ABSTRACT

Community development has many meanings. The strength of this conceptual openness is that it creates space for communities and their knowledges, values and interests. Its weakness is that, without general agreement on the nature of community development, the concept is applied inconsistently and becomes a “buzzword” which is high on application, yet low on meaning. This paper presents an analysis of community development as an essentially contested concept, highlighting descriptive and normative aspects of meanings and the role of context. It concludes with a range of actions that may assist in working through tensions between general definitions and conceptual openness.

摘要

社区发展具有许多意义。这种概念上的开放性的优势在于，它为社区及其知识，价值和利益创造了空间。它的弱点是，在没有就社区发展的性质达成普遍共识的情况下，该概念的适用范围不一致，并成为一个“流行语”，流行度很高，但意义却很低。本文对社区发展进行了分析，认为社区发展是一个本质上有争议的概念，强调了意义的描述性和规范性方面以及上下文的作用。它以一系列行动作为总结，这些行动可能有助于缓解一般定义与概念开放之间的紧张关系。