The structure of dialogic practice within developmental work

A critical first step in community development work involves initiating and responding to contact with others. Contemporary approaches rely heavily on the ability of practitioners to communicate effectively with the people with whom they are working. Prior to “facilitating” “good public processes”, or “mobilizing” “common pool” resources, or even “empowering communities” to “do it themselves”, practitioners must first build good local-level relationships. This article examines the various structures of interpersonal communication within community development settings. Given that the objective of that communication is to bring parties together, we focus our attention on the use of dialogue in building a developmental process between individuals. The article provides a framework for understanding the structural make-up of dialogue by exploring the use of dialogue processes within community-level practice settings. In the main section of the article, we draw on two distinct narrative exchanges to demonstrate the structural make-up and critical aspects of dialogue processes.