Syllabus - CRD/GEO 240: Community Development Theory

Source: University of California, Davis
Program: Department of Human & Community Development
Course: CRD/GEO 240: Community Development Theory
Instructor: Dr. Clare Cannon

Description

Community development supports community participation in and influence of important public and private functions including planning, governance, economic development, health and social services provision, responses to poverty, effective transportation, housing for all groups, and improved education and human resources. Changes in community practices over the last few decades have given increasing importance to region-wide collaboration, complex partnerships, and new forms of public/private organization. Similarly, the projects that community organizations are involved in are vastly more complex than those of even a few years ago, requiring networks that encompass technical, financial, legal, and social services expertise.

Effective community development practice requires critical reflection on the social, political, economic, environmental, and historical processes and structures that shape the distribution of opportunities, resources, and risks in and across communities. This critical analysis can be facilitated by applying generalizable understandings of these social phenomena, a.k.a. theory.

Syllabus - CRD240: Community Development - Theories For Practice

Source: University of California, Davis
Program: Department of Human & Community Development
Course: CRD240: Community Development: Theories For Practice
Instructor: Dr. Chris Benner

Description

Community development interventions in this course are understood as activities to facilitate, strengthen, and improve less-advantaged communities, empower their residents to define and participate in the development process, and interact in larger social, political, and economic systems on behalf of the community.

This course is an opportunity for students to explore, develop, and apply an interdisciplinary set of theories useful for understanding and acting within the professional and academic field of community and regional development. This course starts from the basic assumption that community development is best characterized as complex. Complexity signifies that the amount of possibilities from which to choose by far exceeds what ever can become an implantable praxis. Hence, this abundance makes any applied decision precarious. It is against this canvass that the various elements of this course are projected. The many theoretical as well as –and thus- political approaches we will discuss in this course are meant to let the participants understand why the business of community development is a constant, never ending, and often contradictory process of shifting social figurations.