Dokumentumok
Cím:
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL-EASTERN EUROPE
Szerző:
Vercseg Ilona
A kiadás éve:
2003
Tárgyszavak:
partnerség, közösségfejlesztés, Közép-Kelet Európa
Állomány:
Közösségfejlesztési partnerségépítés Közép-Kelet Európában
Forditas:
Megjegyzés:
Raktári jelzet:
E



“Community Development Partnership Building in Central and Eastern Europe”
Project-Closing Seminar in Sovata, Romania, 27-28 March 2003

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL-EASTERN EUROPE
by Ilona Vercseg


Introduction
In the introduction to my paper I would like to make a mental bridge between the beginning and the end of the seminar when our sociologist friend, Attila Gergely will close this event with his summary remarks. I would like to reiterate afresh his thoughts from thirty years ago which had such a tremendous impact on us in the early years of establishing our community development activity. His thoughts, I feel, have even more relevance today, 14 years after the change of the political system, than in those early years.

Our friend said at the end of the 70s that comprehensive and fast changes in society highlight a critical condition of remaining in competition: the significance of culture generating ability. In a time of constant change the change of eras is also a change of cultures, as the essence of the changes lies in the transformation of the basic cultural structures.

He introduced the concept of “current cultural preparedness” which he saw as the overall combination of socially established habits i.e. institutions. He says that some of the institutions that make up a given culture are continuously in a state of becoming obsolete, while, at the same time, cultural gaps and vacuums are created. The culture generating ability is about closing these gaps and creating new institutions. He says that in a time of constant change the lack of institutions cannot be handled on an individual basis, according to the traditional logic; therefore we need to create the community institutions of acceleration. Such an institution, in his interpretation, is cultural development – in our understanding community development - which has the role of increasing (in its broadest sense) the cultural capability of society.

1. Community development as an institution suitable for accelerating the culture generating ability of society
1.1. Social reform concept or methodology?
At the end of our two-year regional co-operation I believe that the first important question we need to ask ourselves is whether we understand community development in its broader or narrow sense: do we regard it as a tool in the struggle to create a better society, or do we interpret it merely as a technical-methodological notion, a society organising practice?

This question is directly linked to another dilemma: do we understand community development as an independent profession or merely as one of the possible society improvement methods? If we regard it as a profession we can’t avoid examining the theories legitimising its existence, as well as clarifying our own values, which will take us to slippery grounds.

This ground might be even more slippery in our region than in other areas. We could cautiously say “social reform concept”, deliberately avoiding the use of words such as idea or ideology, as these still have a fresh negative historical connotation in our region. The current society improvement efforts in our region tend to be freer of ideology than before, and we can also see the plurality of values typical of the post-modern era. We could say that we tend to “believe” in pragmatism, the regulating role of market economy, rather than in the more “comprehensive” guiding principles such as values of “good society” or “liberty, equality, fraternity”. At the same time we can witness, not just in our region but also in the western world, the intensification of certain key society improvement ideas and then their immediate devaluation. I have in mind the ideas of democracy and civil society. These ideas are also suitable for the professional legitimisation of community development.

Based on our impressions so far we can say that some of the organisations in the region tackle this complexity by defining community development as an independent profession, while others apply it mainly as a method of community improvement.

1.2 Possible functions
If we understand community development as an institution capable of accelerating society’s culture generating ability we need to examine, as a second step, what functions it can fulfil in the transformation of society.

We believe that community development in our region has a role in society in developing the ability of communities to take initiative and action.

The main pre-requisite of adequate community action is the communication that needs to take place between social players. Communication, as Habermas puts it, is the road to self-introduction, to the description of our situation, problem definition and the creation of dialogue. The action already takes place in the formation of the dialogue, and through communication a common understanding of issues and a common language is created which will link us as a new community. The road to solidarity is also the road of communicative action, as this will form the basis for understanding, agreement, the reconciliation of views and the recognition of the need for co-operation.

Community action creates motivation for education, learning, it opens up closed worlds and increases the sphere of action, organises new institutions and establishes links between them and helps citizens and our communities to be able to use those institutions that have been created for them. Through all these, community development can largely contribute to the acceleration of our society’s culture generating ability.

In terms of social development in our region, these are the most important social functions of community development but we could, of course, list other functions, too.

These functions legitimise community development. In order to eliminate the lack of social institutions we need those who take the initiative, from whose the initiative can be taken over; we need professionals who organise social communication and we need empowerment and learning that will enable community action to succeed.

These functions can be best met in the framework of democracy. As the states in the region did not have this before, it is not suprising that we experience difficulties when trying to fill this framework. This highlights a clear need for facilitation, acceleration and taking on our role in community development. Now let us examine, based on our fractured experience, what conclusions we can make on community development practices in our region.


2. The emergence of community development as an institution in the region
2.1. The roots
The emergence and development of community development and community work as a professional field shows that this profession can directly be linked to democracy and the emergence and development of civil society.

The Central-Eastern European region has traditions in self-help and mutual help, associations, secular and church charity, philanthropic activity goes back a long time as a heroic activity, and the intelligentsia traditionally has a sense of mission. The village teacher was a leading light, the movement of the folk writers, sociography, free learning, public and adult education, and even the left-wing workers’ movement was striving for social progress, and region never lacked reformers. Urbanisation that was brought about by industrialisation created a similar situation here as anywhere else (new towns and quarters) and the change of the political system has produced masses of the disadvantaged – the unemployed and the impoverished.

Our region also had the progressive elements typical of the development of modern communities. One could find many examples to illustrate all these, but due to the lack of a comprehensive democratic social establishment they could perhaps exert less influence on the political power - on social policy, legislation, sponsorship practices -than in the old democracies. Modern solutions appeared more as an exception not as widely applied practice. The sense of citizenship, civil society, the movements and organisations of citizens could exist only as an exception not on a mass scale, therefore they were not able to produce professional results, or if they did, the state did not help them to come out of their isolation to become a widespread society improvement practice. Our history lacks large scale grassroot, bottom-up organisation which could create in its focal points social movements, civil activity and at the same time society improvement techniques – professions - which are then supported and strengthened by the specific tools of the democratically elected organisations (not the political power).

Some of the organisations we know have come to the social scene as a result of internal, organic efforts. Our organisation, the Hungarian Association of Community Development was perhaps closest to the philanthropic traditions when continuing instinctively the search for the new ways of social modernisation and democratisation already in the mid 70s. Similar motivations led SZEKE Székelyföldi Közösségfejlesztők Egyesülete (CD Association for Transylvania, Romania) when it started its activities two decades later, and we believe there was a trace of the intelligentsia’s sense of mission in the formation of RACD Romanian Association for CD a couple of years ago. Similar motivations can be found in other organisations that were formed after the political changes, such as CAL Centrum Wspierania Aktywnosci Lokalnej (Local Activity Centers), Poland or VOKA Vidiecka organizacia pre komunitné aktivity (Rural Organisation for Community Activities), Slovakia. Our impression is that the emergence of these organisations was also largely helped by external inspiration and support. The supporting organisations themselves appeared as organisations of institution building and acceleration.

A special feature of many community development organisations in the region is their strong link to the cultural houses. The Hungarian, Romanian and Polish organisations have a direct contact with these organisations, though they are at different phases in the history of this relationship. The Polish organisation encourages those working in the cultural houses (among others) to learn and use the “CAL” community development method, while the members of the Hungarian and the Romanian Hungarian organisations started out with reforming the work carried out in these institutions, thus reaching a wider social spectrum and creating an interdisciplinary profession. Cultural houses, which combine and promote democratic traditions and practice and provide an experimental field for developing new professions, represent an interesting type of institution in the region, and their analysis would deserve a separate lecture.

2.2 What have we learnt over the years?
In view of the introductory thoughts, our main question is the following: is community development in our region able to increase society’s cultural capability, thus act as an institution of acceleration?

My answer is both yes and no.
Yes, as it has proved its ability to survive on numerous occasions, as proved by this seminar. These examples are born in those local communities which are starting from a deadlock: as new institutions are being created in the local communities, at the same time new professional methods, legitimising theories, professional organisations, international co-operations, learning material and training programs are developed.

No, because this activity so far has taken place in a rather narrow circle, therefore its influence on the acceleration of society’s culture generating ability is fairly limited. HACD has recently evaluated its 5-year activity. If we focused our analysis and evaluation on the two main pillars of our work – creation of a movement and the establishment of the profession - we would come to the conclusion that since the political changes we have achieved significant results in developing the profession, but we definitely have not succeeded in creating a movement, and we have even lost some of the strongholds we had. We believe the main reason is that despite all our efforts community development has not been able to appear in the national support system and development programmes, and it seems likely that our efforts by themselves will not be sufficient. The question then arises: is it time to draw the serious conclusion and say that this specialist area is not able to develop into a profession in a country that is not entirely democratic, and it might take a long time for this to happen? Instead, should we just define ourselves as an experimenting professional group, thus giving up our struggle to apply community development on a broad social basis, as this could be created only through a much stronger civil society, a democratic, supporting environment and complex state-run programmes?

The final question, as I see it, is the following: will societies accept and integrate our improvement efforts?

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