Yet the age grade and masquerade society were prominent in the role of policing and the task of policing and fighting crime among other roles or functions, and all adult male citizens belong to both the age grade and masquerade society meaning that the task of policing is that of the entire society.

An outline of the need for psychology knowledge in health professionals: implications for community development and breast cancer prevention.

Knowledge of health and community psychology in health professionals influences psychosocial and community determinants of health and promoting participation in disease prevention at the community level. This paper appraises the potential of knowledge on psychology in health care professionals and its contribution to community empowerment through individual behavior change and health practice. The authors proposed a schematic model for the use of psychological knowledge in health professionals to promote participation in health interventions/disease prevention programs in developing countries. By implication, the paper provides a vision on policies towards supporting breast cancer secondary prevention efforts for community health development in Asian countries.

Resource governance and the challenges of community development in the Nigerian bitumen belt

On March 17, 2003, Olusegun Obasanjo, then the Nigerian President performed a groundbreaking ceremony to signal the commercial mining of bitumen under a neoliberal resource governance framework. This ceremony marks an important threshold in the history of bitumen development in Nigeria. Ever since bitumen, also known as heavy oil or tarsand, was discovered in 1900 (GCU, 1980: 10), attempts towards developing it have been undermined by political and socioeconomic challenges that persist within the bitumen bearing region (henceforth, Bitumen Belt), and a problematic governance framework. However, the Nigerian federal government׳s decision to adopt a neoliberal mining strategy towards bitumen extraction opened a new frontier in the discourse on resource governance and the socio-economic development of resource endowed communities in Nigeria. This paper explores the connection between the bitumen governance regime and the community development challenges of the bitumen belt. In doing so, the paper explores the contradictions inherent in the use of a neoliberal mining framework for resource extraction in a rentier capitalist economy like Nigeria and its implications for community development. It argues that the underlying issues of concern to bitumen bearing communities must be captured in the resource governance framework in order to ensure its sustainability and acceptance.

Amenity migration to the global south: Implications for community development

Despite a growing trend of migration to countries in the global South fueled by their natural amenities (i.e., natural amenity migration), research on this topic has predominantly been conducted in the global North. This is problematic given the notable socioeconomic, attitudinal, and behavioral differences between amenity migrants (often urbanites from developed countries) and local people (often rural residents of developing countries). Grounded in community field theory, this study begins to fill this gap in the literature by increasing our understanding of the ways in which local residents and amenity migrants interact in the amenity-rich community of Nuevo Arenal, Costa Rica. We found that linguistic, cultural, and spatial barriers (real and perceived) created a social climate in which the interaction between local residents and amenity migrants was primarily based on mundane interactions and did not lead to social integration. This proved to be a hindrance to the creation of the community field, which led to a lack of joint planning and participation in activities and projects that sought to improve the overall living conditions in the community. Explanations of these findings and the implications of such a divide are offered.

The mining boom in Malawi: implications for community development

The mining boom in Malawi: implications for community development

Evaluating public participation: instruments and implications for citizen involvement

The article presents two studies that address issues concerning the evaluation of public participation. Study 1 aimed to validate two instruments for measuring the process (the Deliberative Process Perceived Quality Scale, composed of two factors: “dialogue” and “knowledge/understanding”) and the outcome (Outcome Rating Scale) of a specific participatory procedure, i.e. the Open Space Technology (OST). Study 2 explored whether the participants' evaluation of OST's process and outcome predicted the future involvement of citizens in the same type of practices. Participants (N = 471) were recruited during five OSTs held in Italy between January and October 2010. The results indicated that (a) “dialogue” and “knowledge/understanding” appeared as distinct mechanisms and (b) participants who experienced respectful and collaborative relationships, and who positively evaluated the results achieved, were more likely to repeat a similar experience in the future, irrespective of the associated cognitive gains. Implications for community development and empowerment processes are discussed.

The Northern Forest Canoe Trail: economic impacts and implications for community development

Recreation is increasingly promoted as a sustainable means of diversifying rural economies, yet few studies have explored how the characteristics of a recreational activity and its economic impact can vary significantly between communities. This research examined the economic impact of paddler recreation in six communities along the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. Results indicate that approximately 90,000 visitors paddled the waterways in 2006. Their spending created $12 million in economic impacts, supporting about 280 jobs. However, economic impacts varied considerably between communities, due to differences in the number of users, trip lengths, lodging choices, group size, travel distances, and use of outfitters. This finding suggests that, while expenditures by visitors may help diversify local economies, community development practitioners and land managers must be cognizant of the conditions that facilitate visitor use and spending to ensure that potential economic benefits contribute positively to community development.

Feminist Systems Theory: Learning by Praxis

Feminist Systems Theory (FST) is an emerging theory grounded in cultural ecofeminism and critical systems theory. FST's contribution is in a set of principles that contain implications for community development and social research. FST brings to the fore the importance of valuing and considering the voices of people at the margins of social research and community development projects and is an effort towards a new ontology and language of person and nature to adequately address environmental marginalization. The 'systems' theory contribution to FST enriches our repertoires of methods and tools with an emphasis on systems thinking characterised by the use of boundary analysis. FST is ideally situated to enhance systemic intervention practice, an application of action research and participatory research practices. This paper will examine 'process philosophy' necessary to understand the nature of boundary analysis and the implications for FST and praxis with relevant examples drawn from case studies of current applications of FST in action research settings; (1) economic analysis and transition pathways; (2) policy analysis of the Close the Gap strategy for Indigenous equality and equity in Australia; (3) a community food distribution system; and, (4) a community health and diabetes prevention program.

Education for maintenance culture in Nigeria: Implications for community development

Infrastructural development is the bedrock of any development in the modern world. However, without a strong maintenance culture, efforts at infrastructural development will amount to nothing. This study looked into the issue of maintenance as practiced by Nigerians. Two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The survey design used for the study are sample of 120 men and women at various governmental levels which were randomly selected from Oyo State Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Works and Services Ibadan North Local Government and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. A 12-item questionnaire called Maintenance Culture for Development scale was constructed on a four-point Likert-type scale and used for data collection. The data was analyzed using chi-square statistical tool. The result indicated that there was a significant relationship between maintenance of facility and development and that education has a significant impact on maintenance culture. Based on the result, it was recommended that people should be educated and encouraged to adequately and properly maintain facilities in their care so as to facilitate rapid process of development. Key words: Maintenance, culture, infrastructural facilities, development, community.

Farmer support of local organizations, causes, and charities through philanthropy

As rural communities lose population, businesses close their doors, and financial resources become scarce, local leaders experience increasing difficulty providing necessary facilities and services to ensure an acceptable quality of life. A strategy for obtaining additional resources to meet local needs is through philanthropy or charitable giving of local residents. In farming communities, estate bequests have particular appeal because the legacy of many farmers is their land holdings. In 2004 the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll questioned farmers about their philanthropy with local community organizations, causes, and charities. Amounts and types of local contributions by farmers are examined controlling for theoretically relevant personal, social, and structural factors. Results indicate that amount given is related primarily to economic factors, whereas who the benefactors are and the nature of the contributions is more a function of degree of participation in community organizations and activities. Implications for community development are discussed.

Democracy Satisfaction: The Role of Interpersonal Trust

This study assesses the extent to which people who exhibit "generalized and/or particularized trust" are likely to experience satisfaction with the way democracy works and examines the roles that different forms of trust play in people's satisfaction with democracy. Using American National Election Study 2000 data, logistics regression models were derived to ascertain which trust variables are important in explaining levels of satisfaction with democracy. Findings suggest that not all forms of trust predict satisfaction with democracy. While trust is important when it comes to democracy satisfaction, it is generalized trusters rather than particularized trusters that are more likely to be satisfied with democracy. It is concluded that participatory democracy is impeded in communities with individuals that exhibit strong particularized trust and limited generalized trust. It is argued that more effort should be devoted to building generalized trust among community members, and several policy implications for community development are presented.

Building community capacity for locally managed ecotourism in Northern Thailand

This paper provides an approach for building community capacity and two case study examples of improving locally managed ecotourism in Northern Thailand. It provides an analysis of the practical application of the approach and the implications for community development. Nine 'operational domains' were used to build and measure community capacity at the community level. This allowed community- based organizations to scrutinize their achievements, to address their constraints and to measure their progress over time, enhanced by a simple means of visual representation. Experiences in Northern Thailand demonstrate that the key to this approach was in the use of strategic planning to initiate community actions towards sustained locally managed ecotourism. The knowledge, skills and competencies gained by the two communities led to an improvement in their ecotourism enterprises.

Overview: Articulating the Economic Importance of Child Care for Community Development

Child care is typically conceptualized as human development or social welfare rather than in an economic development frame. Although economists have recently discovered the importance of early education to long-term human development (Heckman & Masterov, 2004; Lynch, 2004), most policy is still focused on either expanding preschool for four year olds (Committee for Economic Development, 2002) or using child care subsidies to promote work among low income mothers as part of welfare reform (Mezey et al., 2002). The importance of child care for children, workers, and for broader economic development is vastly more significant than can be acknowledged within these limited education and welfare policy frames. The Cornell Linking Economic Development and Child Care project has used the symbol of the three petals of a trillium flower to represent the three most distinctive dimensions of the economic importance of child care: its implications for child development, parental labor force mobilization, and regional economic development. See Figure 1. Child development researchers are concerned with the impact of early care and education (ECE) on long-term cognitive and social skills. Labor researchers are concerned with the labor mobilization and labor productivity of parents afforded by quality child care. Regional economists are concerned with the employment and output contributions to the regional economy of the child care sector and the strength of economic linkages between child care and other sectors. Work in these three arenas has rarely intersected. However, the impacts on children cannot be segregated from the welfare of parents; the impacts on parents cannot be divorced from the health of the economy in which they live; and the health and sustainability of the economy cannot be separated from the prospects for its children. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Community development practitioners and researchers must consider the connections between children, parents, and local economies as they address the ECE sector. The papers in this issue collectively sketch out a more comprehensive and integrated perspective of the importance of child care in our economy, and its implications for community development. Child Care's Place in the Regional Economy The article by Warner chronicles a groundswell of interest in the regional economic importance of child care as over fifty-eight state and local teams have come together since 2000 to measure the size and linkages of their child care sectors. Her article demonstrates the many conceptual and methodological challenges faced by these teams. Current data systems seriously undercount care sector work--in part because of the large number of micro-enterprises and informal providers that characterize the care sector. This structure makes it difficult for economists to measure the sector accurately. For child care, the difficulty also stems from gender bias in our economic counting systems and a privileging of exporting industries over local services. Pratt and Kay challenge this orientation in regional economic analysis pointing to the large and growing importance of service sectors in the U.S. economy and the need to look at total linkages, both backward and forward, as a better measure of the contributions of service sectors such as child care. They demonstrate the use of an alternative modeling approach, hypothetical extraction, and show how it elevates child care from 20th to 4th in a ranking of 41 similarly-sized sectors in the New York State economy. The implications for regional economic development practice are exciting. By addressing the conceptual challenges raised by the child care sector, we raise implications for economic development investments in other locally serving sectors that are likely to have a larger and more lasting impact on community development. The export tilt and the bias against local service investment, especially services that meet the needs of workers, families, and women, are challenged as anachronistic. …

Internet Purchases by Rural Residents: Implications for Community Development

This article examines Internet purchasing patterns of rural residents by age, income, and sex to determine the characteristics of Internet purchasers and the types of stores in rural areas likely to face the most competition. The multivariate Logit analysis of 840 rural residents in the 2000 Illinois Rural Life Panel indicates that access to the Internet at home rather than work, recent changes in financial status, size of community in which people reside, age, and past experience in purchasing from mail order catalogs are important determinants of Internet purchases. The paper concludes with several implications for rural economic development including the notion that future Internet purchases may be those that already were purchasing outside the community through catalogs. Local stores can develop web pages but probably will still be disadvantaged unless they can focus on services, unique merchandise, or join cooperatives that carry a large inventory at lower prices. Main street stores may focus on customer services while accessing inventories maintained by the cooperative venture.

An identification and interpretation of the organizational aspects of community empowerment

Community empowerment is central to community development and yet making this concept operational in a programme context remains elusive. Based on doctoral work, this paper identifies and interprets nine organizational ‘domains’ for community empowerment. These organizational domains are not absolutes rather they serve as a point of departure for further discussion about straightforward ways to define and measure community empowerment as a process. This paper is seen as a step toward clarifying and making this concept operational to guide practitioners who wish to apply and measure community empowerment in a programme context. The implications for community development and research are discussed.

Changes in Rural Bankingmarkets in Wisconsin:Implications for Community Development

The recent spate of mergers in the U.S. financial sector is the latest example of a trend that startedin the 1980s: a growing concentration and centralization of the financial sector. Comparing 1990to 1980, there was a decline in the number, but an increase in the size, of financial institutions. Thisstudy examines how this national trend manifested itself in Wisconsin's rural banking markets.We find an increase in financial institutions (suggesting greater competition), a higher ratio oflocal to nonlocal financial institutions (suggesting a continuing local connection between lendersand customers), and an increase in the size of service areas (suggesting greater capacity for capitalmobility). Greater capacity for capital mobility suggests a need for alternative credit sources fordeclining rural areas.

Slum dwellers' diagnosis of their own needs: Implications for community development in Nigeria

This report describes a community participatory approach for improving health in urban slum communities in Nigeria. The study site included 6 slum communities in Lagos State. Public health conditions included poor hygiene, overcrowding, blocked drainage systems, lack of toilet facilities, feces-contaminated water, and cramped housing construction. Drinking water was unavailable, and people obtained paid water per bucket. These communities had taken it upon themselves to improve conditions. People built roads, acquired electricity, dug gutters, and planned their communities. In one community, a school was built; in another, a health center. One community spent its energies preventing another relocation. Interviews revealed people's interest in talking about the history of their communities, the peculiar problems faced, their organizational structure, and solutions to improving their lives. Slum dwellers did not view themselves as poor. People wanted drinking water, better roads linking their community to the larger community, expanded canals to prevent flooding, good drainage, electricity and street lights, good education, literacy education, modern equipment for sand dredging, improved fishing systems, better buildings, a policy department, libraries, and recreational facilities. No one mentioned health education. Without this assessment, the author would have set up an inappropriate health education plan. The alternative was to help these communities secure funding for their desired projects.

The Rural Turnaround in Wyoming: Implications for Community Development

From 1970 to 1980 Wyoming experienced a population increase of more than 40 percent. Most of the increase is attributed to migration. By 1980 three of every 10 residents were migrants. Most migrants settled in nonmetropolitan areas. (Wyoming had no metropolitan area in 1970, only one by 1980 and two by 1984). Growth from 1980 to 1986 slowed to an increase of 8.0 percent, but nonmetropolitan areas still were experiencing a higher rate of growth than metropolitan areas. Examination of the industrial sectors within Wyoming's economy revealed that the number of jobs in the state increased substantially during the 1970–1980 decade; growth occurred disproportionately in construction and mining, reflecting the development of the state's vast natural resources of coal, gas and oil. Although the population boom of the 1970s was tied closely to energy extraction, results are inconclusive regarding a possible “bust” during the 1980s as natural resource development declined. Wyoming's employment distribution changed dramatically from 1980 to 1986 with substantial declines in construction and mining, and increases occurring in the retail, finance, service and government sectors. As this structural change occurred, total employment declined by 1.8 percent. It is concluded that state and local governments need to be involved more actively in fostering economic development than they traditionally have been in Wyoming. The refinement of migration models, particularly incorporation of sociopsychological information such as residential preference data, is needed in order to provide a sound basis for the development of both short and long-term government policies aimed at helping nonmetropolitan counties adjust to rapid population shifts.

Ecological stability and community diversity during mormon colonization of the Little Colorado River Basin

By describing the ecological implications of Mormon settlement in the Little Colorado River Basin, the paper demonstrates: (1) the application of general ecological concepts in human ecology, (2) the ecological basis for the evolution of complex human communities, (3) the interactive, hierarchical relationship between community diversity and environmental stability, and (4) the positive contribution that human ecology can make to the general discussion of diversity and stability in ecological systems. The paper gives a brief description of Mormon colonization in the Little Colorado River Basin. Local differences in community development are then related to environmental variation within the basin and compared to general ecological research expectations. The implications of community development in this region for explaining the relationship between diversity and stability in ecological systems are discussed.

Interorganizational Relations: Implications for Community Development.

Interorganizational Relations: Implications for Community Development.