This research engages with bottom up accounts of community participation and nonparticipation, and identifies some of the ways in which participation is constrained, enabled or provoked. The project is set against a background of UK policy relating to participation since 1997, and includes a critical engagement with the policies of New Labour and the new coalition government, providing a comparison between official 'top down' accounts and the perspectives of the research participants. I focus on understanding participation as a situated practice, and identify how different ways of participating - both formally and informally - can be understood to reflect broader socioeconomic conditions. I argue that both people's capacity and inclination to participate is strongly affected by factors such as patterns of work, education, housing tenure and leisure. Consequently attempts to promote the self-empowerment of disadvantaged groups through increased participation require more than simply attitudinal change, and need to take into account the particular modes of disempowerment experienced by such groups. Further, I suggest that the concept of geographical community can become less relevant in particular contexts whereby neighbourhoods are' emptied out' over time, in terms of the disappearance of local workplaces, shops and spaces of leisure, and where increasing social divisions undermine . relationships and solidarities between local residents. Hence, the idea that participation can necessarily be engendered on a local level is problematized.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:577525 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Wright, Katherine Jane |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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