No. 6 (2014): Territorial realities of sociocultural community development

With the process of globalization, there is a growing concern about the loss of territorial identity markers in favour of a perceived homogenization. In this context, calls for the affirmation of local specificities are of increasing importance. Often, the discourse that supports these calls involves a set of oppositions, from local to global, with which existing cultural institutions and policies try to cope. Beyond oppositions like rurality/urbanity, locality/transnationality or actuality/virtuality, sociocultural community development is seen, on the one hand, as one strategy against inequalities. On the other hand, geographical, economic, political and social territories have specificities that impact not only on the practices of sociocultural community development, but also define its probable field of action. How territorial conditions inform or render sociocultural community development possible? How sociocultural community development fit into the social and political fabric of a territory? What are the functions that are assigned to local agents? Starting from the proposition that the characteristics of a territory induce not only distinct sociocultural community development practices, but also different ways of interrogating them, this issue is an invitation to reflect on the possible articulations of sociocultural community development and territory. The papers presented were first delivered at the 6th International Symposium on sociocultural community development held in autumn 2013 in Paris under the auspices of the Réseau international de l’animation. They all take as their starting point the issue of territory for sociocultural community development, or the ways in which territory offers a renewed point of view on the practices of sociocultural community developers.