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The Well-Connected Community A networking approach to community development

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The naturalist John Muir once wrote "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe" and this has certainly been my experience of thinking, researching and writing about networking. My initial interest in networking emerged from my experience as a neighbourhood community worker and political activist. I became aware of how useful it is to have a range of connections in terms of getting things done without many resources and without much obvious power or status. I also noticed that keeping this web of contacts and relationships required quite a lot of time and some ingenuity, and that the women I knew were particularly adept and committed to this way of working. I began to realise that networking was not only an efficient approach to developing collective action, but represented an aspect of work that was insufficiently rewarded. I was motivated by a desire to find out why and how networking enabled people to work together to achieve their common goals. What makes a good networker? Why are networks so useful? These were the key questions that led me into an investigation of the skills and strategies that underpin both effective and ethical networking.
The findings described in the book are based on research undertaken to discover how networking is used by community workers and others to develop collective action among communities and to underpin multi-agency working. I was particularly interested in the tactics and traits that good networkers demonstrated, and wanted to make more visible the skilled and strategic nature of good networking. The research programme consisted of two parts. The first was a case study of my own involvement in coordinating the first Bristol Festival Against Racism in 1994. The second phase of the research involved working with a panel of community practitioners over 12 months. They were asked to identify key networks in their professional practice and describe what they were used for, as well as any limitations. The community workers then spent a few weeks making notes of 'critical incidents' that had occurred in their professional or private lives that they felt had contributed in some way to community development. The evidence collected from these two stages was used to construct the questions for one-to-one interviews and the whole process culminated in a focus group discussion in which panelists considered the research findings and debated implications for community development policies and practice

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Ketersediaan — Departemen Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

307.14 GIL t

Penerbit

UK : The Policy Press., 2007

Deskripsi Fisik

viii, 166p .; il .: 25cm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

1-86134-527-5

Klasifikasi

307.14

Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

I

Subjek

Community development

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

Alison Gilchrist

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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