Remarkably this book, according to its editor Gary Craig, is the first in over 30 years to look at the intersections of race, racism and community development. The reasons for that must be more than lack of scholarly interest, or policies or resources (or lack of them) from various governments. In a period where academic research on race and racism has expanded greatly, it is a gap that is significant and intriguing, although that is not what this book is mainly about. Spread over 19 chapters, with both academic and non-academic contributors, as well as a range of locations across and beyond the UK this is, inevitably, an uneven collection. Some of the weaknesses reflect the state of thinking around what community development and how to effect structural and institutional change. There is a persistent thread in the book that community development is about building bridges between communities. In spite of criticisms of assimilationism in UK race policy, not least through the recent stress on integration, this is not really interrogated in this book. The question of what it means to ‘connect’ communities beyond the well-worn themes of community cohesion and of bridging capital is not developed; nor is the intersection between social and economic marginality. Moreover, in some cases authors do not provide sufficient detail about what was actually done in the name of anti-racist community development, making it difficult to assess the value of the work carried out.

However, there are a number of interesting and impressive contributions across the five sections the book is divided into – history and policy, capacity building, working with Roma communities, global experiences and personal reflections on working across cultural boundaries. Rather than going through each of these sections I pick out a couple of connections across them. The first one that struck me is largely conceptual. While this is done in very different ways, the authors do raise core questions about what is ‘the community’ and what does it mean to develop it? Asif Afridi provides an admirable if schematic overview of UK policy on race and community over the past 50 years. He asks whether ‘descriptive representation’ is a sufficient measure of progress and makes a case for ‘substantive representation’ in policy making; this challenging argument deserves more attention among race scholars and policy makers, as well as in the voluntary sector. Colin Clark assesses EU policy on the Roma and argues that despite the intentions of policy makers, there has been limited progress in terms of participation and empowerment. Part of the reason for that is the reliance on a kind-of deficit model through which Roma communities are judged to be failing, in spite of a rights based approach that sought to do the opposite. Similarly, Brian Belton makes related arguments about the ways in which community development has drawn on colonial and deficit models, often engaged in disciplinary practices rather than the empowerment it claims. Phil Ware also provides a succinct account of what was achieved – and not achieved – in the voluntary sector in Birmingham in his chapter. In their different ways these chapters point to the need to for structural and long-term thinking and engagement around diverse communities.

A second cluster of chapters usefully provides a combination of theory and practice, as well as details that others can adopt and evaluate. David Smith and Carlos Moreno-Leguizamon set out the Learning Alliance methodology that aims to enhance the socio-economic impacts of research. Their work in the field of health and illness calls for a more intersectional approach as it raises key questions about the limits of community in terms of ethnic boundedness; the ‘false homogeneity’ (p.91) attributed to BME groups means that individuals’ needs and variation are missed. Working with Roma communities in Glasgow, Stuart Hashagen et al. stress the issue of what is the most effective form of community work, and of moving between community organising and advocacy. They emphasise the need to avoid static approaches that can create forms of dependency rather than autonomy, while also retaining a focus on structural issues of power and of commonalities across communities. This is also clear from Athena Lathouras and Dyann Ross’ chapter on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities where they draw on theorising about structural community development (SCD). As they show, SCD entails requires ‘structural connecting’ that sets the basis for collective action; of ‘structural shaping’ that engages with issues of power as well as changes at various levels; and of ‘structural politicking’, or forms of democratic participation. Finally, Lis de Vries et al. and Lorraine Gutierrez et al. also provide interesting though very different accounts of community development, with the former focusing on work by Red Cross with asylum seeking groups in Australia, while the latter set out an asset-based community development strategy as applied in the arts sector in the USA. In these and the other chapters mentioned, readers will find case studies and discussions that frame core issues, and sometimes enduring problems, of community development.