This seminar is based on a study of four organizations and their social intervention practices. Three of these organizations are in the Pacific (Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji) and one is in Aboriginal Australia. These case-study organizations share a view that is framed positively in terms of control by people of their development in society, and negatively as the effect of structures of colonising power relations. These groups have in common the aim of producing personal, group and social change that is transformative. Across the variety of historical, social and cultural settings, the conceptual similarities in the operations of the groups and the extension methodologies they employ is evidence of the universal applicability of ways organisations can support people to have greater autonomy and control.

By looking to work begun in the 1970s, this seminar uses these conceptual similarities to develop a theoretical framework of the group as the locus of control for personal and social change. This framework integrates a universal conception of human need with Habermas’ communicative action and a dual analysis of power. The framework, called the field of community control, is represented by a lattice showing the logic and dynamics of personal, group and social empowerment. It provides a dynamic view of strengths-based change processes, indicators and outcomes. From its basis in a universally grounded moral philosophy, this framework is used to describe the necessary criteria for social intervention that contributes to physiological and psychological health, and to social wellbeing. This type of intervention is necessary to reverse the harm caused by the powerlessness of being part of an encapsulated, colonized minority.

Richard Barcham is a doctoral scholar at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research.