A Critique on the Book “A Critical Approach to Community-Based Development”

The Problem of Development has always been a topic of discussion for researchers and thinkers in various fields of social sciences. In this framework, “Critical Approach to Community-Based Development” is one of the leading works in the field of sociology of development, written by Margaret Ledwith.  Ledwith is a researcher in the field of communitarianism and social justice, which in this work examines the development of community-based. She has focused both on objective developments in Western societies such as England in the context of globalization and on two philosophical turning points of the twentieth century: the Brazilian philosopher Paolo Freire and the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. According to Ledwith, community-based development requires a search between theory and method. According to him, community-based development forms the knowledge that is based on justice, equality, and democracy. It seems that the connection between theory and practice for change is one of the innovations of Ledwith in this work. The purpose of this article is to introduce the mentioned work, critique and evaluate it in both form and content and focus on Iranian society.