Understanding Community: Politics, Policy and Practice

✍ Scribed by Peter Somerville

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 362
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Understanding community is a highly topical text offering a clear understanding of policy and theory in relation to community. By examining areas of government policy, such as economic development, education, health, housing, and community safety, this book explores the difficulties that communities face and discusses new concepts such as community cohesion, social capital and community capacity building. Somerville challenges our understanding of community, both social and conceptual, and assesses the strengths and limitations of this understanding. This book is essential for students studying social policy, social work and sociology, and an invaluable resource for policymakers in community development, urban regeneration and allied fields.

✦ 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