Community psychology: Should there be a European perspective?

In this era of globalisation community psychologists have to examine how gl obalisation patterns interact with local cultural norms. to find tools to p romote a sense of community that fits a particular context. We cannot there fore acritically adopt for many European contexts, community psychology con cepts and intervention strategies geared to USA values. The paper argues fo r the need to develop a European perspective in Community Psychology, built more on the European tradition of political concern for promoting social c apital. besides an individual's freedom and autonomy. The paper attempts to identity some of the main differences that have emerged in the last decade s between USA and European approaches to community psychology. It also desc ribes two empowering tools, which integrate traditional and post modem view s of science: community profiling and multidimensional organisational analy sis. that have been used by European community psychologists to rebuild soc ial capital in organisations and local communities. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.