Introduction: Community Economic Development and Social Work

In this introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Community Practice, guest editors Margaret Sherraden and William Ninacs discuss the emergence of community economic development as a strategy for strengthening families and communities by enhancing local social fabrics, job markets, and asset pools. They elaborate the concept of this strategy, trace its thread in social work’s history, demonstrate its relevance in the profession’s present engagements, encourage further development of social work’s curriculum, and suggest routes for subsequent research. The editors also summarize the contents of the issue, emphasizing that these disparate works share a common understanding of community economic development as “a planned, community-controlled process of social change by which disempowered communities, through new institutions, acquire control over the economic resources they need to ensure individual and collective well-being.”

Contributions in this special issue, including its introduction, were simultaneously published as chapters in Community Economic Development and Social Work.

Project: American Dream Policy Demonstration