Ethical and Political Issues Encountered in Conducting Community Action Programs: Experiences from the Kirseberg Project in Sweden (From Research, Action, and the Community: Experiences in the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems, P 95-98, Norman Giesbrecht, Peter Conley, et al., eds. -- Se

• NCJ Number: 128283
• Author(s): S Larsson; B S Hanson
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: Superintendent of Documents, GPO; National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented at the Symposium on Experiences with Community Action Projects for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems, March 1989, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

Annotation

The Council for Environmental and Community Medicine in Malmo, Sweden, has implemented a program to increase the health of the general population, and one goal of the Kirseberg Project is to reduce alcohol consumption and associated illnesses.

Abstract

The Kirseberg Project incorporates a number of practices to mobilze both resource persons and local residents through the organizational network already available to reduce alcohol consumption. Another aspect of the project involves the participation of Kirseberg residents in producing information about alcohol to counter publications dominated by commercial alcohol-producing interests. The authors believe that community action projects can generate knowledge about general community intervention programs in the health and social arenas and can lead to debate about political ideals and realities in democratic societies. The following ethical-democratic issues are relevant to community action research projects: professional versus amateur; expert knowledge versus general public opinion; center versus peripheral power; hierarchy power structure versus bottom-to-top power structure; population as object versus subject; uniform versus reciprocal communication; and representative versus participant model. Various approaches to intervention at the societal level focus on individual versus collective efforts and treatment versus prevention. Discussion regarding human, democratic, and professional components of community action projects should incorporate these issues and approaches. 1 reference