Community Development Society Presentation

Having an on-going interest in history, archaeology and cultural anthropology, I am excited about the opportunity to mesh these interests into an abstract for the next Community Development Society annual meeting, next July in New Orleans. I am sharing my abstract in order to elicit feedback.

Utilizing the Community Capitals Framework in an Ethnohistorical Context

The Community Capitals Framework is a versatile tool that can be used to map community assets, analyze how communities work, assess community capacities, program planning and evaluation of these programs. Much of the work to date has been on current community development praxis and theory with very little attention to a historical application. The framework can be used to help map historical capitals and explain how societies such as the ancestral Puebloan cultures in the American Southwest collapsed due to the losses of certain capitals, capitals that could not be replenished. This presentation is an attempt to place the community capitals in an ethnohistorical context and compare with contemporary native peoples to show the strong reliance of one community capital upon the others. Looking at past systems and societies and how they utilized their capitals may better reinforce our community development work today.