The broad topic of the thesis is the emergence of local businesses enterprises within the limitations of a depleted community. The thesis explores this topic through an examination of the community business approach to development as a novel response to the plight of depleted communities. Depleted communities are characterized as places where, despite economic disparity, residents maintain strong attachments to place. In the absence of the mainstream economy, alternative approaches to economy and local development are often attempted in depleted communities; community business is one such response. New Dawn Enterprises in Cape Breton, Canada's oldest community development corporation is studied as an example of the community business approach. New Dawn is compared to the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation in Spain. From these examples a theory of community business is developed regarding: how community businesses are formed; how they respond to the socioeconomic needs of the community; and how they maintain communitarian values within competitive business structures. Community businesses were found to emerge through novel forms of entrepreneurship: community business entrepreneurship. Community business entrepreneurs are able to access community assets and lever them into economic assets through business structures. The community businesses that they establish, it was found, are structured around three basic principles: wealth creation, community rootedness, and social purpose. These three principles protect the social nature of the organization. It was also found that leadership in community businesses plays an important role in maintaining the balance of social goals and business practices, particularly in absence of the original entrepreneur. The two case studies demonstrate that business development is possible in depleted communities, particularly when focused on the community assets of such places. While such business development is possible, the cases also show that community businesses on their own are not sufficient to replete depleted communities.

The aim of this thesis is to reconceptualise community development as a discourse and understand how various discursive repertoires influence the available identities for practitioners and community groups taking part in community development activities. Community development is rarely thought of as a discourse and it is from this gap in knowledge that my research is positioned. Throughout this thesis, I analyse how community development discourses are formed, structured and operationalised and I investigate whether the dominant discourses of community development live up to their ‘radical’ claims by exploring the identity constructions of practitioners and local people. In order to analyse the discourses of community development, I operationalised a post-structuralist discourse analysis methodology as developed by Hansen (2006). Post-structuralist discourse analysis is concerned with understanding the construction and reproduction of identity within a particular discourse through the analysis of texts. Using Hansen’s methodology and method, I selected and analysed 121 American and British community development texts dating from 1968 to 1997. As a result of my discourse analysis of texts, I argue that there is a serious problem embedded in the discourse of community development. Community development, despite its dominant presentation of itself as unproblematic and essentially ‘radical’, constructs suspect identities for professionals and local people. Throughout this research, I make one original contribution to knowledge. I demonstrate that community development, since at least 1968 in both the US and the UK, reproduces identities that invest the community development professional with agency and construct local people as a passive and often incorrigible Other. This binary persists whether a community development discourse defines itself as either ‘radical’ or ‘conservative’. This research finding calls into question dominant contemporary portrayals of community development. Rather than being a self-evident good, community development, more often than not, subjects local people to patronising and unequal identities that reinforce rather than undermine negative stereotypes about the political nous of marginalised groups

The development of social enterprise as a potential tool to assist local and community economic development, has led to a range of debates specifically about the social and entrepreneurial values they exhibit. These debates have led to more theoretical questions about how social enterprise can transfer knowledge and best practice within and between local networks of association and how their successful outcomes should be measured. These issues have posed problems for many social enterprise support agencies and policy makers as they attempt to make sense of both support and development needs. Ultimately, these have led to a study about obtaining a better understanding of the support networks at regional and sub-regional levels, which are available for social enterprise. This has been done through a critical examination of contemporary policy documentation and research grounded in empirical investigation, about the development of the social economy, the effectiveness and construction of social enterprise support, how local economic development policy knowledges evolve and are shared and how social enterprise intersects and interacts within established socio-economic and socio-political systems. The thesis was undertaken between 2002 and 2008 and utilised a grounded theory approach to triangulate both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research principally through a national scoping survey and sub-regional interviews with social enterprise support providers and policy makers.

Natural resources are in abundance but have not benefited resourcebased communities. The mining industry, especially in developing countries, has fallen short of working towards sustainable community practices. Different governance initiatives adopted by governments to make the communities beneficiaries of these resources are yet to bring sustainable results. Government is seen as the sole actor on policymaking and its implementation, and the production and delivery of goods and services. Acknowledgement is not given to the roles and responsibilities of the resource-based communities to work as co-partners towards sustainable community development. Hence, this thesis argues that government policies should move away from seeing resource communities as recipients and representatives in policymaking towards co-partnership. As such, this thesis aims to explore the dynamics between resource use and achieving sustainable community development by exploring the barriers and potential for sustainable community development in diamond mining communities in Kono, Eastern Sierra Leone. To do this, the thesis uses data from a wide rage of indebt semi-structured interviews, documents and focus group discussions from four case studies representing four chiefdoms to point out a shift from the governance approach of institutionalisation to adaptive governance approach that will make the resource communities self-determined and sustainable. The thesis deals with three objectives. First, a focus is put on the relationship between resource exploitation and community governance in mining communities through an analysis of key actors and their roles at a range of scales. Second, in an attempt to find out the scope of sustainability in resource-based communities, attention is given to the ways mining communities utilise their assets and undertake practices that contribute towards sustainable community development. Third, in finding answers from issues arising in these communities and the prospect for effective mining policies, the thesis attempts to identify both the structural and community-based barriers to promoting sustainable community development in mining communities and then make policy recommendations for community development in such communities. Key Words: Resource Exploitation; Community Development, Community Governance, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Community Development

The thesis presents and inquires into a first person research story about the development of a ‘Community of Practice’ for asset-based rural development practitioners from across the UK and Republic of Ireland. It includes an account of how geographically remote members of the CoP were supported to come together over eighteen months to co-produce an online handbook called ‘Exploring Community Resilience’ (included as Appendix 1). Findings include: - Social networking and social media technologies can be powerful enablers of third and second person inquiry; - A compass tool (included here) can help hosts and curators make good design and facilitation choices as they host the emergence of complex, large scale social learning architectures (which this thesis calls ‘Digital Forests’); - Action researchers can benefit from developing skills as digital curators, producers of social media, and hosts of transformative learning processes; - Future generations of social media are likely to challenge the assumptions, methods and findings of this thesis. As we navigate our way into this fast changing future, it will be helpful to inquire into their impacts of new generations of digital technologies on our personal and collective psychological, cultural and social wellbeing.

Thesis (M.Dev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2013 / The study aims to provide insights into the nature and extent of development funding provided to various poverty eradication projects by the National Development Agency (NDA) and its subsequent impact on reducing poverty in the predominantly rural communities of the Makhuduthamaga Municipality in the Limpopo Province. It examines in detail the impact made by the NDA on community development through the disbursement of funds to poverty eradication projects. It also provides insights into the total number of the NDA-funded projects and the total proportion of the NDA-funds allocated to them in the Makhuduthamaga Municipality. The study further examines the nature of the NDA support regarding the design of the interventions, relevance, participation of communities, delivery modalities and sustainability. The effectiveness of the NDA-funded projects in community development is determined using employment opportunities created, income generated, skills transferred, assets accumulated, sustainability mechanisms and community empowerment indicators. Although all of these indicators are found to be tightly linked to the NDA’s mandate of poverty eradication, the extent to which the NDA has achieved its objectives in disbursing development funding earmarked for poverty eradication and strengthening of CSOs was yet to be determined, hence the relevance of this study. The study, therefore, highlights key issues regarding the types of employment opportunities created and levels of income emanating from the NDA-funded projects. The study further highlights various areas of community empowerment, financial and sustainability measures put in place for the sustainability of the NDA-funded projects. Using a combined method of research, that is the qualitative and quantitative case study approach, the study highlights in detail insights into the impact made by the NDA on community development, particularly on Makhuduthamaga Municipality. The study highlights that while the NDA made some strides in the creation of employment opportunities, income generation, food security and community empowerment, both financial and institutional sustainability proved to be a daunting challenge for the NDA-funded projects Tailor-made and accredited training interventions coupled with the introduction of market-driven products to the NDA-funded projects as opposed to heavy reliance on donor funding will go a long way in bringing about productivity and, most probably, positive balance sheets and the maximum impact on the NDA funded projects.