Seeking partnership: the state, community participation and the provision of social services: analysis of experiences from Tanzania and Zimbabwe

A lecture paper on the participation of the community in social services.As a notion, the words 'participation’ and participatory’ entered the development jargon during the late 1950s. The realization that the oppressed had not only failed to 'unfold like a flower from a bud’, but also that populations were kept out of all the processes related to the design, formulation and implementation of development programmes and projects led to the advocacy for the end of top-down’ strategies and the inclusion of participation and participatory methods as an essential dimension of development. As the 'Development Establishment’ also began to realize the fact that billions spent on development was not producing the expected results, a new consensus was forged among planners, NGOs and field workers that a change in the relationships between the different parties to the development activities was imperative

Sixth annual Julius Nyerere memorial lecture presented by Catherine A. Odora Hoppers in 2009

Sixth Annual Julius Nyerere Memorial Lecture Presented by Catherine A. Odora Hoppers in 200

Centre for African renaissance studies, the academy, the state and civil society: Methodological implications of transdisciplinarity and the African perspective

The Centre for African Renaissance Studies (CARS) at the University of South Africa was born in a political and social environment in which there is a new groundswell for a rebirth, where there are calls for ownership, accountability, excellence, responsiveness and substantive democracy on new terms. Surrounding the centre are the state, the academy and civil society, each with its limitations as well as possibilities for an institution that is established to foster, nourish and effect change in the context of the African Renaissance. The challenge before CARS is therefore one that involves the creation of new knowledge, analyses and interpretations of social reality on an ongoing basis. In working out its linkages and its strategies for dialogue, engagement and co‐determination around the past, present and future of Africa, with players such as the state, the academy and civil society in general, therefore, the centre needs of necessity to clarify its position, role and vision in the field of knowledge production. It is here that transdisciplinarity signifies a distinct methodology in knowledge generation, development and utilisation. This article argues that the nature of the crisis we face today is definitely no longer that of ‘economics’, ‘politics’ or ‘culture’ per se; neither is it, for that matter, a crisis of the humanities versus the natural sciences; but rather it is one in which there is a peculiar convergence of all these factors and which, together, form an entirety exceeding the sum of its parts.School of Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies (SIRGS

Community engagement, globalisation, and restorative action: Approaching systems and research in the universities

This title is now published by SAGE Publishing. The new website for this journal is http://adu.sagepub.com/. Please be sure to update your bookmarks to the new website.It is clear that there is a wide range of arguments that reflect varying degrees of disaffection with the university worldwide. A great deal of understandable effort is directed at the impact of globalisation, especially the way it is making universities engage in academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). The alternative arguments emphasise democratic internal governance and external community service driven by the goals of social equity, democratic values, and concern for the public good. Currie and Subotsky (2000) referring to the South African situation, caution that without exploring the basis upon which reconstructive community development can be institutionally operationalised, the twin goals of global and redistributive development will remain unsolved. They point out the overinvestment in accounting for the new organisational and epistemological features of the ‘market’ university, policy and academic debates that are silent on the corresponding features of the reconstructive development function of higher education, especially in light of the widening disparity between conventional academic practices and societal needs. This paper argues that the depth of that chasm between universities and society reveals stories of death, humiliation, denigration, racism, and epistemological disenfranchisement. The new social contract to be contemplated should take into account the factor of amnesia and the concomitant factor of the relevance of historical memory. Community engagement, reconstituted in the twenty-first century, should be capable of leading the countries of the Third World into new conceptual and methodological beginnings.School of Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies (SIRGS