A Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable Community Development

A Dynamic Balance aims to illustrate the links between two normally disparate literatures -- social capital and sustainable development -- within the overall context of local community development. Since the social dimension of sustainable development is the least understood of what are often viewed as its three imperatives (the other two being the ecological and economic), the book illuminates the importance of understanding this dimension and how it can be mobilized at the community level. This is shown by applied research in a number of small, predominantly rural Australian and Canadian communities. Given the number of small communities in both countries struggling to diversify from single-resource economies in a context of increasing globalization, this topic touches on several critical public policy issues. The contributors argue that the key strategies for communities to respond to the issues they are facing must be embedded in the dialectics of sustainable development. Unless this critical imperative is met, single-resource economy communities will continue to face ecological, social, and economic collapse. This book will appeal to both specialists in the fields of social capital and sustainable development, and to wider audiences, such as business administration students, development experts, and public policy decision-makers.