Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice 9781447328087

Table of contents :
UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY
Contents
Detailed contents
List of boxes
List of acronyms
About the author
Part I
1. The nature of community
The meaning of community
Community studies
The beloved community
2. Capital, class and community
Capitalism, class and inequality
Capital and community
Evidence of the effects of capitalism on local working-class communities
Community development
Conclusion
3. Political community under capitalism
The nature of political community
The nature of the political field, including state power
4. Governmental approaches to community
Neoliberal projections of community: as collectively governable subjects
Community dilemmas: comply or resist?
The case of the UK
Conclusion
Part II
5. Community economic development (CED)
Governmental approaches
Cooperatives
Conclusion
6. Community learning
Problems with schooling
The case of the UK
Communities of learning as communities of practice
The contribution of schools to community learning
Early intervention versus community learning: the case of Sure Start
Conclusion
7. Community health and social care
The nature of a healthy community
Developing healthy communities
The case of the UK
Communities of practice, co-production and social cooperatives
Conclusion
8. Housing and community
Gentrification and displacement
Housing market renewal
Community action on housing and development
Housing cooperatives, co-production, co-housing and community
Conclusion
9. Community policing
The nature of policing
Public self-policing
The binary stereotyping of people and communities
Community policing in practice
The case of the UK
Conclusion
Conclusion
references
Index

Citation preview

UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY

Politics, policy and practice

Peter Somerville

SECOND EDITION

Understanding welfare: Social issues, policy and practice

UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY

Also available in the series Understanding health policy (second edition) Rob Baggott “​ Enables students to think critically and innovatively about the highly political nature of health, and the practice of local and national decision making in health care.” Dr Jan Quallington, Head of the Institute of Health and Society, University of Worcester PB £22.99 (US$38.95) ISBN 978 1 4473 0011 3 HB £65.00 (US$85.00) ISBN 978 1 4473 0012 0 352 pages October 2015 E-INSPECTION COPY AVAILABLE

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UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY Politics, policy and practice Second Edition

Peter Somerville

First edition published in Great Britain in 2011 and Second edition published in 2016 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol BS2 8BB 1427 East 60th Street UK Chicago, IL 60637, USA +44 (0)117 954 5940 t: +1 773 702 7700 [email protected] f: +1 773 702 9756 www.policypress.co.uk [email protected] www.press.uchicago.edu © Policy Press and the Social Policy Association 2016 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 978 1 44731 608 4 paperback ISBN 978 1 44731 607 7 hardcover ISBN 978 1 44732 807 0 ePub ISBN 978 1 44732 806 3 Mobi The right of Peter Somerville to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol, Policy Press or the Social Policy Association. The University of Bristol, Policy Press and the Social Policy Association disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol Front cover: photograph kindly supplied by www.alamy.com Printed and bound in Great Britain by CMP, Poole Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents Detailed contents List of boxes List of acronyms About the author PART I one The nature of community two Capital, class and community three Political community under capitalism four Governmental approaches to community

vi ix x xi 1 3 23 67 91

PART II 121 five Community economic development (CED) 123 six Community learning 147 seven Community health and social care 171 eight Housing and community 197 nine Community policing 231 ten Conclusion 261 References 265 Index 337

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Detailed contents one The nature of community The meaning of community Community studies The beloved community Summary Questions for discussion Further reading

3 3 8 16 17 18 18

two Capital, class and community 23 Capitalism, class and inequality 24 Capital and community 33 Evidence of the effects of capitalism on local working-class 39 communities Community development 43 Conclusion 56 Summary 58 Questions for discussion 58 Further reading 59 three Political community under capitalism The nature of political community The nature of the political field, including state power Summary Questions for discussion Further reading

67 67 77 85 86 86

four Governmental approaches to community 91 Neoliberal projections of community: as collectively governable 92 subjects Community dilemmas: comply or resist? 100 The case of the UK 103 Conclusion 112 Summary 113 Questions for discussion 113 Further reading 114 five Community economic development (CED) 123 Governmental approaches 133 Cooperatives 135

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Conclusion 141 Summary 141 Questions for discussion 142 Further reading 142 six Community learning 147 Problems with schooling 148 The case of the UK 152 Communities of learning as communities of practice 156 The contribution of schools to community learning 157 Early intervention versus community learning: the case of 161 Sure Start Conclusion 165 Summary 166 Questions for discussion 166 Further reading 167 seven Community health and social care 171 The nature of a healthy community 172 Developing healthy communities 174 The case of the UK 178 Communities of practice, co-production and social cooperatives 184 Conclusion 190 Summary 191 Questions for discussion 192 Further reading 192 eight Housing and community 197 Gentrification and displacement 201 Housing market renewal 209 Community action on housing and development 211 Housing cooperatives, co-production, co-housing and community 216 Conclusion 220 Summary 221 Questions for discussion 221 Further reading 222 nine Community policing The nature of policing Public self-policing The binary stereotyping of people and communities Community policing in practice

231 232 234 237 239

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The case of the UK 241 Conclusion 253 Summary 254 Questions for discussion 255 Further reading 255 ten Conclusion

viii

261

Detailed contents

List of boxes 1.1 Life in an encapsulated community 2.1 How ACORN works 2.2 London Citizens 3.1 The Jesuits in Paraguay 3.2 Marinaleda 4.1 The Govanhill swimming pool campaign 5.1 Hill Holt Wood: a three-legged community enterprise 6.1 The value of a school to a community 7.1 Camphill communities 7.2 Care Plus Group 8.1 Housing market renewal in Manchester Salford 8.2 Housing market renewal in Kensington, Liverpool 9.1 How exclusionary (‘hard cop’) community policing fails 9.2 Anti-social behaviour policy in the UK – taking community policing seriously? 9.3 Family interventions: the policing of ‘troubled families’? 9.4 Riots: a failure of community policing?

13 50 53 72 84 98 137 159 187 190 209 210 243 245 249 251

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List of acronyms ASBO Anti-Social Behaviour Order BME black and minority ethnic CCTV closed-circuit television CED community economic development CEN Community Empowerment Network CIC Commission on Integration and Cohesion CLG Communities and Local Government COF Citizens Organising Foundation FIP family intervention project HAZ Health Action Zone HHW Hill Holt Wood JRF Joseph Rowntree Foundation LEA local education authority LGTB lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual LMS Local Management of Schools LSP Local Strategic Partnership MINCy mixed income community NDC New Deal for Communities NESS National Evaluation of Sure Start NGO non-governmental organisation NHS National Health Service NMP neighbourhood management pathfinder PB participatory budgeting PCT primary care trust RDA Regional Development Agency SSLPs Sure Start Local Programmes

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List of boxes

About the author Peter Somerville is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Lincoln, UK. He has researched and published widely on issues of housing, policing, race equality, homelessness, substance misuse, cooperative enterprise and community governance.

xi

Part I This first part looks at the concept of community generally and how it relates to different kinds of actual community, whether experienced or imagined. Community is set in the context of contemporary society, in particular in relation to capitalism, social class, and social and political projects for development and emancipation. Community is seen as in tension and conflict with forces of exploitation and domination focused on social control rather than liberation. It is also emphasised, however, that the projects of the powerful are continually resisted by communities and often fail to achieve their aims – though sadly often damaging communities in the process.

1

one The nature of community This chapter argues that, in spite of numerous different interpretations of the word ‘community’, it has a common core of meaning, namely common attachments (whether material or symbolic) and common recognition of those attachments. Attachments arise in all sorts of ways that are far from being fully understood, and they are associated with dispositions that result in distinct sets of practices. In reviewing literature on attachment to place, the chapter suggests that such attachment does not have to be exclusive. Some place communities, however, are identified as abject, even encapsulated, in ways that are related to the attachments that members of the community have to one another – relationships that need to be more deeply explored by researchers. The chapter also introduces the concept of a beloved community, as an ideal community whose members freely act together in a spirit of love for one another.

The meaning of community ‘Community’ is a much used and abused word, with countless different definitions and interpretations (Hillery, 1955). The more it is mentioned and discussed, however, the more difficult it seems to identify it in real life (Hobsbawm, 1994, 428). This book attempts to clarify the situation. It argues that there is a sense in which we all know what community is but this ‘common sense’ co-exists with a variety of interpretations of how communities are. Understanding community, therefore, requires that we first make a distinction between ‘community’ and ‘communities’. What kind of ‘thing’, then, is community? It is easier, perhaps, to say what community is not. It is not, indeed, a ‘thing’ at all: it is not a system or structure or relation or network or text or space or object of any kind – all of which have been stated to be characteristics of communities.This does

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not mean, however, that community is purely subjective, being identified, for example, with a certain kind of feeling or emotion or desire, as some scholars have claimed (for example, Brent, 2004). Rather, community ‘is an ideal and is also real; it is both an experience and an interpretation’ (Delanty, 2010, xii). In short, community is a kind of state of being or existence, which is both subjective and objective, or in which the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is dissolved. In the simplest terms, community can be understood as ‘being together’ (or more or less organised ‘convivial consociation’) (Neal and Walters, 2008, 291) – a state of being or set of practices in which people are connected or linked in some way.This can involve, for example, living together, working together, learning together, caring together, acting together, and so on.This is not really enough, however, to distinguish community from looser or thinner forms of interconnectedness – mere associations or groupings or networks (objective) or interpretations (subjective). Arguably, what makes community different from these other forms is the existence of common attachments and the common construction, maintenance and recognition of those attachments.As Clements (2008a, 21) puts it:‘Community is made of the casual and more intimate bonds that we make and remake every day.’1 Being attached to something or someone involves caring about (psychological) and for (practical) that object. There is no clear limit on what an attachment could relate to: a place (or field of care – Tuan, 1974), a set of beliefs or practices, an identity, a language, a nation, a class, an ethnic group, a gender, a cause, an organisation. People could also simply be attached to one another, as in a family (though interestingly we tend to distinguish family from community). In every case, however, people recognise one another as sharing that particular attachment (the existence of community therefore depends on the communication of that attachment), and there also exists the possibility (and, in some cases, the necessity) of those people acting together accordingly (collective action).Thus, although different interpretations of community exist, it has a core meaning on which everyone could perhaps agree.2 Some scholars have argued that community can be understood in terms of belonging. For example, Delanty (2010) argues that the basis for community is ‘communitas’, which is ‘an expression of belonging that is irreducible to any social or political arrangement’ (Delanty, 2010, 4). Then ‘community must be understood as an expression of a highly fluid communitas – a mode of belonging that is symbolic and communicative – rather than an actual institutional arrangement’ (Delanty, 2010, 20). And: ‘Following Bourdieu (1990), we can say that community is a set of practices that constitute belonging. What is distinctive about these practices – and this is to move

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beyond Bourdieu – is that they are essentially reproduced in communication in which new imaginaries are articulated’ (Delanty, 2010, 102). Unfortunately, there is a certain circularity to this analysis. Community is understood as an expression of belonging, while belonging is interpreted as an effect of community.The nature of belonging itself remains strangely unanalysed, and communication seems to be confused with what is communicated. The linking of belonging to communication does not help (‘Belonging today is participation in communication more than anything else’ – Delanty, 2010, 152), for two reasons. Assuming that belonging means something similar to attachment, first, it is possible for people to communicate without belonging, for example, mere association or interaction; and second, it is possible for people to belong to the same community without communicating with one another, for example, attachment to something to which unknown others are also attached (for example, a national community). Communication is required to enact or perform community, since community members must recognise one another as having the same attachments, but attachment (or belonging or communitas) exists prior to this communication. Esposito (2010, 6) also argues that what is shared in communities is ‘a debt, a pledge, a gift that is to be given’ – which suggests that ‘belonging’ is not the right word. Another scholar who conceptualises community in terms of belonging is Savage (Savage et al, 2005a; Savage, 2008; 2010a). What he actually identifies, however, on the basis of research on Cheadle by himself and his colleagues, are three ‘narratives of attachment’ (to place), namely,‘dwelling’ (in place), ‘nostalgia’ (for a remembered or imagined past community)3 and ‘elective belonging’. Dwelling in place seems to correspond more or less with the attachment to place found in traditional local communities (see below), which often overlaps considerably with nostalgia for how the community used to be in the past (as evidenced by many studies, for example Watt, 2006, 784–6).The narrative of elective belonging, however, is quite different. According to this idea, people become attached to places through conscious choices (for example, to move and settle in those places). Whereas dwelling in place is narrated in terms of ‘being thrown into place’ (Savage, 2010a, 132), involving what could be called belonging to place, elective belonging is understood almost as the antithesis of this, in terms of ‘the place as belonging to them’ (Savage, 2008, 152) or ‘a possessive concern over place’ (Savage, 2010a, 132) (see also discussion of gentrification in Chapter Eight, in particular Butler, 2008). Here too, however, nostalgia can come into play – for example, in the notion of the rural idyll (Bell, 2006; Short, 2006), which evokes pastoral and romantic images of community life in bygone days, and which rural gentrifiers attempt to recreate (see, for example, Tyler, 2003; Somerville, 2013b).

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For Buonfino (2007) belonging is a human need, like food, water or shelter. The nature of this need, however, is not entirely clear. It may be a need for contact with other human beings, and few people would disagree that such a need exists. She seems to mean more than this, though – specifically, a need for recognition from other human beings that they have certain qualities in common such as ethnicity or nationality. Her concept of belonging is therefore identical with community, understood as a collectivity with common attachments (for example, to ethnic group, nation, etc) and common recognition of those attachments. Community, therefore, involves common attachments, bonds, ties or commitments, and different kinds of community are associated with different objects of attachment. These common attachments are then what make it possible for society to exist and to be reproduced. Essentially, community has a spiritual meaning – hence the use of the term ‘community spirit’, which refers to the unseen force that activates the set of practices that constitute community.4 This may sound deeply mysterious but actually we have all experienced the operation of this force – it is no more (or less) mysterious than the forces of gravity or magnetic attraction. We also have some (albeit limited) understanding of how community is generated and maintained, which will be explored in the rest of this book. For example, we know that attachments originate in families but they can also be forged in a complex variety of other ways, for example, through seduction (Bauman, 2001), enchantment (Bourdieu, 1997; 1992), interpellation (Althusser, 1970), discipline (Foucault, 1977), and above all through recognition of having in common a valued (experienced or imagined) quality to which they are attached (such as kinship, social position, nationality, cultural tastes, sexual orientation, or the very qualities of sharing and caring themselves). Brent (2009) talks of community in terms of a process of conjuration, which involves people coming together for a common (typically creative) purpose – community as a state of becoming rather than being (see also Latour’s, 2010, concept of composition) – what Mulligan (2015, 347) calls ‘a projection of community’. In this sense, to use Mulligan’s terms, communities can be ‘projected’ rather than ‘grounded’ (see Chapter Four). Communities can be most simply understood as distinct groups of people who embody and express community in their practices. Consequently, communities vary according to the nature, function and strength of their common attachments. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is useful here. For him, a habitus is a set of dispositions to act in certain ways, typically based on past experiences and current capabilities. People (as individuals and in groups) act to some extent out of habit – but they are not entirely creatures of habit, as their capabilities and resources (which Bourdieu calls ‘capital’) enable them to choose different courses of action. They operate like

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players in a game (what Bourdieu calls a ‘field’) in that they work within particular sets of rules but they can have different strategies and tactics for winning the game.5 According to this interpretation, communities are sets of practices within habitus in which the dispositions of the community members are determined specifically by their shared attachments (which are likely to be produced by past experience but not necessarily so). A complicating factor here is that people are typically members of more than one community and their practices are also shaped by their positions in different fields (as the rest of this book attempts to explain). Although communities exist within habitus, therefore, habitus themselves exist in relation to fields of different kinds. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, it needs to be stated here that the use of terms such as ‘attachment’, ‘bond’ or ‘tie’ does not necessarily signify any constraints or restrictions on human freedom. Admittedly, communities can be experienced as oppressive and stifling, but Žižek, for example, paints a more positive picture: the bond that holds a given community together is the way in which we share our enjoyment. What we fear most is the theft of that enjoyment by others. Our enjoyment is made up of all kinds of things, ways of life, mythologies. It is the way in which we imagine our community to be and therefore is often based on a nostalgic attraction to another way of life that never really existed or has been lost. (Žižek, 1993, as reported in Clarke et al, 2007, 99) According to this interpretation, then, community is typically based on the joys of shared experiences and imaginings, as remembered, retold and typically embellished over the years. (It is precisely the exercise of the imagination that also gives rise to visions of utopian community, such as that of the beloved community – see below.) Attachments vary in strength.This was perhaps first noted by Granovetter (1973) in his distinction between ‘strong ties’ and ‘weak ties’ and later by Turner (2001, 29) in his distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ communities.6 Strong ties (and thick communities) are more permanent and involve relationships of intimacy (Misztal, 2000), deriving mainly from kinship (so-called ‘traditional’ kin-based communities) but also, increasingly, from close friendship – for example, strong ‘personal communities’ (Pahl, 2001; Spencer and Pahl, 2006). Weak ties (and thin communities), on the other hand, are more temporary and transient, having more of the character of acquaintanceship and ‘thin’ sociability (Somerville, 2009a), and derive from contacts or connections through work (for example, collegiality) or

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residence (neighbourliness) or other kinds of everyday activity.Tie strength can perhaps be represented most accurately in terms of a continuum from intimate family ties at one end to loose forms of association at the other (see, for example, Buonfino, 2007, 11 – ‘the spectrum of belonging’7). Communities commonly involve combinations of strong and weak ties – for example, strong attachment of community members to the same object plus weak attachment to one another. This is most likely to occur in the case of imagined communities such as nations in which the members are strongly attached to the nation but weakly attached to most fellow nationals.8 Without the strong attachment, a nation would not be a community; on the other hand, an absence of weak attachments would suggest a lack of mutual recognition, which is essential for community, so in this case the result would be an imaginary (as distinct from imagined) community, a community in name only.9

Community studies Early community studies, mainly in the UK and US (in the 1950s and 1960s) noted the significance of attachment to place10 or locality in people’s lives, with the result that ‘community’ came to be identified with ‘local community’ (for a comprehensive review of this literature, see Bell and Newby, 1971; and perhaps most famously, Dennis et al, 1969). Later studies continued to find plenty of evidence of this strong ‘dwelling in place’. Scherer (1972), for example, identified an attachment to place in Harlem that was strong enough to over-ride cultural differences within the community; this attachment arose from a shared experience of living in a particularly distinct area, with open access to community resources, reinforced by regular mutual recognition. Similarly,Wallman’s (1984) study of Battersea showed how shared attachment to a locality can overcome the potential barriers posed by differences of language and skin colour (see also Atlee, 2007, on Cowley Road, Oxford, and Lichtenstein, 2007, on Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets – but contrast Dench et al, 2006, with their narrative of nostalgia and racialized class conflict, and Putnam, 2007, who argues that rates of ethnic diversity are inversely related to social solidarity both within and between different ethnic groups).11 From the 1970s onwards, various studies showed that even the most remote and inaccessible local communities were not completely selfcontained and functioned within a wider economy and society (see, for example, Fox, 1978; Cohen, 1987). These studies explained how communities were socially constructed and how the terms of their membership were negotiated. Partly in response to this, many researchers rejected the identification of community with locality and instead

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emphasised de-localised networks of personal communities (Wellman, 1979).12 Unfortunately, however, with the notable exception of Granovetter (1973; 1983), this new approach has tended to underestimate the importance of attachments generally (Allan, 2006) and to neglect the communal and societal context of network relationships (Morgan, 2005). As Allan and Phillipson (2008, 165) comment:‘It is a little ironic that network approaches to personal communities have tended to de-contextualise the interactional properties of the relationships on which they focus.’They argue instead for a ‘broader’ community studies perspective, in which the local is seen in the context of the global, reflecting people’s increased geographical mobility and reduced embeddedness in the local, and they cite evidence that local attachments have become more diverse: Inner-city populations, to take one example, may be characterized by two extremes of population: a ‘short-stay’ population divided between transient (mainly single) professionals on the one side and poor families on the other; and a ‘long-stay’ population comprising, for example, older people ‘ageing in place’ and some ethnic minority groups. (Allan and Phillipson, 2008, 167) They conclude that attachment to locality continues to be important for most people.13 It varies, however, and not only with social class14 and ethnicity (see, for example, Reynolds, 2013, on ‘Black neighbourhoods’) but also with stage in the life course – people who are younger or single are less likely to be attached, while those who are older or couples with children or poor or certain ethnic minorities (who actually seem to be the poorer ones) are more likely to be attached.All this suggests that community is associated with more permanent forms of attachment (‘long stay’ and ‘ageing in place’) and, moreover, seems likely to fit with the narratives of nostalgia (particularly in the East End of London) and dwelling in place. Some studies, however, have drawn attention to aspects of the narrative of elective belonging, particularly where it involves claims of collective ownership or control of place that exclude others from that place (for example, what Watt, 2009b; 2010, 154, calls ‘selective belonging’, where a group of higher income newcomers create their own ‘oasis’ in a desert of ‘lower class locals’). Another term that has been used to describe this exclusivity is ‘territoriality’, defined as ‘a situation whereby control15 is claimed by one group over a defined geographical area’ (Kintrea et al, 2008, 9). In the UK at least, these groups are typically defined by their social class and also sometimes by their race or ethnicity. For example, in some areas predominantly white working class communities have seen those areas as belonging historically and exclusively to them (Seabrook,

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1973, on Blackburn; Walklate and Evans, 1999, on Ordsall in Salford; Wemyss, 2006; 2009, on the East End of London; McKenzie, 2015, on St Ann’s in Nottingham):16 ‘white, working-class people were normalised as being the natural and historically legitimate occupiers of East End spaces in the discourses of the local and national media. They were at the top of the “hierarchy of belonging”’ (Wemyss, 2006, 228; see also Wemyss, 2009; Back et al, 2012). This shows how claims to exclusive or stronger rights for particular groups can be linked to forms of racism. It also helps to make sense of gang formation and, at a national level, it helps to explain negative attitudes towards immigration (Back et al, 2012). In all cases, an exclusive attachment to place (whether locality or country) is associated with exclusion of the ‘Other’ from that place (see also Chapter Eight). Attachment to place does not have to be exclusive, however, so this exclusivity needs to be explained, for example in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of misrecognition and the politics of community generally (see Chapter Three). Another explanation is that place attachment is bound up with the formation and maintenance of personal identity (Livingston et al, 2008; Visser et al, 2015, 38–9), especially in affording continuity of experience, a sense of self-esteem and a source of individual and collective agency. Perhaps most importantly, however, for the purposes of this chapter, it can be noted that exclusive attachment to place seems to involve a combination of strong attachment to the place itself with strong (even if only imagined) attachments to one another on the part of those who share the place attachment. More generally, an exclusive community could be said to be one whose members are not only strongly attached to the same object but also strongly attached to one another. An exclusive national community would then be one that could be described as a ‘total community’ (Nisbet, 1953), excluding foreigners and fusing all sections of the nation into a single whole. A number of studies have suggested how exclusive attachment to place arises. For example, Phillips (1986) points to the importance that (traditional, dwelling in place) communities assign to newcomers’‘fitting in’ and participating in community activities.The strong mutual attachments within many traditional place and ethnic communities make ‘chains of interdependencies’ (Elias, 1974), which are strong enough to discourage individual action that goes against local traditions (Anwar, 1985; Robinson, 1986; Reynolds, 2013). Some studies also suggest that gossip and mutual surveillance have been the primary means by which the cohesion and exclusivity of the community are maintained (Elias and Scotson, 1994; Roberts, 1995; Tebbutt, 1995). In many exclusive communities the bar for membership can be set at a very high level indeed, such that one has to be born into the community in order to be accepted, and/or one has

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to be seen to meet very stringent moral standards. For example, Elias and Scotson’s study of Winston Parva in 1965 showed that newcomers who remained attached to patterns of behaviour that were regarded as normal and acceptable in their communities of origin (namely, noisy enjoyment and pub-going) but were disapproved of by the established residents were never accepted into the community; the status distinctions between the two groups were reproduced in succeeding generations (see Crow and Allan, 1994, 72). In contrast, Phillips’ study of Muker in North Yorkshire shows how, where newcomers are prepared to ‘muck in’ (Phillips, 1986, 151) – that is, they are willing to share the habitus of existing residents – they may become accepted into the community after a certain period of time (Somerville, 2000, 58–9). A rather different issue is that of ‘abject’ (Kristeva, 1982) communities or what is known in post-colonial literature as ‘subaltern populations’ (Bayat, 2000).These communities are stigmatised and constrained (Wacquant, 2008; 2011), typically sharing a common resentment and grievance against those whom they hold responsible for their plight. Many of these communities exist in areas that have become ‘institutionally isolated’ (Gans, 1972), lacking essential services and facilities, and left to fend for themselves. This may occur both in rural areas (Milbourne, 2004; Rural Coalition, 2010) and in urban areas (for example, Butler with Robson, 2003). It is interesting to note that in both kinds of area their abjection is often but by no means always17 related to processes of gentrification (for urban areas, see Smith, 1996a; for rural areas, see Somerville, 2013b; see also Chapter Eight of this book) and specifically affects older, working-class, and mainly female residents (Savage et al, 2005b, 44; Key, 2013).The stereotypical ‘slum’ (Davis, 2004) is an example of where a subaltern population lives, characterised as a ‘habitus of the dispossessed’, typified by ‘flexibility, pragmatism, negotiation, as well as constant struggle for survival and self-development’ (Bayat, 2007, 579) (see also McKenzie, 2015). An abject community that is ethnically homogeneous, with strong mutual attachments and parallel institutions, is called an ‘encapsulated’ (Crow and Allan, 1994, 81) community or a ‘ghetto’ (Wacquant, 2011, 5). Typically, encapsulated communities are ethnic minorities with strong kinship ties to one another but constrained to live in disadvantaged areas, to which they become attached. Examples of encapsulated communities in England include the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets (Phillipson et al, 2003) and the Pakistani community in Keighley (Vertovec, 1998). Contrary to the opinion expressed by Wacquant (2011, 10), however, poorer workingclass communities in Britain going back to the 1940s and 1950s display similar characteristics, and this continues to the present day – for example, Govan in Glasgow (Damer, 1974; 1989); council estates in Rotherham

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(Charlesworth, 2000) and more generally (Hanley, 2007); deprived areas of Teesside (MacDonald et al, 2005, 879–80 – see Box 1.1; McGuinness et al, 2012 – on South Bank in Middlesbrough), Hull and Walsall (Green and White, 2007; White and Green, 2011); the Carpenters estate in Newham (Watt, 2013); Partick in Glasgow (Paton, 2013); St Ann’s in Nottingham (McKenzie, 2015).18 These latter communities, originally predominantly white but with some of them now increasingly mixed, with their lack of connections to or understanding of processes outside their communities,19 have tended to be more encapsulated than those local minority ethnic communities who imagine and experience themselves as part of a wider transnational community (for example, Eade, 1997, on Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets; or Levitt, 2001, on Dominicans in Boston; or Dean, 2008, on Brazilians in Gort, Galway). An example of the fatalism that can result from encapsulation comes from an interviewee in Glasgow: If your horizons are limited to three streets, what is the point of you working really hard at school? What is the point of passing subjects that will allow you to go to college or university if you cannot travel beyond these streets? What’s the point of dreaming about being an artist, a doctor, etc, if you cannot get on a bus to get out of the area in which you live? (Kintrea et al, 2008, 35; see also Kintrea and Suzuki, 2008)20 Paton (2013) shows how, although attached to a particular place, these communities lack even the power to remain in that place in the teeth of interventions to displace them – vulnerable to displacement due to lack of suitable or affordable accommodation in the area and/or gentrification processes (see Chapter Eight).As time goes on, however, the white workingclass communities are becoming more ethnically mixed, while new generations of minority ethnic young people in these mixed communities are becoming less connected to the wider world, resulting in more complex, less racialized forms of encapsulation (see, for example,Visser et al, 2015, on Feijenoord in Rotterdam) – neither ghettos nor anti-ghettos. In view of the copious literature emphasising how much community life has changed and how social relations today are so much more fluid, insecure, transient, mobile, and less embedded in place generally (see, for example, Bauman, 2000), it may be salutary to note the findings of Robertson et al (2008) concerning the long-term stability of even (or perhaps particularly) the poorest residential areas: ‘while each of the [three] neighbourhoods studied [in Stirling] has undergone significant social changes, its relative social position has not altered greatly over the last 80 years’ (Robertson et al, 2008, 97). In other words, while circumstances have changed in many

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respects over the generations, it continues to be the same neighbourhoods that find themselves at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This is a point that will be explored further in Chapter Two.

Box 1.1: Life in an encapsulated community In their study of young people in ‘Kelby’ in Middlesbrough, Robert MacDonald and his colleagues found that their respondents ‘were united by a common experience of economic marginality’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 876). 21 This experience continued into adulthood, where ‘individuals remained tied to locally-rooted, social networks’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 876). ‘By their mid- to late-20s, virtually all interviewees remained living in the neighbourhoods in which they had been born and brought up’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 877), and most of them ‘did not seem short of strong, close, supportive relationships’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 883). 22 At the age of 20, Martin gave one of the most up-beat assessments of community life in Primrose Vale [one of the five most deprived war0000ds in England]: Martin: Living here, it’s brilliant. We have no problems with anyone. We know all the thugs and the thieves and whatever but everyone’s okay… It’s a lot better if you know someone and something goes wrong. If you have problems, you can always call on people. They’re always quite loyal in that sense. JM: Do you think there’s a great community spirit? Martin: It depends on what you call community spirit. It’s really an underground kind of thing. It’s the backing…//… everyone supports you. Neighbours come over and they wanna borrow money until they get paid, things like that. You know you’ll get it back, so… You can always rely on everyone else. If you’re stuck, someone’ll help you. (MacDonald et al, 2005, 878)

This appears to be an encapsulated community because most of its members: had very limited lived experience of places beyond Kelby… They did not know how their contemporaries in more prosperous locales fared and without a more global vantage point it was difficult for them to perceive in full the spatial polarization of class inequality. Partly because they were so familiar with their

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own (geographic) place, they had strikingly little awareness of their subordinate place in wider class structures. (MacDonald et al, 2005, 879–80; and for similar narratives about the parochialism and inward-looking character of life on poorer council estates, see Hanley, 2007; McKenzie, 2015) Many, if not most, areas contain mixes of people, with different narratives and strengths of attachment. Hudson et al (2007) convey an impression of this variety in their study of the inner-city areas of North Tottenham in London and Moss Side in Manchester.The same narratives of nostalgia among older residents occur as in other studies but the researchers also identified small communities based around small groups of streets or a few blocks of flats (as in Wallman, 1984).These communities appeared to come about mainly through length of residence, irrespective of the ethnic identity of the residents – though there could be a chicken-and-egg situation here in that the attachment to place could arise through the passage of time or the long-term residence could result from attachment to the place. In many cases, there was not a clear single narrative of dwelling in place or elective belonging; rather, residents expressed multiply ambivalent attitudes, being both thrown into place and choosing to stay in place, and also being both attached to place and drawn to greater opportunities elsewhere. Few studies have looked into the reasons why people become attached to particular places. One exception is Livingston et al (2008), who studied four relatively deprived neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester.They found that positive feelings about neighbours, stemming from supportive family and social networks, and about personal safety, were associated with attachment to the neighbourhood, and with length of residence. Place attachment was lower in deprived areas largely because these positive feelings were lower and there were fewer long stayers in these areas (due to high population turnover).An interesting finding was that some social housing residents had strong attachments to other areas where they had grown up, indicating that social housing allocations were working against the grain of human need (at least as understood by Buonfino, 2007).The effect of population turnover was significant insofar as it related to negative feelings towards ‘the [lower] class of people that seem to be moving in’ (single mother with pre-school child, from an ‘unstable/low mix’ area) (JRF, 2008, 3).23 Another interesting finding is that in areas of high mix, whether of ethnic groups or tenures, the mix was not regarded as problematic and was regarded as positive by some residents:‘Indeed, most interviewees had difficulty in even discussing ideas about social mix; they did not think about their area in these terms’ (JRF, 2008, p3).24 The researchers suggest that mix of ages, household types

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and educational levels may also be beneficial for communities but caution against making changes too quickly.25 Pearce and Milne (2010) studied two former council estates in Bradford, which are among the most deprived areas in England, and could be regarded as containing socially excluded communities. One of these (Braithwaite and Guardhouse), in Keighley, looks comparable with Kelby in Middlesbrough in being overwhelmingly white as well as working class. However, the research shows that, unlike Kelby, this is not an encapsulated community: residents are only too well aware of their ‘subordinate place in wider class structures’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 880) and the community itself is divided both geographically (between Braithwaite and Guardhouse, with separate and conflicting community organisations) and politically (proand anti-BNP). The study uncovered evidence of widespread misogyny, racial prejudice, ill-treatment of people with mental health problems, and deep and abiding resentment of how they are viewed and treated by the authorities and agencies working in the area.26 In contrast, Scholemoor, in inner-city Bradford, was racially mixed (white, Asian and Slovakian) but residents were alike in terms of the negative attitudes they showed towards authorities/agencies and also towards outsiders (hence some hostile acts against Slovakians). Many residents on both estates, however, apart from offering narratives of nostalgia, also reported high levels of neighbourliness, with a sense of community focused on their community centres; while some labelled their localities as ‘crap’, ‘others felt a deep pride in their neighbourhood and a long-term commitment to the estate’ (Pearce and Milne, 2010, 33). Further investigation would probably have revealed the same ambivalence as that found by Hudson et al (2007). Again, this seems to show that attachment to place is complex and multi-faceted: people living in these areas feel a common attachment to their estate, even if they recognise the seriousness of its flaws (including their own faults), and they also feel a common grievance against those whom they hold responsible for their abject social position, such as the police, the council, the government and ‘higher’ social classes generally, and a common resentment against the stigmatisation of their estates by the outside world. Some are more attached than others, and some are not attached at all, but, to a greater or lesser extent, they recognise one another as being in the same social position, and therefore as being (or in some cases becoming) a community, albeit a divided and vulnerable one. Calcutt (2008) provides a trenchant critique of post-war community studies, as pioneered by Michael Young and the Institute of Community Studies, on the grounds that they presented the working class as domesticated consumers and ignored the importance of wartime solidarities. Only ‘personal’ relations of family and community appeared, while ‘impersonal’

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relations, particularly related to employment and politics, were hardly mentioned: ‘In that it mistook domesticity for social reality,Young’s gritty realism was really an idealisation of community’ (Calcutt, 2008, 99), which set the stage for the ‘consumer society’, in which ‘impersonal’ relations (for example, the market and the state) were only the means to support the intimately personal space of domestic consumption.The later governmental ‘turn to community’ (discussed in Chapter Three) can then be understood as a depoliticising project, attempting to enlarge personal relations to the scale of the social role previously played by the impersonal relations of politics (Calcutt, 2008, 100). Such criticisms, however, cannot be said to apply to those studies that looked at men’s and women’s workplaces as well as their domestic lives (for example, Beynon, 1975;Westwood, 1980). More recent studies too, such as Pearce and Milne (2010), have looked more closely at the problems and needs of socially excluded communities and how these might be addressed, not only through the efforts of the communities themselves but through wider political action and government intervention. Arguably, though, these latest studies are only touching the tip of the iceberg, and our understanding of the variety and dynamics of communities of place remains at a low level.

The beloved community In the first edition of this book, I introduced the concept of a beloved community, in which the flourishing of the community as a whole is produced by the free activity of all its members. I attributed this idea to Martin Luther King but of course it has a much older pedigree, going back to early Christian communities, the Diggers of the seventeenth century and early Presbyterian congregations. Basically, it is a view of a realisable utopia, first articulated in a very cryptic form in Laozi’s Daodejing (Lao Tzu, 1922).According to Clark (2013), following Ricoeur (1986), utopian communities are more or less authoritarian or libertarian: ‘to be ruled by good rulers – either ascetic or ethical – or to be ruled by no rulers’ (Ricoeur, 1986, 17, cited in Clark, 2013, 136). The beloved community is at the libertarian end of this spectrum. It is a community whose spirit is one of compassion or loving kindness for all (see hooks, 1995, 264 – a beloved community is one ‘where loving ties of care and knowing bind us together in our differences’), and the community activated by this spirit is characterised by freedom from exploitation and domination, with a radically open membership, and always in a dynamic process of becoming, being made and remade into more free and equal and less coercive forms of life.The attachments in a beloved community are simply those that flow from commitments made out of the spirit of compassion.27 It is not pie

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in the sky, but actually expresses how many people feel that communities should work – in a spirit of cooperation, mutual respect, open-mindedness and democratic decision-making. The disposition towards the beloved community is everywhere (which gives us cause to hope) but it exists in complex conflict with other dispositions, as examined in the chapters that follow. The concept of freedom in the beloved community will be discussed further in Chapter Three but may be worth a comment here. Essentially, it derives from Hegel’s concept of substantive freedom, in which what is willed is one’s own and has developed or realised content (Clark, 2013, 62). A free community is then one whose members will and act together through their own deliberative processes, experienced as a form of self-expression (Clark, 2013, 65). A free community is not a purely formal or abstract community outside of space and time but is grounded in concrete social and historical contexts. In a free community, mutual recognition involves recognition, not just of common attachments, but ‘by each person of the personhood of each other person’ (Clark, 2013, 68), that is, recognition of one another’s freedom. For Hegel, therefore, a free community is ‘a community of self-realizing beings who are agents in their own development’ (Clark, 2013, 70). This seems to be incompatible with coercion or domination. The difficulty is that, in practice, coercion and freedom (in the form of consent) are often inextricably intertwined, so that communities are both free and unfree at the same time. The point of the concept of beloved community is then to show how the balance might be able to be shifted more towards freedom.

Summary Community is highly ambiguous and contested, yet it is a term that has continued to prove useful in a variety of social contexts. Its value as an idea lies in its core meaning as social attachments, bonds, ties or obligations beyond the family. Community arises wherever people have a common attachment, either directly to one another or indirectly via an attachment that they share, for example, to a place or a set of practices. This chapter has distinguished between more and less exclusive communities, with the former involving stronger attachments to the community and stricter criteria for membership of that community or stronger attachments of community members to one another. The chapter has argued, however, that many poorer working-class communities, despite strong common and mutual attachments, do not have the power to exclude, and need to be understood instead as ‘encapsulated’, isolated from wider social forces but relatively powerless to resist those forces. Other working-class communities, perhaps not as poor, are not encapsulated and are more rejecting of the abject status assigned to them, but also perhaps more divided among themselves.

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The chapter suggests at the end that we are a long way from understanding how communities are working or changing in the world today.

Questions for discussion • • • • •

What is the core meaning of community? How do common attachments arise? How can a community be exclusive? How does a community become encapsulated? What is a beloved community?

Further reading Brent, J. (2009) Searching for community: Representation, power and action on an urban estate, Bristol: The Policy Press. Clements, D., Donald, A., Earnshaw, M. and Williams, A. (eds) (2008) The future of community: Reports of a death greatly exaggerated, London: Pluto Press. Delanty, G. (2010) Community, 2nd ed, London: Routledge. Esposito, R. (2010) Communitas: The origin and destiny of community, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pearce, J. and Milne, E. J. (2010) Participation and community on Bradford’s traditionally white estates, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Notes 1

2

3

4

Note that, although community is something that is always being continually redefined and renegotiated (Satsangi, 2007), the meaning of community cannot be reduced to ‘social interaction and some ties or bonds in common’ (Taylor, 2011, 48–9), for two reasons. First, the bonds of community are forged in the imagination as well as through interaction; and second, community involves a special kind of bond, whose nature is considered further below. This means that I do not agree with Alleyne (2002, 608) that community is ‘impossible to define’, or with Mooney and Neal (2009, 3) that: ‘Finding one definitive meaning of community is neither possible nor desirable.’ Nor do I agree with Farrar (1999, 12) that: ‘Everyone knows that they don’t know what it means.’ People do know what it means (its sense or connotation) but they disagree about how it is to be denoted or referred to or interpreted. And attachment itself is a deeply mysterious phenomenon (which can perhaps only be understood phenomenologically!). This is a recurrent conservative theme on community, from Edmund Burke (Clark, 2001) to Simon Jenkins (2012). For example, Farrar (1999, 13), in his research on Chapeltown in Leeds, found that community was expressed in terms of ‘yearning for a new life of spiritual

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5

6

7

8

9

10

11

communion’, which found material form in churches, mosques and gurdwaras, and social and political form in ‘the mobilisation of demands for social justice, the end of racism and the redistribution of resources in favour of the poor’ (Farrar, 1999, 13). Bourdieu’s theory of capital will be discussed further in Chapter Two. Here it should be noted that I have adapted Bourdieu’s concept of habitus in order to rid it of its structuralist residue. Basically, Bourdieu saw the world as consisting entirely of structures: both habitus and field are both structuring structures and structured structures (Bourdieu, 1984, 166). I would argue, however, that habitus (in the plural) are not structures but sets of practices, and agency (as an integral part of practice) cannot be reduced to structure. The distinction is prefigured in Tönnies’ (1988) distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and Durkheim’s (1893) distinction between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Just to add a note of caution here: Buonfino (2007) seems to focus on recognition as the basis for belonging and misses the underlying imagined object of community – what I called above the mysterious force of attachment. Derrida (1998) argues that being a citizen or member of a political community does not require one to be friends with one’s fellow citizens. It can be seen from this section that, although communities can be (and often are) more or less exclusive, it is not the case that ‘community is always, at some level, inevitably about boundaries and outsiders’, nor that ‘the idea of processes in which some people are included while others are excluded is crucial to understanding what community means’ (both from Mooney and Neal, 2009, 8), nor that ‘community is…a categorical identity that is premised on various forms of exclusion and construction of otherness’ (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997, 3). The core meaning of community does involve inclusiveness, but this does not have to imply exclusiveness. This point will recur throughout the book, particularly in discussion of the beloved community. Attachment to place has been defined as a ‘set of feelings about a geographic location that emotionally binds a person to that place as a function of its role as a setting for experience’ (Rubinstein and Parmelee, 1992, 139). Agnew (2005) distinguishes three components of place as meaningful location (see also Cresswell, 2004): a position in space, a setting for social interaction, and an object of attachment. Putnam’s findings could perhaps be explained as a consequence of higher levels of residential mobility in areas of greater ethnic diversity – as, for example, in London (Wills, 2012). Statements of this kind, however, are over-generalised, and more context-sensitive analysis is required to make sense of the dynamics of the relationships involved – see Phillips (2015) and the discussion in Chapter Eight of this book.

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12

13

14

15 16

17

18

This network approach continues to be influential – see, for example,Wellman (1996), Wellman et al (1997), Rowson et al (2010). In the US most scholars seem to assume without question that communities must be place-based, even when they have to be created rather than already existing – see, for example, the edited collection by DeFilippis and Saegert (2008), but note also their recognition that transnational communities are an exception to this rule (2008, 329–30). According to CLG (2011), the lower the socio-economic group a person is in, the more likely they are to be strongly attached to the neighbourhood in which they live. Or at least rights of occupation. According to McKenzie (2015, 91), it was the men who understood St Ann’s as belonging to them, and they established their control by processes of ‘passing by’, moving around the estate in the course of their daily ‘business’. In contrast, the women were attached to St Ann’s mainly through their family and friendship networks and common experiences, particularly as white working-class women with mixed-race children. It is often a by-product of deindustrialisation – for example, in areas of NorthEast England (McCulloch, 2004; McGuinness et al, 2012). Their high rates of ethnic homogeneity (at least, originally) and collective identity disqualify them from being ‘anti-ghettos’ (Wacquant, 2007; 2011). Much research on poorer neighbourhoods claims that place attachment is weaker in these areas (for example,Woolever, 1992 – due to high densities and low quality housing; or Bailey et al, 2012 – due to lower levels of social cohesion; Sturgis et al, 2011). Such research, however, lacks a clear concept of poor or deprived or socially excluded community: it does not identify abject communities and does not distinguish between communities that are encapsulated (where place attachment is strong) and those that are not (where place attachment is likely to be weak), or between those that are more like ghettos and those that are more akin to anti-ghettos (see, for example, Livingston et al, 2010; Bailey et al, 2012). Another problem with the research by Bailey et al is its arbitrary definition of neighbourhood, for example, as a statistically constructed ‘lower super output area’, which may or may not correspond to residents’ perceptions of place. More attention needs to be paid to what it is that people are attached to. Hancock and Mooney (2013, 56) appear to reject the term ‘ghetto’ as applied to impoverished white neighbourhoods in Britain but evidence from studies such as those cited above suggests that there do indeed exist encapsulated communities that are stigmatised, constrained (economically and socially), spatially confined (see the above quote from Kintrea et al, 2008) and with parallel institutions (see, for example, McKenzie, 2015, on the substantive and varied networks that exist in St Ann’s in Nottingham).This does not mean, incidentally, that they are defined

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19

20

21

22

23

24

25

in terms of their worklessness or benefit dependency or (alleged) parallel set of values. White and Green (2011, 55) contrast this ‘parochialism’ with the ‘more progressive relationship with place’ that they found in a deprived area in Wolverhampton, much closer to the city centre. Similar attitudes exist across the world, and not necessarily more commonly in the global South. For example, Caldeira, talking about the ‘peripheries’ of Brazilian cities, argues that poor young men in these areas ‘establish a nonbridgeable and non-negotiable distance between rich and poor, white and black, the centre and the periphery, and articulate a position of enclosure’ (Caldeira, 2008, 3). Such marginality suggests encapsulation, but this is not clearly stated by the researchers. For similar findings see Bright (2011) on young people in former coalfields in North East Derbyshire, Reynolds (2013) on young Black people in deprived areas of London, and Visser et al (2015, 49) on young people in Feijenoord in Rotterdam. This has for some years been a common refrain from people living in council housing, reflecting long-term processes of residualisation of that tenure (Malpass, 1989), and it contrasts with the relative toleration of higher-class newcomers found in gentrifying areas (Watt, 2006). This finding contrasts starkly with the literature that portrays many socially mixed neighbourhoods as characterised by either a lack of engagement or an outright hostility between different ethnic groups (for example, Amin, 2002; Watt, 2006). This could of course be simply because different scholars are talking about different neighbourhoods, so we should be wary of making generalisations about the effects of social mix.There are countless types of mix, and everything depends not only on the type of mix but also on the particular economic, social, political and cultural context in which the mix occurs (for more on mixed communities, see Chapter Eight). Another study, of the use of community gardens in New York City, found that: ‘A strong place attachment and identification with the living environment as well as a sense of ownership and control over it are developed in the gardens’ (Eizenberg, 2012, 770). This comes about as a result of the gardens being: a valued material space; carriers of culture (for example, Latino,African American, eclectic) within the city; and a source of new collective learning, both of practical skills and of ‘alternative representations of community and of the urban’ (Eizenberg, 2012, 774). In this case, therefore, attachment to place is indistinguishable from attachment to the people associated with that place, and is produced materially, socially and culturally all at the same time.As one gardener said: ‘it is not just about having a plot and growing a few things, you know, it’s actually making something beautiful for the whole community and sharing that

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with the whole community’ (Eizenberg, 2012, 776).This seems to come close, on a neighbourhood scale, to the concept of a beloved community (see below). The gardeners’ struggle against the City Administration’s attempts to annihilate their gardens then turned them into activists, who organised themselves in neighbourhood coalitions and a citywide coalition, which successfully resisted this threat. This is a concrete example of a successful assertion of ‘the right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1996, 173; Mitchell, 2003; and see Chapters Eight and Nine), which results in a fairer distribution of resources within capitalism (that is, reform) but is also potentially transformative of capitalism (De Angelis, 2007; Eizenberg, 2012, 779). 26 For similar findings in white working-class communities in Bristol, see Hoggett et al (2013) 27 Edwards (1998, 23) makes the point that compassion must be unconditional and universal, because conditional kindness is seriously problematic: ‘Amnesty International tells us that young men who love and desire the approval of their fathers and peers make highly efficient torturers.’ It is not a matter of love conquering hate but of understanding the need for what Edwards calls ‘the compassionate revolution’. The beloved community must also be a universal community because compassion cannot be reasonably limited or it will result in domination.

22

two Capital, class and community This chapter considers the nature of capitalism and the vexed question of the relationship between capitalism and community. The argument draws upon Marx to show that capitalist society today continues to be based on the exploitative relationship between employers and employees (as owners/controllers and nonowners/non-controllers of the means of production), and upon Bourdieu to show how relationships other than exploitation also contribute to the formation and reproduction of social classes. One important characteristic of capitalism here is its tendency towards periodic crises, which arise from contradictions within the labour process. These crises, along with their associated upheavals and annihilation of value, are inherently destructive of community, and yet responses to these crises can also generate new forms of community. The chapter considers how the global ascendancy of capital in more recent decades has tended to fragment and undermine working class solidarity and community, resulting in the encapsulation described in Chapter One. Worker co-operatives are examined as a possible step towards non-exploitative production relations, particularly if embedded within co-operative communities, and therefore towards a beloved community – a point that is taken up in more detail in part II of this book. Approaches to community development/work are criticised on a number of grounds (most notably neo-colonialism, participationism and laissez-faire) but mainly for their failure to address capitalist realities. Even some approaches that regard themselves as ‘critical’ or ‘radical’ seem to be rather vague when it comes to citing evidence about what their practice can achieve. Arguably, therefore, greater humility is required in this area of academic and professional practice, although the chapter suggests that community organising approaches still have potential, especially if more firmly rooted in a multi-scalar, multi-field co-operative movement.

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Capitalism, class and inequality This chapter aims to examine the nature of capitalism, its links to social class and inequality, and the implications of this for our understanding of community. Capitalism is a potentially totalising system, which rests on a capacity to invest value in such way as to produce greater value (value so invested is known as ‘capital’), giving rise to what is usually called ‘economic growth’ or what Marx called ‘surplus value’. This is possible, according to Marx, only because workers produce more value than the value of the wages or salaries that they are paid. There was a point in history when labour itself became a commodity that could be bought and sold on a market, and its value, like that of any other commodity, was then determined by the value of the labour required to produce it.This value, however, was less than the value that, when put to work, it added to the commodities that it produced – hence surplus value.To distinguish labour as a commodity from the labour expended in the production process, Marx called the former ‘labour power’ (Marx, 1970, chap VI). What workers do under capitalism, then, is to hire out their labour power for specified periods of time in return for wages, while the value they add to the products of their labour exceeds the value of the wages they receive. This is called labour exploitation.1 Three points are crucial for understanding capitalism. The first is that it involves a fundamental social division between ‘employers’ of labour power and ‘employees’, whom they employ.The second is that this relation of domination is ‘hidden’,2 because what is seen is an exchange between employer and employee, where one enters freely into a contract with the other.3 On both sides, the idea of a ‘fair wage’4 is one that reflects the market value of the labour power that is hired, not the value that is added in the labour process. Third, as expounded in Capital, volume 1, chapter 1, all commodities have what Marx called ‘use-value’ as well as exchange value; that is, they are of some social use irrespective of what price they might fetch in the market. Considered in this way, labour power as a commodity not only has exchange value but is also socially useful; moreover, since labour produces added value, labour itself is a form of capital (which Marx called ‘variable’ capital, to distinguish it from ‘constant’ capital, which is invested in the means of production). The contradictory character of labour (as both use-value and exchange value, both labour in use and variable capital) lies at the heart of the capitalist system, reflecting the contradictoriness of the commodity form more generally. This contradictoriness is widely misunderstood, and the corresponding existence of labour exploitation generally denied or ignored. Ironically, however, the existence of a labour market is accepted as almost axiomatic under capitalism, with its implication that there is a class of

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people who own and control the means of production (capitalists – or simply ‘bosses’, and their representatives, for example,‘managers’) who set to work a separate class of people (workers).There are of course other classes, for example, those who work for themselves or on their own account (whom Marx called the ‘petite bourgeoisie’ – for a detailed account of the petite bourgeoisie, at least in France, see Bourdieu, 1984) but these are not the main classes in capitalist society. Capitalism has of course changed considerably since Marx’s day but it remains the case that a distinction can be drawn between those who set others to work (employers) and those who are set to work (employees), and this distinction is enshrined in employment and contract law. These social positions (of employer and employee) are produced by capital in motion ( for example, in the mutating forms of investment, production and commodities – what Marx called the ‘circulation’ of capital) and are not merely discursively constructed, as post-structuralists (such as Foucault) have argued. Perhaps the main way in which capitalism advances is by opening up new markets for capital investment and labour exploitation, moving towards an end point in which anything and everything can be bought and sold, including even community (Habermas, 1987, calls this process the colonisation of the ‘lifeworld’ by the ‘system’). This is only a tendency, however, and this chapter (and also Chapter Three) attempts to explore the limits to this tendency. One issue that must be addressed here is the position of labour under capitalism. There seems little doubt that the labour movement, as the movement of the working class under capitalism, has been, from the end of the nineteenth century at least up until recent years, the most important social movement in the world (that is, if one accepts the controversial thesis that movements of the ruling class, such as neoliberalism and fascism, have been largely reactions against the labour movement), which has given rise to modern welfare states and major improvements in the lives of working people. This movement, however, has had two contradictory aspects, reflecting the contradiction within the category of capitalist labour itself: a reformist movement to improve the position of the working class within capitalism (notably expressed in the form of labour unions and social democracy), and a revolutionary movement to transform capitalism through the abolition of capitalist labour (most notably the Bolsheviks in Russia). This point is worth emphasising, because it seems to be misunderstood by some contemporary Marxists, such as Holloway (2002; 2010a) and Hardt and Negri (2001; 2005; 2009), who have abandoned the labour theory of value and no longer recognise the contradictoriness of the commodity form, in particular the form of capitalist labour5. They view the organised working class as being only reformist, not transformist, concerned with maintaining and enhancing

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its existing position within capitalism, while they see transformation as coming from popular struggles that are against capitalism but have no clear relationship to capitalist production (what Holloway, 2002, 21, calls ‘autonomous community projects’).Therefore, they miss the point, which stems from the contradictory character of capitalist labour, that the working class is both reformist and transformist of capitalism (in and against but also beyond capitalism). Bourdieu has attempted to revise Marx’s theory in order (among other things) to explain how capitalism continues to dominate the world. In a nutshell, his argument is that capital becomes capitalism through the harnessing and mobilising of ‘capital’ in other forms – social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986; 1987).These different forms of capital relate to different ‘fields’, which are more or less ordered sets of social positions. Essentially, Bourdieu argues that the movement of capital as a whole creates social positions (in fields), whose occupants thereby have dispositions to act in certain ways that reflect those positions, with each set of dispositions constituting a (class) habitus. As Bourdieu (1984, 107) says: ‘capital is a social relation, i.e. an energy which only exists and only produces its effects in the field in which it is produced and reproduced’. So, for example, ‘employer’ and ‘employee’ are positions within the field of the labour market, while ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ are positions within the field of education, and ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ are positions within the field of healthcare. The main argument in Bourdieu (1984) is that different social classes are at least partly constituted by a combination of (1) their total capital of all kinds in all fields; and (2) the distribution of their specifically economic and cultural capital within this total – a distribution that varies from one field to another. On this basis, Bourdieu identifies a ‘dominant class’ with a large total capital (much larger than that possessed by any other class) but also within this class a number of fractions based on the different distribution of specific capitals: a property-owning fraction (having primarily economic capital) and an educated elite (with mainly cultural capital) (and one could perhaps add a managerial elite, possessing primarily social capital, though cultural capital is also very important in their case). Following this, Savage et al (1992) (see also Savage, 2000, 156–7) identified three fractions of the middle class6 in Britain or perhaps three middle classes (petite bourgeoisie, managers and professionals) on the basis of the types of ‘assets’ (that is, capital) that they command: economic (property), organisational (bureaucracy) and cultural assets. Since Bourdieu (1984), considerable evidence has accumulated of class inequalities (most recently, Wilkinson and Pickett, 2008; Dorling, 2011; 2012; Piketty, 2014), and many attempts to make sense of class inequality have been influenced by Bourdieu’s work ( for example, Willis, 2004;

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Bennett et al, 2008; Crompton, 2008; Le Roux et al, 2008; Silva and Warde, 2010;Atkinson et al, 2012).A significant development has been the linking of class inequality with other dimensions of inequality, particularly gender inequality (Skeggs, 1997; Adkins and Skeggs, 2005). Most recently, a huge survey (Savage et al, 2013), involving 161,400 completed questionnaires, has established that people in the UK now fit into seven social classes, based on Bourdieu’s two criteria of total capital volume and distribution of economic, social and cultural capital. For the first time, an elite group has been identified, constituting 6 per cent of people in the UK, consisting mainly of chief executives, with household incomes almost double those of the next highest class (the established middle class), based mainly in south-east England and graduating mostly from Oxbridge and London universities. This is obviously the dominant social class: ‘They are clearly a relatively exclusive grouping, with restricted upward mobility into its ranks’ (Savage et al, 2013, 15).7 The middle classes are then split between the ‘established’, who are largely professionals and managers, with high social and cultural capital, and the ‘technical’, whose social and cultural capital are much lower. The working classes then fall into three groups, all of whom are said to have ‘emerging cultural capital’: ‘new affluent workers’, with ‘moderately good economic capital’ but low social capital (Savage et al, 2013, 12), mostly male and non-graduate, working mainly in sales, retail and catering, and living mainly in old manufacturing centres of the UK outside south east England; ‘traditional working class’, with ‘moderately poor economic capital’, low social capital, mainly female, nongraduate and home owners, low emerging cultural capital, and employed mainly as careworkers and cleaners, and also living mainly in old industrial areas outside south east England; and ‘emergent service sector’, also with ‘moderately poor economic capital’, but moderate social capital, and high emerging cultural capital, relatively young urban non-graduates, employed mainly in customer service, bar staff and careworkers. Finally, at the bottom of this class ladder there lies the ‘precariat’ (Standing, 2011), 15 per cent of the population, who have the lowest economic, social and cultural capitals, living in old industrial areas but often away from the large urban areas, and again are mainly careworkers or unemployed.8 There are some odd things about this ‘new model’, however.9 First, the divide between the established and technical middle classes seems artificial and open to question.Why, for example, would higher education teachers, natural and social science professionals, and senior professionals in education establishments be categorised as technical middle class, while midwives, police officers, and quality assurance and regulatory professionals be regarded as established middle class? The model does not seem to take account of the wide range of social positions that figure here – for example,

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common sense would appear to suggest that a uniformed police constable does not have the same class position as a chief constable.10 Second, the new affluent workers ‘cannot easily be identified as either middle or working class’ (Savage et al, 2013, 22) – so what exactly is it that makes them one rather than the other? Maybe some of them are middle class and some are working class, but how is one to tell the difference? Finally, one could question whether the bottom three classes are really three distinct classes or merely reflect different positions that working class people find themselves in at different times and at different stages of their lives – for example, older working-class women in the ‘traditional working class’, younger working-class people among the ‘new affluent workers’ (perhaps aspiring to middle-class status?), and what might be called the ‘unlucky’ working class in the ‘precariat’ (reflecting increased job insecurity, long-term health problems, and so on). It is striking, for example, how these three bottom classes all include careworkers. The model is useful in highlighting the apparently growing gap between a rich elite and a multiply disadvantaged precariat but it is not based on any clear understanding of how classes in capitalist society are actually related to one another.This lack reflects deeper problems with Bourdieu’s revision of Marx (see Desan, 2013, for a detailed critique). In particular, his extended concept of capital seems to lose contact with Marx’s notion of labour exploitation, with exploitation being confined to the field of what he calls ‘economic capital’.This misses the point that the labour market is, in a sense, a special kind of field, which pervades all the other fields within capitalism. So, for example, although the field of education is structured, in part, by the relationship between teacher and student (which is not a relation of exploitation), the work of teachers is largely ruled by the vagaries of the labour market in which they operate. Nevertheless, Bourdieu’s work serves to draw our attention to the existence of such fields within capitalism that appear to be distinct from that of the labour market (for example, the housing field, see Bourdieu, 2005).These fields, involving both exploitative and non-exploitative relationships in which different kinds of value are co-produced, will be explored in later chapters of this book. His work is important also for showing that social classes in capitalist society are not simply a product of production relations, and he is frequently illuminating in showing how class rule is secured through everyday activity, where class struggle may be absent or invisible (see Chapter Three). Reviewing the model of Savage et al’s model in the light of Bourdieu’s criticisms, it might be suggested that the elite is the dominant class, at least some of the middle classes are in a contradictory class position (being able to set labour to work but also being set to work by members of the dominant class), and the working classes (including the new affluent workers) are

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dominated classes but divided in all kinds of ways (by age, gender, sector, educational qualifications, level of skill, and so on). It might be instructive to look more closely at the composition of the middle classes in order to distinguish the following groups: 1) those who set labour to work, either through direct employment or through line management, and are not set to work in the same way by others ( for example, they do not rely mainly on a wage or salary for their income or, if they do, they have some power to set the level of remuneration for themselves) – these would be members of the dominant class; 2) those who do not set labour to work at all and rely mainly on a wage or salary for their income – these would be members of the dominated class; and 3) those who both set labour to work (or at least have the capital to do so) and are set to work by others in the same way (middle management springs to mind, or some street-level bureaucrats) – these would be in a contradictory class position and could be affiliated to either the dominant class or the dominated class, depending upon their dispositions. As we saw in Chapter One, Bourdieu’s fundamental concern is with practice (see, for example, Bourdieu, 1977; 1990; 1998; 2000), which he understands as the movement of capital in habitus (basically, people’s dispositions to deploy capital in daily life) in relation to specific fields. If we think of the labour market, for example, as a field (leaving aside the question of its segmentation into a plurality of labour markets), then it can be seen that both employees and employers bring their capital (the former, in the shape of their labour as variable capital, and the latter, in the form of their financial and constant capital) to that field, either to exploit or be exploited. In order to be set to work, workers must be ‘employable’ in some sense, and that involves the cultivation of the disposition to be employed (learning how to play the game – the so-called ‘work ethic’), which is part of the working class habitus. This cultivation in turn involves practice in other fields, particularly the family and the education system. Although Bourdieu’s extension of the concept of capital leaves him open to the accusation of being ‘blind to exploitation’ (Desan, 2013, 336), his conception of forms of capital does reflect ways in which capital can circulate across different fields – for example, (cultural) capital in the form of educational qualifications, itself the product of investment of labour and money, can be ‘invested’ in the labour market by its owner to secure a higher value of variable capital, yielding a higher return in terms of earnings (economic capital). The accumulation of different totals of capital then explains how class inequality takes the form of a ladder, with ‘upper’ classes having the most capital and ‘lower’ classes the least. Bourdieu’s contribution is to show that capitalist production and reproduction are inseparable, part of the same

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capitalist system, and that social classes are made and remade through both kinds of processes and across all fields (Bourdieu, 1987). Crossley (2002) has explored what this means for understanding social movements. He argues that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus contains an explanation of human agency, in that ‘habitus’ denotes the conditions in which individuals and groups find themselves and they act in response to those conditions. In a nutshell: ‘Agents act in situations in accordance with the way in which they define those situations and they define their situations in accordance with the schemas, interests, know-how, etc, that comprise their habitus’ (Crossley, 2002, 172). Bourdieu (1984, 104) argues, however, that ‘there is a strong correlation between social positions and the dispositions of the agents who occupy them’ – so that, in most cases and for most of the time, members of the dominated classes will accept the rules of the game laid down by the dominant class. Similarly, Crossley (2002, 175): ‘Agents act, think, reflect, desire, perceive, make sense, etc, but they always do so by way of habits inherited from the social locations in which they have socialized, which are in turn shaped by wider dynamics of the social world.’ The result is what Bourdieu (1984, 164) calls a ‘competitive struggle’ (illustrated, for example, by negotiations over pay and working conditions), in which the working classes ‘are beaten before they start, as the constancy of the gaps [between dominant and dominated classes] testifies’, and in which the working classes ‘implicitly recognise the legitimacy of the goals pursued by those whom they pursue, by the mere fact of taking part’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 164). For Bourdieu, therefore, the dominated classes within capitalism are an integral part of that system and not necessarily anti-capitalist. Capitalism is inherently volatile and unstable, however, leading to crises in which ‘the dialectic of mutually self-reproducing objective chances and subjective aspirations may break down. Everything suggests that an abrupt slump in objective chances relative to subjective aspirations is likely to produce a break in the tacit acceptance which the dominated classes – now abruptly excluded from the race, objectively and subjectively – previously granted to the dominant goals, and so to make possible a genuine inversion of the table of values’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 164). Bourdieu does not go into the detail of how crises arise but he suggests that it has something to do with internal divisions within the dominant class itself:‘the dominant class … can ensure its own perpetuation only if it is capable of overcoming the crises that are liable to arise from the competition between the fractions [economic, political and cultural elites] to impose the [corresponding]

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dominant principle of domination and from the succession struggles within each fraction’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 293). All this seems to imply that the agency of the working class is mostly conservative, seeking only piecemeal improvements within the existing capitalist system, except in times of society-wide crisis. Bourdieu actually seems to be suggesting that a crisis in the system must occur before the dominated classes will act collectively against their domination. Crossley (2002, 180), however, criticises this simplistic strain model (a strain between objective chances and subjective aspirations) and argues that, since each field has its own forms of social control, structures of opportunity, and types of resource, it will also have its own potential for social movement formation, development and success. He argues that: ‘An analysis of fields and their various interactions allows us to make sense of the strains, opportunities, resource flows, etc, which can give rise to movements’ (Crossley, 2002, 182). Basically, he equates ‘movement’ with Bourdieu’s concept of practice (see above), he clarifies that practices (or social movements) may develop within specific fields as well as across fields and he adds that ‘there is, within our society, a more permanent field of movement and political activism, a political field, wherein various movements stake their claim’ (Crossley, 2002, 183). This point, about the distinctive character of the political field, will be examined further in Chapter Three. In relation to this field, Crossley (2002, 189–90) argues for the possibility of resistance or radical habitus, which ‘can be born in periods of change and discontent and can give rise to durable dispositions towards contention and the various forms of knowhow and competence necessary to contention’ – hence social movements. Given that most, if not all, periods of capitalism are periods of change and discontent, however, it is not clear what this adds to our understanding. On crisis, Crossley (2002, 186) argues, contra Bourdieu, that ‘only certain habits are suspended in periods of crisis, albeit a sufficient number and range to generate a situation of “social unrest” or generative “collective effervescence”.’ In other words, if I understand him correctly, taking the example of the dominated classes, they are always habitually conservative in some respects (or in some fields) but not so in others, and in times of crisis, some of the more conservative habits are suspended, and new habits are formed, which are more critical of the status quo (see, for example, the discussion of riots as a ‘rupture of the habitus’ – Akram, 2014). Unfortunately, however, this does not seem to get us very far in understanding the nature of crises and their significance for social change. It does not engage with the real crises that periodically beset the capitalist system. To explain these, one needs to go back to the contradictions that lie at the heart of the system, namely the capital –labour relation itself.

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It is well known that capitalism goes through cycles of boom and slump, and has done so ever since it became a major force on the world stage (Polanyi, 2002; Stiglitz, 2003; Harman, 2010). Many learned treatises have been written in order to explain this phenomenon and, if possible, put an end to it (perhaps most famously, Keynes, 1936), with which I cannot hope to compete. My point here is only to show how crisis is built into the system itself. Marx, for example, first identified a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This happens because, as capital expands, profit (which is related to surplus value) is continually reinvested in the production of more commodities, which then have to be sold in order to realise more profit.As the output of commodities grows, the returns on investment tend to diminish as demand becomes saturated and prices fall. The capitalist therefore needs to find other ways of increasing profit. Since there is a limit to the amount of value that labour can produce in a given time,1 given a certain level of productivity, the only way that more value can be extracted (thus increasing the rate of profit) is by increasing the productivity of labour. Here the problem for capital arises, in that more productive labour is, generally speaking, labour that is more skilled, and therefore more valuable. From capital’s (or what Marx called ‘Moneybags’!) point of view, labour is a mere cost, which has to be reduced as far as possible, so the preference is to employ less skilled labour because it is cheaper. To solve this problem, capital has followed a contradictory path, by down-skilling existing skilled labour by breaking down the labour process into its constituent activities so that they can be performed by less skilled workers, and by using new up-skilled labour to develop new labour-saving technology and operate with it in the labour process.The path of down-skilling restores the rate of profit by lowering the cost of labour, while the path of up-skilling, although increasing the cost of labour, ensures that the workers produce value over and above the added cost of hiring them – that is, higher productivity, hence higher rate of profit. Capital expansion is therefore characterised by processes of simultaneous down-skilling and up-skilling, which to some extent work against each other, making periodic crises inevitable.12 Currently, on a global scale, capital continues to recruit hundreds of millions more unskilled workers while at the same time up-skilling through the development of new technologies and industries. Boom periods tend to coincide with the rise of new, more productive industries (as in the dot com boom in the 1980s), with higher-value labour, while slumps are likely to be associated with the devaluing of labour, that is, falling wages (which, interestingly, also increases labour productivity). There is of course much more to be said on this issue.13 My main point here, however, is that the crises to which capitalism is prone arise primarily from contradictions within the labour process itself (only one of which

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I have described here), not simply from ‘over-production’ or ‘underconsumption’ or the wider ‘class struggle’. My secondary point is that these crises do not presage an inevitable end of capitalism but are in fact a ‘normal’ feature of the system. Capital both expands itself externally, penetrating new markets and recruiting new labour, and transforms itself internally, innovating and revolutionising the means of production. Contrary to the apocalyptic visions of the Cassandras of ‘end-capitalism’ (Žižek, 2010), therefore, there is no obvious end to this process – every threat to capitalism is also potentially an opportunity for further profit-making.

Capital and community The implications of this analysis for community are immense. Cremin (2011), for example, documents how, in a period where organised labour is relatively weak (due, in part, to the decline of many traditional industries, which were highly unionised), it is basically a matter of every worker for themselves, at least in advanced capitalist countries: As power shifts in favour of capital, workers compete with one another to be the object of the boss’s desire by entering into new productive relationships in and outside of work that promise enhancements to intellectual, physical and social capital. In their enterprise, workers exploit the means for enhancing their job prospects at the expense of other workers and in doing so embrace their servitude by necessity… the qualities workers are now encouraged to possess … only serve to strengthen the grip of employers, both materially and ideologically, over every aspect of our lives. (Cremin, 2011, 33–4) Thus arise what Foucault called ‘technologies of the self ’ that enable individuals to adapt to the labour market (see, for example, Rose, 1998). Part of this adaptation involves not only ignoring the character of labour exploitation but also seeing capitalist work ‘not as a painful obligation imposed on individuals, nor as an activity undertaken for mainly instrumental purposes [i.e. to earn a wage], but rather as a vital means to individual liberty and self-fulfilment’ (Du Gay, 2000, 64, cited in Cremin, 2011, 37). This in turn tends to erode any sense of solidarity or community that may exist within the working class habitus. In order to fulfil themselves, workers are obliged to compete with one another for the boss’s attention and to provide the boss with whatever they may need (BBC1’s The Apprentice is a good example of this). Workers have to demonstrate that they are ‘employable’ (for example, by reference to

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projects they are involved in or have completed, and to connections they have made), even though they usually have little idea of what employers in general might require from them (for a coruscating critique of ‘the culture of employability’, see Cremin, 2011, 37–53; see also Peck, 2001; Sennett, 2006; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). Cremin therefore provides an analysis of the labour market as a system of domination or, more precisely, ‘reflexive exploitation’, a commodification of the self (Cremin, 2011, 45). Each worker adapts themselves not just to particular employers but to the generality of employers, to the demand from capital as a whole. And the adaptation takes place increasingly outside of working hours or through unpaid work ( for example, volunteering, internships); the enslavement of the contemporary worker (or prospective worker) extends beyond the workplace to encompass every facet of their life that might make them more employable, including even their own sense of identity and autonomy14. At the same time, it seems that since the 1970s labour has intensified and the working day has lengthened (Basso, 2003), leaving less time and energy for activity outside of paid work. Cremin (2011) provides a fascinating account of the cultural capital that workers are increasingly required to deploy in the labour market. He makes it clear that workers are not merely victims of capitalist oppression but have real agency in playing the capitalist game.The key question, however, concerns the extent to which individuals have real choice about whether to play the game or not, and the answer for most people seems to be that they do not have a choice, so their freedom must be severely limited. On the other hand, in playing the game they are not just serving their employer, they are also serving themselves to some extent, for example, they may be doing useful work, making rewarding contacts, and becoming more human (rather than unemployable ‘bare life’ – Agamben, 1995).To the extent that the labour market is a free market, then, people can exercise choice within that market, even if they cannot choose not to enter into the market in the first place.The labour market is thus a system of domination in two respects: first, an individual has to enter this market if they have no independent means of earning a living; and second, having found employment, one is subject to the rule of one’s employer. In this system, the dominated can have choice only in relation to how they make themselves employable and which particular employer or kind of employment they seek.This limited concept of freedom (essentially the free movement of labour), along with the corresponding free movement of capital, lie at the root of all liberal thinking (see Chapter Three). We live in capitalist society, and, as shown in this chapter, the capital– labour relation is the main source of domination in that society, giving rise in particular to class inequality and divisions. Capitalism is not the only

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source of domination, however – there are other kinds, which involve systematic discrimination and oppression, for example, on grounds of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion, nationality, and so on. It is important to take account of these in developing the concept of beloved community outlined in Chapter One. Here I wish only to argue that all these other forms of domination are ultimately at odds with capitalist exploitation, even if, contradictorily, they may sometimes be politically advantageous for the dominant class (insofar as they facilitate ‘divide and rule’ of the dominated classes).15 The point is, as has been argued in this chapter, the labour market, which lies at the heart of modern capitalism, works most profitably if both capital and labour are allowed to exchange as freely as possible, and this means that barriers to that exchange must be removed as far as possible.All forms of discrimination in the labour market constitute such barriers, insofar as they result in a job going to a person who is not the best qualified to do that job. Essentially, for free labour market exchange, the only legitimate form of discrimination is in terms of the goodness of fit between the value of the labour power coming to the market and the wages or salary being offered to hire it. In practice, of course, the fit is usually very poor (not only because labour does not move particularly freely but also because the value of labour power is notoriously difficult to determine); nevertheless, systematic discrimination on any of the grounds mentioned above (with the possible exception of disability16) would be likely to be detrimental to profitability in most circumstances because it would mean some applicants being offered jobs that other applicants for the same jobs could do more effectively or productively. Needless to say, perhaps, capitalism is not compatible with community, let alone the beloved community. Capitalism has little room for compassion or loving kindness – everything tends to be reduced to the bottom line, which is the cash nexus and making a profit. It has little time for attachments or ties of any kind, unless these are instrumental to this goal. It is inherently corrosive and destabilising of all communities, even communities of capitalists. DeFilippis et al (2010, 79), echoing Mollenkopf (1981), Logan and Molotch (1987) and Stoecker (1997), provide a clear account of the problem here in relation to communities of place: Communities are divided into a set of use and exchange values, and many of the basic components of community life – schools, parks and other public spaces, houses of worship, rental housing, health care, and so forth – are all defined for the people in communities by their uses, not by their potential exchange value. They are, in short, parts of life that are not viewed as commodities or investments by those using and experiencing

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them. Capital, however, interacts with communities in different ways, and is interested first and foremost, in the commodification of social life, and conversion of what people need into profit. A landlord does not view a multifamily rental property that he or she owns in the same way that the residents of the property do. The goals are structurally different – and, we should add, at least partially structurally antagonistic. (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 79) At the same time, however, capitalism requires high levels of cooperation, trust and collective organisation, and, at least in its more advanced stages, works most effectively in a relatively free society, with freedom of association and speech, and the rule of law – capitalists would not disagree with the definition in Chapter One of a free community as ‘a community of selfrealizing beings who are agents in their own development’ (Clark, 2013, 70), and this is indeed what neoliberals would say they are trying to achieve.17 So the task is really to ‘humanise’ (Restakis, 2010) capitalism, re-asserting some attachments and creating new ones. Above all, the capital–labour relation must be addressed and transformed. Marx’s original idea of communism as enjoyment, play, pleasure and recreation needs to be reclaimed from its woeful legacy of vanguardism, militarism, puritanism, sectarianism and revolutionary heroism (Therborn, 2008). Marx recognised that a worker cooperative is a significant advance within capitalism because it overcomes the division between capital and labour – essentially, workers become their own employers, so the distinction between employer and employee is abolished: The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e. by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. (Marx, 1972, 440) As Marx says, worker cooperatives are still within capitalism – they continue to function as capitalist enterprises, with the workers being employed by the cooperative and the cooperative itself acting in the market like

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any other enterprise. In a sense, the workers in such a cooperative are exploiting themselves, and their capital is part of the capital in general that is the basis of capitalism as a system. Collectively, the cooperative can decide, for example, how to distribute any surplus it may produce but this is tantamount to a power to decide, within certain limits, the rate of exploitation of its members. By the same token, the cooperative can decide what the wage levels of its individual members should be, but the wage form itself remains as an expression of the value of the collective labour power of the cooperative. Just like any other capitalist enterprise, the cooperative has to decide the balance of payments among wages, reinvestment, and loans, and the price its products are likely to fetch in the market. On the other hand, by abolishing the employer/employee relationship, a worker cooperative undermines the key foundation for class inequality. Cooperatives are essentially organisations that are democratically controlled and collectively owned by their members (Somerville, 2007; Woodin et al, 2010; Parnell, 2013), so in principle there are no relations of domination within a worker cooperative, no distinctions between ‘managers’ and ‘managed’.Worker cooperatives, therefore, represent a clear step away from class divisions towards a beloved community, free from domination in the workplace, even though domination (for example, by the market and the state) persists in wider society.18 The big question is how to ensure that worker cooperatives thrive and multiply throughout the world.This is a question which I address to some extent in Part II of this book. Meanwhile, Restakis (2010) has already provided the answer in a general form by showing how cooperatives succeed only if they are embedded within wider cooperative cultures and movements, that is, within free cooperative communities – ‘an autonomous co-operative culture’ (Restakis, 2010, 51). He notes, for example, the remarkable growth of worker cooperatives in Italy since 1971: The answer seems to lie within the ethic and social capital relations among co-operatives themselves once a critical mass of enterprises has been reached. Italian co-operatives mastered the art of mobilizing common interests. In addition, the presence of co-ordinating umbrella institutions capable of forging new partnerships, discerning long-term strategic opportunities at industry levels and mediating the establishment and mobilization of sector-wide resources has been a key factor in the Italian case. (Restakis, 2010, 70) He illustrates this with the case of the construction sector, in which small worker cooperatives were formed from the early 1900s, which then, over

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the years, joined together in consortia of cooperatives across the region of Emilia Romagna. The breakthrough came in 1978 with the merger of these consortia into a single regional consortium, facilitating a large expansion of operations, and finally in 1990 incorporation into a national consortium of building supplies cooperatives, becoming Italy’s leading construction enterprise (Restakis, 2010, 71).The power to create consortia would therefore appear to be key to the expansion of the cooperative model. But first there has to be movement from the workers themselves, a groundswell of opinion in favour of this particular model, expressed most obviously through their trade unions (see Conaty, 2014, 18). Restakis argues that cooperatives can have a highly positive effect on living in a capitalist system: What co-operation can do is humanize a capitalist economy. It can foster and sustain economies of small enterprises that are rooted in community and yet can survive in a global marketplace. It can mitigate the catastrophic effects of largescale, nomadic production systems and their impacts on the environment, the community and the character of work. Cooperation can provide a viable alternative to de-localization and the dehumanizing effects of work devoid of skill. It can cultivate a sense of shared purpose, a collective concern for the success of all enterprises, including one’s competitors, and an understanding that the success of one firm may be intimately connected to the success of all. The success of one enterprise does not require the failure of another. (Restakis, 2010, 86) Restakis thus recognises that successful cooperatives emerge from particular local and regional communities of cooperation,1 and these communities arise in different ways in different places. He notes that these communities include private enterprises as well as cooperatives and that the two types of organisation benefit from one another.This is what I have called ‘community enterprise’ (Somerville and McElwee, 2011; and see Chapter Five of this book), a term that includes a variety of enterprises within a (local) community that work closely together; not all of them are democratically run but, taken together, they serve the community as a whole; those of them that are member-owned I have called ‘community cooperatives’ (Frith et al, 2009). The cooperative movement is arguably a movement in ‘abeyance’ (Taylor, 1989, 761), which needs to be revitalised. In doing this, however, it is important to review the aims of the movement. Is its purpose to develop cooperative enterprise as an end in itself, or is this only a means to an end

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– and if so, what might this end be? Buber (1958), for example, argued that it is not enough to have cooperative production and consumption – what is required is cooperative living. This involves more than mutual aid or exchange, it must also be about giving without expectation of receiving in return, based on collective expression of compassion and solidarity – in other words, the beloved community (see also Landauer, 1978). Cooperatives then have to be seen as an integral part of cooperative living, as associations based in community, and this community needs to be seen as active on all scales – local, regional, national, continental, global. Caring relationships, for example, whether they involve our nearest and dearest or refugees from any part of the world, are not fundamentally about exchange or reciprocity (although exchanges are certainly involved) but about encounter, shared experience, affinity (being ‘on the same wavelength’) and commitment. In practice, commitment can be time-limited and conditional, that is, dependent on reciprocation, leading to a more loosely associated community, but it can also be permanent and unconditional, with no strings attached, leading to a beloved community. Arguably, commitment to a cooperative community must be unconditional in order to ground and sustain a cooperative economy – otherwise the prevalence of loose associations within and among cooperatives will tend to result in the degeneration of those cooperatives into conventional private enterprises (Somerville, 2007), most notably through the usurpation of democratic authority by managerial elites (Davis, 2013). It follows that cooperatives should not be seen as an end in themselves but only as a means to the end of a beloved community.20

Evidence of the effects of capitalism on local workingclass communities Historically, there have been numerous studies, particularly in US and UK, that looked at the effects of capitalism on poorer working-class communities, from Engels (1845) through Mayhew (1851), Stedman Jones (1976), Roberts (1990), Rowntree (1901) and Thompson (2013), up to Piven and Cloward (1972; 1977), Sennett and Cobb (1972) and, most recently, Ehrenreich (2001), Collins (2004), Hanley (2007), Jones (2012), Tyler (2013a), O’Hara (2015) and McKenzie (2015). Here I provide just a few examples of both the obvious and hidden ‘injuries of class’ (as Sennett and Cobb call them). Sennett and Cobb (1972) conducted 150 interviews with working men and women in Boston, Massachusetts, and found a mix of beliefs about their position in capitalist society. On the one hand, they recognised that their work was not respected or valued as they thought it should be (they

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were just treated as ‘part of the woodwork’ or cogs in a machine). On the other hand, they felt that they were the only ones to blame for not ‘making something of themselves’, that is, rising up the echelons of class society. Two facts, however, reveal the problematic character of this mindset. First, it is clearly impossible for everyone to ‘rise’ in this way, given the nature of capitalist work (social mobility works only for the fortunate few, and only when additional ‘higher class’ jobs are created for them to occupy), so it is unreasonable for someone to consider themselves a failure for not having done so. Second, in those cases where a worker does rise to a more middle-class job, they feel themselves to be a traitor to their class, having joined the bosses whom they affected to despise and no longer performing work that they personally value. So for them making something of themselves would actually mean losing something that they really value about themselves – which again seems unreasonable. Sennett and Cobb’s work therefore shows the extent of what Bourdieu called the ‘symbolic violence’ done to the working class in terms of damage to people’s dignity and self-respect. Some (particularly male) workers actually seemed to embrace this symbolic violence, regarding their work as a sacrifice made for the sake of their families, in return for which they gained legitimate power over those families – hence the link between capitalism and patriarchy.21 MacDonald et al (2005, 880–1) (see Chapter One) documented how features of the labour market serve to produce or reinforce working-class poverty and disadvantage: [V]irtually all [of our interviewees] displayed work histories – into their mid and late 20s – that consisted of various combinations of: government schemes that rarely led to lasting employment; unfinished and/or low-level educational courses; low/no skill, low paid, insecure employment; and recurrent periods of unemployment. Individuals transited between these labour market statuses with little sense of forward motion toward more secure, rewarding employment. They concluded that ‘unemployment, job insecurity and poor work have become common working-class experiences’ (MacDonald et al, 2005, 882; see also Bright, 2011). Most young people in this study got jobs through friends, neighbours and family members, which suggests that attachment to the community is seen as important for finding work. However: Because those that helped in finding jobs were also typically confined to the same sectors of the labour market as them, our interviewees remained constrained to work at the bottom of the

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labour market that offered little chance of personal progression. Interviewees became trapped in insecure, ‘poor work’ with little or no training or prospect of internal promotion and few bridges to more permanent, rewarding employment and, thus, were unable to escape the churning of cyclical labour market careers. As the years passed, they became even less attractive to those with better employment to offer. (MacDonald et al, 2005, 884–5). This describes vividly the encapsulated character of the community (strong attachment to the area itself and to one another within that community, but not to the world outside that community), associated with its isolation from better job opportunities. Working class communities have always been, and continue to be, characterised by status differences, for example, between skilled artisans and unskilled labourers. Much of the literature, however, seems to be less concerned about such recognised status differences than about claimed status differences, expressed (for example) in terms of the distinction between ‘rough’ and ‘respectable’ people (a distinction that goes back at least to Morris and Mogey, 1965; for a more recent study, see Nayak, 2006). Skeggs (1997, 81–94) points out that this distinction is gendered, with working class women claiming to be respectable in order to avoid being looked down on and known as ‘rough’ or ‘common’.Watt (2006, 778–9) remarks: ‘Intra-class status distinctions between the “rough” and “respectable” have a long historical pedigree in English working-class neighbourhoods and were prominent in both the pre- and post-war periods’.The distinction is related to recognised status differences but involves (alleged) behavioural differences as well: Skill and income could play a part, with skilled manual workers and their families more likely to regard themselves, and be regarded by others, as respectable compared to the unskilled. Behavioural factors were also significant with the ‘roughs’ described by Roberts (1995, 7) as those ‘who can be characterized by violence, whether to people or to property, frequent drunkenness and petty criminality’. Respectability was signified by sobriety, respect for the law and hard work, while for women it was also associated with ‘keeping up appearances’ via the maintenance of a clean and tidy home. (Watt, 2006, 779) Problems arise with this distinction, however, when it comes to identifying who counts as ‘rough’ and who counts as ‘respectable’.The main difficulty

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is that people are not always what they claim to be. In general, those of higher status are more likely to succeed in their claims than those of lower status, so someone from a skilled worker family claiming to be respectable is more likely to have their claim accepted than someone from an unskilled worker family – irrespective of any actual differences between the behaviour of the two individuals. Consequently, in the absence of a long-term mass observation project, it is practically impossible to sort the members of any working-class community into these two groups. The distinction is mythical in the sense that, even if it were possible to distinguish clearly between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour, one is always likely to find examples of both kinds of behaviour in all sections of the community, and even in the same individual. It is also insidious insofar as it feeds prejudice along lines of both class and race. Finally, it seems almost irrelevant to understanding, let alone resolving, the problems that beset working-class communities (for example, people living in these communities have to be ‘tough’,2 rather than ‘rough’, in order to be respected by their peers and therefore presumably to be ‘respectable’). A further study that helps to explain the attachment of young women in particular to encapsulated communities is that of Measor (2006).This was a study of young women living on two very deprived housing estates in Brighton. On these estates, there was a high sense of risk and fear, especially of powerful families who had a ‘reputation’ in the area, and who could provide ‘protection’, particularly for young women. Measor shows how being ‘hard’, and coming from a criminal family who dominate the area, achieves relatively high status, which appears attractive to vulnerable young women. Her argument is that young women are helping themselves by ‘building a tie of flesh, and sealing it permanently with a blood connection’ (Measor, 2006, 192).23 This seems to be a striking example of the gendered character of the effects of encapsulation, whereby male dominance in the community (which numerous writers have commented on – most notably, Campbell, 1993) is legitimated, reinforced and reproduced through the ‘rational’, self-interested choices of the female community members. Overall these studies suggest that poorer working-class communities are not just socially excluded and encapsulated but abject (Kristeva, 1982), in that they have been cast out and down by capitalism. The resurgence of the age-old distinction between ‘roughs’ and ‘respectables’ is merely a symptom of the increased denigration of working-class life and the attempts to escape it or rise above it (see Chapters Eight and Nine). What is also not generally recognised, however, is that people in these communities do indeed find alternative ways of coping and getting on in this habitus, in particular through participation in criminal gangs (Walsh, 2003; Harding, 2014) and drug dealing generally (McKenzie, 2015).A habitus of toughness

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or hardness, admittedly a caricature of forms of traditional manual labour, is also a rational and to some extent effective response to the experience of abjection, especially when combined with an entrepreneurial spirit, which is, ironically, encouraged by the powers that be (more of which in Chapter Three).24

Community development Community development originated as a colonial project (Mayo, 1975). As Clarke (2009, 82) points out, it emerged out of the need of imperialist countries (UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands) to ‘divide and rule’, to control colonised populations in India, Africa and other parts of the world (see also Robson, 2000). In this approach: Government stands outside and above the field of communities, providing the framework to enable communities to reconcile their differences. So, colonial governments simultaneously invented and enforced these categories of community and claimed to stand outside intercommunal tensions. As the representatives of ‘civilisation’, colonial governors administered and adjudicated between the different ‘native communities’. (Clarke, 2009, 82–3) From this perspective (a perspective of governmentality – see Chapter Four), community development involved preparing ‘native’ populations for independence and helping to ensure their continued cooperation with their former colonisers in what was to be the post-colonial era. Echoes of this approach can still be heard today in some of the thinking that permeates so-called ‘development studies’, where development is understood in terms of ‘strengthening voice and strengthening responsiveness to voice’ (Gaventa, 2004). According to this neo-colonial thinking, the primary purpose of community development is to build good relations between communities and governments. This is to be achieved in two ways: on the one hand, by strengthening the capacity of communities to represent themselves (‘voice’) (compare the coloniser’s preparation of its colony for independence by establishing the civic infrastructure necessary for democratic government); and on the other hand, by strengthening the capacity of government to manage the demands voiced by communities (obviously, it will not be able to meet all these demands) – compare the role of, for example, the Department for International Development in responding to the needs of post-colonial populations.

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From the coloniser’s point of view, neo-colonialism has been extremely successful. For example, nearly all ex-colonies have become members of the British Commonwealth (the most notable exception being Eire), and relations between the mother country and the other members have generally been good (the most notable exception in recent years being Zimbabwe). The situation looks very different, however, from the viewpoint of the colonised. In what is known as the global South, community development has often been seen as a creature of governmental elites in both the mother country (see Chapter Four) and the newly independent country and, to a lesser extent, of powerful non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (see, for example, Hall and Midgley, 2004). The former colonies have largely been left to their own devices,2 with substantial well-intentioned intervention being only a very rare occurrence (for example, in the case of the civil war in Sierra Leone).26 What has perhaps been less recognised is the extent of neo-colonialism within the UK. Northern Ireland, as Clarke (2009, 82) recognises, has long been regarded by the British government in a colonial light, as divided between ‘the two communities’.Apart from this, however, the neo-colonial approach to community development within Britain is clearly revealed in its governmental claim to stand outside class divisions as well as racial and ethnic divisions, and in its various attempts over the years to achieve harmony and cohesion between all these different ‘communities’ (see Chapter Four). This claim is of course no more valid within the UK than outside the UK, the main difference being that within the UK substantial governmental interventions are only too common. Other approaches to community development seem to emphasise participation27 and social justice, though what these terms mean is open to a great variety of interpretations (see, for example, the definition by the Community Development Exchange, 2001). The focus has been almost entirely on local community (see, for example, DeFilippis et al, 2010;Taylor, 2011)28, and largely on promoting self-help (Twelvetrees, 2002) based on an analysis of community pathology (Batten and Batten, 1967). In the UK for example, community work arose after the second world war, initially to restore local community ties broken by physical displacement (Taylor, 2011, 27) (due to the war itself and then to slum clearance and the building of new towns and new housing estates). Later, in the 1960s, especially in the US, community work aimed to address inner-city problems such as racial conflict and rising crime, caused by deindustrialisation and struggles against capitalist exploitation and racism (Popple and Shaw, 1997). Community participation came to the fore in the UK with the national Community Development Project in the 1960s, emphasising reducing poverty and improving community services in inner-city areas. Contrary to local

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community pathology assumptions, reports from this Project concluded that the problems in these areas were consequences of the way that capitalism works (for example, flight of capital from less profitable to more profitable areas), and could not be solved by action at local level alone (CDP, 1977).29 If these conclusions are correct (and no one seems to doubt them), it throws into question the whole purpose of community work as a neutral professional or ‘technical’ activity, concerned with applying sticking plasters to gaping wounds instead of undertaking major surgery, and with reconciling abject communities to their fate rather than challenging the forces that have brought them down (Craig, 1989; and similarly Stoecker, 2008, on Community Development Corporations in the US).30 These criticisms apply with even greater cogency, however, to approaches that advocate communities being left to develop themselves, relying mainly on their own informal networks of material and emotional support and other ‘assets’, without any need for external assistance (see Burns and Taylor, 1998; Richardson, 2008; and Skerratt and Steiner, 2013, on the ‘complexities of empowerment’; on the complexities of observed and experienced communities, see Holman, 2015).3 It is important, of course, to recognise the resources that even the poorest communities may have but it is also important to recognise that these resources are often woefully insufficient to ensure that their needs are met.32 More sophisticated versions of the ‘traditional’ community work approach are still very much current. These seem to put their faith in what in the US is called ‘community building’, that is, the building of ‘capacity’ or ‘capabilities’ (Sen, 1999; Carpenter, 2009) or ‘assets’ (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993) or ‘networks’ (Gilchrist, 2009), and to treat their sticking plasters as a form of ‘social capital’ (for a critique of community capacity building, see Craig, 2007, and for a critique of Gilchrist, see Somerville, 2011a, 41–2).33 At their best, these approaches can be claimed to involve the accumulation of different forms of capital (cultural and symbolic as well as economic and social). Thomson and Caulier-Grice (2007, 6), for example, drew evidence from studies in a number of countries (not only UK but also Denmark, Australia, Canada and France) that suggested that small community organisations can generate and mobilise different types of social capital, break down divisions in communities and empower individuals (see also Richardson, 2008). Economic capital in the form of funding for such community groups can be very helpful in enabling them to build trust within and between groups that leads to a range of other benefits (Taylor et al, 2007). Many other studies have shown that the development of community networks increases the choices and information available to communities, as well as their capacity for collective action (see, for example, Jochum, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Kapasi, 2006; and the studies in Rogers and

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Robinson, 2004). Community building should therefore not be dismissed entirely – efforts to build community have their place, particularly within wider projects, for example for community learning (see Chapter Six), community economic development (see Chapter Five) and community health and social care (see Chapter Seven, and, in particular, Pearce, 2012). At the same time, however, it is clear that these approaches are mostly based on self-help ideology or ‘bootstrap’ thinking (believing that communities can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps – with some help from ‘professionals’)34 and do not take sufficient account of how capitalism actually works (for criticism along similar lines, see Mayer, 2003; Berner and Phillips, 2005; Kubisch et al, 2008).35 Shragge (2003) argues that community work in the US mostly aims for social integration, not social change. For a critique of community building approaches to impoverished neighbourhoods in the US on the grounds that they ignore the city-wide processes that contribute to their impoverishment, see Fraser et al (2008); see also DeFilippis et al (2010, 29):‘most contemporary models of community building and development focus exclusively on the local internal community, not the economic, political, and social decisions that rest outside the community and create community needs and concerns.’ (later they refer to this as ‘contextual myopia’ – DeFilippis et al, 2010, 111) Arguably also, all the emphasis on communities developing themselves, using their own resources, is unnecessary because, if they could do so, then presumably they would be doing it already.36 Consequently, alternative approaches have been developed, which use large group mobilisation and, in some cases, confrontational tactics, with specific political and policy goals, emphasising ‘empowerment’ of the powerless.The most well-known of these approaches is community organising (Alinsky, 1969; 1971; Ledwith, 2005, 87–92;Taylor and Wilson, 2015) (see Box 2.1 on how ACORN works – going beyond local community), though in the UK there is also something known as ‘critical community practice’, which is understood to mean working with and alongside disadvantaged, excluded and oppressed communities, challenging established power, acting reflexively, and aiming for transformational change (Butcher, 2007, 34). This seems to include community organising, and also critical popular education (Freire, 1972; and see Chapter Six). Similarly, there is ‘radical’ community work or practice that ‘unites people in collective action beyond the boundaries of neighbourhood to engage in wider structural change’ (Ledwith, 2005, 21) – this also seems to be what Ledwith and Springett (2010) mean by ‘participatory practice’. As an example of such practice, Ledwith (2005, 68) describes a ‘Freirean–feminist’ model, in which community groups meet to exchange stories about who they are and what has shaped them in their world, using the stories to reflect on

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their lives and problematize their experiences (thus achieving ‘critical consciousness’), developing skills of listening and empathy, engaging in dialogue, reflecting further on themselves and on the process, building a collective story, making critical connections with ‘the bigger picture’, and then moving to collective action for change on a broader front (through alliances and networks). It seems that the community worker is part of the process throughout, working with the community on a more or less equal basis;3 at the same time, however, it seems that the community worker plays a crucial leading role, in forming the group itself, understanding group dynamics and leadership (Ledwith, 2005, 94), enabling or facilitating the dialogue within the group, posing the problems, and linking the personal to the political (Ledwith, 2005, 69). This seems to me a conception of the community worker (or ‘participatory practitioner’ – Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 161) as heroic (but modest and humble) leader – a charismatic figure with great compassion, commitment, sensitivity, understanding and political nous (role models include Gandhi, Freire and Vandana Shiva).38 It is not always clear, however, what relationship this conception bears to the experience of those on the receiving end of community work. When it comes to examples of concrete issues, we find only things like ‘the need for safer play facilities in the community’ (Ledwith, 2005, 99),39 which, though no doubt important for those affected, do not seem to require the deep theoretical and political analysis and professional skills that Ledwith advocates. On the contrary, the concerns of community work often seem rather parochial, and well within the competence of communities to tackle themselves on their own, perhaps in cooperation with their local councils.There seems to be a huge gulf between such parochial concerns, activities and aspirations and ‘the capacity of people to transform the world on their own behalf ’ (in which Ledwith, 2005, 100, purports to believe). Ledwith and Springett (2010) do mention a few concrete examples of community practice that go beyond the local – specifically relating to community health (which I discuss in Chapter Seven) but what they mean by ‘wider structural change’ remains fuzzy. For example, they refer to one example of participatory practice in which the goal in ten years’ time was that: ‘People would look happier’ (Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 183). This would not only fail to go beyond the local but is also difficult to take seriously as evidence of structural change or transformation – yet it would be perfectly compatible with traditional community work, of which they are ostensibly so critical. Ledwith (2005) is therefore rather lacking on evidence to support the extravagant claims she makes for radical community work40, and similarly with Ledwith and Springett (2010) on participatory practice.The later book amplifies on the former one by advocating a grand theory of participation

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as practice, critical education, empowerment, social justice, democracy, biodiversity and personal and social transformation, ‘the antithesis of isolation, marginalisation, exclusion, powerlessness and alienation’ (Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 57), and also as a kind of magic41 wand that can be waved to dissolve dichotomies between structure and agency, self and society, subject and object, yin and yang, reason and emotion, body and soul, matter and mind, secular and spiritual, heart and head (Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 76–7). Nevertheless, their concept of participation does resonate with the idea of a beloved community and they also seem to have moved away from the notion of a community worker as some kind of specialist in working with communities and are more open minded about what skills such a worker might need – indeed, their conception of participatory practice seems to include practice that does not involve community workers as such at all but other kinds of specialists such as educators, health workers, and local government workers.42 Above all, however, the community worker is seen as a ‘critical educator’ (Ledwith, 2005, 95), whose job it is to get people to see the world in a different way and be critical of the powers that be.This offers the prospect that community work could have important influence over a longer period of time. Ledwith and Springett (2010) are particularly keen on participatory (or emancipatory) action research as a method to achieve this. But does this actually happen? And if so, what difference does it make to the world? Ledwith (2005, 142) cites Lockhart (1999, 92) as claiming that there is no evidence that critical pedagogy is capable of transformative social change, and although she cites others who contest this, she provides no evidence herself (see Chapter Six for further discussion of critical education). The little evidence that is adduced in Ledwith and Springett (2010), buried as it is in a mass of normativity and exhortation, also seems to suggest that such pedagogy on its own can have only limited and local effects. Although their only reference is to Ledwith (2005), Chanan and Miller (2013) criticise, in a similar vein to the above, what they call ‘radicalist’ (page 40) and ‘critical’ (page 44) approaches to community work. Instead, they advocate a ‘reformist community practice’ (page 46), accommodated to the reality of capitalist society.This seems to me, however, to be just a reassertion of the traditional approach to community work, and its emphasis on strengthening communities and strengthening governmental responses to communities also seems to echo earlier neo-colonial approaches. Their emphasis on neighbourhood in particular suggests that community development is just a matter of ‘improving’ the organisation of activities within specific geographical areas. Neighbourhoods no doubt can be ‘transformed’ (regenerated, revitalised, renewed, and so forth) in all sorts of ways but it is difficult to see how communities can be liberated on the

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scale of a neighbourhood. Unfortunately, Chanan and Miller provide no detailed factual evidence43 on how their preferred organisational form of neighbourhood partnerships actually works44. Looking at the skills required of a community practitioner (Chanan and Miller, 2013, 107) also suggests to me certain heroic qualities, albeit those of a heroic manager rather than a heroic leader. DeFilippis et al (2010) are similarly focused on the local and committed to community organising for societal change, but they are clearer than Ledwith et al about the outside help that local communities need in order to achieve this change, and clearer than Chanan and Miller about the kind of political action needed (see also DeFilippis, 2004).They point out that, historically, successful community organising beyond the local has always been associated with being part of a wider social movement, such as communist and labour movements in the US in the 1930s and civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s,45 and this is important because:‘Even more than community organization, [social movements] have the power to force claims, politics, strategies and tactics onto not only the local but also the state and national political stage, thereby legitimizing and catapulting them beyond traditional barriers’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 54–5). On the other hand: ‘history also demonstrates that local organizing gives birth to, galvanises, and sustains social movements’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 55). So there is a reciprocal (though often conflictual) relationship between local community action and wider social movement organisation – a finding that returns us to a consideration of the role of social movements in relation to community (see below). Another important point that DeFilippis et al (2010, 57) make is that community action is not necessarily progressive but can be conservative or reactionary ( for example, to protect property and privilege, and/or to exclude ‘undesirable’ people and developments – see, for example, Chapter Eight of this book, and neighbourhood homeowners’ associations in the US in the 1950s, focused mostly on racial exclusion – DeFilippis et al, 2010, 61–3).The most successful community organising in the US in recent years has been that by the Christian Coalition, which DeFilippis et al (2010, 128–32) attribute to how well its community organising is integrated into a national social movement organisation, with a clear political agenda and mobilising ideology, and strong electoral activism.46 In contrast, ACORN (see Box 2.1), the only progressive community organising body in the US that has a national framework, has no clear political direction or radical vision, no effective critique of capitalism and no proposals for alternatives to capitalism.

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Box 2.1: How ACORN works ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) is the largest national network in the US devoted to organising poor communities. It campaigns for a living wage for all workers and for justice for those on ‘workfare’. It emphasises building organisations from scratch controlled by community leadership, and collecting dues from members to make the organisations as self-sustaining as possible. In Alinsky style, the organiser’s role is to build local leadership, and to remain in the background as support when it becomes time for public actions and negotiations. ACORN follows four main steps in its campaigns:

Step 1 Organise ACORN employs its own organisers across the US, recruited largely from their own communities. Organisers start by knocking on every door in the community, learning what issues are of concern to people, and signing up people as members. Then they organise small block meetings, then multi-block meetings, then neighbourhood-wide meetings. Members gradually move into positions of recruiting other members to join, go to meetings, and do the work of the organisation. Step 2 Get the message out ACORN has a reputation for holding large rallies and public meetings and other confrontational actions when needed, along with employing a sophisticated negotiation model whenever possible. Use of the mass media figures very strongly in disseminating the message to as many people as possible as powerfully as possible. Step 3 Political pressure Public and private sector organisations who have the power to do something about the problem are approached directly with clear practical demands. For example: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. This organisation relied heavily on employing people on ‘workfare’ (so-called ‘general relief’ workers). ACORN demanded:

• jobs at the hospital doing building and grounds maintenance; • jobs in building a new hospital; • negotiations with the hospital within two weeks;

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• negotiations with the County Department of Human Resources within two weeks. Step 4 Arrest retrenchment ACORN has found that, unless punitive policies against the poor are vigorously and persistently opposed, then even more punitive policies tend to follow further down the line. Therefore it is essential to keep up the pressure – sometimes, a case of running to stand still. Sources: ACORN video (2000); Dreier (2005); DeFilippis et al (2010, 153–63)

What Taylor (2011, 256) calls ‘scaling up’ (or going beyond the local) therefore appears to be crucial if community action is to have any substantial and durable success, and this scaling up involves integration of a wide variety of local organising processes within a national (and possibly international) organisation (or at least a social network or set of ‘social relays’ – Ohlemacher, 1992) that make connections between different communities) that in some way represents a social movement with clear aims and sense of its own identity. DeFilippis et al (2010, 171–2) emphasise the importance of creating ‘alternative practices that challenge dominant ones. Examples are the wide array of popularly or democratically run organizations that embody the creation of social and economic alternatives, such as cooperatives, or alternative services such as feminist-oriented health services and domestic violence shelters.These can be understood as entering into conflict with dominant practices by developing institutions with alternative values and practices such as participatory democratic control. We see these as connecting the alternative to the oppositional.’ Examples in the UK include Coin Street Community Builders in Lambeth, London, the Eldonians in Vauxhall, Liverpool, Royds Community Association in Bradford,Walterton and Elgin Community Homes in Westminster, London, and Witton Lodge in Birmingham (Somerville, 2010d, 94–7). DeFilippis et al’s (2010, 175) comments on the relationship between local community organising and the development of social movements, a relationship that they see as key to sustaining these alternative practices in the long term, are perhaps worth quoting in full: History shows us that local organizing gives birth to, galvanizes, and sustains social movements, such as the labor, civil rights, women’s, or gay movements.There is not a logical progression for grassroots work to evolve into larger efforts; usually they just remain local…. But when connected to a social movement,

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that dynamic can change. Historically, social movements begin in local social-movement organizations such as an organizing committee, but truly burst onto the scene on a larger scale. These larger-scale interventions fuel local efforts, providing more power, sparking and giving confidence to an oppositional imagination, legitimizing claims and grassroots work, and sustaining and galvanizing community efforts. Relatedly, local/ community efforts often start out as social movements, whether the ‘backyard revolution’ of the 1970s that followed on the heels of the anti-war and student movements, or the origins of local feminist consciousness-raising groups as a product of both the New Left and civil rights movements. Sometimes social movements begin at a larger level and work their way down. For example, the peace and disarmament movement in the 1980s put itself on the political landscape by organizing huge national and international demonstrations. Following them and supporting subsequent demonstrations, work on the local level included the promotion of nuclear-free zones and other campaigns that brought local organizations to the wider movement. Community organising is relatively unusual in the UK but a good example, which also goes beyond the local, is London Citizens (Wills, 2012; see Box 2.2). Essentially, London Citizens is an alliance or coalition of community organisations across London, representing, in East London alone, ‘tens of thousands of people from some of the poorest, most mobile and diverse geographical areas of the country’ (Wills, 2012, 122). It includes trade union branches, faith groups, educational organisations and local community associations (for more on coalitions between unions and community organisations, see Tattersall, 2010).Wills points to the key advantage of this way of working, involving institutional membership rather than individual membership, in that it enables ‘scaling up’ of organisation from the level of small inner-city areas and individual faith and interest groups to the city as a whole and an intersectional social movement for social and political change: ‘The multi-scalar dimensions of London Citizens allow relatively isolated individuals from local organisations to be connected to a larger network that is then able to establish relationships with political and business leaders in the city’ (Wills, 2012, 123). People are engaged on the basis of their existing attachments (to faith, trade union, school, university or community group), and then, through finding common ground and sharing experiences of collectivity, they become additionally attached to the wider community of London Citizens.This is similar to the way political parties

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work, except that London Citizens does not have individual members and does not (yet?) contest elections – it acts rather as a pressure group to influence the powerful to make changes. It is in fact remarkably similar to ACORN in the US not only in its mode of organisation but also in some of the issues on which it has campaigned, for example, the living wage. It also appears to have the same weaknesses, for example, lack of resources and lack of strong ties in its networks (Wills, 2012, 124), as well as lack of a common perspective on capitalism. Skidmore (no date, 5) notes: There is nothing particularly revolutionary about COF’s [Citizens Organising Foundation, of which London Citizens forms a part] techniques: the emphasis on campaigning; the slow, painstaking construction of a coalition of progressive organisations in particular areas; careful, inclusive negotiations to establish shared priorities; realistic goals for change; judicious selection of targets, most famously the Canary Wharf financial institutions; a willingness to embrace creative, eye-catching ways to get their message across. The COF succeeds because it secures direct, tangible improvements in people’s lives.

Box 2.2: London Citizens London Citizens does not fit easily into any of the familiar political models. ‘It is not a political party, not an advocacy organisation, not a social provider, not a single issue campaign group, not a social movement, not even a community group in the conventional sense’ (Jane Wills, 2013). Instead London Citizens describes itself as a broad-based alliance, made up of diverse, grass-roots community organisations (mostly faith-based) (Bunyan, 2010), working together for the common good (compare ACORN in Box 2.1). London Citizens’ philosophy begins from the premise that citizen self-organisation, civil society, ‘the third sector’ has been undervalued in favour of the market and the state. London Citizens builds relationships, both between individuals and among institutions. It believes that, by investing energy in getting to know one another, trust and solidarity is developed between disparate communities. Relationships within the organisation are built in regular two- and five-day training sessions at which leaders from member organisations are taken through the basics of community organising (compare Freire’s popular education discussed above). The most important lesson is always the one that teaches participants how to do one-to-one meetings. This is the core of relational organising. The aim of such

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a meeting is not to ‘sell’ London Citizens, nor to recruit someone to a campaign, but to find out who they are and what moves them. London Citizens’ organisers are appointed by trustees from member organisations as part of a process of finding and developing community leaders. The leadership attributes that organisers are looking for are not always the obvious ones. Leaders are people with passion and anger, who can see the world ‘as it should be’. They have a ‘following’ not necessarily because they hold any official position but because their neighbours, colleagues or workmates listen to them and respect their views. And they are prepared to act to bring about change. Leadership for London Citizens is a collective process, not reliant on charismatic individuals. London Citizens is bold, whereas many other organisations are timid. Member organisations are expected to take action on the issues that concern them. If a local group identifies a campaign it wants to pursue, it will set up an action team to drive the strategy through. London Citizens has campaigned on issues that range from local problems like the lack of bins in Southwark and street lighting on Whitechapel Road to largerscale issues such as the living wage for London or the treatment of migrants coming into the UK. These campaigns are not discrete. One segues into another, as campaigners discover that low paid workers need affordable housing and that irregular migrant workers struggle to earn a living wage. So taking part in action teaches both political skills and a wider social analysis. London Citizens has had some spectacular policy victories. Its living wage campaign has changed the industrial relations climate among private contractors and their clients. Once large employers washed their hands of employment matters; once they contracted out their cleaning and catering. But London Citizens has insisted that employers take responsibility for ensuring that all staff, whether employed directly or through private contractors, are paid a wage adequate to live on. Major firms in the City and Canary Wharf, as well as health trusts and universities, now require their contractors to pay a living wage. The Greater London Authority set up the Living Wage Unit in 2005, and the Mayor of London announced the London Living Wage in 2013 (initially at £8.80 per hour, increased to £9.15 in 2014). Perhaps most surprising has been the success of Strangers Into Citizens, a campaign to establish a route into citizenship for irregular migrant workers, which was launched in 2006 and endorsed by all four mayoral candidates in 2008. A more timid organisation would not have taken on something so controversial, but London Citizens has proved that it is worth pushing boundaries to bring about social change.

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London Citizens operates on different scales: neighbourhood, district (London borough) and city (London as a whole), and is also a member of Citizens UK, which originally launched the Living Wage Foundation in 2001. From its roots in community unionism in the East End (The East London Community Organisation (TELCO)), it has grown to speak and act for Londoners generally. Its organisers work with communities of different kinds, in different areas and on different scales. Source: Adapted from Littman, 2008; Wills, 2012

Three broad and overlapping approaches to community development have been identified in this section. First, a neo-colonial approach that places itself outside and above communities, with an emphasis on good ‘community relations’, social order and cohesion. Second, a reformist approach that involves working with communities, with an emphasis on community building and social inclusion. Third, a radical approach, working in and beyond local community, with an emphasis on community organising and social transformation. The first two approaches are sponsored mainly by governments but also, increasingly, by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The review of the literature shows the relative success of these two approaches from the point of view of the dominant class (as neo-colonisers in the first case and neo-liberalisers in the second), and relative failure so far as the dominated classes are concerned who, as well as continuing to be exploited and down-trodden, are now increasingly suffering the symbolic violence of being made to feel that it is their own fault for not developing themselves, for example, by ‘participating’, taking the initiative, seizing opportunities allegedly made available to them, and so on. Arguably, therefore, only the third approach holds out the promise of real improvement in the lives of people in the poorest communities. Even this approach is fraught with difficulties, and the claims made by some of its advocates are not always supported by research evidence. It seems clear, however, that success comes from embedding community organising within a multiscalar social movement for change in the political field. Such a movement must ultimately challenge the exploitative relationships that lie at the heart of capitalism, for example by building on the achievements of the cooperative movement and by developing new forms of political action and organisation.

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Conclusion State-sponsored community development will be considered further in Chapter Four. Here I want to reflect only on the lessons for community development from the analyses of capitalism and community so far, and particularly for the prospects for a beloved community. Capitalism is a system that depends on the circulation of capital through different forms (as money, production and commodities). In this system, labour power is a crucial commodity because its activation ensures that capital expands in value, producing surplus value for those who set the labour to work (employers, capitalists).At the heart of capitalism, therefore, lies a fundamental division between employers (bosses) and employees (workers), based on the exploitation of labour. As owners and sellers of a precious commodity (namely their own labour power), workers are part of capitalism but they are not in a position to choose otherwise.They may either approve or disapprove of capitalism but they do not have a choice of whether to play the game or not – at least most of the time. As the primary producers of use-value, however, they are in a position to envisage a world beyond capitalism, where they are no longer exploited by capitalists and can experiment with non-commodified forms of production. They can build their own resources (earnings, skills, connections, qualifications, and so on), both individually and collectively, in terms of working-class organisations, and deploy these resources to improve their position in the system and to develop alternatives to that system. For this to happen, however, they need a sense of community (sometimes called ‘solidarity’), which comes from a recognition that they occupy the same habitus as exploited wage earners with relatively little capital of any kind. This solidarity exists both within and beyond the workplace: it arises from cooperation within the workplace but extends to support cooperation outside the workplace. Working-class solidarity or community has been eroded over the years, in a number of ways (arguably, this is the key source for the old refrain of ‘the decline of community’). Occupational change is no doubt a major factor behind this decline, with the disappearance of jobs in manufacturing, mining, shipbuilding, heavy engineering, and so on. More fundamentally, however, it is the increased freedom of capital to move where it likes that is responsible: in a globalised market, capital is more easily disinvested from production in areas where labour is more expensive or less productive and reinvested where labour is cheaper or more productive. The capitalists take no responsibility for the negative repercussions on the communities affected by such disinvestment. As a form of capital, the same argument applies to labour: insofar as labour is free to move where it likes (in practice, this freedom is far more restricted than that of capital more generally), it

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tends to move away from low wage areas towards high wage areas, leaving poorer areas even further impoverished. Here, however, the migrating workers in some cases may retain ties with their home communities, using their higher wages to help support those communities – that is, labour, unlike capital, may sometimes accept some responsibility towards the community that it leaves. In these circumstances, it would seem that the most logical way to prevent and even perhaps reverse community decline would be to impose conditions on the freedom of both capital and labour, to ensure that they pay adequate compensation for the harm they inflict on communities when they move. Under current global arrangements, however, this is not practicable – and even if it were, it would be of little benefit to communities in the long run (the capital in one case, and the labour in the other, would still be lost to their original communities). Under capitalism, the situation can change only if the labour becomes cheaper or more productive in the areas that capital has left, giving rise to opportunities for new capital investment, or if the wages become higher in the areas that labour has left, encouraging workers to stay where they are. In the former case, however, lower wages only make the community poorer, and increased productivity can be achieved only through capital investment, which is not forthcoming. In the latter case, higher wages (without any corresponding increase in productivity) make the area less attractive for capital investment, resulting in fewer jobs, so increased need to move to find employment. So, whether one looks at it from the viewpoint of either capital or labour, the internal contradictions of capitalism cause problems for community. Capital everywhere seeks labour that is productive and cheap, but the reality is that more productive labour costs more, so a balance is always being struck between the employment of higher paid more productive workers and lower paid less productive workers – a balance that is inherently destructive of community. Given this context, it is inevitable that ‘working with communities’ remains more of an aspiration than a reality of everyday practice, for at least three reasons. First, gross and unrecognised inequalities between the two ‘partners’ (the community on one side, the professionals and politicians on the other); second, lack of understanding of the nature and dynamics of the communities concerned and the causes of their problems; and third (which follows from the first two), unreasonable, unrealistic and/or unclear expectations about how such partnerships should work, for example, in terms of the commitment from both sides and the nature and extent of participation required. I have suggested in this chapter that the way forward for community development must lie with radical approaches, not expounded in some decontextualized bubble but firmly rooted in fields – of politics, education,

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housing, and so on. We must consider more seriously how to work with communities that are abject, demonised, and criminalised – and indeed radicalised in ways that are incompatible with the beloved community.We need to be clearer about what kinds of participation are appropriate, and by whom, for different purposes ( for example, improving political decisionmaking, enhancing democratic legitimacy, or improving services), for solving different community problems and meeting different community needs. We must resist temptations to restrict the freedoms that we have, and must instead question the foundations on which those freedoms are based (see Chapter Three).We must also resist the further commodification of relationships, for example, of care, of places, of non-humans, of the commons generally (see Part II).We must learn how to build a cooperative culture within and across different fields of production and reproduction, and within and across different scales of activity. It is hoped that a beloved community will then emerge.

Summary Whereas Chapter One focused on the nature of community, Chapter Two has concentrated on community development – how communities develop, what prevents them from developing, and what enables or supports them to develop, in particular the social and political forces involved. Capitalism and social classes have been identified as key determinants here, with community being seen as continually threatened and undermined by the restless search for economic growth, and labour exploitation as inevitably producing class divisions that tend to contradict a common sense of community or citizenship. The encapsulation of working-class communities described in Chapter One is explained in terms of these communities being left behind as capital has moved on to more profitable markets in other areas, and this abjection is in turn explained in terms of the position of the working class as a dominated class in capitalist society. Working-class communities, however, are seen as both supportive of, and resistant to, capitalism, with transformative as well as reformist potential. In particular, the chapter has suggested how worker co-operatives embedded in community might play a part in such a transformation. What might be called ‘professional’ approaches to community development, whether traditional or ‘radical’, are shown to be ineffective insofar as they fail to take account of capitalist realities. New forms of more broadly-based community organising, exemplified by London Citizens, seem to hold out greater promise of success.

Questions for discussion • What are the key distinguishing features of capitalism as a system? • How are social classes formed and reproduced in capitalist society?

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• • • •

Why does capitalism experience recurrent crises? How far is capitalism compatible with community? How far can communities be developed under capitalism? How can an encapsulated community break out of its capsule?

Further reading Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste, London and New York: Routledge. Cremin, C. (2011) Capitalism’s new clothes: Enterprise, ethics and enjoyment in times of crisis, London: Pluto Press. DeFilippis, J., Fisher, R. and Shragge, E. (2010) Contesting community: The limits and potential of local organizing, New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Harman, C. (2010) Zombie capitalism: Global crisis and the relevance of Marx, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Restakis, J. (2010) Humanizing the economy: Co-operatives in the age of capital, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Sayer, A. (2015) Why we can’t afford the rich, Bristol: Policy Press. Taylor, M. (2011) Public policy in the community, 2nd ed, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Notes 1

Most economists do not accept the labour theory of value. They argue, for example, that capitalists are entitled to their profits because of the risks they run, their entrepreneurialism, and so on, but these arguments generally ignore the risks taken by, and innovative practices of, the workers themselves. For useful accounts of Marx’s theory of capital, see Cleaver (2000) and Harman (2010, chap 1). 2 For more detail on the nature of this mystification, see Burawoy (2012) and Chapter Five. 3 Workers are subject to the authority of their bosses through an employment contract, whereby the employer pays the employee to do a job (Ellerman, 2005). 4 I return to this idea in Chapter Three. Basically, my argument is that the employer–employee relation is one of domination, which translates into working class habitus as a work ethic or discipline, justified in terms of fair and equal exchange, that is, a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. 5 For further critique of Holloway and of Hardt and Negri, see Wainwright (2004, 49) and Cremin (2011). 6 The term ‘middle’ is significant because it highlights the existence of a class ‘ladder’ (sometimes mistakenly called a ‘hierarchy’) of ‘upper’, ‘middle’ and ‘lower’, which exists alongside of the main division between dominant and

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7

8

9

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dominated classes.The middle classes here do not seem to fit easily into either of these two main classes. For vivid illustration of the nature of some members of this class and how they work, see Jones (2014). For more detail on the growth of precarious employment under capitalism, see Kalleberg (2011), Huws (2011), especially for women (Fudge and Owens, 2006). The methodology of the survey has also been severely criticised – see, for example, Dorling (2014). Nevertheless, according to Marks and Baldry (2009, 54), 90 per cent of people in Britain recognised the existence of social classes and saw themselves as occupying a class position. Another possible criticism of the model is that it is difficult to fit with Piketty’s (2014) claim that a new ‘patrimonial class’ has emerged, somewhere between rich and poor, owning 25–35 per cent of total wealth, at least in the US. But this wealth seems to be largely in the form of housing assets, so the alleged new class seems to be one of home-owners – a Weberian ‘housing class’ (for further information on wealth and the wealthy, see Rowlingson and McKay, 2012). This limit is physiological, in terms of how hard a worker can work, and legal/ political, in terms of how far employers are restricted, for example, in terms of limits on the number of hours a worker can work, breaks, holidays, and so forth. For further discussion of this point, see Carchedi (1991). The simplest explanation of crises is that, as capital expands in boom periods, the marginal utility of capital declines, causing the rate of profit to fall; this fall then results in disinvestment, leading to recession.The rate of profit can be recovered, if at all, only by increasing labour productivity, which is achieved through processes of simultaneous upskilling and downskilling, primarily by investing in new kinds of production process – specifically using new technology that costs less to produce than the old ones and/or facilitates higher value output. For further discussion, see Harman (2010). For example, investment in new technology increases labour productivity and therefore output per worker. This is clearly beneficial for the capitalist, even if they have to pay the workers more. As other capitalists follow and output increases overall, however, the commodities produced fall in price, which once again tends to reduce the rate of profit. ‘In the ideal managerial form of capitalism…the subject sacrifices herself to the command “be yourself ”, the call to self-determination which becomes a commodified object of exchange when “being yourself ” translates as a value employers seek; alienation in Marx’s sense becomes a commodity’ (Cremin, 2011, 57). Ideal managerial companies ask their employees: ‘to give up everything – to give up any other form of allegiance, their personal interests

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15

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and even their personal life – in order to give themselves, body and soul, to the company which, in exchange, will provide them with an identity, a place, a personality and a job they can be proud of ’ (Gorz, 1999, 36, cited in Cremin, 2011, 64). Anything that restricts capital’s power to employ as it wishes is detrimental to capital. However, if capital uses this power to restrict labour’s access to employment, then it reduces its capacity to exploit. In a free market, labour has the freedom to move to where it is most wanted, which produces the best return to capital. Consequently, under free-market capitalism, the tendency must be for all forms of discrimination to be subsumed under the capital– labour nexus. Cumbers et al (2010, 58) make much the same point when they argue that there is a contradiction in capitalism between the ‘homogenisation’ and ‘heterogenisation’ of labour – the former yields higher surplus value by reducing the cost of labour to a common minimum, while the latter, although politically useful in dividing the workforce (‘white’ versus ‘black’, old versus young, citizens versus non-citizens), makes labour more expensive and/or less productive, and therefore not sustainable in conditions of capitalist competition. I say this only insofar as, for any job, there will be people who are more or less able to do it. Yet ability to do a job is the main (legitimate) criterion for discriminating between different applicants for that job. I appreciate, of course, that many disabilities need not affect job performance, particularly if employers take steps to accommodate those disabilities, and therefore should not be the subject of discrimination. It is ironic that the second largest capitalist economy in the world today, China, lacks these basic freedoms while at the same time retaining a communist ideology. This is possible, however, only because of the ruling Communist Party’s monopoly ownership of land (among other things). The pressures for commodification of everything, which are endemic to capitalism, mean that this situation cannot be sustained in the long term. Of course there are many organisations that call themselves co-operatives but do not change capital–labour relations (Somerville, 2007). For this reason,Wolff (2012) recommends using the term ‘worker self-directed enterprise’ instead, though it seems to mean the same as ‘worker co-operative’ as defined here. Restakis (2010) provides a diversity of examples in addition to the well-known Italian ones mentioned above, for example, the sex worker co-operative in Calcutta, the Small Organic Farmers’ Association in Sri Lanka, the UCIRI cooperative in Mexico, Co-operativa Sin Frontera in Costa Rica, the recovered factories movement in Argentina, and so on – everywhere the ‘good’ cooperatives are those that are rooted in community, while the ‘bad’ ones are those that are driven from the top, invariably by authoritarian national socialist governments ( for example, in Sri Lanka, and in Argentina under Perón; one could also add the former USSR, Tanzania under Nyerere, Yugoslavia under

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20

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24 25

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Tito, and so on – see Melnyk, 1985). Each successful example seems to function independently, but also occurs within a wider movement of working classes, small farmers and social entrepreneurs. A rather different example would be that of the Mondragón Corporation in the Basque country of Spain – rooted in the Basque community, a regional co-operative of co-operatives (Whyte and Whyte, 1988) – but it has its critics (see, Kasmir, 1986; Benello, 1996). Restakis (2010), unfortunately, does not recognise that not everyone is in a position to take part in a co-operative on an equal basis and reciprocate accordingly. Co-operatives are by no means the answer to all our problems! Skeggs and Loveday (2012) also provide a vivid account of how the ‘hidden injuries’ of class have affected working-class men and women, resulting in ‘ugly feelings’ of anger, bitterness, resentment and envy directed against those who unjustly and undeservedly sit in judgement on them. See also Charlesworth (2000). Meaning, for example, physically courageous, able to look after oneself and defend oneself in (potentially) dangerous situations, having a reputation of being prepared to use violence if this is seen to be necessary to protect one’s interests, a strong sense of personal honour and demand for respect from others (not backing down if challenged), an ability to make difficult decisions and stick to them, and so on – but not being out of control or self-indulgent or dirty (for example, although roughness is associated with frequent drunkenness, toughness is associated with being able to hold one’s liquor). Nayak (2006,Abstract) comments that ‘by exhibiting “spectacular masculinities” of white male excess, young men accrue a body capital that has a currency and a local exchange value within the circuits they inhabit.’ But high body capital is associated with high status toughness or hardness rather than low status roughness. But for a more upbeat account of life on a council estate, see Back (2015). Even existing colonies have been neglected – hence the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in 1982, although this invasion then triggered a massive response from the British government. Ill-intentioned interventions, however, such as the expulsion of the Chagossians from their homeland and the invasion of Grenada, have probably been more common than is generally realised. If we include countries that have not exactly been colonies but have been under the British yoke, many more such neocolonial adventures could be mentioned, for example, Suez in 1956,Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Huge military support of course continues for Israeli colonisers, in spite of their illegal seizures of land and uncompromising antiArab racism. And this is not even to mention the enormous economic effects on ex-colonies, for better or worse, arising from their generally weaker trading positions – for example, brain drain, anti-competitive pricing, national debt, and so on.

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Participation is a shibboleth (see discussion in Somerville, 2011a, 51ff; see also White, 1996). Taylor (2011, 217) asserts: ‘Excluded communities should not have to “participate” in order to have the same claim on service quality and provision as other members of society have.’ This focus on local community goes back at least to the Chicago Scholars in the 1920s, who ‘tend to see community as something preserved in the locality while being under threat in the wider city…In effect, community was seen as pertaining to relatively small groups, such as neighbourhoods, based on mutual interdependence and common forms of life’ (Delanty, 2010, 40–1).The dominant theme was one of defence of the community in response to external threats (see also Chapter Eight). Nevertheless, assumptions of community pathology continue to be popular, especially with governments – see Chapters Four and Eight. Cockburn (1977) identified the function of community work as a statesponsored activity to defuse escalating conflict by diverting energy into forms of participation that give an illusion of democracy. Such state sponsorship has continued, in different guises, right up to the present day – summoning ‘active citizens’ to stick on the plasters has been particularly popular with governments (see, for example, Richardson, 2012; and for a critique in the very similar context of Eire, see Gaynor, 2009; see also Chapter Four below). For example, Holman (2015, 418) notes ‘the co-presence of apparently contradictory currents of conflict and co-operation’. DeFilippis et al (2010, 124) state bluntly: ‘there are neither the resources nor the capacities at the local level to solve major community problems such as poverty, poor education, insufficient affordable housing, and so forth.’ And: ‘it takes much more than a community to advance economic and social justice’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 135). Also: ‘The cliché of “think globally, act locally” is an extremely disempowering one because it discourages action beyond the local’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 170). For an exposure of the circularity of arguments around social capital, see Somerville (2011a, 62–3), namely: ‘lack of social capital signifies a need for community development while community development is taken to mean the building of social capital’ (Somerville, 2011a, 62). Removed from any critical analysis either of capital or of capitalism, the concept of social capital loses all explanatory force. For example, Chanan and Miller (2013, 55) cite a definition of community groups as ‘voluntary organisations or associations in which the beneficiaries include the volunteers, for example, self-help groups…and groups organising communal activities’.There is no suggestion here that these groups might look beyond the parochial concerns of a neighbourhood. The nature and extent of help they require from outside the community is also often unclear, and this issue is discussed elsewhere in this book.

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35

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Similarly, ‘empowerment’ is typically defined as ‘the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes’ (World Bank, 2009).This definition has been criticised as glossing over crucial issues of power such as control over resources and the ability to make decisions on the direction of one’s life (De Vos et al, 2009, 25). It may be worth emphasising here the resourcefulness of even the poorest communities in many parts of the world, displaying a ‘political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well-meaning progressive activists’ (Benjamin, 2008, 725). As Ledwith and Springett (2010, 89) affirm:‘In true participatory practice there is an animator, a co-facilitator, who is sharing in the process of transformation.’ The problem with heroic leaders was identified by Taylor (2011, 174) as one of how to secure the succession:‘Successful community leaders are feted, adopted and promoted by public authority partners in ways that make it very difficult to follow them.’ For examples of community heroes (interestingly, all based on ‘problem’ council housing estates), see Seabrook (1984) on Goscote, Walsall, and Knight (2014) on Halcon estate,Taunton, Pengegon estate, Camborne, and Stockwell Park estate, Lambeth. No doubt there is a place for local heroes in community development but these stories provide at best only a partial picture of what is going on in these areas. To be fair, Ledwith also refers to credit unions, local exchange and trading schemes (LETS) and community gardens but these are all pitched at a very local level. The only example that Ledwith (2005, 108–11) cites of community organisation beyond the local level is that of the Women’s Forum at the 1995 Beijing Conference, but she does not state clearly what this forum has achieved.Also, the only example she gives of community work scaling up beyond the local is that of ‘alliances between community workers and environmental activists’ (Ledwith, 2005, 154) but the nature of these alliances is not described, so it is not clear what they amount to. Ledwith and Springett (2010) focus more specifically on community learning (which is important – see Chapter Six of this book) but again they seem to be concerned largely with processes of interaction at the local level and do not sufficiently clarify how ‘participatory practice’ is to be extended beyond this: ‘The role of the participatory practitioner is to develop theory in action by questioning the lived experience of local people’ (Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 169 – italics mine). I use the word ‘magic’ deliberately because Ledwith and Springett (2010, 135–6) actually do seem to believe in magic when they say, following Freire, that naming the world transforms the world. The word ‘participation’ is itself used fetishistically to remake the world according to their ideal of how the world should be – the world of fact is thereby magically transformed into their world

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of ‘praxis’. This is not to imply that I necessarily reject magical world-views but, if they are to be effective, they surely need to be grounded in concrete practices in space and time – when it comes to participation, context really is everything. Similarly, Butcher (2007, 46) and Banks (2007, 103–4) recognise that leadership can be distributed and shared among a number of parties. There are two fictional case studies in Chapter Seven. They believe that: ‘The best hope of making a significant difference to the wellbeing of a local population is to mobilise the fragments of latent and quasi community practice within an area around a small specialist team which can coordinate and strengthen this aspect of their varied roles. This amounts to some form of neighbourhood partnership’ (Chanan and Miller, 2013, 160). Unfortunately, it is not clear what evidence this belief is based on – a point that will be taken up further in Part II of this book. They link this explicitly to Martin Luther King’s concept of the beloved community, in which ‘community was both a strategic structural site as well as a critical oppositional concept and vision’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 54). This is not to imply, of course, that Christian organising is necessarily conservative or reactionary – see, for example, London Citizens in Box 2.2.

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three Political community under capitalism This chapter discusses the complex (and as yet only partially understood) relationship between political community and capitalism. A political community is a special kind of community, which exists only insofar as it is publicly performed by its members, either directly (through participation) or indirectly (through means of representation). A beloved community can then be understood as a political community that is free from all forms of domination. Capitalism, however, is above all a system of domination (by capital over labour), and it exists on a global scale. Political community at only local or even national level is therefore incapable of ending this domination. Indeed, the 20th century presents a history of ideologies (liberalism, state socialism, anarchism, nationalism, fascism) that have misrecognised the character of political community under capitalism, particularly as it relates to state power. Acknowledging the value of prefigurative politics (by anarchists and autonomists, for example), whereby the beloved community is enacted at the grassroots in everyday practice, the chapter nevertheless goes on to argue that no one can now exist outside the capitalist system. The challenge, then, is to build a global political movement that will transform capitalism from within and achieve a beloved community.

The nature of political community ‘Political community’ (or polity) denotes a kind of community where people recognise one another (either directly or through public media) as being, in a sense, the same people (or ‘demos’). It differs from other kinds of community in that it has to be publicly performed and membership of the community requires capacity and opportunity for such public performance. Since the Hellenistic age, there have been two complementary

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interpretations of political community: polis, which is particular and local – the community of citizens in a Greek city or citizens of a nation-state today; and cosmopolis, which is universal and (at least aspirationally) global, such as the Roman Empire or the community of believers in the world religions (such as Christendom or Umma). These two interpretations persist up to the present day, with debates between communitarians and cosmopolitans about which one should have priority. In ancient times it was assumed that some form of public authority was needed to rule the political community. In the modern era, however, this came into question:‘The defining element in the discourse of community from the seventeenth century onwards was a critique of the state…In this respect community expressed…a vision of a pure or pristine social bond that did not need a state. It was, in a sense, a purely utopian concept of community as an emancipatory project’ (Delanty, 2010, 3). In some cases, though, particularly in the case of nationalism, the vision of community embraced a kind of state, namely a nation-state:‘an organic entity expressing the totality of political community’ (Delanty, 2010, 3). This chapter, then, considers first the nature of political community as an imagined community (Anderson, 1983), and the nature of the political field. It will then go on to discuss how the relations of domination and subordination identified in Chapter Two are expressed in the field of politics, particularly in relation to the state.Hegel’s concept of Sittlichkeit is important for understanding political community. Translated variously as ‘the social order, the ethical world’ (Hegel, 1931, 375) or ‘ethical life’ (Hegel, 1931, 460), it refers to people’s concrete customs and practices rooted in specific historical realities and complex social conditions, which give rise to specific obligations and attachments to one another. It is similar to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus but additionally for Hegel these obligations make sense only in a political community (expressed, for example, in common law). Sittlichkeit is contrasted with Moralität, which consists of abstract rules, norms and principles that have no specific historical foundation but express selfconsciousness in the form of an ‘inner moral life’ or ‘conscience’ (Hegel, 1931, 461). So, for Hegel (as later for Marx), key ethical concepts such as freedom, recognition, equality and democracy have to be understood as specific historical constructs, and realisable only in specific forms of political community (Hegel, 1952). Political communities in practice can be positioned on a variety of continua: from open to closed, inclusive to exclusive, libertarian to authoritarian, anarchist to statist, democratic to autocratic, pluralistic to totalistic. Since the seventeenth century by far the most successful political communities have been nations based on common attachments to a particular place (a homeland or motherland or fatherland), culture, traditions, rituals, language,

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and so on. It seems undeniable that this success has been largely due to nations becoming free to govern themselves (typically in the form of a state), so any discussion of political community must take account of this historical phenomenon of national self-determination. Gellner (1983) argued that modern nations were for med by industrialisation, as a way to restore the sense of community undermined by economic and social change. In contrast, Conversi (2007; 2008b) emphasises the importance of wars and the military in shaping modern nations, and argues more generally that, rather than nations creating states, states have created nations, with the French Revolution playing a particularly important role (Connor, 2004).These states have attempted to mould their citizens into a single, culturally uniform body, so that they can be easier to govern.Techniques such as mass conscription and compulsory education have been key to achieving this effect. In Bourdieusian terms, therefore, we could say that the habitus of a nation and the field of a state are strongly integrated in modern nation-states: vast economic, social, cultural and military resources have been invested in the development of nations, and this investment has been deployed largely through the structures of capitalism and state power, involving what Pandey (2006) has tellingly called ‘routine violence’. For these reasons, it is necessary to be sceptical about the concept of a nation as a basis for a free and open political community, that is, one that is not oppressively conformist, homogenising, militaristic, or exclusive of difference of any kind (see Conversi, 2008a). Whilst acknowledging the progressive character of some national liberation movements (as opposed to, say, colonial rule) and the popular attractiveness of ‘small nation’ nationalism (as in Scotland or Wales) in comparison with its larger counterpart (Britain or UK), it must be recognised that nationalism in general (understood as the belief that a nation should be self-governing) does not seem to represent a possible solution to the problems faced by the world today, not least the problems presented by global capitalism.1 A beloved political community is, as outlined at the end of Chapter One, an open community of free and equal people (in this case in their public role as citizens), negotiating their differences on the basis of mutual respect and recognition. But what kind of freedom is envisaged here, exactly? Liberal conceptions of freedom, from Hobbes (1651) and Locke (1689) in the seventeenth century through JS Mill (1859) and TH Green (1895) in the nineteenth century right up to Berlin (2002), Skinner (2002) and Pettit (1997) in the twentieth century, conceive it as freedom from subjection to the will of others.This conception sounds fine as an abstract general rule but it lacks clear historical contextualisation. In particular, it lacks recognition of the social forces that restrict people’s freedom and consequently its

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understanding of domination is seriously inadequate – it ignores entirely the fact that capitalism is a system of domination, as explained in Chapter Two.2 On the contrary, liberals tend to see capitalism only as a source of freedom, associated with free markets and freedom to dispose of one’s property as one wishes. In combination with democracy, what we now call liberal democracy also includes free elections, freedom of speech and association, a free press, and some other civil and human rights. These freedoms are important gains, which may need to be defended against the authoritarian view that an element of coercion is necessary for the public good.3 We should not be fooled, however, into thinking that they stem from the nature of capitalism itself. Rather, the relationship between capitalism and increasing political freedom is more complex. It is necessary here to look more closely at the nature of domination under capitalism. Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that liberals are right and that freedom is to be equated with non-subjection to the will of others. In conditions of freely operating capitalism, the worker is free to seek work wherever s/he pleases, the employer is free to employ whoever they think is best for the job, the relationship between employer and employee is a free exchange of labour for wages, the commodities (goods and services) produced or provided by the workers are freely exchanged in the market, the capitalist is free to invest capital wherever they like, and so on. The surface appearance of this ideal capitalism is therefore the embodiment of liberal principle. Regulations that interfere with these freedoms such as restrictions on where workers can go in search of work or the kinds of work they can do, on whom employers can employ, on the wages they can pay (for example, minimum wage legislation), on the prices that can be charged, on the interest that financial capitalists can charge, and so on, are all suspect for liberals, because they signify the existence of a regulatory authority that imposes its will on others. Liberals argue that such regulation inevitably distorts the market in every case, leading to a less than optimum outcome for all concerned.4 Now consider the position from the point of view of the property-less, those whose only capital is their own labour power. In a free market (free from regulation or domination by outside forces), the worker is coerced into selling their labour power and entering into an exploitative relationship. They put their labour at the service of another and are consequently dominated by that other. The propertied classes thus dominate the unpropertied, and the freedom extolled by liberals exists only for those with property or capital.This is the ‘essence’ of capitalism everywhere as a system of exploitation and domination, to which liberals remain spectacularly blind. The historical experience of liberal democracy then shows that capitalist

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domination can be mitigated to a certain extent, though the consequences of such action are often unforeseen and nearly always contested. The problem with the liberal conception of freedom, then, is not that it is ‘wrong’ in some sense but that it is too abstract, floating free from capitalist realities. In Hegel’s terms it is a product of Moralität rather than Sittlichkeit. For Hegel, freedom presupposes this formal absence of coercion but only as a necessary condition for a more substantive freedom, and this means that: ‘(1) what is willed is in a meaningful sense one’s own; and (2) what is willed must have developed or realized content’ (Clark, 2013, 62). (1) implies a concept of strong agency, capable of challenging all forms of domination including capitalist domination: to be fully free, our activity must be ‘the product of our own deliberation, affirmation and autonomous choice’ (Clark, 2013, 63). A free political community is then one whose members recognise one another as equally self-conscious, self-acting beings within that community who do not try to dominate or control one another but instead deliberate and decide together and act together through shared realisable political projects: ‘the members of the community must have a common understanding of the action within the context of the community’s life, and must will the action in a collectively meaningful sense’ (Clark, 2013, 65).5 As outlined at the end of Chapter One, this seems to me to express the essence of the beloved community as a political community in which all systematic forms of domination are abolished6 – and is also perhaps what Ledwith and Springett (2010) mean by ‘participatory practice’! Ironically, in view of his criticisms of Moralität, Hegel’s concept of a free political community remains too abstract and insufficiently grounded in communities that are actually experienced and performed.7 The most obvious candidates for such communities are those that are very small in size, known as communalist communities (or communes), defined as ‘voluntary, small-scale communities in which co-operation is all-encompassing and in which egalitarian values and practices, group ownership and control are supreme’ (Melnyk, 1985, 79).8 Such communities, based on ‘full cooperation’ (Buber, 1958, 158, 281) have existed since time immemorial, frequently motivated by strong religious beliefs and commitments. Perhaps the earliest one in the modern era was set up by the ‘Diggers’ or ‘True Levellers’ in 1649 on St George’s Hill near Cobham in Surrey under the leadership of Gerrard Winstanley (1973). Most such communities do not outlast their founding members but some, such as the Hutterites and Amish communities in North America, have survived for hundreds of years.Apart from the small size and egalitarian character of such communities, Melnyk notes their isolationist and separatist tendencies and the charismatic nature

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of their leadership. A good historical example of a communalist political community is that established by the Jesuits in Paraguay (see Box 3.1).

Box 3.1: The Jesuits in Paraguay From 1607 the Jesuits helped to organise 32 villages in Paraguay, with over 100,000 people, into a Christian community. They did not set out with the intention of establishing the villages as communes but simply adapted the social organisation of the local Guarani Indians. ‘All property was held in common, including the buildings and livestock…In addition to allocations of private plots to the Indians for agricultural production, common plots were set aside and cultivated by common labor to provide for the sick and needy, to collect seed for next year and to stock a common storehouse as a reserve food supply and as a means to exchange produce for European goods. A thriving socialist economy was built, including a highly developed craft industrial system’ (Restakis, 2010, 41). Life was an almost uninterrupted ritual, with full attendance at daily Mass and evening devotions. The project came to an end only with the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish possessions in America in 1767, but a few of the villages survive to this day. Source: Adapted from Rexroth, 1974; Restakis, 2010, 41

It seems, however, that the qualities that enable such communities to survive may be precisely those that ensure that they remain small, namely their commitment to a separate, ‘purer’, exclusive, self-sufficient way of life, ideological uniformity and direct democracy (Rexroth, 1974). In the case of religious communes, Melnyk (1985, 101) reports that: ‘The most successful communes are those that rejected the concept of their commune as a heaven on earth, and insisted it was only a waystation to something higher.’ In other words, the most successful religious communes are those that are fixed more on the next world than on this one. Far from wanting to change this world, they want to prepare themselves for life in the hereafter. In the case of secular communes, their task is far more difficult: ‘the contradiction of secular communalism [is] it seeks to escape society and simultaneously transform it’ (Melnyk, 1985, 90). The problem is that, in order to survive, communes have to build strong boundaries against the ways of life that they reject, but the very institution of these boundaries helps to ensure that those ways of life continue. As Melnyk (1985, 101) says: ‘Communalism needs an inward-looking and self-contained reality to maintain its practice’, but this militates against achieving any significant durable social change. Moreover, Melnyk (1985, 100) points out that: ‘Communalism survives only when it is tolerated by the state or has

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sufficient backing in the wider society.’ In other words, even if a commune is self-sufficient economically, it is still vulnerable to pressure from wider social forces, particularly the state, and depends on at least the good will of the wider political community in which it operates. All of this suggests that communalism has strictly limited potential to be ‘scaled up’ to higher levels of political community (nation, continent, globe). However, there do exist examples of projects or social movements for national political community that rely on communalism. The best known is that of Zionism, which originally envisaged Israel as a free political community, built on the foundation of kibbutzim: ‘Based [in principle] on cooperation, collective ownership, equality, consensual values and secular self-government, the kibbutz gave expression to a kind of total community’ (Delanty, 2010, 13). Based in practice on collective farming and fighting, these communes were regarded by Jewish settlers as the most practical way to survive in a hostile environment – meaning, in effect, that they were a tool of colonialism and oppression (Davis, 2002, cited in Clark, 2013, 158). Once the Israeli state was established, however, kibbutzim declined in importance and now only a tiny proportion of Israeli citizens are involved in these communes. Socialist states have also tried to establish communes as the building blocks of total political communities, for example, Kolkhoz in the former USSR, communes in the People’s Republic of China, workers’ self-management in the former Yugoslavia, and Ujamaa socialism in Tanzania (for an evaluation, see Melnyk, 1985, 64–7).These attempts have all proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful – they lacked the ideological power of Zionism and survived as long as they did only because they were imposed on the people by an authoritarian state. Sadly, in these socialist countries, for much if not most of the twentieth century and beyond, working-class communities have been sacrificed to the cause of building militarised, culturally uniform states that are a long way away from being free political communities. The dream of building a community of communities of free communities, therefore, as originally formulated by Landauer (1978), remains just that – a dream, with no material foundation. Dreams, however, are not necessarily unrealisable. Clark (2013, 2) talks about ‘possible impossibilities’:‘things that are possible only in “another world” beyond the present system of social determination and social domination.’We have to envisage a community in which exploitation and domination no longer exist, or are at least minimised – a goal to work towards in the long term. Political projects need to be assessed in terms of their overall capacity to move in this direction. The question of what to do about the state in particular is crucial. Anarchists (sometimes now calling themselves ‘libertarian communitarians’) have a long tradition of advocating political community without a state,

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expressed in practice in personal relationships, affinity groups, intentional communities, cooperative projects, and movements for revolutionary social transformation. Ritter (1980) argues that a conception of ‘communal individuality’, which is much the same as the beloved political community, runs through the whole anarchist tradition – Godwin, Bakunin, Reclus, Kropotkin, Goldman, and so on (Day, 2005; Clark, 2013, 172–5).Anarchists should indeed be credited for being among the first to recognise the unacceptably oppressive character of state socialism (see Goldman, 1923). However, anarchists’ rejection of all forms of political authority has made it difficult (if not impossible) for them to create any durable political communities. Clark (2013, 184) does admit that ‘tendencies toward excessive individualism, adventurism, and detachment from social reality have always been present within anarchism’ but nevertheless maintains that social transformation (by which he means at least the abolition of domination) can, and indeed must, be achieved through collective action at many levels of society at the same time: this implies the flourishing of local economic alternatives such as worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, laborexchange systems, land trusts, cooperative housing, and other non-capitalist initiatives – in short, of an emerging solidarity economy. It implies neighborhood and local radical, direct actionist political organization (including a movement for strong town and neighborhood assemblies) that helps generate a radical democratic grassroots politics. It implies the existence of cooperative democratic media, including strong dissident and community-based radio, television, and print media. It implies the creation of local institutions such as bookstores, cafes, theaters, art galleries, music venues, and community centers for the nurturing of liberatory arts and forms of cultural expression. It implies the establishment of local alternative schools, educational centers, skills and knowledge exchanges, colleges, and universities. It implies the flourishing of cooperative households, small intentional communities, and affinity groups. (Clark, 2013, 189) Clark (2013, 190) attaches particular importance to the role of affinity groups: ‘The affinity group structure offers the possibility of a sphere in which the members can practice in their most personal interactions their values of egalitarianism, antihierarchy, mutual aid, love, and generosity. It is a basic community of solidarity and liberation out of which the larger ones might emerge.’9 Such groups certainly do exist but they tend to

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be fragile and impermanent, and, as with communalism, the problem of ‘scaling up’, which Clark at least acknowledges,10 is not really addressed. Indeed, the only example of scaling up that Clark discusses is that of the Sarvodaya Movement in India (and later in Sri Lanka), founded by Gandhi, in which democratically-run village communities were viewed as the autonomous building blocks of a national anarchist Indian community (compare the discussion of Zionism above – Gandhi basically saw Indian villages as communes, which actually they were not). Unfortunately, what seemed to work for national liberation turned out to be less successful for coping with the newly independent Indian state. Clark (2013, 217–36) paints a very positive picture of the movement but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was not based on very solid foundations and, while being highly sophisticated in its challenge to the British Raj, was entirely naïve when it came to confronting the power of the new state. In Sri Lanka, the similar Sarvodaya Shramadana movement has achieved a stronger base and continues to grow, even in the face of government harassment and intimidation, but ‘it has not so far developed the far-ranging program of social transformation envisioned by Gandhi’ (Clark, 2013, 245). This is not surprising, however, because the movement itself has established that ‘the dominant political system is incapable of solving major problems and engaging local communities actively in the process of creating a better society, and that these communities have been excluded from any real decision-making. It has been found that people of all communities want peace, but they do not think that the centralized state can achieve it’ (Clark, 2013, 244). In the absence of any realistic and practicable alternatives, this sounds to me more like a politics of despair than of hope. Anarchists’ rejection of all forms of political authority makes their beloved community seem like an impossible utopian dream. Clark, however, argues that utopian practice – that is, practice that is not subject to political authority – involving ‘a utopianism of the passions and aesthetic sensibility in the tradition of Fourier and [William] Morris, if decoupled from naïve antiauthoritarian ideology’, (Clark, 2013, 140) can provide an alternative to what he calls ‘the utopia of consumption’ (this alternative utopia of enjoyment and creativity echoes the quote from Žižek, 1993, on page 7 of this book). Similarly, Holloway (2010a, 99) talks about ‘concrete doing’, which is outside of capital and the state, and can involve anything from reading a book in the park, playing a guitar in a band, or even taking up arms to fight injustice in Mexico. For anarchists, utopia is something to be lived in the here and now, not in some dim and distant future, but it is also an experience of what a community without domination could be like in that future.11 This is probably anarchism’s greatest strength. Its weakness, however, as Cremin (2011, 84) has pointed out, is that it has not found

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ways to bring together all these different activities into ‘a more unified struggle that is needed to confront the centralised agencies of power’.12 Similarly, there is a long tradition on the political left called ‘autonomism’, which goes back to the anarcho-syndicalists of the early twentieth century (Damier, 2009; Rocker, 2004), overlapping with the anarchist tradition.This movement looked to the organisations of the labour movement, purely through their own direct action (rather than through the capture of state power), to achieve the abolition of capitalist exploitation and domination. In more recent years, however, with the decline of the labour movement, autonomism has been understood as a process of creation of autonomous spaces not necessarily connected to the labour process (Negri, 1991, 165), a wider constituency such as a ‘multitude’ (Hardt and Negri, 2001; 2005). Unlike the anarchists, some autonomists have recognised that autonomy must be a contradictory practice, reflecting the contradictory character of capitalist labour (as outlined in Chapter Two), meaning that it works both for and against capitalism at the same time (Dinerstein, 2014, 23).Autonomy or self-determination can never be definitely achieved within capitalism but can only be strived for (Holloway, 2010b, 910) because one is always acting against oneself as one that is dominated and subjected to capital (for example: as a worker one is set to work, one does not control one’s own working life – the status of ‘employee’ has to be abolished in order for autonomy to exist). ‘Prefiguration includes the negation of the given, the creation of the alternative, the processes of struggle with, against and beyond the state, the law and capital and the production of excess [over capital]’ (Dinerstein, 2014, 28).This is not enough, however, because such struggle on its own, outside the state, is bound to become assimilated or recuperated by capitalism.The struggle against capital must also, at the same time, take place within the state, without being overwhelmed by it (for a useful evaluation of autonomism see Aufheben, 2003). I try to explain this further in the next section. To end this section I want to suggest that the best term to describe this practice of the beloved political community is ‘communism’. As Clark (2013, 52) says: The tradition of communism, in its most meaningful and historically grounded sense (the most libertarian and participatory communism) is the tradition of the commons, the practice of humanity through 99 per cent of its history. It is…a deeply rooted tradition that lived on even in Europe into the medieval and modern periods and has only recently been suppressed in both the West and globally through the most concerted efforts of the centralist and imperialist nation-

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state, and the ruthlessly colonizing market economy…We must retrieve the history of commons, the commune, and communism, and resituate our creative communal practice within that history. In doing so, we will help destroy the identification of communism and the common with certain ideological constructs that have been used to legitimate forms of state capitalism, bureaucratic centralism, and political vanguardism that have inevitably worked to dissolve ruthlessly the authentic communal sphere. The practice of communism in this sense is about communalism but on a global scale, not on the very local scale discussed above. In the next section, therefore, I look at some of the obstacles to realising this vision.

The nature of the political field, including state power A political field, or a field of politics, can be understood as a set of positions in a specific public space or spaces occupied by people engaged in the game of politics, whose stakes are nothing less than the future of the community as a whole (Bourdieu, 1992). More precisely, politics is a field in which agents and institutions compete for ‘the monopoly of production and imposition of the legitimate representation of the social world and of legitimate action upon this world’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 431). The game of politics involves competing performances in this world to gain public support for (or opposition to) particular political projects and programmes or universal political approaches or directions (such as Left or Right, liberal or conservative). Key players in the game include political parties, political office holders and electorates. Since the eighteenth century, in England and France, the term ‘civil society’ has been used to describe this field (Tester, 1992; Seligman, 1992; Edwards, 2004).13 Arguably, the biggest stake of all in the political field is that of state power. A state can be defined (for the purposes of this book) as a set of organisations that rules over a particular population or people.14 The state makes law (through legislative authority such as parliament), it executes law (through executive authority or government), and it interprets and enforces law (through judicial authority or a justice system). The stake is therefore one of domination – a unique capacity to tell people what to do, to order their lives, and to coerce them when this is seen to be necessary or desirable. A capitalist state can then be understood as one that rules over a people dominated by capital. The stake in this case is the management of capitalism as a system of domination.

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I am not so concerned in this book to conduct a forensic examination of ‘the state’15 or its functions (although some of these will be discussed in later chapters), but only with its power, the sources of that power, and how it affects community. For all states, it seems clear that the main source of their power is their control of the means of violence (ultimately, military force) within their territories, which historically has been so great that it can construct (and indeed destroy) nations (Conversi, 2007; 2008b, as mentioned earlier).16 For capitalist states, capital emerges as a distinct source of power in addition to military force. This happens in a variety of ways. First, the historical emergence of what is known as ‘bourgeois law’, a legal system based on property rights (Pashukanis, 1924; Neocleous, 2000; Cook, 2006) and on what Kay and Mott (1982) called the ‘law of labour’, has the effect of legitimating capitalists as owners of the means of production as part of a legitimation of property ownership generally. Second, through the field of capitalist labour markets, as examined in Chapter Two, capital reaches into the heart of state organisations: the positions of employer and employee exist within state organisations as everywhere else within capitalism, so that class relations within the state reflect class relations more generally (this was first analysed by Cousins, 1987, but seems to have been largely ignored by state theorists). Third, and related to the second point, the process of class struggle, both inside and outside the state, in all fields, produces organisations and alliances that tend to favour capital in political decision-making – for example, producing Gramsci’s (1971) ‘historic blocs’, which are effectively periods of time when the various fields within capitalism correspond with one another to produce what Gramsci called ‘hegemony’, where a political elite rules not only through coercion and domination but with the more or less active consent of the people. So my argument is that capital rules basically through military might and through its domination of labour in the labour process (what Eisenhower perceptively called ‘the military-industrial complex’, though he neglected to recognise that the US state is itself an integral part of this complex17), supported and legitimated by what is usually called ‘the rule of law’ (which achieves the legitimation of coercion) and by a profusion of ‘policy’, which represents innumerable compromises between the forces of capital and labour both inside and outside the state. In order to understand how hegemony works, however, I think we need a clearer idea about the difference between coercion and consent and the relationship between them. On coercion, it needs to be understood that simply being instructed to do something that one does not want to do (even if backed by an implicit or explicit threat of force) is not necessarily coercive. In practice, we often consent to do things we do not want to do, not just because we feel we

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have no choice but because we accept as legitimate the authority of the person who is instructing us and we also believe that what we are being instructed to do is not something to which we would object on ethical grounds. The key issue is therefore one of authority and especially of the perceived legitimacy of that authority. Armed force generally, for example, is legitimated on the grounds of self-defence (so long as it is necessary, reasonable and proportionate),18 where the ‘self ’ can be either an individual or a community. For centuries, however, states have gone to war usually without the consent of their people, and this arguably makes most wars illegitimate. Even when the people do consent to a war, this consent does not in itself make the war legitimate. Everyone seems to accept that might is not right but perhaps not everyone recognises that the consent of the people (or at least the majority of the people) to the exercise of might still does not make it right. So, just because people consent to the control of armed force by a state (and even military dictatorship requires the consent of at least the military), it does not make that control legitimate. For a state to achieve any reasonable level of peace and stability, however, it seems that most people it rules have to recognise the legitimacy of its control of armed force and of the ends to which that force is deployed – the alternative being more or less continual rebellion or (armed or unarmed – Schock, 2005) insurrection (as has occurred throughout history and still in many parts of the world today, such as in Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or so-called ‘failed’ states such as Somalia). This legitimacy, though, does not seem to be based on arguments of self-defence but rather on the grounds that such control is necessary for the safety of the people as a whole – to prevent civil war (Hobbes, 1651) or to protect private property (Locke, 1689).19 We can conclude, therefore, that states rule through superior military force, but this rule has to be recognised by the people as legitimate if it is to be sustained in the long term. The institution of universal franchise and free elections in increasing numbers of states from the nineteenth century onwards, itself largely due to the efforts of the working class in their struggles with capitalists (Rueschemeyer et al, 1992),20 has indeed been associated with a popular acceptance of state control of the means of violence and virtual extinction of armed rebellions within those countries. A rule that may at first sight seem coercive therefore ceases to be so when it is accepted as legitimate. Such is the power of the rule of law (see Chapter Four for further discussion). Free universal franchise, however, which represents the strongest material legitimation of political authority, also presents a potential problem for capitalist states, which by definition involve rule by a capitalist elite rather than by the people as a whole (for further discussion of democracy, see

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Somerville, 2011b). How, then, is the dominance of capital in the workplace, supported by the framework of bourgeois law, carried through to the political sphere? Here I wish to argue that Bourdieu (1984) has already supplied at least a general answer to this question. As we saw in Chapter Two, the working classes ‘implicitly recognise the legitimacy of the goals pursued by those whom they pursue [namely, their employers], by the mere fact of taking part’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 164 – italics mine). By extension, this holds true for the framework of law and bureaucracy that supports their employment and for the state that makes, implements, enforces and adjudicates that law. For employees of capital, in short, the capitalist state is a legitimate state, and its rules, orders, policies, and so on, are legitimate. Dissent and resistance are nevertheless possible – and indeed can also be legitimate, if conducted within the established legal framework. Bourdieu (1984) explains how the domination of workers in their workplace extends to the social fields outside their workplace, to their consumption of food, dress, sport, music, and so on, to the political field. The lower total capital of the working classes noted in Chapter Two has the effect of reducing their influence in the political field – their culture, experience and opinions are devalued in relation to the dominant class, and they tend to lose out in their struggles to win political arguments. In Bourdieu’s terms, the working class lack the ‘distinction’ that is necessary to exercise authority: the illusion of ‘natural distinction’ is ultimately based on the power of the dominant to impose, by their very existence, a definition of excellence which, being nothing other than their own way of existing, is bound to appear simultaneously as distinctive and different, and therefore both arbitrary (since it is one among others) and perfectly necessary, absolute and natural. (Bourdieu, 1984, 253) Elite rule is therefore believed to be legitimate even though it is seen to endorse capitalism, perceived as the ‘best’ (or possibly ‘least worst’) system. This belief is then strengthened if the state is seen to provide significant material benefits for the dominated classes (for example, the so-called ‘welfare’ state) and to manage, with some apparent success, the periodic crises to which capitalism is prone (see Chapter Two). Domination is maintained everywhere in the same way, through the imposition of ‘superior’ knowledge and culture, which is more formal, abstract, technical and explicit:

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ordinary workers are dominated by the machines and instruments which they serve rather than use, and by those who possess the legitimate, i.e. theoretical, means of dominating them. In the factory as in the school, which teaches respect for useless, disinterested knowledge and establishes relationships invested with the ‘natural’ authority of scientific and pedagogic reason among simultaneously hierarchised individuals and activities, workers encounter legitimate culture as a principle of order which does not need to demonstrate its practical utility in order to be justified. (Bourdieu, 1984, 388) Bourdieu places particular emphasis on the role of the education system in forming political opinion and producing inequality of political participation: The propensity to delegate responsibility for political matters to others recognised as technically competent varies in inverse ratio to the educational capital possessed, because the educational qualification (and the culture it is presumed to guarantee) is tacitly regarded – by its holders but also by others – as a legitimate title to the exercise of authority. On the one side, there are those who admit that politics is not for them and abdicate their formal rights for lack of the means of exercising them; on the other, those who feel entitled to claim a ‘personal opinion’, or even the authoritative opinion which is the monopoly of the competent. These two opposed but complementary representations of the division of political labour reproduce the objective division of political ‘powers’ between the classes and the sexes in dispositions, practices and discourses, and so help to reproduce the division itself. And so it is that, by one of the paradoxical reversals that are common in such matters, education, which the nineteenth century reformers expected above all to ensure the proper functioning of universal suffrage by producing citizens capable of voting (‘We must educate our masters’) now tends to function as a principle of selection, the more effective for not being officially or even tacitly imposed, which supports and legitimates unequal participation in electoral democracy and, tendentially, the whole division of political labour. (Bourdieu, 1984, 415) I have quoted this at some length in order to show the subtle way in which the deployment of cultural capital in particular ensures the dominance in the political field of the elite group identified in Chapter Two.To this could

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be added the deployment of economic capital (for example, in funding political parties and political campaigns, control of the mass media, and so on) and social capital, with similar consequences. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a common response from the working class is one of ‘simple abdication’ of civic responsibility: ‘contrary to the naïve belief in formal equality before politics, the working class is realistic in seeing no choice, for the most deprived, other than simple abdication, a resigned recognition of status-linked incompetence, or total delegation, an unreserved remission of self, a tacit confidence which chooses its speech in choosing its spokesmen’ (Bourdieu, 1984, 418). Fatalism and passivism (sometimes misrepresented as apathy) are therefore the main responses of the most deprived people in capitalist society – their conformity is logical because it is driven by what they perceive as necessity. It is tempting to draw pessimistic conclusions from Bourdieu’s work.The odds certainly seem well stacked against the working class. It is important, therefore, to recall the contradictoriness that lies at the heart of capitalism and that penetrates all the fields where capital predominates. Above all, the category of labour as both free (in a free labour market) and unfree (dominated by capital) exposes the fundamental flaw in the system, which makes it incompatible with a free community. It is also clear that, historically, the working class has made considerable progress under capitalism, such as universal franchise, the welfare state, and real improvements in living standards, and there is no compelling reason why further progress should not be forthcoming (see, for example, Harman, 2010). The working class has shown itself capable of acting together as a community (Bourdieu, 1992) both in the workplace through unionisation (for recent evidence, see Dunn, 2004) and in the political field through workers’ parties (historically in Europe, through labour and social democratic parties, and elsewhere in the world, for example, through the Communist Party of India and the Workers’ Party in Brazil, see Hickey and Mohan, 2004), and direct action organisations.21 Capitalism is also beset by crises, which stem from the contradiction between capital and labour (see Chapter Two); while not necessarily signalling the death-throes of capitalism, these crises do present opportunities for transforming capitalism. Finally, the historic examples of worker cooperatives around the world, often in most unfavourable situations and contexts, show that the capital–labour nexus can be broken within individual workplaces, including those of the state,22 even if wider transformation does not necessarily follow. It is important to bear in mind that state power itself is not merely oppressive and dominating, as anarchists believe, but is (or can be) also empowering and liberating.23 My point here is only to suggest that there are grounds for optimism as well as pessimism.24

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Neoliberalism can be understood most simply as a political project to (re) establish the rule of capital as fully as possible (see, for example, Harvey, 2005, 2), with neoliberalisation being the process or processes of moving towards that goal. This project/process involves removing all barriers to the free movement of capital (such as monopolies, cartels and restrictions on trade) and, to a lesser extent, of labour (so-called ‘restrictive practices’, mainly by labour unions), opening up new areas for capitalist exploitation (for example in parts of the world where people still provide their own means of subsistence and in areas of social reproduction such as childcare) and recommodifying goods and services that have historically been decommodified (mainly by governments, namely nationalised industries, and in education, health, social care, and so on). In a neoliberal society, everything is subordinated to the aim of ‘economic growth’ (meaning the expansion of capital), and such growth is understood in terms of participation in the labour market (labour as capital) and the (related) expansion of profitable business. It takes no account of unpaid labour, unless this can be commodified in some way (such as payments in kind). Neoliberal governments attempt to create ‘the right conditions for business growth’ (CLG, 2009, 15) by ensuring that workers are employable and productive, and that employers are restrained and regulated as little as possible.The ideal neoliberal state is a minimal one, which taxes and spends as little as possible,25 and in which all remaining functions and activities are contracted out to capitalists at competitive prices. Neoliberals believe that human development and happiness is best served if capital (including labour) is free to move where it will – to work, to invest, to spend, and so on, thus maximising equality of opportunity and social mobility. Such freedom is not possible in the absence of other basic freedoms (of speech, association, private property, and so on), and these freedoms need to be protected by a framework of law, in which everyone is treated equally.The relationship between capital and labour is seen as an equal exchange and it is this equality that is ideally reflected in the law (bourgeois law) and in political democracy. However, the institution of law and democracy itself presents opportunities for further commodification, which neoliberals are perhaps only now beginning to explore. Neoliberalism is a powerful force and is not to be dismissed lightly. Many of the freedoms it advocates are indeed to be cherished. Its fundamental flaw, however, is that it completely misrecognises the nature of capitalist exploitation and domination.26 It fails to see that most people are not free inasmuch as they are dominated in their workplaces and, by extension, in capitalist society generally. It fails to see that people are not equal because they possess radically different totals of capital, which determine their social positions within dominant and dominated classes. It is also

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utopian in a bad sense in suggesting that ‘everyone can rise’27 when it is clear that capitalism always produces losers as well as winners (and the relative positions of most people in the class structure change little over time – Li and Devine, 2011).28 And, of particular relevance for this book, neoliberalism is incompatible with the beloved community, which is free from exploitation and domination – in a capitalist society, the only possible (but still highly unlikely) ‘community of self-realizing beings who are agents in their own development’ (Clark, 2013, 70) would be the community of capitalists themselves (but for a possible exception, see Box 3.2).

Box 3.2: Marinaleda Marinaleda in Andalucia has been called a ‘communist model village’. It has 2,700 inhabitants. In the late 1970s it had unemployment of more than 60 per cent. It was a farming community with no land, its people frequently forced to go without food for days at a time. It elected a communist mayor in 1979, who has been re-elected time after time since then. Today, the primary source of paid work is the Marinaleda cooperative, which owns the land on which it works and is mainly agricultural (arable crops) but also food processing. Decisions are taken in general assemblies. Unemployment appears to be minimal and everyone in the cooperative is paid the same, which is more than double the Spanish minimum wage. Surpluses from the cooperative are used to create more jobs. So Marinaleda is a cooperative community – it is based on a cooperative that is accountable to a (village) community as well as to its members. It is also anticapitalist but it exists within a capitalist state. It contravenes bourgeois law in many respects, such as occupying land illegally, refusing to pay debts, and raiding supermarkets to feed the poor, but its members pay taxes and receive benefits in return (education, healthcare, pensions, etc). It is, in effect, another example of a communalist community (with similar problems of scaling up), but it is interesting because it is larger than most such communities and more explicitly a political community. Source: Adapted from Hancox, 2013

I want to end this chapter on a positive note by returning to the discussion of social movements in Chapter Two. Historically, most social movements have given priority to specific injustices (for example, of class, race, gender, disability) over others. In recent years, this has been criticised on the grounds that all forms of domination (on grounds of race, gender, disability, age, and so on) are inextricably linked and should therefore be opposed in

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their entirety – a position that has come to be known as ‘intersectionality’ (Yuval-Davis, 2011).A social movement that incorporates intersectionality in both its aims and its practice could then be said to satisfy an important condition for achieving a beloved (political) community. One example of a movement that appears to do this is that of the Indignados (indignant or outraged people) in Spain. In their study of the movement, López and García (2014) identified four dominant interpretive frames, two of which (‘Life’ and ‘Bodies’) showed significant intersectionality. The Life frame in particular saw the main problem for the movement as ‘the existence of deep inequalities created by an unjust hierarchical order in which market interests aligned with political systems take priority over the life of individuals’ (López and García, 2014, 12). Importantly, the Life frame included a critique of capitalist work, while the Bodies frame ‘identified the mutually reinforcing strength of the capitalist and heteronormative systems in excluding people of transgender, lesbian, gay, intersexual, or other orientations’ (López and García, 2014, 15).The third frame, ‘Labor Justice’ focused on capitalism as a single system of oppression but its definition of ‘workers’ was extended to include ‘the unemployed, immigrants, youth suffering job precariousness, or women doing unrecognized work and subject to labor discrimination’ (López and García, 2014, 15) and it did not claim that this was the only kind of oppression. All decisions were made in general assemblies and: ‘There was no search for leadership, no hierarchy, no representation, no spokesperson’ (López and García, 2014, 17). Such is the movement that now provides the social power behind Spain’s new political party, Podemos (Dolan, 2014).

Summary Political community is a special kind of community, whose existence depends upon its public performance. In the modern world, nations have been the predominant form of political community, but these have largely been created through the exercise of state power, as a way of rendering populations more governable. State power has its sources in the control of the means of violence and also, in capitalist societies, in capitalist domination of labour processes, supported by a legal framework based on property ownership. Capitalist states are therefore founded on class domination but workingclass compliance with capitalist rule is achieved through the mystification of labour exploitation (so that labour appears to be free), through the material benefits that workers gain from participation in capitalist social relations, and through capitalism’s ability to present itself as the ‘least worst’ system. In reality, capitalism is a system that is inherently divisive and dehumanising, and incompatible with a global community of free, equal and co-operative citizens.

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Questions for discussion • • • •

What is political community? Can it exist on a global scale? What is neoliberalism? What are its limitations? What is anarchism? What are the problems with it? What do you think are the prospects for communism (conceived as communalism on a global scale) or autonomist socialism?

Further reading Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste, London and New York: Routledge. Clark, J. P. (2013) The impossible community: Realizing communitarian anarchism, New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic. Harman, C. (2010) Zombie capitalism: Global crisis and the relevance of Marx, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Holloway, J. (2010) Crack capitalism, London: Pluto Press. Somerville, P. (2011) ‘Democracy and participation’, Policy & Politics, vol 39, no, 3, pp 417-37.

Notes 1

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For further evidence of the dark side of modern nationalisms today (and, more generally, what might be called the politics of fear and loathing), see Worth (2013, chapter 4).This is not to say, however, that nations cannot play a progressive role as political communities within wider continental communities and within a global community – in principle, nations could form part of a universal beloved community. For a detailed critique of Pettit (1997), as well as other liberal and ‘civic republican’ thinkers such as Lovett (2010), for their failure to understand systemic domination, see Clark (2013, 106–26). Thomas Carlyle, for example, argued against Mill ([1859] 1974) that it is not wrong to ‘coerce into better methods, human swine in any way’ (Carlyle, 1904, 196, cited in Mill, 1974, editor’s introduction, 42). I discuss the question of the legitimacy of coercion later. In practice, most if not all liberals accept a great deal of such regulation, contrary to their belief in non-domination. This is part of the compromise that they have to make in a (liberal) democracy. But there are limits to this – for example, Locke ([1689] 1823) argued that citizens had a right to revolt if the state tries to remove and destroy their property or tries to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power; and, in the face of such arbitrary power, Pettit (1997, 199) argues that dissenters must be allowed to secede from the political community.

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5

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Bang (2015) seems to be moving towards this in his conception of ‘policypolitics’ as a democratic politics in which ordinary members of a political community engage in expressive and reciprocal (not just formal and representational) relationships with ‘political authorities’. ‘Genuine reciprocal recognition requires that the other be allowed to be, and this implies that coercion, force, and violence must be renounced as the basis of human relationships’ (Williams, 1997, 76). Clark (2013, 76) points out that in his early writings Hegel also saw a free community as being one of ‘mutual self-realization based on love and solidarity’, and not on force and coercion (law) or ideology (faith). I here leave on one side Hegel’s absurd attempt to identify a free political community with the early nineteenth century Prussian state. For Hegel, a free political community achieves its final realisation in the form of what Nisbet (1953) called a ‘total community’, that is,‘a fusion of state and society, an organic whole’ (Delanty, 2010, 12). This is obviously to be distinguished from communalism in the Indian subcontinent, which is a form of sectarianism based on religion or ethnicity. For more on affinity groups, see Clark (2013, 160–4). ‘A crucial issue is whether affinity groups and other small communities of liberation can spread throughout all levels of society, moving beyond their present marginality without losing their radicality’ (Clark, 2013, 191). Since there is no clear way forward here at all, one is forced to conclude that this represents a triumph of hope over experience. This is referred to as ‘prefiguration’, that is, ‘a process of learning hope’ (Dinerstein, 2014, 19) – see also Levitas (2013). An example of prefiguration in practice is that of ecotopias (Leonard, 2007). Interestingly, the Transition culture movement, at least as described by Neal (2013), seems to combine elements of political anarchism with more open and experimental forms of apolitical communalism. This is a ‘new politics’ of community, emerging in response to the new ‘big issues’ of Peak Oil and climate change, but it is not yet clear how much such local action can contribute towards solving these global problems. This term originally included only wealthy property owners (Howell and Pearce, 2002) but, as the franchise was extended in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, civil society became more democratic – we now refer simply to ‘the public’. The term is confusing (much like community!), so I avoid it in this book: it is constructed not only as a field or set of fields of public action, as noted here, but also as habitus, and again as a ‘third sector’ outside of capitalist relations. Civil society has ‘blurred boundaries’ (Taylor, 2011, 79) indeed! Bourdieu (1998, 41) defines the state as ‘the culmination of a process of concentration of the different species of capital’ but this only summarises how

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15

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capital comes to dominate state organisations and does not say what state power actually is. Much of the literature fetishises ‘the state’ as if it were an object that can be observed and/or theorised about separately from capitalism (see, for example, the collection in Hay et al, 2006) – what Gamble (2007, 863) has called a ‘Weberian concept of the state, which remains so central to our understanding of state institutional forms and capacities’. In reality, all contemporary states are sites of contradictions, contested terrains, and entirely integral to capitalism as a system. Some scholars, going back to Weber (1994), have talked of the state’s monopoly of the means of violence. In practice, however, states have rarely exercised a monopoly but have had to compete with other powers acting in the same political field. It is also incorrect to define a state as claiming such a monopoly because that says nothing about what a state actually is. Beetham (1984, 213) says it better when he writes that control of the means of violence is par excellence the business of the state. Harman (2010, especially 166–8) explains how spending on arms has played a major role in the post-war success of capitalist states (we see this in, for example, the so-called ‘long boom’ from the 1940s to the 1970s, and also the demise of the USSR): ‘The secret of the Western long boom of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s lay in the way the national state could reduce the pressures leading to over-accumulation [of capital] (by diverting a portion of capital into non-productive military channels); take direct action to try to maintain a high rate of exploitation (through wage controls); intervene to slow down the boom before it led key firms to become unprofitable; and maintain a minimum guaranteed level of demand through military orders’ (Harman, 2010, 178). For Harman, the key issue is that of the competition among capitalist states (page 200), which inevitably results in capital over-accumulation, falling rates of profit, and ever-deepening crises, which can end only in global catastrophe or revolutionary change (page 323). Capitalist states dominate their own territories but they compete with one another on a global scale. This extends to ‘humanitarian intervention’ where the express intention is to protect life from imminent and grave danger. What is called ‘just war theory’ goes back to Thomas Aquinas (1265–74). Du Gay (2012, 399) defines the ‘modern state minimally as the political apparatus that delivers the governmental capacity needed to protect the members of a territorial population from each other and from external enemies’. ‘It was not the capitalist market, nor capitalists as the new dominant force, but rather the contradictions of capitalism, that advanced the cause of democracy’ (Rueschemeyer et al, 1992, 7), with the working class being ‘the most consistent democratic force’ (Rueschemeyer et al, 1992, 8).This continues to be the case in historically more recent transitions to democracy in Spain, Portugal, Greece,

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Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and other countries: ‘The collective action of labor movements played a key democratic role not only in propelling a transition, but also in expanding political space and the scope of contestation in the new democratic regime’ (Collier and Maloney, 1997, 300). For example, the MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan – Organisation for the Empowerment of Workers and Farmers) in Rajasthan, which confronts corruption by using public hearings to locally verify official accounts, and large-scale protests to get rights of access to government information (Williams, 2004, 99). I would argue that, as a field, the political field must be transformed like every other.This involves crucially the decommodification of labour power, especially that of state employees. The first step to take is to cooperativise state organs – see later chapters.We must be inside and outside the state, against the capitalist state, and beyond the capitalist state. Du Gay (2012), for example, argues that the state’s monopolisation of the means of violence, although far from perfect, results overall in a safer society. This is open to debate in that it could be countered that it is the consent of the people to that monopoly, rather than the monopoly itself, which ensures a safer (but still not necessarily more free) society. As an example to support Du Gay’s argument, however, one could compare states that impose strict gun control, such as UK, with those that are far more lax, such as US, and note that the rate of gun killing in the US is hundreds of times higher than in UK. A further possible source of optimism is the growth of new political parties dedicated to ending exploitation and domination, such as Podemos in Spain arising out of the Indignados social movement (Dolan, 2014) (this seems to satisfy Bang’s (2015) condition for a democratic politics, emerging organically from scaled-up community action – see also Reyes, 2015). Evidence of successful action by political parties abounds elsewhere in the world: for example, in Kerala and West Bengal (India) and Porto Alegre (Brazil). Harvey (2005, 67) argues that taxation is needed to fund a system of law and order, and to regulate ‘natural monopolies’ to ensure the provision of infrastructure such as roads. Some neoliberals, however, would argue that these functions could be discharged through quasi-markets (public services – or rather public commissioning of services – that are as ‘market-like’ as possible), thus keeping taxation to the minimum. Neoliberalism is an ideology in Althusser’s (1970) sense of an illusion that alludes to the reality of capitalist exploitation. Davies (2011, 114) says: ‘A society of networks based on trust is the visionary regulative ideal of neoliberalism’. For evidence on how dominant classes win out in public service provision generally, see Hastings and Matthews (2015).

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four Governmental approaches to community This chapter looks more specifically at how ‘community’ is constructed by governments, most commonly today as part of a neoliberal project, to ensure the governability of the populations they rule. It is argued that modern liberal capitalist states derive their authority not only from their historically acquired control of the means of violence and from their establishment of a disciplinary framework of law and capitalist markets (as explained in Chapter Three), but also through specific forms of governmentality, which mobilise citizens in such a way that they freely choose to act to further the interests of capital. The concept of governmentality, however, is not sufficient to explain why governments act as they do or how successful they might be expected to be in such mobilisation. Such explanation requires empirical research, and so far this research indicates that governments follow a variety of approaches: managing the relationship with community organisations (or other organised groups of citizens), either by co-opting them to governmental agendas or by working more openly with them; ignoring or by-passing them and setting up their own organisations that are then assumed to represent the ‘community’ as projected by government itself; and attempting to suppress community organisations that resist government actions or oppose government policies. Clearly, there are limits to governmentality but where these limits lie continues to be disputed – relationships between government and community are dynamic, unpredictable and extremely varied. Communities tend to resist as well as comply, and the balance between compliance and resistance is highly variable and uncertain. The role of front-line workers is particularly important in shaping the relationship between government and community, and this role is examined in part II of this book. The chapter also briefly considers the admittedly limited literature relating to the issue of ‘scaling up’ community action that was raised in Chapter Three.

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The chapter offers a case study of the UK to illustrate the particular approaches followed by its governments since the second world war, commencing with the shallow, community-blind nostrums of ‘post-war consensus’ and culminating in the exceptionally oppressive and divisive ‘austerity’ politics of today (which also assumes or presumes or projects an entirely fictitious popular consensus).

Neoliberal projections of community: as collectively governable subjects Contemporary governmental approaches to community have been dominated by neoliberal agendas (for historical background on government and community, see Newman and Lake, 2006; Somerville, 2011a), and this has led to a convergence of policies on community across a number of advanced capitalist states including US, UK and Canada (Mitchell, 2001; Brodie, 2002; MacLeod, 2002; Fyfe and Milligan, 2003; Fremeaux, 2005; DeFilippis et al, 2010, 68). Increasingly, in the Anglo-American world at least, governments have attempted to govern ‘through community’ (Rose, 1996a), as an ‘institutional fix’ for problems of social services and social policy (Macmillan and Townsend, 2006; DeFilippis et al, 2010, 83). The result has been a ‘shadow state’ (Wolch, 1990), in which governments rule increasingly through voluntary and community sector organisations (which DeFilippis et al, 2010, 86, call ‘the nonprofitization of the state’), in which they expect citizens to be ‘active’ (Marinetto, 2003) and ‘engaged’ (Buser, 2013) – ‘a new mode of governance that…appears to involve mobilization from below but does so in an extremely circumscribed and biased way’ (Mayer, 2003, 110). In spite of academic support for greater public participation (for example, Dryzek, 2002), the experience of such ‘active citizenship’, as of participation in government projects generally, has not been particularly positive (for a variety of evidence to support this, see Hastings et al, 1996; Skelcher et al, 1996; Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Shiner et al, 2004; Atkinson and Carmichael, 2007; Cornwall, 2008). Of their 17 case studies of public participation, Barnes et al (2007, 184) acknowledge that many ‘seemed to have achieved little in terms of challenging professional expertise or bringing about changes in the ways in which services were delivered.’ The opinion of lay people or ordinary citizens is either dismissed as ‘uninformed’ or, when clearly informed, it is portrayed as the concoction of undemocratic ‘usual suspects’ promoting their particular hobby horses (Maguire and Truscott, 2006; Taylor, 2006, 274). Some studies have also highlighted the inequalities within communities that can be exacerbated by public participation: ‘those already well connected tend to get better

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connected’ and ‘community participation tends to be dominated by a small group of insiders who are disproportionately involved in a large number of governance activities’ (Skidmore et al, 2006). DeFilippis et al (2006, 683–4) concluded that community participation is inevitably limited, relatively ineffective in solving community problems, under-focused on structural issues of poverty and redistribution, and over-focused on local issue or single-issue problems.Worse still, participation can actually damage communities, as activists become recruited to local leadership coalitions that do not work in the interests of poorer communities (Purdue, 2005, 260). There seems to be widespread agreement among researchers across the world, therefore, that community organisations are relatively powerless in the face of government.1 In the US, for example, DeFilippis et al (2010, 91) report that: It is the government that sets policy goals, rules, targets, and so forth, while it is the community organizations that have to meet them in order to both have services provided in their communities and obtain the contracts to do the providing. Although there is a strong rhetoric of partnership or empowerment in the context of community organization involvement in public services, the state usually exhibits little understanding or regard for localized processes and traditions, and it assumes that all communities have both the capacity and the will to follow policy decided from the center. In the UK, the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power (CPPP) (2000), for example, found what they described as an overwhelming level of anger, distrust and cynicism among grassroots activists (an alternative term for ‘active citizens’).2 They found meetings conducted in jargon, in surroundings in which people did not feel comfortable; endless paperbased questionnaires from a myriad of initiatives and organisations; plans and reports that did not highlight people’s real concerns in plain language; and monitoring and evaluation arrangements – nearly always conducted by independent experts – which did not get to the nub of problems. The Commission concluded that the main problem was that too often people experiencing poverty did not feel respected and too often they were not respected. Similarly, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Neighbourhood Programme found that ‘many community organisations still feel marginalized in partnerships with statutory authorities and agencies’ (JRF, 2007, 8). This is no surprise in the UK, however, because its New Labour government established a Compact between the government and the voluntary and community sector, which effectively incorporated the

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sector in a subordinate role (Craig et al, 2002;Taylor and Warburton, 2003; Blackmore, 2005; Kelly, 2007, 1012–13). Also in the UK, Barnes et al (2007) concluded: Despite the ‘official’ discourses of empowerment or partnership, of consumerism or stakeholding, which pervaded the language of policy documents and, in many cases, of the ‘strategic’ managers we interviewed at the outset of the project, it seemed that public bodies managed to retain and even enlarge their power. This was evident in the power of public officials to constitute their public in a way that best fitted their needs (rather than to engage with pre-existing and more potentially troublesome groups); the power to set the rules and norms of engagement; and in many cases to set the agenda of what issues were, and were not, to be opened up to public deliberation. They also had the power to decide what legitimacy to afford to different voices and different modes of expression; and ultimately, of course, the power to decide whether or not to take account of the views expressed. (Barnes et al, 2007, 190–1) Taylor (2011, 160) has pointed out similarly that communities or members of the public still: ‘do not decide the game that is being played; they do not determine the rules of play, the system of refereeing or, indeed, who plays; and the cards are stacked in favour of the more powerful players. In fact, many find they are in the wrong game altogether.’ Taylor (2011, 160–85) elaborates on each of these points: the rules of the game in terms of structures and systems of decision-making, codes of behaviour, the system of refereeing, the nature of the players, the stacking of the cards (or loading of the dice), and the futility or illegitimacy of the game itself. Public sector cultures assume that the public will not understand the complexity of the decisions that have to be made, will not be willing to make the sacrifices dictated by limited budgets and by the need for fairness, and will be ruled by self-interest. State–citizen partnerships are overwhelmed by a culture of consensus, which implies that the most powerful view wins out. And state agendas are swamped by monitoring and accountability mechanisms, with the concern being to spend the money ‘properly’. The dominance of the audit culture diverts community energies or professionalises how they work, placing power in the hands of those who can interpret the rules – what Bauman has called the ‘command economy of thought’. Consequently, government is forcing communities to restructure themselves, centrally reshaping them to become part of the ‘solution’ instead of articulating the problem (Atkinson,

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2003). But it is doing this in such a way that the communities cannot win because those who control the resources and possess strategic knowledge have privileged pathways, from which organised community groups are excluded. The crucial issue of how a community is to be developed is therefore reduced to a question of how that community is to participate in certain governmentally prescribed structures or networks, and evidence suggests that this approach fails to do justice to the needs, sensibilities and aspirations of the community concerned (for clear illustrations of this point see Wallace, 2010; Lawson and Kearns, 2014). The particular variant of neoliberalism, in which citizens and communities are actively constructed, invoked, enrolled, summoned, conjectured or projected into existence by government to perform as willing servants of capital (as both producers and consumers), has been termed ‘roll-out’ or ‘rolled-out’ neoliberalism (Peck and Tickell, 2002, 37) or the ‘activating state’ (Mayer, 2003, 123), deploying ‘active social policy’ (Cochrane, 2007; Cochrane and Etherington, 2007) to ensure ‘responsible’ labour market participation,‘responsible’ entrepreneurship and ‘responsible’ consumption.3 This variant is exemplified in the UK by the New Labour government (see, for example, Fuller and Geddes, 2008), and continued, in a less strategic and more arbitrary way, by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government from 2010 to 2015, and now by the Conservative government. The emphasis has been particularly on local communities (Amin, 2005, 614; Newman and Lake, 2006, 55),4 which have been subjected to an ‘alliterative garble of revitalization, renaissance, regeneration, renewal, redevelopment, rejuvenation, restructuring, reurbanization and residentialization’ (Slater, 2008, 219), not to mention the latest buzzword, ‘transformation’ (Hickey and Mohan, 2004).5 Local community organisations have been expected to ‘become more professionalized – and thereby divorced from their communities – and more businesslike in how they operate and understand their roles’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 92; for a scathing account of what this means for community development practitioners, see Scott, 2010).6 Communities, and the people who live in them, and the organisations that work in them and for them, are all expected to make themselves more attractive for capital investment, more exploitable, more employable – they have to ‘sell’ themselves in what is increasingly a global market (DeFilippis, 2004), no matter where they live in the world (Walker et al, 2008). Consequently, community organisations that were once radical in their aims and ways of working have been ‘deradicalized’ (O’Connor, 1999, 106), ‘focused on the physical revitalization of place rather than the transformation of local governance’ (Newman and Lake, 2006, 54), on service provision rather than ‘empowering the poor or transforming social relations’ (Mayer, 2003, 120), and ‘on development and growth,

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organizational stability and professional competence, not on social change’ (Fisher, 1984, 131).7 Essentially, governments in capitalist countries construct community and citizenship not only as national (as we saw in Chapter Three) but also as local, and their constructions, particularly in relation to poorer communities, are intended to change people and places (whether national or local) to fit with their projects of neoliberalisation, which are about adapting those people and places to meet the needs of capital.8 Such projects, however, for better or worse, while making a clear difference to many places (albeit ‘ameliorative, not transformative’ (Lupton, 2013, 68)), do not appear to have been particularly successful in relation to people, either because of resistance from the communities themselves or because ‘there are neither the resources nor the capacities at the local level to solve major community problems such as poverty, poor education, insufficient affordable housing, and so forth’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 124; see also Dunleavy et al, 2006) or, to put it another way, ‘the focus on neighbourhood-scale project-based development and service delivery can only ameliorate symptoms of largerscale political and social restructuring without addressing underlying causes’ (Newman and Lake, 2006, 59). It is argued, therefore, that communities are relatively powerless to resist governmental depredations and yet it is also alleged that somehow they do resist them, and sometimes successfully; and it is also argued that government interventions in neighbourhood communities can form a successful part of a neoliberal project, while at the same time failing to empower the residents of those neighbourhoods. How is this to be explained? One explanation relies on the concept of governmentality. According to this concept, government is a way of exercising authority over people, distinct both from sovereign authority that comes with the control of the means of violence (see Chapter Three) and from the disciplinary power exercised through the rule of law (Kay and Mott, 1982 – especially pages 131–7 on ‘the production of procedures’ and pages 137–56 on ‘policy’) and through the institutions of capitalism (primarily the labour market). Governmentality is simply the mentality of government and is specifically about the construction of governable subjects (which encompasses building ‘good relations’ between communities and governments – see Chapter Two). As Roy (2009, 160) puts it: ‘Government…unfolds through the mobilization of the interests and aspirations of the governable and self-governing self, that is, through willed, free, self-determining, even empowered, subjects.’A neoliberal government is then one that mobilises its citizens so that they freely choose to act to further the interests and expansion of capital, for example, by being as employable as possible, by working as hard as they can, by accepting that the ‘market rate’ for a job is a fair remuneration, by

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becoming their own bosses and employing others to act in the same way, by either spending their earnings on commodities or investing them in capitalist enterprises, even by running their own public and community services (Gillies, 2012, 82), and so on.9 The process of constructing governable subjects thus also reinforces the other sources of state authority, by (re)constructing pacified and relatively orderly spaces (or territory) in which the governable subjects can live and work, and through the disciplines of the workplaces and markets in which they find themselves as subjects – all part of what Foucault called ‘the governmentalisation of the state’ (Foucault, 1991, 103 – for more detail see Dean, 1999; 2007; Rose, 1996b). Community development specifically is deployed by government as a form of ‘managerial technology’ (Schofield, 2002, 675) to achieve this end of free, active, governable communities. Governmentality therefore explains, to some extent, the relative powerlessness of communities in a capitalist society. It does not explain, however, why government works as it does, why it is either more or less successful in mobilising communities to its agendas, or what the implications of all this might be for community empowerment or disempowerment (for further critique of governmentality, see Kerr, 1999). Given the contradictory character of capitalism as described in Chapter Two, one would expect any project of governmentalisation to be inherently fragile and constantly contested. Research reveals, indeed, that governments have acted in a number of ways (some of which are contradictory) towards existing community organisations and communities. They have: • attempted to locate them, fix some points of connection with them, and then find ways of managing the relationship (Donald, 2008, 183). This can involve: – co-opting them to governmental agendas (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 92–3; Davies, 2011, 120; for a good example from Indonesia, see Carroll, 2009), for example, by constructing them as service providers and social enterprises (Carmel and Harlock, 2008); even when co-opted, however, community organisations are most often involved only as ‘peripheral insiders’ (Maloney et al, 1994); and governmental agents also tend to select the ‘expert citizens’ (Bang, 2005) whom they want to co-opt (Taylor, 2011, 174);10 or: – working with them on a more open-minded and collaborative basis (Ling, 2002; Kelly, 2007; Somerville and Haines, 2008; DeFilippis et al, 2010, 121–2)11 – for example, participatory budgeting in Brazil (Gret and Sintomer, 2005; Wampler, 2007; Smith, 2008); • largely ignored or by-passed them and set up their own organisations that are then assumed to represent an imagined free community, capable of

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managing its own affairs, developing itself and taking on governmental responsibilities – as in the case, in England, of Single Regeneration Budget (Schofield, 2002) and New Deal for Communities (Foley and Martin, 2000; Beatty et al, 2010; Lawless, 2011);12 or: • attempted to suppress those organisations altogether if they offer resistance (Mooney and Fyfe, 2006 – see Box 4.1) – ‘governments want to exploit community but are deeply uncomfortable with community activism’ (Barnes et al, 2007, 204).

Box 4.1: The Govanhill swimming pool campaign The New Labour government in the UK (1997–2010) sought to build ‘active communities’ in which people would work together to tackle problems of ‘social exclusion’ and lack of community cohesion. Govanhill is an area of Glasgow with a number of problems such as poor health, increasing drug use among young people, declining public services, and lack of facilities for young people. The city council’s announcement that the local swimming pool was to be closed (as part of an ‘upgrade’ or modernisation of Glasgow’s sports facilities) provoked a strong reaction from the local community. The different community organisations who used the pool (‘the Muslim Ladies Swimming Group, the Orthodox Jewish swimming groups, mother and toddler groups and the elderly ladies of Queen’s Park Swimming Club’ – Mooney and Fyfe, 2006, 142–3) came together to protest and campaign against the closure, with a round-the-clock picket of the pool. The community had not been properly consulted and the campaigners exposed weaknesses in the council’s arguments for closure. Instead of engaging and negotiating with this now highly active community, the council resorted to a process of harassment and intimidation that culminated in a forcible end to the occupation 141 days later. The police arrested and charged a number of protesters but only one was convicted (for breach of the peace and police assault). This case shows how a neoliberalising government (here in the shape of Glasgow City Council delivering on New Labour’s local government modernisation agenda) ignored the existing ‘well-developed community networks, multi-ethnic and age cooperation and interaction on the ground’ (Mooney and Fyfe, 2006, 146) in Govanhill. Far from engaging with this ‘active community’ (which, ironically and unintentionally, was galvanised by the announcement of the closure itself), the city council acted with outright hostility towards it and attempted to deactivate it. This presents an unusually clear illustration of the positions of the two protagonists in capitalist society: on the one hand, those who focus on exchange value (in this case, of the pool) and the need for greater profitability, and those who focus on its use-value (in terms of its contribution to local social welfare). It

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also shows how a neoliberal project can be ‘successful’ in its own terms (in that the allegedly uneconomic pool was closed) while at the same time disempowering the local community. There are many other examples of such ‘success’. As McCabe (2010, 11) notes: ‘Where Government (both national and local) has actually been extremely successful in galvanising community action is when it has angered people. In the last decade, such successes have included the establishment of the Countryside Alliance and the campaign against the banning of fox hunting, the anti-Iraq war demonstrations, anti-globalisation actions at the G8 and G20 Summits and most recently in the demonstrations against the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance and increases in student tuition fees.’ Source: Mooney and Fyfe, 2006

Arguably, even working open-mindedly with community organisations tends to become just a limited form of power sharing around some local public goods and services (Miraftab, 2004; Clements, 2008b, 176–7):13 Management of poor areas has been delegated in part to community organisations, which has allowed for some degree of ‘social peace’; yet this ad hoc type of power sharing remains outside the traditional political system and, as such, does not offer any means of transforming that system or of addressing problems at the broader scale at which they arise. Instead, it can lead to a fragmentation of power which only profits the most powerful. (Bacqué and Biewener, 2013, 2210) To a large extent, how governments act varies according to the context in which they act. Currently, however, we do not have a good understanding of the limits to governmentality, in terms of how free governments are (even at a local level) to choose the path that they follow. There also seems to be a widespread assumption (exemplified by the concept of ‘new public management’ in relation to neoliberal governmentality (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992); for critiques, see Dunleavy et al, 2006; Goldfinch and Wallis, 2010) that governments act consciously in following a particular path, with a clear idea of where they are going and how they are going to get there.14 In practice, however, many of the consequences of government action are unintended, though not necessarily contrary to the government’s general aims. So community organisations and communities, without being formally co-opted to governmental agendas, may still be induced to respond to those agendas, for example, in response to what DiMaggio and Powell (1991) called coercive (mainly regulation), mimetic (standardisation of

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‘good practice’ – professionalization)15 and normative (the normalisation of managerialist ideology) pressures (Kelly, 2007, 1015–16), producing the docile, compliant, homogeneous and isomorphic (and therefore more governable) community and community organisations that government seeks.

Community dilemmas: comply or resist? Now consider the issue from the point of view of those on the receiving end of government, namely citizens and communities. Typically, they do not choose whether to comply or resist but rather they both comply and resist, reflecting their contradictory position within capitalism.They comply with neoliberal projects insofar as they see those projects as providing much needed investment to improve the services in their communities and as potentially creating employment for themselves; but they resist them inasmuch as they view them as undermining or destroying their communities or making their lives more difficult (for example, by increasing their cost of living or removing valued amenities). Compliance and resistance can occur simultaneously – for example, support for government investment can coincide with resistance to government attempts to dictate how that investment is to be made (this seems to have been the case with at least some New Deal for Communities projects (Lawless, 2011)). The outcome of such conflictedness in any given situation is impossible to predict, so the real lessons of governmental projects have not been learned, either by government or by communities. In view of the powerlessness of communities, Davies (2007) argues that, rather than participating in state-led ‘partnerships’ (that is, engaging with local authorities and other statutory authorities in formal governance structures), communities would in some cases (specifically, Dundee and Hull) be better off organising themselves outside of such partnerships. He cites the successful examples of the anti-poll tax movement of 1989–92 and what is now London Citizens (see Box 2.2), both of which created autonomous forms of action not tied into governmental networks.This is not to deny that participation may occasionally be beneficial (for example, to gain funding) but:‘Ultimately, the choice between participation and exit is tactical and context-specific’ (Davies, 2007, 796). The problem is that: ‘Where incompatible common-sense understandings of purpose combine with both blatant and subtle inequalities in political power the prospects for an equitable consensus seem poor’ (Davies, 2007, 793). The consequence of this is that ‘disempowered actors who carve out autonomous spaces and act coercively against dominant interests can influence governing outcomes better than those collaborating with governing elites’ (Davies, 2007, 780). This appears to be at least partly because such community organisations

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can act ‘as a bulwark against colonisation [in Habermas’ sense] and as part of a public sphere where “citizens can debate the ends and means of governance” (Edwards, 2004, 14–15; Wills, 2004)’ (Davies, 2007, 795). Davies’ suggestion is interesting but it is not clear how applicable it is in areas other than Dundee and Hull, and he also recognises that it is by no means certain that communities even in those cities would actually be better off if they exited their partnerships with government bodies.16 Few would deny that it is important for communities to have their own autonomous spaces and organisations (see, for example, Cornwall and Coelho, 2006; Gaventa, 2007, cited in Taylor, 2011, 184) but it is arguable that equally important is the role played by ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) or front-line workers in the two-way process of mediating governmental projects to communities (see, for example, Ray et al, 2008, though their research still does not explicitly address the question of the circumstances in which it is worthwhile for disadvantaged groups to participate in governmental structures). All government projects are problematic for communities but that does not mean that communities cannot make progress on the ground, and such progress is often dependent on support and advocacy from front-line workers (Barnes et al, 2007).17 Although the allegiance of such workers is primarily to the organisation that pays their wages or contract fees (which is not to say that they have any affection for that organisation and they may be strongly critical of their managers and of government policy and practice – as in the case of community development workers quoted in Scott, 2010), they also have to build relationships with communities and to learn how to manage those relationships. A number of studies have shown that front-line workers continue to exercise a great deal of discretion (see, for example, Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003) and play a key role in local policy-making (see, for example, Michels and de Graaf, 2010, on Eindhoven and Groningen), and in working horizontally across professional and organisational boundaries (Taylor, 2011, 283). The ‘encounters’ (Bartels, 2013) between these workers and members of the public are important in determining what happens to the community generally.18 As Bartels argues, however, these encounters need to be examined more closely by researchers.19 The relative powerlessness of local communities has prompted many activists and academics to consider ways in which community action can be ‘scaled up’ (see discussion at the end of Chapter Two). Skocpol et al (2000), for example, has shown the value of a model that situates local community efforts within a national organisation. Rather than privileging either local or national collective action, the aim should be to build a national membership federation. This actually sounds rather like a political party, so maybe what she is saying is that we should try to build new political

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parties like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain (mentioned at the end of Chapter Three). In his study of two successful community organisations, namely the Society for the Promotion of Area Resources (SPARC) in Mumbai and Hezbollah in Beirut, Roy (2009, 163) found that they both function as ‘forms of government and produce governable spaces and governable subjects’ on at least an urban or regional scale. They deploy effective technologies of governing through a variety of public services, although SPARC is committed to working with the state while Hezbollah is more militant and confrontational.These are therefore relatively powerful community organisations. Roy notes, however, how in both organisations the female participants are disciplined in their roles as wives and mothers at the same time as they are valued activists on behalf of their community. He also shows the limitations in the approaches of both organisations in that neither has achieved the transformation of the poor that they seek: SPARC was powerless to stop the violent demolition of 300,000 slums in Mumbai in the winter of 2004–5, with no compensation or resettlement, while Hezbollah have used their growing wealth and power to become a partner in Lebanese neoliberalism (Roy, 2009, 174).These examples suggest not only that success depends on context in a general way but also that the judgement of whether a particular development actually counts as successful or not depends on the context in which it is judged. Scaling up is usually understood in terms of broadening scales from the local towards the global, facilitated by multi-scalar relational networks (Fox, 1996). Following Smith (1996b) and Cox (1997), however, Perreault (2003, 65) suggests that ‘scales may be shifted or “jumped” in many directions, often simultaneously, and the scales at which power operates are contingent upon social, political, and economic contexts, all rooted in particular histories’. In his study of an indigenous community organisation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Perreault (2003) showed that the community began organising itself to defend its territory in response to large-scale colonisation of the region from the 1960s onwards, but key to its success (for example, in securing legal recognition for its land claims) was the support provided by a number of organisations operating on a diversity of scales from the local to the international (Perreault, 2003, 67). Consequently, indigenous people became integrated into a growing web of multi-scaled and overlapping networks (involving NGOs, state agencies, national intellectuals and foreign researchers) and re-scaled their space to form and consolidate their own local scale, which formed bases for later forms of political and cultural organising (Perreault, 2003, 75). Thus, the processes occurring across scales actually worked to reconstitute scales, and the multi-scalar networks involved in these processes were largely responsible for the success of indigenous communities’ political and cultural organisations.This

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meant the ‘glocalization’ of the community (Swyngedouw, 1997), ‘that is, the (re)constitution of identities and organizations rooted in local places but simultaneously global in nature’ (Perreault, 2003, 83). Consequently, ‘indigenous peoples and their organizations have become a force to be reckoned with in Ecuadorian politics’ (Perreault, 2003, 85). This example clearly illustrates the importance of scale transformation in community empowerment, by ensuring that what happens locally is linked politically to what happens nationally and globally, with politics and government being themselves transformed in the process (compare nationalist movements in Chapter Three; and for more on the trans-scalar or translocal organisation of indigenous communities, see Castree, 2003). Such illustrations of a trans-scalar organised public seem to be lacking in more advanced capitalist countries, as Wills (2013, A2) has noted. Neoliberalism is therefore a specific historical project, of global reach and importance, which is played out in different places and institutional contexts and on different scales, for differently imagined and constituted communities. It is also a project that is contested by different communities in all these different places, contexts and scales, continually reinvented, and never completely achieved, because of the contradictions inherent to capitalism and because of its (illiberal) reliance on state power. In the rest of this chapter, I will consider the UK government in particular as an illustration of this phenomenon.

The case of the UK Historically, the UK governmental approach to community has been overwhelmingly on local community, with some attention being given to ethnic communities in more recent years. This began with the attempt to create ‘balanced communities’ in the New Towns Act 1946 – understood as neighbourhoods in which every family/household had access to employment, housing, schools and health services – and continued from the 1950s onwards with the promotion of ‘special initiatives’ to deal with the problems of poverty in certain local communities (especially in inner-city areas). From the start, therefore, community policy was largely disconnected from mainstream government policy and consisted of individual areabased projects (Hastings, 2003, 87–8). All of these initiatives, including the famous Community Development Projects (CDPs) (Loney, 1979), assumed that local action would be sufficient to address the problem, although the CDP researchers concluded otherwise and called for the creation of wellpaid jobs in new types of industry, substantial investment in housing and environmental improvements, and more political clout for the affected communities – which of course did not happen.

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This emphasis on local action and area-based initiatives has continued right up to the present day. Under the Conservative governments of 1979–97, the focus was more on economic initiatives, for example, to encourage employers to invest in inner-city areas (with the creation of Enterprise Zones) and to make people more employable (for example, the Community Programme), and to unleash market forces more generally (for example, through privatisation and outsourcing of public services and the introduction of competitive bidding for government funding). Community involvement, however, came to be increasingly recognised as important for the success of these projects, as community members play key roles in the market, for example, in holding public authorities to account and in helping to improve public services. Still, evaluations of urban policy up to 1997 suggested that little improvement had occurred in the most deprived areas and that there had been little change in the focus of mainstream budgets (ODPM, 2002). Other commentators noted that major divisions within communities had not yet been addressed – for example, on race and gender (Brownill and Darke, 1998), on social class (Page, 2000) and on disability (Edwards, 2003). The New Labour government (1997–2010) continued its predecessors’ neoliberal approach and greatly expanded the emphasis on area-based initiatives and community involvement. However, as ‘roll-out’ neoliberals (Fuller and Geddes, 2008) and professed communitarians (Fyfe, 2005), they placed more emphasis on the inclusion of all communities within the overall national community and their cohesion with one another. This called for more active state intervention than envisaged by previous Conservative governments – to provide communities with a ‘leg up’ (or rather a ‘hand up’). They also promoted a ‘civilising mission’ (McLaughlin, 2002), in which the disciplinary powers of the state (the so-called ‘nanny’ or dirigiste state) were to be used firmly to ensure that people behaved in the ‘right’ way. Indeed, behaving in the right way was seen as a condition for being eligible for a hand up, that is, for social inclusion. This was taken to mean, for example, that citizens should be actively seeking not only work but also opportunities for volunteering,‘taking responsibility’, and other forms of ‘participation’ (for example, in partnerships with government) and socalled ‘active citizenship’ (see discussion above). Fuller and Geddes (2008, 262) noted: For New Labour, ‘community’ is a foundation of social organisation and interaction. There is a need for citizens to belong to communities, since citizens are interdependent and have shared responsibilities and rights. The importance of ‘community’ is most noticeable in policy initiatives at

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neighbourhood level, where key institutional innovations such as NDC [New Deal for Communities] partnerships are permeated from top to bottom by rhetorics of community – whether used to imply a veneer of common interest among residents in localities which in reality are inhabited by shifting and multiply fractured populations, or to suggest a particular priority for certain groups – ‘the black and minority ethnic (BME) community’ – where the very nomenclature suggests a catch-all term for non-whites. But it is also important at broader regulatory scales where the new LSPs [Local Strategic Partnerships] include significant representation of the ‘community’ (and voluntary) sectors.The resort to ‘community’ is significant in its recognition of the limitations of both stateand ‘market’-led urban state agencies, and the new models of partnership which New Labour has introduced are a particular challenge both to more traditional Labour-elected councillors who do not accept their legitimacy, as well as to managerialist state bureaucrats whose assumption of the right to manage has been one result of neoliberal New Public Management. Many other researchers in the UK have drawn attention to this increasing emphasis on ‘neighbourhood’ as a focus (site, space or sphere) for neoliberal government (Sullivan, 2001; 2014;Taylor, 2003; Smith et al, 2007; Lowndes and Sullivan, 2008). Most notable under New Labour were its national strategy for neighbourhood renewal and the New Deal for Communities mentioned by Fuller and Geddes above (for critiques of these policies, see McCulloch, 2004; Dinham, 2005; Davies, 2005; Cochrane, 2007; Wallace, 2007; 2010; MacLeavy, 2009). This can be understood as a governmental programme to construct new spaces in which to contain governmentally constructed communities.20 Just like these ‘communities’, such ‘neighbourhoods’ bear no necessary relation to what people living in them would call their neighbourhoods. More recently, Griggs and Roberts (2012) have shown that this neoliberal project is a depoliticising one of neighbourhood management rather than, as originally envisaged by some people, a more politicising one of neighbourhood governance (for similar findings in Amsterdam and Paris, see Uitermark and Nicholls, 2014).This serves to highlight the role of (front-line) neighbourhood managers. More specifically, New Labour assigned a key role for what it called ‘community anchor organisations’, which were multi-purpose, residentcontrolled organisations, involving all sections of a community and facilitating its development (CLG, 2004, 19). These were a mixture of those old and new local community organisations of which the

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government approved.21 Another crucial role assigned was that of the community development worker, in developing and supporting community organisations, developing and improving community services and facilitating community access to resources and influence on policy makers (CLG, 2006a, 15).This policy-making culminated in a White Paper (CLG, 2008b), whose overriding image was one of the active citizen, who acts as a volunteer in the community, who seeks better information with a view to action, who has a real influence over policy decisions, who holds public officials and elected representatives to account for what they do, who seeks swift and fair redress when things go wrong, who is willing to stand for public office (elected or appointed), and who is prepared (in cooperation with fellow citizens) to take on responsibility for running local services. Evaluations of government programmes, however, have found little evidence that community involvement in them makes any significant difference. For example, an evaluation of Community Participation Programmes in England found that ‘there was little evidence as yet of them [through Community Empowerment Networks] influencing the “mainstream”’ (Taylor, 2006, 272; see also Taylor et al, 2005); an evaluation of the government’s support for the voluntary and community sector found that their primary focus was on support for service providers rather than on community development or civil renewal (Macmillan et al, 2007, 4); and an evaluation of the Communities First programme in Wales reported that ‘there is little evidence of community influence over budgets and service delivery, and no evidence of bending mainstream services to reflect the partnership process’ (Adamson and Bromiley, 2008, xv).Throughout New Labour’s rule, there was no long-term investment in community development, no specified arenas in which such development was to take place, little evidence of any effective local action planning, no evidence of attempting to reach a shared vision with communities (except perhaps a vision of ‘quality public services’), and no encouragement of wider community action that might challenge governmental policy or practice. Essentially, it sought to engage with local communities as ‘partners’ (providers as well as users) in order primarily to discipline them and control them, to ensure that they posed no threat to its rule (Karn, 2007; Wallace, 2014). Part of this discipline involved the interpellation of certain individuals and organisations as ‘representative’ of their communities (in an attempt to ensure that the community as a whole was signed up to the partnership) while at other times dismissing the same individuals and organisations as the ‘usual suspects’ when they were perceived to be too vocal, too powerful, too oppositional, obstructive, disruptive or simply too time-consuming.22

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The image of ‘active citizens’, volunteering and taking on responsibility for services and/or working in partnership with government, therefore, signifies an ideological representation of communities: it is not based on any understanding of actual communities and provides no clear means of support to those communities to achieve the goals that it promotes.23 Essentially, the actions the government wanted citizens to take were primarily those that would produce what they regarded as more efficient and effective services. Thus the active citizenship agenda did not include fundamental political issues such as climate change, redistribution through tax and spend, membership of the European Union, waging war, migration, greenhouse gas emissions, industrial relations or the quality of the rule of law. It is little wonder, then, that citizens are increasingly disengaged from this depoliticised politics.24 Even so, it is not clear why communities would want to take on responsibility for running services, anyway. What small community groups often say they need most, and for which they have pressed most strongly for years (see, for example, Thomson and CaulierGrice, 2007), is long-term core funding, which has remained decidedly unavailable. Nevertheless, the coalition government (2010–15) continued New Labour’s emphases on ‘active citizenship’, ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’, with its slogans of localism and ‘big society’ (Bailey and Pill, 2011; 2015). It envisaged devolving power to local authorities and neighbourhoods (that is, local ‘communities’), opening up public services to enable community-based organisations to deliver them, and a renewed emphasis on community organising and voluntary service (Conservative Party, 2010). This involved a new approach to neighbourhood planning (Cox et al, 2013, 39, and see Chapter Eight), with strong claims being made for the benefits of ‘neighbourhood working’ (see, for example, Richardson, 2012). However, the approach seems to be only a ‘modernised’ version of traditional community work (see Chapter Two), complying with the latest governmental agendas on localism and active citizenship.25 It does not address the most important problems facing local communities such as worklessness and low wages. Labour’s ‘civilising mission’ has also continued under the coalition (Gray and Mooney, 2011; MacLeod and Johnstone, 2012) but things have got decidedly more difficult for local communities, at least in England. Investment in community regeneration (which under New Labour had achieved some success in reducing poverty and increasing resident satisfaction in the most deprived neighbourhoods – for more detail, see Lupton et al, 2013) was reduced from £11 billion to £3 billion, government support for community development organisations was almost entirely withdrawn (Chanan and Miller, 2013, 29), and the duty on public

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authorities to involve the community in their decision making was repealed. Five thousand community organisers26 were trained as promised but only 500 of these were paid workers (the rest are volunteers), while over the same period (2011–15) substantially more than 5,000 community development workers lost their jobs. ‘There was no vision of dynamic collaboration between communities and the public sector, only of the voluntary sector or local communities taking over declining public services’ (Chanan and Miller, 2013, 30–1). The ‘new localism’ (for a thoroughgoing critique, see Clarke and Cochrane, 2013) turned out in practice to be largely about getting local authorities to divest themselves of as much as possible of their assets and services to local community organisations – so-called community rights to bid (to buy community assets), to ‘challenge’ (that is, bid to take over local authority services) and to build (small developments of affordable housing) (Wyler and Blond, 2010; CLG, 2014; see also Chapter Eight of this book). As Chanan and Miller (2013, 31) pointed out, however: ‘The idea that local people who are dissatisfied with the running of a public asset would see themselves as empowered by having to buy it and run it themselves in order to put it right is dubious…Why should local residents have to buy an asset for which they have already paid, through their rates and taxes? And how would the community as a whole be empowered by the sale of an asset which belongs to all of them, to an organisation which consists of only a fraction of them?’27 Such criticisms were well anticipated by Donald (2008, 184): ‘There is absolutely nothing positive about having the right to manage the delivery of community services; there are, however, many genuine concerns that the restricted freedoms which result from these arrangements will undermine the ability of communities to act as independent citizens and autonomous individuals.’ Taylor (2011, 217) concurs: ‘the people who have least are likely to benefit least from a wholesale transfer of power and responsibility.’ Macmillan (2013) argued that, with its rhetoric of ‘big society’ and of the government ‘getting out of the way’, the coalition represented a return to ‘roll-back’ neoliberalism. Whereas New Labour attempted to enlist community organisations in support of its agenda, creating new ‘partnerships’ as it saw fit, the coalition adopted a more ‘hands-off ’ approach to community, arguing that ‘big government’ had been ineffective in solving major social problems or indeed had been part of the problem, serving to ‘crowd out’ civil society and compromise its independence (Macmillan, 2013, 5).28 Following Hayek (1979), the coalition believed that communities and citizens (the so-called ‘third sector’) needed to be liberated from forms of governmentalisation that capture and co-opt them into the processes and institutions of government itself, so that they can be free to

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create a spontaneous order as exemplified by a free market. In other words, through retrenchment of the interventionist state, the coalition hoped to be more effective in furthering the interests and expansion of capital, which is the aim of all neoliberal projects.In practice, however, such ‘liberation’ largely meant a loss of government funding for community organisations, which, if not leading to their actual demise, reduced their effectiveness or made them more dependent on the vagaries of market forces: ‘At a very practical level, area-based initiatives and ring-fenced funding (much of which supported community development) have all but disappeared and the strategic partnership arrangements put in place by New Labour to facilitate dialogue between Government and the community sector have been phased out’ (Derounian, 2014, 7; see also Dayson and Wells, 2013). A ‘perfect storm’ (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013) of so-called ‘austerity’ (for critiques of austerity, see Levitas, 2012; Atkinson et al, 2012) has resulted in drastic cuts in government funding for a variety of community services such as libraries, housing support and youth services, and ‘significant reductions in the number of public sector staff working in frontline, community-facing roles’ (Cox et al, 2013, 5), all disproportionately affecting the most deprived areas (Hastings et al, 2012). Local authorities are responding in different ways to weather this storm but notably displaying ‘institutional resilience’ (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013, 542), involving ‘institutional bricolage’ – ‘the recombination and reshuffling of pre-existing components or other institutional materials that happen to be at hand and that, even when depleted, can serve new purposes’ (Lanzara, 1998, 27, cited in Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013, 543). Basically, it seems that local authority staff have adapted to the new conditions of austerity without rebelling or even protesting while at the same time:‘Growing numbers of poor people quite simply do not have enough to eat and food banks and feeding projects have made their appearance on the local stage…The current crisis is…a crisis of hungry bodies, broken things, shut doors, and stuck people’ (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013, 545; for more detail on the devastation caused by ‘austerity’, see O’Hara, 2014).29 It is particularly insidious that ‘austerity’ now seems to be being promoted by government as desirable, as part of a ‘new thrift’ (Jensen, 2012) or ‘neoliberal shock doctrine’ (Levitas, 2012, 326, based on Klein, 2007), rather than the necessary evil that it was originally claimed to be. New Labour operated with a ‘vision’ of an ‘integrated and cohesive community’ (CLG, 2008a, 10), in which people from different backgrounds had ‘similar life opportunities’ and shared a ‘sense of belonging’ while recognising the value of diversity, and had strong, trusting relationships with one another and with local institutions. The problem with this vision (largely re-packaged in the Conservative vision of a ‘big society’),

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however, is that it ignores or underplays deep divisions, within and across communities, of social class, political belief, gender, generation and territory or ‘turf ’, and fundamental disagreements on foreign policy, immigration, religion, taxation and so on (for further discussion, see Flint and Robinson, 2008; and for a more trenchant critique, see Tyler, 2013a). New Labour’s community cohesion agenda suggested a naive ‘Why can’t we all get on?’ approach, which alluded to these divisions but in such a way as to depoliticise them and turn them into problems of municipal management – for example, it is not the case that wide disparities in life opportunities can be overcome through local action alone, and arguably it is more important to have trust in national institutions in order for society to be cohesive. It also had no clearly defined purpose: it was not clear what exactly were the different groups, sections, identities or communities that the government wanted to bring together or what was to count as brought together or what might count as ‘positive’ and ‘meaningful’ interaction across communities (CLG, 2008c; Orton, 2009). If the purpose was one of public order or the avoidance of disorder, then it was to be expected that community cohesion activities would address causes of disorder, not just symptoms, but it is by no means certain that they did this.30 This failure to address causes of disorder continued under the coalition government, as is clear from its response to the riots in August 2011 (Allen et al, 2013; for more detail see Box 9.4, page 251). An excellent illustration of this distorted and out of touch governmental ‘vision’ is the quote from the founder of the Living Library: ‘We work on the principle that extreme violence and aggression happens between people who don’t know each other’ (CLG, 2008c, 31). The statement is revealing because it expresses the belief, clearly supported by government, that familiarity with one another produces social order (rather than, say, contempt). In fact, however, on an individual level, most murders and extremely violent acts are committed against people who are well known to the perpetrator. And on a community level, serious conflicts typically arise not from ignorance but from recognition of opposing interests and from deep and long-standing grievances.There is a circularity of argument here, anyway, which parallels that regarding social capital generally: it is argued that community cohesion is produced by ‘positive’ interaction, but ‘positive’ interaction seems to be equated with whatever produces community cohesion. There is a particularly patronising section of the guidance (section 12), entitled ‘helping to give people a voice’ (CLG, 2008c, 40–1), which appears to assume that people do not have a voice and are unable to develop one themselves without help from government.Yet the government’s own evidence from the NCF report (Orton, 2009) showed that people or communities had a voice already but the government listened

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only to what it wanted to hear.The community cohesion agenda therefore fell well short even of the traditional forms of community development favoured by the New Labour government. And under the coalition government, although New Labour’s faux-communitarianism was echoed in the coalition’s slogan ‘We’re all in this together’, community cohesion as a governmental project seems to have been abandoned. It is important to note that New Labour’s project was not entirely a neoliberal one. HMG (2008, 21), for example, advocated what they called ‘the politics of the common good’, where: ‘People are willing to put their own interests second if they know they will not be exploited; they are willing to respect decisions that go against them if they are convinced that the process that led to those decisions was fair; they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to help others if they know that help will be reciprocated in times of need.’ This politics is therefore one of nonexploitation, due process and reciprocity – arguably, necessary conditions for a stable political community. Contrast this, however, with what happens under neoliberalism, in which labour is exploited, there is one law for the rich and one for the poor (Cook, 1989), and, instead of long-term reciprocity, market exchange is instantaneous and based on ability to pay rather than on need. By New Labour’s own standards, then, a neoliberal society is one that is unfair and undesirable, yet paradoxically this is the kind of society that it aimed to create. And for good measure, if by chance anything were to go wrong (such as a major recession), it was down to us ordinary citizens to put it right (with support from government in some cases): ‘in tougher economic times one of the most important demands will be that everyone who can work, does work. Those who cannot work, whether temporarily or more permanently, will still need to receive financial and practical support. To achieve this we need a fair system that focuses on what people can do rather than what they cannot, and offers them appropriate support’ (HMG, 2008, 24). So, even with three million unemployed, the government seemed to believe that jobs could be found for them all, and that the capitalist work ethic trumps everything else – there is nothing here about decent work for a living wage or the responsibilities of employers to their employees or the responsibilities of government to its citizens.The coalition government has expressed similar impossible sentiments, insisting that people must work in order to pay their way (criticising ‘welfare dependency’) while at the same time promoting volunteering, where people work without pay to help others who are not paying their way – but here the government does not even pledge to provide ‘appropriate support’, though this may be available, in some cases, with (increasingly onerous) conditions attached.

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Conclusion This chapter has shown how neoliberal governments attempt to construct ‘community’ as a way of ensuring the existence of collective governable subjects and that this attempt meets with a complex mix of compliance and resistance.The discussion has rather neglected the role of government workers in the process, but this has been considered elsewhere (Somerville, 2015) and is also examined in detail in Part II of this book. Essentially, government workers are in the same position as all other workers under capitalism, in that they must serve their employers but are also ‘free’ to serve other employers (whether ‘public’ or ‘private’) who can use their labour. For the government worker, therefore, the rule of the employer shades imperceptibly into the rule of government itself. As we saw in Chapter Three, however, workers and their communities are capable of resisting this rule and transforming the labour relations in which they are embedded.The first step must be to cooperativise government organisations, departments and institutions, in order to abolish relations of domination within the workplace. It seems most straightforward to do this at local government level, particularly given the recent increase in the number of local authorities calling themselves ‘cooperative councils’ (Reed and Ussher, no date).There is considerable potential here to establish multi-stakeholder cooperatives covering a wide range of services, including education, social care and housing (see later chapters). Given the unitary character of the English state, however, it seems unlikely that the cooperativisation of English local authorities would make much difference to policy at national level, at least not in the short term. There appears to be no alternative, therefore, to reorganising the civil service along cooperative lines, and this would have huge implications for the conduct of government – hopefully making it more open and responsive to informed public opinion. Featherstone et al (2012) propose what they call ‘progressive localism’, which is actually not a new idea (see Castree et al, 2003, 179–80) and harks back to the discussion of community organising in Chapter Two (see also MacKinnon et al, 2011). The idea is to stimulate community action that creates ‘positive affinities between places and social groups negotiating global processes’, producing new relationships that ‘reconfigure existing communities around emergent agendas for social justice, participation and tolerance’ (Featherstone et al, 2012, 179). In the UK, they point to forms of industrial action such as by female British Asian Gate Gourmet workers in West London,‘discursively grounded in notions of community, decent work and rights to social reproduction’ with evidence of international solidaristic support (Featherstone et al, 2012, 180).They argue that such forms of local community action can feed into broader social and political movements,

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such as for a living wage. Some forms of progressive localism can be taken up by national governments, leading to substantial improvements for working-class people – they cite the example of how the National Health Service was created following the example of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society. The main point is that the potential is there – but of course the actualisation of that potential is another story.

Summary This chapter has explored the relationship between government and community in more detail than in Chapter Three, with particular emphasis on current neoliberal projections of community as an ideal collectively governable subject. Neoliberalisation projects have been shown to be a form of governmentality, attempting to get populations and territories to adapt themselves to meet the needs of capital. These projects, however, as with neoliberalisation more generally, succeed only up to a point. In practice, we find a variety of relationships between government and community, depending on the strength of community resistance to or support for the governmental project, the extent to which government is ready and willing to engage with communities, and perhaps the degree to which government allows for local variation in the implementation of its initiatives (holding that ‘no size fits all’ rather than bemoaning ‘a postcode lottery’). Governments have attempted to co-opt some community organisations, worked collaboratively with others , imposed their own community-based organisations on communities, and ignored or suppressed other community organisations. In general, governments have not followed a coherent or consistent approach in relation to communities. In this context, there is scope for grassroots community action, particularly in co-operation with front-line workers, to advance their own agendas, especially if they can ‘scale up’ their activities from the local towards the global, as some indigenous communities have succeeded in doing. The chapter concluded with a critique of recent UK governmental approaches to community.

Questions for discussion • In what ways has community been projected by governments in recent years? • What is the difference between ‘roll-back’ and ‘roll-out’ neoliberalism? • How useful is the concept of governmentality for explaining governmental approaches to community? What does it not explain? • What have been the main ways in which governments have actually acted towards communities? • Should community organisations engage with government or not? If yes, in what circumstances? • What are the prospects for scaling up community action in the UK?

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• Why do you think governments continue to fail to understand or respond effectively to community needs?

Further reading Atkinson, W., Roberts, S. and Savage, M. (eds) (2012) Class inequality in austerity Britain: Power, difference and suffering, Farnham, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Barnes, M., Newman, J. and Sullivan, H. (2007) Power, participation and political renewal: Case studies in public participation, Bristol: The Policy Press. Clark, N. and Cochrane, A. (2013) ‘Geographies and politics of localism: the localism of the United Kingdom’s coalition government’, Political Geography, vol 34, pp 10-23. DeFilippis, J., Fisher, R. and Shragge, E. (2010) Contesting community: The limits and potential of local organizing, New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Kerr, D. (1999) ‘Beheading the king and enthroning the market: a critique of Foucauldian governmentality’, Science & Society, vol 63, no 2, pp 173-202. Mooney, G. and Fyfe, N. (2006) ‘New Labour and community protests: the case of the Govanhill swimming pool campaign, Glasgow’, Local Economy, vol 21, no 2, pp 136-50. O’Hara, M. (2015) Austerity bites: A journey to the sharp end of cuts in the UK, Bristol: The Policy Press. Roy, A. (2009) ‘Civic governmentality: the politics of inclusion in Beirut and Mumbai’, Antipode, vol 41, no 1, pp 159-79. Taylor, M. (2011) Public policy in the community, 2nd ed, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Notes 1

2

3

Even the famous social movements of the 1960s in the US achieved only ‘limited victories’ (Newman and Lake, 2006, 52; see also Castells, 1983, 66). This seems to be an all too common finding – see, for example, Prior (2007, 22). This is distinguished from ‘roll-back’ neoliberalism, which is associated with reduction of government intervention and restoration of a more ‘laissez-faire’ approach. It is also more or less equivalent to what has been called the ‘network state’ (Castells, 2010) or ‘competition state’ (Harman, 2010), that is, one that is embedded in global competitive networks of states and non-governmental organisations. However, the distinction is one of degree rather than substance: a state that is more or less interventionist in the service of capital. In this context, ‘responsible’ just refers to ‘free’ action that serves a capitalist state. Roll-back neoliberalism is often portrayed as ‘deregulation’, by both its proponents and detractors, but actually it is more about re-regulation, for example, to establish free markets in labour and capital.

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4

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For an example of how one local authority, Manchester City Council in England, acts towards its communities, see Diamond and Pearce (2010). Community organisations in the city were seen either as ‘legitimate’, and therefore incorporated into local governmental decision-making structures, or as ‘headbanger’, and consequently marginalised and then excluded from these structures (Diamond and Pearce, 2010, 163–4).The researchers concluded that the space for people in the voluntary and community sector to oppose the city council’s neoliberalising agenda (as a globally competitive city-region) was minimal (Diamond and Pearce, 2010, 174). This localist emphasis probably exists in most developed capitalist countries, not just the UK and US. For example, Uitermark and Nicholls (2014) show how, in Amsterdam and Paris since the 1980s, governments have co-opted broadly-based social movement organisations and turned them into narrowly focused managers of neighbourhood territories and populations. Similarly, Gaynor (2009, 29) argues that, in the context of Ireland, so-called active citizenship ‘substitutes self-help for redistribution, self-reliance for state accountability, in the process contributing towards an ongoing depoliticization of the principles and practice of community development and affording “ordinary” people little say over the direction of their country and their lives.’ More recently, Uitermark and Nicholls (2014) refer to this process in terms of community associations moving from a ‘politicising’ role to a ‘policing’ role in relation to their communities. They attribute this change to the success of governmental co-option and depoliticisation practices. Neoliberalisation is about the promotion of places, as well as people, in competition with one another. For example, Manchester’s ‘gay village’ (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004, 49) has been constructed as an imaginary cosmopolitan community attached to a place – not an actual community but a gay space. Binnie and Skeggs (2004, 57) conclude that ‘it may be marketability rather than sexuality that is the issue for marginalised groups for the next millennium’ and ‘the cosmopolitan nature of the space can be seen as just another attempt at banal consumption by branding’. There occurs a process of Bourdieusian distinction: ‘differences are incorporated [by market forces], enhancing the cultural capital of the already privileged, establishing others as the constitutive limit’ (pages 57–8). Ultimately, this involves the depoliticisation of the state, in the sense of ‘the denial of political contingency and the transfer of functions away from elected politicians’ (Flinders and Wood, 2014, 135), as citizens no longer engage in political life and politicians no longer need to make decisions. The state loses none of its power but it ceases to be democratic. Indeed, as a capitalist state, it becomes a more powerful supporter of capital because of the lack of overt political opposition or resistance. Those who do resist neoliberalisation or simply fail to take up the ‘opportunities’ it offers ‘are positioned as corrosively

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10

11

12

13

dependent on the state [conceived as a political constituency of ‘welfare’] and in need of community-led help to become more active and self-reliant citizens’ (Gillies, 2012, 82 – emphasis added; see also this book, Chapter Nine, on stereotypical moral binaries). ‘Inevitably these are likely to be those whom they find easiest to work with or the most easily approachable (the “acceptable” face of community involvement) – those who “share the bias, instincts, priorities and culture of the department” (Maloney et al, 1994, 29). They are unlikely, therefore, to be “typical” of the communities from which they come’ (Taylor, 2011, 174). They can also become ‘piggy in the middle’ – accused both by governmental agents of being unrepresentative of their communities (if they disagree with them) and (if they don’t get their way) by their communities of failing to represent them effectively and ‘selling out’. Arguably, whether intentionally or not, governments tend to follow a process of ‘divide and rule’, alternately co-opting and then delegitimising community representatives, in an attempt to enhance the legitimacy of their own rule (Taylor, 2011, 175, 181; see also Lawson and Kearns, 2014 – ‘empowering’ communities to make decisions that cannot realistically be carried out and then working with an unrepresentative community organisation to justify a messy compromise). Somerville and Haines (2008) found that different English local authorities identified and attempted to shape three different kinds of community organisation with which to work: civil parish councils; service-influencing organisations such as community forums and neighbourhood partnerships; and service delivery organisations such as community boards. See also Bailey and Pill’s (2015) ‘state enabling/self-help’ model of neighbourhood intervention. In view of the asymmetry between governments and communities, it is a fine line between such open-ended collaboration and attempts at co-option. See also Barnes et al (2007, 187) in UK, Naidu (2008) in South Africa,Atkinson and Carmichael (2007) in Europe. Taylor (2011, 163) reports that this is a common occurrence when there is a change of political administration. The community itself is usually imagined as a stable, fixed, relatively homogeneous and cohesive entity (Little, 2002; Schofield, 2002), whose ‘capacity’ needs to be ‘built’ (Craig, 2007) because it lacks the ability to solve its own problems (McKee, 2008; Lawless, 2011).The responsibilities assigned to communities tend to change over the course of the project, with no clear rationale or direction, no consistent strategic focus or community sensitivity (Beatty et al, 2010). Clements (2008b) argues that participatory budgeting, at least in the UK, is in fact a form of coercive responsibilising, which is positive for some participants but not for the most vulnerable or those with better things to do with their time. He regards this as involving an impoverished notion of citizenship, which focuses only on the ‘little changes’ (page 177) that people can make.

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New public management, for example, takes on different forms in different countries – see discussion in Goldfinch and Wallis (2010).What all these forms have in common, however, is a focus on management’s prerogative to exploit the workforce as they see fit, to exclude workers’ organisations from decisionmaking, and to open public services up to competitive market forces – in short, a neoliberal project. The alleged shift from new public management to ‘new public governance’ (Osborne, 2006) or ‘network governance’ (Considine and Lewis, 2003) or ‘interactive governance’ (Sørensen, 2013) or even (most confusingly) ‘citizen-centred governance’ (Barnes et al, 2008) makes little difference to these fundamental characteristics – it is still a neoliberal project. The loss of conscious intention that might have been thought to accompany this alleged shift is said to be compensated by the emergence of ‘metagovernance’, in which the government is said to continue to steer the overall governance process (for further discussion and critique of concepts of governance and metagovernance, see Davies, 2011). For example, by using technologies of government such as good practice guides, training and visioning exercises and community action days to ‘reconstitute individual citizens as community subjects’ (Larner and Butler, 2005, 38). DeFilippis et al (2009, 38), however, note that the increased participation of community organisations in local development and social provision has been associated with a diminishing of critical political perspectives, which does not bode well for the communities concerned. Barnes et al (2007) note that the officials involved in participation processes often share some form of identification with those with whom they are seeking to engage, for example, as women, gay or lesbian, or as members of the same community. Goetz and Gaventa (2001) note that, in the Empowerment Zones in the US, ‘successful initiatives were those that invested heavily in staff whose primary function was to manage citizen contacts with the administration’ (Taylor, 2011, 259).Taylor (2011) stresses the importance of long-term staff support to communities (at least two years – page 284) in order to make a real permanent difference. For example, trust is generally assumed to be a necessary condition for successful encounters. Aitken (2012), however, shows that our understanding of trust in such relationships is inadequate and draws a new distinction between receptivity trust, ability trust and representative trust, which varies according to the context of the encounter. It is likely that many different kinds of encounter occur between government and community, between governors and governed, mediated in a variety of ways by different front-line staff working in different institutional contexts and with different professional and political allegiances. The same citizens appear in different roles in their encounters with different

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20

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24

apparatuses of government, while government relates to different ‘interests’ or sections of the citizenry in different ways. Uitermark and Nicholls (2014, 977) call this ‘territorial encapsulation’, which amounts to a governmental project that can lead to the encapsulated communities noted earlier in this book. They included broad-based community associations, well-established residents’ associations, development trusts, tenant management organisations, neighbourhood partnerships/networks/federations, village halls, faith-based organisations, schools, New Deal for Communities partnerships, Single Regeneration Budget successor bodies, neighbourhood watch groups and possibly organisations with a cultural or sports focus (CLG, 2004, 20). This interpellation of community leaders was sometimes taken to ludicrous lengths. Blake et al (2008, 57) cite the example of community activist F, who reports: ‘If a lamp on my street is not working, people will walk 60 yards to tell me rather than phone the council.’ Blake et al comment: ‘Clearly, this is rewarding, but can also lead to stress. In F’s case, this contributed to a heart attack, leading F to step down from chairing and shift into a less stressful area of responsibility.’Arguably, a more appropriate comment would be:‘Clearly, this is not rewarding, because it results in a heart attack.’Why is it seen to be desirable that a community representative should act for someone who is perfectly capable of acting for themselves? This simple example vividly highlights the insidious nature of the New Labour project. The reality was that:‘Every New Labour paean to local involvement and active communities ends with a rider that brings the state back in and institutionalises government regulation at an even greater level than before’ (Chandler, 2001, 10). Rodger (2008, 162) describes this phenomenon as ‘inauthenticity’: ‘confronted by the difficulties of the political administration of complex social and political systems, governments tend to conceal their manipulative and controlling activities by devoting considerable resources to appearing to be responsive to community and individuals. There is little evidence that the voluntary sector in the UK is actively engaged with government in shaping social policy or is genuinely embedded in policy networks…The extent to which there is authentic community participation in the process of building community efficacy is questionable. The nature of the strategy is in reality one which has stimulated division rather than solidarity and is obfuscatory rather than illuminating about community involvement.’ It is interesting to note that a similar approach seems increasingly to be adopted by employers in relation to the development of their employees – ‘increased responsibility without meaningful discretion and authority’ (Webb, 2004, 719). This could be called ‘inauthentic empowerment’.

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25

26

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Cox et al (2013, 65) explicitly endorse ‘asset-based community development and self-help’, which ‘rejects needs-based approaches as patronising and disempowering’ – as if people don’t have needs that are not being met by the current system of provision! Full compliance with the coalition’s roll-back neoliberalism is illustrated by the ‘new neighbourhoods approaches’ described in Cox et al (2013, 62,Table 6.1). However, I think I also detect here a resurgence of roll-out neoliberalism (a sort of ‘new’ New Labour) in the discourse of an active government, facilitating and ‘nudging’ citizens and communities – the concept of a more ‘relational’ state (Cooke and Muir, 2013; Muir, 2013) and a ‘domesticated governmentality’ (Leggett, 2014, 12), which is easily subverted. The role of a community organiser was envisaged as ‘to identify local priorities, identify local solutions to these concerns, build the capacity of these solutions until they are credible business propositions with clear outcomes and forward plans, and then help the solution providers gain funding to operate’ (Maginn, 2010, 26). According to IPPR and PWC (2010), 90 per cent of people in England (or at least in Darlington and Reading!) think that the state should continue to be primarily responsible for delivering public services. According to its main spokesperson at the time, ‘big society’ is about ‘releasing information, power, and people in their streets and institutions, and supporting people to take as much or as little control over their lives from whomsoever currently hoards it – mainly government, but also other large vested interests’ (Wei, 2010, cited in Macmillan, 2013, 10). For accounts of how the focus on ‘austerity’ diverts attention from the increasing gap between the rich and the rest of society, see Hills (2015), Lansley and Mack (2015) and Sayer (2015).Allen and Taylor (2012, 16) talk of ‘an age of austerity’, in which ‘gendered, classed and racialized processes of belonging and social abjection, inclusion and exclusion are becoming further entrenched and their effects further individualised’. For example, defusing tensions arising from BNP marches is certainly addressing the symptoms, but it is not clear how far it can be said to be tackling the causes of those tensions.

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Part II This part (except for Chapter Five, which looks more generally at processes of adding value) looks at specific fields (encompassing both social and spatial positions – a field of representations and a representational field) in which community is imagined, invoked, summoned, projected, constructed, etc, in order to signify or embody a particular orientation or direction for policy and practice. All fields are seen as embedded within capitalism and affected, in different ways and to different degrees, by the ‘re-capitalisation of capital’ (Miller, 1978). Each field has its own distinctive set of positions, typically associated with a specific kind of service (Hastings and Matthews, 2015). Each service has a distinctive profession or set of professions and relationship between service providers and consumers (or clients or customers). The professionalism that characterises a field is shown to have value (for example, in terms of contributing to learning, health, wellbeing, decent housing and community safety) while also helping to mystify labour relations within the field. Overall, the chapters suggest a need to demystify professional labour without devaluing it. Each field is also seen, following Bourdieu, as a game, with set rules, which professionals and service users learn to play, bringing different totals and distributions of capital (economic, social and cultural) to the game (Greener, 2002, p 702). Although capitalist relations of production prevail across all fields, each field involves specific relations between producers and consumers, with consumers adding value in different ways.

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five Community economic development (CED) Under capitalism community economic development can be understood primarily in terms of increasing the market value of goods and services produced in the community, but also as involving the production of use-value for the community – in other words, as production either for profit or for community benefit (and in practice sometimes both). Evidence suggests that communities that are more in need of development tend to be stuck in ‘low-pay/no-pay’ cycles, where new jobs being provided are predominantly low-waged and insecure, and approaches to community economic development are primarily imposed upon such communities from outside. Where better-paid jobs are created in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, they tend not to go to existing residents. In contrast, ‘bottomup’ approaches, involving the relatively spontaneous formation of clusters of enterprises, working in co-operatively competitive communities of practice, seem to hold out more promise for both capital growth and community benefit. Here, however, evidence seems to suggest that a version of the inverse care law operates, whereby the amount of benefit gained is proportional to how well off the community is in the first place. What is required, therefore, particularly for poorer communities, is the cultivation of co-operative enterprises that are firmly rooted in community and dedicated to meeting community needs. Such community co-operatives may work with a range of organisations (private, public and third sector) in order to challenge capitalist social relations and move towards a beloved community.

The question of how communities are to be developed economically takes us back to the discussion of community development in Chapter Two.This chapter looks more closely at the nature of the value created by community development generally, and more specifically at the character of

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the organisations that create that value, as well as governmental approaches to realising that value. At the heart of the matter here is the category of labour. It is labour in general that produces value but, under capitalism, the focus is primarily on the creation of what Marx called exchange value or what is commonly called commercial value, which is expressed in the price that the products of labour are likely to fetch in the market. Capital is invested in the means of production and in hiring workers, who are set to work to produce the goods and services that have this commercial value. Under capitalism, therefore, community economic development is understood primarily in terms of increasing the market value of goods and services produced in the community, which is achieved primarily by the investment of capital in community-based enterprises that produce this added value. However, community economic development can equally be understood as involving the production of use-value for the community, and this observation serves to highlight the contradictory character of such development – as oriented towards either profit or community benefit. This contradiction points to the problems with capitalist work (see Weeks, 2011, for a fuller account). Under capitalism, the capitalist or entrepreneur is seen as benefiting the workers because s/he is providing them with needed employment, while the workers are seen as adding value for their employer through their work. The relationship between employer and employees is viewed as a straightforward commercial exchange, in which the employees are paid the value of their hire. What is not seen is that the value the workers contribute to the enterprise exceeds the value of their hire – what Marx called surplus value, which is key to the exploitation of labour and the expansion of capital. The positions of employer (as owner and/or controller of the means of production) and employee (as nonowner and alienated from the means of production), which are both the source and consequence of class society, are simply taken for granted, even though they are incompatible with (equally taken for granted) democratic principles. In these circumstances, it seems that everyone benefits from development, even if in systematically unequal ways.1 The workers earn wages, the employers make profits, and the community benefits insofar as the workers are part of the community and spend their earnings in the community and insofar as the profits are reinvested in the community. However, the wages may be low (reflecting the lower value of labour power in communities that are in need of development),2 the profits may be extracted and used elsewhere (Frith and McElwee, 2009), and the enterprise itself may not be community-friendly (it may be polluting or not use local labour or undermine other enterprises in the community or may appropriate valuable community resources such as land for its own

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purposes).3 Under capitalism, therefore, community economic development always displays this ambivalent character. Another problem lies with the concept of community – who exactly is being developed here? Overwhelmingly, it is understood as local community, with the typical assumptions that were discussed in Part I, namely a vague, relatively homogeneous group of people living and/or working in a particular place such as a village, a parish, a housing estate, or a named neighbourhood – or sometimes a town or city or local authority area. Traditional approaches, in which communities are believed to be capable of developing themselves, or at least to be capable of developing such capability with a little outside assistance, were criticised in Chapter Two, largely on the grounds that they assume that a community’s lack of development is a local problem arising from predominantly local considerations, and they pay insufficient attention to the role of wider processes associated with the communities’ underdevelopment. In short, they take little or no account of the nature of capitalist work (which affects all local communities and is therefore not a peculiarly local issue) or of how local economies are embedded in national and global capitalism. However, Chapter Two also noted that more radical approaches, while holding out more promise, have not so far been outstandingly successful. If community economic development is to mean anything at all, therefore, closer attention must be paid to the dynamics of the communities in question (especially the balance of class forces within them), based on the stocks of capital held by different groups and organisations, and to the networks of social relations in which those communities are embedded. Bearing in mind this twin problematisation of capitalist work and local community, it is possible to consider the question of how encapsulated communities (Chapter One) or abject working-class communities (Chapter Two) in particular can be developed. As we saw in Chapter Two, these communities contain members of the ‘precariat’ (Standing, 2011), who are unemployed and/or involved in informal employment or carework (especially childcare),4 or else in insecure, low-paid formal employment. People over pensionable age may not be included in this precariat but nevertheless their position may be precarious if their only source of income is the state retirement pension and they lack the means to access the goods and services they need. Increasing the state retirement pension and improving access to essential goods and services can therefore be important ways of contributing to the development of these communities. For those of working age, the position can look more complicated: on the one hand, the expansion of capitalist work could mean that more jobs are provided; on the other hand, the existence of unpaid ‘webs of care’ (Katz, 2004, 246) in these communities has the effect of lowering the

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value of the labour power being reproduced by this care, which potentially makes it more profitable to exploit. The result of this combination is a predominance of casualised low-paid work in these areas, with few prospects of advancement (North et al, 2006; Cook and Lawton, 2008; see also Cumbers et al, 2010, 63–5, for a discussion of how this is associated with processes of resilience, reworking and resistance in the case of Glasgow; for the most recent picture in English and Welsh cities, see Clayton et al, 2014, which shows the association between low pay and job insecurity, as well as the increasing polarisation between high-paid and low-paid jobs). When it comes to the reproduction of labour power (whether daily or intergenerationally), then, both commodified (in the sense of participation in the labour market) and non-commodified (in the sense of unpaid labour) forms present opportunities for capital (either to exploit labour directly or to make labour more exploitable). This suggests that the most important policies to develop these communities economically would be to legislate for a living wage for all (see discussion of London Citizens in Chapter Two) and to promote non-exploitative enterprise such as worker cooperatives, as well as measures to fund and support social care. In practice, approaches to community economic development have been primarily ‘top-down’ or exogenous, in the sense of being driven from the ‘top’ and from outside the community, that is, by government and other powerful organisations (see, for example, Haughton, 1998). In the 1980s, the myth of ‘trickle down’ was used in a number of countries (including UK, Canada and US, see DeFilippis et al, 2010) to justify a form of development in the community that was not actually a development of the community at all: rather, forms of ‘regeneration’5 were implemented that typically involved redevelopment of land and buildings in order to attract private investment into the area. In later years, as we saw in Chapter Four, governmental approaches became more sophisticated, being ‘more clearly linked to meeting local needs and providing jobs for local people’ (Haughton, 1998, 872). The emphasis today, however, continues to be primarily, and perhaps increasingly, on securing profitable markets for capital.6 In particular, the drive for efficiency and uniformity favours development at national, regional or subregional levels rather than at community level, presenting significant barriers to CED (see, for example, McGregor et al, 2003). Sanderson’s (2006, 5) review of worklessness in deprived neighbourhoods, for example, found ‘little evidence to support the case for targeting job creation specifically at deprived neighbourhoods… New employment is addressed most effectively at the subregional level in the context of broader economic development strategies.’ Similarly, North and Syrett (2006) concluded that if job creation initiatives are targeted on

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disadvantaged neighbourhoods, many of the new jobs will not go to the existing residents. In contrast to ‘top-down’ or exogenous approaches to CED,‘bottom-up’ or endogenous approaches put the emphasis on communities doing it for themselves, for example by growing their own enterprises and accessing satisfying and well-paid employment.There is indeed a significant literature on how clusters of owner-managed businesses, working in cooperative competition with one another, achieve the development of the community as a whole.7 These clusters are effectively communities of practice (see Chapter Six), based on the proximity of the enterprises to one another (combining spatial, social and institutional proximity, as being in the same locality or region, with the same social connections and operating in the same market, see Kasabov, 2010).8 Cluster developments, however, tend to be exclusive as well as inclusive: they are open to those who share their interests and can contribute to serving those interests but not open to those, such as poorer people, who have different interests and may lack the capacity or willingness to cooperate with them.9 For more deprived communities, community self-development can be problematic, as we saw in Chapter Two.Thake (1995) found that it almost always occurs in response to catalytic events or external pressures, such as a threat of major redevelopment, civil disturbances or escalating crime, withdrawal of an important employer from the area and closure of a major public or private service such as a local school or shop, as well as government initiatives.The resulting ‘community-run enterprises’, which are common throughout the world (Taylor, 2011, 212), provide a range of services that can be described as community economic development (Taylor, 2011, 213): • ‘childcare or other caring services, environmental services, workspace, training, cultural activities, housing, enterprise development opportunities and/or credit’; ‘alternative energy, bulk buying of goods, or services to local businesses’; • the community ownership and/or management of a community building, whose subsequent development ‘offers opportunities for locally accessible sports, arts, and so on as well as a hub for local services’ (see Aiken et al, 2011); • ‘an umbrella or holding company for community-based, short-term, grant-aided projects that would struggle to obtain funding or survive on their own’; • ‘an intermediate labour market for people within the neighbourhood who have been out of work for some time and need work experience and skills’.

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Taylor (2011, 213) argues that ‘community enterprises have the capacity to transform local economies, valuing work that has not been valued, keeping ownership of assets and resources in local communities, providing locally based services, circulating wealth and generating job opportunities within local communities’. This seems to be the case, however, only for those communities that have particularly valuable assets (such as Coin Street Community Builders, profiled by Taylor, 2011, 214–15). For poorer communities, the prospects look distinctly less rosy, at least under capitalism, and Taylor (2011, 217) recognises this:‘The danger is that externally driven initiatives to encourage community management are forcing communities to manage their own exclusion, with the responsibility but not the resources or power to tackle local needs effectively’ – ‘dumping communities with problems others cannot solve’ (Taylor, 2011, 216–17). The record of even the best-funded community organisations such as the Community Development Corporations in the US suggests that improvements at the micro level have been offset by continued disinvestment and decline at the macro level (Murphy and Cunningham, 2003).1 Also, for poorer communities, the emphasis has increasingly been on active inclusion in the labour market (Peck, 2001, 12; DeFilippis et al, 2010, 75–6), with capitalist work being seen as the primary or even only way out of poverty. Unfortunately, however, even where labour activation policies succeed in getting people into jobs:‘The jobs that follow tend to be unstable and low wage’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 77), as mentioned above.As Taylor (2011, 218) concludes, it seems that community economic development is unable to overcome the contradictions in capitalism.11 Somerville and McElwee (2011) call for greater clarity about what is meant by community enterprise. They define a community enterprise as an enterprise whose social foundation lies in a community of some kind, and go on to argue that the key questions to ask of a community enterprise are who participates in the enterprise, who they represent and what is the nature of the community in which they move.The key participants are the entrepreneurs, who are seen as activists, in a triple sense: economic, insofar as they create assets and generate income; social, because their activity involves sections of the community in important ways, achieving benefits other than monetary ones; and political, in the sense that much of their activity involves mobilising the community as citizens, and lobbying and advocating on their behalf in governmental arenas, at local, regional and national levels. Their activism is indissolubly economic/social/political: their focus is on adding value, whether that value be understood in terms of money, social connectedness (community) or political/cultural change. Bourdieu’s concept of capital, as being economic, social and cultural is then used to explain how such activism can be generated (see Chapter Two).

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Further, community enterprises can be understood, to some extent, in terms of the priority they give to different social capital functions (bonding, bridging and linking), how inclusive or exclusive their membership is, how democratically they are organised, how they relate to one another and to non-members, and how they construct community itself (as a polity, a network of interdependent actors, or a primary social group of some kind) (for more detail, see Somerville and McElwee, 2011). It is also important to distinguish between the contribution made by each enterprise to the community and the total contribution made by all enterprises to the community: each community enterprise, considered in isolation, may serve only a particular section of the community, but all the enterprises together may have the effect of developing the community as a whole. Essentially, the social foundation of community enterprise can be interpreted as a community of equals, whether these be members of a cooperative, a community of supporters, or a community of some other kind, bound together by common residence, interest or identity. Any such community could spawn a variety of community enterprises. For any given community enterprise, then, it is not necessary (though it may be desirable in some cases) for all sections of the community to be represented within it, nor does it require high degrees of community participation, so long as the wider community within which that enterprise operates is democratically governed. The ‘community’ here must therefore be seen as in one sense a political community, with structures and processes of democratic government. Gorz (1980) argues that (even well-resourced) bottom-up approaches that remain within a framework of profit-seeking are liable to reproduce and reinforce existing economic inequalities and therefore fail to develop the community as a whole.12 In order for them to succeed, he suggests, what he calls the needs-based economy has to be ‘de-linked’ from the global market economy. Essentially, for communities, this means a process of separate development outside of governmental and commercial structures and avoiding engagement with those structures (compare the ‘exit-action strategy’ for community groups discussed by Davies, 2007, and in Chapter Two). It is unclear, however, how communities can survive on this basis, except in the short term, for example as Temporary Autonomous Zones (Social Centre Stories, 2008).The proposal for a ‘more localized economy’ (Haughton, 1998, 875) here seems particularly problematic in view of the inevitable dependence of localities on the rest of the world.13 Taylor (2011, 218) seems to imply that the notion of de-linking is romantic because, in practice, such an autonomous community will not be an undifferentiated whole, and those who end up managing its services and assets ‘may offer no

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more control to their service users than state or market providers do’.This raises issues of cooperative governance, which are discussed further below. In similar vein, one could mention radical or ‘real’ utopian approaches such as ‘participatory economics’ or ‘parecon’ (Albert, 2003; see also Hahnel and Wright, 2015).This is the creation of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. It involves self-managing workplace and consumer councils, remuneration based on effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning. The beauty of parecon is that it involves the complete abolition of the labour market and its replacement by a system in which all workrelated decisions are made democratically, so that exploitation and class divisions become impossible. The weakness of parecon, however, is that it offers no way to get from here to there. And even if it did, there would still be fundamental problems with it: for example, the emphasis on input measures of the value of work (in terms of the amount of effort or sacrifice) neglects the importance of output measures (in terms of product or service innovation, quality of design, aesthetic effect, greenhouse gas reduction, consumer satisfaction, etc); and it is not clear that anyone really understands how an advanced industrial economy could be practically organised on the basis of a system of participatory planning. Is it necessary, for example, to do without money? If so, then how is a system of sophisticated barter to be organised? And if not, what is to stop people paying whatever they think a thing is worth rather than what it has been judged to be worth in terms of the effort or sacrifice gone into making it? Either way, it would seem that making parecon work would require a powerful collective will that would inevitably be oppressive of its individual members. Other arguments for alternative economic approaches have been made in relation to community entrepreneurship. For example, Lindgren and Packendorff (2006, 211) suggest that, if bottom-up CED is to be successful in the long term, it must, to some extent, be working just outside the boundary of the culture, constructing and reconstructing the boundaries of everyday life. Otherwise, it risks being drawn back into the value-extracting and disempowering economic and political systems that caused the community’s problems in the first place. Lindgren and Packendorff (2006, 230) differ from Gorz, however, in that they describe community entrepreneurship as ‘an eternal balancing act between deviation and belonging’. For them, therefore, community entrepreneurs must be somehow inside as well as outside the community, following the rules but also breaking the rules.They work from the bottom upwards but they aim to change the bottom in the process.They develop themselves as individuals and as collectives but they are about developing the community as well (see Box 5.1 on Hill Holt Wood; see also Gibson-Graham, 2008, on creating ‘community economies’,1 Roelvink et al, 2015, on ‘performing diverse

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economies’, and Bauwens, 2005, on peer-to-peer production, where the ‘community’ concerned is effectively a virtual community).1For Halpern (2005), trust in strangers is the key factor for all community development, including CED.The problem, however, is that it is those communities that are most in need of development that are also likely to have low trust in strangers (for example, the encapsulated communities discussed in Chapter One). So how is a community that lacks trust in strangers supposed to gain that trust? How is a community that is relatively closed, inward-looking and exclusive to become relatively open, outward-looking and inclusive? This is the point at which the bottom-up model of CED tends to break down, because it seems to be asking communities to haul themselves up by their own bootstraps and this is just not a practicable option for many communities. Given the problems that both top-down and bottom-up approaches present for poorer communities, it might be thought preferable to adopt approaches where ‘top-down meets bottom-up’ (Taylor, 2000) – or, more strictly, side-in approaches where ‘professionals’ (funded mainly by government)1 work with the community as equal partners – that is, coproduction:‘where users [and, by extension, their families and communities] are equal partners with professionals in transforming services to suit their needs’ (HM Treasury, 2007, 49; Stephens et al, 2008).17 Co-production is a growing phenomenon, where service users (whether individual or collective) are regarded as assets, involved in mutual support and service delivery; developing generally outside nationally funded services, and usually despite public administrative systems (Boyle et al, 2006; Boyle and Harris, 2009; Slatter, 2010). Co-production is therefore not specifically private enterprise, nor is it public enterprise, nor can it be adequately characterised (like peer-to-peer production) as ‘third sector’ activity;1 rather, it is a form of economic development that cuts across all sectors.This approach emphasises the importance of social networks, which ‘provide a context through which the venture gains additional resources, knowledge, information and experience’ (Haugh, 2007, 164), with success depending on the networks being enabling rather than restrictive, open rather than closed (Taylor, 2008). Pestoff (2012, 1115) makes a useful distinction between ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ co-production, where: ‘Co-production “heavy” is only possible when citizens are engaged in organized collective groups where they can reasonably achieve some semblance of direct democratic control over the provision of public [or private] financed services via democratic decision-making as a member of such service organizations’ (see also Joshi and Moore, 2004). In practice, however, as Bovaird (2007, 856) points out, partnerships are often very unequal and co-production is not a panacea: ‘Problems

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arise, including conflicts resulting from differences in the values of the coproducers (Taylor, 2003), incompatible incentives to different coproducers, unclear divisions of roles, free-riders (Mayo and Moore, 2002), burnout of users or community members (Birchall and Simmons, 2004), and the undermining of capacity of the third sector to lobby for change (Ilcan and Basok, 2004).’ The breadth of scope of co-production is also a source of weakness as well as strength, making it vulnerable to increasing professionalisation (conspiracies against the laity by a new breed of professionals), managerialism (the emergence of new elites of supermanagers) and governmentalism (increasingly intrusive apparatuses of state control). In short, co-production has potential to transform services in the interests not only of their users but also of service providers, managers and political leaders – and the latter may well conflict with the interests of the community in important respects. The extent to which the practice of co-production really differs from traditional approaches to CED, therefore, could well be questioned.19 In their review of research on the economies of deprived neighbourhoods, North et al (2006) emphasised the importance of seeing them as part of the wider economic system. They drew attention to the variety of factors associated with neighbourhood deprivation, such as economic restructuring, sectoral change (from manufacturing to knowledge-based industries – creating a polarised workforce), and population churn and out-migration of those with the most skills. They also noted a mismatch between labour supply and demand in that new low-skilled jobs were not being located within reach of the residents of deprived neighbourhoods (see Sanderson, 2006). They called for a better alignment of economic policy with housing and transport in particular, in order to increase job opportunities without people having to move.This, however, requires more sensitive and sophisticated planning, which governments seem decreasingly inclined to do. Overall, therefore, the classification of CED as top-down, bottomup or side-in is convenient but to some extent it misses the point that, under capitalism, all economic development is contradictory in that it is development of both use-value and exchange value. Self-organising communities of the poor that develop for their own benefit become, at the same time, increasingly visible to global capital as an exploitable asset (Roy, 2011, 229). Community cooperatives (see below) can be commodified and thus recuperated for capital. Autonomous collective action by ‘slum’ residents is not only anti-capitalist but also pro-capitalist, with local ‘development mafias’ (Weinstein, 2008, 22) colluding with property developers, neoliberal governments and the police. The slum

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itself is a living contradiction (see Roy, 2011, on Dharavi in Mumbai). In particular, it is both socially isolated and globally connected.

Governmental approaches Governmental approaches to CED have involved a combination of topdown/exogenous interventions and allegedly co-productive partnerships. In the UK, for example, the New Labour government had two main aims: 1) (re)integration of workless people into the labour market, especially in communities with the highest rates of worklessness such as coalfields communities and neighbourhoods that scored highest on the Index of Multiple Deprivation (CLG, 2007); and 2) partnership with third sector organisations to tackle community economic problems generally (Kelly, 2007, 1004–6). In relation to partnerships, significant funding was given to a variety of programmes (from 2004, £446 million for Change-Up and Futurebuilders alone) but the impact of these programmes on poorer communities remains unclear (see NAO, 2009, 8; Hoadly et al, 2009, 17). The government also established nine regional development agencies which were focused primarily on economic development. These agencies spent over £12 billion until their abolition by the coalition government in 2012, but again their impact on poorer communities is not clear. It seems that most of this funding was not directed specifically towards communities or towards any particular areas at all but came in the shape of formal support to businesses, from Business Link and other business support providers. Even then, it was judged to be inadequate and cost ineffective (Hines, 2004; HM Treasury, 2007, 70; see also Richard, 2008). Sanderson (2006) concluded that ‘there is a lack of convincing evidence for the beneficial effects of training programmes’ (North et al, 2006, 14) and that national programmes like Job Centre Plus ‘did not significantly improve the employment prospects for the most disadvantaged client groups’ (North et al, 2006, 14). However, the Future Jobs Fund, launched in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis, led to the creation of over 105,000 jobs for job-seekers in two years at a cost of £680 million, mainly in the form of a £6,500 subsidy to employers for each job created (DWP, 2012).20 The Conservative-dominated governments that followed New Labour continued the emphases on labour market inclusion but abolished English regional development agencies and replaced them with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), which were more specifically focused on local economic development (Ward, 2015a). Unlike regional development agencies, LEPs have little core government funding but they were eligible to apply for up to £3.2 billion from the Regional Growth Fund from 2011/12 to 2016/17 (up to 2014 £1.15 billion of this has been allocated), to support

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private enterprises in poorer areas to create sustainable jobs (Ward, 2015b), and a further £770 million from the Growing Places Fund from 2012 to 2015, for investment in housing and transport where it is most needed. This represents a considerable reduction in government funding compared with the New Labour years. Moreover, in 2013 the National Audit Office reported that it had not yet been demonstrated that LEPs were capable of delivering value for money, with areas of concern including weaknesses in leadership, changes in board membership, not taking advantage of available funding and insufficient administrative capacity, resulting in failure to meet job creation targets (NAO, 2013), and in 2014 the Public Accounts Committee complained about a lack of effective means for evaluating the success of LEPs (HoC Committee of Public Accounts, 2014).2 Perhaps partly in response to these criticisms, from 2015/16, a new Single Local Growth Fund has been introduced, providing £2 billion a year for the next five years (£1 billion of which has been secured by LEPs, see Ward, 2015a, 10). This represents a return to the funding levels previously achieved by regional development agencies, but most of this funding is for housing, transport and skills development rather than for job creation as such. Unfortunately, whatever prospects may have existed for community economic development have been somewhat undermined by the introduction of so-called ‘austerity’, according to which benefits to lowerincome households have been severely cut, and workless people of working age have been subjected to increasingly draconian sanctions for failing to find work, resulting in increased indebtedness and/or destitution for many (for more detail, see O’Hara, 2015).Those in low-paid work are also now being hit by cuts to their tax credits, which will make it less affordable for them to work at all. Ultimately, the success of this policy of austerity depends on an uplift in the number of accessible jobs paying a living wage, and there is no guarantee that this will occur.22 It is difficult, therefore, to reach any clear conclusions about the effects of recent UK government policies on community economic development. Even in the rosier New Labour years, high unemployment, poor health and education persisted in poorer communities, and some areas actually fell behind (see, for example, Johnson et al, 2007; and Gore et al, 2007 – the Central Valleys in Wales). It therefore seems reasonable to argue that things will have got much worse under so-called ‘austerity’ – an argument that appears to be well supported by the available evidence (O’Hara, 2015). An important point here relates to governments’ apparent failure to join up ‘people-based’ and ‘place-based’ approaches to economic development. Over the years, government funding has gone largely either to ‘place-based’ infrastructure projects (land reclamation and assembly in the 1980s, housing and transport in the 2000s) and other area-based initiatives (for a review

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of these, see Henderson, 2012) or to ‘people-based’ projects to integrate people into the labour market.The latter have not proved to be particularly successful in developing communities (for example, they may counterproductively enable more people to move out of the area)2 while the former may have detrimental effects on poorer communities, for example, through gentrification, loss of social housing, and rising rents and house prices (see Chapter Eight). What is required instead are approaches that actively combine ‘people’ and ‘place’, paying more attention to the needs of each community (the people in place) and developing strategies to meet those needs. Gore et al (2007), for example, studying labour market changes in three former coalfield areas: SouthYorkshire, Lothian and the Welsh Central Valleys, noted how they differed in terms of their economic and physical context and transport links.The researchers concluded that these variations were crucial for understanding their economic development needs. A focus on individual workless people therefore needs to be situated within a wider understanding of the ‘place’ or community in which they live – an understanding that has been lacking in national government policies generally. National governments seem to have become increasingly out of touch with how their poorer citizens live, and this is a serious concern for the future of democracy in advanced capitalist countries.

Cooperatives This section briefly discusses community ownership, worker cooperatives and community cooperatives. There is a small but growing literature in the UK and US on community ownership and/or control of community assets (Aiken et al, 2011; Bailey, 2012) including village halls (Skerratt and Hall, 2011), pubs (Cabras, 2011; Markham, 2013), village shops (Plunkett Foundation, 2012), land (Moore and McKee, 2014), and social housing (Satsangi and Murray, 2011). This literature has been reviewed by Moore and McKee (2014) but so far it is difficult to draw clear conclusions from it. The following points seem to be emerging: community ownership of an asset can bring real benefits to community members but the process can be slow and laborious (Bailey, 2012) and succeeds perhaps only where the members are strongly attached to the asset (Skerratt, 2011); there is a great variety of contexts and activity, with potentially conflicting goals, classified by Aiken et al (2011) as stewardship, community development and entrepreneurship; so-called assets can often turn out to be liabilities (Skerratt and Hall, 2011); and transfer of their assets to communities has been a way for public sector organisations in various countries, especially the US and UK, to reduce their costs and

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offload their liabilities, particularly in a time of austerity, which is also a time of greater risk (Aiken et al, 2011; Bailey, 2012). Worker cooperatives in particular are important for community economic development (see, for example, Cornwell, 2012; Safri, 2011). However, they must be embedded in a wider community or social movement if they are to be sustained in the long term. Safri (2011, 332) asks: ‘Are [worker] cooperatives communist or communal?’ The answer seems to be that, currently, they are mostly communal – or at least tending towards the communal as discussed in Chapter Two, with ‘an inward-looking and selfcontained reality’ (Melnyk, 1985, 101).As such, they remain relatively small (with one or two exceptions such as Mondragón), are largely dependent on capitalist markets, and contribute little to community economic development. In contrast, a communist cooperative would be one that is organised on a global scale: as Safri (2011, 332) says, ‘communism must be enacted at the level of the social formation as well as at the firm level’. It is not clear how this is to happen, however. If progress is to be made in this area, it must be recognised that worker cooperatives are in a contradictory position within capitalism. Labour power within these cooperatives has been decommodified but at the same time they are in the business of producing commodities (goods and services for sale). This contradiction cannot be resolved within the cooperative itself but only at the level of the political community.This is the fundamental limitation of worker cooperatives for community economic development. The real importance of worker cooperatives, then, is that they provide a concrete illustration of how the exploitation of labour can be abolished even within capitalism, effectively creating what Cornwell (2012) would call a non-capitalist workplace, acting as an example for others to follow (Cornwell, 2012, 737), and cultivating a wider cooperative culture (Cornwell, 2012, 741). Given the development of the ‘right’ kinds of community (that is, the beloved community), the transformation of capitalism perhaps does not look quite so fanciful. A community cooperative is an organisation that provides goods or services to a particular community and is governed along cooperative lines (Somerville, 2007; Lang and Roessl, 2011). It is different from other cooperatives in that it is accountable to a community and members of the cooperative are also members of that community. Lang and Roessl (2011, 708) argue that ‘community cooperatives occupy a middle position between traditional cooperatives and voluntary associations’. They differ from traditional cooperatives in that they exist primarily to benefit the community as a whole, not just their members, but this also makes them similar to many voluntary community associations.

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Box 5.1: Hill Holt Wood: a three-legged community enterprise Hill Holt Wood (HHW) is a 34-acre ancient woodland in Lincolnshire, which was bought by Karen and Nigel Lowthrop in 1995. At the time, HHW was in a very poor condition: most quality timber had been removed, invasive rhododendron had taken hold of large tracts of land, and the drainage system had been severely damaged, leaving much of the surface area of the woodland waterlogged and inaccessible. Karen and Nigel explicitly adopted a three-legged approach: economically, the new enterprise had to be a viable company; socially, it had to bring clear benefits to the local community and to society more generally; and environmentally, it had to put more (carbon) into the environment than it took out. First, they became part of the local community by selling their home, using the proceeds to buy an American Winnebago and then moving into it on site. To get the community involved in their enterprise, they took steps to open up the woodland to the public: they built a footpath through the wood for visitors to use as a dog-walking route, then they began attending local events, meeting their neighbours and generally publicising this new amenity. Visitors suggested that the woodland would make a pleasant picnic venue, so Karen and Nigel created a small clearing at the edge of the wood and built a number of seating areas there. Soon the local community were arranging ‘help days’ in which around 20–30 people gathered together and spent the weekend camping in the woodland and helping with restorative activities. In 1997 Karen and Nigel organised an open meeting, as a result of which a management committee for HHW was established, which included representatives from the local community, as well as local politicians and business people. Thus HHW became a social enterprise, whose membership was open and free to all – members only had to sign their agreement with HHW’s aims and objectives. However, HHW needed to look beyond the immediate rural community in order to ensure its long-term economic survival: they needed the support of major stakeholders in government and in the forestry industry. Through contacts developed in the community, Karen and Nigel secured a contract from the local education authority to provide on-site training in basic life skills such as teamwork and responsibility for young offenders who had been excluded from mainstream education. This training developed into a series of courses, accredited to key stages 3 and 4, designed around improving, managing and maintaining the learning environment, that is, the woodland itself. Also, in 1998, the social enterprise Groundwork in Lincolnshire asked HHW to manage a government contract it had won under the New Deal for Young People programme. The numbers of learners grew steadily over the next few years, as did the number of people employed by HHW to carry out this work. HHW’s economic viability seemed to have been

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secured, and its achievements became increasingly recognised, as evidenced by a number of local, regional and national awards, and testimonials from a variety of agencies. The key point in the transition from what might be described as a socially and environmentally minded private enterprise into a community enterprise occurred in 2002. Karen and Nigel both felt that the overall (three-legged) sustainability of HHW required that the business, and the wood itself, be fully owned and managed by the local community, not by themselves. Consequently, the Volunteer Board of Directors took full control in 2004. The new community enterprise has a membership of around 120, and they are elected to the governing body at an annual general meeting, with seats on the body being apportioned to corporate members (three), staff (two), individual members (seven), faith (one) and funders (two). Members can be individual residents or local organisations such as businesses or parish councils. Source: Adapted from Frith et al, 2009

There are few examples of community cooperatives in the literature (see Frith et al, 2009, and Box 5.1; Lang and Roessl, 2011), yet it may be possible to classify them on the basis of their initial activator (a community group or an outside organisation), and the relationship of that activator to the enterprise (taking over an existing organisation or creating a new one) – see Table 5.1. Lang and Roessl (2011) also identify distinctive governance episodes (actors, ambiences and arenas), processes (discourses and practices) and culture (norms, values and rules) in the ‘story’ of each of their two case study cooperatives (based in Austria).They find that attachment to the place (a village in one case, and an urban neighbourhood in the other), with place-bound values of local autonomy, independence and pride, together with collective ‘imagination of the place’ (Lang and Roessl, 2011, 724) or of how the place should be, are the key factors in the governance of the cooperatives, and these result from the specific histories of the places over Table 5.1: Classification of community co-operatives Activator

Community taking over existing organisation

Community creating new organisation

Community group

Luthe (Lang and Roessl, 2011)

Hill Holt Wood

Outside organisation

Gurtis (Lang and Roessl, 2011)

?

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long periods of time (see also Robertson et al, 2008, discussed in Chapter One).This seems to be true also in the case of Hill Holt Wood, where the wood itself is crucial for the enterprise, not only for its economic value but for its social and amenity value for the local community. In Hill Holt Wood, however, the community sees the wood as part of a larger space of activity and interconnectedness. Interestingly, none of these places had a strong history of cooperative organisation: ‘Collective action rather stems from the identification with an image of what the place should be and the conformity to the norms and values attached to this place identity’ (Lang and Roessl, 2011, 727). What potential do community cooperatives have for community economic development? The key argument here, as in Chapter Two, must be that, like worker cooperatives, community cooperatives represent a break away from labour exploitation (which is the main source of the need for community economic development in the first place).The community in which the cooperative is embedded may be divided, along class and other lines (gender, age, ethnicity, etc), but it comes together for the purpose of making the cooperative work. Gibson-Graham (2006), for example, refer to a ‘community economy’, as a politics of possibilities that can shape creatively different ‘post-development’ economies, highlighting that the seeds of a ‘post-capitalist’ society are already present within capitalism, that non-capitalist forms of association can be produced today.They claim that there is then no need to ‘wait’ for a political revolution in the traditional sense, because ‘the making of a new political imaginary is under way, or at least a remapping of the political terrain’ (2006, xix;). Such communities can arise anywhere and everywhere and, as we have seen, do not have to depend on particular traditions of cooperative working. Looking at the case of Hill Holt Wood outlined in Box 5.1, a number of points are worth noting: • The community entrepreneurs originate from outside the community and work at the margins of that community, transforming both the community and themselves in the process – just as envisaged by Lindgren and Packendorff (2006). • The lines separating the private, public and third sectors are blurred. Hill Holt Wood starts out as a private enterprise, then prospers due to support from the public sector and finally transforms itself into a communityowned enterprise or ‘community cooperative’. • The transition from a private to a social enterprise can occur for good business reasons from the private owner’s point of view. • The links between the three legs of an enterprise (economic, social and environmental) can be very indirect and difficult to make – for example,

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woodland crafts may not be very profitable, the value added by training courses may be difficult to measure, or the environmental benefits of woodland management may be difficult to determine. Achieving all three legs simultaneously is very unusual for a social enterprise (Teague, 2007, 102–3). Hill Holt Wood also satisfies all the conditions for being a community enterprise as defined by Somerville and McElwee (2011). The individual members are drawn from the local community but they also include parish councils, which are (in theory at least!) representative of the local community, and the Board of Directors are selected on the basis of one member one vote.The governance of Hill Holt Wood, therefore, embraces not only the expected sectional interests within the community (dog walkers, picnickers, those interested in woodland crafts, and so on) but also the interests of the community as a whole as expressed through local political representatives (not only parish councils but also the local district council). Giovannini (2015) suggests that community cooperatives are more common in indigenous communities in Latin America, and may have clearer political potential. She points out how exogenous developmental models, far from developing indigenous communities, ‘have contributed to the expropriation of indigenous territories and to the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources’ (Giovannini, 2015, 72), with the result that ‘entire ecosystems have been destroyed because of high-impact projects such as hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining’, causing ‘the displacement of many rural indigenous communities and a generalized worsening of their living conditions’. In Chiapas in Mexico, however, indigenous enterprises, many of which were established after the 1994 Zapatista insurrection, ‘are embedded in the indigenous community, they pursue explicit social goals rather than profit-maximization, they are collectively owned and managed through participatory governing bodies, and…they produce goods or services to sustain themselves and their members’ (Giovannini, 2015, 73). In other words, these enterprises are cooperatives that serve a particular community, are embedded in an indigenous people’s movement, and ‘represent a concrete and viable alternative to the capitalist economic system’ (Giovannini, 2015, 77).The concept of ‘buen vivir’, which guides this endogenous development of Latin American indigenous peoples, seems to have much in common with the concept of beloved community.Arguably, however, the Zapatista insurrection is an example of autonomous peasantbased resistance in face of an external threat, which does not move beyond the traditional social relations of a peasant society (Aufheben, 2003) (for more on autonomism see Chapter Three).

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Conclusion Economic development is a key issue for communities across the world. The meaning of community economic development (CED), however, is contested, and there are many contrasting approaches. This chapter has argued that, under capitalism, CED always has a contradictory character, bringing both benefits and harms to communities simultaneously. There are problems with both exogenous and endogenous approaches, and with both people-based and place-based approaches.There is, therefore, no easy way forward. Nevertheless, it is suggested that in the case of some policies and practices the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. These policies and practices include: • a living wage to every worker and guaranteed decent income for nonworkers • community enterprises that are non-exploitative and economically, socially and environmentally sustainable and culturally rich • provision of quality affordable services – for learning, health, social care, housing, social care, safety – based on open and inclusive communities of co-producers • development of more strategic approaches to meet the needs of different communities in different places. Further chapters will consider some of these issues in more detail.

Summary Community economic development is basically about adding value to communities. Neoliberal governments have understood this mainly in terms of monetised value, that is, capital growth, especially job creation and thriving businesses. It is also, however, about improving the well-being of communities. This chapter has taken the view that economic development initiatives should be judged in terms of the value they add to those communities (in particular to the members of those communities) who need it the most. The chapter has criticised both top-down and bottom-up approaches to community economic development, and has argued that, for poorer communities, more strategic and sophisticated approaches are required, which recognise more explicitly the contradictory character of economic development under capitalism, and involve new forms of co-productive partnership between service providers and service users, and new types of community co-operative enterprise.

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Questions for discussion • What value can economic development add to communities? • What are the problems with top-down and bottom-up approaches to community economic development? • What alternatives exist to these approaches? • What are the prospects for community enterprise and community co-operatives in poorer communities? Can community co-operatives/enterprise be scaled up?

Further reading DeFilippis, J., Fisher, R. and Shragge, E. (2010) Contesting community: The limits and potential of local organizing, New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Giovannini, M. (2015) ‘Indigenous community enterprises in Chiapas: a vehicle for buen vivir? Community Development Journal, vol 50, no 1, pp 71-87. Lang, R. and Roessl, D. (2011) ‘Contextualising the governance of community cooperatives: evidence from Austria and Germany’, Voluntas, vol 22, pp 706-30. Roelvink, G., St. Martin, K. and Gibson-Graham, J. K. (eds) (2015) Making other worlds possible: Performing diverse economies, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Somerville, P. and McElwee, G. (2011) ‘Situating community enterprise: a theoretical exploration’, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, vol 23, nos 5-6, pp 317-30. Taylor, M. (2011) Public policy in the community, 2nd ed, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Notes 1

2

The inequality is not just between employers and employees, between management and workers, but also within the workforce, between those who are better able to take advantage of the job opportunities on offer and those who are less able. Local enterprises can also find themselves priced out of the market by larger competitors, as has been seen, for example, in the case of supermarkets, who can offer greater economies of scale (see, for example, NEF, 2003). Such economies of scale work against many communities, resulting in the disappearance of corner shops, grocers, banks, post offices and pubs. It is well established in the literature that poor people find that only poorquality jobs are available to them (see OECD, 2006; North et al, 2007; Green and White, 2007). A review of JRF research found: ‘The quality of jobs, and whether in economic terms they offer realistic incentives for people to return to work, remain fundamental challenges even if transport connections and other measures to connect disadvantaged areas to jobs are addressed’ (Taylor, 2008, 13). It would appear to follow that a fairer distribution of job quality is

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3

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required, for example, by mixing low- and high-quality tasks within the same job (see Sayer, 2011, and discussion of worker co-operatives below). Potential investors are not usually philanthropic, being interested primarily in profit; any interest they may have in the welfare of the community is likely to be secondary to that end. Williams (2011, 375) has found that people in deprived areas ‘have higher participation rates in forms of community self-help that are reimbursed’, whereas ‘people in affluent localities have higher participation rates in unpaid forms of community self-help’ [emphases added]. The term ‘regeneration’ is essentially vague, not just because it includes physical, social and cultural as well as economic development, but because it confuses capital with mere expenditure. Regeneration may add value but it does not necessarily produce self-expanding value – it could involve consumption (or even waste) rather than investment. DeFilippis et al (2010, 73) point out that ‘even with the practices that have created alternatives, or that have radicalized CED practice, the dominant practices are linked to an entrepreneurial vision [i.e. for private profit-making], pushed by state and related private foundation funding and programs’. Community Development Corporations in the US are now mainly involved in developing small businesses, training entrepreneurs, and providing technical assistance to businesses (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 74). Examples include civic associations in north Italy (Putnam, 1993), Silicon Valley in California, the M4 corridor in England, biotechnology firms around Cambridge, the Madchester culture, wine and food districts in France, car manufacture in US cities, and glass and crystal manufacture in Bohemia. According to Porter (2004), a cluster creates an overall competitive advantage for the business community in the region where it has formed. Different teams working on similar problems find that interaction across teams helps to develop solutions (Huggins et al, 2008, 324). This argument seems also to apply to the growing ‘collaborative economy’ (Stokes et al, 2014) facilitated by the internet. Arguably, the networks of consumption, production, learning and finance that make up this economy consist of non-localised ‘clusters’, which are an integral part of advanced capitalism (they include, for example, eBay and Uber). Some of them are cooperatives and community-based (see below) but most are not. A recent review of Community Development Corporations (Varady et al, 2015) confirms this conclusion. CDCs have been able to make little headway in the face of concentrated poverty and continuing haemorrhaging of jobs to the suburbs and overseas (see also Briggs, 2014). Evidence to support this conclusion comes from Teasdale’s (2012) study of six social enterprises in the homelessness field, which found that, rather than a situation where social and commercial considerations complemented one

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13 14

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another, these enterprises experienced an inherent tension between the two. The contradictions within capitalism were not resolved but continued to be reflected within the organisations themselves. A similar view is expressed by DeFilippis et al (2010, 78–80), who argue that community problems cannot be solved by capitalist enterprise, and that ‘community itself is undermined by the market’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 79), basically because community is incompatible with the commodification of social life. See, for example, Monbiot’s (2003) criticisms of localisation. Mention could also be made here of the ‘social and solidarity economy’, which exists in French, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, and whose theories and practices are said to be part of a ‘counter-hegemonic political economy’ (Satgar, 2014). On the evolution of the social and solidarity economy in Metro Manila, Philippines, and in Geneva, Switzerland, see Sahakian and Dunand (2015) – the organisations involved look like community enterprises. Peer-to-peer production is a form of economy that involves distributed networks, which are ‘networks in which autonomous agents can freely determine their behaviour and linkages without the intermediary of obligatory hubs’ (Bauwens, 2005). Bauwens characterises peer-to-peer production as a ‘third’ mode of production, a ‘third’ mode of governance and a ‘third’ mode of ownership. In practice, it is a form of co-operative enterprise in which membership is open to everyone equally who wants to participate in the (virtual) community. As Taylor (2011, 22) puts it: ‘if community economic development is to scale up to any significant level, it paradoxically needs the state.’ This supports what was argued above about the need for a living wage and improved funding of social care. Bovaird (2007, 847) defines co-production as ‘the provision of services through regular, long-term relationships between professionalised service providers and service users or other members of the community, where all parties make substantial resource contributions’. For further discussion of co-production see Bovaird and Loeffler (2012), Somerville (2015); for a review of the literature on co-production, see Bovaird and Loeffler (2014); for a study of co-production across five EU countries, see Parrado et al (2013); for a study of co-production in five areas in England and Wales, see Bovaird et al (2015). Unsurprisingly, perhaps, these studies found that co-production tends to be higher when people have a strong sense that they can make a difference, and that levels of co-production do not vary much by gender or ethnic background. It is useful to know that: ‘All stereotypes in this sphere are likely to be misleading’ (Bovaird et al, 2015, 18)! CED is commonly assumed to fall within this ‘third sector’ (or ‘third system’, see Pearce, 2003, 25) but, as we have seen, all sectors are capable of contributing to

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community development. Also, much, if not most, of the value in communities is produced outside of the three sectors, through the domestic economy (mainly child care and housework) and the informal economy (defined as ‘the paid production and sale of goods or services which are unregistered by, or hidden from, the state for tax, benefit and/or labour law purposes, but which are legal in all other respects’, see Katungi et al, 2006, with an estimated value of £126 billion per year in UK, see Williams and Windebank, 2000). Confusingly, perhaps, Pearce (2003) includes the ‘family economy’ and informal ‘self-help’ within the ‘third system’. Co-production will be discussed further in Chapters Six to Nine. But Boyle and Harris (2009) is a good example of an acceptance of the dominant neoliberal agenda, with its rhetoric of ‘self-reliance’ (rather than ‘dependency’) and ‘reciprocity’ (‘something for something’ rather than ‘something for nothing’ – which denies the validity of a needs-based agenda) and failure to examine the causes of the problems to which co-production is offered as the solution. It anticipates the Conservative idea of Big Society in its claim that ‘the essence of co-production is…about using society to remake the state’ (Boyle and Harris, 2009, 22). Governance International (2015) also shows an interpretation of co-production as a revamping of asset-based approaches, at least in the co-commissioning of public services (see www.govint.org/our-services/coproduction). These jobs were temporary (for six months), for only 25 hours per week, and for a minimum wage. Nevertheless, the official evaluation found that the value added to ‘society’ per participant was £7,750 (DWP, 2012).The governmental subsidy is therefore modestly justified in cost–benefit terms, but only if one ignores the probably higher level of labour exploitation that it is subsidising. Mention could also be made here of Enterprise Zones, for which LEPs are responsible (HMG, 2015). This is a resurrection of a failed policy from the 1980s; 25 such zones have been awarded, with business rate discounts worth up to £275,000 per business over a five-year period, and automatic planning permission for certain development such as new industrial buildings or change of use of existing buildings. Evidence on the impact of this policy, however, is lacking. In its 2015 summer Budget, the government announced that it would introduce a £9 per hour national ‘living wage’ from 2017 but it is not clear how this will affect the number of jobs available. In a revealing phrase, the government stated that it was aiming for ‘A higher pay, lower welfare society’ (HM Treasury, 2015).

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Although it doesn’t have to be like this – see Bailey and Livingston (2007). The point is to create jobs that enable people to stay in the area who might otherwise have moved out, and to create an environment in which people (especially young people) want to (continue to) live. This involves avoiding the situation where people feel they have to move out in order to get on or to escape an unappealing environment.

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six Community learning Community learning is about forms of learning that are shared both within and across communities, as contrasted with learning that is locked up within institutions such as schools and universities. The school system in capitalist society is a specific type of field with specific types of player (teachers, students, governors, parents, etc). Like other fields within capitalism schools are sites of both oppression and resistance, reproducing and yet also potentially challenging economic and social inequality and injustice. In recent decades, however, the neoliberal movement for global education reform has threatened to undermine the post-war achievement of quality education available to all children free of charge. In response to such threats, the chapter argues that schools need to become more firmly embedded in the communities they serve, acting as hubs for wider community learning in communities of practice. The recent growth of co-operative schools in the UK is welcomed as a positive move in this direction, especially as it helps to situate schools within a wider co-operative movement. The chapter concludes with a case study of Sure Start, which suggests that the failure to learn (on the part of both government and communities) from this government programme was a more or less inevitable consequence of its failure to be a clear process of community learning.

Learning can be considered as a process of developing knowledge, skills and understanding. Understanding is key because without it knowledge is just lists of facts, and skills are merely cleverness. The nature of understanding, however, or rather of the capacity to understand, commonly known as intelligence, is the subject of considerable debate: Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to

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overcome obstacles by taking thought.Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of ‘intelligence’ are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Intelligence) All learning is social, involving interaction between sentient beings and their environments, whether direct or mediated (for example, using print or electronic communications). There is an important difference, however, between institutional learning (understood as individual learning in institutions such as schools and universities) and community learning (shared learning within and across communities). One way of understanding this is in terms of Bourdieu’s distinction between habitus and field. In the case of institutional learning, the school or university represents a specific field, namely a set of positions to which individuals are assigned (teachers, students, administrative and support staff), and a range of manual workers (caretakers, cleaners, caterers, estate workers, security). Community learning, however, is anchored within a specific habitus, that is, it relates to a community of learners – to their sense of being-in-the-world, to the ‘outlook’ of that community, as an integral part of its way of going on in the world.

Problems with schooling Schools would appear to be the main formal community-based agency for learning activities, and learning can be said to be institutionalised in such organisations insofar as learning activity is officially recognised as such only to the extent that it fits into the curriculum and work routines that the school follows. As an institution, therefore, a school can provide valuable structure for learning processes. In practice, however, schools are top-down, hierarchical structures, where each class teacher rules over their class and the head teacher rules over all. This authoritarian, command-and-control structure produces a general sense of uniformity in a school. The school as a field is firmly embedded within an all-encompassing and corrupting capitalist system, taking the form of a factory for producing knowledge and credentials that raise labour productivity and reproduce class distinction,

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fitting pupils to their later labour market and social structural positions (Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Willis, 1977; 2004; Bourdieu, 1984, 388). Some commentators have argued that schools are not so much in the business of learning as of ‘schooling’, understood as meaning ‘to be conditioned, to believe, to perform and to act in a given way’ (Meighan, 2004).1 The purpose of schooling is simply to inculcate a sense of discipline and respect for authority (Johnson, 1976). Schooling is seen to be part of the process whereby subordinate groups are persuaded to accept inequalities by being passive and stoical – the so-called ‘banking’ model of education (Freire, 1972, 45–6). Schooling is said to involve ‘cultural invasion’, namely ‘the imposition of the values and beliefs of a dominant culture in a way that marginalises and silences in order to dominate’ (Ledwith, 2005, 98). Ledwith and Springett (2010, 160–1) go so far as to say: Schooling is essentially hegemonic. As an institution of civil society, it reaches into the being of young people to reinforce dominant ideas of inferiority/superiority through a powerful process of success/failure, to maintain the status quo. The illusion of democracy is maintained by the occasional working-class ‘success’, while the social group as a whole remains marginalised. By individualising educational failure, the educational determinants of everyday life are overlooked and ‘failure’ is taken on board as personal inadequacy, resulting in low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. Such comments echo those of earlier critics of schooling such as Illich (1973) and Holt (1964). Illich, for example, saw schools as an integral part of a system dedicated to the commodification of all aspects of reality, including knowledge. Learning, which was for Illich an aspect of being in the world (part of the habitus of every individual and community), becomes corrupted into the acquisition of knowledge, seen as a possession to be exploited (part of a global capitalist economic field).2 Similarly, Holt saw schools as perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. Both Illich and Holt came to advocate forms of homeschooling, family and community learning, and so-called ‘informal education’ (see www.infed.org). Since Illich and Holt, the commodification of learning has progressed by leaps and bounds – see, for example, Leadbeater (2000). Traditionally, students have been seen as passive consumers in the sense of empty vessels into which teachers poured knowledge, but now they (or at least their parents or guardians, acting on their behalf) are increasingly viewed as active consumers, choosing the schools to which they go and even running schools for themselves.3

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Nevertheless, it has to be said that the position of all these critics is somewhat one-sided. In the main, they fail to understand that schooling can be at the same time both oppressive and liberating, constraining and enabling. In particular, they ignore or play down the importance of resistance to school regimes. Blackburn (2000, 9) argues that Freire is simply wrong to assume that the oppressed are powerless – for example, what he calls a ‘culture of silence’ may conceal acts of sabotage, non-cooperation, and the secret observance of a distinct culture and identity.This argument holds true even for children and young people – see, for example,Willis (1977). Also, schooling indeed creates failures, but, contrary to Ledwith and Springett (2010), it is not in itself hegemonic in the usually understood sense of being based on consent (Gramsci, 1971). Rather, it is compulsory, and the working class on the whole are not fooled by it; the minority who succeed at school are understandably more inclined to see the benefits of it, while the majority who do not do so well are more likely to express resentment and hostility towards it. As adults, their continuing support for the system (such as it is) is not based on beliefs about who is superior or inferior but is conditional upon the ability of schools to teach their children basic academic skills and open up their minds to possibilities that might not have occurred to them otherwise.What is hegemonic in capitalist society, as we saw in Chapters Two and Three, is the understanding of capitalism as being based on free and fair exchange, which Marx explained as being due to the way in which labour exploitation is subject to processes of mystification (notably, what he called the fetishism of commodities). Not surprisingly, schools also tend to reproduce rather than challenge social inequality and injustice (Ball, 2008). This happens in a number of ways. Poorer communities tend to get poorer schools (an instance of the so-called ‘inverse care law’), for example, due to higher turnover of staff (Lupton and Kintrea, 2011, 324, 326), while better schools in poorer communities tend to give more help to the less poor (Lupton and Kintrea, 2011, 327).The latter is not necessarily the fault of the school itself. It is at least partly to do with working-class habitus, where the opportunity for social mobility for brighter working-class pupils may be outweighed by their fear of losing the social support and ‘comfort zone’ of their community. If schools are to reduce inequality, they must be part of a process for lifting the community as a whole, not be outposts for creaming off those whom the community can least afford to lose (this is just one of the problems with the ideology of meritocracy). A possible alternative to institutional schooling is homeschooling, that is, the organisation of learning for children in their families and communities. This was actually the norm until the nineteenth century – typically, geared towards the type of work that children would pursue throughout their lives,

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for example, in the fields or in the home.Today, however, homeschooling is very different. It is largely a reaction against the negative effects of formal schooling, and takes many different forms, using a wide variety of methods and materials (for more information, see Wikipedia on ‘Homeschooling’). It is a significant movement in the US, where in 2003 there were 1.1 million homeschooled students. Numerous studies in that country have found that homeschooled students on average outperform their peers on standardised tests. However, these studies may not be comparing like with like, as the parents of homeschooled students are likely to have more formal education and higher income than the average parent; also, homeschool testing is usually voluntary, while public school testing is compulsory. Overall, it is not yet clear what advantages, if any, homeschooling may have over formal schooling.The most likely conclusion to be drawn is that it depends on the nature of the schooling provided in either case. Such a conclusion would be reminiscent of debates about whether childcare is better provided by two carers than by one – that is, it all depends on the quality of care being provided. In today’s world, however, homeschooling is not a realistic option for most parents, who have to go out to work. Comparative research indicates that Finland has the best school system in the world, as measured by standardised outcomes.Yet Finnish governments have set themselves against what Sahlberg (2012) calls the global education reform movement (GERM) – a movement towards increasing competition among schools, increased choice of schools, stronger accountability of schools, and standardised testing of students to assess the performance of schools and teachers. Instead, the Finnish government invests heavily in teacher training and pays them well – education is seen as a public good accessible to all free of charge without standardised testing or competitive private schools. The lessons to be learned from this are obvious. What is driving GERM is the prospect for making profits out of a more commodified education system, mainly by breaking the teaching unions and forcing down teachers’ salaries to subsistence levels (Bale and Knopp, 2012), as has occurred in other public services. Weiner (2012) makes an important point when she criticises the business or service model of trade unionism, in which the role of the unions is to provide services to members and not to challenge the right of managers to manage (which, in the case of schools, includes deciding on the curriculum, the organisation of the school day, what counts as quality teaching and learning, and the role of schools in their communities). The struggle is not simply between two sectional interests (professionals and their employers) but a struggle over the future of education itself. This takes us back to the discussion in Chapter Two. Education institutions in capitalist society are ‘edu-factories’ in which teachers are contracted to

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instruct students.The products of these factories are the students themselves, whose labour power becomes more valuable and can attract higher pay as a result of acquiring what Bourdieu called ‘cultural capital’. In a public education system, teachers’ labour power is partially decommodified, in that their pay is determined by processes of negotiation between their employers and their trade unions (collective bargaining) rather than by market forces, and their employers are not profit-making. Under neoliberal governments, however, pressure is increasing to recommodify teaching work, so that teachers will be paid only what their labour power is worth in a freely operating labour market (albeit with, in some cases, a possibility of extra pay for ‘performance’), and to reconfigure education institutions as profit-making businesses.

The case of the UK The post-war education system in the UK, at least at secondary school level, closely reflected its class structure.Well-funded grammar schools were available for children who passed the 11 plus (but not all such children – many passing girls, for example, found that there was no grammar school for them to go to), while those who failed were consigned to less well-funded secondary modern schools. Most middle-class children attended grammar schools, while most working-class children went to secondary moderns. This iniquitous system of segregation, which exists in almost no other country in the world, was reformed by the establishment of comprehensive schools from the 1960s onwards.4 Suspiciously soon afterwards (by the late 1970s), these comprehensive schools were being criticised for their low standards of educational attainment (particularly compared with Britain’s main competitors) and therefore for ‘failing’ their pupils. Since then, the primary purpose of government education policy has been to improve school performance (Jones, 2003). Until the 1980s, state schools were accountable to local education authorities, who ostensibly represented local communities and who had considerable powers to determine school budgets, open and close schools, hire and fire school staff and decide school policies generally. Following the implementation of the policy of Local Management of Schools (LMS) in the late 1980s, however, many of these powers, particularly the control of budgets, were devolved to individual schools. Suddenly, the governing board of the school became the key body for holding the head teacher to account. LMS stipulates that each school governing body must include elected parent and teacher governors and nominated governors from the LEA and from the local community (the latter is not specified so it could be

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a local shopkeeper or a representative of a local residents’ association or other interest group).The only significant group of stakeholders that does not have to be represented on the governing body is the pupils. With this exception, however, the composition of the governing body can be seen to ensure a certain degree of accountability of the school to the local community: apart from the actual community representative, parents mostly live in the community, so do many of the teachers, and the LEA governors typically live locally too or represent the local community in other ways (for example, as local councillors). So here we have an example of what has been called a ‘learning democracy with over 350,000 local people legally responsible for the conduct and direction of their schools and large amounts of public money’ (Allen and Martin, 2002, 9). The question is, however: how successful has LMS been in holding head teachers to account and connecting schools with local communities and businesses? What difference has it really made to the policy, practice and performance of schools generally? It is worth pointing out that LMS does not define any strategic role for the governing body in relation to the community.The agendas of governing bodies are almost entirely focused on the school itself, and it is arguable that LMS has had the effect of co-opting parents and community to these agendas.The governors identify with the common interest of the school but do not necessarily have a clear idea of what this is (Dean et al, 2007). Further, the membership of governing bodies does not reflect the make-up of the population of either parents or local communities: school governors are disproportionately white, female and professional (Dean et al, 2007). The New Labour government (1997–2010) adopted a ‘social investment’ approach to education (Lister, R, 2006), ‘concerned not with the present learning needs or well-being of children, but with schooling as a kind of instrumental, future-orientated fund which will – at some indeterminate point in the future – pay dividends for society’ (Kraftl, 2012), in terms of more productive workers and more responsible citizens.5 In other words, New Labour saw schooling primarily as a means to increase productivity and maintain the (capitalist) status quo. Under its rule, we saw an increasing emphasis on ‘performativity’ (Ball, 2001), both of teachers and pupils, with an emphasis on targets, league tables, inspections, audits, record keeping and measurable outcomes generally. At the same time, however, New Labour wanted schools to be more ‘inclusive’ and more ‘communityfriendly’, working in partnership with parents and local communities. The problem with this is the tension between the two goals (Crowther et al, 2003). For schools, the dilemma is that they are under pressure to raise pupil attainment levels (as reported publicly in school league tables) but also to be inclusive, for example, of children with learning or behavioural

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difficulties.An obvious way of improving league table performance is to be more ‘exclusive’ in terms of selecting more promising pupils and excluding more ‘difficult’ or troublesome ones, but most schools have little freedom for manoeuvre here – and indeed the adoption by any school of such a more ‘exclusive’ approach would show a disregard for the needs of their local community. New Labour did make three significant attempts to reduce educational inequality. First, under the pupil premium policy, £2.5 billion was distributed to schools according to the number of pupils receiving free school meals. Under LMS, however, schools were free to spend this money as they wished and this means that, given the tendency noted above to spend relatively more on children likely to achieve higher grades, priority might not have been given to those receiving free school meals. Second, Building Schools for the Future was a programme for rebuilding or refurbishing all 3,500 secondary schools in England by 2020 (for more detail, see Kraftl, 2012). No doubt many school buildings were in dire need of improvement or redevelopment but this hardly justified the £45 billion that was proposed to be spent over a period of 15–20 years. There is also no evidence to support New Labour’s claim that new school buildings act as a catalyst for educational or social change (Beckett, 2007;Woolner et al, 2007). Local communities, including young people, were not effectively engaged with this programme (Kraftl, 2012, 865).The coalition scrapped it in 2010, by which time 500 new schools had been built and nearly half the £45 billion had been spent. Unfortunately, since most of the new schools were built through private finance initiatives, the burden to the taxpayer is likely to continue for the next 30 years.6 Third, New Labour introduced academies (in 2000). These were new schools, funded directly by central government and free from local authority control, with more freedoms than under LMS, for example, to set pay and conditions for staff, often supported by a sponsor. They were originally intended only to replace failing schools.7 Under the coalition government, however, the Academies Act 2010 enabled all so-called ‘maintained’ (that is, state funded) schools to convert to academy status (for more detail, see DfE, 2015). Between April 2010 and March 2012 £8.3 billion had been spent on academies (House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, 2013), and the number of academies rose from 203 in May 2010 to 4,500 in March 2015 (House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, 2015), representing well over half of secondary schools in England. The implications of this rapid change are not yet clear. The report of the Academies Commission (2013), however, cast doubt on whether the academisation programme is producing any substantive improvement in educational attainment. The Commission found that,

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even though a lot of money and attention was directed towards around 200 schools converted into academies, they did not perform noticeably better than similar schools.They also reported serious problems in a range of areas – school admissions, governance, accountability, financial oversight and system improvement. In particular they found a failure to collaborate with other schools, even though international research has shown that a strong collaborative culture is important for success. In OECD countries, as reported by Glatter (2013): ‘The poorest performing school systems were ones with high autonomy for institutions but low interconnections between them and within the system generally.’ The Commission also expressed concern about the sidelining of local education authorities, who continue to have extensive statutory responsibilities but now lack the power to discharge them in relation to academies – academies have no local mechanisms for community and stakeholder engagement, whistleblowing or parental complaints, thus creating ‘a serious democratic deficit’ (Glatter, 2013). In their research on two local authorities in the Midlands, Smith and Abbott (2014) found that much depended on the ‘culture of acceptance’ or ‘culture of rejection’ among school leaders in the area (headteachers and chairs of governors). Basically, where the leaders of different schools saw themselves as in competition with one another, they were more likely to opt for academy status, but where they had cooperated closely over some years, they were less interested in this option (their continuing loyalty to the local authority, however, was dependent upon that authority being responsive and supportive to their needs). Overall, therefore, academisation now looks as if it is part of the global education reform movement, which was criticised above. The coalition government also introduced new kinds of academy such as so-called ‘free’ schools and studio schools (DfE, 2015). Free schools were particularly controversial (see, for example, Benn, 2011; for a more positive evaluation, see Porter and Simons, 2015) because they are set up not by government or by conversion of existing schools but by groups of people (mainly parents and businesses) on their own initiative (recall Big Society!). Potentially, they could be more community-oriented but in practice it all depends on the nature of the group involved and the ethos of the school that is subsequently created. By 2014–15, 252 free schools had been opened (DfE, 2015), though rather more primary than secondary schools. It seems that the quality of learning in schools (though not of community learning) has improved since the 1990s but it is difficult to be sure how much (if at all) any of these changes made by English governments have been responsible for those improvements.

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Communities of learning as communities of practice Community learning is concerned specifically not so much with learning in the community as with learning by the community, as a whole. Some advocates of community learning see it as a bottom-up process, a process of community self-development, involving cooperative life-long selflearning (see, for example, Ellis, 2005). They believe in a fully inclusive sharing of learning within and across communities based on open communication, in which communities take ownership of their own learning through dialogue, self-evaluation and self-development.They are critical of forms of institutional learning, particularly schools, and tend to support homeschooling movements.They want to break down unnecessary barriers between teachers and learners, between ‘experts’ and ‘non-experts’. They have a vision of learning as one that is, in Bourdieu’s terms, geared to the habitus of individuals and communities, and not subordinated to governmental agendas of employability and the production of ‘good citizens’. Community learning can therefore be a way of counteracting negative experiences of schooling: ‘It is not that they have failed in education; it’s that education has failed them’ (community worker, cited in Taylor, 2011, 192). This idea of community learning as self-organised can be understood in terms of communities of practice. According to Etienne Wenger (2011, 1), these are ‘groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.’ This is bottom-up organisation par excellence – for example, allotments (Crouch and Ward, 1997) or squatting (Owens et al, 2013) (for a useful discussion of self-organisation, see Uitermark, 2015). Even a policy community or a street gang can be a kind of community of practice.8 The members of such a community have a common domain of interest (for example, an allotment, a squat, a street) and are attached to a process of learning to act in that domain. Through mutual engagement, their members build relationships (that is, community) that enable them to learn from one another and to develop durable shared practice. Such communities tend to be temporary, existing for specific defined purposes, although they can be long lasting – for example, disciplines and professions and representative community organisations. Levels of interdependency are kept to the minimum required to support learning, in order to allow for maximum spontaneous cooperation and to avoid prescribing what is to be learned (Lever and Smith, 2013).9 Interestingly, social movements have, historically, functioned as (larger) communities of practice (for example, the workers’ movement, see Flett, 2006; Cox, 2014).This may be less true today (Grayson, 2011), but Hall et al (2012) provide numerous examples across the world of communities of

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practice based in social movements – anything from Occupy to organic farming. Interest has grown recently in the co-production of learning (Pohl et al, 2010; Beebeejaun et al, 2013; Durose et al, 2013) or co-learning – an approach that goes back to Freire (1972). This is where outside researchers (usually university-based) work with communities as catalysts and facilitators of communities’ own collective learning. The researchers enter into an open-ended dialogue (typically using techniques of participatory action research) with local communities as co-researchers focused on particular community problems and needs, as a result of which the learning and practice of those communities (as well as that of the researchers) is enhanced.This model brings together entirely different communities of practice (research teams, practitioners such as farmers, and governmental agencies) in order to achieve common goals such as sustainable development. Participatory action research (PAR) is particularly important here. Developed from Freire (1972) by Chambers (1997, 108), it involves ‘collective research through meetings and socio-dramas, critical recovery of history, valuing and applying folk culture, and the production and diffusion of new knowledge through written, oral and visual forms.’ PAR ‘has been widely adopted and used as a method of identifying local needs, assets and priorities rather than having these defined from above’ (Taylor, 2011, 191). However, it has also been co-opted to neo-colonial community development agendas (Cooke and Kothari, 2001;Waddington and Mohan, 2004), so before applying PAR techniques in any given situation, it is always essential to take account of ‘the power relations and context within which they are being introduced or how they are going to be used’ (Taylor, 2011, 192). It is important to ensure that the learning is a two-way process and for all parties to recognise that the different communities bring with them different kinds of expertise, which must be equally respected and engaged. Otherwise, this degenerates into mere institutional learning.10

The contribution of schools to community learning Arguably, the primary purpose of a school is to serve the children and young people in its care. Such service, however, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Does it mean, for instance, giving top priority to ensuring that they get the best grades in examinations, leading to top positions in adult society? Or does it mean giving them the best possible preparation for the adult life that they are most likely to lead? Or does it mean ensuring that their experience of school is as enjoyable as possible, including intellectual stimulation as well as a circle of friends and pastoral support? Or does it

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mean treating them all fairly, fostering their sense of justice and fair play, so that they become ‘active citizens’ in a positive sense, contributing towards making the world a better place? Finally, does the school see itself as part of the community in which it exists, working with local people to improve their quality of life, or does it see itself as set apart from the community, enabling young people to escape to what it regards as a brighter future for them?11 The answers to all these questions help to determine what the elusive ethos of a school might be. For community learning, it is necessary for schools to be open and accountable to their communities. A school that sees itself as set apart from its community is likely to have an elitist ethos, in the sense that it is concerned with cultivating ‘leaders of the future’, in which leadership is understood in a traditional hierarchical sense rather than a distributed sense. This ethos is often reinforced by the leadership style of the head teacher, which can be autocratic rather than democratic.The unaccountable school, therefore, has an inevitable tendency towards elitism and autocracy. The risk with academisation in particular is that it may encourage such elitism both within the school and in relation to other schools. The Academies Commission (2013), for example, found that, although schools that were invited in 2010 to convert to academy status had to say how they would support a struggling school nearby, these schools were mostly breaking that promise, under the pressure to show good results and a favourable Ofsted rating. In practice, therefore, with increasing emphasis on school autonomy and the growing diversity of specialist schools (technology, language, sports, for example) and academies, schools run the risk of becoming more disconnected from their local communities. At the same time, however, they may become more connected with communities of other kinds, such as regional, national and even global communities of faith, business and learning (for example, the Catholic school in one of the case study local authorities in the research by Smith and Abbott, 2014, 348). Their catchment areas may be larger, and they may be more closely linked with other schools and education institutions in other areas. Cantle (2008) believes that faith schools in particular are divisive on a local scale, though evidence to support this opinion is lacking (but see ICC, 2009).1 Arguably, schools are disconnected from their local communities in other ways, for example, because they have to deliver a national curriculum, much of which will have little relevance to local communities.13 Policy makers generally take it for granted that a school contributes, or at least can contribute, value to its local community, for example, through extended schools14 (DfES, 2005; for positive evaluations, see Cummings et al, 2007; Wallace et al, 2009). The importance of this contribution is

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highlighted by Clarke et al (2007), who studied an area in Bristol that had lost its secondary school (see Box 6.1). As a result, children had to attend schools elsewhere and: This leads to the disintegration of school-based networks which often involve mothers. It also increases mobility and transitoriness among the local population, as families may move to get their children into the secondary school of their choice. This fosters a sense that the community cannot offer residents what they want and therefore they are willing to put less into the community. (Clarke et al, 2007, 91–2) The general lesson from all these studies is clear: schools can act as an important and relatively stable focus for community learning, and the closure of a school can therefore be seriously damaging for community.

Box 6.1: The value of a school to a community You feel ‘us against the world’, that sort of attitude develops, when you attack a school, you attack its community as well. I can’t think of anyone I’ve met who’s had an involvement with the school in the past who’s not felt a real sense of loss from it closing. And obviously especially the kids that were going there until a year or so ago, they’ve not got anything good to say about the change at all, but are very negative about it…The expression I keep hearing from a number of people is that it seemed to sort of rip the soul out of the area for a lot of people. Source: Bristol respondent, cited in Clarke et al, 2007, 91

Recently, there has occurred a dramatic rise in the number of cooperative schools in England. Currently totalling 834, this represents the fastest growing network of schools in the UK. It is no accident that this has coincided with the massive increase in numbers of academies since 2011. Basically, the conversion to academy status has led many schools to reflect on what their values are and look to ways to safeguard their new-found autonomy from corporatist influence (for example, through sponsorship and investment), thus responding to the problems identified by the Academies Commission (2013). The values and principles of cooperative schools can be found at www.cooperativeschools.coop.They are effectively the ones set out by the International Cooperative Alliance (www.ica.coop). For the purposes of this book, the relevant principles are ‘cooperation among cooperatives’ and ‘concern for community’. Cooperative schools therefore are committed to

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working closely with other cooperative schools, particularly within the same local authority area, and to being engaged with their local communities. An important feature of cooperative schools is that their students are more involved in the governance of the school (for example, Cotham Cooperative Academy in Bristol (www.co-op.ac.uk/learningtogether/presentations), see Figure 6.1). A distinctive feature of this model of governance is the Figure 6.1: The co-operative academy model (Cotham)

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importance it attaches to the school forum.While not actually a decisionmaking body itself, the forum acts as a second chamber, providing a wide range of representation to the governing body from parents/carers, staff, students, the local community and alumni. This ensures that the school governors are well informed and would find it difficult to contravene the considered opinions of the forum without very convincing reasons. The forum could also provide a means for networking and collaboration with other cooperative schools in Bristol and elsewhere, and with the cooperative movement generally. Many cooperative schools are sponsored by the Cooperative College, which promotes and supports such extended cooperation. Cooperative schools therefore represent a clear and promising attempt to recover some of the ground that has been lost as a result of global education reform. It has to be said, however, that they are not actually cooperatives, since they are not controlled entirely by their members, and their governing bodies remain vulnerable to capture by elites of managers and shareholders.The teachers’ position remains the same, as employees of the school (which is represented by the governors), so the basic division between capital and labour is not abolished (Chapter Two).Their position has also been weakened in that their pay is now not so clearly determined by national negotiation but can vary according to local conditions.They have a ‘stake’ on the governing body, but it is less than what it was under LMS.

Early intervention versus community learning: the case of Sure Start Sure Start is by far the largest UK governmental initiative related to community learning. It was launched as a ten-year programme in 1999, and provided funding of over £3 billion for 524 Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in England, each with a budget of up to £1 million per year and typically serving a population of 400–800 children (DfEE, 1999). SSLPs were administered by local partnerships between local authorities, primary care trusts, national children’s charities and other local private, voluntary and community organisations, with the aim of bringing together core programmes of health (child and maternal), early education and play, and family support for children below the age of 4 years. In practice, their core services have been: outreach and home visiting (for befriending, delivering health/ development services, acting as a gateway to other services, and providing specialist services); primary and community healthcare (for example, for postnatal depression, pregnancy, breastfeeding support and smoking cessation); support for good quality play, learning and childcare; and other

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support to families and parents (Allnock et al, 2005). The emphasis on outreach work was important for two reasons: to access difficult-to-reach families, and to ensure autonomy for local projects. SSLPs were required to involve parents in their governance structures (management boards and parent forums), in determining local needs and priorities, and in assessing the impact of the interventions made. Early evaluations of Sure Start found that SSLPs were not helping the most severely disadvantaged families (Melhuish et al, 2005; NAO, 2006) and there was also widespread confusion about the nature and purpose of the participation expected from parents in the programme (Avis et al, 2007; MacNeill, 2009). ‘At the same time, findings were emerging from the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education project [EPPE, 2004] that indicated that integrated children’s centres were particularly beneficial to children’s development’ (Johnson, 2011, 4; see also Lewis, 2011; Eisenstadt, 2011). Consequently, in 2005 the government decided that SSLPs would become Sure Start Children’s Centres, as part of a national programme to have ‘a Children’s Centre for every community’, not just deprived communities – 3,500 centres in all. At the same time, the policy emphasis shifted towards helping parents into work (with links to the local Jobcentre Plus and training) and, in line with the government’s new childcare strategy, towards enabling all families with children to have access to an affordable, flexible, high-quality childcare place for their child. This expanded, and inevitably much more expensive, programme, has now been the victim of ‘austerity’ cuts to local authority funding, with hundreds of children’s centres being closed across the country. However, the coalition government and now the Conservative government have continued New Labour’s emphasis on children’s health and development, parenting and employability, with extended provision of 15 hours per week free education for 3–4-yearolds and for the most disadvantaged 2-year-olds (DfE and DH, 2011).15 There seems little doubt that Sure Start has been beneficial for many families (Melhuish et al, 2008; Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 102), particularly in terms of health improvements (Anning et al, 2007), including better physical health and lower BMI of children than in comparison areas (NESS, 2010), and moving parents into paid work more quickly than parents in comparison areas (Meadows et al, 2011, 1).16 Lloyd and Harrington (2012, 102) state: ‘For many of the families who engage with Sure Start, such impacts represent life-changing progress and are vital stepping-stones to other longer-term impacts.’ Overall, however, the impacts have been relatively limited (NESS, 2010).As Clarke (2006) points out, Sure Start was another example of New Labour’s social investment approach, with the same problems of instrumentalism and top-down imposition of middle-class beliefs and practices on working-class parents and children. The value or

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efficacy of such ‘early intervention’ in general also remains unproven, given the resilience and plasticity of the infant brain (Bruer, 1999; Uttal, 2011), and arguably, social support is needed for the family as a whole, whatever the age of the children (Featherstone et al, 2014), and even whether or not the family has any children at all. With hindsight, it can be seen that the problems with the programme, particularly in relation to community learning, were evident from the beginning. Norman Glass, the senior civil servant who was the key figure in initiating the programme, wrote: The aim of Sure Start is to work with parents and children to promote the physical, intellectual, social and emotional development of children – particularly those who are disadvantaged – to make sure they are ready to thrive when they get to school. It is consciously intended to achieve longterm results such as better educational performance, lower unemployment, less criminality and reduced levels of teenage pregnancy. (Glass, 1999, 258) There is no mention here of community development, nor is there any explanation of what kind of involvement might be expected from parents and children or how such involvement might contribute to the long-term results that he mentions.Yet later Glass (2005, 2) claims: Sure Start was run on community development principles – that is, it was structured to allow local people, particularly parents, to participate fully in determining the content and management of programmes, in the light of their perceptions of what their areas needed…The statutory agencies were seen as helping the programmes to get off the ground and then handing them over to local, parent-dominated management boards. On the one hand, therefore, Sure Start was supposed to be centrally directed, with an emphasis on tightly specified high-quality provision to achieve clear employment, educational and health improvement targets (Melhuish and Hall, 2007) while on the other hand it was intended to be locally driven, varying according to the perceptions of parents and communities as to what their needs were – in short, a process of community learning.17 In practice, however, Sure Start was never a process of community learning. Research suggests that parental and community involvement in children’s centres was problematic throughout. Few fathers participated at all (Pemberton and Mason, 2008), and parents felt unable to shape the service provided, while

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professionals complained that parents did not have the time or desire to get involved (IPPR and PWC, 2010, 11). Most service providers did not use volunteers, parents were not aware of how they could be involved or could not give the level of commitment required or had no incentive to get involved, while professionals had few incentives to work with parents or were too busy to do so (IPPR and PWC, 2010, 12). No attempt was ever made to identify communities of practice (for example, parent groups) that might already exist that Sure Start could tap into, no guidance or support was given for the development of learning communities into which SSLPs could be embedded, no understanding seemed to exist, at least at national level, of the nature of co-learning or of the relevance of techniques such as PAR that might be useful in achieving co-learning. The government simply passed responsibilities for all these issues to SSLPs with no thought for the consequences.18 As noted in Chapter Four of this book, Sure Start was a classic example of New Labour’s ‘rhetoric of community’ (Fuller and Geddes, 2008, 262), which lacked any practical substance. With the move to local authority-run children’s centres, the possibility of parent or community control or even co-production seemed to disappear altogether (see Pemberton and Mason, 2008, 20), to be replaced by ‘more traditional models involving the planning and designing of services involving either “distributed commissioning” or “user consultation”’ (Pemberton and Mason, 2008, 23). Gustafsson and Driver (2005) provide an interesting explanation of Sure Start in Foucauldian terms.They argue that Sure Start cannot be understood solely as a form of disciplinary power, whereby the state induces people to accept and even embrace its rule (as in its policy of ‘active citizenship’, criticised in Chapter Four). It is also a form of pastoral power, whereby the state supports people with knowledge and skills to shape their own lives for themselves. The exercise of such pastoral power can involve genuine empowerment, in the sense that it can increase people’s capacity for self-action and self-development, which can lead to challenges to state power. By the same token, however, it can help legitimate the state as a benevolent, and indeed beneficent, ‘welfare’ state and thereby make people more trusting and accepting of state power. In the case of Sure Start, parental participation has led to changes in how SSLPs work, taking on board some of the suggestions that parents have made, and this partly explains the diversity of practice to be found in SSLPs. Mention should be made here of the problems in evaluating Sure Start. The main problem was that the national level of evaluation was never effectively connected to the local level (Allen and Black, 2006; Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 97). For example, NESS could measure changes in child cognitive ability, maternal wellbeing, and so on, but was not in a position

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to identify the factors within SSLPs that might have led to these changes (except for obvious ones such as smoking cessation). Consequently, NESS does not tell us what we have learned from Sure Start, which could inform policy and practice in the future.19 In addition, there were problems at the local level. Many SSLPs were not clear about what services or interventions parents, children or families in their areas had received (hence lack of clear data to evaluate), or about what the outcomes of any given service or activity should or might be (hence lack of clear basis for programme planning and progress measuring) (Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 101) or about how they might evaluate the impacts of their services and activities (Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 105). Also, individual local evaluations were not coordinated or integrated with one another (Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 98), so whatever community learning did take place at local level went no further than the local community. And if the learning from Sure Start has not been anchored in the community, then it risks being lost unless it can be somehow embedded in the work of the children’s centres (and particularly in the practice of the paid workers in those centres). Local authorities have a clear role to play in ensuring that this happens, but the rise in commissioning of external organisations to run children’s centres militates against this (Lloyd and Harrington, 2012, 104). In conclusion, given Sure Start’s emphasis on childcare and employability, it seems that one long-term impact of the programme could be to secure more effective inclusion of both children and parents into the work routines and daily rhythms of capitalist society (as indeed does seem to have been the underlying intention of the policy, see Clarke, 2006). Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the programme offered certain opportunities that did not exist before. The main problem is that, in the absence of any framework for community self-development, Sure Start is unlikely to have any lasting effect on the most disadvantaged communities, as described in Chapter One. It can be thought of, without too much exaggeration, as a less intensive version of an intensive family support project (see Chapter Nine, Box 9.3), and is unsustainable for much the same reason, namely that it is not sufficiently rooted in the communities in which it has been seeded.20

Conclusion Community learning is a complex and little understood process but is crucial for community development and for ensuring that such development endures.The motivation and purpose of community learning comes from within the community itself, and cannot be manufactured from outside, although outsiders can play an important role in stimulating and guiding the process. Community learning approaches are critical of

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authoritarian, command-and-control approaches to learning (known as ‘schooling’) but this does not necessarily mean that they reject institutional learning of any kind (although some do, for example, Holt). Rather, it seems that the possibilities for schools and other educational institutions as sites for community learning have not yet been fully explored.21 In practice, all such institutions are subject to economic and political pressures, for example, to ensure that their learners will be employable and will become ‘good citizens’ as the state requires. There is an increasing variety of ways, however, in which those institutions can respond to such pressures. For community learning to take place, the institution’s response must be guided first and foremost by the experiences, needs, demands and aspirations of the community itself (although, as mentioned above, outsiders also have a part to play).This is rarely the case at present, and this perhaps helps to explain the growing popularity of homeschooling as an alternative to schools. The prospects for community-led approaches to learning in England, as probably in most countries, remain uncertain. There is some cause for optimism in the rise of cooperative schools, however, particularly if this leads to stronger national networks for cooperative education and stronger links with the cooperative movement generally, at both national and local levels.

Summary Broadly speaking, community learning is learning that is integral to the everyday life of people in their communities. Such learning can be relatively informal and selforganised, as in communities of practice, or it can involve more formal processes of co-production, linking different communities of practice in specific learning and research projects. This chapter has contrasted community learning with institutional learning (which is contained mainly in schools), focusing in detail on education policy in the UK, and has questioned the contribution that schools make to community learning. It has argued that, although signs of improvement can be detected (e.g. the increasing number of co-operative schools), the fairest verdict is probably one of ‘could do better’ – mainly because of the pressures on schools to succumb to neoliberal and elitist agendas. Sure Start is examined as a model of a major opportunity for community learning that was lost largely because of the government’s failure to value such learning or to understand what it involves and requires.

Questions for discussion • How do communities learn? How can what they learn be spread to other communities? • How can schools learn from communities and how can communities learn from schools?

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• What sort of movement is the global education reform movement? • What are the prospects for community co-operative schools? • How can we get governments to learn?

Further reading Bale, J. and Knopp, S. (2012) Education and capitalism: Struggles for learning and liberation, Chicago: Haymarket Books. Ellis, B. (2005) The Gaian paradigm part 3: Cooperative life-long self-learning, http:// ezinearticles.com/?The-Gaian-Paradigm-Part-3---Cooperative-Life-Long-SelfLearning&id=89930 - Oct 31, 2005 Hall, B., Clover, D., Crowther, J. and Scandrett, E. (eds) (2012) Learning and education for a better world: The role of social movements, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Lupton, R. and Kintrea, K. (2011) ‘Can community-based interventions on aspirations raise young people’s attainment?’ Social Policy and Society, vol 10, no 3, pp 321-35. Taylor, M. (2011) Public policy in the community, 2nd ed, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Uitermark, J. (2015) ‘Longing for Wikitopia: the study and politics of selforganisation’, Urban Studies, doi: 10.1177/0042098015577334. Wenger, E. (2011) Communities of practice: A brief introduction, https:// scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/11736/A%20 brief%20introduction%20to%20CoP.pdf?sequence=1

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Donzelot (1979), among others, has argued that, historically, compulsory schooling was introduced in order to discipline families, particularly workingclass families, to become docile (that is, teachable) subjects of capitalist rule. Illich’s thinking here is clearly echoed in Habermas’ (1987) ideas about the colonisation of the life-world by the system (see Chapter Two). There is widespread confusion about the meaning of consumerism (for further discussion, see Somerville, 2015). Gilliatt et al (2000, 347) detected a trend across public services (and one could add private services too, for example, in retail, transport, or hospitality) of expecting consumers to do more for themselves.This is advantageous for producers because it reduces their costs and allows them greater flexibility in their operations.The consumers or service users are adding value to the service (and therefore can be regarded as co-producers) but their efforts go largely unrewarded in monetary terms. Far from being empowered, therefore, the consumers are being exploited. True, this trend also means that the producers are becoming more dependent upon the consumers, but this serves only to clarify the (frequently blurred) distinction between dependency and powerlessness (for example, a master may be more dependent on his slave than the slave is on his master, but it is clear who holds the power). In the case

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of education, it is clear that schools are increasingly dependent upon parents, while the parents are increasingly exploited by the school. 4 The old system continues in a few local authority areas such as Kent and Lincolnshire. It also continues to be stoutly defended by many on the grounds that it enabled many working-class children, who passed the 11 plus, to move into middle-class occupations. The argument is entirely spurious, given that it was clearly the post-war expansion of middle-class occupations that enabled this upward mobility. 5 Parker (2010, 20) suggests that New Labour’s agenda here was to promote the achievement of a middle-class identity or ‘classlessness’. 6 Private finance initiatives (PFIs) are partnerships between government and private companies, in which the latter invest directly in governmental projects. This reduces the need for government borrowing to cover the costs of the project. Naturally, however, the companies require a profitable return on their investment, and this return has to be paid for out of public money. Thus, for the taxpayer, what looks like a saving in the short term can be a massive spend in the long term. 7 Interestingly, there was some resistance to this at local level: ‘many local communities saw the building of a new school as a signification of failure and have actively campaigned against them (Hatcher and Jones, 2006)’ (Kraftl, 2012). 8 Lees and Meyer (2011) suggest that communities of practice may be an effective vehicle for delivering interprofessional education. 9 Communities of practice may need facilitation and support from outside but they do not need governmental ‘knowledge and skills’ agendas. 10 In relation to deprived communities, ‘any pre-determined vision of liberation introduced from the outside is ultimately paternalistic, since it presupposes that the oppressed are incapable of determining their own endogenously produced vision of liberation’ (Blackburn, 2000, 12). 11 Orr (1991, 3) argues that it is a myth that education gives you the means for upward mobility and success: ‘The plain fact is that the planet does not need more “successful” people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.’ 12 ‘Recent newspaper reports suggest that some Church of England schools in cities in the north of England now have a majority of Muslim pupils.As a result some Christian parents have decided to send their children to secular schools’ (ICC, 2009, 18). 13 lthough Ofsted (2013) reports continuing improvement in the teaching of citizenship studies since 2006, especially in primary schools, the curriculum does not focus specifically on the relationship between the school and its local

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14

15

16

17

18

19 20

21

community. For critiques of citizenship education, see Kisby (2007), France and Meredith (2009).The latter scholars point out that citizenship education is future-oriented, attempting to ‘responsibilise’ young people for the roles they are expected to play in their adult life, and not based on their experiences of everyday life in the present (France and Meredith, 2009, 88). This echoes the more general criticisms of schooling made at the start of this chapter. Extended schools provide wraparound childcare (for 3–4 year olds, and for all pupils between 8 am and 6 pm), parenting support, family learning, and widespread community use of school facilities, not just for learning but for other health and recreational activities. EPPE (2004) found that children with pre-school experience were more developmentally advanced than those without, even controlling for a range of factors such as birth weight, gender, parental education and ‘home learning environment’ (see also Clarke, 2006, 709). For an interesting case study of how a children’s centre should work, see Knight (2014, 39–43) on the Jeely Piece Club Nursery in Castlemilk, Glasgow. Clarke (2006, 717) refers to this as ‘a contradictory conceptualization of parents as both competent and incompetent’. The rhetoric was one of governmental intervention in family life to change parental behaviour in specific ways (Hey and Bradford, 2006) but the reality was more complicated and diverse and remains largely unknown. I would call this a failure of the policy community, which includes academics. For example, being focused only on 0–4 year olds, it ensures that the duration of membership of the group is limited to the number of years for which the children of any given parent fall within this age group (namely, five years for one child, though this can be extended for each younger sibling). Although this chapter has focused on schools, much of the argument applies equally to other learning institutions such as universities (although in the case of universities the nature of the community they are supposed to serve is far less clear).

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seven Community health and social care The original vision of global healthy community in the 1970s involved universal access to free health care, with health practitioners working and learning together with communities. In this process of co-production and co-learning, communities shape health priorities, while professionals develop practices to meet those priorities. This approach has been proven to be successful around the world but unfortunately, all too often, health services have been dominated by senior medical professionals, in a mutually beneficial relationship with pharmaceutical and insurance companies – a veritable conspiracy against the laity, with little attention being given to community priorities, particularly on social care and the social determinants of poor health. The original vision has been increasingly undermined, with the imposition of user charges and privatisation of health services as required by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile, global corporations continue to be allowed to get away with murder, whether they be tobacco companies, oil companies, agri-business, or drugs companies, and ‘elephants in the room’ proliferate, such as global obesity and climate change. In the UK in particular, health policy since the second world war has focused overwhelmingly on the National Health Service. Over the years, successive governments have reorganised the NHS, with each reorganisation costing far more than the one before, and none of them producing any clear benefit in terms of savings or efficiencies or improved outcomes. It seems clear, therefore, that the improvements in health care achieved by the NHS occur in spite of, rather than because of, government intervention – but the reasons for this are not well understood either within government or in the NHS itself. The recent cuts in social care are particularly damaging, and serve to reveal a wilful ignorance and

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lack of care on the part of government itself. In an attempt to end on a positive note, however, the chapter discusses the potential for communities of practice, coproduction and community co-operatives to provide better social care outcomes, and argues that relational approaches, embedded within a wider co-operative movement, represent the way forward to a beloved community.

The nature of a healthy community It seems to be generally agreed that health and wellbeing have material, psychological and social dimensions: • Material – that is, the health of the body, which involves not only a lack of physical impairments, diseases, and so on, but also access to whatever that body needs to sustain itself, for example, food, shelter, relevant skills; • Psychological – that is, the health of the mind, which similarly involves not only lack of mental impairments, disorders, and so on, but also understanding of one’s state of being, one’s needs, drives and aspirations; • Social – that is, the health of society, in which the material and psychological aspects of health are given meaning through relationships among actors (see, for example,Vaitilingam, 2009, 6). Each of these dimensions can be seen as indispensable for healthy living: material conditions that enable the sustaining of life itself; psychological conditions that enable a sentient being to determine for itself how its life is lived; and social conditions that shape and integrate material and psychological conditions. A healthy community has been characterised as one that is liveable, sustainable and equitable (Barr and Hashagen, 2000, 23) and empowered (Wilkinson, 1999; Marmot and Wilkinson, 2001) (see Table 7.1). A liveable community is therefore one whose members have healthy minds in healthy bodies in a healthy environment, with a sufficiency and variety of resources and experiences, and supported by effective health services. A sustainable community is one that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable, with a high quality of internal and external connectedness. An equitable community is one that is mutually respectful, trusting, caring, supportive and non-exploitative, acting together to ensure that everyone has access to the health and social care and support or assistance that they need. Finally, an empowered community is one that has control over its own future, with resources of money and support networks and the economic and political power to acquire the services to live a healthy life (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2001).1

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Table 7.1: Characteristics of a healthy community Healthy community

Characteristics (adapted from Barr and Hashagen, 2000, 23; Marmot and Wilkinson, 2001; Wilkinson, 1999; Wilkinson, 1996)

Liveable

Clean, safe physical environment (1) Meets community needs (1) (2) (3) Everyone lives to a ripe old age (1) Contains wide variety of resources (1) Contains wide variety of experiences (2) Provides public health care services (3)

Sustainable

Has a diverse economy (1) Has a negative carbon footprint (1) Has an innovative economy (1) (2) Is self-organised (1) (2) (3) Is a well-connected, self-supporting community (3)

Equitable

Inclusive, meets needs of all (1) (2) Mutual respect, trust and esteem (2) (3) Resources are fairly distributed (3) Mutual support, caring and nonexploitative (3)

Empowered

Has economic resources (1) Controls its own destiny (1) (2) (3) Has support networks (3) Has political power and influence (3)

Dimensions



(1) = material (2) = psychological (3) = social

From Table 7.1 it can be seen that a healthy community has characteristics of the three dimensions identified above. Materially, it is a community that is environmentally and economically resourceful, diverse and sustainable, meeting the lifelong needs of all of its members.2 Psychologically, it is selfdirected and self-organised, with a diversity of experience and imagination, built on a foundation of mutual respect, esteem and trust. Socially, it is well-connected, internally and externally, supporting and caring for its own members, and strongly influencing the powers-that-be outside the community.3 Arguably, these characteristics of a healthy community require that it be positive about health and wellbeing. This involves being open-minded about different lifestyles, promoting healthy norms (for example, eating a balanced diet, taking a moderate amount of exercise, being polite and considerate to neighbours), and limiting health-damaging or harmful behaviours (for example, smoking, abusing drugs, binge drinking, unsafe sex). MacMurtry (2007) extends these ideas about a healthy community

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into a broader concept of ‘life goods’, which are atmospheric (breathable air, open space, light), bodily (potable water, food, waste disposal), home and habitat (shelter and life-enhancing environment), care through time (love, safety and healthcare), human culture (music, language, art, play and sport), human vocation (meaningful work of value to others), and economic justice (right to enjoy these life goods and obligation to help provide them). All of this means that ‘healthcare has a relatively limited impact on our health. The environment around us, our genetic inheritance, how we live our lives and the opportunities we have together largely determine our health. International studies suggest healthcare contributes only about 10 per cent to preventing premature death’ (Public Health England, 2014, 6).

Developing healthy communities The story of community health really takes off with the Alma Ata Declaration in 1975 (WHO, 1978; 2008; Birn, 2014). This advocated a universal right to free healthcare and set out a global strategy for Health for All by 2000. Its vision was one of communities (including patients and carers) and health professionals working and learning together – that is, a process of co-production and co-learning, where communities shape health priorities, while professionals develop practices to meet these priorities. The emphasis was on developing community services and preventive services (so-called primary healthcare), and on tackling the social causes of poor health (see, for example, Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010), including the prevention/resolution of armed conflict and social injustice. The Health for All approach has been proven to improve health outcomes (see, for example, McPake, 2008; WHO, 2008). In the 1980s, for example, dramatic improvements were found in health outcomes in China, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Kerala (in India) as a result of emphasising the provision of primary healthcare within an overall social welfare-oriented development model, where services were provided to everyone who needed them, free at the point of use. Many studies have also found that publicly funded models of public provision provide far greater universal protection from health risks (for example, Oxfam research on Sri Lanka and Kerala, see McPake, 2008; de Vos et al, 2009, 31, on Cuba; Hernández and Salgado, 2014, on Costa Rica), with taxation being the most sustainable and reliable source of funding and positively associated with progress towards universal health coverage (Reeves et al, 2015).4 The extent to which these successes looked at the social causes of poor health or involved co-production between health professionals and communities, however, is unclear. Unfortunately, in the 1990s, partly due to pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,5 many countries turned away from

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this universalist model and introduced user fees, insurance mechanisms and greater private sector involvement in healthcare, thus undermining access to health by the poorest people (McPake, 2008).6 This is, however, only a partial explanation for the deteriorating health situation in many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Taking the 2014 Ebola epidemic as an example, PHM (2014) noted a pattern with previous epidemics: ‘almost invariably, they affect regions whose economies and public health systems have been decimated for a variety of reasons’ (page 4).7 In these regions, people are driven to seek food deeper in the forests where the animals carrying the pathogens live, and the infection is then spread to the general population mainly via the health system itself. And the reason why people in the Guinea Savannah Zone (where the Ebola virus originated) faced chronic food shortages and extreme poverty was that agribusinesses had moved into the area and bought huge tracts of land for maize and soybean cultivation (the British-backed Farm Land of Guinea Limited in 2010) and biofuel crops (the Italian energy company Nuove Iniziative Industriali).8 This is the harsh reality of neo-colonialism. Community participation in health has long been popular, and to a limited extent successful, as a way of developing healthy communities (see Rifkin’s (1986) review of 200 case studies; and Preston et al’s, 2010, review of 689 studies on rural participation alone).9 Co-production occurs but mainly goes no further than a relationship between health workers (understood as professionals) and communities (understood as the laity).10 The Oregon Experiment (Tritter, 2012, 83) is one project that went further by involving the public in deciding the priority to be given to different health conditions and treatments, but very few projects have involved communities in making decisions on the social, economic and political conditions that affect their health. Bowes et al (2008), for example, identified health problems of child obesity, drug misuse and early death from heart disease in Normanton in Derbyshire, England, but interventions (focused on improving diet, increasing physical activity and reducing alcohol consumption) were then developed without first agreeing with the community about how these problems should be tackled.The reality is that: ‘The field of medicine and healthcare has been dominated by holders of cultural and symbolic capital’ (Callaghan and Wistow, 2006, 587) – that is, by medical professionals, with the public or community being allowed only a limited role, which does not extend to dialogue (Callaghan and Wistow, 2006, 594). Participatory practices in health have also been criticised for bringing excluded people into areas of control, reducing spaces for dissent by reinforcing the status quo (Barnes, 2007, in Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 90) and legitimising existing power structures (Callaghan and Wistow, 2006, 596). Halabi (2009) cites the case of Indonesia, where the introduction of decentralised arrangements

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for public participation has been an integral part of a move away from universal healthcare, which has resulted in a significantly deteriorating quality of service, particularly for the poor. In the UK, many studies have uncovered evidence of community participants being burnt out, labelled as a ‘grass’, threatened or attacked (Kagan, 2006; Barnes et al, 2007).11 All of this suggests that the health benefits of community participation in health services may have been exaggerated (see, for example, Wayland and Crowder, 2002).12 Supporting this suggestion, a review of 22 studies by Attree et al (2011, 257) concluded that the reporting of community engagement initiatives in health often failed to distinguish between active community (by which they actually mean ‘lay people’) engagement in decision-making that may affect people’s lives and simply engaging them in activities that may be health- or life-enhancing. At the same time, they identified a number of negative consequences of community engagement for the physical and emotional health of participants (exhaustion, stress, consultation fatigue, disappointment, and so on). De Vos et al (2009) emphasise the importance of a class perspective, where the poor make their own decisions through their representatives. They cite the issue of land reform, which is critical for developing healthy communities in the Philippines (as in other countries) (‘communities that are able to take control of their own land are able to take control of their lives’ (page 27)), but which cannot be addressed adequately at the community level. Political organising, within and across communities, is therefore necessary for developing healthy communities.13 Halabi argues similarly that a different approach to developing healthy communities is required, based on a ‘progressive realisation of the right to health’ (Halabi, 2009, 54), spearheaded by a partnership between Indonesian government agencies and Western and Indonesian NGOs. A further important argument by Yamin is that placing health users on an equal footing with health providers and funders in deliberative decisionmaking processes may not be sufficient to develop healthy communities because ‘the rules of the game may have already been set’ (Yamin, 2009, 10). What is also required, therefore, is a fair, democratic process of determining how healthcare priorities should be set. Yamin argues that this process is currently lacking in many countries because of the disproportionate influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies, the World Bank and a variety of NGOs, as well as the distorting effects of foreign aid. One exception, however, appears to be Brazil, where ‘constitutionally-created health councils…have allowed for a genuine transfer of control over priority-setting and budgeting to affected populations’ (Yamin, 2009, 12). Such examples from across the world show that, in order to develop healthy communities, it is important to recognise that health systems are

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part of a global capitalist system, which has an overwhelming impact on global health, and to tackle these so-called ‘social determinants’ of poor health. In far too many countries, however, the Alma-Ata agenda, if it has not been ignored altogether, has been narrowly interpreted to involve, at most, healthy relationships between health professionals and local communities (identified in Chapter Two as a neo-colonial approach). As Yamin (2009, 12) says: ‘if participation in health is limited to the local community level or to delivery of health programs, key decisions that take place at a district or central level relating to resource allocation, healthcare workforce, structuring of health systems, and the like…are never “up for contention”.’ Moreover: ‘devising strategies for participation cannot be confined to the health sector when we have abundant evidence that social determinants of health, including workplace and neighborhood characteristics, education, and income inequalities, have a far greater impact on population health than “downstream” questions relating to healthcare’ (Yamin, 2009, 12) – evidence such as in the cases of the depredations of agribusiness in West Africa, the food industry in Mexico (both illustrative of global trends) and land reform in the Philippines discussed above. Large food corporations in particular are responsible for the global rise in obesity and diabetes.14 Otero et al (2015) identify what they call ‘the neoliberal diet’, which consists of highly processed and refined, convenience, ‘energy-dense’ foods, mass produced and marketed by mainly US agribusinesses (see also Moubarac, 2015; WHO, 2015a). This diet is the main culprit, due to its cheapness (which makes it popular, especially with the poor) and high calorific intake.The problem of obesity, therefore, cannot be solved locally, either through community action or through co-production between communities and health professionals.15 Yet this problem is not robustly confronted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and is largely ignored by governments and regulatory bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK (Popay, 2006). Even the more ‘holistic’ approach of the Foresight report (2007) misses this ‘elephant in the room’. Community gardening and growing one’s own food (for examples, see Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 67), and preventing the marketing of high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods to children (Garde, 2012), are of course all laudable activities/legal provisions, but they cannot be a viable alternative to reforming (and transforming) the global food industry.16 An even bigger elephant in the room for those involved in the field of health is climate change – potentially the greatest threat of all to global human health, and already responsible for over 150,000 deaths per year (WHO, 2015b). It seems clear that, as Klein (2014, 450) says: ‘only mass social movements can save us now’. Klein compares our current dependence

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on fossil fuels to the US dependence on slave labour in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the comparison does not seem quite right. Actually, what global capitalism depends on is wage labour and it will require a revolt of these workers in order to bring fossil fuel industries to heel. What will be needed also are mass national and international organisations to lobby governments to impose caps on greenhouse gas emissions, and (in view of the urgency of the situation) direct action against those responsible for the largest emissions. It is encouraging that even the International Monetary Fund now recognises the evils of global income and health inequality and that a strong labour movement is required to remedy these evils (Jaumotte and Buitron, 2015).

The case of the UK In the UK, a National Health Service (NHS) was established in 1948. Basically, it was a command-and-control system, with all health services being accountable to the Secretary of State for Health for everything they did. Although the first such Secretary, Aneurin Bevan, famously declared that he did not want to hear the clatter of every falling bedpan, the legislation that set up the NHS made no provision for him or his successors to wear earplugs. What happened instead was the adoption of what is known as a ‘biomedical’ model of health, in which the focus is almost entirely on addressing the biological causes of ill health, with major health policy decisions being left to the (clinical) judgement of hospital consultants, general practitioners, and so on. Issues of community health and social care, insofar as they were considered at all, were seen as largely a matter of individual behaviour, choice and responsibility, outside the NHS system. So, people were expected either to help themselves or to seek medicalised treatment or formalised care from appropriate organisations, and this approach still dominates today. The first major change in the NHS’ command-and-control system was the introduction of market-based approaches from 1983 onwards, to counteract what was regarded as its overly bureaucratic and monopolistic character.These involved the externalisation through competitive tendering of support services such as catering, cleaning and facilities management in 1983, and, from 1991, the separation within the NHS of providers from commissioners of health services, with the providers competing with one another to deliver those services. The purpose was to challenge but not necessarily tame the health professions. The central emphasis was on increasing the choices available to patients (as ‘customers’) and improving the responsiveness of service providers to those choices. Improving health was understood, rather narrowly, in terms of increasing the effectiveness

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of personal health (and social) services, and health as a community issue continued to be largely ignored. This continued to be the key emphasis of health policy in the UK until recently (see, for example, DH, 2009a), despite the fact that there was little evidence to show that an internal market improved clinical outcomes, value for money or patients’ experience of care (Coote and Penny, 2014, 9). With the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 came a new emphasis on health and social care in the community rather than in institutions such as hospitals.This so-called ‘community care’, however, should not be confused with care by the community. The focus was essentially on the meeting of individual needs by health and social care agencies working in the community. As Twelvetrees (2002, 132) put it: ‘The approach taken by governmental and voluntary agencies to the needs of these people and groups was the development of individual care plans in the context of an overall plan designed by these agencies together.’ Examples of such ‘community care’ are legion: Care and Repair, carer support schemes, community transport, ‘good neighbour’ projects, day centres, Home Start, and so on. As Twelvetrees (2002, 133) says, they are generally designed to build and/or provide networks of support for people living in their own homes. Some of them are actually grassroots initiatives based in the community, so could be described as care by the community, but probably the majority of them are not. Many of those that are community-led rely on government support and/or funding for their continued existence. Overall, there is a continuum of relationships between professionals and service users, with professionals in control at one end and users in control at the other. The New Labour government’s approach (1997–2010) was more strategic. While continuing and deepening the internal market, it also aimed to reduce health inequalities across the country, deploying a mix of centralised and market-oriented models of provision, working with and through communities, and retaining a strong emphasis on ‘customer’ (or patient) choice and voice. The inequalities it aimed to reduce were across geographical areas, across socio-economic groups, between men and women, across different BME groups, across age groups, and between the majority of the population, on the one hand, and vulnerable groups and those with special needs, on the other (DH and HM Treasury, 2002). The strategy set numerous targets, and adopted, as its key measures of success, increases in life expectancy and reductions in infant mortality.This represented a strategic centralisation, reinforcing the already well-established command-and-control structure of the NHS. By 2009, however, the main gap, between the worst-off and the average, had not narrowed at all (DH, 2009b), indicating a significant failure of this style of management. One

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gets a sense of the lack of co-production in New Labour’s approach from DH (2008): ‘many of the Department of Health’s traditional practices in meetings leave no time at all for real dialogue. Indeed, one member of the evaluation team new to working with the NHS remarked, “They seem to talk a lot but there is no action which follows.” The pressure to seek early wins to please the minister gives little scope for the space and time to get to the place where there can be a dialogue of equals’ (Ledwith and Springett, 2010, 148). Running alongside this approach, however, the New Labour government gradually became convinced that community-based interventions were most effective in improving health and social care (DH, 2006), though it was not clear how these interventions related to their overall strategy, if they related at all. In spite of considerable rhetoric about ‘community control’ (see, for example, Blears, 2003), communities were not given any real power over primary or secondary healthcare services, and the National Health Service (NHS) continued to be community insensitive and community unresponsive (Emmel and Conn, 2004, 11). In the NHS,‘community’ tends to be defined in terms of a plurality of lay people, who are consulted in order to hit pre-set targets of efficiency and service delivery.17 This is not consultation proper, however (Emmel and Conn, 2004, 7), and professionals can feel free to ignore what these lay people say if it is seen to conflict with clinical judgement or to undermine clinical autonomy. Typically, those consulted are self-appointed ‘community leaders’ who misrepresent their communities by excluding marginalised groups, and these latter groups either lack power to have a voice or intentionally ensure that their networks are invisible to those in authority (Emmel, 2004, 6–7). The gap between the concerns of the NHS and those of the community appears to be huge and growing (see also Barnes et al, 2007), and it is difficult to share the optimism of commentators such as Bridgen (2006), or even to see what evidence can be adduced to support it.18 Another growing problem with the NHS is known as giantism.This term is used to describe the way in which the NHS, in a misguided pursuit of ‘efficiency’ and economies of scale, has closed smaller hospitals and built increasingly large ones, which are inevitably less accessible or accountable to local communities. The change has enabled the NHS to make savings from bulk purchasing and commissioning, and from the introduction of new technology. On the down side, however, it has increased the burdens and costs for people to access hospital services, particularly for those who rely on public transport (Boyle et al, 2004, 13). It also appears to have facilitated a wider spread of dangerous bacteria such as MRSA and clostridium difficile. Declining standards of hygiene, cleaning and catering in hospitals, attributed largely to increased ‘efficiencies’ particularly related

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to the contracting out of these services, have also contributed to the rise of these ‘superbugs’. In 2002, the World Health Organisation reported that a patient admitted to a UK hospital had a one in ten chance of ending up suffering ‘measurable harm’, from mistakes (clinical or otherwise, for example, food poisoning), microbes, faulty equipment or drug side-effects, with resulting additional hospital stays valued at £2 billion per year (WHO, 2002). Finally, although malnutrition has long been recognised as a common and serious problem among hospital patients in the UK, a national inpatient survey reported worsening problems with regard to hospital food (The Patients’ Association, 2009, 6). The coalition government addressed none of these issues – of health inequalities, community insensitivity, dysfunctional hospitals, and so on. Instead, it severely constrained healthcare funding as part of its ‘austerity’ programme and, under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, submitted the NHS to its largest and most expensive reorganisation since its founding in 1948. No longer did the Secretary of State need to hearken to bedpans because s/he no longer had a duty to provide or secure provision of health services at all. New clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were made responsible for commissioning most services, and services were competitively tendered to any organisation qualified to provide them. Ham et al (2015) concluded that the changes resulting from this reorganisation had been damaging and distracting, taking time and attention away from the work needed to maintain the improvements in care achieved over the previous decade. Similarly, Appleby et al (2015, 4) found that ‘NHS performance held up well for the first three years of the parliament19 but has now slipped, with waiting times at their highest levels for many years and an unprecedented number of hospitals reporting deficits’, not to mention growing problems in primary care, ‘with a decline in the proportion of patients reporting a very good experience of making an appointment and…of general practice over the last three years’ (Appleby et al, 2015, 4). Even more worrying than these independent evaluations, however, is the separate King’s Fund report that the initial interest and engagement from many GPs in assuming the leadership of CCGs was declining, with less than half reporting that they had the support, time and resources to undertake this role effectively (Holder et al, 2015, 5).20 Meanwhile the number of health service contracts being awarded to private providers has increased dramatically (Coote and Penny, 2014). Evidence from England suggests that competition between hospitals does not improve clinical quality (Beva and Skellern, 2011), nor does the privatisation and marketisation of healthcare systems more generally and internationally (Footman et al, 2014). It is trivially true that competitive tendering will improve quality only if contracts are awarded to organisations

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that can be relied upon to deliver that improved quality rather than those who simply offer the lowest price. In practice, however, it seems that this is not always how things work, with contracts being given to the lowest bidder, irrespective of their track record in delivering similar services.Yet somehow in spite of this it seems that, at least up to 2013, health services in UK improved, not only in absolute terms but relatively to other countries, with the UK receiving the highest ranking for effectiveness, safety, coordination and patient-centredness, but the second lowest expenditure per person – ahead of Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada,Australia and the US (which was the lowest ranking and the highest spending) (Davis et al, 2014). It is difficult to explain how these improvements managed to occur, especially as it is increasingly recognised that patient choice has never been a key driver of such improvements (Boyle, 2013) (and see discussion in Coote and Penny, 2014, 27–8),21 and that the use of private funding for capital projects has turned out to be a false economy, adding significantly to the financial burden placed on the NHS in the long term (Coote and Penny, 2014, 28–30). It is possible that it has something to do with improvements in the education and training of health professionals, but we do not actually know. The Five Year Forward View by Simon Stevens (2014), Head of NHS England, which seems to be what is guiding the current Conservative government, promises yet more substantial reorganisation. Although ostensibly offering a new kind of ‘third way’ between a highly centralised command-and-control system and ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’ (Stevens, 2014, 31), it is difficult to see how the proposed new ‘models of care’ (which largely involve integration of health and social care) will affect NHS budgets. As Mason et al (2014) have pointed out, no convincing evidence has been found that integrated care will save hospital costs (and Stevens’ proposals will certainly increase social care costs). It is also unclear, at least to this writer, where the lines of accountability might run in these different models – for example, who are the budget holders and who determines how the budgets are distributed? Coote and Penny (2014, 40) also point out that a focus on integrated care may ‘jeopardise efforts to prevent ill health’, by siphoning energy and resources away from tackling urgent public health problems (such as obesity and alcohol), which are also a priority for Stevens. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 also created Public Health England to cover clinical aspects of preventative healthcare such as immunisation, screening and health visiting, and local Health and Wellbeing Boards, to lead the development of integrated care through joint commissioning of acute hospital and community health services by CCGs and local authorities. These Boards have been allocated £3.8 billion (known as

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the Better Care Fund) out of a total health and social care budget of just under £120 billion for 2015–16 (Barker, 2014, 13), to be spent according to the needs of the local community as measured by joint strategic needs assessments. It seems too early to say how effective this will be in addressing the lack of alignment between health and social care agencies, but Barker has already argued that Health and Wellbeing Boards should play a much larger role in commissioning combined health and social care services, and that everyone with ‘critical’ or ‘substantial’ care needs should, like all NHS patients, receive social care free at the point of need. Public Health England and Health and Wellbeing Boards are probably the closest the coalition (and now the Conservative) government have got to understanding community health and social care. However, they seem to be focused on meeting the needs of individuals and on changing individual behaviour rather than on developing healthy communities. Public Health England even appears to lack understanding of the relationship between prevention and treatment – for example, citing McGinnis et al (2002) on the US, it lists the following as both contributing to premature death and preventing early deaths: genetic predisposition (30 per cent), behavioural patterns (relating to diet, sex, physical activity and substance use) (40 per cent), social circumstances (relating to infant nurturing, presence or absence of family and close friends, income and levels of education and inequality (15 per cent), exposure to environmental hazards (such as pollution and infectious diseases) (5 per cent), and healthcare (10 per cent) (Public Health England, 2014, 6).What McGinnis et al (2002, 83) actually say, however, is that approximately 10 per cent of premature deaths could have been prevented by better healthcare (deaths due to medical errors, poor healthcare or poor access to healthcare), not that 10 per cent of early deaths have been prevented by (presumably good) healthcare. Despite this misunderstanding, it is clear that healthcare plays, and always has played, only a small role in improving human health. Yet the vast bulk of health funding continues to be devoted to healthcare. In spite of continuing rhetoric to the contrary, comparatively little is spent on social care (which is more community-based) or on mental health22 or on chronic illness generally, let alone on prevention. To be fair, Public Health England (2014) have set out seven priorities, namely tackling obesity, reducing smoking, reducing harmful drinking, focusing on pre-school children, reducing the risk of dementia, tackling the growth in anti-microbial resistance, and reducing the incidence of tuberculosis. In the first three of these, however, the emphasis is on changing individual behaviour, with little or no recognition of the role of the relevant industries (food, tobacco and alcohol)23 in creating these problems, and little or no understanding of why these problems are more

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prevalent among ‘lower’ socio-economic groups.The last three priorities are about prevention, but there is no recognition of the need to determine the causes of these problems (dementia, inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics, and the rise of TB) and no clear view about the role of communities in addressing, managing and possibly solving these problems. Only the focus on improving the health of pre-school children explicitly tackles health inequalities and potentially involves community health and social care interventions, but there is no mention of children’s centres here (see Chapter Six) – and indeed no mention of the 4,200 extra health visitors by 2015 that the coalition government promised when it was elected in 2010. So the approach, as they say, is not ‘joined up’. For nearly 30 years, the competition among social care providers has resulted in a gradually accelerating ‘race to the bottom’ (Commission on Funding of Care and Support, 2011) in terms of wages, conditions of service and quality of care (Spear et al, 1994). The severity of the crisis now cannot be underestimated, with social care being particularly badly hit by ‘austerity’, especially cuts in local authority funding (social care costs account for one-third to one-half of their core budgets) (for more detail, see Fernandez et al, 2013).24 Murray (2013, cited in Conaty, 2014, 45) refers to a gathering ‘scissors crisis’, with needs rising (especially numbers of people with dementia) at the same time as public spending is falling. All of this is probably what accounts for the rising mortality rates since the latter part of 2012 (Dorling, 2015, 172), especially given the substantial cuts in the number of visits to people needing help in their homes, who are mostly older people (Dorling, 2015, 170) and people with a mental health problem (Fernandez et al, 2013, 5). Disabled people are among the worst affected, with the closure of the Independent Living Fund, reductions in employment support and disability living allowances and personal independence payments, restrictions to Access to Work, reductions in social care packages and, from 2017, abolition of their employment and support allowance. At the time of writing, a new scissors crisis has arisen in that housing and care organisations are saying that they cannot afford to pay their workers the new national living wage (£7.20 per hour in 2016, rising to £9 by 2020) (Spurr, 2015), while it is also reliably reported that it is increasingly difficult to recruit care workers because the wages are too low (Penfold, 2015).

Communities of practice, co-production and social cooperatives As we saw in Chapter Six, a community of practice is a ‘group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how

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to do it better as they interact regularly’. If health and social care are to be integrated, however, this group cannot be based on just one single profession. Rather, the community of practice must be one in which different health and social care professionals, other professionals in cognate areas, families and carers all work together with a particular type of client. Apparently, much less is known about the development of such interprofessional communities of practice (Kilbride et al, 2011). Cornes et al (2014, 542), however, have drawn from the theories of ‘collective capability’ (Soubhi et al, 2010) and ‘psychologically informed environments’ in order to understand how such a community might work. Essentially, it seems to require the formation of a team, in which members have clear roles such as ‘knowledge broker’ (‘to ensure the integration of interprofessional learning and education alongside day-to-day case management activities’ – Cornes et al, 2014, 542), and receive organisational support to facilitate:‘a shared work priority; frequent and timely communication; trust and mutual respect among members (the flattening of hierarchical structures); co-ordination and task integration’ (Cornes et al, 2014, 542).There is a strong emphasis on building relationships within the team,25 reflecting on practice, and improvising in the face of uncertainty, uniqueness and conflicting values. The research by Cornes et al established six communities of practice for multiply excluded homeless people, with each community having 6–12 front-line practitioners from health, housing, criminal justice and social care services. The researchers found that the creation of a community of practice was valued by the participants as a means to improve relationships and provide a space for collective reflection and mutual support, but ‘what often emerged in the community of practice meetings was a sense of mutual frustration about the intractability of many of the issues that were being discussed’ (Cornes et al, 2014, 544), such as the shortage of accommodation for homeless young people and the shortage of psychological support services for people with a diagnosis of personality disorder. This finding points to the limitations of communities of practice: they are important, possibly even necessary, for improving service co-ordination and effectiveness and continuity of care, but they are not a substitute for political action to tackle wider social problems. If these problems are not addressed, then the communities of practice risk being undermined. Unfortunately, it seems that current ‘payments by results’ schemes and more tightly drawn service delivery specifications and contracts are working against both integrated care and continuity of care (Cornes et al, 2014, 545). Stevens’ (2014) models of care, however, seem to lend themselves to a ‘communities of practice’ type of approach, so the outlook is not entirely hopeless. Co-production (see Chapter Five) has much in common with communities of practice, namely the emphasis on collaboration and building

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personal relationships across professional, organisational and administrative boundaries. Insofar as it explicitly empowers the recipients of health and social care, however, it can look more promising as a way forward (see, for example, Needham and Carr, 2009; Loeffler et al, 2012). In practice, though, much of it is ‘co-production “light”’ (Pestoff, 2012, 1115), involving changes in the behaviour of individuals, discourses of social inclusion and traditional community development (see, for example, Morris, 2012; Pearce, 2012). Even advocates of a whole-system approach to co-producing social care admit that: ‘The success of this model remains still empirically unproven’ (Joyner, 2012, 19). Arguably, what is required here is ‘heavy’ rather than ‘light’ co-production, involving long-term institutionalised relationships and mutual accountability between health and social care professionals and organised groups of citizens – an approach, incidentally, which seems to be entirely absent from governmental agendas, as represented in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Hudson, 2012, 76–7), Stevens (2014) or Public Health England (2014). Community cooperatives (Chapter Five), in this case with a focus on improving health and social care for particular communities (including communities of service users), are clearly compatible with co-production heavy. Indeed, the study by Vamstad (2007; 2012) of pre-school services in Sweden, in which he compared parent cooperatives with other preschool service providers (worker cooperatives, local authority services and small private firms), found that only the parent cooperatives facilitated co-production ‘heavy’, with much greater parent participation than the other providers.Vamstad (2012, 1181) is particularly important in conveying a sense of the relational approach (see Cottam, 2011, 136–7, on ‘relational welfare’) involved in these cooperatives, where the relationship between professionals and parents is dialogical, resulting in better decisions for the children – it is effectively a system of joint management by parents and professional staff, and each cooperative is its own community of practice. The study found a clear parental preference for cooperative preschools over local authority ones, while staff in the cooperative preschools rated both the physical and psychosocial work environments much more highly than staff in the municipal ones. Relational approaches have been found to be successful in other studies, for example, to enable older people with high support needs to ‘age in place’ (Bowers, 2013), though Bowers suggests that professionals and agencies may need to be contractually required to adopt these approaches. Fox (2013, 3) makes a strong case for relational approaches to be adopted by all care and support providers, and criticises approaches that give priority to individual choice and empowerment: ‘Individual choice and control are vital, but paradoxically, being able to act collectively brings people more real power than acting alone.’ He also

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argues that the necessarily small organisations that adopt these approaches can be linked together in a ‘hub and spoke’ model (as in Shared Lives, see Fox, 2013, 12–14), in which local services work to a national specification but are monitored locally – a ‘networked model of care’, ‘in which a wide range of informal and professional relationships work alongside and enhance each other’ (Fox, 2013, 14). Finally, Jones (2013) also argues that relationships are key and, like Fox (2013), criticises local authorities for allocating personal budgets to individuals in need while neglecting their overriding need for social relationship (Stephens et al, 2008; Jones, 2013, 157–8). Jones describes a community health initiative on personalised care in a neighbourhood of Sandwell,West Midlands, and emphasises the importance of an empowered collective voice (page 159), representing the neighbourhood but not attached to any one section of it or any single community or tenure within it (page 161). The representative body emerged organically after three years of outreach nurturing by local authority-led community development and neighbourhood management work, taking the form of a resident steering group on neighbourhood planning, which eventually became the Friends and Neighbours Community Interest Company.Through this company, the community provides a pool of supporters who are matched to clients in need (page 161).This is a rare example of developing a relational approach on social care at a community level – genuine care by the community.26 This has resulted, for example, in an expanded definition of vulnerable to include those from newer communities, single parents and some people with drink and drugs problems (page 162). However, this does not go so far as to develop a social model of vulnerability, according to which it is indicative of social oppression (Wishart, 2003, 24).This collective relational approach, therefore, still does not address the social causes of the needs that it is attempting to meet.

Box 7.1: Camphill communities Camphill communities are villages in which members share large homes, where learning disabled residents, non-disabled families with children and volunteer coworkers all live together. The co-workers give their time to the life of the community and the care and support of its residents, in return for free accommodation, food and travel costs. There are 61 Camphill villages across Britain. In Botton Village, for example, 280 residents (of whom 150 have learning difficulties) work on four farms, an organic seed factory, a bakery and café, a Steiner school, church and concert hall. These are true cooperatives, in which all members live and work together, contributing what they can and consuming what they need.

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Unfortunately, Camphill Village Trust, which manages nine Camphill villages, has scrapped this system of cooperative management. It requires that the coworkers be fully fledged employees of the charity, and, following a Care Quality Commission inspection, that social care be focused more on the needs of each individual villager. Thus, the Trust fails to recognise that the need for community encompasses and goes beyond the needs of any particular individual. The Trust simply does not understand that, in these communities, it is the relationships among the members that are of key importance, which emphatically do not include an employer/employee relationship. The introduction of such a relationship must, in any case, result in a massive increase in costs (to pay the workers). All that this achieves is to transform a viable and long-standing (60 years old) community of practice, based on Steiner principles, into an orthodox capitalist hierarchical employment organisation. Source: Adapted from Fearn, 2014

Conaty (2014) provides a globally comprehensive and up-to-date account of what the International Cooperative Alliance and the European Union call ‘social cooperatives’, which have a multi-stakeholder membership that includes ‘paid staff, volunteers, service users, family members of service users and social solidarity citizen investors’ (Conaty, 2014, 10). Such a model for organising social care was pioneered in northern Italy in the late 1970s as part of a ‘social solidarity cooperative’ movement in response to a public sector funding crisis and the closure of large social care institutions. Apart from multi-stakeholder governance and work organisation (to build solidarity among the different stakeholders), these new cooperatives were characterised by collaboration with local authorities, a clear and supportive legal constitution (from 1991), sub-regional consortia for sharing administration, training, and so on, and a ‘strawberry fields’ principle of expansion, according to which each successful cooperative commits to incubating one new social cooperative (Conaty, 2014, 15–18). As a result, the movement has grown to 14,500 cooperatives, with 360,000 paid workers, 34,000 volunteers, almost five million service users, and an annual turnover of €9 million (Borzaga and Depredi, 2014).Today similar social cooperatives operate in a growing number of EU countries and in Canada, and a similar but separate movement exists in Japan (known as Han groups – see Kurimoto, no date). Most UK care cooperatives are said to be worker cooperatives but it is claimed that a few social cooperatives exist such as Care Plus Group in North Lincolnshire (see Box 7.2) and the Oxfordshire Wheel (Conaty, 2014, 46–8).

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In the UK context, I think there are reasons to be cautious about the growth of cooperatives in health and social care. First, it is no accident that they are being promoted by neoliberal governments (DH, 2010), as part of a ‘communities first’ or ‘Big Society’ philosophy of ‘government getting out of the way’ (see, in particular, Girach et al, 2014, who want us to return to the days of the pre-NHS friendly societies). Second, there is an important distinction to be made between an employee-owned enterprise and a true worker cooperative where the work is all organised horizontally and the distinction between workers and management is abolished. Third, while being an advance on a vertically organised structure, a worker cooperative does not necessarily take more account of the needs and wishes of its service users. Although it is more likely to do so because of the way that front-line practice works (Somerville, 2015), the cooperative still has to compete in a market that is stacked against the provision of quality care, so it is desirable to ensure that the voice of users carries weight in the cooperative’s decisionmaking. Where user participation is particularly important for the success of a cooperative, as with the pre-school cooperatives in Vamstad’s research (discussed above), it is perhaps understandable that a parent cooperative would perform better than a worker cooperative.The advantage of a multistakeholder cooperative is that all interests are represented in its governance, though this does not mean that they all have to be represented equally, and different models will be suited to different kinds of service and different kinds of client. Fourth, all cooperatives, even multi-stakeholder ones, have inherent limitations. Their emphasis on exchange or reciprocity does not sit easily with relational approaches. Exchanges are certainly involved in caring relationships, which are about encounter, shared experience, connection (on the same wavelength), and commitment (which can be conditional, that is, dependent on reciprocation, but can also be unconditional, with no strings attached). In many cases, however, the service user is unable to reciprocate and may have no family or friends to help them.They will then need advocates to represent their interests, and these advocates will need to be paid and supervised.This is how many public services work, but it is unclear what would be gained from changing such a public service into a cooperative. It is even possible that social care cooperatives may be more inclined to work with those who can reciprocate, and therefore less likely to take on responsibility for the poorest and neediest people. Finally, cooperatives, after all, are only a means to an end, which in this case is the development of healthy and caring communities. The multistakeholder cooperative form seems appropriate where it is the quality of the relationship between provider and user that matters, so both need to have control as members of a member-owned enterprise. This form is

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also formally co-production ‘heavy’, so is likely to be a most beneficial way of working.These cooperatives, however, mostly rely on government contracts in order to survive, and are not in a position to challenge the ‘austerity’ agenda. Their internal democratic governance cannot protect them against the relentless commodification of labour, as the example of Camphill communities shows. They therefore need to be more firmly embedded in a wider cooperative movement for political change that has a clearer recognition of the value of caring relationships.

Box 7.2: Care Plus Group Care Plus Group was set up in North-East Lincolnshire in 2011 as a community benefit society. It is owned by its 800 staff but it is moving towards becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative in that it also has a category of ‘community member’, with all its service users now being invited to take up this membership. The main decision-making body, the Council of Governors, has a built-in worker majority, with eight governors elected by the staff membership, two appointed by the local authority, two by GPs, and three elected by the community membership. The Council of Governors appoints and removes the chair of the board of directors (who are responsible for the Group’s operations) and the other non-executive directors. Source: Adapted from Conaty, 2014, 40, and updated from Care Plus Group’s website, www.careplusgroup.org

Conclusion No matter how ‘efficient’ or ‘effective’ they are, ‘top-down’ health systems institutionalise forms of class division and, as such, are always vulnerable to capture by commercial and professional/managerial interests.27 Coproduction is necessary to prevent this – but of particular kinds, and varying according to the type of health and social care service being delivered. Co-production, however, is not enough – some of the most important and pressing health problems are created by capitalism itself, and require political solutions that go way beyond the concerns of mainstream health services. Similarly, democratic governance and management of health and social care organisations, for the purpose of improving the quality of relationships between providers and users, is necessary but not sufficient. These organisations also need to be an integral part of a wider movement (or community of practice) to tackle the social determinants of ill health.

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Healthcare users’ movements do exist (see, for example, Crossley, 2002) but currently they are not well integrated at any level (local, national or global). A final thought: following Marx, the labour of care workers can be understood as part of a process of reproducing labour power (see Chapter Two). However, many of the people receiving care are not in the labour market (for example, retired, long-term sick), and the care they are given does not produce or reproduce any labour power (hence the term ‘surplus population’) (see Kennedy, 2005). So the value produced by care labour is not clear and is assumed to be very low – hence the arbitrariness of the 15 minutes labour time per home visit that has been set for home care workers by care providers in the UK. Also, in a free market, the wages of care workers are determined mainly by the balance of supply and demand: employers will pay as little as what the workers are prepared to accept or as much as they need to do in order to fill their job vacancies, and this turns out to be very low indeed – even lower than the subsistence levels expected by Marxist theory because the reproduction of a ‘surplus population’ is not ‘socially necessary’. The only way that the value of care work can be increased (apart from making it more efficient, of course) is for governments to value it more by investing more in it.28 For neoliberal governments, however, spending on the care of the ‘surplus population’ is not a priority because it creates no clear value for the capitalist economy.

Summary A clear vision of healthcare for a global community has been increasingly tarnished and undermined by powerful elites at national and global level, who have been more interested in making profits and protecting professional monopolies than in improving the health of the people. Health policy has also been framed in very narrow terms as clinical intervention, with little concern for social care or social determinants of poor health. To a large extent, however, the decline in standards of healthcare and community care in many parts of the world has gone unrecognised because of rises in living standards that have led to improved health outcomes for many people. Meanwhile new health crises have occurred, such as obesity and the effects of climate change, which the health system seems constitutionally incapable of addressing, yet alone solving. In the UK, the chapter has shown how, as with education, improvements in healthcare seem to have occurred despite rather than because of government meddling. Unfortunately, the current government’s austerity programme is already causing deterioration in social care provision, but the chapter attempts to look beyond this to a time when wiser heads might prevail, through integrated communities of practice, collective relational approaches, and political recognition of the real value of care work.

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Questions for discussion • What is the universalist model of healthcare? What have been its advantages and limitations? • How far is community participation in health desirable? • What counts as the ‘community’ in community health? Is public health the same as community health? • How do you think health and social care should be integrated? What are the prospects for new communities of practice here? • What is the potential for developing community-based social co-operatives? What are the limitations of such co-operatives? • What are the prospects for collective relational approaches in community health and social care? What are the limitations of such professional approaches?

Further reading Barnes, M., Newman, J. and Sullivan, H. (2007) Power, participation and political renewal: Case studies in public participation, Bristol: The Policy Press. Clark, M., Cornes, M., Manthorpe, J., Hennessy, C. and Anderson, S. (2015) ‘Releasing the grip of managerial domination: the role of communities of practice’, Journal of Integrated Care, vol 23, no 5, pp 287-301. Conaty, P. (2014) Social co-operatives: A democratic co-production agenda for care services in the UK, Manchester: Co-operatives UK. Coote, A. and Penny, J. (2014) The wrong medicine: A review of the impacts of NHS reforms in England, London: New Economics Foundation. Goldacre, B. (2012) Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients, London: Fourth Estate. Otero, G., Pechlaner, Liberman, G. and Gürcan, E. (2015) ‘The neoliberal diet and inequality in the United States’, Social Science & Medicine, vol 142, pp 47-55. Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2010) The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone, London: Penguin. Yamin, A. E. (2009) ‘Suffering and powerlessness: the significance of promoting participation in rights-based approaches to health’, Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, vol 11, no 1, pp 5-22.

Notes 1

2

Following Chapter Six, a healthy community can also be described as a learning community, in which, through communities of practice, people learn how to live healthier lives together. The emphasis is on ‘all’ because the needs of some sections of the community, such as psychiatric patients, tend to be neglected (Halpern, 2005, 90).

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3

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Evidence of the importance for health of being socially connected comes, for example, from Sherbourne et al (1995), who found that people who are isolated and lack intimate social support are more likely to suffer from depression when under stress, and to remain depressed for longer. More widely, of course, powerful social connections can help to improve health services and generally attract resources that can help people to live more healthily. In countries without such state-funded universal health services (such as the US), large numbers of the population have no access to any effective healthcare that they can afford. In a systematic review of the comparative performance of the public and private sectors in health across a range of health system performance areas, Basu et al (2012) concluded that, while public health systems are often weak and under-resourced, they still deliver better quality of care, more equitably and with greater efficiency than the private sector. Private providers tend to serve higher socio-economic groups, have higher risk of low-quality care, create perverse incentives for unnecessary testing and treatment, and suffer from weak regulation.The World Bank has long supported the expansion of private health services in poorer countries and claimed that investing in public–private partnerships would improve efficiency and effectiveness in the health sector. Several of its own publications, however, have revealed that these claims were either unsupported by data or the data was not provided in sufficient detail to be included in the review. Many of the poorest countries simply do not collect enough money from taxation. They are more reliant on corporate than on personal tax income but corporations are adept at avoiding this tax (see O’Meara et al, 2015), and Global Financial Integrity estimates that $991 billion was lost by developing countries to ‘illicit financial flows’ in 2012 (Kar and Spanjers, 2014). These reasons include being required by the World Bank and IMF to cut public spending on welfare, and the migration of health workers from these regions to richer countries, which is so high as to make it impossible for many countries in West Africa to build credible health systems (PHM, 2014). In the other countries affected by the Ebola outbreak, namely Liberia and Sierra Leone, in addition to the takeover of agricultural land by agribusiness, civil wars have led to enormous displacements of local populations, which have had the same effect of increasing the pressure on forest land and accelerating the migration of forest animals out of these areas. Problems with community participation were explored in Chapter Two and will not be repeated here. To be fair, this relationship goes beyond consultation to include involvement in service development, service evaluation, education and training of health and social care professionals, and research (Tritter, 2012, 82), but it is typically individuals that are involved here not communities.

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11

12

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In their research in Reading and Darlington, England, IPPR and PWC (2010, 20) found a similar problem of ‘burn-out’ affecting unpaid carers. Similarly, Scanlon and Adlam (2011) refer to studies showing that paid staff working with people experiencing ‘complex trauma’ also become distressed and ‘burnt-out’. A recurring popular approach in public health practice is known as assetbased (see Chapter Two), looking at the determinants of health rather than the determinants of ill-health. This is basically the same approach as on social capital, positive psychology, collective efficacy, community resilience, wellbeing, and so on. The only problem with these ‘bootstrap’ theories is that there is no ‘published evidence that use of a broad assets based approach can successfully prevent or reverse the main avoidable causes of ill-health’ (NHS Health Scotland, 2012, 3; see also MacKinnon et al, 2006; McLean, 2011; Friedli, 2013).While it is important to recognise the assets that less healthy communities undoubtedly have (for example, Friedli, 2013, 139), it is equally important to understand the powerful forces that are preventing them from developing those assets and becoming healthier (Birn, 2009; Friedli, 2013, 134–5). This finding from the Philippines has lessons for the encapsulated communities in England discussed in Chapter One. But how are they to organise across the boundaries of their community? Kapilashrami et al (2015) emphasise the importance of social movements (in particular, the people’s health movement) and public health advocacy (by public health professionals working alongside communities and workers) for achieving this. This is in addition to their role in fuelling global poverty (see War on Want, 2015). A good example here is Mexico. Since the North America Free Trade Agreement came into force in 1993, most of the country’s foreign investment has gone into the production of processed foods, reaching $124 billion of sales in 2012 and yielding $28 billion profits for PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever and Danone. Correspondingly, the proportion of women aged 20–49 who are obese rose from 9.5 per cent in 1988 to 37.5 per cent in 2012, and more than 7 per cent of the Mexican population now have diabetes (Herrera, 2015).Thankfully, the Mexican government addressed the problem by introducing a 10 per cent tax on soft drinks in January 2014, which already seems to have had some effect in reducing obesity (though such taxes are regressive, yet not high enough to achieve the substantial change required) (Agren, 2015). Another ‘elephant’ is the pharmaceuticals industry, which is hugely profitable, but at whose expense? Goldacre (2012), among others, has exposed the extremely dysfunctional character of the industry. One of its worst characteristics is to create new, more expensive drugs that have little to no added therapeutic value compared with existing treatments. Recently, the European Parliament concluded, on the basis of studies in France, Germany and the Netherlands, that most medicines authorised for use fall into this category, and some of these

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17

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19 20

21

actually do more harm than good (Van Wilder et al, 2015). Yet Big Pharma continues to try and maximise its profits to the detriment of poorer countries – witness its current objective to obtain 12 years of market exclusivity for its biologics (an emerging class of cancer and immunotherapy treatments and vaccines), which will deny access to more affordable medicines for hundreds of millions of people in countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico and Peru (Gleeson, 2015). The editor of the Lancet recently wrote that possibly half of the medical scientific literature may now be false and that ‘science has taken a turn towards darkness’ (Horton, 2015, 1380). ‘Community care’, for example, still tends to mean care that goes on outside of institutional care (see, for example, HMG, 2009) – typically at home. Contrary to popular opinion, however, there is no a priori reason why care provided outside an institution should be any better than that provided in an institution. In general, community care approaches also tend to emphasise the independence of the individual client and to downgrade the importance of community, which involves interdependence (Oldman, 2003). Rather than the individual flourishing through their involvement with others, they are made to feel that they must learn to cope on their own, with as little help from others as possible – a recipe for (increased) social isolation, not community. Community-based interventions in health and social care are increasingly ‘sold’ on the basis that they are a form of community development. However, they never seem to take any account of the nature of the communities in which they intervene (they are usually based on arbitrary or administrative geographical areas, not on communities), and they focus overwhelmingly on behavioural change. It is hardly surprising to find that participation in such programmes actually does improve health and wellbeing but it is not clear how communities are developed by this or to what extent such progress is maintained when the intervention ceases) (see, for example, University of East London, 2015). 2010–13 – that is, until the NHS reorganisation was well under way! This report also found that some GPs continued to be unclear about when they were accountable to their CCG or to NHS England.This confusion about accountability is likely to be increased if Stevens’ (2014) ‘models of care’ are introduced – see below. ‘The choices on offer do not respond to the multi-dimensional needs and preferences that patients actually experience’ (Coote and Penny, 2014, 28). The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, agrees – see his interview in Health Service Journal of 26 November (West, 2014), where he recognised that ‘there are natural monopolies in healthcare, where patient choice is never going to drive change’. Choice is particularly irrelevant in emergency care, and market forces will not create good integrated community care.

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22

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28

See, for example, the King’s Fund (2015) – the rhetoric employed since 2011 of ‘parity of esteem’ between physical and mental health services has not been reflected in any substantive changes in the balance of funding for these services. One possible exception is their support for a minimum unit price for alcohol – although arguably this only penalises the consumer and may actually increase the profits for the alcohol industry. At the time of writing (October 2015) another possible exception has arisen, namely the suggestion of imposing a tax on sugar consumption – again a focus on the consumer rather than the producer, blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator. In a 2012 review, based on 13,000 inspections, the Care Quality Commission found that one in five care homes and one in ten nursing homes failed to provide service users the food and drink they need, and that the vast majority of care homes, nursing homes and home care providers failed to meet the minimum standards for providing their staff ‘proper training, supervision and development’ support, with many failing to manage medicines properly and to keep records adequately. Eight out of ten home care workers are estimated to be on zero-hours contracts, with most being paid below the minimum wage due to non-payment for travelling time between home visits (Conaty, 2014, 9). For more on the importance of relationality, establishing horizontal forms of interprofessional working and challenging ‘managerial domination’, and involving encounter, emotion and authenticity, see Clark et al (2015). This seems to come close to being a beloved community. For a different example, see Box 7.1. Also worth mentioning here are the ‘webs of care’ found by Katz (2004, 246) in East Harlem.These exist among neighbours, providing everyday services such as childcare, and containing key individuals (often older women) who act on behalf of others in dealing with powerful actors such as landlords and local authorities (see Cumbers et al, 2010, 62; and Bradley, 2014, on the tenants’ movement). An extreme example here is that of the Philippines, in which community health workers have been murdered by the army for opposing government programmes and policies (CHD, 2015). Raising the minimum wage to a ‘living wage’ may only result in fewer care jobs becoming available, which means less care being provided.

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eight Housing and community The field of housing is different from other fields because of the peculiarities of housing tenure (unlike education or health, housing can be owned or rented) and because of the important role that housing (and landed property more generally) plays within capitalism as a store of value and source of unearned income. The inequality that is characteristic of capitalism generally, namely that between owners and non-owners of the means of production, is perhaps reflected most vividly in the housing field, in the inequality between wealthy home-owners and those who have no housing assets or whose housing assets have little or no value. Similarly, the periodic crises that beset capitalism are increasingly closely associated with crises in the housing market, with the most recent global financial crisis being triggered by the collapse of the market in sub-prime mortgages. The chapter reviews the literature on gentrification and displacement to show some of the ways in which different neighbourhoods under capitalism have been, and continue to be, changed through housing processes and struggles, often to the detriment of existing working-class communities. Limits to gentrification are acknowledged while at the same time noting that evidence of successful resistance to gentrification remains thin and fragile in nature. Attempts to achieve mixedincome or mixed-tenure communities appear to have had little effect in terms of increased integration or cohesion, and it is not even clear why such attempts would succeed, given the absence of any other (non-housing) measures to this end and a widespread lack of official understanding of people’s attachment to place. The chapter also considers the variety of community action relating to housing, including action in defence of valued assets, action against landlord oppression, and action against displacement. The tenants’ movement in England is described as an example of such community action that has wider but largely unrealised political potential – it is a movement that is entirely domesticated and exists only in abeyance, and the increasing abjectification of social housing serves only

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to weaken it further. A concerted fightback is long overdue but the form this should take is much disputed. Following the theme of earlier chapters, therefore, this chapter concludes with a discussion of housing co-operatives with a view to arguing that these need to be seen as part of a broader movement for workingclass control over their housing, which also includes the tenants’ movement – co-operation across co-operatives and across communities.

Housing is a distinctive kind of field. In other fields, such as health or education, goods and services are broadly viewed as being provided in three different ways: through the market, through the state and through voluntary effort.These three ways are equated with three different sectors: the private sector, the public sector and the voluntary and community sector, respectively. The main cleavages in welfare provision are therefore regarded as sectoral. With housing, however, tenure – understood as a distinct bundle of property rights and obligations – presents a complicating factor because it gives rise to a different kind of cleavage, between those who own housing (as owner-occupiers or landlords) and those who rent it. Some commentators, such as Saunders (1990), argue that tenure cleavages are more important than sectoral cleavages, and it is at least plausible that those who rent their homes (whether from a private, public or voluntary sector landlord) have more in common with one another as tenants than they have with their landlords. However, the relationship between housing tenure and community is complex, varies from one country to another, and is still not very well understood. For example, although in many countries, the most precarious households are likely to be found in the private rented sector, it is not generally the case that homeowners are less ‘community-minded’ than public sector tenants. In the US: ‘The most prominent form of community organizing in the 1950s was the neighborhood homeowners’ associations that proliferated in outer cities and new suburbs’, which ‘all shared a twofold goal of protecting property values and building and maintaining community’ (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 61). For these homeowners, therefore, their sense of community was exclusive and self-interested, and focused primarily on preventing African Americans from moving into their neighbourhood (DeFilippis et al, 2010, 63). Later, in the late 1970s, these same associations were in the vanguard of a regressive localist movement to cut their property taxes and even ‘secede’ from municipal authority (Davis, 1990). Housing is particularly significant in capitalism because of its value as landed property, a major recipient of capital investment, a reliable source of unearned income (‘safe as houses’), a lucrative outlet for bank lending (mortgages1) and as useful collateral for borrowing (for a detailed account, see Bourdieu, 2005). As with the relationship between housing tenure

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and community, however, the relationship between housing as capital and housing as use-value remains poorly understood. Engels (1887) was the first to consider the position of housing within capitalism and concluded that ‘the housing question’ (as he called it) was secondary to the question of class struggle over the means of production. History shows that many, if not most, struggles over housing have been class struggles located in the sphere of reproduction – specifically over rent increases that were regarded by tenants as unacceptable or excessive (Corrigan and Ginsburg, 1975; Grayson, 1997).As Clarke and Ginsburg (1975, 4) said:‘Just as in a particular wages struggle a worker is engaged as a specific type of worker engaged with a specific capital, so in a housing struggle the worker is engaged as a specific type of working class tenant confronting a specific capital.’ Struggles over rent increases are typically rooted in working-class communities, and thus housing tenure, to some extent, acts as a proxy for social class. This chapter will consider, in particular, struggles against gentrification and displacement, and the council tenants’ movement in the UK. Recently, Aalbers and Christophers (2014, 374) have tried to offer ‘a coherent and relatively comprehensive conceptualization of the place of housing in the contemporary capitalist political economy’.They distinguish three ‘modalities’ of capital (as process of circulation, as social relation and as ideology). First, housing is not only an important industry in its own right, indissolubly linked with other industries and embedded within capitalist labour markets but also functions as a store of value outside of production (like cash in the attic or gold or art treasures). This stored value can be a hoard for investors in times of crisis (Keynes, 1936) or it can be an object of speculation but it can also be unlocked to get the economy moving again when coming out of a recession (so-called ‘privatised Keynesianism’, see Crouch, 2009; 2011; or ‘house price Keynesianism’, see Watson, 2010; see also Forrest and Yip, 2011). Unlike most markets, the housing market is dominated by the circulation of already existing commodities rather than newly produced ones, which makes it a much more volatile market. Second, the social relations of housing in many countries present a divide between a class of wealthy households, who are mainly home-owners, and a class of ‘have-nots’, who include slum-dwellers, most tenants, marginal home-owners, homeless people, and live-in domestic servants (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014, 380), as well as people squatting, lodging, living in institutions and forms of temporary accommodation (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014, 387).2 This divide is reflected, to some extent, in forms of residential spatial segregation (Massey and Denton, 1993;Van Kempen and Özüekren, 1998), which are then associated with wider inequalities (so-called ‘neighbourhood effects’), especially in access to employment opportunities, essential services and safe and healthy environments. The

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inequality of power is also associated with a wide range of abuses of power including racial discrimination, excessive rents and house prices and evictions (well documented in Aalbers and Christophers, 2014, 381).Third, the ideology of capitalism, which privileges private property ownership, market allocation mechanisms and accumulation strategies, is epitomised by and reinforced through the housing system. In some countries, this privileging of property ownership extends to the fields of law and politics (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014, 384).3 Compared with health, education and social security, housing has often been described as the ‘wobbly pillar’ (Torgersen, 1987) of the welfare state. In particular, it is worth noting that, in liberal capitalist countries, housing production has always been almost entirely carried out by private companies and mostly for private ownership (contrast with health or education). Nevertheless, as Bourdieu (2005, 30–1) has shown, the state contributes crucially to housing, both by shaping the universe of builders and sellers via fiscal, banking and regulatory policies, and by moulding the dispositions and capabilities of house buyers (including the propensity to rent or buy). Increasingly, governments have recognised that the accrual of assets from property ownership can be a resource for self-provision of welfare when needed, especially in old age – a perspective that is called ‘asset based welfare’ (Regan and Paxton, 2001; Doling and Ronald, 2010) but is effectively a privatisation of welfare.The scope for such privatisation is limited, however, because of the inability of lower income households to accrue sufficient assets, for example, to pay for their long-term care (see, for example, Commission on Funding of Care and Support, 2011), particularly with the decline in owner-occupation following the so-called global financial crisis (Forrest and Hirayama, 2015, 241) – see below. The political and ideological salience of home ownership, most notable in Anglo-Saxon countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand), has tended to blind commentators to how capitalism really works in the housing field. Above all, capital seeks new markets, new ways to make and increase profits, irrespective of housing tenure: what Forrest and Hirayama (2015, 233) call ‘the relentless logic of commodification’ applies equally to renting and buying, and the privileging of private property ownership can encompass private landlords just as much as owner-occupiers. This seems to be a newly discovered reality, however, related to the growing ‘financialisation’ of housing markets (Arrighi, 1994; Aalbers, 2012), in which money (particularly in the form of mortgage loans) is itself treated as a commodity to be bought and sold, rather than (or as well) as the universal medium of commodity exchange. Forrest and Hirayama (2015, 236) describe the process through the 1980s and 1990s by which housing changed from a ‘social project’ to being ‘a source of income and magnet

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for investment’, as building societies demutualised and became banks, and buildings became ‘liquidised into securities and then melted into the flow of the mixture of variegated financial products’ (Forrest and Hirayama, 2015, 237). Following the so-called global financial crisis of 2008, however, borrowing has become more difficult for lower income, higher-risk households, but not for investors in ‘safe as houses’ landed property, and this has resulted in a boom in private renting, as the latter buy properties in order to rent to the former, accompanied by a decline in owner-occupation – in UK, US, Japan and Australia (Forrest and Hirayama, 2015, 239–41). The financialisation of housing played a major role in the financial crisis by treating housing purely as exchange value and losing sight of how housing is actually used. Not for the first time, therefore, the housing crisis reflected a crisis of capitalism more generally.

Gentrification and displacement Gentrification is a term that was originally coined by Glass (1964) and has been defined as ‘a process whereby a residential area which is predominantly occupied by relatively low-income households…switches into occupation by relatively high-income households’ (Merrett, 1976, 44). Gentrification has been regarded by many as a market-led process, motivated primarily by profit (for example, Smith, 1979) or culture (Ley, 1996). It has attracted a considerable amount of research across the world (see, for example, Clay, 1979; Ley, 1986; Caulfield, 1994; Smith, 1996a, 2002; Butler, 1997; Butler with Robson, 2003; Savage et al, 2005a; Martin, 2005; Slater, 200; Swanson, 2007; Whitehead and More, 2007; Allen, 2008; Watt, 2008a), including international comparative studies (Lees, 1994; Carpenter and Lees, 1995; Smith, 1996a; Harris, 2008). This research has shown that gentrifiers are largely newer middle-class households who are rich in capital, especially cultural capital (through higher education, and so on), which enables them to acquire an ‘aesthetic sensibility’ (Ley, 1996, 310), disposing them to wish to live in the inner city because of its features such as ‘heritage’ (Butler, 1997) and centres of cultural activity (theatres, concert halls, prestigious restaurants, exclusive clubs, etc).4 As a form of capital, cultural capital is self-expanding, meaning here that gentrifiers are oriented towards remaking the landscape of the inner city according to their own image – what Allen (2008, 50) has called ‘the valorisation of ugly landscapes’. So gentrification is simultaneously economic and cultural, in that the value it adds is both monetary and aesthetic. Gentrification, therefore, is an example of what Bourdieu (1984) called social distinction (described in Chapter Two), as it is a process whereby a section of the middle class establishes its distinctiveness in the hierarchy of social classes. It does this by creating, to

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some extent, its own habitus, but this creation is most commonly (though not in every case) achieved by invading and colonising a space that was previously home to a working-class community (see, for example, Smith, 1996a; Allen, 2008). This revanchism is usually justified by the gentrifiers on the grounds that they are ‘improving’ the area, which presupposes, of course, that they represent ‘a better class of person’ than those whom they are displacing. Consequently, gentrification is often accompanied by either denigration or patronising of what these middle-class people are wont to call ‘the lower classes’ (Jones, 2012). Gentrification typically involves displacement but the two are distinct. Displacement was defined by Marcuse (1985) as follows: Displacement occurs when any household is forced to move from its residence by conditions that affect the dwelling or its immediate surroundings, and that: 1) are beyond the household’s reasonable ability to control or prevent; 2) occur despite the household’s having met all previously imposed conditions of occupancy; and 3) make continued occupancy by that household impossible, hazardous, or unaffordable. (Grier and Grier, quoted in Marcuse, 1985, 205) Marcuse also identified two less direct forms of displacement: exclusionary displacement, when a household is prevented from moving into a dwelling because gentrification or clearance of that dwelling or neighbourhood has occurred (see Atkinson, 2000; Crump, 2002; Perez, 2004; Freeman, 2006; Newman and Wyly, 2006), and displacement pressure, which affects businesses as well as households, when the neighbourhood in which one lives or works is changing dramatically, with friends leaving, stores closing and changes occurring in public facilities, transport and support services that make the area less liveable or viable for one’s business (Marcuse, 1985, 207). It can be seen that displacement is wider than gentrification. For example, slum clearance projects in many countries in the 1960s and early 1970s involved massive displacement of populations to ‘a variety of destinations including doubled-up residences, pre-migration origins, and inner-ring suburbs’ (Newman and Lake, 2006, 57), mostly without any corresponding gentrification of the areas from which they were displaced.A similar process has been occurring in a number of countries since the 1980s, especially in the US, with regard to the elimination of public housing, the dispersal of low-income, low-status households from these areas, and a ‘re-imaging’ (Goetz, 2012, 333) of these areas through large-scale redevelopment.5 Also, massive indirect displacement or displacement pressure occurs when a major source of local employment is closed or relocated, with no available

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and accessible alternative.6 On the other hand, at least some gentrification involves restoration of run-down or derelict housing and neighbourhoods, which does not involve displacement. In terms of the effects on community, displacement is always disruptive, insofar as it removes people from the places to which they are attached, whereas gentrification does not have to be so but only if it does not involve displacement. In recent years, attention has focused on the impact on communities of mega-events such as the Olympic Games (Bernstock, 2009; Minton, 2009; Watt, 2013) or Commonwealth Games (Paton et al, 2012; Lewis, 2015). Evidence indicates that such events ‘are often catalysts for redevelopment entailing massive displacements and reductions in low cost and social housing stock, all of which result in a significant decrease in housing affordability’ (CoHRE, 2007, 11). People on the receiving end of such developments have a ‘strong sense of feeling invisible, of being someone (or perhaps a community of people) that just doesn’t count: in a sense, of becoming a non-citizen’ (Porter, 2009, 397).7 The space in which they live is first bureaucratically imagined as a ‘space emptied of people and activity’ (Porter, 2009, 397), and then their property, jobs and businesses are systematically and sometimes compulsorily taken from them (Watt, 2013, 104), involving all of Marcuse’s types of displacement:‘direct displacement through forced eviction, compulsory purchase and police harassment;… exclusionary displacement as the displaced cannot access the new or existing housing in the neighbourhood; and displacement pressure where the daily reality of living in a rapidly transforming neighbourhood has its own displacing effects (see Slater, 2009)’ (Porter, 2009, 398).8 Lewis (2015, para 1.2) notes the outcome of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002: ‘Despite the promises of legacy, East Manchester remains dislocated from the rest of the city and the future continues to be defined by uncertainty.’ Governments commonly play a major role in gentrification and displacement processes (Hackworth, 2002; 2007; Slater, 2004; 2006; Atkinson and Bridge, 2005; Porter and Barber, 2006; Uitermark et al, 2007; He, 2007; Lees and Ley, 2008; Lees et al, 2008; Davidson, 2008; Watt, 2009a; 2013). Wacquant (2008) documents the ways in which the state affects the housing market through urban and regional planning, infrastructure maintenance, schooling, transportation, provision of cultural amenities and policing. Both at national and local levels it acts in such a way as to prepare the ground for gentrifying colonisers, both materially (for example, through infrastructure provision) and symbolically, in ‘terms that bolster a neoliberal narrative of competitive progress (Tickell and Peck, 2003) that carves the path for stealth gentrification (Wyly and Hammel, 2001)’ (Slater, 2008, 219).9 This then connects with wider (and

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less stealthy) governmental agendas amounting to ‘a concerted attempt to make seemingly “unproductive” people and places “productive”’ – workingclass communities ‘are deemed to be deficient or lacking and flawed in multiple ways which work to compound each other’ (Paton et al, 2012, 1471). Successive governments have attempted to rebrand gentrification as ‘urban regeneration’ or ‘urban transformation’ but what this actually means is the transformation of ‘problem people’ and ‘problem places’ (Damer, 1989; Mooney, 2008) into ‘civilised’ and ‘responsible’ producers and consumers.10 It seems that gentrification is not just about the revanchist displacement of the working class: it is also about the re-creation and re-invention of those places and people for capital and for bourgeois social order. (This includes the emergence of privatised public spaces such as Canary Wharf in London (Minton, 2009, 3–14): a new form of ‘urban enclosure’ (Amaral, 2015).) The working class is to be put literally ‘in its place’, which is in areas of low value or low attractiveness for capital investment, yet at the same time ‘manageable’ by the authorities (Uitermark et al, 2007) and within commuting distance of essential, though usually low paid and precarious, employment. ‘In this way, gentrification processes simultaneously exclude and include working-class residents’ (Paton et al, 2012, 1477). In the UK at least, there has been a long tradition of local authorities working with private developers to achieve ‘comprehensive’ redevelopment of large housing sites (Jones, 2008). Dunleavy (1981) first exposed this collusion between council architects and planners and the construction industry – a coming together of professional hubris (cultural capital) with corporate profit-making (economic capital) to wreak symbolic violence on the working class in the form of what are now known as ‘tower blocks’ (see also Glendinning and Muthesius, 1994). The same processes seem to be continuing today in relation to gentrification, but now the designers are more likely to be employed by the private developers, with the active support of local authorities and housing associations, particularly in making land available at prices that are most attractive for profitable development (Watt, 2009a, 2013). Examples include Woodberry Down in Hackney (Couvee, 2012; Chakrabortty and Robinson-Tillett, 2014), the Aylesbury estate in Southwark (Lees, 2014), the Heygate estate in Southwark,11 and the Carpenters estate in Newham (Watt, 2013). In all of these cases, council housing estates are being demolished and replaced by largely private housing at higher densities, mainly for owner-occupation but also for renting at much higher levels than tenants are currently paying. In the process, long-standing communities are being displaced and destroyed, with the developers giving little thought to the consequences of their actions.12 Much of the literature on gentrification can convey the impression that ‘resistance is useless’, so it is important to consider the extent of

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opposition to these processes. DeVerteuil (2011) points out that there are limits to gentrification (Shaw, 2005; Ley and Dobson, 2008; Walks and August, 2008), and that not all residents are displaced by gentrification (Newman and Wyly, 2006). Owner-occupiers, for example, are more able to resist market-led gentrification than tenants, and communities can mobilise around ‘displacement-resistant clusters of non-profit social service facilities that provide a common front against gentrification-induced displacement and dismantlement’ (DeVerteuil, 2011, 209), as has happened inVancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Lees et al, 2008; Ley and Dobson, 2008), San Francisco’s Tenderloin (Hutton, 2010) and Sydney’s Redfern (Shaw, 2000). Local authorities also can, to some extent, counteract the forces of revanchism by means of schemes to help poorer tenants to stay put – as happens in New York City (Newman and Wyly, 2006), Melbourne (Shaw, 2005) and London (though more in some boroughs, such as Islington, than in others, such as Southwark (Watt, 2009a);13 and similarly in Los Angeles, with more governmental support in Hollywood and Santa Monica than in Downtown (DeVerteuil, 2011, 214)).14 DeVerteuil (2011, 214–15) also points out, however, that the ‘staying put’ that results from successful resistance to displacement is a hollow victory if it means that the residents are unable to find ‘feasible locational alternatives in a gentrified city, thereby locking in facilities to their locations (and locking out newcomers)’ (that is, in Wacquant’s terms, a ghetto) – effectively, a policy of containment.They cannot choose to move on their own account, but they are still vulnerable to displacement by others.15 Perhaps what is missing from the gentrification debate is a vision of a realistic alternative for working-class communities living in declining areas (which may or may not be threatened with gentrification) – something that will involve not only refurbishment of their homes (a common demand, for example, on the Aylesbury estate, see Lees, 2014, 18) but offer real hope for the future, with a clear political programme of action towards that end.The European Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City represents a growing international housing movement for such an alternative, campaigning against the privatisation and financialisation of public assets, supporting occupations of empty homes (an action that is now criminalised in UK), stopping evictions, ending buy-to-leave investments in residential property, regulating private rents and building more secure social rented housing to meet need. Government-led gentrification often takes the form of projects for ‘mixed income’ communities (or MINCies, see CLG, 2006b). MINCies can be defined as residential neighbourhoods that contain a mix of household incomes, and this is assumed to occur when a certain proportion of the housing is affordable to those on low incomes. The policy is then either

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to create new MINCies from scratch, with a ‘balance’ of tenures (as in new towns), or to transform existing communities into MINCies, by getting better off households to take up residence in what is currently an area of low-income households. The policy makers assert that this will achieve community integration and cohesion, sustainable neighbourhoods and social order – an example of what Jacobs (1961, 123), following the theologian Niebuhr, called ‘the doctrine of salvation by bricks’. There has been a considerable amount of research on MINCies – for a summary, see Holmes (2006); for a thoughtful review, see Tunstall and Fenton (2006); for a critique, see Cheshire (2007); for an account of residents’ views, see Bretherton and Pleace (2009); and for an evaluation of the link between social mix and gentrification, see Bridge et al (2011).This research reveals that links between residents in different tenures are limited (Bridge et al, 2011) and they are often unhappy about living together in the same development (Bretherton and Pleace, 2009) – which is not surprising because it seems overly optimistic to place very different people cheek by jowl and simply expect them to get on with one another.16 Rather than solving any problems of social order or cohesion or unsustainability, MINCies merely reproduce these problems within the development itself (Davenport, 2008), and possibly even create additional tensions and conflicts (Bridge et al, 2011). MINCies are mostly ineffective in improving the lives of low-income residents (Bridge et al, 2011), and the concept of the MINCy is not based on any clear understanding of community or community development. In its evaluation of the New Labour government’s ‘sustainable communities’ policy (which advocated new build MINCies), the Sustainable Development Commission commented that it was basically a policy for building houses and was not joined up with other community services, in particular employment (SDC, 2007). MINCies are therefore vulnerable to erosion in the long term, for example, due to buy-to-let or buy-to-leave, where home-owners rent out their homes to lower income households or leave them empty altogether. It may be that planning mixed-income communities within a free market just does not work (Cheshire, 2007). There is, in any case, no evidence that mixing incomes within housing developments, whether new or already existing, makes spaces and communities more governable or manageable, although this is a long-cherished belief in housing management circles. With regard to regenerating existing communities to achieve a mix of resident incomes, the picture looks much the same, even though in some cases greater effort has been made to join up housing with other services (for example, in New Deal for Communities (see Chapter Four)). The use of tenure mix as regeneration strategy is well established in a number

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of cities, such as Glasgow (McIntyre and McKee, 2008; 2012). Paton et al (2012, 1483) argue that this ‘reflects the “problematisation” of mono-tenure social housing estates within current policy debates, and the promotion of homeownership as a solution to reconnect disadvantaged communities back into mainstream society.’17 A number of studies, however, have shown that regeneration initiatives targeted at poorer communities over the years do not appear to have improved their position relative to other communities (Dorling et al, 2007; Leunig and Swaffield, 2008).18 Leunig and Swaffield (2008, 23) suggest why this should be: ‘current policies mean that poorer towns will continue to get poorer relative to the rest of the country.When the national economy is doing well, and money for regeneration is plentiful, they will get gradually poorer.When the national economy is doing badly, and money for regeneration is hard to come by, they will get poorer much more quickly.’ Dorling et al (2007) report evidence of increasing polarisation, with rich and poor living further apart. It is unclear whether regeneration programmes have reduced the rate of this polarisation, made no appreciable difference to it or actually contributed to it (for example, by enabling better-off households to move out of the area) (Thornhill, 2009, 48).19 Bridge et al (2011) argue that gentrification and social mixing are virtually the same process – for example, if higher-income households move into a lower-income area in any significant numbers, this must mean that some displacement of lower-income households has occurred (the reduction in the number of lower-income households cannot be entirely attributed to what might be called ‘natural wastage’). In short, MINCies really are a euphemism for state-led gentrification. So, in a housing development, ‘mixed-tenure’ is used as a proxy for ‘mixed-income’, while ‘mixed-tenure’ is itself a strong indicator of mixed social classes. None of these, however, is anything like ‘mixed communities’ (Arthurson, 2012), a term that tends to suggest ethnic or racial mix. Housing, ‘race’ and community have been strongly linked ever since Rex and Moore’s (1967) classic study of Sparkbrook in Birmingham. Some scholars, notably Smith (1989), went so far as to argue that residential segregation (meaning different ethnic groups or communities living in different neighbourhoods) was the key factor underlying racial discrimination and conflict. It followed from this that the main way to achieve racial justice, social cohesion and social order was through residential integration (meaning people from different ethnic groups living in the same neighbourhood community).This concern with ethnic segregation (and integration) ‘has continued to pervade discussions on immigration and cohesion’ (Phillips, 2015, 392), as manifested in the expression ‘parallel lives’ (Cantle, 2008) to explain the disturbances in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001.20 However, this concern tells us more about the white majority than about ethnic minorities, in that the

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latter have always expressed strong preferences for integration (although what Back et al, 2012, 150, call ‘the social weight of racism’ can result in a certain ‘hunkering down’ or ‘turning turtle’), while it has been the former that has often been slow to adapt to new populations.The recurring pattern identified by research in England is one of initial hostility on the part of local residents to influxes of immigrants (except wealthy and high-skilled immigrants), followed by gradually increasing tolerance of their presence over a period of ten years or so, accompanied by increasing hostility to diversity in areas adjacent to the neighbourhoods of immigrant settlement21 (Kaufmann and Harris, 2014). If this pattern continues, it seems likely that tolerance will spread as immigrant populations disperse to and settle in these adjacent areas while at the same time intolerance will increase in other areas that are adjacent to these adjacent areas (and these other areas could be even larger).The work of the Sparkbrook Association showed that ‘diverse groups can cooperate successfully, putting aside differences, if motivated by local interests and common neighbourhood concerns’ (Phillips, 2015, 395; compare Gort in Galway, see Dean, 2008).22 These are of course likely to be areas manifesting a common attachment to place – that is, a sense of community (Vertovec, 2007; Phillips et al, 2014; see also Chapter One). So the whole issue of racial integration and managing diversity can be seen to be an issue that calls for community development (see Chapter Two). It is not clear, however, what kind of community development is envisaged or how it might relate to the problems (for example, of class division, neoliberalisation and exclusionary displacement) discussed in this book. Phillips (2010, 211) points out that, across the EU-15 member states, the terms ‘integration’ and ‘social mix’ have no clear meaning. Integration is seen (by the European Commission) as a two-way process but the nature of the process is left vague, making it easy to blame minority ethnic populations for not adapting. Similarly, what counts as a ‘good’ neighbourhood social mix is never specified.23 Such absences serve only to invite scepticism from commentators about the real intentions of policy makers (see, for example, Burnett, 2009, on the ‘new racism’) – the official valuing of diversity seems to be only ‘skin-deep’, concealing a deeper neo-assimilationist agenda. It is quite possible, anyway, for residential ethnic segregation to be compatible with wider integration of minority ethnic groups into systems of housing, education, employment and politics (Phillips, 2006), thus refuting the alleged centrality of housing to race relations and social cohesion. Meanwhile, in the UK, segregation along class lines, between higher and lower-income households, seems to be growing and intensifying, exacerbated by so-called ‘welfare reform’ (see, for example, Hamnett, 2010; 2011; Fenton, 2011; Jacobs and Manzi, 2013, 37).

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Housing market renewal One example of an attempt at state-led (or at least state-sponsored, see Cameron, 2003; 2006; Webb, 2010) gentrification is the housing market renewal programme of the UK Labour government.24 This policy was launched in 2002 ‘in response to concerns expressed by local authorities and their partners about the emergence of problems of low and changing demand for housing – reflected in very low house prices’ (Leather et al, 2009, 4). Between 2002 and 2011, the government spent £2.2 billion on nine housing market pathfinders in sub-regional areas across the Midlands and north of England (Audit Commission, 2011). The stated main aim of this policy was to eradicate ‘low demand’ by 2020, to solve a problem of ‘housing market weakness’ and achieve a ‘more balanced housing market’ (Cole, 2012, 354) or reconnected housing markets (Cole and Ferrari, 2008), or to ‘rebalance housing markets’ (Ferrari, 2012, 270).25 Given that these notions of weakness and balance were given no clear meaning, the programme was inherently flawed from the start. Moreover, evidence was lacking that communities in these areas recognised the existence of a problem of ‘low demand’ (or housing market weakness or imbalance). Indeed, it might be expected that poorer communities would regard high demand, not low demand, as a problem because it results in lower affordability of housing to buy and longer waiting lists for affordable housing to rent. Unfortunately, it is not known what residents of these areas thought about this key issue because it appears that they were never asked (Cole, 2012, 359–60)!26 The general approach towards community engagement taken by the pathfinders is illustrated in Box 8.1.

Box 8.1: Housing market renewal in Manchester Salford In Manchester Salford Partnership, community engagement was undertaken by local teams. This involved door-knocking and contacting specific households affected by the proposals and consulting them before beginning development so as to raise awareness of the programme and of issues such as relocation packages and financial support. Households were also invited to join residents’ groups set up as part of the masterplanning process, over such issues as large compulsory purchase order schemes. The respondent interviewed claimed that any challenges to schemes had come from individual residents rather than community groups and had been resolved, although often after intensive consultation. Source: Leather et al, 2009, 60

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This shows that all the key decisions on the programme had already been taken before residents were ‘consulted’, and the purpose of the ‘consultation’ was then simply to ensure that the programme went ahead as smoothly as possible. It is clear that community groups were not even contacted by the programme managers (who preferred to set up their own residents’ groups), and the claim that no challenges came from any community groups is not supported by any evidence. As for ‘intensive consultation’, given the power differences between the two parties, this was probably just a euphemism for brow-beating. Given the relative helplessness of residents in this situation, it is not surprising that some had recourse to the media in order to make their case heard. Wise to this, the pathfinder teams employed their own media managers to minimise negative coverage, and this proactive approach was directly linked to making the areas more attractive to developers and other commercial bodies. As one respondent reported for the national evaluation: ‘we will actually look at it from a developer prospective [sic], I mean we will talk about the importance of HMR in terms of business benefits and what we can do is actually alert them to the resources going in and challenge more negative stories’ (cited in Leather et al, 2009, 61). In other words, negative stories needed to be rebutted, not so much because they might be false, but because they could be damaging to the creation of the markets that the pathfinders wanted to see. Ultimately, therefore, it seems that the pathfinders wanted to provide increased opportunities for capital investment, where firms would come into the area to raise the value of property generally, yielding profits for themselves and perhaps attracting higher income households into the area, resulting in gentrification (though not necessarily displacement). From what Cole (2012) says, however, it seems that (like most New Labour partnerships) they were just not up to the job, and the evidence base for the programme was inadequate (Cole, 2012, 359–60). Consequently, as a gentrification project, it failed miserably, and was abruptly terminated by the incoming coalition government in 2010.

Box 8.2 Housing market renewal in Kensington, Liverpool As working-class people, the residents of Kensington ‘relate to their houses and neighbourhoods as “things” that are “ready to hand” rather than in terms of their symbolic or investment value within the space of positions in the market for houses’ (Allen, 2008, 126). In Marx’s terms, houses for working-class people are of interest for their use value not their exchange value – the residents are concerned with enjoying them for what they are, not with making money out of them (for what they could be). This general disposition of the working class, however, which

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is characteristic of working-class habitus, clashes with ‘the dominant view of the market for houses as a space of positions’ (Allen, 2008, 89). When working-class people misrecognise this dominant view as legitimate (as Allen shows that they do), the result is a form of symbolic violence, which reveals itself in a number of ways: a ‘general interest’ in house prices (when they do not want to move and cannot afford to do so, anyway) (Allen, 2008, 89), a perception of housing in terms of a housing ladder that they cannot get on (Allen, 2008, 89–91), and a recognition of the dominant ‘suburban ideal’ (Silverstone, 1997, cited in Allen, 2008, 91). Following Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), Allen argues that Kensington residents’ recognition that they desired only what they could not possess served to reinforce their acceptance of their current circumstances as inevitable – that is, it strengthened their encapsulation. However, for some respondents, this acceptance did not occur without a certain amount of regret, for example, they saw themselves as having ‘failed’ (Allen, 2008, 97–8), even though they had not failed at all (because they lived in good quality, comfortable housing), while other respondents openly rejected the dominant view as expressed in the media and in middle-class housing careers (Allen, 2008, 100–1). What this shows, in a way comparable with Sennett and Cobb (1972), is that symbolic violence damages working-class communities although they are also capable of resisting it: either way, however, encapsulation tends to be reinforced not undermined. 27

Flint (2011) criticises Allen for over-generalising about working-class and middle-class habitus, in that many working-class people are indeed interested in the exchange value of their homes, while many middle-class people are attached to their homes and neighbourhoods. Clearly, the relationship between housing and class is complex (mediated as it is by forms of capital and tenure), and not well understood. This does not alter the fact, however, that housing market renewal was a classic,‘top-down’ but half-baked policy that made little serious attempt to engage as equals the households who were on its receiving end. The academics who endorsed and promoted this policy should have known better.

Community action on housing and development Housing is a very lively field for community action, in many ways (see the discussion in Chapter Two). In the UK, there are movements by sections of communities to defend their villages or neighbourhoods against developments that are seen to be inappropriate, for example, because they are thought to be too large or unsightly or lacking necessary infrastructure (roads, drainage, etc) or because they require the elimination (or at least devaluation) of valued amenities (green spaces, recreational areas, cherished landmarks).28 These protesters are often disparagingly described as ‘nimbys’

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(‘not in my back yard’) but this is an over-simplification of a complex variety of dispositions among local communities, developers and local authorities. On the one hand, there does seem to be increasing opposition from local people to new developments that meet demonstrated housing need: housing associations trying to build such housing report that on almost every site that they propose to develop some people will object to the development (though this does not necessarily mean the proposal will not be approved by the council).29 On the other hand, however, local communities have also campaigned against large speculative housing schemes put forward by private developers, which do not meet local need, devalue community assets and place considerable pressure on local public services. Again, on the one hand, there are areas such as Milton Keynes, where high levels of housing development of all kinds are largely accepted and even supported (Youde, 2013). On the other hand, however, there are the ‘green belts’ around large cities, particularly London, where all new development other than for agricultural purposes is banned, even though the greatest pressure for new housing is in parts of these green belts.30 The situation therefore seems uncannily similar to that described above in relation to racial integration: those areas that are already accustomed to new development are more supportive of it, while those that have no new development but are adjacent to the most developed areas are the most hostile towards it. The ‘tenants’ movement’ in the UK is based in residents’ own communities but also involves concerted action across communities (Bradley, 2014). Since the 1860s, the struggle has been for low rented accommodation, free from damp and disrepair, and for community facilities of various kinds (Grayson, 1997). Traditionally, at least since the Second World War, its strength has lain in its connections with the labour movement and, in particular, with the Labour Party. This movement of council tenants (and prospective council tenants, largely in the private rented sector) has had notable achievements such as the Tenants’ Charter (in 1980) (which gave tenants a number of rights, in particular security of tenure), the defeat of the government’s proposals for housing action trusts (which, in their original form, would have changed the tenants’ landlord without consulting them at all), the right to a ballot of all council tenants to decide on proposals to transfer their housing to other landlords (in 1988), and ensuring the government’s commitment to a ‘decent homes standard’ (in 2001). The movement embraces a variety of types of community action: rent strikes against extortionate rent increases and forced relocations (of private tenants throughout the nineteenth century in the UK, see Ginsburg, 1979, Englander, 1983, Grayson, 1997; of public tenants in Leeds and Birmingham in the 1930s, in the 1960s in London, Liverpool, Sheffield and Walsall, see

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Bradley, 2014, 20–1; against the imposition throughout Britain of ‘fair rents’ by the Housing Finance Act 1972, see Sklair, 1975;31 for an example outside UK, in Durban, South Africa, both under apartheid, see Maharaj, 1996, and post-apartheid, see Mitlin and Mogaladi, 2013); post-1988 campaigns against the transfer of public housing to housing associations (Ginsburg, 1989; Daly et al, 2005; Watt, 2009a; McCormack, 2009; Cumbers et al, 2010, 66); and lobbying, through durable tenants’ and residents’ associations, for improved living conditions and political influence for residents. These occasionally successful ‘grassroots mobilisations’ (Cumbers et al, 2010, 66; Somerville, 2011d, 95–7) are effectively part of an autonomous project (see Chapter Three)32 that links to a global struggle for a ‘right to the city’, understood as a right to be attached to a place (Aalbers and Gibb, 2014, 209),33 and organised around its use value not its exploitation for profit (Castells, 1983, 319).This includes, crucially, struggles against displacement (see the papers by Glass et al, Darcy and Rogers, AlKhalili et al, and Kadi and Ronald, in the special issue edited by Aalbers and Gibb, 2014). As Uitermark et al (2012) point out, however (see also Harvey, 2012), we need to move ‘beyond the right to the city’, not only in recognising the contradictoriness of autonomous practice (as discussed in Chapter Three), here expressed as a move towards a more inclusive capitalist ‘city’, but also by linking these struggles to struggles within capitalist states, in particular against neoliberalisation. Bradley (2014) provides a very persuasive and well evidenced account of the tenants’ movement in England as an example of a ‘poor people’s movement’ (Piven and Cloward, 1977), a ‘social welfare movement’ (Williams, 1992)34 and an urban movement (Pickvance, 2003), with similarities also to the women’s movement, gay and lesbian groups, ethnic minority organisations35 and the students’ movement (Bradley, 2014, 37).With all these movements it shares a commitment to participatory democracy and a concern about gaps in welfare provision that arise from narrow interpretations of universal need. What is distinctive about the tenants’ movement, however, are its collective action frames of: commitment to social rented housing as a collective and collectivising service, oppositional identity (as a collective of tenants), and privileging of experiential knowledge (over professional knowledge), embodied in an organisation and movement identity through the promotion of participatory and direct democracy (Bradley, 2014, 74). Interestingly, Bradley also identifies a particular meaning of community and community action in relation to the tenants’ movement: ‘Community’ marks the place where the domestic economy of housework, parental discipline, the bonds of reciprocity and institutional authority all meet to establish the moral bedrock

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of society, and communities have become therefore ‘the instrument through which governments focus their strategies for controlling and regulating social conduct’ (Mooney and Neal, 2009, 24). (Bradley, 2014, 94–5) Consequently, community action becomes ‘the politicised voice of local attachment’ (Bulmer, 1986, 95) (and see Chapter Three on local political community).36 Bradley (2014, 95) shows in detail how: ‘Community action manifests itself as an ethic of care extended into the public sphere, mobilising political power from an authority exercised in the domestic realm, and transforming care-giving from women’s alienated reproductive labour into a model of cooperation on which to reconstruct society (Abel and Nelson, 1990).’ He finds ‘an extended subterranean chain’ (Bulmer, 1986, 112) of services enabling delayed, transferred or indirect repayment of good deeds, a form of ‘gift relationship’ (Titmuss, 1970), in which a ‘positive practice of neighbourhood’ seeks to foster the social relations of community as a model for the collective organisation of society, the basic idea being that ‘the provision of the means of life will, alike in production and distribution, be collective and mutual’ (Williams, 1967, 326). Bradley (2014, 95) concludes that: ‘The principles of cooperation and relations of reciprocity are therefore the starting point, and not the outcome, of a process of transformation. Community action, in its transformative mission, promotes community as a space for democracy, where cooperation designates a method of achieving a shared understanding of the common good (Staeheli, 2002).’ This points to the existence of a potentially strong link between collective tenant action and social care as discussed in Chapter Seven, with significant echoes of the ideal of beloved community. In practice, these high ideals of equality and inclusive caring and sharing are very far from realisation. Bradley recognises that, irrespective of how its members see it, the tenants’ movement is extraordinarily weak. It has no long-term strategy, no influence over housing costs, housing supply or access to housing, no protection against effects of national housing and social policy decisions (Bradley, 2014, 112), no coherence or collective agreement over goals, no clear forms of organising: ‘Most tenants’ organisations define themselves in uncritical relation to the current policy definition of participation and are concerned with their success in influencing the housing standards of housing organisations and in developing community capacity in ways that complement the empowerment aims of governmental strategies’ (Bradley, 2014, 134).37 Even where tenants are collectively opposed to their landlord’s proposals, studies show that this has little effect on the final outcome (see, for example, Lawson and Kearns, 2014). In her research in Lewisham and Islington in London, Uguris (2004) found that

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collective action by tenants and residents tended actually to reinforce rather than challenge complex existing divisions of class, gender and race, and even created new divisions based on ‘turf ’. There is some doubt, therefore, as to whether the tenants’ movement can be called a movement at all. Nevertheless, Bradley argues that it is indeed a movement but it is one that exists only through the governmental processes in which it participates: The tenants’ movement is a domesticated movement, it exists in, and through, the regulated process of participation and it is made intelligible only in the language of participation and according to its rules. What can be called a movement is the expression of a collective and its attempt to expand the boundaries of this regulation, to widen the vocabulary of its voice and to find exceptions to its rules. (Bradley, 2014, 140–1) In other words, the tenants’ movement is a movement in abeyance (Taylor, 1989, 761) (like the cooperative movement discussed in Chapter Two), existing only as a circuit of exchange in the beliefs shared by ‘submerged’ or informal networks (Melucci, 1994) or as a sense of social movement ‘community’ (Taylor and Whittier, 1992). So the movement is no more than ‘a communion of shared beliefs’ (Bradley, 2014, 148). The actions of this community do not result in any transformative change. For Bradley (2014, 143), however, there is real potential in the ‘collective belief in the power of performative voice’: ‘It is a movement of collective contentions rather than strategies for change – a movement, therefore, of possibilities, not plans.’ It is difficult to imagine how this potential will ever be realised. The tenants’ movement has been in decline for a long time, and shows no signs of recovery. As Bradley (2014, 27) recognises: ‘Tenant loyalty to an ideal of decommodified housing provision has been at odds with the political direction of housing policy since the 1950s and the rise of working-class homeownership relegated social housing tenants to a backwater that the labour movement largely ignored.’ Tenant mobilisation has now long been seen as just another part of consumer culture (Bradley, 2014, 30), reaching its possible zenith in February 2010 with the launch of the National Tenant Voice. Even this was short-lived, however, and now the prospect of consumer power of any kind is fading, with some housing associations giving up on the whole idea of resident democracy in favour of more targeted support for their tenants who need it (Family Mosaic, 2015). It seems as if social housing management may be returning to its more traditional paternalist regulation of people’s lives.38 ‘Responsible

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participation’ (Paddison et al, 2008) has not saved the tenants’ movement, but the question of landlords’ responsibilities has never been adequately addressed. Meanwhile, and paradoxically, tenant and resident management (rather than participation) is quietly making a comeback – see below. Social housing is not just a backwater: it is also a tenure that is increasingly denigrated and stigmatised, not just in the UK but in many other countries (Damer, 1974; 1989; Hastings, 2004; Cooper, 2005; Card, 2006; Johnston and Mooney, 2007; Hanley, 2007; Dikec, 2007; Blokland, 2008;Watt, 2008b; Paton, 2009; Law et al, 2010; Somerville, 2011c, 134; HMG, 2011, 22; Jones, 2012; Hancock et al, 2012, 351–2, on ‘welfare ghettoes’; Hodkinson and Robbins, 2013, 69–70; Hancock and Mooney, 2013; McKenzie, 2015).39 This makes social housing even less likely to be a source of effective tenant mobilisation.The UK, however, is an example of topsy-turvy land, where successive governments commit themselves to increasing owner-occupation yet the proportion of households who own their own home falls year by year. Over the last ten years, the number of households renting privately has more than doubled, while the number of social rented homes has remained about the same (DCLG, 2015a; 2015b), yet people still prefer social renting to private renting (Ecotec, 2009; Robinson and Walshaw, 2014).After years of increasing social rents and letting housing benefit take the strain, the Conservative government has now (2015) decided to reduce them in order to save on its housing benefit bill. However, this confirms social rented housing as a residualised tenure, especially in combination with the new right to buy for housing association tenants, the compulsory sale of the most expensive council housing, and the policy of ‘pay to stay’ which will mean better-off council tenants having to pay market rents.40 Contrary to Hodkinson and Robbins (2013), there is no clear ‘class war’ logic here, only the neoliberal logic of marketising housing wherever possible and residualising housing where it is not possible to marketise it – a logic that does, however, serve to promote and support capitalism.The problem with this logic, of course, is that the market does not work,41 in the sense that millions of households (or potential households) cannot afford to buy their own home or to pay the new so-called ‘affordable’ rents (for more detail, see Somerville, 2016), yet will also find it increasingly difficult to access a shrinking social rented sector.

Housing cooperatives, co-production, co-housing and community From the perspective of a beloved community, there are problems with the main housing tenures in many countries today. With a few notable exceptions such as Singapore, owner-occupied housing is treated as a

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commodity that is bought and sold by individual households and used more or less as they wish, and all rented housing involves an unequal relationship between a landlord (who owns the property) and a tenant (who does not), which is incompatible with cooperative ideals of equality and democracy. Private rented housing is just a profit-making business while social rented housing is a non-profit-making business run by local authorities and housing associations. The relationship between landlord and tenant is not quite the same as a relationship between producer and consumer, or between provider and user. In some ways, it is like the relationship between employer and employee, in that the former owns the assets of the business (the means of production, the premises on which the business is done, and so on) while the latter does not.These two relationships are still very different, however, not least because, whereas the employer pays the employee for the hire of their labour, it is the tenant who pays the landlord for the hire of their residential property. It is this latter characteristic that perhaps gives rise to the mistaken belief that tenants can exert power over their landlords. Of course tenants can, and indeed should, be treated as customers, deserving of the best possible service in return for their rent payments (though the concept of service improvement is messy and contestable – for example, how does one compare the quality of a repairs service with that of rent arrears recovery?), but this does not mean that they are customers.42 Or, if they are, then most of them are captive customers: they are not, for example, in a position to take their custom elsewhere (so-called ‘exit’) nor do their landlords have to pay any attention to their demands (so-called ‘voice’) over and above what landlords are legally obliged to do (and, in the case of council housing, politically mandated to do). For all these reasons, it is difficult to see how the relationship between landlord and tenant can be genuinely co-productive short of changing the nature of the tenure itself, for example into a housing cooperative or into some kind of community-led housing – an example of what Eizenberg (2012) calls an ‘actually existing commons’. Recognising this, in 2002, the Confederation of Cooperative Housing in the UK, with the support of the Chartered Institute of Housing and Co-ops UK, launched what it called ‘the community gateway model’ (HACAS Chapman Hendy, 2003), according to which local authorities transferring their housing set up a member-controlled association, which consists entirely of transferring tenants and leaseholders. This association is then responsible for deciding how the transferred housing will be governed, with its governing body being entirely elected by the tenant and leaseholder members. Although only four such associations with over 5,000 homes have been set up in England,43 this model has succeeded not only in terms of resident democracy but also in housing management terms, with lower rent arrears,

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happier staff and improved repairs and maintenance (Hilditch, 2015b – on Preston Community Gateway Association). The community gateway model, however, does not amount to full cooperative ownership and the traditional distinction between managers and tenants is largely retained. Housing cooperatives, in which a group of homes are owned or managed collectively by those who live in them, are a major feature of housing systems in many countries (Gulliver et al, 2013). In the UK, however, housing cooperatives represent only about 1 per cent of the country’s housing stock compared with 6 per cent in Spain and 22 per cent in Sweden (BSHF, 2014, 10–11).44 Housing cooperatives are inevitably small in size but there are many that operate over a wider area such as a local authority (for example, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing).45 Larger organisations are better able to expand cooperative housing provision by developing and supporting new housing cooperatives, and promoting the form of a local housing cooperative at national level. BSHF (2014, 11) argue that housing cooperatives (and other forms of community housing such as cohousing, community land trusts and community self-build) can be scaled up without losing their self-organising character, and present four case studies from the US, Uruguay and Pakistan as evidence for this, including a federation of housing cooperatives (in Uruguay) and a national community land trust network (in the US). Some organisations try to operate on the ‘strawberry fields’ principle, whereby every new cooperative that is started is obliged to initiate other cooperatives once it is established. The largest developer of new build housing cooperatives in the UK, however, namely Redditch Cooperative Homes, is a partnership between the local authority and a housing association (Accord), created specifically to develop neighbourhood housing cooperatives, of which there are now five, with nearly 300 homes. Housing cooperatives certainly put their tenants in control of their housing, and clearly this alters the relationship between landlord and tenant – effectively, the tenants, as a collective body, have become their own landlord. From the tenants’ point of view, however, it can seem as if their position as tenants has not substantially changed. They still pay a rent to the cooperative as their landlord, asking for repairs to be done, and so on. They are now in a stronger position as customers to ensure that they get a quality service but they still have to pay for that service, if not in their rent then in participation in the cooperative’s governance and activities.46 This could then be the foundation for a valuable coproductive relationship between tenants and paid staff, which makes Rochdale Boroughwide Housing a particularly interesting model. In their study of German housing cooperatives, Brandsen and Helderman (2012) found that successful co-production depended primarily on the long-term maintenance of group boundaries and specific trajectories of

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organisational development.The former involved long-standing close-knit communities, often based on family ties, producing a cooperative with a closed membership,47 while typically in the latter case, a local authority made land available for cooperative housing development (as in the case of Redditch above) and supported residents to set up ‘housing communities’ (Brandsen and Helderman, 2012, 1149) to acquire and develop the land. This success, however, came at a price, in terms of being more risk-averse and inward-looking (‘more oriented towards satisfying the housing needs and demands of their members than towards contributing to local and regional housing issues’ (Brandsen and Helderman, 2012, 1153)). Brandsen and Helderman (2012, 1154) suggest that these limitations could be overcome by accommodating housing communities within the housing stock of larger cooperatives – perhaps along the lines of Redditch Cooperative Homes. Housing cooperatives have been found to be successful in other ways – mostly, no doubt, related to the quality of the co-production between tenants and staff.The research by Gulliver et al (2013), for example, found that housing cooperatives added social value beyond other forms of social housing – on personal and community wellbeing, health, employment access and progression and life chances – as well as outperforming all other landlord types on customer service, repairs and maintenance, dealing with complaints, looking after communal areas, helping with housing benefit, health and safety and neighbourhood safety (Handy and Gulliver, 2013, 48–9). By rejecting the traditional distinction between tenant and landlord, the movement for housing cooperatives may seem to be incompatible with the tenants’ movement, which is based precisely on this distinction, understood as a form of antagonism. Mathers and Taylor (2005, 28–9), however, argue that this difference merely reflects the fragmentation of the working class into categories (tenant, worker, and so on) – a fragmentation that they say should be challenged and resisted. From this point of view, housing cooperatives are to be understood as (potentially or prefiguratively) part of a wider process of democratising housing provision. The movement, then, is perhaps not a movement specifically for housing cooperatives but is part of a broader movement of the working class for collective control of its own housing. For this to succeed, even locally, special conditions may be required – for example, a tightly knit group of highly committed residents, a clear and visible threat (in the case of The Eldonians, the threat to destroy their homes), a decisive repulse of a potential threat (Royds Community Association’s winning of Single Regeneration Budget funding in competition against Bradford City Council), a golden opportunity (such as the Greater London Council’s gift of the OXO tower to Coin Street

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Community Builders), a strong spirit of social enterprise, and an enduring constituency of support (Somerville, 2011d, 95–7). Although criticised in Chapter Four, a community right to buy could be useful where such special conditions apply, to enable a group of concerned residents to take control of a valued community resource.48 Cohousing is a form of housing cooperative that originated in Denmark in the mid-1970s,49 and swiftly became established in Scandinavia, Germany and the US. A few co-housing communities have emerged in the UK over recent years, and now there are more than 60 projects in the pipeline (Sherwood, 2014 – for more information see www.cohousing. org.uk). Cohousing evokes (and perhaps invokes) the spirit of communalist communities discussed in Chapter Three and the Camphill communities in Box 7.1, where residents share communal facilities such as workshops, open space, play areas and a community building where they can meet and share meals as they wish.The most recent cohousing projects attempt to minimise their impact on the environment, using on-site and waste materials, consuming very little energy and recycling their own waste, resulting in considerably reduced living costs for residents – for example, LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community) in Leeds (www.lilac. coop). The political sophistication and network connectedness of these communities shows that housing cooperatives can succeed without being inward-looking or risk-averse.50

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to cover a considerable amount of ground. It turns out that housing is not only increasingly functional for capitalism and crucial for the neoliberal project, it is also at the heart of people’s attachment to place, which is a common foundation for the construction of community. The literature on gentrification in particular is vast, perhaps because it combines these two features of neoliberalisation and community-building (and destroying). Housing has been, and continues to be, a major arena of class struggle, and one that the working class appears to have been losing in the last 30 years or so.The prospects of decent, affordable housing for all have been constantly eroded and diminished in many countries (UK, US, France, Eire,Australia, New Zealand, Canada, for example), under successive governments, with harmful effects for many poorer communities.The UK Conservative government’s current policies look set to bring about the end of social housing altogether, bringing untold hardship and homelessness.To avoid the politics of despair, however, the chapter ends with a discussion of housing cooperatives, and of the prospects for community cooperatives in

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particular.The potential is there but the challenge is to scale up this effort to a national and international level.

Summary The relationship between housing and community is both more straightforward and more complicated than is the case for economic development, education or health. On one hand, housing is fixed in place and therefore most easily associated with communities of place. On the other hand, housing is mostly consumed privately, by individual households, not collectively, as a community good. Under capitalism, housing is basically property, whose owners can either live in it themselves or let it to others, but it also has use-value, meeting fundamental human needs. The high capital value of housing, however, has given it an increasingly important role in the capitalist system, particularly in the generation and exacerbation of economic crises. Housing supply and demand have also been crucial in determining many of the changes that have occurred to communities – in particular the gentrification and displacement of working-class communities, some of which has been sponsored, if not directly led, by governments. The effect, and in some cases the purpose, of these latter changes has been to increase the capital value of property that was previously of relatively low value. This has of course been to the detriment of those who cannot afford to pay the higher prices now being asked for. Thus are communities gradually eroded and destroyed. The chapter has considered anti-displacement struggles and the tenants’ movement more generally but sadly has not found much evidence of success. This is partly because these struggles are not well linked into wider struggles against capitalism but also perhaps because these struggles are mainly in defence of a systemically subordinate position, either as tenants or as owners of poor quality housing. Consistent with other chapters, this chapter has suggested that community-based housing co-operatives represent a more promising way forward, despite risks of depoliticisation through professional co-option and political recuperation.

Questions for discussion • To what extent do housing market crises reflect crises in capitalism more generally? What are the implications of this association for the relationship between housing and community? • How far does gentrification create community and how far does it erode or undermine community? • To what extent can a community of any kind be sustainable? • Do you agree that the record of community action on housing has not been very impressive, at least in the UK and in comparison with post-war governmental

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action? If so, how is this to be explained? Does this reflect a weakness in community action generally? • What are the prospects for expanding the provision of housing co-operatives and what are the barriers? How far do such co-operatives free their members from landlords while at the same time being accessible by the poorest households?

Further reading Aalbers, M. and Christophers, B. (2014) ‘Centring housing in political economy’, Housing, Theory and Society, vol 31, no 4, pp 373-94. Aalbers, M. and Gibb, K. (2014) ‘Housing and the right to the city: introduction to the special issue’, International Journal of Housing Policy, vol 14, no 3, pp 207-13. Bradley, Q. (2014) The tenants’ movement: Resident involvement, community action and the contentious politics of housing, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Forrest, R. and Hirayama, Y. (2015) ‘The financialisation of the social project: embedded liberalism, neoliberalism and home ownership’, Urban Studies, vol 52, no 2, pp 233-44. Forrest, R. and Yip, N.-M. (eds) (2011) Housing markets and the global financial crisis, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Somerville, P. (2016) ‘Coalition housing policy in England’, in H. Bochel and M. Powell (eds) Coalition social policy, Bristol: Policy Press. Uitermark, J., Nicholls, W. and Loopmans, M. (2012) ‘Cities and social movements: theorizing beyond the right to the city’, Environment and Planning A, vol 44, pp 2546-54.

Notes 1 2

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Amounting to two-thirds of all bank lending in 2009 (Turner, 2013). Taken together these amount to more or less the same as the precariat, described in Chapter Two. One problem with Aalbers and Christophers (2014) is their claim that housing is or should be central to political economy when in fact, as they themselves recognise, ‘the central category of political economy [is] capital’ (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014, 375). Arguably, housing is more correctly identified as a field, just as education and health are fields, and none of them are central to capitalism, which has no centre, anyway. The possibility must be considered, however, that housing does indeed play a more central role. Schwartz (2012), for example, argues that the financialisation of housing was a key factor in causing the global financial crisis in 2007, as a result of the securitisation of mortgages and the macro mismatching of these long-term liabilities in housing finance to long-term assets such as pensions. ‘The colonisation of many areas within towns and cities that were previously considered too “dangerous”, either as areas for financial investment or personal

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safety, has been a defining feature of the current urban renaissance. A socially selective embracing of the central city by empty-nesters, gay households and young professionals has spread well beyond London’s centripetal forces’ (Atkinson, 2006, 821). Interestingly, Atkinson describes the process of gentrification in terms that seem to echo the encapsulation of workingclass communities described in Chapter One, claiming to detect practices of ‘insulation’, ‘incubation’ and ‘incarceration’ that correspond to gentrifiers’ activities of pioneering, home-building and defending, respectively (Atkinson, 2006, 825).What the middle-class gentrifiers are defending, however, is primarily their own private property rather than a public space or shared amenity. As colonists, the gentrifiers are actually aggressors, while the encapsulated workingclass people are fighting to defend their community from an external threat (which in some cases comes from gentrifiers). Goetz (2012, 342) reports that: ‘Remarkable real estate booms have occurred where public housing has been demolished in Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and elsewhere.’ This strongly suggests a process of government-led gentrification (page 340), following the displacement of the original population, most of whom end up living nearby in ‘other high poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods that are marginally better than the public housing neighborhoods they left’ (page 342). In rural areas, for example, Somerville (2013b) has argued that historically in the UK a decline of agricultural employment, in combination with governmental restrictions on non-agricultural development, has indirectly displaced workers from those areas (see also Hunt and Satterlee, 1986, 521:‘Many of its [the English village’s] once resident working-class inhabitants have had to leave the village as a result both of rising house prices and the lack of job opportunities’). Similarly, Sturzaker and Shucksmith (2011) have shown how exclusionary displacement in rural areas has been achieved through misrecognition and symbolic violence, where ‘sustainable communities’ are constructed in such a way as to prevent development and protect the wealthy and privileged. Mostly, however, they display the usual characteristics of a working-class habitus noted in Chapter One, but one that is more ethnically diverse, beleaguered and precarious (Gunter and Watt, 2009; Kennelly and Watt, 2012; Watt, 2013, 105). For an account of how a thriving community was devalued and then destroyed to make way for the Athlete’s Village in the 2012 London Olympics (and for post-Olympics gentrification), see Cheyne (2009) on the Clays Lane estate (see also Hatcher, 2012, on the aftermath of this). Interestingly, similar accounts have been written concerning the effects of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, which included ‘the virtual eradication of public schools… and their replacement by publicly funded, but privately run, for-profit charter schools (a process that saw job losses of many erstwhile teachers in the public

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school system, and is widely perceived as having reversed the gains of the civil rights movement regarding the same standard of education for all children)’ (Olivier, 2009; see also Slater, 2008, 212–13; see, especially, Boyer, 2014, in particular the elimination of public housing and the construction of gated and exclusive enclaves – the denial of any right to the city for its poor and black citizens; and Arena, 2012, on the co-opting of NGOs and academics into this revanchist agenda), and similarly the displacement of fishing villages in Sri Lanka to make way for ‘world class’ resorts following the devastating tsunami (Klein, 2007). See also Cremin (2011, 49) on the ‘projective city’ and Chapter Four of this book. Contra Paton et al (2012), the focus is on both production and consumption. Also, urban regeneration or gentrification policy is not necessarily ‘crucially concerned with the regulation, management, control and social reproduction of particular populations’ (Paton et al, 2012, 1472) – for some populations, in particular those made homeless (often as a result of displacement), it is concerned with achieving their exclusion, transformation or even elimination (see Murphy, 2009, and Gowan, 2010, on San Francisco). Many governments are simply unconcerned about where the populations they displace end up.This is particularly the case with exclusionary displacement, where governments feel free to claim that they lack responsibility for the problem (Somerville, 2013a). See www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkZqgcj0n8. A similar well-publicised example, but of a private estate with low rents, is New Era estate in Hackney, where the tenants successfully resisted an attempt to raise their rents to market levels with a view to driving them out in order to facilitate a lucrative redevelopment (Duxbury, 2015). Other London boroughs just seem congenitally hopeless at even communicating with their tenants, for example, Lambeth (Parkes, 2014), or else they just don’t care, for example, Barnet (see www.facebook.com/pages/Barnet-HousingAction-Group/462079237237388). Occasionally, residents can also use the law to resist displacement. For example, in the UK, council tenants on two estates in London facing demolition have served notice of plans to transfer their homes into community ownership, in order to halt an £8 billion regeneration scheme in the Earls Court area (‘Earls Court tenants serve transfer notice’, Inside Housing, 14 August 2015, 5). Many black communities in US cities appear to be in this position: they are not being gentrified, just neglected, with the result that the gentrification that does take place perpetuates racial and ethnic inequality (see, for example, Hwang, 2015, on Chicago and Seattle). This is yet another example of a neocolonial and managerial mentality.What is reported as positive about MINCies, such as increasing property prices and lower turnover, is not necessarily positive at all, or else it is at least partly the result of

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gentrification, such as increased demand for vacated homes (being bought by the gentrifiers) or higher levels of tenant satisfaction (because the less satisfied tenants are more likely to have left) (Martin and Watkinson, 2003). Of course in some cases residents of MINCies will get on well enough together (Allen et al, 2005) but the reasons for this have nothing to do with their community being a MINCy. Actually, this problematisation is very old, going back at least to the 1970s. Much so-called regeneration is of course not aimed at helping communities at all but simply at making profits for capital (see, for example, Minton, 2009), even if this rides roughshod over community needs and interests. Some commentators go further, pointing out that regeneration in some cases involves the actual removal or exclusion of certain groups from the area, for example, bans on ‘hoodies’ (from the Bluewater shopping centre), and the elimination of rough sleepers from the streets of London, in preparation for the Olympics in 2012 (CLG, 2008d). For further comment and critique see Harrison et al (2005), Phillips (2006), Finney and Simpson (2009) and Beider (2012). These adjacent areas cover a substantial proportion of England. Similarly, Letki (2008) found that, in Britain, racial and cultural diversity had only a limited effect in eroding people’s sense of neighbourhood community, especially when compared with the effects of economic deprivation. In practice, however, the effects of race and income can be difficult to distinguish, and there is no straightforward relationship between deprivation and neighbourhood attachment (see Chapter One). For example, many people have ambivalent relationships to their neighbourhoods, with strong positive and negative feelings, for example, positive to some neighbours and negative to others, or having strong supportive networks but few assets and a poor environment. Letki’s argument is weak because she recognises that context is crucial (page 120) but her methodological approach treats context only in an abstract general way – no actual neighbourhood is examined. Ferrari (2012, 265), for example, refers to an aim of housing market renewal being to achieve a ‘more balanced sociospatial mix’. He provides no idea of what this might mean but manages to discuss ‘diversity’ without mentioning race or ethnicity at all. On the other hand, Dean (2008) tells the story of Gort, a small culturally homogeneous community in Galway, which managed to accommodate an influx of Brazilians from 1999 amounting to 40 per cent of the householders in the town, apparently without experiencing any particular problems at all. She writes: ‘What is revealing about the situation in Gort is the disparity between people’s lived experience of immigration where the established population simply get on with engaging with new locals, and the anxious nature of the wider public discussion, which frets about the problems that immigrants can cause’ (Dean, 2008, 142).This has striking resonances with

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the situation today in countries such as the UK and Australia. See also Chapter Nine. Flint (2012a, 254) suggests that there have been similar programmes in other countries – the US, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Australia. See, in particular, Goetz (2012) on the HOPE VI programme in the US. Ferrari (2012, 274) even talks of achieving ‘a socially just balance between use and exchange value’, which makes no sense at all – or makes whatever sense you want it to make. Cole (2012, 360) says categorically: ‘there was no programme-wide study, of even the most cursory kind, of community impact’. And the lack of evidence ‘makes it impossible to measure how far HMR plans for demolition, for example, affected residents’ attachment to place, disrupted communities and caused displacement’. Strictly speaking, the ‘space of positions’ here is the field of a housing market. One of the characteristics of an encapsulated community is that its habitus is not integrated with the field that encapsulates it.Agents in this field, or representing the positions in this field, simply do not recognise the boundaries that are so important for an encapsulated community. Pinkney and Saraga (2009) show that many communities in the UK have mobilised against newcomers (for example, local anti-asylum seeker campaigns in 2000), while few have campaigned to support newcomers who have settled into the community (for example, anti-deportation campaigns such as in Shetland in 2004). Similar high levels of objection are made to proposals for hostels for homeless people or people with mental health problems, for travellers’ sites, wind farms, industrial units and so on – virtually anything that could have the effect of reducing the value of residents’ assets or neighbourhood amenities. An example from somewhere between these two extremes (but probably more towards the conservationist position) is the world’s first garden city, Letchworth (Hilditch, 2015a). Here, people are protesting against the proposal for over 1,500 new homes, mostly on one greenfield site on the northern edge of the city, which would increase the number of homes in Letchworth by over 10 per cent. However, they are not opposed to development as such, but only to the large single-site location, and argue that there are sufficient brownfield sites within the city that could be built on – an argument that is flatly contradicted by North Hertfordshire District Council. These rent strikes involved 100,000 council tenants in 80 local authority areas. Martínez López (2013, 881) argues cogently that the squatters’ movement in Europe has evolved as ‘a genuine autonomous urban movement’ over the last 40 years (for a more global perspective, see Corr, 1999). As suggested above, however, squatters could also be understood as integral to a wider ‘precariat’.

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Aalbers and Gibb (2014) use the expression ‘right to belonging to a place’, but I reject the term ‘belonging to’ for the reasons stated in Chapter One. And of course this is not a legal or natural right but a political claim or reclaiming of place (not just urban space but any space) by the dispossessed working class people across the world – see, for example, Whose streets? Our streets! at www. waronwant.org/righttothecity; and www.righttothecity.org. With the current revival of private renting, new private tenants’ action groups are springing up, to challenge rogue private landlords and improve housing conditions – for example, Edinburgh Private Tenants Action Group, Scarborough Organisation of Private Tenants, and Hackney Digs, in addition to the longstanding ones, such as Camden Federation of Private Tenants (established in 1980) (Pooler, 2013). For example, the disabled people’s movement (Oliver, 1990), organisations of people with mental health problems (Barnes, 1999; Barnes et al, 2007), and of people with learning difficulties (Phillips, 1992). For the latest account of black and minority ethnic housing associations in Britain as part of a community-based social movement, see Human City Institute (2015). This emphasis on local attachment has nothing in common with governmental agendas of localism (see discussion of ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘new localism’ in Chapter Four), which are about making populations more governable, divide and rule, devolving responsibility without power, and cultivating and empowering local elites that are more sympathetic to the neoliberal project (see, for example, Jacobs and Manzi, 2013, 40). McCormack (2009) found that the most common attitude attributed to tenants of one local authority towards ballots on whether their housing should be transferred to another landlord was ‘better the devil you know’ – an attitude that he deconstructs as ambivalent, incurious, risk-averse, fatalistic, passive, unimaginative and conservative (page 395), rather than hopeful and forwardlooking, as one would expect from a social movement. He links this with Freire’s concept of submerged consciousness, produced by abjectifying and dehumanising oppressor–oppressed relations. Even the more active tenants display ‘naïve transitivity’ (anger, rebelliousness, polemics and oversimplification of issues) (page 397) more than critical consciousness.The tenants’ movement, therefore, does not look like a movement for transformational change. This is not to say, however, that their submerged consciousness cannot be changed into critical consciousness. In keeping with the argument of this book, McCormack (2009) also found that many of the local housing authority’s own staff, ‘particularly those in manual and low-paid jobs’ (page 408), manifested a similar sense of submerged consciousness, having ‘more in common with the tenants than they did with their senior colleagues and elected council members.’ He concluded that ‘the oppressors [that is, the dominant class] appear not so

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much to be the council per se but a bureaucratic elite consisting of politicians, senior council staff and agents’. The mystification of capitalist exploitation described in Chapter Two thus helps to explain the submerged consciousness of (working-class) council tenants. On stock transfer, the only critical line to take on key decisions is to abstain (which most tenant activists did) because voting either for or against transfer would only signal conformity to the established regime (either by accepting the landlord’s preference for transfer or by showing preference for retaining the status quo). In the interests of fairness, it seems pertinent to acknowledge here the improvements made to the quality of social housing and housing management that occurred under the New Labour government in the UK (Pawson and Jacobs, 2010). Also, for historical background on UK policy on community involvement in housing management, see Pawson and Jacobs (2010, 33). See also discussion of abject communities in Chapter One of this book. This of course penalises the ‘hard-working families’ that this government claims to support (Foster, 2015). See, for example, the section on housing market renewal above. A similar argument can be made (and even more strongly) in relation to the payment of taxes. Taxpayers should receive a service from government in return for the taxes they pay but the relationship between government and taxpayers is far from being one of service producers and consumers. Citizens are (politically) obliged to pay tax, just as tenants are (contractually) obliged to pay rent, and in return they enjoy citizenship rights (or tenants’ rights) of various kinds. However, political obligations are not the same as contractual ones – there is no such thing as a ‘social contract’. It seems that even this may be an over-statement as at least one of these four had a governing board in which tenants comprised less than half the members (Turner, 2013). Handy and Gulliver (2013, 45) refer to European Union norms of 5–15 per cent, 5 per cent in Canada, 12 per cent in Turkey, and 1 per cent in the US; Brandsen and Helderman (2012) state that in Germany housing cooperatives account for around 10 per cent of the housing market. As Duncan and Rowe (1993, 1352) noted long ago, ‘self-provided housing [housing cooperatives typically provide housing for themselves] plays a central role in the housing supply systems of most advanced capitalist countries’. In Britain, however, ‘an unholy alliance of speculative builders (who feared competition from selfproviders), public bureaucrats (who feared people running their own lives) and the establishment (afraid of the democratisation of the countryside) put paid to recurrent surges of popular interest in self-provided housing – all in the name of orderly planning and conservation’ (Duncan and Rowe, 1993, 1343). Rochdale Borough Council transferred its housing to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing in 2013. The cooperative has 4,500 tenant and employee members,

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who elect 15 tenant, eight employee, two local authority and up to three external representatives to their representative body. 46 Hence Brandsen and Helderman’s (2012, 1149–50) finding that housing cooperatives in Germany did not differ radically from the housing corporations in the Netherlands (which are similar to housing associations in UK and HLM – habitations à loué modéré – in France). 47 ‘It is true that residents stay in their homes longer, that there are close relations between managers and residents, and that there was a relatively large amount of contact between residents’ (Brandsen and Helderman, 2012, 1150). In the terminology used in this book, therefore, these are ‘community cooperatives’ (see Chapter Five), providing and managing housing for specific communities – successful housing cooperatives are community housing cooperatives. This point would seem to apply also to the resident-led organisations discussed by Somerville (2011d, 95–7) – cooperatives in spirit, if not quite in their legal form. 48 A community right to buy has been in force in Scotland since 2004. For an evaluation of its impact see Scottish Government (2015). 49 The original cohousing community was Christiania in Copenhagen, established in 1971 (for the most recent detailed account, see Jarvis, 2013). 50 For a more international perspective on cohousing and ecovillages, see Litfin (2014). An ecovillage involves cohousing but also includes economic activity, education and organic farming in an integration of housing, food, learning, work and play.

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nine Community policing Community policing is here understood in terms of a negotiated relationship between communities and policing agencies, working together to solve community problems. The success of community policing depends on communities being able to police themselves to a large extent, and on policing agencies being able to delegate to front-line officers the authority to decide (in co-operation with the community) how the community should be policed and what should be the priorities for police action. In practice, however, communities do not always police themselves very well, police organisation continues to be very hierarchical (based on outdated militaristic models), with little delegation to the front line or accountability to the community for decisions made, and front-line officers do not necessarily pay attention to community opinion or feeling. In addition, ‘community policing’ has often been used cynically as a way to cover up a failure to ‘solve crime’ rather than being a serious attempt to engage with and support communities, and make the justice system work for them. The chapter looks at UK policing policy and practice in particular over recent years, which has produced a confusing fragmentation of community policing provision and revealed lack of understanding of how communities might be usefully engaged in policing. Policy approaches have relied on crude stereotyping of people and communities (e.g. contrasting ‘respectable’, ‘law-abiding’ and ‘hardworking’ with ‘disreputable’, ‘law-breaking’ and ‘irresponsible’), resulting in mainly punitive, largely misplaced, often ineffective and sometimes counter-productive ‘civilising offensives’ against a variety of what were seen by governments as more or less easy targets such as ‘anti-social behaviour’ and ‘troubled families’. The implementation of these policies at ground level, however, has resulted in a wide variation in practice across the UK, particularly where local agencies and frontline workers have been able to make their own interpretations, reach their own decisions and use their own discretion in their relationships with service users and their communities. The extent of this variation is not well understood. The example of the 2011 riots serves to show how an institutionalised ignorance of both the bases of community action and the role played by community policing in

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contemporary capitalist society is maintained and reinforced. It appears to be true that the only lesson learned from history is that nothing is learned from history.

The nature of policing Since the time of Aristotle (1976), if not earlier, it has been recognised that there exist forms of what might be called moral order, which involve methods and techniques whereby the behaviour of a society’s members is characterised by a certain level of peace and productivity. The number of such forms of moral order, however, is potentially infinite.At different times in history, it has been viewed as perfectly ‘in order’, for example, to own slaves, to kill disobedient wives and children, to commit incest, to invade neighbouring territories without provocation and to rape, enslave and kill their inhabitants, to kill those of a different religious faith or ideology, to steal from the poor and defenceless and evict them from their homes, and so on. A moral order is therefore not necessarily a ‘good’ or ethical order in the way that term is understood today.This raises the question, however, of whether we do actually have a common sense of a moral order today, or whether the form of that order might vary from one community to another.1 Sayer (2005a, 948) argues that such a common moral sense does exist and he calls it ‘lay normativity’ or ‘lay morality’. At the heart of this conception is the principle of valuing, caring about and being concerned for oneself and others – that is to say, respect (Somerville, 2009a, 140). It is important to bear in mind that this lay normativity may not involve equal valuing of others and may be compatible with a wide variety of discriminatory constructions such as classism (see, for example, Sayer, 2005b), racism, sexism, heterosexism, or disablism. However, it does seem to include at least a general principle of non-harm to others, providing those others do not pose a threat to oneself. Arguably, this represents an advance over the eighteenth century, for example, when the slave trade was in full flow and aggressive imperial wars were fought with little apparent consideration for the huge loss of life involved.2 It is to be expected, in any event, that lay normativity will vary according to the nature of the ‘laity’. In today’s ‘consumer society’, for example, it may appear that only those who consume are really respected (Millie, 2009, 208). Whatever the reality (or lack of it) of lay normativity on the world stage, Somerville (2009a, 245) argues that mutual respect on the basis of equality of citizenship is necessary for orderly interaction in a democratic society. Otherwise, some citizens would be considered as being of lower value than others, which, apart from being disrespectful, would mean that

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their voices would carry less weight. As Dee Cook (2006, 21) points out, this can lead to a sense of injustice and therefore to conflict and disorder: ‘ If a society cannot guarantee “the equal worth of all citizens”, mutual- and self-respect and the meeting of all needs, it cannot expect that all citizens will feel they have an equal stake in abiding by the law.’ This statement is perhaps slightly misleading, in that abiding by the law does not require that all citizens must feel that they have the same stake in it (some will have more to gain than others from abiding by the law – or more to lose from not abiding by it). The important implication of what Cook says, however, is that unequal valuing of citizens, on any basis (class, race, gender, age, disability, sexuality, and so on), tends to create a situation where disorder is more likely. This could help to explain why, if we exclude states that are failed or are experiencing open civil war (such as Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, or Syria), crime and disorder are highest in countries such as South Africa (with its history of apartheid), India (with its caste system), Brazil (with its continuing oppression of indigenous peoples) and of course the US (where only the richest can access political power and the poorest are largely disenfranchised). In the beloved community, which is a democratic community, every member is valued equally with all the others, and policing (of whatever kind there may be) is cooperatively organised and accountable to communities and democratically elected authorities. The concept of the beloved community also makes clear that freedom and order are mutually constituted – the flourishing of every individual member secures the order of the community as a whole.3 This is the only true basis for an ethical community order. A distinction can therefore be drawn between this ideal form of community order and that which actually exists, namely different forms of lay normativity or different ordered ways of ‘going on’ in habitus. The maintenance of order of any kind, whatever its context (such as the family, the community, the market or the state) can be called ‘policing’ (see Loader, 2000, 334). The term ‘policing’ therefore has a much wider connotation than activities carried out by the public police. As Neocleous (2000, 10) argues, the terms ‘policing’ and ‘policy’ have the same root, and all policy is, to some extent, concerned with the maintenance of order. For example, as Rodger (2008, 5) reports (following Squires, 1990), the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 ‘was a system of welfare that was primarily concerned to police entitlement to benefits in a context of building a disciplinary society that would complement the needs of the growing and developing capitalist economy’ (italics mine). This has been the role of ‘welfare’ ever since, with the result that all the government policies considered in previous chapters of this book have been formulated,

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developed and implemented with a view to establishing, maintaining and/ or improving order, whether this be public, social, political, economic, moral, aesthetic, community or whatever.4 When unequal valuing of citizens is reflected in the machinery of government, the inevitable result is problematic policy – policy whose internal contradictions are the outcome of struggles within the wider society. Many reforms do indeed help those who are disadvantaged while at the same time reinforcing their disadvantaged position.This has been found to happen for minority ethnic individuals and communities (Prior and Spalek, 2008, 124, in relation to anti-social behaviour; Burnett, 2009) and for gay and lesbian people (Bibbings, 2009, 46). Bibbings (2009, 46–7), for example, points out that legal changes have brought real progress in putting an end to ‘appropriate’ sexuality as being exclusively hetero, for example, with the recognition of same-sex civil partnerships (and now same-sex marriages).There is, however, still some way to go before homosexuals and heterosexuals are valued equally in society – formal legal equality does not immediately translate into equality in everyday practice. At one end of the spectrum, therefore, policing can be understood very narrowly, in terms of the activities of public police services, while at the other end it can be interpreted very widely, as the maintenance of order by any form of agency with the requisite power or authority. Community policing specifically then means the activities of agencies in maintaining order in communities. The police are the main agency here, but other agencies include social workers, youth workers, housing officers, private security firms, magistrates, probation officers and the public generally. As we have seen in earlier chapters, however, for example in relation to self-organising community economic development, communities of practice in learning, health and social care and housing communities, policing, too, can be selforganised – that is, the community is seen as policing itself. Typically, this occurs on an informal basis; that is, without the intervention of particular formal organisations.

Public self-policing Perhaps the earliest exponent of this idea of self-organised policing was Jane Jacobs (1961). She pointed out that routine mutual monitoring and surveillance of one another by people going about their daily business tended to reduce the incidence of behaviour that might commonly be regarded as transgressive, anti-social or criminal – behaviour that is literally ‘out of order’.This finding, of the effectiveness of informal mutual action, has been supported by nearly all subsequent research, in a variety of contexts, including socially excluded communities (Suttles, 1972; Shapland

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and Vagg, 1988; Foster, 1995; IPPR and PWC, 2010, 14–17; Taylor, 2011, 98). Since then, a number of attempts have been made to explain her findings.These attempts can be summarised in the argument that potential transgressors are deterred by the perceived risk that others might intervene or might bear witness against them later on, or perhaps by the shame that might be attached to being seen as a transgressor. Readiness to intervene (that is, ability and willingness to intervene) is a key factor in public self-policing (see, for example, Nieuwenhuis et al, 2013). Studies have shown, however, that bystanders do not usually intervene where transgressions take place (assaults, damage to property, dropping litter, and so on).This is so for a number of reasons: they have difficulty in noticing the incident in the first place, then in interpreting it as a transgressive act that calls for intervention, and finally, in actually intervening to provide help (for example, because of the fear or perceived risk of harm to themselves) (Latane and Darley, 1970; Margo, 2008; IPPR and PWC, 2010, 15–16). Deciding to run this risk is more likely where the transgressor is known to the witness and also where the witness is known to them; where it occurs in the witness’s own immediate neighbourhood (Harris, 2006, 64); where fellow bystanders are seen as people like them (Levine and Reicher, 2001, 3); where the authorities are perceived as responsive, effective, supportive or trustworthy (Silver and Miller, 2004, 558; IPPR and PWC, 2010, 16); and where the witness recognises a responsibility/duty to intervene or an intrinsic value in intervening (Hawdon et al, 2003; Barnes and Baylis, 2004, 101), or an instrumental value, for example, to protect their reputation (Raub and Weesie, 1990).5 Conditions of shared habitus, supportive neighbours, reliable authorities and self-confidence or sense of obligation are therefore all key to effective community self-policing. The lessons from this body of evidence are that the decision to intervene is conditional upon trusting that other people and the authorities will support, or at least not undermine, one’s intervention, and upon having a certain social status or reputation in a community and responsibilities associated with that status. In many situations where a transgression takes place, however, such trust is lacking and there is no witness with sufficient ‘clout’ in the community to risk challenging the transgressor. In these situations, therefore, self-policing is of limited value in maintaining order. What is needed in addition are dedicated policing organisations who will work with the grain of local community self-policing in order to achieve successful interventions – in other words, a relationship of co-production between police and community. In practice, a big problem with public or community self-policing is not that people disagree on what counts as a transgression, but that they disagree about whether a given event or type of event is transgressive. Everyone

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would agree, for example, that excessive noise is transgressive but some people are far more sensitive than others about levels of noise, persistence of noise, different types of noise, noise at different times of the day, and so on.Where the interpretations of different neighbours clash on such issues, there is often a need for mediation and negotiation. Usually, this solves the problem but, where it does not, intervention of some kind is required. In the absence of impartial and trustworthy policing organisations, such intervention may involve ‘rough justice’, namely arbitrary, inconsistent and often partisan judgements and penalties.6 Some forms of public self-policing can be actually harmful for the community – for example, where the community is dominated by criminal gangs (for example, drug dealers, see May et al, 2006), whose rule is typically reinforced by an ‘anti-grassing’ culture (see references in Somerville, 2009b, 264), where members of the public take the law into their own hands (that is, vigilantism), where communities are ruled or defended by gang law and vigilantism (Suttles, 1972), and where communities are deeply illiberal, unequal, hierarchical or divided, for example along racial lines, or ignorant and insensitive, for example, on drugs issues (Shiner et al, 2004, 9). In all these cases, intervention by members of the public tends to have harmful effects, whether this be in terms of punishment or retaliation by gang members and vigilantes, or open conflict between different social and ethnic groups (who may themselves be organised into gangs). For all these reasons, public self-policing has to be governed by an independent, impartial ‘rule of law’ – an ideal of ‘natural justice’ (Rodger, 2008, 11) (which also, of course, has to govern the actions of policing organisations).7 Notwithstanding these problems, public self-policing plays an important role in maintaining order in many (perhaps most) communities. It is interesting to note, for example, how communities have acted in the face of disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, not to mention 9/11 (see Solnit, 2009). Rather than a Hobbesian war of all against all in the absence of any clear authority, with widespread panic, mob rule, looting, arson, rape, and so on, one finds a feeling akin to joy among the survivors, as people pull together in the aftermath, spontaneously gathering, socialising and helping one another.The problems after the disaster come, not from the people, but from the elite, whose claim to authority has been undermined by the disaster itself and who are prepared to use armed force to regain that authority (for an excellent example of this in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, see Mooney, 2008; on the problems in reconstructing New Orleans after the hurricane, see Boyer, 2014).These examples of public self-policing are all the more important for occurring in such desperate circumstances.8 One could contrast them with the episodes of huge destruction of human life – genocides, wars, and so on – that

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have universally been carried out at the express command of political and military elites. In most situations, therefore, it seems that a basic confidence in the legitimacy of public self-policing may not be misplaced.

The binary stereotyping of people and communities In Chapter One, we saw that people growing up in encapsulated communities find that their choices are restricted in determinate ways, and these restrictions can lead them into adopting transgressive forms of behaviour as a means of surviving in those communities. It seems, therefore, that transgressors may differ from others, not so much in terms of their dispositions to action as in terms of the contexts within which they act.9 It is perhaps partly this contextual variation that has given rise to the crude stereotyping of certain neighbourhoods, communities and social groups as problematic for social order – in particular, Tony Blair’s division of the people into the ‘innately decent’ and the ‘others’ (see Stephen, 2008, 329).10 Rodger (2008, 113) describes an example of this binary opposition (identified here as a division between ‘decent families’ and ‘street families’) from Anderson’s (1999) research in Philadelphia: The ‘street families’ perceived conventional society as a social order that had humiliated them through racist practices and disadvantaged them through social and economic policies that left them isolated in communities without welfare support or opportunities for well-paid and dignified work. In those circumstances, conventional society lost its legitimacy and the ‘street families’ adhered to an ‘outlaw culture’ in which workingclass values of social solidarity and unionism were replaced by a ‘code of the street’… the young men of the lower-class community adopt styles of behaviour, language and codes that embrace criminality, and sexist and abusive attitudes to nonfamily females, in order to preserve integrity on the streets. This is similar to the distinction discussed in Chapter Two between ‘roughs’ and ‘respectables’, but here the argument is even more insidious because it appears to attribute a wide range of characteristics, behaviours, values and even identities to an entire social group, namely ‘young men of the lower-class community’ (this could of course just be code for ‘African American’, reflecting material racial divisions in US society). It is potentially harmful to assume that all young men, or even a majority of young men, living in the same community, respond in the same way to changes in the economy and wider society, because it can be used to justify enforcement

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interventions against whole communities or social groups. This is not to imply, however, that there is no problem here: Squires (2009), for example, is clear that the code of the street involves the use of violence,1 and this is inherently self-destructive. Some scholars see transgressors as victims of their environments, choosing to transgress, usually out of fear, in order to survive in socially excluded communities (Rodger, 2008, 189) – Pitts (2008), for example, talks of ‘reluctant gangsters’. Evidence suggests, however, that only a minority of young men in such communities join gangs or commit serious offences, so this looks like just another negative stereotype if applied to the community as a whole.There is also a tendency to focus on transgressions of a particular type, such as public violence, and ignore transgressions of other kinds, which occur in all types of community, most notably the ‘crimes of the powerful’ (Hall, 2009, xv). The truth is that we are all capable of transgression, including serious transgression. We all begin our lives transgressing, and life itself can be represented as a process of learning to desist from some transgressions and to succumb to others (possibly even the same ones at a different time) (see, for example, Williamson, 2006). We are much more likely to transgress in some contexts than others but, in any given context, given the choice, some of us will transgress and others will not. Governmental approaches to policing tend to reflect these binary stereotypes, in that there are policies for the ‘law-abiding’ and policies for the ‘others’, for example, ‘civil renewal’ and ‘active citizenship’ for the former, and ‘civilising offensives’ (Flint and Powell, 2009, 221) for the latter.12 The policies of democratic governments, however, have usually involved a more or less complex unity of care and control – care through control or control through care (an indissoluble mix of sovereign power, disciplinary power and what Foucault called pastoral power, in order to achieve governable subjects – see Chapter Four).13 The so-called ‘welfare state’, for example, has always been also a ‘warfare state’ – the Labour government that established the National Health Service, free secondary education, national assistance, and so on, was the same one that introduced Britain’s nuclear deterrent and attempted to re-establish Britain’s global military role. The welfare state itself has always been at least as much about control and discipline (for example, through compulsory schooling of children, or the policing of families by social workers) as it has been about welfare – indeed an element of control has been assumed by those in authority to be essential for welfare (‘for their own good’).14 In relation to offenders in particular, the criminal justice system has always been about the detection and apprehension (and thus control) of offenders, and their welfare has been considered only to the extent required to prevent them from re-offending (so-called ‘rehabilitation’ or ‘resettlement’).15

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Community policing in practice Community policing is generally understood to mean a combination of three components: police (understood as uniformed police officers) and community working together (that is, co-production), a community problem-solving approach (as contrasted both with responsive policing, that is, reacting to reports of crime being committed, and with an approach where the problem is defined by the police themselves or by government), and organisational decentralisation (neighbourhood policing teams) (Oliver, 1998, 32–43, 51). These three components are linked, in that neighbourhood policing teams are seen as necessary for working closely with communities, while an approach that seeks to identify communities’ crime problems and their causes, and the priorities of different communities for dealing with those problems, follows from the police having a deeper involvement with those communities. At the heart of the idea of community policing, therefore, is a coproductive relationship between police and public, which aims to reassure the public and prevent crime rather than simply fighting crime. Police officers, individually and collectively, are expected to work with a local community towards agreeing on common aims and objectives, with everyone learning to trust one another, and including all citizens in decision-making forums of police and community representatives (see Shiner et al, 2004, 45–6, for an illustration of how this can work in practice). Evidence from the US, at least from Chicago (Skogan, 1994; Skogan and Hartnett, 1997), suggests that such community policing can have a significant impact in reducing community problems and improving the quality of community life. In other parts of the world, where it has the effect of increasing the perceived legitimacy of the police, the maintenance of social order is likely to improve (see list of references in Renauer, 2007, 64).16 There is also evidence that community self-policing ‘can be enhanced by bringing police and residents closer together, particularly through police-resident collaborations or partnerships’ (Renauer, 2007, 63). These results may be exceptional, however, because so many initiatives across the world that call themselves ‘community policing’ are not clearly linked to community development or crime prevention. Brogden and Nijhar (2005), for example, concluded that in most areas in most countries the impacts of introducing community policing have been harmful, mainly because they take no account either of local community conditions (in particular how communities police themselves) or the state of local police forces (who are frequently corrupt, violent, feared, hated and/or despised).17 Even in Chicago, ‘residents are not involved in the development of solutions to their problems or in how those solutions

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might be implemented’ (Somerville, 2009b, 266). Where they exist at all, community policing forums are dominated by the police and tend to reflect only minority views within the community (Brogden and Nijhar, 2005, 54–5).The main problem seems to be that community policing is often overshadowed by traditional police organisation (Hough, 2003), that is, ‘command and control structures dedicated to law enforcement and crime fighting’ whose ‘accountability to communities remains vague and very much at the discretion of the police themselves’ (Somerville, 2009b, 267). Brogden and Nijhar (2005) concluded that community policing is an ideology or set of powerful myths (see also Robin, 2000, and Manning, 2004),18 which resonates well with the rhetoric of ‘new public management’ of public services – conceived as a way of delivering policing products to an increasingly diverse community of consumers. Paradoxically, however, the reality of this new public management, with its emphasis on performance effectiveness and technocratic efficiency, only reinforces the traditional core police mandate of crime control, so that community policing acts merely as a strategic buffer against criticism for failing to solve crime (Zhao, 1996).19 In other words:‘Community-oriented policing is an excellent PR tool for an organisation that cannot “solve crime” but which seeks to assure the community that it is “doing something”’ (Brogden and Nijhar, 2005, 78). In practice, what happens is that: the police determine the nature of the community, its problems, and how such problems should be responded to. Other community problems – unemployment, bad housing, poor health facilities, and so on – are now constructed as second order problems. Recognising the latter as a greater priority than crime, or as the real cause of crime, would diminish the police autonomy and authority in determining communal social order and communal values. It precludes intervention by non-police agencies. Community policing allows the police to coordinate those other agencies under its own banner and leadership to solve its definition of the priority of community problems. (Brogden and Nijhar, 2005, 65) Community policing in practice is therefore about governmentality, certainly, but it is also about the agency of ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980) or the power exercised by front-line practitioners (Somerville, 2015). Only rarely, however, has it been about genuine engagement with real communities (Rosenbaum, 1994; Schneider, 1999), which might be regarded as characteristic of what community policing should be about.

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Restorative justice has been defined as a process ‘where all stakeholders affected by an injustice have an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and to decide what should be done to repair the harm’ (Braithwaite, 2004, 28).This involves not only reacting to injustices already committed but also, through public conferences, small group meetings and one-to-one dialogues, a focus on preventative measures and on building relationships in a variety of public service contexts, including community work, children’s homes, nurseries and schools as well as police forces, thus enabling communities of practice among professionals beyond the public police, based on communities of the school, workplace and small neighbourhood (Lambert, 2014). However, conferences are known to surface community divisions and lead to miscarriages of justice (Johnstone, 2002) and depend for their success on cooperation between offenders and victims. Where the wider community has not been involved, public conferences have the potential to voice their feelings in such a way that, through vengefulness or lack of understanding, they destroy the restoration process (see Lambert, 2014, 305, for an example of such a conference).This problem highlights the importance of community mediation (Liebmann, 2007), which has the potential to go far beyond what is usually envisaged by restorative approaches (Somerville and Steele, 1996).

The case of the UK The general emphasis of governmental approaches in the UK over the last 20 years or so, to policing just as to other areas considered in this book, has been on developing active citizens, active consumers (of private security) and active communities, with individuals, organisations and communities being increasingly expected to assume responsibility for managing their own crime risks, while policing organisations are increasingly expected to support that management by being responsive and contractually accountable to individuals, organisations and communities (Crawford, 1997; Loader, 2000, 331; Spalek, 2008, 94) – so-called ‘government through community’ (Rose, 1996a). All governments since New Labour, therefore, have aimed to strengthen public self-policing and to promote strong, safe, cohesive communities.20 Over recent years, there has been a double shift in focus, from the public police to plural policing (a variety of policing organisations) and from political to contractual governance, that is, contracting out policing functions (Crawford, 2003; Lister, 2006).At the same time, there has been a widening of the state’s net of social control, with the enlisting of individuals, organisations and communities in the service of policing objectives (with, for example, increasing powers of policing being made available to local

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communities), but also a narrowing of the net’s mesh, with increasing managerialisation and new disciplinary mechanisms, such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) and dispersal orders, which increase the state’s regulation of public space (Brown, 2004; Karn, 2007). In general, ‘new public management’ has sought to replace accountability to the users of relevant services (the ‘public’ in the sense of a living, breathing population) with accountability to whoever is paying for the relevant services (ultimately, this is the taxpayer – an abstract general ‘public’). The growth of plural policing (with police community support officers, neighbourhood wardens, private security officers, and so on (Crawford et al, 2005)) has produced a fragmentation of community policing provision, with a lack of clarity about the boundaries, roles, responsibilities and limitations of the different policing officers, which has engendered uncertainty among the public about the identity, functions and powers of different policing providers and about what can legitimately be expected of them (Crawford and Lister, 2004, viii). Over the years, there has been no clear strategic approach to community engagement, and little understanding of the ‘levels’ and potential complexity of such engagement. For example, none of the four ‘models’ of plural policing identified by Crawford et al (2005, 89–90) defined a clear role for the community in defining the type of policing provision, in planning how this type of policing would be provided, or even in its day-to-day operations. Annual crime surveys in England and Wales have shown that public confidence in the police is associated with community engagement and problem solving (Myhill and Beak, 2008). Despite levels of crime falling, however, this confidence has declined (Myhill and Quinton, 2010). This has been attributed specifically to reduced visibility or accessibility of the police – the so-called ‘reassurance gap’ (ACPO, 2001), and more generally to public anxieties about lack of social control in their neighbourhoods (Herrington and Millie, 2006) or in wider society (Girling et al, 2000; Mackenzie et al, 2010). The initiatives that have perhaps come closest to community policing in the UK are the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) established in 2003 and the creation of neighbourhood policing teams21 in all police authority areas from 2008 onwards, both of which attempt to narrow the reassurance gap. The NRPP aimed to engage communities in order to identify and address their policing priorities and concerns, and provide a visible, accessible and familiar or ‘known’ police presence (Tuffin et al, 2006).The programme has been well supported by the public (Singer, 2004) and associated with reductions in crime and anti-social behaviour (as a result of problem solving and targeted police patrols), and reduced ‘worry’ about crime and increased public confidence in policing (as a

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result of general foot patrols and community engagement – involving quality contact22 with all sections of the community and particularly with victims of crime) (Tuffin et al, 2006, xv). In their study of the impact of reassurance policing in Scotland, however, Hamilton-Smith et al (2014, 175) found that ‘the current coalition government has begun to revert back to a focus on crime reduction’ and that within police forces cuts in policing budgets due to ‘austerity’ have tended to undermine community policing as emergency reactive work (still widely viewed as ‘real’ police work) is given higher priority.23 Public confidence in the police therefore looks set to decline still further. One strand of New Labour’s approach to policing therefore focused on the allegedly law-abiding and ‘respectable’.The other concentrated on those who deviated, transgressed, or were otherwise seen as in need of care and control. Broadly speaking, the first group were interpellated as ‘the policers’ (‘Us’), while the second were interpellated as ‘the policed’ (‘Them’), who were seen as being potentially if not actually ‘out of order’ and in need of being kept ‘in order’ or ‘restored’ to order. The New Labour government employed a vast repertoire of policing interventions (including most of the policies discussed in previous chapters, particularly related to health, education and young people), targeted at specific individuals, groups and/or communities or simply at certain kinds of behaviour – a ‘civilising offensive’ that came to be known disparagingly as the ‘nanny’ state. The term ‘civilising’ is ambivalent, in that it has both inclusive (‘soft cop’) and exclusive (‘hard cop’) connotations. In the former case, it means changing the behaviour of the ‘uncivilised’ so that they become part of a socalled decent, law-abiding community.24 In the latter case, the ‘uncivilised’ are excluded, evicted, banished or exiled from ‘civilised’ society (see Box 9.1).25 In both cases, however, people are treated as flawed beings rather than as equal citizens (a treatment that itself has huge negative implications for relations between policers and policed – see, for example, Skeggs and Loveday, 2012). In both cases, too, a civilising offensive is an active intervention that runs a high risk of failure:‘soft’ policing risks transgression, deterrence failure, permissiveness, and weakening of authority, while ‘hard’ policing risks resentment, resistance and rebellion. A civilising offensive is not for the faint-hearted.

Box 9.1: How exclusionary (‘hard cop’) community policing fails Moore (2008) provides an interesting illustration of a civilising offensive in relation to a street-life community. He explains the phenomenon as follows: ‘The increase of street-life people may be linked to the decline in large-scale institutions and

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the development of the alternative model of reform of community care that increasingly led to people with a range of social and mental difficulties becoming more visible in public places’ (Moore, 2008, 186). Attempts to change their behaviour (‘soft cop’ approaches) had apparently met with fairly robust rejection from members of this street-life community. Moore goes on to describe how public meetings in the area where street-life people gathered then demanded that action be taken against them (specifically, removing them from the area). The local policing agencies (public police and council officers), however, became aware that moving them on from one place to another was not resolving the problem: It became fairly obvious to the police and officials that they were engaged in a pointless task, because the majority of the street-life people did not actually present a significant crime problem. Furthermore, there was a realisation that it was not unreasonable to see the street-life people as victims themselves – often of sexual abuse when children, of marital disharmony, of mental illness, of drug and alcohol dependency – rather than necessarily as aggressive troublemakers. (Moore, 2008, 194) So the ‘hard cop’ approach did not appear to be working either. Interestingly, however, it was the public, not the police, who were pressing for elimination of the ‘problem’, as they saw it. Moore therefore concluded that: New Labour’s community-led agenda has prevented the development of more reasoned policies and the police feel constrained to continue a punitive line against the street-life people that they may privately disagree with. The outcome of handing power to the community is that punitive voices are heard and, rather than drawing people into the community as government rhetoric would have it, processes of social exclusion develop. (Moore, 2008, 195)

Moore’s criticism of New Labour’s approach is one that recurs throughout the literature – for example, on the policing of sex workers (Sanders, 2005; Phoenix, 2008; Sanders et al, 2009).26 By identifying the community with its so-called law-abiding majority, the approach excluded ‘deviant’ minorities altogether. Consequently, rather than civilising behaviour and solving a community problem, New Labour’s civilising offensive tended to be counter-productive, making the problem worse or even creating a problem where none previously existed.27 This is perhaps most clearly seen in relation to its Respect agenda. Here the government started with an approach that was inherently disrespectful because it stated that respect

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is not freely given but has to be earned (Respect Task Force, 2006, 30). It follows that those who, for whatever reason, did not manage to ‘earn’ the respect of others were not entitled to be respected and could be disrespected with impunity (see Johnstone and MacLeod, 2007; Somerville, 2009a, for further discussion of New Labour’s approach here; on the criminalisation of urban policy that follows from this, see Hancock, 2007). The government therefore failed even to begin to build a foundation for the mutual respect that is required for a beloved community. The views of the so-called ‘respectable’ people in Moore’s study simply reflected this inherent disrespect. As Somerville (2009a, 150) states: the Respect Agenda actually encourages disrespectful behaviour by people who believe themselves to be respectable. The Respect Agenda is part of a wider culture and politics that encourages people to complain about others, report their transgressions to the authorities,‘take a stand’, and so on, rather than attempt to communicate, mediate, negotiate, and so on. In short, it encourages people to adopt the status of a victim rather than a citizen. The community of the ‘respectable’, who bear the power and responsibility for public self-policing, do not have to earn respect, they are entitled to respect, they are the ‘active citizens’ that New Labour wants to cultivate as its natural constituency, they are the ordinary, hard-working people that politicians are always talking about. This construction of a ‘respectable community’, however, is purely rhetorical, and does not correspond to any living reality – or, if it does, it seems to evoke the narrow-minded, intolerant, uncaring outlook of the ‘community’ in Moore’s study. New Labour’s approach to anti-social behaviour, and to community policing generally, essentially involves the subordination of the needs of others to the needs of this ‘respectable community’ – an approach that is very far removed from the ideal of the beloved community (see Box 9.2). It is also self-defeating, insofar as those who are disrespected are likely to show disrespect in return (Millie, 2007).

Box 9.2: Anti-social behaviour policy in the UK – taking community policing seriously? ‘Anti-social behaviour’ is a governmental term defined as ‘behaviour which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people who are not in the same household as the perpetrator’ (Home Office, 2003, 5). In other words, anti-social behaviour is whatever is perceived as such by members of the

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community. This appears to include anything that might be found offensive by the ‘decent, law-abiding, respectable’ majority discussed above. In essence, therefore, it refers to any behaviour that is deemed to be ‘out of order’ by this majority. My own experience as a housing officer from 1975 to 1984 investigating complaints about tenant behaviour taught me the following: there are always at least two sides to every story; most complaints are resolvable through communication and negotiation; only in very exceptional cases is it worthwhile even to attempt to apportion blame; and, although complaints vary considerably, it is possible to fit most of them into certain categories, for example, noise, swearing, litter, children’s misbehaviour, obstructive car parking, harassment and intimidation, and disputes over boundaries and shared spaces and facilities. Few housing organisations gave any priority to such investigations – hence in most cases neighbour disputes were not taken seriously by housing officers. This somewhat laissez-faire attitude began to change in the 1980s. One reason for the change, very rarely mentioned now, was that housing authorities began to treat the problem of racial harassment with increasing seriousness. Rather than simply rehousing the victims of racist neighbours, as they had done up until then, they started to take enforcement action against the perpetrators (this action was pioneered by authorities such as Tower Hamlets, Newham and Leeds). Although this led initially to a sharp increase in racist incidents (at one time, one in four black and minority ethnic people in Newham reported being racially harassed in the previous year), the resolve of the authorities remained strong and, after the eviction of a number of racist tenants, order began to be restored (or rather a new order of racially mixed communities began to be accepted). The success of the new enforcement approach attracted the attention of other housing organisations, and so the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group was born. This group has acted primarily as a campaigning organisation to persuade the government to take the issue of anti-social behaviour more seriously. A second reason for the shift towards a more interventionist approach was the increasing neoliberal emphasis in the 1980s on so-called ‘customer service’, which meant that housing organisations became more responsive to the demands and wishes of their tenants in particular. Giving more priority to dealing with tenants’ complaints, including complaints about their neighbours, therefore seemed a logical development. Running parallel with these policy developments relating to housing estates in the 1980s was a growing concern about the safety of town and city centres left desolate by the deindustrialisation of the 1970s. The main policing response to this was the installation of vast numbers of CCTV cameras in the 1990s, 28 based

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on virtually no reliable evidence of effectiveness in reducing crime and anti-social behaviour (Goold, 2004; Squires, 2006), and little evidence of contribution to public reassurance (and maybe the opposite of reassurance, by signalling the existence of a problem in the area, see Rodger, 2008, 186). The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced a number of measures to combat anti-social behaviour – including Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), parenting orders, individual support orders, and drug testing and treatment orders. This Act was followed by the Police Reform Act 2002, which allowed the imposition of an ASBO after a criminal conviction (a CrASBO), and the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, which introduced new fixed penalty notices for a variety of anti-social acts. Other new mechanisms of discipline and regulation of behaviour that came into force or were given greater publicity included housing injunctions, demoted tenancies, closure orders, control orders, sex offender orders, dog control orders and dispersal orders.29 Locally, a hierarchy of ‘contracts’ between policing agencies and individuals emerged (such as acceptable behaviour contracts and acceptable behaviour agreements), designed progressively to ‘grip’ anti-social individuals at an early stage and prevent them from deviating from the straight and narrow path that leads to ‘respectability’ – or to restore them to that path if they do deviate from it. ASBOs were particularly controversial, mainly because of the arbitrariness and potential unfairness of the process by which they were imposed – for example, relying on hearsay evidence, taking no account of the condition of the perpetrator, especially people with mental health problems and learning difficulties (Nixon et al, 2007), imposing unreasonable and unrealistic restrictions on their activities (Burney, 2005; 2008; Macdonald, 2006), and, in the case of CrASBOs, being punished twice for the same offence. The criminalisation of perpetrators for breaching an ASBO (often resulting in a prison sentence) perhaps caused the most concern, especially given that most breaches did not involve committing any crime or anti-social behaviour. No evidence has been adduced, however, that young recipients of ASBOs have either been ‘demonised’ (as alleged by Card, 2006; and Carr and Cowan, 2006) or seen their ASBO as a ‘badge of honour’ (a myth created by the media – see Brown, 2011). On the contrary, those receiving ASBOs have tended to view them as a significant burden, restricting their movements and making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to maintain their usual social contacts (family and friends) and perform their normal everyday activities (Solanki et al, 2006; Goldsmith, 2006; 2008; McIntosh, 2008), thus depriving them of what Burney (2008, 146) calls the ‘normal routes to socialisation’, including access to employment or education opportunities. Consequently, and also because of their lack of understanding of what the ASBO involved, they almost all breached their ASBOs (Wain, 2007; Goldsmith, 2008). In general, young people subjected

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to ASBOs viewed them negatively (McIntosh, 2008), reported a range of harmful effects on their families (Wain, 2007), and felt angry about what they saw as the injustice of having ASBOs served upon them (Goldsmith, 2008, 229). They also resented the routine surveillance by CCTV and being stopped by the police that they commonly experienced in the areas where they lived, on which Goldsmith (2008, 234) concluded: ‘this policing and practice, by damaging relationships with young people who would grow up to be adults on the estate, appeared deeply flawed’ (see Karn, 2007, for similar findings with regard to young people’s experience of the policing of dispersal orders). Rather than helping young people to grow up, such practices merely reinforced their vulnerability, leading to some of them taking to drink or drugs (Solanki et al, 2006; Burney, 2008). Once again, therefore, this serves to demonstrate the counterproductive character of government policy on this issue: rather than encouraging young people to put their trust in policing agencies and work with them towards improving community safety, the effect of these policies is exactly the opposite, namely to promote in young people feelings of distrust of the authorities and to increase the likelihood of challenge and resistance to those authorities. The coalition government has continued New Labour’s ‘civilising offensive’ but in a lower key. In the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, the coalition government replaced ASBOs and housing injunctions for anti-social behaviour with a single civil injunction, whose breach does not result in a criminal offence. It grouped together various existing measures to tackle anti-social behaviour under community protection notices and public spaces protection orders, and it introduced a new ‘community remedy’, which involves an element of restorative justice, and a ‘community trigger’ to ensure official responses are made to complaints of repeated incidents of anti-social behaviour. Although these changes are unlikely to make much difference in practice, they do suggest a shift in emphasis from ‘hard cop’ (a robust, punitive approach) to ‘soft cop’ (a conciliatory, rehabilitative and restorative approach).A continuing influential strand in the explanation of anti-social behaviour is the one that focuses on so-called ‘risk factors’ such as poor parenting, poor schooling, peer group pressure and the social environment generally (Graham and Bowling, 1995; Farrington, 2002). Sampson and Groves (1989, 799), for example, state: ‘Our empirical analysis established that communities characterised by sparse friendship networks, unsupervised teenage peer groups, and low organisational participation had disproportionately high rates of crime and delinquency.’ All this ‘recipe mode of analysis’ (Akram, 2014, 380) tells us, however, is that growing up is more risky in some environments (for example, encapsulated or residualised or marginalised communities – whatever you like to call them) than in others. It tells us nothing about how any particular individual is likely to behave in any given environment. Its only advantage, therefore, is to point to the need to improve the environments that give rise to this individual

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vulnerability – in other words, the need for effective social policy (on the family, schools and community development generally). Not only does this tell us nothing that we did not know already but it also suggests, in an insidious way, that the policy focus should be on the vulnerable individual and their parents/carers (to steer them away from a future life of crime) rather than on the social institutions that are causing the individual and their carers to be vulnerable in the first place – truly, a criminalisation of social policy.30 Meanwhile, anti-social behaviour continues to be a serious issue for the public generally, yet few local authorities or police forces took it seriously until recently. Only in 2012 did HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (2012) find clear evidence of improvement in police performance, across the board. It is only fair to say, therefore, that the police have some way to go in order to achieve a satisfactory level of service in this area.

‘Broken society’ continues, more or less unchanged, the binary discourse of New Labour, with a similar emphasis on government intervention to change the behaviour of those who live in ‘welfare ghettos’ (Hancock and Mooney, 2013, 59)31 (see Boxes 9.3 and 9.4).With the coalition, however, this interventionist discourse sits oddly with their belief that it was state intervention in welfare that caused the ‘irresponsibility’ that produced ‘problem populations’ in the first place (Hancock and Mooney, 2013, 58). It could be that they believe that Labour just did not make the right kind of interventions, but then the coalition were never clear about what exactly Labour did wrong apart from spending too much money (which of course they had to do in order to save the banks).This means that the only distinctive characteristic of the Conservatives (and of the Liberal Democrats apart from Vince Cable, it seems) is its commitment to ‘austerity’, which most senior Labour politicians also seemed to share until Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader.

Box 9.3: Family interventions: the policing of ‘troubled families’? New Labour introduced parenting orders and promoted family intervention projects. These were intended to ‘grip’ anti-social families (Parr and Nixon, 2008, 165) and transform them into active, self-governing, responsibilised citizens (Nixon, 2007, 548). This has been described variously as a ‘competence model’ of family support (Gillies, 2011, para 8.3) and ‘a more muscular interventionist stance’ (Featherstone et al, 2014, 1740, citing Frost and Parton, 2009, 165). The coalition continued this approach with its ‘Troubled Families’ Programme (DCLG, 2012). All of these projects aimed to provide support, through a key worker, to

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families with multiple needs (Nixon et al, 2006; White et al, 2008; Pawson et al, 2009). Such projects continue a long historical tradition of governmental or middle-class involvement in the disciplining of the working classes (Foucault, 1977; 1980; Donzelot, 1979; Welshman, 2008) – that is, a succession of civilising offensives to impose middle-class domestic standards and respectability (Skeggs, 2004; Carr, 2009; Holt, 2009; Flint, 2012b, 823–6). They also reflect, however, a more recent shift in social work towards a focus on ‘family practices’ (Morgan, 1996) and ‘family support’ (Featherstone, 2004), with an emphasis on ‘a holistic approach to families with complex and enduring needs (Morris and Featherstone, 2010)’ (Featherstone et al, 2014, 1741; see also Murray and Barnes, 2010). Again, therefore, we see a complex combination of control and care, coercion and consent (see Chapter Three), constraining and enabling, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ policing,32 which is a recurring theme in this book. Even the term ‘grip’, which sounds coercive, is actually used ‘in the sense of establishing a hold on what individuals are and what they may be (Foucault, 1977, 18)’ (Flint, 2012b, 829).33 It is true that the original policies were not ‘rooted in dialogue with vulnerable and marginalised families about their needs’ (as concluded by Morris and Featherstone, 2010, 563), and that ‘very little primary research has been funded with such families prior to setting up projects’ (page 563), but nevertheless the practice can work quite differently from the original policies. There has been a lively academic debate about whether these projects are oppressive or supportive of families, which will no doubt continue so long as it is claimed that ‘evidence for the effectiveness of family intervention projects is weak’ (Fletcher et al, 2012). From the studies carried out so far, however, it seems clear that the relationship between a key worker and a family in need can produce many positive benefits for the family (for details, see Batty and Flint, 2012; see also Lloyd et al, 2012; Bond-Taylor and Somerville, 2013). As we saw above in relation to community policing generally, these projects are both about governmentality (disciplinary intervention) and about front-line practice, in which the relationship between the practitioner and the public (in this case, the family, which the intervention converts into a public) is crucial and potentially co-productive (see also Somerville, 2015; and Chapter Seven).34 Also, just as with the public police, key workers are subject to the authority of their employers or managers, and are therefore also ‘gripped’ by the governmentality of the ‘intervention’, which to some extent shapes how they behave and limits what they can achieve – in particular, it places limits on how far and how deep co-production can develop between workers, families and the communities in which those families live.35 Finally, as with anti-social behaviour policy generally (Box 9.2), family interventions are limited in that they do not address the wider problems of these communities – especially worklessness and low pay.

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Box 9.4: Riots: a failure of community policing? A riot is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd (Oxford English Dictionary, 2013). It involves collective violence, which has a long history (Keith, 1993; Bagguley and Hussain, 2008; Pinkney and Saraga, 2009, 152–64; Bloom, 2012). Riots take a variety of forms (Collins, 2008; Wilkinson, 2009), overlapping with rebellion, social unrest and violent political protest, with riots perhaps being more spontaneous outbreaks. There has been a veritable explosion in publications about the English riots of 2011. Key sources have been Lewis et al (2011) and special issues of Sociological Research Online (Allen et al, 2013) and South Atlantic Quarterly (Trott, 2013) – see also Newburn (2015). There is a long tradition of rioting in England, as a result of which a partial understanding has been achieved, in which long-term ‘smouldering disaffection’ (Bloom, 2012, 126) is seen as combining with a ‘flashpoint’ (Waddington, 2010) to produce ‘community insurrection’ (Akram, 2014, 378). Also, where the riots are seen to challenge state authority (a typical occurrence), they incur a revanchist response from the authorities, involving generalised moral panic, violent re-assertion of state authority, and excessive punishment of rioters and their families. Over the centuries, smouldering disaffection has been related to a ‘moral economy’ (Thompson, 1971), according to which communities have certain expectations deriving from customs and traditions (Harvie and Milburn, 2013, 564), which are not being met because of worsening material conditions and specific injustices. Rioters ‘are often well integrated into local settings and have specific concerns and grievances’ (Gorringe and Rosie, 2011, para 1.3; see also Akram, 2014, 379). Rioting is then seen as a legitimate response to the situation (Tyler, 2013b, para 8.6), representing an opportunity for a public airing of these grievances. For Akram (2014, 376): ‘the rioter’s political motivations and grievances are located in her habitus, with the riot representing a rupture of the habitus.’ In the English riots of 2011, for example, worsening conditions included the ‘new austerity’ of the coalition government (felt most by those least well off – Jensen, 2013, para 4.16) and injustices related to failure to find jobs, exploitation of workers by large businesses, and being repeatedly stopped and searched by police. Rioting itself is a form of collective action, which involves a sense of being and acting together in a new way, rising up against oppression and injustice. As such it invokes a spirit of community (what Millington, 2012, paras 1.2 and 5.3, calls a ‘communion of difference’ or ‘unit of disunity’) that is exhilarating (Bloom, 2012, 123), with a common purpose of claiming what Lefebvre (1996, 173) called the ‘right to the city’. In 2011, this sense of community was greatly facilitated by

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new media communication technologies (Baker, 2011, para 2.10). Looting and destruction of property occur not so much for material gain as to prolong the riot, attract public attention, draw in non-violent actors (Collins, 2008), take revenge on their oppressors (such as shops that took their money but wouldn’t give them jobs) (Bloom, 2012, 109) and show the authorities that they are no longer in control of the situation (Sutterlüty, 2014, 49). In modern riots, the role of policing has invariably been crucial. In every community where riots have occurred, there have been long-standing antagonistic relations between police and young people (Jefferson, 2012; Silvestri, 2013, para 1.7; Sutterlüty, 2014, 46). As Gorringe and Rosie (2011, para 2.3) argue: ‘police are crucial players in the build up to, outbreak and management of public disorder’ (see also Wilkinson, 2009). In most modern riots, the flashpoints have been police actions that have been seen by communities as excessively oppressive, unjust, violent and harmful. Politicians, mass media, public and, unfortunately, some academics continue to promote a partial and prejudiced discourse on riots, which abjectifies and demonises the rioters, their families and their communities (for further comment on demonisation, especially of disadvantaged young people, see Cohen, 1972; Hall et al, 1978; Pearson, 1983; Skeggs, 2005; Welshman, 2006; France, 2007; Tyler, 2008; 2013a; 2013b; Jones, 2009; Jones, 2012; Slater, 2012; Allen et al, 2013; Casey, 2013), and ignores or denies their political character.36 This discourse is classed, gendered and raced (Allen et al, 2013, para 3.19), reflecting and reinforcing the inequalities current in the society at the time but also crystallising what Back et al (2012) call ‘new hierarchies of belonging’. Given the crucial role of policing in riots, it is strange that the nature of policing is given so little attention. Silvestri (2013, para 1.9) talks of the ‘depressing inevitability’ of the police service’s resistance to change. In fact, the policing of riots in England has changed, from the practice of ‘escalated force’ to the use of dialogue, under-enforcement and negotiation (Waddington, 2007, 10). This change is itself problematic as it fails to get riots under control (Newburn, 2015, suggests that the 2011 riots were the first for which the police were criticised on these grounds). What has not changed (or at least not enough) is the way that the police are organised and operate in relation to specific communities, which gives rise to or exacerbates their grievances. What is missing here is any genuine commitment to community policing. The aftermath of the 2011 riots highlighted the divide between the ‘disreputable’ rioters and the ‘respectable’ ‘broom army’ who took part in the clean-up of the areas damaged by rioters (for detail see Lamble, 2013; Tyler, 2013b). If the rioters

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can be said to represent a community of the disaffected, however, what is the community represented by this collective cleansing? Nunes (2013, 572–3) suggests that the latter community was founded on exclusion (of the disaffected) (compare Box 9.1), whereas the community of rioters was more open and inclusive. Jensen (2012) talks of a ‘new thrift’, which advocates conspicuous non-consumption in a new age of austerity, and is represented here by the riot clean-up movement (Jensen, 2013). This emphasis on exclusion, punishment and repression makes any kind of reconciliation, restoration or rehabilitation very difficult. In these circumstances, community policing becomes the exclusive preserve of the ‘respectable’ classes. Sadly, in the end, the actions of the rioters have only reinforced their outcast, demonised status: ‘the mediation of the riots – as the riots of the underclass – has entrenched beliefs that inequality is deserved and has further stigmatised the impoverished communities from which the vast majority of rioters heralded’ (Tyler, 2013b, para 10.2).

Conclusion This chapter has drawn a distinction between public self-policing, understood as the processes by which a public or community polices itself, and community policing, understood as a combination of co-production (police officers working with communities), community problem-solving and neighbourhood policing teams. Community policing and public selfpolicing can co-exist and either support one another or, as in the case of vigilante action, work against one another. In practice, however, community policing rarely works well and typically exists in the shadow of hierarchy, which frustrates and undermines community engagement by police officers. Worse still, governmental approaches tend to reflect binary stereotypes (of law-abiding and deviant) that arise from lay morality, resulting in a policy dualism in which the two stereotypical groups are treated differently (as ‘us’ and ‘them’). Social abjection is thus built into governmental approaches to policing, running counter to the democratic spirit of the community policing ideal. New Labour’s Respect Agenda was a particularly stark example of a policy that divided people into ‘sheep’ (who were entitled to respect) and ‘goats’ (who were not) – and, by thus diminishing one section of the population, it threatened to diminish us all. This chapter examined three specific issues relating to community policing: anti-social behaviour, family interventions and riots. The discussion of anti-social behaviour policy illustrates how a governmental approach can be wilfully ignorant and counter-productive and yet the harm it could have done has been mitigated by the reluctance of most policing authorities (the police and local authorities) to follow that approach.

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On the other hand, however, it means that the problem of anti-social behaviour continues and its root causes have not been addressed at all. The development of community policing, as a process of collaboration between police and communities, has been stymied and distorted by a governmental agenda that takes no account of local policing concerns and competences. The case of family interventions highlights the importance of front-line workers, especially in their relationship with each family, in order to achieve an effective public service.The focus on the whole family in their community is, by extension, a form of community work, and there is potential here (albeit limited) for the emergence of communities of practice, where the different professionals involved grow together to resist managerial domination (see Chapter Seven). Ultimately, however, policing (or ‘gripping’) alone cannot solve the problems of these families, who need long-term help and support. Finally, riots have historically been strongly linked to policing or to what some people would regard as poor policing. Riots take place mainly in abject communities or involve people from those communities, with rioters voicing serious grievances against the authorities, particularly the police. Rioters’ search for a wider, deeper, fairer sense of community, however, ends in failure and punitive backlash, which reinforces existing binary stereotypes and serves to push any form of community policing even further down the political agenda – there seems to be no room for reconciliation or restoration, no understanding that rioters and non-rioters might be or could be part of the same community. In general, then, we need a form of community policing that is more democratic (especially, in being responsive and accountable to the general public) but also impartial (for example, not biased or corrupted by its engagement with the public). This requires a particular kind of professionalism on the part of those working for policing organisations, which is perhaps prefigured in the role of the keyworker in family intervention projects.

Summary ‘Community policing’ is a much abused term – being, at worst, a euphemism for corrupt local policing. This chapter has argued for a more sophisticated understanding of community policing as involving an ongoing dialogue between responsive frontline workers employed in a policing role and the communities they are employed to police. To a large extent and for most of the time, communities police themselves satisfactorily but this self-policing is typically fragile, unreliable and inconsistent in how it deals with transgressions by community members – hence the need for impartial and trustworthy policing organisations. Such organisations, however, form part of the assemblage of state power and, as such, reflect the bias and contradictoriness of

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that power. This appears perhaps most starkly in its division of the population into ‘respectable’ and ‘disreputable’, ideologically transforming what are actually highly porous, fluid and disputed boundaries into solid Berlin walls of certainty. The chapter has argued that more open and democratic forms of community policing have the potential to challenge such bias and negative stereotyping. In the case of the UK it has shown how community policing based on stereotypical assumptions has failed even to address, let alone solve, underlying community problems. To be really effective, community policing has to be based on an understanding of the needs of the community (or communities or the public) as a whole, not the opinions of a vociferous minority (or even majority), and it requires devolution of power to the front line, supported rather than over-ruled by senior managers.

Questions for discussion • Should communities be left to police themselves as far as possible? What problems are likely to arise here? • How far can policing be fair under capitalism? Are we really all equal under the law? • What is wrong with the current policing of anti-social behaviour? How do you think it should be policed? • Why are riots most commonly triggered by aggressive and insensitive policing? What do you think should be done to prevent this in future? • What are the prospects for more democratic policing, impartial in its practice yet fully accountable to communities?

Further reading Batty, E. and Flint, J. (2012) ‘Conceptualising the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes of intensive family intervention projects’, Social Policy and Society, vol 11, no 3, pp 345-58. Brogden, M. and Nijhar, P. (2005) Community policing: National and international models and approaches, Cullompton: Willan. Brown, K. (2011) ‘Beyond “badges of honour”: young people’s perceptions of their ASBOs’, People, Place and Policy Online, vol 5, no 7, pp 12-24. Millie, A. (ed) (2009) Securing Respect: Behavioural expectations and anti-social behaviour in the UK, Bristol: The Policy Press. Mooney, G. (2008) ‘Problem populations, problem places’, in N. Yeates and J. Newman (eds) Social justice: Welfare, crime and society, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 97-128. Newburn, T. (2015) ‘The 2011 England riots in recent historical perspective’, British Journal of Criminology, vol 55, pp 39-64. Rodger, J. (2008) Criminalising social policy: Anti-social behaviour and welfare in a de-civilised society, Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

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Somerville, P. (2009) ‘Understanding community policing’, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, vol 32, no 2, pp 261-77. Squires, P. (ed) (2008) ASBO nation: The criminalisation of nuisance, Bristol: Policy Press.

Notes 1

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Millie (2009) suggests that what is in or out of order (or place) is also a matter of aesthetic judgement (page 205), and in modern society this judgement is based primarily on its economic value (page 206). Some might say that this earlier ‘lay attitude’ continues, in that one in four African Americans gets sent to prison and their unpaid prison labour produces a significant quantity of US manufactured goods; while little public concern, either in the UK or the US, has been expressed about the loss of life resulting from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – or, in European countries more recently, about mass drownings of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean. Bauman (2001, 4) says: ‘Missing community means missing security; gaining community, if it happens, would soon mean missing freedom. Security and freedom are two equally precious and coveted values which could be better or worse balanced, but hardly ever fully reconciled or without friction.’ This conceptualisation views freedom and security (or order) as to some extent contradictory but in the beloved community they are two sides of the same coin – there can be no freedom for all without order and there can be no order without freedom for all. Rancière (2006) makes an important distinction between ‘the police’ and ‘the political’. The former is about an established social order, while the latter is about contesting or dissenting from that order.This chapter is about ‘the police’ in this sense (Chapter Three is about ‘the political’). It can be seen from this list that the likelihood of intervention is based on a complex concrete construction, whose meaning is not enhanced by being subsumed within an abstract, generalised notion such as the extent of social cohesion in a neighbourhood (contra Coleman, 1990; Sampson et al, 1997). Social cohesion, like social capital, community capacity, collective efficacy, and so on, explain nothing at all – on the contrary, they are conditions that need to be explained (see Chapter Two).Worse, social cohesion tends to be understood in terms of homogeneity (basically, neighbours being ‘similar’ to one another). To take just one example, Nieuwenhuis et al (2013) recognised that neighbours who are similar to one another are just as likely to come into conflict as those who are different from one another, yet they persisted in attempting to find correlations between neighbourhood heterogeneity (signifying lack of social cohesion) and negative neighbour relationships (signifying failure of community self-policing). Predictably, however, they found no evidence that heterogeneity in income, ethnicity or age was associated with the quality of

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6

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8

9

10

neighbour relationships, whether positive or negative – nevertheless, a useful finding (for a positive relation between ethnic heterogeneity and social cohesion, see Dean, 2008). Interestingly, although they also found no relation between poverty concentration and negative relationships (no surprise there, because studies have often found a high degree of mutual aid and voluntary activity in poorer neighbourhoods (see Forrest and Kearns, 1999, 22), and Walklate and Evans (1999) also found a correlation between a strong sense of community and high crime rates in a poor neighbourhood), they did find that the likelihood of negative relationships increased with higher mean property values. Another factor significantly related to negative relationships was religious diversity, but they were unable to explain why this was so. As they say, more research is needed! See also the discussion of ‘mixed communities’ in Chapter Eight. Or:‘Informal solutions may operate in a grey area between legality and illegality or in a counterculture’ (Taylor, 2011, 99). It is easy to blame ‘the state’ for a wide range of harms, arising from social divisions of class, race, gender, sexuality and so on (see, for example, relevant chapters in Coleman et al, 2009), but it can be more difficult (though not impossible) to recognise and address the extent to which these divisions are entrenched in the public or in communities themselves (see, for example, Uguris, 2004). As we saw in part one of this book, capitalist states (including their policing agencies) tend to reflect capitalist societies. Incidentally, this finding shows that public self-policing can exist in conditions of lawlessness and instability and that, paradoxically, it is ‘law enforcement’ itself that can undermine social order. Neocleous (2000) has much that is useful to say about how the wide discretion typically allowed to so-called ‘law enforcers’ is precisely a power that is outside the law: ‘the constable is an officer of order rather than an officer of the law’ (Neocleous, 2000, 113).A more mundane, but far more common example, of public self-policing in conditions of ‘instability’ is where hundreds of thousands of people are out drinking every weekend (at least in many towns and cities in northern Europe), many of whom are drinking to get drunk, and yet: ‘Given the lack of police and transport, and the number of people who are supposedly drunk, perhaps we should be surprised that there is not even more trouble and that, in the circumstances, the majority, although noisy and drunk, are generally well-behaved’ (Norris and Williams, 2008, 263 – italics mine; for evidence, see Hobbs, 2003; Loveday, 2006). One thinks, for example, of the expression: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ This process of ‘othering’, with its associated disposition towards clear binary oppositions, is unfortunately all too common in human societies (see LeviStrauss, 1963). For recent critiques of this kind of thinking, see Young (1999; 2007), who regards it as a false binary of the ‘conventional’ versus the ‘deviant’ citizen.

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11

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‘Research from many countries suggests a reputation for violence to be a necessary component of successful participation in street culture’ (Squires, 2009, 255). See also Kintrea et al’s (2008) comments on territoriality reported in Chapter One. ‘Civilising offensive’ is a term that neatly incorporates the ambivalence of neo-colonialism (that is, as both aggressive and causing offence) as seen from the viewpoint of those at its receiving end. Contrary to Garland (1997, 182), imposing a sovereign will is what much, if not most, law-making and law-enforcing power is about. Much of this is arbitrary (for example, driving on the left side of the road rather than the right) but nevertheless essential for society to work (we cannot be allowed to choose for ourselves which side of the road to drive on). For more on the governance of so-called ‘problem populations’ see Hughes (2009) – especially pages 123–30 on the ‘management’ of indigenous people in Australia. One could say that, in order to be governable subjects, the people must first be subjects. In the UK, at least until recently, criminal justice has never been about social justice, such as meeting the needs of victims. Legitimacy is of course important for effective policing of any kind – see, for example, Ballintyne and Fraser (2000, 173), Hancock (2001, 150). Evidence from around the world, including countries in Europe, Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Latin America, suggests that ‘community policing is, at best, unproven practice. At worst, it is simply a practice that reinforces existing schisms and inequalities’ (Brogden and Nijhar, 2005, 161). Manning (2004) argues that the police engage in a form of magic, in that they mimic or simulate religion (specialised costumes, roles, equipment, rituals and beliefs) but stand apart from their fellow human beings. Collectively, they are both sacrificers (as enforcers of the law) and sacrificial victims (for example, the ‘thin blue line’). It is only through sacrificing themselves that they maintain connection to ordinary society. As we saw in Chapter Four, community policing functions as an aspect of governmentality, which is about the construction of governable subjects – a reassured public is a more governable public. The bottom line of reassurance policing is the assurance of governable publics, which all governments strive to achieve. Neglecting or downgrading community policing can reduce the effectiveness of traditional policing approaches if it damages the relationship between police and public. In a revealing speech to the party faithful, Blair said:‘One day when I am asked by someone whose neighbourhood is plagued with anti-social behaviour; or whose local school is failing; or whose hospital is poor, “What are you going to do about it?”, I want to be able to reply: “We have given you the resources. We have given you the powers. Now tell me what you are going to

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do about it”’ (Blair, 2005; for elaboration of this basic idea, see Blears, 2003). This quote assumes that the complainant has a genuine grievance – that is, that she or he is a member of that decent, law-abiding, respectable majority whom New Labour wanted to support and whose votes they wanted to attract. The policies that New Labour wanted to develop were therefore to be geared towards the needs of this group, whom it understood to be the ‘public’ that was to police itself as far as possible. It also reveals the neo-colonial character of New Labour’s approach (see Chapters Two and Four). Government was to be positioned outside and above communities, providing the framework required for communities to govern themselves. The ultimate purpose was to prepare these communities for independence, envisaged as a yet unspecified form of public self-policing, probably resting on something like Sayer’s (2005a) notion of lay morality. Blair simply assumed that people would act respectfully to one another and that public services would respect the public that they served. If these services did not, then the public needed to be able to ensure that they did. In reality, however, life is not so simple. In particular, Blair’s vision glosses over the inequalities that may and do exist between different sections of the community, and between service professionals and service users. 21 Neighbourhood policing teams bring the police closer to local communities but this does not necessarily mean greater engagement with the public, and the teams remain subject to the usual police hierarchies, with all that implies in terms of policing priorities and periodic abstractions (Myhill, 2006). 22 This means treating people fairly and with respect and following correct procedures transparently (Bradford et al, 2009; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). 23 Similar effects have been noted in other countries such as the Netherlands (Terpstra, 2009) and Sweden (Peterson, 2010). 24 As Rodger (2008, xvi) states: ‘the trend has been to seek solutions to social disorder by developing policies aimed at “civilising” the “kinds of people” who behave in an uncivil way.’ 25 According to Elias (1978), civilising has involved the removal from public view of certain practices and people seen as embarrassing or shameful, for example, bodily functions, punishments, people with mental health problems and learning difficulties, and so on. 26 The government’s Coordinated Prostitution Strategy was explicitly eliminative. Prostitution was seen as a public nuisance and as associated with male criminality. Sex workers were seen as victims, requiring coercive counselling and support to exit their profession. 27 For critiques of ‘community safety’ more generally, see Cooper (2008), Rankin (2010). 28 ‘For almost 10 years, public CCTV camera schemes accounted for approximately 75 per cent of the entire Home Office crime prevention budget’ (Squires, 2006, 3).

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29 30

32

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Note that an order (by a court) is precisely intended to create order. Rodger (2008, 101–2) provides a summary of the ‘received wisdom’ on this vexed topic.This amounts to: 1) the younger that children start transgressing, the more likely it is that they will commit crime as adults; 2) those who transgress as children follow a different path through life from those who do not, that is, they are more likely to transgress as adults; and 3) the factor most strongly associated with transgression is family environment, in particular parental supervision, disciplinary practices and child–parent attachment – that is, lack of caring, authoritative parenting. Quelle surprise! Similar ‘commonsense’ superficiality is found in the governmental emphasis on early intervention more generally, in particular with regard to children’s health and social care (see, for example, Featherstone et al, 2014).Yet governments seem chronically incapable of striking a balance between family support and family enforcement, and continue to rely on ‘short-term, time-limited, discrete “interventions” delivered by disembodied experts’ (Featherstone et al, 2014, 1745) to protect atomised individual children. This seems to be similar to what Harrison and Sanders (2006) mean by ‘regulatory therapy’ – though, just to underline the complexity here, both regulation and therapy can be either ‘tough’ or ‘tender’ (that is, more or less coercive or consensual). See also Featherstone et al (2014, 1743–4). Holt, for example, reported that some parents subject to parenting orders ‘may discover new ways of “being” through the space provided by parenting programmes’ (Holt, 2008, 214 – see examples on pages 214–16). The projects came from government in response to what it saw as ‘social problems’, so tended to emphasise enforcement, but in practice have been used (by local authorities and front-line workers) as a way to meet human needs (for practical and emotional support, advocacy, etc). For further analysis of the class position of key workers as front-line workers within capitalist organisations, see Somerville (2015). A fashionable current in academia has been to see riots as expressive of a new consumer society or ‘consumer culture’ (Hall et al, 2008). For example, rioters have been viewed variously as ‘defective and disqualified consumers’ (Bauman, 2011), lacking ‘noble’ purpose, ‘blind acting out’ (Žižek , 2011), conforming to consumerist values (Moxon, 2011); or as having ‘nowhere to go but the shops’ (Treadwell et al, 2012; Winlow and Hall, 2012), with the result that, through their violence, destruction and conspicuous consumption (Varul, 2011), they ‘mimic on the streets of London what corporate capital is doing to planet Earth (Harvey, 2012, 156). These crude, reductionist and abjectifying responses have been criticised by Jensen (2013), Casey (2013), Harvie and Milburn (2013), Nunes (2013), Akram (2014) and Sutterlüty (2014), mainly on the grounds that they miss the political significance of the riots. Even the terminology of ‘broken’ is not new (Johnstone and MacLeod, 2007).

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ten Conclusion In this conclusion, I want to revisit the concept of a beloved community and consider what has been learned about how that community can be made more real in the contemporary world. First, I have argued that community is to be understood as a collection of people who have in common an attachment to something (which involves caring about and caring for that something), and who recognise one another as having that attachment. In this sense, a family is a kind of community, although in this book I have examined only relationships going beyond the family. The causes of attachment are largely mysterious but I have tended to assume that they arise from dispositions that are part of our common humanity, experience and struggle for life. A beloved community is then a special kind of community, in which the ethics of care and recognition that define community generally are enhanced by ethics of justice and freedom that work to abolish all exploitation and domination. In Part I of the book, I argued for a form of beloved community as self-organising and democratic – which sounds utopian, but in Part II I attempted to endow this ideal with practical meaning, as a community whose members together create value, learn through practice, look after one another, live in decent housing and police themselves, supported as necessary by people with relevant skills and qualities, who themselves work together in communities of practice. The book has identified two major obstacles in the path of achieving a beloved community.The first is the nature of capitalism.This is a system that does not just produce winners and losers but is based on labour exploitation and class domination. Under capitalism, as Marx (1848, 16) put it,‘all that is solid melts into air’, so attachments are continually broken and not always easily remade. A sense of community is inherently incompatible with a system that projects the commodification of everything – recognition of

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our common humanity simply cannot be reconciled with a system that depends on people selling their labour power to others (or submitting to managerial domination) in order to survive. As workers and employees, however, and also as dependent on workers for material support, we are ourselves part of that system. A struggle against capitalism, therefore, is at the same time a struggle against ourselves, insofar as our labour is itself a form of capital (as it produces added value). It follows that we must struggle against capital not only to maintain and improve our position or status as workers within the system (for example, to receive a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, or to be recognised as ‘hard-working families’, etc) but also to question the system itself with a view to putting an end to the need for struggle of this kind. This book has argued that one way forward is through the creation of worker and multi-stakeholder cooperatives, insofar as these abolish relationships of exploitation and domination within the workplace. It is recognised, however, that this does not go far enough, as such cooperatives have to compete within capitalist markets in order to survive. An important contribution of the book is the emphasis on embedding cooperatives (not only worker cooperatives but cooperative schools, health and social care cooperatives, housing cooperatives, etc) within community of some kind – so-called ‘community cooperatives’. It is argued that the cooperative movement, currently in abeyance, could be, needs to be, and perhaps is being thus reactivated. The second major obstacle is that presented by capitalist states. In general, these states reflect and reinforce the mystification of labour exploitation, with capitalism seen as ‘natural’ or inevitable, and also as the foundation for a ‘free society’.Within liberal democratic states in particular, the systematic subjugation of labour appears, in Orwellian guise, as a community of free and equal citizens. Community itself becomes appropriated and co-opted to a commercialising neoliberal agenda, involving an insidious corrupting of community action that takes the form of ‘community participation’ initiatives and so-called ‘active citizenship’. This is governmentality at its worst, in its restless search to create governable citizens (reflecting the restlessness of capital itself), but I have also tried to show the limits to this governmentality, in terms of unintended consequences, occasional successful resistance from communities and, above all, the ambivalent role played by the workers responsible for implementing governmental directives. Workers in different fields (such as education, health, social care, housing and policing) work in different ways, with different habituses and different individual or collective clients (users, consumers, customers, residents, publics, or communities). Some will be members of their own occupational community – that is, a profession. Some may work with practitioners from different professions in inter-professional communities of practice, who

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may be engaged co-productively with a range of individuals and publics. This may sound close to being a beloved community but the reality is that, increasingly, these workers are subjected to ‘managerial domination’ (Clark et al, 2015). In this respect, they have much in common, as they all embody a form of capitalist labour. The question then is how they can change their way of working, and thereby transform the fields in which they work into something more consistent with a beloved community. The conclusion of this book is that such transformation can occur first, as already stated, through the creation of cooperatives in every field and across fields, but second, through forms of relational working, whereby the workers engage directly with those affected by their work in a collective effort to resolve the contradictions arising from the workers’ position under capitalism (a position that serves both the people and capital). This goes beyond cooperative working in that it does not assume that a relationship must be reciprocal but only that each relationship has to be negotiated, not only individually between worker and client but collectively between communities of workers and the communities they serve. Currently, we are still very far from this situation, which will require not only a sea change in the way that most organisations are managed but also a wider politicisation of these communities, leading to a transformation of government (the political field is the key field here). This involves what could be called a relational politics, addressing the forces of capital itself that give rise to the problems experienced by ordinary people.A broad-based social movement is therefore needed, which will link cooperative and relational working across all fields and communities, and embed that working in the practice of the movement itself – we rise together or not at all. The approach of Podemos in Spain needs to be internationalised.

263

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Index

Index A Aalbers, M. 199, 200, 213 Abbot, I. 155, 158 Abel, E. 214 abject/ subaltern communities 11, 42–3, 125 academy schools 154–5, 158, 160 ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) 46, 50–1 action research 48, 157 active citizenship 92, 104, 106, 107, 158, 238, 245, 262 Adamson, D. 106 Adlam, J. 194 n.11 advocacy 189, 194 n.13 affinity groups 74–5 Agamben, G. 34 ageing population 184, 186 agency 30, 34, 36, 71, 84 agribusiness 177 Aiken, M. 135 Aitken, D. 117 n.19 Akram, S. 31 Albert, M. 130 Allan, G. 9, 11 Allen, C. 201, 210–11 Allen, K. 110 Allen, L. 153 Alleyne, B. 18 n.2 Allnock, D. 162 Alma Ata Declaration 174, 177 Althusser, L. 6, 89 n.26 Amaral, CV de L. 204 Amin, A. 95 Amish communities 71 anarchism 73–6 anti-social behaviour 234–5, 237, 242, 245–9 Appleby, J. 181 Aquinas, T. 88 n.18 Aristotle 232 Arthurson, K. 207 assets 45, 108, 128, 131, 135–6, 194 n.12 Atkinson, R. 94 Atlee, J. 8 attachments in a beloved community 16, 261 bonds of community 18 n.1 in definitions of community 4–8

exclusivity 10–11 and length of residence 14 to place 8, 9–11, 14 reasons for 14–15 underestimated in community studies 9 Attree, P. 176 audit culture 94 austerity 109, 134, 136, 162, 181, 190, 249 authority 79, 96, 149 autonomism 76, 100–1, 129–30, 140, 213

B Back, L. 10, 207 Bacqué, M-H. 99 Bailey, N. 20 n.18, 108, 116 n.11, 135–6 Ball, S. 150, 153 Bang, H. 87 n.5, 89 n.24, 97 Banks, S. 65 n.42 bare life 34 Barnes, M. 92, 94, 98 Barr, A. 172–3 Bartels, K. 101 barter systems 130 Basu, S. 193 n.5 Bauman, Z. 6, 94, 256 n.3, 260 n.36 Bauwens, M. 144 n.15 Bayat, A. 11 Beetham, D. 88 n.16 Bell, D. 5 belonging 4–6, 5, 8, 10, 252 beloved community and buen vivir 140 and cooperatives 39 description of 16–17, 261–3 and discrimination 35 health and social care 196 n.26 housing 216–20 moral order 233 mutual respect 245 and neoliberalism 84 and participatory practice 48 political communities 69–70, 71 benefits sanctions 134 Berlin, I. 69 Bibbings, L. 234 Biewener, C. 99 Big Society 107, 108, 109, 145 n.19, 189

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binary stereotyping 237–8, 243, 252–3 Binnie, J. 115 n.8 biomedical model of health 178 Birmingham 208 Blackburn, J. 150 Blair, Tony 237 Blake, G. 118 n.22 ‘bootstrap’ thinking 46, 131, 194 n.12 bottom-up versus top-down approaches 127–33, 156–7 see also grassroots work Bourdieu, P. 4–5, 6–7, 10, 26, 28, 29–30, 31, 40, 68, 77, 80–2, 128, 148, 152, 156, 198, 200, 201 bourgeois law 78, 80, 83 Bovaird, T. 131–2, 144 n.17 Bowers, H. 186–7 Bowes, L. 175 Boyle, D. 145 n.19, 180 Bradford 15, 51, 207, 219 Bradley, Q. 213–15 Braithwaite, R. 241 Braithwaite and Guardhouse, Keighley 15 Brandsen, T. 219 Brazil 21 n.20, 82, 97, 176 Brent, J. 6 Bridge, G. 206, 207 Bristol 159 Brogden, M. 239, 240 Bromiley, R. 106 Buber, M. 38, 71 buen vivir 140 Building Schools for the Future 154 Bulmer, M. 214 Buonfino, A. 6, 8, 14 Buser, M. 92 Business Link 133 businesses see community enterprises Butcher, H. 46, 65 n.42 bystander intervention 235–7

C Calcutt, A. 15–16 Caldeira, T. 21 n.20 Callaghan, G. 175 Campbell, B. 42 Camphill communities 187–8, 190, 220 Cantle, T. 207 capabilities building 45, 185 capacity building 45 capitalism see also neoliberalism and arms spending 88 n.17 boom and bust 32 CED (Community Economic Development) 123–46 class and inequality 24–33 and community 33–9, 56–7

338

and community development 43–55 compliance or resistance to government 100–3 and cooperation 36–9 crises 30–2, 82, 199 and education 148–9, 151–2, 153 and health 177, 178 hegemony 150 and housing 198–201, 213 as obstacle to beloved community 261–2 political community under capitalism 67–89 right to the city 22 n.25 transformation of 136, 139, 261–3 and worker cooperatives 136–7 and working classes 29–34, 39–41 care cooperatives 188–9 care ethic 214, 261 Care Plus Group 188, 190 care through control 238 care work 27–8, 125, 127, 179, 184, 191 caring relationships 39, 189, 191 Carlyle, T. 86 n.3 Carmel, E. 97 Castells, M. 213 casual labour 125, 126, 128 Caulier-Grice, J. 45 CED (Community Economic Development) 123–46 Chambers, R. 157 Chanan, G. 48–9, 108 Change-Up 133 Chicago Scholars 63 n.28 China 61 n.17, 73, 174 choice agenda 195 n.21 Christian Coalition 49 Christian communes 72 Christiania 229 n.49 Christophers, B. 199, 200 citizenship active citizenship 92, 104, 106, 107, 158, 238, 245, 262 civic responsibility 19 n.8, 82 compliance or resistance to government 100–3 ‘good’ citizens 166 political communities 69–70 civil service 112 civil society 77 civilising mission of government 104, 107–8, 243–5, 248, 250 Clark, JP. 16, 17, 36, 71, 73, 74–5, 76–7, 84 Clarke, J. 43 Clarke, K. 162, 169 n.17 Clarke, S. 159, 199 class see social class

Index

Clayton, N. 126 Clements, D. 4, 99, 116 n.13 climate change 87 n.12, 177–8 cluster developments 127 coalition government 107, 108–9, 111, 133, 181, 248, 249 Cobb, J. 39–40 Cochrane. A. 95 Cockburn, C. 63 n.30 coercion 17, 78–9, 86 n.2, 87 n.6, 250 COF (Citizens Organising Foundation) 53 cohesion 104, 109–11, 207, 256 n.5 cohousing 218, 220 Coin Street Community Builders 51, 128, 219–20 Cole, I. 209, 210 co-learning 157, 174 collaborative economy 143 n.9 collective action 4, 36–7, 45–6, 211–16, 251–2 collective capabilities 185 collective storytelling 46–7 Collier, RB. 88 n.20 colonialism 43–4 see also neo-colonialism Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power (CPPP) 93 commodification 36, 83, 126, 149, 261–2 common good, politics of 53, 111, 214 communal individuality 74 communes/ communalist communities 71–3, 220 communication, in definitions of community 4–5 communist communities 36, 61 n.17, 76–7, 84, 136 communitarianism 68, 104 communitas 4 Communities First 106, 189 communities of equals 129 communities of practice 127, 156–7, 164, 184–90 community anchor organisations 105–6 community building 45–6 community care 179, 187 community cooperatives 38, 132, 136–40, 186, 262 community development 43–55, 57–8, 92–100, 103–11 Community Development Corporations 128 Community Development Project 44–5, 103 Community Economic Development (CED) 46, 123–46 community economies 139

community enterprises 38, 127–30, 137–40 community entrepreneurship 130 community gardens 21 n.25 community gateway model 217 community governance 138–9, 140 community health and social care 47, 171–96 community land trusts 218 community leaders 180 community learning 46, 147–69 community mediation 241 community organising 46–9, 92–100, 176 community ownership 135–40 Community Participation Programmes 106 community pathology 63 n.29 community policies (UK) 103–11 community policing 239–60 community spirit 6, 13 community studies 8–16 community versus communities 3–4 community work 44–5, 57–8 community workers 46–9, 101, 106, 107–8, 131 community-led housing 217–20 compassion and loving kindness 16–17, 35 Conaty, P. 38, 184, 188, 190 Conn, C. 180 Conservative government approaches to community 95, 104, 109, 110 austerity 249 economic development 133 health 182–3 housing 216 Sure Start 162 conservativism 31, 49 consortia 38 consultation exercises 164, 180, 209–10 consumerism 167 n.3, 215, 232, 246, 253, 260 n.36 control through care 238, 250 Conversi, D. 69, 78 Cook, D. 233 Cooperative College 161 cooperative housing 216–20 cooperative living 39, 71–3, 74, 82, 84 cooperative schools 159–61, 186 cooperative working 112, 127, 137–40 see also worker cooperatives Coote, A. 179, 181, 195 n.21 co-production approaches and beloved community 263 economic development 131–2 education 157

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health 174, 175, 185–6, 190 housing 219 policing 235–6, 239–41 troubled families 250 Corbyn, J. 249 Cornes, M. 185 Cornwell, J. 136 Cottam, H. 186 council housing 204, 212–13 Cousins, C. 78 Cox, L. 109, 119 n.25 Crawford, A. 242 Cremin, C. 33–4, 75–6, 224 n.9 crime, policing 231–60 criminal justice system 238 crises 30–2, 82, 199 critical community practice 46 critical education 48 Crossley, N. 30, 31 cross-sectoral work 131 see also interprofessional communities of practice Crow, G. 11 cultural capital 26, 34, 81–2, 128, 152, 175, 201, 204 Cumbers, A. 61 n.15, 213

D Davies, JS. 89 n.27, 97, 100–1 Davis, M. 11, 198 Davis, P. 39 De Vos, P. 176 Dean, C. 153 Dean, S. 225 n.23 DeFilippis, J. 20 n.13, 35–6, 46, 49, 51–2, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 128, 144 n.12, 198 definitions of community 4–8, 36, 261–3 definitions of community enterprises 128–9 deindustrialisation 20 n.17, 44 Delanty, G. 4, 5, 68, 73 democracy and beloved community 233 and capitalism 124 and community action 214 and community enterprise 129 and cooperatives 37 and health 176 and law and order 238 liberal democracy 70 and neoliberalism 83 universal franchise 79–80 and the working classes 88 n.20 Dench, G. 8 Dennis, N. 8

340

Derrida, J. 19 n.8 Desan, MH. 29 development studies 43–4 DeVerteuil, G. 205 Devine, F. 84 devolved power 107 diabetes 177 Diamond, J. 115 n.4 diet 177 Diggers/ True Levellers commune 71 DiMaggio, P. 99–100 Dinerstein, AC. 76, 87 n.11 direct action organisation 82 disability 35, 184, 187–8 disasters 223 n.8, 236–7 disciplinary power 96, 104, 164, 238 discrimination as form of domination 35 intersectionality 85 and moral order 232 racism 10, 44, 49, 208, 246 and social movements 84–5 systematic discrimination 35 displacement 202–8, 213 distributed commissioning 164 distributed leadership 158 domains of interest 156 domination capitalism based on 29–31, 34–5, 83–4, 261–2, 263 and concepts of freedom 70 and conservativism 31 and neoliberalism 83–4 of workers 29–31, 34–5, 80–1, 112 Donald, A. 97, 108 Donzelot, J. 167 n.1 Dorling, D. 184, 207 Driver, S. 164 Du Gay, P. 88 n.19, 89 n.23 Duncan, SS. 228 n.44 Dunleavy, P. 204 Durkheim, E. 19 n.6 dwelling in place 5, 8, 9, 10

E Ebola epidemic 175 ecosystem damage 175 ecotopias 87 n.11 ecovillages 229 n.50 Ecuador 102–3 education systems 81, 147–69, 186 Edwards, C. 22 n.27, 101 egalitarian ideals 71–2, 74–5 Eizenberg, E. 21 n.25, 217 Eldonians (Liverpool) 219 elective belonging 9

Index

Elias, N. 10, 11, 259 n.25 elite classes 26–7, 28–9, 78, 80–1, 227 n.37, 238 Emilia Romagna 38 Emmel, N. 180 employability 33–4, 83 empowered communities 172–3 empowerment ideologies 45, 46, 93, 94, 108, 116 n.10 encapsulated communities 11–14, 41–2, 118 n.20, 125, 194 n.13, 237 Engels, F. 199 enjoyment, in definitions of community 7 Enterprise Zones 145 n.21 entrepreneurship 43, 128, 130 environmental concerns 137, 140, 177–8, 220 equality 83, 172–3, 232–3 see also inequality Esposito, R. 5 ethical life 68, 71 ethnicity see race and ethnicity European Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City 205 evaluation 164–5 Evans, K. 10, 256 n.5 exchange values 24–5, 35–6, 124, 132, 150, 189, 191, 210–11 exploitation of labour capitalism based on 24–5, 28, 33–5, 37, 261–2 and cooperatives 136, 139 economic development 124, 130 government 83–4, 111 schools 150

F family 4, 6, 261 family support projects 165, 249–50, 254 Farrar, M. 18 n.2, 19 n.4 Featherstone, B. 112, 250, 260 n.30 Ferguson, J. 19 n.9 Fernandez, J-L. 184 Ferrari, E. 209, 225 n.23, 226 n.25 Finland 151 Fisher, R. 96 Fletcher, A. 250 Flinders, M. 115 n.9 Flint, J. 211, 226 n.24, 238, 250 food banks 109 food production 177–8, 181 Foresight report 177 Forrest, R. 200–1 fossil fuels 178 Foucault, M. 6, 33, 97, 164, 238, 250

Fox, A. 187 France, A. 168 n.13 free elections 79–80 free markets 34–5, 70–1, 83, 178–9, 201 see also capitalism free school meals 154 free schools 155 freedom in a beloved community 17, 69–70 and capitalism 36, 70–1 individual liberty and capitalism 33 libertarianism 69–70 and neoliberalism 83 substantive freedom 17 Freire, P. 46, 47, 149, 150, 157, 227 n.37 Friedli, L. 194 n.12 Frith, K. 38, 138 front-line workers 101, 109, 240, 250, 260 n.35 Fuller, C. 104, 164 funding austerity 109, 134, 136, 162, 181, 190, 249 government funding for community development 133 healthcare 174–5, 181–3 need for long-term core funding 107 PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) 168 n.6 social care 126 Future Jobs Fund 133 Futurebuilders 133 Fyfe, N. 104–5

G Gaebler, T. 99 Gamble, A. 88 n.15 Gandhi 47, 75 gangs 10, 42–3, 156, 236 Gans, H. 11 García, SR 85 garden cities 226 n.30 Garland, D. 258 n.12 gated communities 223 n.8 Gaventa, J. 43, 117 n.18 Gaynor, N. 115 n.6 Geddes, M. 104–5, 164 Gellner, E. 69 gender and encapsulated communities 42 inequality 27 and participation 102 and respectability 41 systematic discrimination 35 in working class communities 20 n.16 gentrification 5, 11, 135, 201–8

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geographical mobility 9 Germany 218–19, 220 ghettos 11–12, 205, 249 giantism 180–1 Gibb, K. 213 Gibson-Graham, JK. 139 Gilchrist, A. 45 Gilliatt, S. 167 n.3 Gillies, V. 97, 115 n.9 Ginsburg, N. 199 Giovannini, M. 140 Glasgow 11–12, 98–9, 207 Glass, N. 163, 201 Glass, R. 201 Glatter, R. 155 global education reform movement (GERM) 151, 155 global financial crisis 133, 201, 222 n.3 globalization 95, 102–3, 129, 177 glocalization 103 Goetz, E. 117 n.18, 202, 223 n.5 Goldacre, B. 194 n.16 Gore, T. 135 Gorz, A. 129, 130 gossip 10 Govanhill swimming pool campaign 98–9 governance community governance 138–9, 140 cooperative governance 130 health and social care 187–8, 190 multi-stakeholder governance 187–9 school 153, 155, 158, 160–1 government approaches to community 91–119 civilising mission 104, 107–8, 243–5, 248, 250 community economic development 133–5 construction of governable subjects 96–7, 100 government workers 112 governmentality 43–4, 96–9, 108, 126, 250, 258 n.19, 262 housing 200, 203–4, 205–6, 216 policing 241–2 unequal valuing of citizens 234 Gramsci, A. 78, 150 Granovetter, M. 7, 9 grassroots work 51–2, 74, 93, 127, 179, 213 Greece 102 Green, AE. 21 n.19 Green, TH. 69 green belts 212 Griggs, S. 105 Growing Places Fund 134 Gulliver, K. 219

342

gun control 89 n.23 Gupta, A. 19 n.9 Gustafsson, U. 164

H Habermas, J. 25, 167 n.2 habitus and capitalism 26 concept of 6–7 education systems 148, 156 housing 202 and human agency 30 and nations 69 and newcomers 11 policing 233, 235 and political community 68 and practice 29 Hahnel, R. 130 Haines, N. 116 n.11 Halabi, SF. 175–6 Hall, B. 156–7 Halpern, D. 131, 192 n.2 Hamilton-Smith, N. 243 Hancock, L. 20 n.18, 249 Handy, C. 219 Hardt, M. 25, 76 Harlock, J. 97 Harman, C. 88 n.17 Harrington, L. 162, 164–5 Harris, M. 145 n.19 Harrison, M. 260 n.32 Harvey, D. 89 n.25 Hashagen, S. 172–3 Hastings, A. 103, 109 Haugh, H. 131 Haughton, G. 129 Hayek, F. 108 health and social care 171–96 Health and Wellbeing Boards 182–3 Health for All 174 healthy communities 172–3, 174–8 Hegel, G. 17, 68, 71 hegemony 78, 149, 150 Helderman, J-K. 219 Hezbollah 102 Hickey, S. 95 Hill Holt Wood 137–40 Hillery, G. 3 Hirayama, Y. 200–1 Hobbes, T. 69, 79 Hobsbawm, E. 3 Hodkinson, S. 216 Holder, H. 181 Holloway, J. 25, 26, 75, 76 Holman, D. 63 n.31 Holt, A. 260 n.33

Index

Holt, J. 149 homelessness 143 n.11, 185, 224 n.10 homeschooling 149, 150–1, 166 hooks, b. 16 housing 112, 132, 134, 135, 197–229 housing communities 219 housing cooperatives 217–20 housing market renewal 209–11 hub and spoke models 187 Hudson, M. 14, 15 Huggins, R. 143 n.8 humanitarian interventions 88 n.18 Hunt, G. 223 n.6 Hunt, J. 195 n.21 Hutterites 71

J

I

Kapilashrami, A. 194 n.13 Kasabov, E. 127 Katz, C. 125, 196 n.26 Kay, G. 78, 96 Kelby, Middlesborough 13–14, 15 Kelly, J. 100 Keynes, J.M. 199 kibbutzim 73 kin-based communities 7 King, Martin Luther 16, 65 n.45 Kintrea, K. 9, 12, 150, 258 n.11 Klein, N. 177–8 Kolkhozi 73 Kraftl, P. 153, 154 Kretzmann, J. 45 Kristeva, J. 11, 42

identity 10, 34 Illich, I. 149 imaginary communities 8 imagined communities 8, 68 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 174, 178 immigration 10, 54, 207–8 inclusion agenda 104, 153–4 incomers see newcomers Index of Multiple Deprivation 133 India 75, 82, 102, 174 indigenous communities 140, 258 n.13 Indignados 85, 89 n.24 individualism 74, 183 Indonesia 97, 175–6 industrialisation 69 inequality and capitalism 24–33, 37 and economies of scale 142 n.1 and education 149, 150 and gender 27 and housing 199–200, 207 and public participation 92–3 unequal valuing of citizens 232–4 informal education 149, 151 informal employment 125, 126, 128 institutional learning 148–52 integrated care models 182, 185 interdependencies 10, 104, 156, 195 n.17 International Cooperative Alliance 159, 188 interprofessional communities of practice 168 n.8, 262–3 intersectionality 85 interventionist state 108–9, 249, 250 inverse care law 150 Ireland 44, 115 n.6 Italy 37–8

Jacobs, J. 206, 234 Jacobs, K. 228 n.38 Japan 188 Jensen, T. 109, 253 Jesuits (Paraguay) 72 Job Centre Plus 133 Johnson, R. 149 Johnson, S. 162 Jones, O. 202 Jones, T. 187 Joyner, S. 186

K

L Labour see New Labour labour see also exploitation of labour; unemployment autonomism 76 and capitalism 24–5, 28–9, 33–5, 70 care work 27–8, 125, 127, 179, 184, 191 and community economic development 124 and deprived communities 132 domination of workers 29–31, 34–5, 80–1, 112 government approaches 133 labour market inclusion policies 133–5 law of labour 78 and liberalism 70 and neoliberalism 95 and parecon 130 and the political field 78 work as route out of poverty 128 Lake, RW. 95, 96, 202 land reform 176

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Landauer, G. 73 Lang, R. 136, 138–9 language differences 8 Lao Tzu 16 Latour, B. 6 law bourgeois law 78, 80, 83 community policing 231–60 versus governmentality 96 inverse care law 150 and neoliberalism 83 rule of law 79, 236 Leather, P. 210 Lebanon 102 Ledwith, M. 46–8, 71, 149, 177, 180 Lees, A. 168 n.8 Leonard, L. 87 n.11 Letchworth 226 n.30 Letki, N. 225 n.22 Leunig, T. 207 Levi-Strauss, C. 257 n.10 Levitas, R. 109 Lewis, C. 203 Ley, D. 201 Li, Y. 84 liberalism 70, 200, 262 liberation movements 69 libertarian communitarianism see anarchism libertarian communities 16 Lichtenstein, R. 8 life course stage 9 life goods 174 lifeworlds 25 LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community) 220 Lindgren, M. 130, 139 Lipsky, M. 101, 240 Lister, S. 242 liveable communities 172–3 Liverpool 51, 210–11, 219 living wages 24, 111, 126, 134, 184 Livingston, M. 10, 14 Lloyd, N. 162, 164–5 local authorities approaches to community 100, 107–8 children’s services 164 as cooperative councils 112 education 152–3, 155 housing 205, 217–18 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) 133–4 Local Management of Schools 152–3 Local Strategic Partnerships 105 localism 107, 108, 112–13, 198, 227 n.36 locality, community associated with 8–9, 103–4, 125, 127–8, 158 see also place Locke, J. 69, 79

344

Lockhart, J. 48 London Bangladeshi community, Tower Hamlets 11 Coin Street Community Builders 51, 128, 219–20 housing 212, 222 n.4 New Era, Hackney 224 n.12 riots 110, 251–3 London Citizens 52–5, 100 López, MC. 85 low wages 124, 125, 128, 132 Lowndes, V. 109 Lowthrop, Karen and Nigel 137 Lupton, R. 96, 150

M McCaughie, K. 109 McCormack, J. 227 n.37 MacDonald, R. 13–14, 15, 40 McElwee, G. 38, 128, 140 McGinnis, JM. 183 McIntyre, Z. 207 McKee, K. 135, 207 McKenzie, L. 10 McKnight, J. 45 McLaughlin, E. 104 Macmillan, R. 108 MacMurtry, J. 173–4 Maginn, B. 119 n.26 Maguire, K. 92 Mahoney, J. 88 n.20 Maloney, W. 97 Manchester Salford Partnership 209 Manning, PK. 258 n.18 Marcuse, P. 202 marginalization 13, 139, 149, 180, 248 Marinaleda, Andalucia 84 Marinetto, M. 92 Marmot, M. 172–3 Martin, J. 153 Martínez López, M. 226 n.32 Marx, Karl 24, 28, 32, 36, 68, 124, 150, 191, 210, 261 Mason, A. 182 Mason, J. 164, 182 Mayer, M. 92, 95 Measor, L. 42 Meighan, R. 149 Melhuish, E. 162, 163 Melnyk, G. 71, 72–3, 136 mental health 183, 184, 185, 192 n.2 Meredith, J. 168 n.13 Merrett, S. 201 Mexico 194 n.15 Meyer, E. 168 n.8

Index

middle classes 26, 27–9, 40, 201 military power 69, 78, 79 Mill, J.S. 69 Miller, C. 48–9, 108, 121 Millie, A. 232, 245, 256 n.1 Milne, EJ. 15, 16 Milton Keynes 212 MINCies (mixed income communities) 205–8 Minton, A. 204 MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan) 89 n.21 Mohan, J. 95 Monbiot, G. 144 n.13 Mooney, G. 18 n.2, 19 n.9, 20 n.18, 98, 249 Moore, R. 207 Moore, S. 243–5 Moore, T. 135 moral order 232 Moralität 68, 71 Morgan, D. 9 Mott, J. 78, 96 Mulligan, M. 6 multi-stakeholder governance 187–9 Murray, R. 184 mutual aid 39, 214, 256 n.5 mutual surveillance 10

N nanny/ dirigiste state 104, 243 National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) 242–3 nationalism 69 nations 8, 10, 69 see also states Neal, S. 4, 18 n.2, 19 n.9, 87 n.12 Negri, A. 25, 76 neighbourhood development work 48–9, 96, 105, 107, 187, 203 neighbourhood policing teams 239, 242–3 Neighbourhood Programme (JRF) 93 Nelson, M. 214 neo-assimilationism 208 Neocleous, M. 257 n.8 neo-colonialism 43, 48, 55, 157, 175, 177, 224 n.16, 258 n.12, 258 n.20 neoliberalism anti-social behaviour 246 as capitalist project 83–4 and care cooperatives 189 and care work 191 community development 92–100 and co-production 145 n.19 and education 152 governmental approaches to community 92–100

and health 177 housing 213 as obstacle to beloved community 262–3 as reaction to labour movement 25 network approaches 20 n.12, 45, 186–7 New Deal for Communities 98, 100, 105, 206 New Era, Hackney 224 n.12 New Labour approaches to community 93–4, 98–9, 104, 106–9 economic development 133, 134 education policies 153–4 health 179–80 housing 206, 209–11, 228 n.38 neo-colonialism 258 n.20 policing 241, 243, 244–5, 249–50 Sure Start 162 New Public Management 105, 240, 242 newcomers 10–11, 226 n.28 Newman, K. 95, 96, 202 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) 44, 176 Nicholls, W. 115 n.5, 115 n.7 Nieuwenhuis, J. 256 n.5 Nijhar, P. 239, 240 nimbyism 211–12 Nisbet, R. 10, 87 n.7 non-capitalist workplaces 136, 139 nonprofit sector see voluntary sector North, D. 126–7, 132, 133 nostalgia 5, 9 Nunes, R. 253

O obesity epidemic 177, 183 Occupy movement 157 O’Connor, S. 95 Ohlemacher, T. 51 Oliver, W. 239 Olympics 203 oppressive, communities as 7 Oregon Experiment 175 Orr, D. 168 n.11 Osborne, D. 99 Otero, G. 177 othering 10, 257 n.10 see also discrimination; stereotypes Oxfordshire Wheel 188

P Packendorff, J, 130, 139 Paddison, R. 216 Pahl, R. 7

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Pandey, G. 69 Paraguay (Jesuits) 72 parecon 130 Parker, S. 168 n.5 Parmelee, PA. 19 n.10 participation community development 44–5 community participation in health 175–7 compliance or resistance to government 100–3 as condition for ‘hand up’ 104 participatory action research (PAR) 157, 164 participatory budgeting 97 participatory economics (parecon) 130 participatory planning 130 participatory practice 46–8, 71 public participation 92–4 tenants’ movement 211–16 user participation 189 partnership working 93–4, 100–1, 106–7, 131–2, 133, 139, 153 pastoral power 164, 238 paternalism 168 n.10, 215 Paton, K. 12, 204 patriarchy 40 patrimonial class 60 n.10 Pawson, H. 228 n.38 Pearce, J. 15, 16, 115 n.4, 145 n.18 Peck, J. 95 peer-to-peer production 131 Pemberton, S. 164 Penny, J. 179, 181, 195 n.21 pensions 125 performativity 152, 153–4, 240 Perreault, T. 102–3 personal budgets 187 personal communities 7, 9 Pestoff, V. 186 Pettit, P. 69, 86 n.4 PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) 168 n.6 pharmaceutical industry 194 n.16 Philippines 196 n.27 Phillips, D. 207, 208 Phillips, SK. 10, 11 Phillipson, C. 9 PIE (psychologically informed environments) 185 Piketty, T. 60 n.10 Pill, M. 108, 116 n.11 Pinkney, S. 226 n.28 Pitts, J. 238 place attachments to 8, 9–11, 14–15 and capitalism 35–6, 125 and community-run enterprises 127–8 in definitions of community 5

346

as driver for collective action 139 dwelling in place 5, 8, 9, 10 localized economies 129 and neoliberalism 115 n.8 people-based versus place-based approaches 134–5 and political community 68–9 social relations less embedded in 12 Podemos (Spain) 85, 89 n.24, 102, 263 policing 115 n.6, 231–60 policy communities 156 polis versus cosmopolis 68 politics see also capitalism; neoliberalism the common good 53, 111, 214 and community enterprise 128–9 community studies 16 entrepreneurs as political activists 128 field of politics 77–85 and housing 200, 222 n.3 policy-politics 87 n.5 political community under capitalism 67–89 relational politics 263 transformation of capitalism 136, 139 poorer/ deprived communities and capitalism 40 community development 44–5, 96 economic development 123, 127, 128, 131–2 education 150 government approaches 93, 95–6, 99, 109, 133–5 housing 207–8 negative relationships in 256 n.5 public participation 93 side-in approaches 131–2 Sure Start 161–5 wider context 132 Porter, L. 203 Porter, M. 143 n.7 post-capitalism 136, 139 post-structuralism 25 Powell, T. 99–100, 238 powerlessness 100–1 precariat 27, 28, 125, 226 n.32 private rented housing 198, 201, 204, 212–13, 217, 227 n.33 profit motive 35, 83, 124, 126, 129 projected communities 6 ‘public’ (avoidance of term) 87 n.13 Public Health England 182–3 Purdue, D. 93 Putnam, R. 8

R race and ethnicity attachment to locality 8, 9 encapsulated communities 11

Index

housing 207–8 multi-ethnic communities 12 systematic discrimination 35 unequal valuing of citizens 234 racism 10, 44, 49, 208, 246 radical community work 46, 47, 48, 55, 95, 130 Rancière, J. 256 n.4 Ray, K. 101 reciprocity 111, 145 n.19, 189, 191, 214, 263 recognition, in definitions of community 4, 6, 8 Redditch Cooperative Homes 218–19 reformist community work 48–52 regeneration 107–8, 126, 202–4, 206–7 relational approaches 186–7, 189, 263 religion 19 n.4, 72, 158, 258 n.18 Renauer, B. 239 representation, of communities 106 resistance 100–3, 150, 204–5 Respect agenda 244–5, 253 respectability 41–2, 237, 243, 245, 252–3 Restakis, J. 36, 37–8, 72 restorative justice 241 revanchism 202, 204 Rex, J. 207 Rexroth, K. 72 Ricoeur, P. 16 right to buy 108, 216, 220 right to the city 22 n.25, 251 riots 110, 251–3, 254 Ritter, A. 74 Robbins, G. 216 Roberts, M. 105 Robertson, D. 12, 139 Rochdale Boroughwide Housing 218 Rodger, JJ. 118 n.24, 233, 236, 237, 260 n.30 Roessl, D. 136, 138–9 Rose, N. 92, 241 ‘rough’ communities 41–2, 237 rough justice 236 Rowe, A. 228 n.44 Roy, A. 96, 102, 132 Rubinstein, RI. 19 n.10 Rueschemeyer, D. 79 rule of law 79, 236 rural areas 11, 223 n.6

S Saegert, S. 20 n.13 Safri, M. 136 Sahlberg, P. 151 Sanders, T. 260 n.32 Sanderson, I. 126

Saraga, E. 226 n.28 Sarvodaya movement 75 Satgar, V. 144 n.14 Satsangi, M. 18 n.1 Satterlee, S. 223 n.6 Saunders, P. 198 Savage, M. 5, 26, 27, 28 Sayer, A. 232, 258 n.20 scaling up 73, 75, 100–1, 102 Scanlon, C. 194 n.11 Scherer, J. 8 Schock, K. 79 Schofield, B. 97, 98 Scholemoor, Bradford 15 schools 148–52, 157–61, 166, 186 Schwartz, H. 222 n.3 Scotson, J. 11 Scott, M. 101 Seabrook, J. 9 selective belonging 9 self-determination 60 n.14, 69, 76 self-development, community 126–7, 156 self-help ideology 44, 46, 116 n.11 self-policing 234–7, 239–41, 245 self-realization 36, 84, 87 n.6 Sennett, R. 39–40 sets of practices, communities as 4, 6, 7 sexuality 85, 234 Short, B. 5 Shragge, E. 46 Shucksmith, M. 223 n.6 side-in approaches 131–2 Silvestri, M. 252 Single Local Growth Fund 134 Sittlichkeit 68, 71 Skeggs, B. 41, 115 n.8 Skidmore, P. 53, 93 Skinner, Q. 69 Skocpol, T. 101 Slater, T. 95, 203 slums 11, 132–3, 202 Smith, N. 11 Smith, P. 155, 158 social and solidarity economy 144 n.14 social capital 26, 45, 110, 128–9 social care 183–4 social class see also specific classes attachment to locality 9–10 and capitalism 24–33 and cooperatives 37 gentrification 5, 11, 135, 201–8 health 176 and housing 199, 201–8, 216 injuries of class 39–40 and neoliberalism 84 and parecon 130 and the political field 78

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social cooperatives 188 social democracy 25, 82 social enterprises 137 social health 172 social housing 14, 135, 207, 212–13, 215–16, 217 social investment approaches 153, 162 social justice 44–5, 258 n.14 social mobility 27, 40, 83, 150, 168 n.4 social movements 49–52, 84–5, 112, 136, 156–7, 177–8, 215, 263 social networks 51, 131 social solidarity cooperative movement 188 socialism 67, 72, 73, 74 solidarity 8, 23, 33, 39, 74–5 Somerville, P. 7, 11, 37, 38, 39, 63 n.33, 112, 116 n.11, 128, 136, 140, 189, 213, 216, 220, 223 n.6, 232, 240, 245 Spain 84, 85, 89 n.24, 102, 263 SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resources) 102 Sparkbrook, Birmingham 207–8 spiritual community 19 n.4 Springett, J. 46, 47–8, 71, 149, 177, 180 squatters 226 n.32 Squires, P. 238 Sri Lanka 75 Standing, G. 27 states see also government and capitalism 78 and housing 200 interventionist state 108–9, 249, 250 and nations 69 as obstacle to beloved community 262–3 state power 77–85 state-citizen partnerships 94 stereotypes 237–8, 243, 252–3 Stevens, S. 182, 185 stewardship 135 Stokes, K. 143 n.9 storytelling 46–7 strain models 31 strawberry fields principle 188, 218 street-level bureaucrats 29, 101, 240 Sturzaker, J. 223 n.6 subaltern/ abject communities 11, 42–3, 125 subjectivity, in definitions of community 4 substantive freedom 71 sugar taxes 194 n.15, 196 n.23 superbugs 181 Sure Start 161–5 surplus population 191 surplus value 24, 32, 56, 124 sustainability 172–3, 206

348

Swaffield, J. 207 Sweden 186, 218 Swyngedouw, E. 103 symbolic capital 26, 175, 210 symbolic violence 40, 211, 223 n.6 Syrett, S. 126–7 Syriza 102

T taxation 89 n.25, 174, 228 n.42 Taylor, M. 18 n.1, 51, 87 n.13, 92, 94, 97, 101, 106, 116 n.12, 117 n.18, 127–8, 129–30, 144 n.16, 156, 157, 257 n.6 Taylor, V. 37, 215 Teague, P. 140 Teasdale, S. 143 n.11 Temporary Autonomous Zones 129 tenants’ movement 211–16, 219 tenure 198–9, 206, 207–8, 212–16, 217 Thake, S. 127 thick versus thin communities 7–8 third sector see voluntary sector Thomson, L. 45 Tickell, A. 95 tie strength 7–8 Titmuss, R. 214 Tönnies, F. 19 n.6 top-down versus bottom-up approaches 126, 128, 131–2, 140, 148–9, 161–5, 190, 211 Torgersen, U. 200 total community 87 n.7 trade unions 25, 33, 82, 83, 151, 152 Transition culture movement 87 n.12 transnational communities 20 n.13 trans-scalar organisation 103 trickle-down economics 126 Tritter, J. 175 troubled families 249–50 Truscott, F. 92 trust 117 n.19, 131 Turner, A. 7 Twelvetrees, A. 179

U Uguris, T. 214–15 Uitermark, J. 115 n.5, 115 n.7, 213 Ujamaa socialism (Tanzania) 73 UK education case study 152–5 housing cooperatives 218 housing market renewal 209–11 neoliberalism case study 103–11 NHS case study 178–84

Index

policing case study 241–53 unemployment 40, 126, 133–5 see also precariat universal franchise 79–80 unpaid work 34, 83, 111, 143 n.4, 194 n.11 up-skilling 32 urban areas 11, 204 US ACORN (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now) 46, 50–1 community development 46 Community Development Corporations 45 gun control 89 n.23 healthcare 182 homeschooling 151 housing 198, 218, 220 policing 239–40 scholarship 20 n.13 use values 24, 56, 98, 124, 132, 210 user consultations 164, 180 user movements 191 USSR 73 utopia 16, 75, 130, 261

V Vamstad, J. 186, 189 vigilantism 236 village shops see community enterprises violence and binary stereotyping 238 monopoly 88 n.16, 89 n.23 riots, London (2011) 110, 251–3 routine violence 69 and social disorder 110 and state power 78 symbolic violence 40, 211, 223 n.6 virtual communities 131 Visser, K. 10 ‘voice,’ giving people 110–11 voluntary sector 92–4, 107, 108, 131–2, 133, 139

war 15–16, 69, 78, 79 Ward, M. 133–4 Watt, P. 9, 41, 203, 204 Webb, J. 118 n.24 Weber, M. 88 n.16 webs of care 125, 196 n.26 Weiner, L. 151 Weinstein, L. 132 welfare states 25, 80, 164, 200, 233–4, 238, 249 wellbeing 172–4 Wemyss, G. 10 Wenger, E. 156 White, RJ. 21 n.19 Whittier, N. 215 WHO (World Health Organisation) 174, 177, 181 Wilkinson, RG. 172–3 Williams, C. 143 n.4 Williams, G. 89 n.21 Williams, R. 214 Wills, J. 52–3, 101 Winstanley, G. 71 Wistow, G. 175 Wood, M. 115 n.9 worker cooperatives 36–9, 74, 82, 126, 136, 188–9, 262 working class communities and capitalism 24–33, 39–43, 56, 79–82 categorisations of 27–8, 219 civilisation of 250 in community studies 11–12 domesticated consumers 15–16 and education 149, 150 housing 199, 201–8, 210–11 socialism 73 and state power 79–82 Sure Start 161–5 worklessness 40, 126, 133–5

Y Yamin, AE. 176, 177 Young, M. 15–16, 257 n.10 Yuval-Davis, N. 85

W

Z

Wacquant, L. 11, 20 n.18, 203, 205 wages living wages 24, 111, 126, 134, 184 low wages 124, 125, 128, 132 precariat 27, 28, 125, 226 n.32 Walker, M. 95 Walklate, S. 10, 256 n.5 Wallman, S. 8, 14 Walters, S. 3

Zionism 73 Žižek, S. 7, 32, 75, 260 n.36

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