Professor Vishanthie Sewpaul who co-edited a new book Participation in Community Work: International Perspectives. UKZN Lecturer Co-Edits New Book
Professor Vishanthie Sewpaul of the School of Applied Human Sciences co-edited a new book with two Norwegian colleagues, Professor Anne Karin Larsen and Ms Greta Oline Hole.
The book, Participation in Community Work: International Perspectives, has contributions from eminent scholars throughout the world.
Sewpaul said: ‘The book highlights that participation is central to community work and that the theory-practice-research nexus is an important one, not only with foregrounding research, but with practice that provides fertile ground for theorizing about community work.
‘Discourses on participation must of necessity include other aspects of global discourses, such as human rights, direct democracy, the power of context, social justice, social inclusion and social cohesion, and related discourses on poverty, inequality, exclusion and marginalisation. They also speak to the power of dreams, hopes and visions for change,’ she said.
Following critiques of conventional definitions and some of the existing models of community work, Sewpaul & Larsen, in the concluding chapter, offer alternative definitions of community work, community organisation and community development. They propose a radical ecological approach that accords with their emancipatory philosophy, bringing together issues from power and intersectional influences to environmental sustainability and species biodiversity into an integrated whole.
- Melissa Mungroo