Editorial

The reader might be forgiven for not being familiar with the term Community Asset Management. Indeed, doing a web search for ‘community asset management’ yields a disparate range of responses, suggesting connections to lessons from financial crisis, to knowledge management technology, to nutrition support in home care, to name but a few of the more interesting articles found in a preliminary web search. It certainly was not part of the lexicon in international development when the Max Lock Centre began using the phrase several years ago at the start of Department for International Development (DFID) - UK funded research on Community Asset Management (CAM) in India and Eastern and Southern Africa. Indeed, lack of recognition was one of the two reactions most often received when the term was first mentioned in discussions with various stake-holders in community development in these locations. Once the ideas behind CAM had been explained however, most quickly remarked something along the lines of, ‘Oh yeah, we're doing that’. (See for example MUTTER 2001; see also KRETZMANN and McKNIGHT 1993)