This month we are excited to launch a publication jointly produced by IACD and the Community Development Journal (CDJ). The Lisbon Papers is a collection of papers from the 2011 IACD conference, jointly edited by CDJ Editor Mick Carpenter and IACD Board Member Rod Purcell.
The conference, hosted by the Portuguese Community Psychology Society (Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicologia Comunitária), had a theme of ‘Transformative Leadership and Community Empowerment’. The papers are diverse in terms of content and geography, and this makes for interesting and informative reading with both local and global perspectives. The papers are grouped together in a way that helps readers traverse the diversity – with some papers speaking most directly to the theme of transformation; others offering a particularly Iberian perspective (reflecting the region where the conference was held); and the two final papers exploring some economic perspectives on the theme. As the editors point out in their introduction to the collection:
Despite their contrasting perspectives, disciplinary traditions and geographical focus all the papers suggest value in communitarian principles, the positive potential of and inventive talent existing in communities, and the possibility of moving beyond amelioration towards a transformed social order based on principles of justice, equality, sustainability and democracy.
IACD Board members Stewart Murdoch (from Scotland, with co-author Dr Terry Barber) and James Calvin (from USA) contributed papers. We are grateful to the Levi Strauss Foundation for supporting an asset-building track at the conference as part of the Indigo project, including the participation of Robert Friedman, founder and chair of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, whose paper concludes this collection.
The Lisbon Papers is the expression of a partnership between IACD and CDJ in which we are exploring ways to jointly promote our shared commitment to critical reflection in community development practice and research. I would like to thank Mick Carpenter and the CDJ team, and Rod Purcell and the IACD team for all their efforts to bring this collection to life.
It’s exciting to have some of the papers presented at this conference drawn together in this collection and to be able to share this with our members and the broader community development field. I hope you enjoy reading and reflecting on these contributions!
The publication is available as a free download from the IACD or CDJPlus websites.
