Communities and Social Action

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This interdisciplinary volume explores how English commercial, co-operative and charity retailing were shaped by and in turn influenced their social and political environments, from the local and the global, between the late-nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries.

This book argues that Myanmar’s resistance is deeply rooted in its university spaces. Drawing on the experiences of key actors – rectors, professors, students and activists – the book offers a compelling narrative about the life of the country following the latest coup d’état, an event that continues to puzzle the international community.

Based on deep ethnographic research, this book explores new practices and ideas about activism in the fight against social inequality. The book is both about feminist activists and is an act of feminist activism, with the author’s experiences as a volunteer ethnographer in New Zealand sitting at its heart.

Hope must be mixed with realism in our approach to the climate emergency, and in this book philosopher John Foster presents a revolutionary approach to our pressing need for a habitable human future.

This book, offering in-depth analysis from a native scholar, is a critical examination of the world-renowned community Auroville located in Tamil Nadu, South India as a site of spiritually prefigurative utopian practice.

What does community social work mean when applied to practice? Colin Turbett explores the erratic history of community social work, demonstrating how this preventative and relationship-based model can work for the individuals and communities served, and also provide an answer to recruitment and retention issues.

Using international perspectives and case studies, this book discusses the relationships between community development and populism in the context of today’s widespread crisis of democracy. Exploring the synergies and contradictions between populism and community development, it offers new ways of understanding and responding to populism.

Presenting unique and critical reflections on international policy and practice, this book addresses the global dominance of neoliberalism. It examines the extent to which community development practitioners, activists and programmes can challenge, critique, engage with or resist its influence.

This book is a step toward curating our existing knowledge in the emerging field of ‘disaster philanthropy’. It aims to build a robust base for future research, practice and public policy, whilst recognising that philanthropic responses to disasters are complex, conditional and subject to change.

How can local communities effectively build peace and reconciliation before, during and after open violence? This trailblazing book gives practical examples, from the Global North and Global South, on communities alleviating conflict and enabling transformation in divided societies.

This unique, holistic and radical perspective on participatory practice has been updated to reflect on advances made in the past decade and the impact of austerity. The innovative text bridges the divide between community development ideas and practice and considers how to bring about transformative social change.

Based on decades of research, this book explores global social change processes through the concepts of social change organisations (SCOs) and social change makers (SCMs) – the individuals working within and alongside SCOs.