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Publications
Peter has published in the fields of community development, dialogue and participation, soul and social change, populism and democracy, ethics, community-based learning/training, refugees and forced migration.
A full list and links to publications can be found at ResearchGate and books for purchase at Booktopia or other platforms are listed below.
Understanding Phenomenological Reflective Practice in the Social and Ecological Fields
This book introduces social practitioners - community development workers, social workers, organisational change facilitators, social, ecological, cultural and political activists - to a phenomenological tradition of reflective practice.
Critiquing reductionist, linear and ossified thinking in the social and ecological fields, the book offers an exciting new alternative that is honouring of the uncertainty of all living and therefore emergent social processes. Linking phenomenology and Goethe's 'delicate empiricism', the book challenges practitioners to observe and work with living processes.
Critiquing reductionist, linear and ossified thinking in the social and ecological fields, the book offers an exciting new alternative that is honouring of the uncertainty of all living and therefore emergent social processes. Linking phenomenology and Goethe's 'delicate empiricism', the book challenges practitioners to observe and work with living processes.
Learning and Mobilising for Community Development
Learning and Mobilising for Community Development introduces the reader to different ways of thinking about, and organising community-based education and training within different settings. Stories from the global south and north illustrate approaches to collective learning and collective action. The book provides not only an insight into the how-to of community-based education and training, but through a range of applications, demonstrates the often unspoken shadow side of the developmental work we undertake.
Dialogical community development with depth, solidarity and hospitality
Community development has been increasingly influenced and co-opted by a modernist, soulless, rational philosophy, which has reduced it to a shallow technique for 'solving community problems' and threatens the very legitimacy of community development as an instrument of society's renewal and fulfilment. Dialogical Community Development is a courageous, ground-breaking attempt to re-draw the parameters and re-map the ground of community development practice. By re-imagining community as dialogue and hospitality, the authors create an alternative vision of community development practice: a deep, soulful exercise that demands a re-examination of personal values, and a respect for and solidarity with the groups within the community.
Creating Us: Community Work with Soul
"Without soul there will be little chance of sustained social change." Current expressions of community work have often been dry, technical, mechanistic processes. If people are to recover their deep longings and aspirations within community, then community change processes need to work in a soul dimension, with the delights, hopes, myths and visions of those involved. Seasoned community work thinker and practitioner, Peter Westoby, explores the role of soul within community work, as a methodology that can contribute to social change. He connects his framework of ideas and concepts, with a set of practices that can unlock this awareness and celebration of the soul element.
Community Development Stories, Method and Meaning
Thankfully, another publication from the creative Queensland Community Development 'crowd'... What I most particularly appreciate is the editors' and contributors' ongoing attempts at creating 'living theory' informed by their ongoing practice and their holding on to the spiritual, democratic, relational and dialogical principles for which their work has become known. The book therewith documents its authors' continuing attempts at developing good practical and reflective support for their ongoing social change efforts, something our local community development scene could very well do with...
Theorising the practice of community development – a South African perspective
Based on 25 years of community development practice, six of which have been lived in South Africa, Peter Westoby’s ground-breaking monograph moves away from dominant normative accounts of community development to provide an appreciative and critical analysis of concrete examples of community development theory and practice. By examining community development stories as experienced on the ground, Westoby is able to show how the poor are organising themselves using various forms of community development as well as demonstrating how the state and non-state actors are attempting to organise, engage or accompany the poor through community development. The book also breaks new ground in theorising the practice of community development, drawing inductively from the stories analysed.
The Sociality of Refugee Healing: In dialogue with Southern Sudanese refugees
This book proposes a socially-oriented model of healing, which augurs a fundamental shift in thinking about refugee settlement: instead of focusing on the past experiences of refugees it is the present world and context of settlement that should be the primary focus for healing work. This book, steeped in the author's experience and extensive research, boldly and convincingly proposes a paradigmatic shift in the theory and practice of working with refugees. As such, the book provides an indispensible contribution to existing debates about refugee settlement and charts new ground for future inquiry.
Soul, Community and Social Change
At a time when inequalities are growing globally, when the pace of socio-economic transitions is rapid, and when traditional ties of community are under threat of dissolving, ‘soul’ offers a new way of thinking imaginatively about how people might respond both individually and collectively in social change work. In exploring ideas such as soul, soulful, ‘soul of the world’ and soul-force, Peter Westoby invites readers to disrupt their taken-for-granted assumptions about community practice and to foreground ethics, quality, being and the aesthetic.
Routledge Companion to Community Development Research
This handbook sets a new research agenda in community development. The contributors redefine existing areas within the context of interdisciplinary research, highlight emerging areas for community development related research, and provide researchers and post-graduate students with ideas and encouragement for future research activity. To do this, the editors have deliberately chosen to frame this book not through a traditional sociological lens of class, race and gender, but through a "Wicked Problems" framework.
Participatory Development Practice, Using Traditional and Contemporary Framework
From indigenous people's groups, classroom teachers, and local and international community workers comes the desire to build community. Participatory Development Practice provides a theoretical and applied base for rethinking development practice that is deeply influenced by a 'community' development tradition having its roots in participation and dialogue, yet is broader than that. The book is framed conceptually as implicate method (starting with positioning self), micro (developing constructive relationships), mezzo (forming small participatory groups), macro (structuring participatory work within formal organizations) and meta (working with both local to global and global to local issues).
Theory and practice of dialogical community development
This book proposes that community development has been increasingly influenced and co-opted by a modernist, soulless, rational philosophy - reducing it to a shallow technique for 'solving community problems'.
40 Critical Thinkers in Community Development
Who are the great activists, thinkers and writers who can inspire us in our community development work? Environmentalists, poets, philosophers, civil rights activists, trade unionists – all can help us question the assumptions that underlie our international development practice. This book invites students and professionals of community development and citizen activists to reflect on the roots of their practice and discover the wisdom of writers they may not have heard of before. 40 Critical Thinkers in Community Development is an important resource for daily or weekly readings and reflections, study groups, working or project teams, and as a resource for teachers of community development.
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