Charlie Cooper

Imagining ‘radical’ youth work possibilities – challenging the ‘symbolic violence’ within the mainstream tradition in contemporary state-led youth work practice in England

This paper critically assesses the contemporary mainstream state-led youth work tradition in England. Its particular focus is possibilities within this tradition for engaging disadvantaged young people in activities that facilitate resistance to oppression. The basic thesis presented is that the current framework for youth work policy and practice is closing off opportunities for progressive ways of working with young people and, as a corollary, is stifling their capacity to overcome the constraints limiting their life chances. The data were gathered in 2010 while the author worked at an open-access youth club in a deprived inner-city district of an English city. While the majority of the young people using the club suffered severe social disadvantage, both the macro and micro political frameworks for state-led youth work worked against imagining strategies of resistance and social change. The paper draws on Bourdieus notion of ‘symbolic violence’ to shed light on the way the operations of social institutions often conceal the power relations behind the violence of oppression and thereby add their own symbolic force to those relations. In the case of contemporary youth work practice, the force of this symbolic violence is having profound material consequences in the form of denied dreams and aspirations.

Conditions of domination: reflections on harms generated by the British state education system

Education in Britain increasingly appears to serve a very narrow notion of pedagogy, partly reflecting the ‘conditions of domination’ generated by the rise of the new managerialism in the delivery of public services. In the name of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, social progress is increasingly seen to lie in achieving continual increases in ‘productivity’, realised through giving management the absolute freedom to arrange its resources in whatever way it feels appropriate. At the heart of this critical reflection on these contemporary developments lies a concern for the role of education in democratic development, as well as the various harms that are the direct result of a profoundly reductionist and dehumanising ‘education’ system. The article concludes by outlining some alternative possibilities for more humane and democratic pedagogical processes.

New Labour, Community Safety, Cohesion and Wellbeing

This chapter presents an assessment of New Labour’s policy discourse on community safety, cohesion and wellbeing, and how this discourse translated into social policy measures and practices rolled out over the ten years following Blair’s election victory in 1997. More specifically, the chapter will deal in turn with three key priority areas of New Labour’s social policy agenda – community safety, urban regeneration and community cohesion. It will briefly describe the background issues to each of these policy areas followed by a critique of the policies themselves.

Concepts of ‘Community’ and ‘Conflict’

The previous chapter illustrated modern Britain’s enduring fascination with notions of community, conflict and safety. Throughout modern (and post-modern) times, various theorists, concerned that the shared beliefs and customs which held traditional (pre-modern) societies together could no longer be assumed, have pondered the nature of social cohesion in industrial (and more recently, post-industrial) society. Traditional forms of association (‘community’) were seen to have been destroyed by industrialisation and urbanisation, a consequence of which appeared to be radical changes in the nature of social relations and the generation of new sites of community conflict. These changes were the concern of classical sociologists such as Durkheim, Weber, Marx and Tonnies.

Summary and Conclusions — Community Wellbeing for All?

In this final chapter we conclude with a consideration of the possibilities for developing a more universalised vision of community wellbeing. We do this by imagining the kind of societal context needed to enable individuals to develop their capacity to engage freely in society as healthy, autonomous beings. We also consider the practical means by which we can transcend the established state of affairs and arrive at a more progressive basis for democratic decision making where community involvement is more meaningful and where real possibilities exist for enhancing the wellbeing of the many. In thinking about the way such a basis for society and politics might be reached, we draw on critical theories of community which emphasise the concept’s transformative capacity and its utility as a counter discourse to the neo-liberal and communitarian principles adopted by New Labour. Before embarking on this endeavour, however, we set out a brief summary of the main argument developed throughout this book in order to define the bedrock or platform upon which any future arrangement for maximising social wellbeing will need to evolve.

‘Community’, ‘Conflict’ and the State – the Historical Field

CommunCommunity is a vague and contested concept. For some it has no meaning at all whilst for others it describes a self-contained collection of people living in the same neighbourhood and sharing a sense of belonging. Throughout modernity, community has often been used to describe collections of ‘dangerous’ people living in ‘dangerous’ places who are a threat to the ‘natural’ order. Such descriptions – from politicians, policy analysts, the media and academics alike – have largely served to legitimise a range of punitive policies aimed at maintaining social cohesion and wellbeing in the ‘national interest’. This focus on communities set apart has also allowed public attention to remain focused on a limited understanding of ‘dangerousness’ and ‘crime’ – a corollary of which is that other more serious social harms (caused by the actions of the powerful) have escaped public scrutiny. Throughout the same time, however, the notion of community has also been embraced by the disadvantaged as a site for mobilising collective engagement in social activism and conflict. For disadvantaged groups, community has served as a symbol of human agency around which collective struggles of resistance have been (and can still be) organised. It is because of its utility as a concept for both the powerful and the disadvantaged that community has remained a fascinating and enduring.

Rethinking Community Safety, Cohesion and Wellbeing

As we have argued, dominant notions of community safety, cohesion and wellbeing established in mainstream political and social policy discourse have largely served to socially construct a disproportionate understanding of major threats to human wellbeing in contemporary British society. In particular, by directing public attention on to risks posed by the relatively vulnerable sections of society, interest has been distracted from attending to more serious social harms resulting from the activities of the powerful. This chapter seeks to redress this diversion by refocusing the debate on community safety, cohesion and wellbeing in a way that offers greater recognition of social harms that are symptomatic of a dysfunctional political and economic system. In particular, the chapter will examine the destructive effects of ‘anti-social’ policies and practices of government and private corporations on community wellbeing. It will argue that the process of building safer communities will require greater attention to these issues, and the planning and mobilisation of a different democratic accord prepared and able to call the powerful to account. Once this process begins to happen then genuine possibilities may emerge for refocusing the social policy agenda towards generating a vision of a universalised approach to supporting human wellbeing.