Capacity building and community development

This chapter is about the language of capacity building. Language is important in that it powerfully, but often unconsciously, shapes the way we understand the concepts we are using. It reveals the assumptions, often implicit rather than explicit, behind the concepts, and it encourages us to ask certain questions and not to ask others. Community capacity building can be seen as, at least partly, synonymous with community development (Craig, 2007) in that many of the same processes are described in the community capacity building literature: participation, empowerment, helping communities to develop resilience, and so on. So why invent a new label, if it describes the same process? The reason is that, although there is a superficial equivalence between the two terms, the use of different language signifies some different ideas and different emphases, and these can profoundly affect the way the process of working with communities is understood. This chapter is about why that change of language is significant, and will argue that a change of terminology from 'community development' to 'community capacity building' is more consistent with a dominant conservative and managerialist approach, which negates the more progressive and potentially dangerous ideas implied in community development. In this chapter 'community development' refers to an approach to communities based specifically on validating wisdom, knowledge and expertise from the community itself, allowing communities real control over their own processes, and emphasising process rather than predetermined objectives or outcomes. It assumes that viable, sustainable 'development' cannot be imposed from above, but must be owned and driven by the people of the community, using a variety of forms of participation. It is an organic and multidimensional process, involving social, economic, political, cultural, environmental and spiritual development (for a fuller discussion see Ife and Tesoriero, 2006; Ife, 2010; Kenny, 2006). It is recognised of course, that not all programmes labelled 'community development' reflect this perspective.