Using a combination of ethnographic methods this research portrays the effects of Bourdieu's concept of habitus in Community Safety Partnership (CSP) work in an English unitary council. The foundation for the research lies in Hughes and Gilling’s (2004) research with CSP managers, which suggests that those who undertake such roles have an outlook on their work that follows a social welfare agenda. This contrasts with the managerial approach to welfare and crime that developed in the late 1970s. The originality of this work lies firstly, in its method of investigation - the author has been an active member of the partnership since 2002 - and interaction with those for whom community safety is a core activity (council CSP teams and the police) and those - like the author - who may be considered as lay members. Secondly, what was found contrasts with the organizational discordance found in other CSP research (Skinns, 2005 and 2006; Ellis et al, 2007) and in other similar partnership work (Burnett and Appleton, 2004; Hodgson, 2004). The partnership is successful Organizational constraints did not seem to override the social democratic habitus of both the core and lay members of the CSP. The spirit of CSP work is illustrated in a small unitary authority in a period that saw a shift from the discourse of New Public Management (NPM) to that of the Big Society. The latter two notions, while present as theory, did not seem evident in practice as what emerged was a CSP managing to deliver services in difficult political and economic circumstances especially in terms of domestic abuse.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:722593 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Powell, Barry |
| Publisher | Lancaster University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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