Community cultural capital: Anakie, Australia

In this chapter, community development is understood entirely as a Western idea. Regardless of how it is defined within the literature, the notion of community development emerges from within the Western culture and thus most always employs philosophical, ethical and epistemological discourses about what a community is and what its development ought to consist of. From this perspective, the “community” is viewed as social structures and field of social processes (Tesoriero 2010: 2; Kenny 2012: 8; Matarrita-Cascante & Brennan 2012: 297), on which individuals and groups (external or internal to these structures and processes) act with the goal of bringing about “development” (that is, bring about improvements, positive changes, sustainability and well-being). This is not to criticize the discipline and practice of community development, but rather to acknowledge that to understand “community” and “development” in other than non-Western contexts requires that we privilege the perspectives of other cultures, philosophies and epistemologies. A discussion of this would take a whole other chapter or even more. However, the aim here is to discuss community cultural capital, and so it is sufficient that we restrict the context for the discussion to traditionally Western communities.