Concept (E-Journal)

Book reviewCommunity Development in Theory and Practice an International ReaderEdited by; Gary Craig, Keith Popple and Mae Sha

Fairweather, Stuart

Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009   Reviews  Book review Community Development in Theory and Practice an International Reader  Gary Craig, Keith Popple, Mae Shaw (eds) Spokesman: 2008  Being asked to review a book that begins in the year of your birth is a daunting task.  The 29 contributions cover the period 1966-2005.  From New Zealand to El Salvador, from Scotland to South Africa, the authors are drawn from across the globe: complemented by an introduction.  For students and workers this is essential reading.  The forward asserts the editor’s hope to strengthen a ‘now-global project’: community development.  Below I attempt to assess how far this has been done. It would be wrong to list the merits of each of the chapters in turn.  I took the approach of reading through the chapters in chronological order but the format affords flexibility.  This book is not a completion of the best of the back catalogue of the Community Development Journal (CDJ).  Thanks to the editor’s painstaking selection it is more than that.  It is both a perspective on our history and a tool for future thought and action. Marjorie Mayo’s introduction asks us to consider the ‘continuities and discontinuities’ over time; but reminds us to take care with context.  Not simply transferring one historical moment for another or too lightly dismissing the cultural or political specifics. The ‘competing theoretical perspectives’ on community development also require consideration.  Mayo offers the reader a conceptual framework:  The post-colonial legacy  Community work and the state  Social movement and globalisation This is a helpful starting point. The early chapters are located in the colonial; they talk about community development becoming ‘something in its own right’, distinct from social work but still contributing to betterment: helping people to become ‘more productive and more deserving’.  Batten in chapter 5 calls for agencies to co-ordinate effort so that people ‘really do value’ the services and amenities provided to them.  Writing in 1974 his sentiments find an echo in the managerialism of today.  Wrestling with the limitations of practice however Batten goes on to ask whether community development should not be simply considered an approach.  This emphasis on technique distances practice from theory; ideology and significant social change, things that the book goes on to consider further. The following chapters provide able illustration of why technique alone cannot withstand the impact of policy, politics or the cultural manifestations of inequality.  Drawing Antonio Gramsci, in chapter 12 Jennifer Sayer asserts ideology ‘is created and recreated through the social practices that hold society together’.   Here individuals are seen as subjects of history operating in civil society, in and against the welfare state.  Structural analysis is retained:  people and communities have agency but within the context of existing inequality.  This jars with a later chapter where self-described radical workers are trapped by their own determinism and by a Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009   Reviews  lack of ‘strategy’ (chapter 18).  Developing that strategy can be about challenging the official discourse.  Mae Shaw and Ian Martin (chapter 25) illustrate this in relation to citizenship.  To ‘democratise democracy’ we need to ‘politicize politics’ this cannot be done without ‘commitment, leadership and organisation’ (chapter 20).  It also means workers seeing community development as contributing to a counter hegemonic project.  A project that challenges negative social relations (Izugbara, chapter 27), this means asking questions about our social purpose and the explicit and implicit content of our programmes.  This reading of the book tests, to a degree, Mayo’s framework.  Returning to it we are reminded to be careful not to let hindsight distort historical reality.  Gary Craig’s chapter (15) chronicles community development progress in Britain, from its early history, mentioned above, through the post-war social democratic consensus and the advent of the Community Development Project (CDP).  The CDP marked the high point of an unnuanced structural analysis that saw welfare as a sop to deflect from ‘industrial and economic’ exploitation.   However, as outlined above social movements were already alive to a reality that was more complex. In response to Thatcherism, practice needed to be both ‘in and against the state’ and understand that in ‘a world that has no patience with a class analysis’ there is a need to address other (previously ignored) contradictions (Sondhi, Chapter 21).  But it did not end there.  Community development, like many other parts of the welfare state infrastructure, had to not only undergo self examination and internal ideological contestation but also withstand the onslaught of global neo-liberal orthodoxy.  In some cases this has seen a threat to ‘autonomy’ and a battle for continued existence.  As politicians embrace the market they have suggested that ‘local authorities must cease doing so many things themselves’ (Chapter 26).  This may push community development to the margins and/or provide the impetus for reinvention. At the time of writing there are huge global financial and environmental imperatives.   In Britain there is a crisis of formal governmental processes.  There is a need to rethink citizenship ‘in a free society as distinct from a ‘free’ market’ (Chapter 25).   That gives community workers space to be more than uncritical conduits of government policy.  Educational and developmental activity requires to respond to the agendas of the communities we work with but those agendas require to include challenging inequality and to be transformative.  Reading and discussing the chapters in this book will provide practical inspiration for that activity: strengthening community development global and local potential. Stuart Fairweather Dundee City Council    

Community Development in Theory and Practice an International Reader

Book review‘Making Spaces for Community Development’ by Michael Pitchford with Paul Henderson, Policy press 200

Watt, Clare

Concept Vol. 1 No. 1 2009    Reviews   Book Review  Making Spaces for Community Development  Michael Pitchford with Paul Henderson, Policy press 2008  ‘Making Spaces for Community Development‟ provides a brief historical context of community development over a forty year period using insights and reflections of experienced practitioners within the field to highlight lessons which inform professional practice, both currently and for the future.  Throughout the period indicated, the book analyses the changes to the policy context which have created tensions, challenges and opportunities for community development, with particular reference to the shift towards a partnership model. The current emphasis, being driven by the government within the model of Community Planning, is towards a more „technical vehicle of capacity building,‟ which attempts to depoliticise community development by delivering short term interventions and by engaging communities around service delivery. This is described by the authors as the „professionalisation of the profession.‟ The book argues that the historic focus of community development work on social change will become weakened and lost if practitioners do not critically analyse both the policy context and their role, and ensure that the values which underpin community development (such as social justice, equality and empowerment ) continue to inform practice. The book is not prescriptive, but encourages further discussion by raising key questions about current practice for debate.  The book clearly indicates the kind of constraints which have contributed towards the development of a more technical approach, such as the emphasis on the delivery of outcomes/ outputs to secure sustainability of an organisation and equally to satisfy the various funding stream objectives. This top down approach militates against community development practice reconnecting with the politics of communities and can instead simply deliver social policy for the government if not approached critically. The authors point out that this is a consequence of a growing emphasis on the kind of short term interventions that disregard the processes of community development which are based on a more long term approach.   The book is a useful resource for current practice from both a theoretical and practical perspective. For example, there are six lessons arrived at from the insights and reflections of the featured practitioners, drawn from their experience of the 1970s and 1980s, and these six lessons compliment  Mae Shaw‟s “seven C‟s for radical practice” (1997) to provide a useful practice framework which strengthens the role and position of community development. Within the current context, and corresponding constraints, these offer direction and a framework to create space for communities to understand and define the problems they face, such as the existence of increasing inequalities in marginalised communities, and to facilitate social change.  Managing this tension created from pressures from above and below requires the practitioner to work within these contradictions and to renegotiate the landscape and challenge where necessary.   One of the strengths of the book is that it critically discusses the tensions and contradictions which exist within the current context and how these may play out in the future. Community development practitioners have always worked under constraints, but the shift from a confrontational/ campaigning role to a seat around the table within the partnership model has created further implications and greater pressure on workers to ensure the fulfilment of policy objectives. In exploring these tensions, Pichford and Henderson stress the importance of not losing sight of our role, if community workers are to remain „agents of social change‟ rather than become „agents of the state‟. The book recognises that community development is a political process and should not be regarded as a neutral activity.   A key function of the book is to galvanise a debate in relation to, „where community development is today and where it is heading‟. Does the book achieve this? It certainly is thought provoking and encourages practitioners to critically reflect on their practice, re-assessing Concept Vol. 1 No. 1 2009    Reviews   their aims and the direction of their work, from a national level to a project and individual practitioner level. The book is however rooted in the English context and although there are parallels to be drawn around the key issues for debate, such as the challenges currently faced the constraints of agency upon structure (eg government top-down emphasis on capacity building) my minor criticism is that it would have been useful to draw from some Scottish experiences to create a more balanced resource, particularly for those practitioners who are still engaged at a community, as opposed to a regional, level. There are plenty of them out there I‟m sure!   In terms of where community development is heading, the book explores the implications of the shift to partnership and in particular the current model, Community Planning, and analyses the implications for current policy and practice. The book poses some key questions: can communities influence strategic decision making, and are social justice, poverty and inequality still key priorities for marginalised communities within this model? The resounding answer is no, although the book highlights that it is still possible when communities recognise the need to negotiate, and not just discuss, at a neighbourhood partnership level in order to maximise their influence and help set the agenda.   There are numerous resources available which provide a historical context in relation to community development between1968 (the year referred to as the beginning of the „Golden Age‟) and the present. However, this book does offer more! The reflections and experiences of practitioners who have worked within the field over a long period permeate the book, and usefully draw from the past to the present in a way which informs future practice. The book clearly sets out the tensions and opportunities for community development for the times ahead, and although these may well have been analysed within other books, „Making Spaces for Community Development‟ is written in an encouraging way that manages to create some optimism for the future by arguing for the need to exploit those tensions and reconnect with both people and politics, rather than just uncritically responding to policy.   Overall I feel the book achieves what it claims to do, encouraging debate and reflective practice. As the title suggests „Making Spaces for Community Development‟ is the focus of the book, suggesting the need for community development workers to engage critically with the current context to redress the mantra of „delivery‟ which prevails within the current context. The book conveys the clear message that as practitioners we have to create space if we want to support marginalised communities effectively to push the boundaries towards a social justice agenda, otherwise community development will continue to be weakened or even lost within the „professionalisation of the profession‟. Reading the book reaffirmed my own sense of personal responsibility as a practitioner within the field and I would recommend the book to students and practitioners as a useful resource to reflect on, and inform, practice.   Shaw, M (1997) Community work: Towards a radical paradigm for practice, The Scottish Journal of Community Work and Development, Vol 2   Claire Watt Deputy Manager, North Edinburgh Trust  

Making Spaces for Community Development’

Book reviewThe Spirit Level:  Why more equal societies almost always do better.  Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.  Allen lane, London, 200

Hewlett, Nigel

Concept Vol. 1 No. 1   Reviews  Book Review  The Spirit Level:   Why more equal societies almost always do better.  Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.   Allen lane, London, 2009.     Epidemiologists Wilkinson and Pickett address the issue of inequality with a purely empirical question:  among the wealthier countries of the world, do those that are more equal tend to perform better on measures of the well-being of their populations?  The authors describe their approach as "evidence-based politics", by analogy with evidence-based medicine.   Firstly, they establish that, among the wealthier countries of the world (roughly, those with average annual incomes of more that 18000 dollars), greater wealth is not associated with greater well-being, although among the less wealthy countries it is.     For their main study, they took the 50 wealthiest countries of the world and first excluded all those with populations of less than three million or on which there were no data on income inequality.  This left 23 countries in all, including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Israel, Singapore and most of the countries of western Europe and Scandinavia.  They compared each country's level of inequality with its performance on various indicators of social well-being such as life expectancy, homicide rates, teenage pregnancies, infant mortality and educational attainment, in order to test the hypothesis that greater inequality is associated with poorer performance.  On measure after measure, they show that more equal countries do better, less equal countries do worse.  They repeated the study, using a similar method, on the 50 states within the USA and obtained similar results.   This book is written for a lay audience and we are spared most of the statistical technicalities. The measure of inequality used in the main study was the gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% of the population.  We are told of other standard measures (I like the idea of the Robin Hood Index, which is the proportion of a country's wealth which would have to be taken from the rich and given to the poor in order to achieve perfect equality!) but the authors claim that they make little difference to the outcome.  The standard presentation used is a scatter plot, in which the score of each country on some measure, like obesity rate, is plotted over its score on inequality.   A plot showing a summary of the results on ten of the measures, scored as an 'Index of health and social problems', is reproduced here as Figure 1.   Figure 1.  A scatter plot of 'Health and social problems' over inequality, for 21 of the 23 wealthy countries (Israel and Singapore are excluded for lack of data on some measures).  From The Spirit Level, p20 (Figure 2.2). The vertical axis is the index value and the horizontal axis is inequality.  The solid line is the line of best fit through the scatter of points.  Concept Vol. 1 No. 1   Reviews  It is obvious that there is a strong correlation:  the more unequal a country is, the worse it tends to score on the index. Since this is a summary, the correlation emerges particularly strongly.  However, on all such graphs for the individual measures (there are some 50 of them in the book), the existence of a similar correlation is obvious at a glance.  The UK is the fourth most unequal of the 23 countries, after Singapore (the most unequal but for which there are no data on some measures), the USA and Portugal.  On most measures it performs accordingly, that is, rather badly.  Japan is the most equal, followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden and these countries all perform predictably and consistently well.  It seems plausible that low status is bad for your health and morale and that in a strongly stratified society it is even worse.  There is an interesting exploration of the connection between violence, in particular, and  low status, with a view to explaining the higher crime rates of more unequal societies.  However, generally the issue is more complicated than merely explaining the negative effects of lower status, since inequality has its effect on all social classes. A steeper inequality gradient is associated with poorer performance, even for the upper echelons of society.  For example, the bar chart reproduced here as Figure 2 shows that there are higher death rates among men of working age in England and Wales than in Sweden and this holds true within every social class.     The relationship between equality and well-being is not just one of association but one of causality. This is conclusively demonstrated over several closely-argued pages (pp187-193) in which it is shown that if all the different pieces of correlation evidence are taken in combination they are sufficient to establish the existence of a causal relationship.    Figure 2.  Death rates of working-age men in England and Wales as compared with those in Sweden.  From The Spirit Level, p183 (Figure 13.3).      Why are humans susceptible in this way to the equality level of the society in which they live? Except with respect to the discussion of violence, mentioned above, the title of the book over-reaches in promising an answer to this question.  I should have thought that the best approach to it would be to undertake fine-grained investigations of the background to some of the existing statistical findings.  For example, what is the chain of causation which increases the likelihood of death among working-age males of high status in England and Wales as compared with Sweden?  Does the steeper inequality gradient in England and Wales produce in those of high status some kind of toxic physiological effect, due to a greater fear and loathing of those beneath them, for example?  Or might it be that dedication and skill levels are higher in carers and the caring professions in more equal societies, resulting in better quality care for the sick?  It would have been interesting to read such hypotheses (doubtless more well-informed than these examples) for testing in a proposed programme of future research and it would have been in the spirit of the evidence-based politics the authors Concept Vol. 1 No. 1   Reviews  espouse.  Instead, they switch to a broad focus, much of it with a view to convincing us that human nature includes the potential for egalitarian styles of social interaction.  To this end, they cherry-pick evidence from anthropology, evolution psychology, experimental psychology and biology.  We learn the results of some experimental economic game-playing and that Stone Age societies were egalitarian.  The centre-piece of this part of the book is a discussion of the contrasting social interaction styles of chimpanzees and bonobos.  Chimpanzees are the villains of the piece, using large quantities of violence to maintain their highly stratified social structures; bonobos, on the other hand, are egalitarians, who use food-sharing and large quantities of sex.  It is unclear what this is supposed to prove.  At one point there is a reference to a claim that we share some relevant piece of DNA with bonobos rather than chimpanzees.  This would be good news but actually their argument turns out to be that we have inherited from our primate ancestry the potential for both status driven and egalitarian modes of interaction, the implication being that we should cultivate our bonobo side at the expense of our chimp side.  It is all quite entertaining but I have to say it reminded me more of Gulliver's Travels than a theory to be taken at face value.  This criticism is trivial enough, when weighed in the balance against the enormous significance of the rest of the book.  The evidence in it implies that greater progressive taxation or a narrowing of income ranges would be both necessary and sufficient to improve the UK's performance on health, education and a range of social issues.  This is doubtless anathema to the political right but their only legitimate recourse is (as with climate change theory or evolution by natural selection) to engage in a debate on the science.   Bring it on!  Nigel Hewlett Honorary Senior Research Fellow School of Social Science, Media and Communication Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh 

The Spirit Level

It is very difficult to understand Adult Education in the last fifty years without considering the historical figure and works of Paulo Freire. In any sense it is very interesting because Freire is not an educator in a strict sense, maybe we can consider him more as a community and cultural worker very committed with literacy as a way to liberating people. This connection, between adult education and community work, as exemplified in Freire’s work makes him the most impressive representative of Radical Adult Education or Popular Adult Education: a kind of educational struggle for Social Justice

Lucio-Villegas, Emilio

Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009 Paulo Freire:  A beginner’s guide1  Emilio Lucio-Villegas University of Seville (Spain) Paulo Freire Institute of Spain  It is very difficult to understand Adult Education in the last fifty years without considering the historical figure and works of Paulo Freire. In a it is very interesting because Freire is not an educator in a strict sense, maybe we can consider him more as a community and cultural worker very committed with literacy as a way to liberating people. This connection, between adult education and community work, as exemplified in Freire’s work makes him the most impressive representative of Radical Adult Education or Popular Adult Education: a kind of educational struggle for Social Justice.  Life and works. Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born in Recife (Brazil) in 1921. In a short review we can differentiate three different stages in his life.  The first period concerns work in Brazil. He worked in several organizations – public and private – making connections between culture and adult literacy. This is an important fact because Freire always connected literacy and adult                                                  1 I am grateful to my colleagues Jim Crowther and Antonio Fragoso for their comments and suggestions. education in a wide range of different contexts. This stage was interrupted by the coup d’état in Brazil in 1964. His early books are a legacy of this time.  The second period began with his exile in Bolivia, Chile, the USA and, finally with his work in The World Council of Churches in Geneva (Switzerland). This period is, possibly, the moment of a wider application of his philosophy and practice and the establishment of his international reputation. He worked as advisor in literacy campaign in several countries like Guinea Bissau; Sao Tomé and Principe, etc. This work is an important link with his own past because these countries were, at that time, colonies fighting for their independence.  The third step in his life is his return to Brazil. This last period is characterised by his work as a teacher in several universities and, finally, as Secretary of Education in Sao Paulo (Brazil) between 1989-1991 (see Torres, O‟Cadiz & Lindquist, 2007). Paulo Freire died in 1997 in Sao Paulo. His ample bibliography can be divided in four different moments, not necessarily in a chronological way. The first relates to his early works in Brazil: Education: The practice of Freedom (1973)2, and, overall, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), the book which he is most associated with and has been translated into more languages in the world than any of his other works. This book can be considered the founder                                                  2 Brazilian edition of this book is previous to Pedagogy of the Oppressed Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009 document in relation to Freire‟s thought. A second section can be characterised as the spoken books phase. These are books made with other thinkers – not only educators – that were created in a dialogical way: Miles Horton; Ivan Illich; Antonio Faundez; Moacir Gadotti, etc. have all collaborated with Freire in producing „talking books‟ which are based on their conversations. The third period is represented by books in which Freire reflects on his own thought, rewriting and adapting his earlier ideas: Pedagogy of Hope (1994) and Pedagogy of the City (1993) are two examples. A final, fourth period is his books concerning experiences: Pedagogy in Process (1978, in relation to his work as adviser in Guinea Bissau), Extension or Communication (1973, about his experience in Chile).  Key concepts. Key elements in his work and thought are diverse but the following can be stressed:  Dialogue: This cannot be understood as a simple methodology. Dialogue is the core of Freire‟s philosophy and his method. Dialogue guarantees communication and establishes education as a cooperative process characterised by social interactions between people in which new knowledge is created through joining and sharing the knowledge that people have. For this, dialogue as an educational journey considers people as social human beings and not as recipients of knowledge. It is the essence of liberating education. Dialogue is, in this sense, the starting point to edify a liberating education. Literacy ‘Method’: This is not a way merely to learn letters, words or sentences. The starting point is always people‟s real situations and experiences shared through dialogue. From this point of departure, people can build the meanings of their own surrounding world. The literacy method makes sense within the bounds of a concrete territory – physical and symbolic. People in literacy processes become learners of their own everyday life. In this sense, to „say their word‟ is to speak about the world in cooperation with others through dialogue. In Freire‟s „method‟ words are more than a simple skill. Words are doors opened to understand the world and change it. Oppression and the oppressed:  From his early works, Freire considered the educational process as one of liberation that will allow people to move away from a Culture of Silence and to have the experience and confidence to say their own word. To maintain this kind of oppression – Culture of Silence – the prevailing sectors in society maintain an educational system that Freire called banking education: deposits are made; rules are given; knowledge is memorized not built. All these kind of things maintain people in a state of alienation. To turn this around, his proposal is for a liberating education that supports people to say their own word / world. This means, that people can express their Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009 dreams, desires, hopes, and to find ways to act on these. Conscientization: This can be the most controversial concept in the whole of Freire‟s thought.  It is related to the concept of oppression, above. In fact, Freire stopped using it for a while because he considered that it might be understood mainly in an epistemological sense: an oppressed man or woman could be conscious about their own oppression in an intellectual way, and he or she can create some knowledge about this situation. For this, it is important to stress that Freire always uses the concept of conscientization to refer not only to the knowledge that a group of people have, but, beyond this, consciousness is formed in a process of investigation and changes – deriving from it – are made in their own reality. In this process, each person, through dialogue, meets with other people and can move from a magical consciousness to a critical one. We can say that conscientization is a process and not a stage. In this path, Freire names different steps: magical consciousness where fate and inevitability are dominant in people‟s understanding, naïve consciousness which involves some understanding of the context in which events occur but the analysis is shallow, and finally critical consciousness where deeper and contextual analysis are evident. Conscientization is more than merely „conciousness raising‟ it implies also the need to act on what is known. But the most important element that I can stress is that conscientization is forged in everyday liberating actions that allow people not only to be conscious about their alienation, but changing the situation that are the cause of it. The glossary included in Kirkwood & Kirkwood (1989) is very useful to go deeply into Freire‟s key concepts.  Critics. Diverse authors and thinkers have made several criticisms of Paulo Freire‟s ideas. The most stimulating, in my personal opinion, are the following: Methodological incoherence: Some people consider that Freire didn‟t define his method beyond the theoretical and epistemological elements. It is true in a certain sense. In fact, only in Education: the practice of freedom we can find an explanation about concrete words and generative themes‟ applications. But, on the contrary, in my personal view, I think that we can affirm that Freire pointed out the essence of the method: dialogue and people‟s everyday life as a starting point. From these, the word and the world are created and recreated. Other critics stress the idea that Freire forgot orality as a primary and vital part of people‟s communicative ability. In fact, it is correct that Freire always stressed the act of reading and the importance of writing, but, on the other hand, he always contemplated the real existing people‟s situation as a starting point for educational intervention. This means that – on a lot of occasions – orality is the starting point for literacy Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009 work. Plus, dialogue – the essential key element in Freire‟s methodology - is constructed and conducted thanks to orality. Freire says: “In adult literacy, like in post literacy, the domain of both oral and writing language is one of the dimensions in the process of expression” (1984, p. 54). In fact, both generative words and themes are derived from the study of people‟s oral universe. The concept of oppression. Two main critics come from feminist and people working with minorities. The major element relates to the idea that Freire only considers peasant without land as oppressed.  Feminists have been very critical because Freire didn‟t introduce gender as an element of oppression. His work primarily considers the oppressed as peasants without land, and he takes little cognisance of gender. On the other hand, other authors consider that Freire forgot cultural issues and problems of ethnic minorities in this analysis about oppression. In short, these critics consider that the analysis of oppression must go beyond class analysis.  Making connections. In the last twenty years there have been several attempts to connect Freire‟s thought with that of other thinkers. Perhaps the more explicit effort has been in making connections between Freire and the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (see Allman, 1988;  Coben, 1998; Mayo, 1999). We can also point to works connecting Freire and the German critical theorist Jurgen Habermas (see Welton, 1995; Torres & Morrow, 2002). In a less explicit way, there is a growing work connecting Freire and the Russian psychologist Vygotski (see Gadotti, 2005) and works on the relationship with social learning in a way so called socio historical psychology. (For this last issue see Cole & Scribner, 1981)  Paulo Freire’s Actuality. Paulo Freire‟s works and thought are spreading around the world. They have been very significant in the twentieth century and today. Freire took part, as advisor, in literacy campaigns in countries such as: Guinea Bissau, Sao Tomé and Principe, Nicaragua, etc. His work has been important not only in Third World‟s countries. In more advanced economies there have been significant attempts to translate his ideas for adult education. We can stress The Adult Learning Project in Edinburgh (see Kirkwood & Kirkwood, 1989) as one of these. Another important development is the creation of Paulo Freire‟s Institutes. The first was created in Brazil (see www.paulofreire.org) before Freire‟s death. Then others have been created. One example of these is The Paulo Freire Institute of Spain (see www.institutpaulofreire.org) that publishes an Online Journal called Freirean Rhizome (see www.rizoma-freireano.org) in four languages Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009 (Spanish, English, Portuguese and Valenciano). The Institute encourages some research about Literacy and about Participatory Citizenship and Adult Education. Plus, the Institute is supporting a Literacy Campaign in Nicaragua connecting literacy with health, productivity and environmental issues.  These practises and new developments renew the richness of Freirean thought.   References. Allman, P. (1988). “Gramsci, Freire and Illich: their contribution to education for socialism”. In Lovett, T. (ed.). Radical approaches to adult education. A reader (pp. 85-113) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Coben, D. (1998). Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire and the politics of Adult Education. New York: Garland Publishing. Cole, M. & Scribner, S. (1981). The Psycology of Literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Seabury Press. Freire, P. (1973). Education as the practice of liberty. New York: McGraw Hill. Freire, P. (1973). Extension or communication. New York: McGraw Hill. Freire, P. (1978). Pedagogy in Process: The letters of Guinea-Bissau. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1984). La importancia de leer y el proceso de liberación. México: Siglo XXI Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the City. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Continuum. Gadotti, M. (2005). Llegint Paulo Freire. Xàtiva: Edicions del CREC. Jardilino, J.R. (2000). Paulo Freire. Retalhos biobibliográficos. Sao Paulo: Pulsar Kirkwood, G. & Kirkwood, C. (1989). Living Adult Education. Freire in Scotland. London: Open University Press. Mayo, P. (1999). Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education. Possibilities for transformative action. London: Zed Books. Torres, C.A. & Morrow, R.A. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Social Change. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C.A., O‟Cadiz, M.P. & Lindquist, P. (2007). Educación y Democracia. Paulo Freire, movimientos sociales y reforma educativa. Xàtiva: Instituto Paulo Freire de España. Welton, M.R. (1995). In defence of the Lifeworld: Critical Perspectives on Adult Learning. New York: Suny Press.  

Paulo Freire: A beginner’s guide

Book ReviewCatching History on the WingSivananda

Burnett, Jon

Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009                                                                                        Reviews  Book Review  Catching History on the Wing   A. Sivanandan Pluto Press 2008  The overthrow of the Institute of Race Relations in 1972; transforming it in the process from a capital serving research unit into a radical think-tank is a pivotal moment in Britain’s history of race relations. It was an overthrow from below. And as the IRR’s then librarian, A. Sivanandan observed; at its core was a battle over the definition of the British ‘race problem’. The victorious staff may have been left with no money; with no premises; but they had emerged with a way of seeing. The problem, as it were, was not ‘race’ – but racism.  The publication of Catching History on the Wing then has come at a moment when its messages, accounts, and discussions are sorely needed. At a time where the government appears adamant on reversing any gains made through the acknowledgement of institutional racism nearly 10 years ago; a time of anti-Muslim racism, control orders, multiple foreign occupations, increased racist violence, surveillance, biometrics, increasing inequality, and targeted campaigns against asylum seekers, this collection of Sivanandan’s works over more than the last 40 years – most of which have been written as IRR Director (a role he took on in 1973) – gives us an insight into the very heart of British anti-racist struggle. One only has to look at the bibliography of writings at the back of this book to understand – for those who don’t already know – just how integral Sivanandan has been, and is, to this struggle. The titles of the speeches, books, articles, and pamphlets give an indication. ‘Prison’, ‘immigration’, ‘repatriation’, ‘imperialism’, ‘capitalism’, ‘resistance’, ‘poverty’, ‘assimilation’: key words leap off the page, emphasising the breadth of the battle and telling their own story. Whilst his list of obituaries give a poignant reminder of some of the friends, comrades, and even enemies that he has encountered, in one way or another, along the way. This is not a book of theorising from a vantage point above and beyond the vanguard.  Writing and fighting are synonymous, as Sivanandan famously asserted, and the 11 pieces that make up this book bear testament to these words. On one level they take us on a journey through the history of ideas about race theorising. La Trahison Des Clercs  (1995) admonishes the postmodernist ideologies and ideologues that offered a retreat from anti-racism as racism itself gathered pace. The ‘intellectual playboys of the western world’, as he bluntly puts it, are exposed as intellectual cowards; servitors to capital and unable (or unwilling) to offer their knowledge to greater struggles against injustice. Whilst The hokum of New Times (1990) is written with what, at one point at least, appears to be a twinge of sadness. ‘Dedicated to those friends with whom, Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009                                                                                        Reviews  out of a different loyalty, I must now openly disagree’ he offers at its beginning; before going on to dismantle the claims of those intellectuals and activists who distorted Marxism in the journal ‘Marxism Today’. ‘New Times’, the hook around which they were based, was ‘Thatcherism in drag’.   But if this was a battle of ideas which Sivanandan put so much effort into, it was only so much so in the sense that these ideas had, and have, relevance for the lived experience of racism and injustice. Race, class and the state (1976) expertly analyses Britain’s post Second World War shifts in immigration control, explaining how racism changed, changes, to suit different times. Its investigation of the legislative framework through which exploitable migrant labour was ‘managed’, and the role in this framework in marrying capital dictates with the mediation of class conflict, reveals as much about today’s immigration controls as it does about those at its time of writing. Whilst the struggles against the institutional racism that this framework consolidated are described from the perspective of one who was there. From resistance to rebellion (1981) tells us not only about how anti-racist struggle was ‘fought on the factory floor and in the community, as a people and a class, and as a people for a class’. It tells us about the context within which such resistance took place: Surveillance, harassment, racist violence, stop and search, detention and deportation are, of course, by no means unique to today’s political structures.  These essays do not just provide a historical account of shifts in state racism though. Nor do they end at providing a detailed account of black resistance in the UK – although both of these things are achieved. What these essays do is provide a way of understanding local realities in a global context; and the realities of today within a historical framework. Imperialism and disorganic development in a silicon age (1979) outlines the exploitation and poverty that was consolidated through the (then) shifting basis of global capitalism. Whereas the New circuits of imperialism, written ten years later, details the creation of new ‘hierarchies of labour’, new forms of global order, and new forms of racism that these circuits embedded. The ways in which imperialism and racism are linked is explained, in one way or another, in each of the essays in this collection – but A black perspective on the gulf war, written in 1991, makes this explicitly clear. And in doing so sets out a meticulous analysis of why anti-racism is anti-imperialism. His discussion of an emerging anti-Muslim racism in this same essay is nothing short of prophetic.   As Colin Prescod writes in the foreword to this collection Sivanandan has influenced a generation of Black British community activists; and the essays in this volume have been written in the thick of struggles – taking their strengths Concept Vol.1 No.1  2009                                                                                        Reviews  from those who fight against injustice whilst informing and inspiring those very same battles. If, as Sivanandan argued at the launch of this collection, ‘history tells us where we came from and where we are at. But it also should tell us where we should be going’, then Catching History on the Wing adds weight to these words. It is Sivanandan who has so clearly dismantled the contemporary attack on multiculturalism and its shift to the assimilatory policy programme of community cohesion. And in Race, terror and civil society (2005), it is Sivanandan that has so coherently unravelled the ways in which those who espouse democracy and values are themselves betraying these ideals through the combined ‘war’ on asylum and terror.   In the final analysis Catching history on the wing illuminates as much as it inspires. It teaches as much as it enthuses. And perhaps most of all it emphasises how Sivanandan has, and continues, to steer the IRR in his own goals, as a ‘servicing station for oppressed peoples on their way to liberation’.  Jon Burnett Information and Communications Officer, Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (PAFRAS), Leeds  

Catching History on the Wing

Scandrett, E

concept vol 1 no 1 2010

Bains, Simon

Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     Why Concept on-line:  or, the history and rationale of the Open Access Movement  Simon Bains Head of Digital Library University of Edinburgh  This article appears in the first issue of Concept to be published on-line as an open access publication through Open Journal Systems (OJS). The concept of Open Access (OA) publishing has existed for decades (Suber, 2009), but has only become genuinely feasible for the majority with the advent of the Web and the digital publishing explosion that followed.  Since then, librarians, academics and publishers have debated and experimented with new models of providing scholarly writing in a way which does not rely on the traditional published journal. For academics, under pressure to publish their research in high status, refereed but inaccessible and expensive journals, Open Access provides a way of reaching a wider audience and accelerating the publishing process instead of, or as well as, using the commercial publishing houses.  The „self-archiving‟ approach was pioneered by arXiv (Jackson, 2002), which was established in 1991 and now contains more than 0.5 million articles (known as „e-prints‟) in physics and related subjects.  This has been followed by the successful medical sciences services, PubMed Central and BioMed Central.  Individual institutions began to self-archive their own articles from 2000, when E-Prints, the first software to support the „institutional repository‟ (IR) approach was launched.  The potential of the Institutional Repository grew once the Open Archives Initiative standard was formalised (JISC 2008), enabling such repositories to share and access each others‟ data easily.  In some ways, this is “so self-evidently right and good that it's hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with you” (Goldacre, 2007).  The Web allows anyone to become a publisher, and provides ways to make information available globally to anyone with an Internet connection.  However, as so often the case, the devil is in the detail.  There are serious and challenging questions about copyright, the refereeing process, the costs and, indeed, the benefits to academics and other writers of doing it at all.  As a result the movement, whilst developing much momentum, has not simply replaced established models, and has remained a contentious topic (Research Information, 2007).  McCulloch (2006) defines Open Access as aiming “to reassert control over publicly funded research in order to achieve best value and to make research output transparent and freely accessible”.  In this sense, it represents a sensible aspiration for libraries Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     seeking to control journal subscription costs, for universities wishing to maximise the visibility of their research, and for journal contributors, who can expose their own writing more widely and easily access material relevant to their current work.  Open Access has been taken forward in a number of different ways, and there continues to be much discussion about the relative efficacy of these approaches.  In economic terms, Open Access is defined as „green‟ or „gold‟ (Harnad et al, 2004 a) where the green route involved deposit into an accessible database (normally referred to as a repository) to be made available for free, and the gold route involves retaining the journal publishing approach, but rather than asking the reader or library to pay for the journal, the author pays to publish (for research outputs, the cost of doing so may be included in the funding made available for the research).  These routes are not mutually exclusive, and both have experienced some degree of success.  The green route has progressed in two ways: through institutional repositories managed locally by universities and similar organisations, or through national and international subject-specific repositories (e.g. arXiv and PubMed Central).  The gold route has, unsurprisingly, been more difficult to take forward, but where funding has been available, gold OA journals have been established.  Particularly successful has been the Public Library of Science (PLoS), founded in 2000 and now responsible for seven online peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals (Brown et al, 2003).  There are strong economic arguments for pushing the Open Access model.  Journal subscriptions become more and more expensive year on year, and it can be difficult to justify a publically funded university giving away its intellectual capital only for its library to be required to buy it back.  A recent study of alternative publishing models (JISC, 2009) found that for the UK, significant savings would be possible if an open access model replaced the traditional journal publishing approach.  The report identified that traditional publishing generated annual university library acquisition costs of about £200 million.  Open Access publishing („gold‟) the same journal article output was calculated at about £150 million per year, and the „green‟ model was estimated to cost only £20 million per year.  However, the publishing sector has been quick to criticise some of the perceived assumptions in the report upon which these savings calculations were based (Joint Statement, 2009).    Nevertheless, it is true that the foundations of OA are in the difficulties university research libraries have with affording journal subscriptions, and they continue to expect that an OA approach should Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     have at least some impact on this particularly costly element of running a modern academic library service.  Harnad et al (2004 b) usefully distinguish between the affordability problem and the access/impact problem, both of which can be addressed by the OA model so that it is not simply about helping libraries absorb budget cuts, but also about extending the reach and accessibility of university activity.  Over the last 5 years or so, technology has evolved to support effective OA services through the use of global standards and the development of mature open source software applications. Search engines are capable of discovering the records, ensuring greater exposure and more choices for access.  Tools like the Mendeley reference management application are becoming popular for managing and sharing publications and the development of new systems offer the potential to facilitate collaborative research, with open access to the resulting publications being an obvious and logical end point (Palmer, 2009).  Open Journal Systems (OJS), which brings you this journal title, is part of this package of academic tools, and the University of Edinburgh is piloting the system partly to explore the possible relationships with the IR, so that scholarly outputs could be dynamically combined into journals as well as being generated as result lists from a database, thereby maximising accessibility.  Nevertheless, takeup of the Open Access concept, translating into actual deposit by researchers into repositories, has not been as rapid or as widespread as was hoped, or even expected. This has been partly because of confusion about the message, partly because authors have legitimate, but sometimes misguided, concerns about issues such as copyright and the need to publish in the „right‟ journals, and partly because the OA community has not been effective in demonstrating the benefits to the writer and the organisation.  Stevan Harnad, an important evangelist for the movement says this about OA:  “OA self-archiving is not self-publishing; nor is it about online publishing without quality control (peer review); nor is it intended for writings for which the author wishes to be paid, such as books or magazine/newspaper articles. OA self-archiving is for peer-reviewed research, written solely for research impact rather than royalty revenue.” (Harnad, ePrints.org)  This message is not always simple to convey, and the traditional publishers remain interested, naturally enough, on preserving their business models, so the academic writer can feel caught in the middle of a battle for supremacy in the research publishing world which ultimately Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     leads to confusion and a sense that at least the status quo is easy and comprehensible.  The OA community is now trying to articulate more clearly the benefits of OA so that the debate moves beyond whether it is simply a good or bad thing, to address the value it might provide both to the individual writer and to his/her parent institution (JISC, 2009).  OA is a global movement, with a greater or lesser takeup by academic institutions worldwide.  The movement gained significant momentum with the publication in 2003 of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access (Harnad, 2005) and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (Suber, 2003).  Since that time, 267 institutions and membership organisations have signed up to the Berlin Declaration, and national movements and initiatives have been mobilised, such as openaccess.nl in the Netherlands, open-access.net in Germany and IRIScotland in Scotland.  A number of national approaches seek to bring together multiple Institutional Repositories to make for a more joined up experience, and as a showcase of national research.  In New Zealand the National Library offers the Kiwi Research Information Service, and the Welsh Repository Network was launched this year.  Scotland is very much at the head of this curve.  In 2004, the Scottish Consortium of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) created the Open Access Team for Scotland (OATS), a committee with the remit to push the national OA agenda, which resulted in the Scottish Declaration on Open Access (OATS, 2004), launched at an event at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and strongly supported (Curtis, 2005).  The committee obtained Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funding to establish an IR network for Scotland, which resulted in the IRIScotland project (Hunter et al, 2008), which in turn led to a second injection of JISC funding in April 2009, and aims to take Scotland into new areas such as digital preservation of open access collections.  The University of Edinburgh has led both of these projects, with partners including the National Library of Scotland and the University of Glasgow.  The University of Edinburgh has been active both at these national/international levels, and locally to establish OA as a viable concept in the institution.  Participation in funded projects such as SHERPA (Markland and Brophy, 2005), with its focus on setting up IRs and exploring the issues, provided the resources which helped to establish what is now the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA).  ERA articles are presently being downloaded at a rate of around 2000 per day with every individual article, on average, being downloaded over 200 times.  On the back of these developments, Edinburgh has Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     created a new staffed service which will support and develop research publications management at the university.  The Research Publications Service (RPS) provides support to anyone interested in depositing their research, and will be fully launched in January 2010 when the University of Edinburgh Research Publications Policy (Cannell, 2009) comes into effect.  It is important to note that this policy does not require Open Access, as this is not always possible or desirable, but it will make it easier to engage academics in the benefits of doing so, and to understand any concerns they have.  The service is being actively marketed through print and web materials and, recently, via physical stalls as part of Open Access Week.  Edinburgh is one of a growing number of institutions to adopt university-wide policies of this kind, with the Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies recording 49 institution-wide mandates worldwide.  Where do we go from here?  As more and more academics and universities see the benefits of Open Access, deposits should increase and the extent of publically funded research that is available to all will be significant.  Technological developments will make it easier to link repositories together and expose their contents in a variety of ways so that discovery is more effective.  Digital Libraries will begin to support not just simple storage and delivery, but also long-term archiving and sophisticated publishing options.  OJS and similar tools will offer opportunities to repackage content in increasingly useful ways for researchers and other university based workers, as well as practitioners in the community who might use this published material as well as, in this journal, contribute to it.     References  Brown, P et al (2003). Why PLoS became a publisher. PLoS Biology, 1(1).  Available from http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0000036  Cannell, S (2009). University of Edinburgh Open Access Publications Policy: paper presented to Electronic Senate.  Available from http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/about/policies-and-regulations/research-publications  Curtis, P (2005). Scottish universities sign open access deal.  The Guardian 14 March 2005.  Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/mar/14/highereducation.uk  Goldacre, B (2007). Open access and the price of knowledge. The Guardian 10 February 2007.  Available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/10/badscience.uknews  Harnad, S (2005). The Implementation of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.  D-Lib 11(3).  Available from: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/harnad/03harnad.html  Concept Vol.1 No.1 2009     Harnad, S.  ePrints.org http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/  Harnad et al (2004 a). The green and gold roads to Open Access. Nature.  Available from http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html  Harnad et al (2004 b). The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30(4).  Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.013  Houghton, J. et al (2009) Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models. JISC.  Available from: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx  Hunter, P et al (2008). IRI-Scotland Final Project Report. Available from http://www.iriscotland.lib.ed.ac.uk/resources/IRIScotland-Final-Report.pdf  Jackson, A (2002). From Preprints to E-prints: The Rise of Electronic Preprint Servers in Mathematics. Notices of the AMS, 49(1). Available from http://www.ams.org/notices/200201/fea-preprints.pdf  JISC (2008). Repositories Support Project: Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).  Available from http://www.rsp.ac.uk/pubs/briefingpapers-docs/technical-%20OAI_PMH.pdf  JISC (2009). Open Access for UK Research: JISC’s Contributions. Available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/programme/2009/jiscoabookletv1.pdf  Joint Statement (2009) A Joint statement by The Publishers Association, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (2009). Available from: http://www.publishers.org.uk/filemanager/root/site_assets/apd_files/pa-alpsp-stm_joint_statement.pdf  McCulloch, E (2006). Taking stock of open access: progress and issues. Library Review 55(6), 337-343.  Available from http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/2325/  Markland, M and Brophy, P (2005). SHERPA Project Evaluation: Final Report. Available from http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/documents/SHERPA_Evaluation.pdf  OATS (2004). Scottish Declaration on Open Access.  Available from: http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/OATS/declaration.htm  Palmer, J (2009). Science enters the age of Web 2.0. BBC Technology News.  Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8325875.stm  Research Information (2007). Open access debate gets personal. Research Information, 7 September 2007. Available from http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=126  Suber, P (2003). Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. Available from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm  

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