Pushing against a future dark side for community development: An editorial call to action

ABSTRACT

Community Development as a journal has undergone streamlining, yet much work remains to improve the journal’s relations with its many stakeholders around the world and within the field of community development. Community Development, in collaboration with the Community Development Society, must respond to the calls of communities. This article conveys the voice of the Community Development editorial team relative to these critical calls. We begin by sharing the significance of honoring and reconciling our past, while carrying forward lessons learned. We then turn to many of the challenges in the field posed as questions: What are we missing? Where are we stagnating? Where are we not challenging the assumptions? Where must we build bridges between theory, practice, and education? And, how do we strive against a “dark side” future? Ultimately, our intent is to critique the journal and the field, pushing the narrative toward a more engaged and interactive CD field.

KEYWORDS:

• State of the field
• methodological rigor
• critical perspectives
• frameworks
• community development theory

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Sofia Kotsiri, Managing Editor of Community Development, for her editorial review of this commentary. Dr. Kotsiri continues to be a beacon of light for our journal guiding authors, reviewers, and editor through our multifaceted (not always easy) publishing processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Matarrita-Cascante and Brennan have put together an update to this article now ten years later, which is currently pending acceptance and publication in the journal.