Community Development Journal 24:127-134
© 1989 Community Development Journal and Oxford University Press
research-article |
The Interdisciplinary Integration of Community Work and Local Economic Development*
Dr Korazim and Dr Klausner work in the School of Social Work and the Department of Geography respectively, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel
Economic distress is increasingly perceived as a structural obstacle to maintenance of adequate social security levels. Hence this article calls for greater interdisciplinary integration of policies and practices on unemployment and local economic development.
Locality-orientated economic policies facilitate a sensitivity to community needs and potentials, rare in broader economic policies. Consequently, this article's central theme is the challenge of developing local economies through joint deployment of social workers, specifically the community workers among them, as well as economic development officials. Such combined community and economic development is essential to the underpinnings of social welfare in the trimmed welfare state of the late 1980s.
The sphere of local economic development provides an opportunity for innovation among community workers, following a long period of entrenchment due to welfare cutbacks. The past record of innovation in Israeli social work leads us to believe that the interdisciplinary challenge will indeed be met. However, if community workers are to work together with both the unemployed and with economic development experts and agencies, they must be suitably trained.
We propose the establishment of specific training programs to foster professional work at the "seam" connecting community and economy. Such training, combined with practical initiatives in the local economy, should be backed by a new national resource center for local economic initiative.