Margaret Ledwith (2020) Community Development: A Critical and Radical Approach, 3rd Edition

Abstract

This third edition of Margaret Ledwith’s bestselling text extends earlier editions from 1997’s Participation in Transformation to 2005’s Community Development: A Critical Approach, with the name changing to become not just a “critical” but also a “radical” approach. Ledwith’s central argument is that community development has a key role to play in creating spaces in which to develop a counter-narrative that challenges the powerful neoliberal story that presents individualism, competition and self-interest as natural and unavoidable, and social inequality as the outcome of individual success or failure.