James Whelan
People Power Manual: Campaign Strategy Guide
The Campaign Strategy Guide was the first instalment of the People Power Manual, a resource created for organisers, activist educators and facilitators. Campaign strategy needn’t be mystifying, lonely or stressful. Social movements become more powerful as more people...
Community Engagement to Facilitate Legitimise and Accelerate the Advancement of GMOs in Australia
Despite promises that community engagement activities will enable policy makers to identify complex and contested community attitudes, and that these will be included as part of the policy making process, a closer look at Australia’s engagement activities reveals...
Rethinking deliberative governance: dissecting the Queensland landclearing campaign
The remarkable campaign highlights an apparent rupture between the discourses and practices of deliberative governance and adversarial power politics. The orthodox processes of consensus politics were rejected as inadequate by conservationists in favour of a strategic...
Learning and mobilising for community development: A radical tradition of community-based education and training
‘Learning and Mobilising for Community Development’ introduces the reader to different ways of thinking about, and organising community-based education and training within different settings. Stories from the global south and north illustrate approaches to...
Community organising for climate action
James Whelan (2012) describes how parts of the environment and climate change movements are adopting the techniques and logic of community organising. This challenges them to learn new habits of political analysis and engagement, and unlearn old ones.
Environmental Advocacy study guide: Unit 4
Unit 4 of the Environmental Advocacy James taught at Griffith Uni in the mid 2000s
Campaign to control landclearing in Queensland
James Whelan and Kristen Lyons. Examines a hugely successful campaign run collaboratively by several ENGOs. The success of this campaign suggests that the emphasis placed on a narrowly defined set of social capital indicators in prevailing natural resource management...
Adult Education and Community Change
James Whelan (1994). A critical assessment of Friere, Knowles and community development.
Environmental Advocacy study guide: Unit 1
Unit 1 of the Environmental Advocacy James taught at Griffith Uni in the mid 2000s.
Bringing About Change
James Whelan (2001) A thought starter for the 2001 National Environment Movement Conference
Environmental Advocacy study guide: Unit 3
Unit 3 of the Environmental Advocacy James taught at Griffith Uni in the mid 2000s
Education and training for effective environmental advocacy
James Whelan’s (2002) PhD thesis: an action research project to develop an understanding of and model for activist education and training in the Australian environment movement.
Environmental Advocacy study guide: Unit 2
Unit 2 of the Environmental Advocacy James taught at Griffith Uni in the mid 2000s
Community organising by the book
James Whelan (2002). A critical appraisal of the Midwest Academy community organiser training program (a modified version of this paper was published in Applied Environmental Education and Communication)
Building the climate movement online: tCA report
What will it take to create a strongly networked, strategic and powerful Australian climate movement? How can the Internet help build this movement? How can online organising bridge the gaps between grassroots and NGO activists, between environmentalists and other...
Popular education for the environment: Restoring confidence in education as a strategy for social and environmental change
James Whelan (2002). The significance attached to the expressions ‘education’ and ‘activism’ by distinct communities of practice amplifies their difference and separation. Environmental activists tend to refer to their media releases, lobbying,...
Keeping it Real: University collaboration with community based environmental advocates
James Whelan (2003): The higher education sector has been urged to demonstrate community relevance by engaging with community problem-solving and action for social justice and by acting as ‘significant allies’ of the community advocacy sector. Despite these urgings,...
Towards a scholarship of advocacy
James Whelan and Sam La Rocca (2003). Presentation at Ecopolitics, Melbourne, 29 November.