Contenu du sommaire : Le développement des communautés territoriales : sens, acteurs et devenir

The économie reality is complex and the problem is how to organize the resources (market, redistribution and reciprocity) in order to promote social justice and ecological sustainability. The hybridization of different economic forms and logics becomes necessary in order not to place solidarity in dependence on market growth, but on the contrary to put the economy back in its place, that of a means to achieve human ends. Nonprofit organizations can play a major role in changing the institutional framework within which economic facts take shape, which involves calling a halt to the current attempts to restrict the power of democracy.

Over the past decades, social engagement in Quebec has been influenced by advancement in modernity, developing social problems, the intervention of the state in the community, demographic phenomena, the transformation of places of socialization and collective actions elsewhere in the world. Strongly influenced by individualism, commitment to the welfare of the community becomes ephemeral, while the sense of duty and obligation is lost. Finally, if the forms of citizen involvement change, it is no less present than before, notably with respect to the direction that is to be favoured for the development of Quebec society.

This paper reports on the results of a participatory action research study, using mixed methods, to understand how the Transition Movement has emerged in Canada, what challenges it has faced, and the courses of action that can be chosen. In this article, we will discuss citizen participation and present the results of a web-scan, surveys, qualitative interviews and two workshops with key players. On the basis of this data, we discuss the ability of movement leaders to co-construct alternatives that promote greater social and environmental solidarity.

This article deals with issues surrounding citizen participation in the framework of an intervention in an urban area, an approach organized with the cooperation of different sectors. The results presented are from a case study carried out during the implementation of an integrated urban revitalization project in the Outaouais region of Québec. It becomes clear that the attempt to meet the différent expectations of so many players and their ideas about how citizens can be involved is very complex.

This article takes a different starting-point from sectorial and ‘macro' approaches in order to analyze the configuration and the effect of public policy and the local dynamics of development in different areas. Combining analysis of public policy and of new developments with a study of what influences the players and a critical examination of local dynamics, the article interprets regulation and reconstruction in the context of local development. It describes the inconsistencies of public policy and the inconveniences arising from the behavior of the players, all of which contribute to the challenges of putting post-colonial regulation on a new footing in Senegal.

While the notion of social development is hardly a novelty in France, it has for several years now become a new craze. It has gradually emerged through local experiments, associative and institutional currents of thought, some circulars and some innovation devices, but it has so far been limited to relatively narrow circles, with a marginal impact, in comparison with the practice of individual social work intervention. However, recent measures of territorial reform (2014 and 2015) brings social development for the first time into the law, and entrusts it to the competence of the Council of the department, renamed “ leader of social action and social development “. The change in the law therefore includes social action and social work in a political project that is now broadened to include social development.

Participatory democracy often boils down to admonitions to take part in the political process, a top-down offer on the part of the institution, which seeks neither to identify possible dysfunctions in public action nor to combat inequalities in the matter of citizenship. It is therefore counterproductive in any attempt to overcome the democratic crisis, marked as it is by distrust of those who represent the people in parliament. The involvement of the citizen can however be an effective – and revolutionary – lever to regenerate democracy, which is still in process of construction. Under certain conditions, it can renew public policies from below, stimulate people to challenge institutions and set people free, especially those in situations of poverty who cannot make themselves heard in the public space. Today democracy can count on new partners, players belonging to the community.

This article presents the results of a case study on the institutionalization of the practice of community support in social housing in Quebec. This survey is part of a broader research project on the conditions for the transfer of innovative practices from the third sector to the public sector in the field of health and social services. We seek to understand what is involved in the process of institutionalizing social innovation once it has been developed by third sector actors. The health and social services sector in Quebec is a privileged sector to reflect on this issue, given that community organizations have contributed to the co-construction of services and public policies for more than forty years.

Jean-Baptiste Leclercq, Sophie Coulombe, Marta Llobet Estany, François Soucisse Based on the common definition of what constitutes a welfare state, this article analyzes its reconfiguration by studying the practices of social intervention consisting in the organization (in Quebec) and intervention (in Catalonia). It is through the transformation of these practices and their marked contexts that are affected to different degrees by the “crisis” and the policies of austerity that the authors trace the outlines of a welfare state which are in the process of being redrawn. Community organizers act as a linchpin between public institutions and the “community”, taken into account in this text as a category of public action or common experience. The emergence of new actors, such as private foundations or collectives that arise from social movements, modifies the conception of public policies and shifts the boundaries of the welfare state. In contexts where the welfare state has been weakened, the experiences that supply collective responses to social problems prove themselves to be socially creative

Whereas the last decades of the twentieth century saw the emergence of innovative practices in local development with the support of the State, the first decades of the twenty-first century have been characterized both by institutionalization and by the calling into question of such approaches. Professional people engaged in collective intervention who have emerged from communities wishing to take charge of their own affairs are today faced with expectations and political climates that are less favorable to the participation of civil society. They do however have the use of skills that are crucial for territories confronted by the challenge of redefining development in terms of what is at stake for the ecology. They can exercise an essential function in this respect, that of liaison – the establishing of links between different sectors of society. They also have a responsibility to fill in restoring hope to the community.