Introduction: Contexts and Challenges for 21st-Century Communities

Introduction: Contexts and Challenges for 21st-Century Communities

Anexus of serious challenges faces community practitioners and educators in the 21st century. Some of these entangled issues, such as the persistence of poverty, are ancient, whereas others, such as globalization, have only recently emerged. The connections among these problems are becoming increasingly complex. Today's community practitioners must deal with the combined effects of global economics and escalating poverty in both postindustrial societies and developing economies; other challenges include wars internal to nations and terrorism across borders, massive movements of refugees, rising tensions caused by increasingly multicultural populations, the continued existence of slavery, and the realities of racial and ethnic discrimination in many societies. There are continuing struggles to build democracies where they have not been established and corollary efforts to make existing democracies representative of their citizenry. This intersection of major social issues offers challenges on every level, from the local to the international.

In a period of unprecedented speed of communication, access to information, and increased knowledge, major work to build and rebuild democratic civil societies is central to take on these problems at multiple levels. Although these issues may seem daunting, apathy, withdrawal, or disillusionment can only promote their invidiousness. Instead, a proactive effort is essential. Community practitioners and the people they serve at the local, state, national, and international levels can address this nexus of social challenges at least partially by strengthening civil society at home and abroad through work in social and economic development as well as [Page 4]community and service system organizing and by planning to treat new facets of problems in innovative ways. One approach to dealing with these new challenges is to focus on five central practice issues:

1.
Expanding and refining practice approaches that can build toward social and economic justice
2.
Focusing practice on the expansion of basic human rights for women, children, and men
3.
Building opportunity structures for disadvantaged populations, and working to build multicultural strategies and coalitions for positive social change based on specific situations and common human needs
4.
Focusing community practice activities on social and economic development, strengthening civil society, and enlarging civic and political participation
5.
Finding effective multinational approaches to reducing absolute poverty (Drake, 2001; Figueira-McDonough, 2001; Friedmann, 1992; Gil, 1988).

In the United States, major demographic shifts are a central component of the new context of practice. Our nation is rapidly becoming a minority-majority population (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). The United States has always been multicultural, but it is not yet fully pluralistic; the future direction of civil society is largely dependent on bridging the great divide between racial and ethnic populations and closing the ever-widening gulf in socioeconomic status. All social workers, and community practitioners in particular, need to be better prepared to address conflicts within and across racial and cultural groups so they can focus on social and economic achievement for all groups that have been marginalized (Longres, 1997). As we work with specific groups and communities, we need to foster the building of horizontal connections necessary to construct larger multicultural coalitions and communities of interest, and we must reclaim and establish a basic concern for common human needs (Longres, 1997; Towle, 1965; Weil, 1994).

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