Community Development Journal Advance Access published online on February 11, 2008
Community Development Journal, doi:10.1093/cdj/bsn002
Repaying favours: unravelling the nature of community exchange in an English locality
Address for correspondence: email: C.C.Williams{at}sheffield.ac.uk
A recurring assumption in community development has been that when material support is provided on a one-to-one basis to the extended family or social and neighbourhood networks, such favours are repaid by offering help in return rather than money. Reporting a study of the community exchanges of 120 households in an English locality, however, the finding is that well over one-third of these were repaid using money. The outcome is a call for the community development literature to recognise and respond to the existence of this sphere of paid favours which demonstrates how monetary transactions can be neither market-like nor profit-motivated.