Getting out of the way for radical community development

Celina Tchida and Margaret Stout

Community Development, 2025, vol. 56, issue 6, 956-986

Abstract: Building on a previously published theoretical framework and analysis that found many professional and volunteer community development efforts to be disempowering to various degrees, this theoretical review article examines how a two-pronged approach to radical community development can both empower communities internally and transform the dominant culture and its institutional systems. Drawing from sources that include both scholars and activists, we describe radical empowerment practices used in “self-help” to enhance self-efficacy, solidarity, and agency, and explain how privileged professional and volunteer community developers can enable and support them. Based on this analysis, we recommend traveling transformative pathways from current professional roles to those better aligned with radical community development; as co-conspirators in resisting, dismantling, and abolishing systemic oppression.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/15575330.2025.2451367

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