Beyond Sectoral Values: Radical Organisational Responses to Human Need

Abstract

In this time of successive crises of austerity, poverty, and the Covid-19 Coronavirus, this article offers a critical reflection on community-based practice, professionalisation of the community development sector, and the limitations imposed on radically-inclined organisations and activists who become entwined with funding criteria and imposed outcomes. Anarchist literature from Graeber (2011) and Kinna (2021) form a central theoretical lens from which to approach the topic, whilst Beck and Purcell (2020) support a critical assessment of the complicated cycles many community collectives or organisations go through as they become more intimately connected with the state. Three Edinburgh-based informal groups - Autonomous Centre Edinburgh (A.C.E.), Edinburgh Helping Hands (E.H.H.), and Mutual Aid Trans Edinburgh (M.A.T.E.) - serve as brief case studies of radical practices, whilst the author’s own employer, the Tollcross Community Action Network (T.C.A.N.) is assessed in terms of anarchistic influence on practice when viewed in relation to state-imposed practice outcomes.