Doing Community Economic Development

Challenging traditional notions of development, Doing Community Economic Development critically examines bottom-up, community economic development strategies in a wide variety of contexts. Among other things, this book looks at community economic development as a means of improving lives in northern, rural and inner-city settings; shaped and driven by women and by Aboriginal people; and animed at employment creation for the most marginalized. In the spirit of alternative community economic development, most authors have employed a participatory research methodology. The work discussed in this book is the result of a broader, three-year community-university research collaboration that focused on the strengths and difficulties of participatory, capacity-building strategies for people marginalized by the competitive, profit-seeking forces of capitalism. No easy answers are offered, but many exciting initiatives with great potential are described and critically evaluated.

Challenging traditional notions of development, these essays examine bottom-up, community economic-development strategies in a wide variety of contexts—as a means of improving lives in rural, and inner-city settings, shaped and driven by women and by Aboriginal people, and aimed at employment creation for the most marginalized. Most authors have employed a participatory research methodology, but all of the essays are the product of a broader, three-year community–university research collaboration. This same collaboration focuses on the strengths and difficulties of participatory, capacity-building strategies for those marginalized by the competitive, profit-seeking forces of capitalism. Many exciting initiatives with great potential are described and critically evaluated, along with on-the-ground descriptions of a wide variety of community economic-development projects, from urban aboriginal businesses to the rural and agricultural fields.

John Loxley is a professor of economics and coordinator of research in the Global Political Economy Program at the University of Manitoba. His previous books include Alternative Budgets: Budgeting as if People Mattered and Transforming or Reforming Capitalism: Toward a Theory of Community Economic Development. Jim Silver is a professor of politics, chair of the department of politics, and codirector of the new Urban and Inner City Studies Program at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of In Their Own Voices: Building Urban Aboriginal Communities. They both live in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Kathleen Sexsmith is an international-development student at the University of Oxford.