The seven deadly sins of community development

ABSTRACT

As a result of our experience and, at times, frustration with the field, we offer “seven deadly sins” of community development. We believe that community development work remains undervalued and underinvested across the world in part because of its own sins, and we maintain that unless we address them, it will remain so. We share our perspectives on the “darker side” of community development by exploring and critiquing the following issues: anti-expertism, localism, and self-help, an overemphasis upon social capital, an over-righteous non-governmental (NGO) sector, and an overemphasis upon collectivism, discipline capture, and self-effacement. Our aim is to challenge readers to reject lazy groupthink and encourage more critical thinking and reflection. We surmise that our field risks further marginalization unless we address these.

KEYWORDS:

• Capacity building
• community based organizations
• community organizing
• gassroots development
• NGOs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.