Considering community capacity building and exploring engagement: contemporary universities contributing to their respective regions

Contemporary universities enact numerous responsibilities to diverse constituencies and stakeholders in their respective regions. They have a distinctive and significant role to play in helping to generate community capacity building through their stores of capital and their knowledge creation and dissemination. Yet this role produces a paradox that many universities have still to resolve: the multiple manifestations and meanings of communities and the highly varied currencies at work in those communities. This multiplicity in turn makes it difficult for universities to engage effectively with their regional contexts and to contribute sustainably to community capacity building. This chapter outlines this conundrum and uses it to present the book's rationale and structure. In doing so, the editors present a framework for the subsequent chapters to highlight practice and research strategies that promote synergies between capacity building and engagement that are likely to maximise successful outcomes for universities and their regional communities