Navigating Community Development Conflicts: Contested Visions of Poverty & Poverty Alleviation

This article explores an ethical dilemma that arose from the author's involvement in a project intended to identify and address the needs of seven batey communities in the Dominican Republic. In the summer of 2014, the author conducted a large-scale needs assessment to inform strategic planning for a foundation that was invested in community development work in those communities. Through a collaborative process, the author worked with the foundation, representatives of the migrant communities, and other researchers to develop survey and focus group tools that were administered to 1,360 and 54 people, respectively. Data collection, analysis, and dissemination proceeded as planned. The conflict and resulting ethical dilemma emerged at the point of data interpretation and strategic planning, processes that revealed that the different parties held conflicting theories of poverty. The ideological conflicts related to why poverty exists, who is responsible for it, and what should be done about it made proceeding with the project ethically tenuous for the author. The author describes the values and theories of ethics on which she relied to navigate this challenge, as well as reflections on her continued participation in the community development process.