Summary
Contents
Subject index
The Handbook of Community Practice is the first volume in this field, encompassing community development, organizing, planning, and social change, and the first community practice text that provides in-depth treatment of globalization—including its impact on communities in the United States and in international development work. The Handbook is grounded in participatory and empowerment practice including social change, social and economic development, feminist practice, community-collaboratives, and engagement in diverse communities. It utilizes the social development perspective and employs analyses of persistent poverty, policy practice, and community research approaches as well as providing strategies for advocacy and social and legislative action.
Theorizing in Community Practice: Essential Tools for Building Community, Promoting Social Justice, and Implementing Social Change
Theorizing in Community Practice: Essential Tools for Building Community, Promoting Social Justice, and Implementing Social Change
Writing a chapter on theories and/or theorizing for community practice is a daunting task because huge numbers of theories can have relevance for some type of community practice. Despite this, many texts on the community or community practice in social work do not have separate chapters or sections on theories or theoretical work relevant for community practice. Theoretical assumptions often are not explicitly identified or explained, and they remain implicit. Authors who discuss theories tend to focus on general systems or ecological theories (e.g., Fellin, 2000), or they categorize broadly the types of theories that social workers use in community practice (e.g., Hardcastle, Wenocur, & Powers, 1997; Hardina, 2002). In this chapter, although I will draw on this work, my emphasis is on why and how using theories is important in community practice, describing how practitioners could use theory, and how theorizing can inform assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. I assume that different theories are relevant for different purposes, and I will pose a set of broad topics and questions that are important for community practice. I discuss some theories to illustrate how theorizing is essential for community practitioners, but they are illustrative, and many others could be included.
What Do We Mean by Theories and Theorizing?
Various authors and dictionaries define theories in similar ways, as sets of systematically related propositions or statements used to explain and/or predict phenomena. These propositions are thought to be applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances. They comprise a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, and sometimes to predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. Theories usually involve abstract reasoning and analysis and structured ways of organizing and making sense of information. Concepts are the building blocks in theories and form symbols that allow communication about phenomena.
Theories are based on underlying assumptions about the nature of human social life—what Kuhn (1962/1970) called paradigms and other authors have called perspectives (e.g., Hardina, 2002; Payne, 1997). Kuhn argued that theories are developed not only from our systematic observations of nature but also from paradigms used to guide observations. Paradigms are basic beliefs or axioms, and within these are the methods and approaches for viewing and understanding nature. Paradigms direct and organize theory constructions, shape how nature is perceived according to theories, and direct how we find out about nature. They can constrain our view of nature as we follow particular rules.
In social work, Mullaly (1997) and Hardcastle et al. (1997) describe paradigms as taken-for-granted assumptions that we often do not recognize or examine, including beliefs, values, and techniques. The concept of paradigms allows us to analyze the relationship between scientific thought in a discipline and the social context in which it arises. Paradigms help those who hold them to locate and organize information, select methods for their work, and shape meaning from the results. Paradigms are grounded in ideology—they represent certain idea sets and values about the way things are and ought to be. They organize and order our perceptions of nature according to their rules. Theories are developed by following the paradigm's rules, and when viewed through the ideological lens of the paradigm, these theories appear reasonable to scientists, scholars, and others who share the paradigm. Practices that arise from a particular paradigm may not appear to be valid or reasonable to observers who do not follow the paradigm's rules or ideology.
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