Social Development: Synthesizing Theory and Practice

Abstract

This paper traces the trajectory of my thinking on social development shaped, initially, by the huge changes that swept South Africa in the 1990s. It describes my early focus on discerning what the policy-driven changes to a developmental welfare system meant for social work and the subsequent critical turn, as social development proved extremely difficult to translate to practice. It traces the changes in my thinking on coming to Australia in 1999, when the country was undergoing a period of massive welfare reform, firmly embedding neoliberal privatization policy. In reflecting on switching concepts in the social development discourse, the discussion turns to its embrace of neoliberalism. Thereafter, it considers three models to highlight the turn from centralized planning, which held the government responsible for social development, to social enterprise, which divested government of its responsibility, and a critical development model that linked national policy to the wider international system. Noting critiques of neoliberal social development, the discussion ends with the current trajectory of my thinking outlined in a critical model for developmental practice with the core foci being the structural–political, cultural–contextual, critical–developmental, and environmental–spiritual dimensions of social development.