This qualitative study examines sixteen women's understanding of their experiences in community organizing in a northern urban context. While most front-line community organizing is done by women, there is a paucity of research giving voice to their particular realities. Similarly, there is little information describing community organizing in a northern urban context. The study's conceptual frameworks draw on theory and research from rural and northern social work, activist mothering, feminist social policy, diversity and exclusion, and the social construction of identities. It follows a feminist research paradigm. The study illustrates women community organizers' sense of place and their perceptions of the politics of language, cultural and linguistic tensions, and the influences of northern economic and geographic realities. The research findings demonstrate the processes of community organizing in a northern setting, community organizers' demoralization because of increasingly less generous social policy environments, and the challenges of racial and linguistic divisions in community organizing. The study challenges the urban lens dominating social work education and highlights the legitimacy of community organizing within social work education. It discusses future research possibilities for cross-cultural community organizing involving minority francophone and ethnocultural populations as well as the relativity of notions of oppression within francophone spheres.

This qualitative research employed the single case study approach to review the process by which service users and the staff of a food bank successfully broke through the bureaucratic resistance and secured new premises from the City of Montreal. This study explores the capacity of weaker parties to achieve their desired goal through strategic intervention on social exchange network despite the pre-existing asymmetric power relations. The conception of goal attainment, power relations and social exchange were discussed in order to develop the research questions. Case materials were collected from multiple sources: documentary research, in-depth interviews, and observation. The findings demonstrate that internal solidarity, potential uses of coalitions and expansion of resource networks are fundamental factors for members of a subordinate group to gain power and to achieve their goals. Implications for community organization practice were drawn from the overview of the empirical findings and theoretical concepts.

The institutionalisation of neo-liberalist discourse has significantly changed the way in which the relationship between government and community organisations is described and regulated in Australia. These changes are most clearly articulated in government policy discourse as a move away from ‘funding’ community service organisations, to ‘purchasing’ the delivery of services. Under previous funding models, responsiveness to community need was emphasised. Local knowledge was valued and community organisations were largely viewed as best positioned to assess local needs and to design services to the meet those needs. In contrast, new highly regulated funding models have created a change in discourse that positions the community organisation as a seller of services to the government. In the ‘quasi-market’ the government is usually the only (or main) purchaser of services. As the sole purchaser, the government is now (potentially) responsible for specifying the nature of services that they are prepared to purchase. These changes in positioning have been accompanied by significant devolution of previous government provision of human services to the non-profit sector, and are supplemented by considerable changes in regulation practices. The principal questions asked in this research are: How have the changes in discourse and practice at the government level influenced existing discourse and practices in community organisations? How have changes in discourse and practices within and among community organisations affected their capability to operate in a way that is consistent with the values inherent in community discourse? This research approaches the research questions from a Social Constructionist epistemology informed by the work of Michel Foucault and also neo-institutional theorists. This research implements Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the methodological framework to draw out and analyse tensions that arise from a contest of the discourses of ‘community’ and ‘managerialism’. This research critically examines emergent structures and practices of community organisations in New South Wales (NSW) through the critical analysis of relevant texts and data from four focus groups and nineteen interviews of management committee members and coordinators from community organisations throughout NSW Australia, with a focus on Greater Western Sydney. The way in which these changes at the government level have been translated in discourse and practice at the organisational level, has resulted in a number of tensions within and among community organisations. The major tensions that emerged, and are discussed and analysed in this research, were: Increased managerialism and the impact on ‘traditional’ beliefs – or the ‘institutional myths’ – of community discourse and practice. Increased reliance by governments on community organisations and the effects of this on organisational capacity: A shift of emphasis in accountabilities coupled with increased ‘professionalisation’ and the impact on ‘community representation’. Need or desire for alliances among community organisations and the impact of this on diversity and individual responsiveness. With these tensions came significant frustration and hardship as traditional strategies became more difficult to action in the quasi-market. Much of this tension was due to the use of one discourse to interpret another. What is required in community organisations is an increase in ‘critical consciousness’ to develop a ‘cultural literacy’. This study identified a number of strategies that were assisting community organisations to re-define their position in the new discursive context. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 2008. / Skytteanum 168"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-223) Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 22, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-67).

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 2008. / "Skytteanum 168"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-223) Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Population and Development))--National Institute of Development Administration, 2003.

Thesis (Ed.D.) -- Teachers College, Columbia University, 1991. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. Dissertation Committee: Lawrence Cremin. Includes bibliographical references: (leaves 118-121).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Duquesne University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-131) and index.