Active partners: education and community development Available to Purchase

States that community development has been promoted as a process, a method, a programme, a movement and a paradigm, but that efforts at definition tend to divert attention from the key concern in this field: what kinds of organizations are most effective in actually doing community development? Posits that the main determinants of what is done in society today are laid down by governments and large corporations; these organizations cannot give people a sense of identity and purpose beyond the job and the daily round of work. Proposes that mediating structures can do so. Reveals that these are organizations which stand between the individuals and the larger entities of society. Examines, using Cape Breton Island as context, a potential role for the university as a mediating structure in community development.