Many present and incoming students have asked to get a description of the differences between Community Development paths and the Social Justice of the MASJCD. Previously, I have answered this question in a type of shorthand: Social Justice “thinks globally”; Community Development “acts locally”.
The largest notion supporting the creation of the MASJCD was to join the theoretical and theological study of social justice into a location-based practice and policy method of transform in urban communities. Another formulation might be the study of community development demonstrates what we are able to do as well as that the study of social justice reveals why we must act.
It can also be said that community development is a kind of social justice. Answering this call often leads students to involvement in justice issues like eliminating poverty and hunger, stopping wars, empowering girls or welcoming immigrants. Community development-building liberating and powerful communities in which access to health care, education and secure housing is a mandate, and when the economy is available to all, in which every member is a valued contributor -carries through the social justice vision.
CD also concerns itself with systems- their investigation as well as the ways in which they need to alter to become fair and sustainable. Understanding housing policy and also the facts of home creation are crucial to altering the housing system. Knowing the economics and politics of food production is critical to work to supply local communities with access to food that is healthful. As one Chicago community developer frequently says, “We have to discover methods to earn enormous systems operate for little places.” That particular discovery is led to by analyzing community development.
Ultimately, an argument could be made that is the reason why there is a MASJCD, and that significant knowledge of both areas is essential to lasting and real change. Toward that end, we don’t require students to declare a track until one full-time term has passed (one year for part-time pupils). And we highly recommend that students take courses in both tracks in their own studies and even once they have chosen a course-a sort of major/minor arrangement. The top combination of local systems and international issues, of theory and practice will produce the best agents of societal change-the aim of our plan.
