Community mobilisation in the 21st century: Updating our theory of social change?

The article explores the Freirian theory of social change underpinning health-related community mobilisation in poor and marginalised communities. Highlighting potential shortcomings of its essentialist understandings of power and identity, and linear notions of change, it examines how lessons from the ‘new left’, and burgeoning global protest movements, can rejuvenate the field given the growing complexity of 21st-century social inequalities. It suggests the need for a pastiche of approaches to accommodate health struggles in different times and places. However, while needing some updating, Freire’s profound and actionable understandings of the symbolic and material dimensions of social inequalities remain a powerful starting point for activism.

[1]  David Graeber,et al.  The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement , 2013 .

[2]  C. Campbell,et al.  Heeding the Push from Below , 2010, Journal of health psychology.

[3]  Erik Olin Wright,et al.  Envisioning Real Utopias , 2010 .

[4]  C. Mohanty.  Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism , 1993 .

[5]  B. Cooke,et al.  Participation: the New Tyranny? , 2001 .

[6]  S. Nolas.  Towards a new theory of practice for community health psychology , 2014, Journal of health psychology.

[7]  R. D'amico.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 1978, Telos.

[8]  M. Caffrey,et al.  HIV/AIDS and community conflict in Nigeria: implications and challenges. , 2005, Social science & medicine.

[9]  J. Gibson‐Graham.  Beyond Global vs. Local: Economic Politics Outside the Binary Frame , 2008 .

[10]  Ulrich Plass,et al.  Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time , 2006 .

[11]  A. Escobar.  Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World , 1994 .

[12]  N. Niven.  Community Health Psychology , 2006 .

[13]  M. Foucault.  The Subject and Power , 1982, Critical Inquiry.

[14]  Andrea Cornwall,et al.  Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment , 2010 .

[15]  M. Foucault,et al.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. , 1978 .

[16]  James G. Ellison.  : Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor , 2007 .

[17]  D. Mosse,et al.  Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice , 2004 .

[18]  Reinhart Koselleck,et al.  Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time , 1985 .

[19]  Teresa Barrio Traspaderne.  Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World , 2015 .

[20]  M. Skovdal.  Pathologising healthy children? A review of the literature exploring the mental health of HIV-affected children in sub-Saharan Africa , 2012, Transcultural psychiatry.

[21]  M. Foucault,et al.  Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 , 1980 .

[22]  H. Dreyfus,et al.  Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. , 1985 .

[23]  V. Nguyen.  Antiretroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic Citizenship , 2008 .

[24]  C. Vaughan.  Dialogue, Critical Consciousness, and Praxis , 2011 .

[25]  C. Campbell,et al.  Local pain, global prescriptions? Using scale to analyse the globalisation of the HIV/AIDS response. , 2012, Health & place.

[26]  S. Rifkin.  Lessons from community participation in health programmes: a review of the post Alma-Ata experience. , 2009, International health.

[27]  P. Freire.  Education for Critical Consciousness , 1973 .

[28]  Jessica Schulze,et al.  Letting Them Die Why Hivaids Prevention Programmes Fail , 2016 .

[29]  Julian F. Henriques,et al.  Changing the subject : psychology, social regulation and subjectivity , 1984 .

[30]  K. Baumgartner.  Body Politics In Development Critical Debates In Gender And Development , 2016 .

[31]  R. Scheyvens.  Subtle strategies for women's empowerment: planning for effective grassroots development , 1998 .

[32]  C. Campbell.  Technologies of ‘Participation’ and ‘Capacity Building’ in HIV/AIDS Management in Africa: Four Case Studies , 2010 .

[33]  F. Cornish,et al.  Trust the process: Community health psychology after Occupy , 2014, Journal of health psychology.

[34]  Stephen J. Collier,et al.  Global assemblages : technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems , 2005 .

[35]  R. Eyben.  Donors' Learning Difficulties: Results, Relationships and Responsibilities , 2005 .

[36]  Paulo Freire,et al.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed , 2019, Toward a Just World Order.

[37]  Hakan Seckinelgin.  Global activism and sexualities in the time of HIV/AIDS , 2009 .

[38]  Hakan Seckinelgin.  The global governance of success in HIV/AIDS policy: emergency action, everyday lives and Sen's capabilities. , 2012, Health & place.

[39]  Paulo Freire,et al.  Pedagogy of Hope , 1994 .

[40]  C. Mohanty.  Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses , 1984, Feminism without Borders.

[41]  S. Rifkin,et al.  Paradigms lost: toward a new understanding of community participation in health programmes. , 1996, Acta tropica.

[42]  J. Mannell.  Practicing gender : gender and development policy in South African organisations , 2012 .

[43]  C. Campbell,et al.  The role of communities in advancing the goals of the Movement for Global Mental Health , 2012, Transcultural psychiatry.

[44]  C. Campbell,et al.  Supporting people with AIDS and their carers in rural South Africa: possibilities and challenges. , 2008, Health & place.