Nicholas R. Fyfe

Preserving Space for Volunteers: Exploring the Links between Voluntary Welfare Organisations, Volunteering and Citizenship

While contemporary social and political theory views voluntary activity as key to the promotion of active citizenship, this paper argues that the connections between voluntary welfare associations and citizenship are more complex than these discourses allow. Drawing on research undertaken in the Scottish city of Glasgow and debates about an increased bifurcation of the voluntary sector, it considers how the different settings within which voluntary welfare associations are organised can act to facilitate or constrain the development of active citizenship. In doing so, it focuses on the tensions voluntary associations face between organisational growth and restructuring in order to provide good quality services, on the one hand, and the positive engagement with volunteers and empowerment of local people on the other. It demonstrates how the drive towards organisational growth can result in disempowerment and the promotion of passive citizenship; however, it is argued, that this is not a necessary outcome. Organisations can and do address the need to deliver professional and complex welfare services while remaining committed to active participation.

Respectable or Respectful? (In)civility and the City

Do we stand before a rising tide of incivility, of disrespect? Or, is this the latest moral panic? Examining (the UK) New Labours approach to incivility in the city, as manifest in the respect and urban renaissance agendas, this paper argues that the current zero-tolerance approach to incivility is based upon a confused understanding of anti-social behaviour and contradictory evidence of its occurrence and impact. Ultimately, it is proposed that a version of urbanity that endeavours to enforce respect and create the respectable city will prove counter-productive. Rather, respect and the respectful city require tolerance of, and engagement with, incivility.

Space, citizenship, and voluntarism: critical reflections on the voluntary welfare sector in Glasgow

Faced with anxieties about meeting welfare needs, and worries about the nature and meaning of citizenship, there is evidence of increasing state-initiated moves to develop the role and responsibilities of voluntary associations. Existing research suggests, however, that there are tensions between the spatial distribution of voluntary resources and welfare needs, and that the relationship between voluntary activity and active citizenship is more complex than is often acknowledged. Focusing on the voluntary welfare sector in Glasgow, the authors first examine the uneven distribution of voluntary activity across the city and its relationship to ‘need’. Although in contrast to previous research this reveals strong representation of voluntary organisations in deprived areas of the city (largely as a result of state funding programmes), important tensions and conflicts remain between where organisations are funded to provide services and the needs of vulnerable populations. In the second part of the paper the relationship between voluntarism and citizenship in Glasgow is examined. Highlighting the existence of a distinction between ‘grass-roots’ and ‘corporatist’ voluntary organisations, the authors illustrate the ways in which voluntarism can be associated with both the empowerment and the disempowerment of citizens. In the conclusions it is emphasised that developments in Glasgow resonate with wider concerns about the impact of welfare reform on the voluntary sector.

In)civility and the City

Urban Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713449163 (In)civility and the city Nicholas Fyfe a; Jon Bannister b; Ade Kearns b a Department of Geography, University of Dundee. Perth Road, Dundee, DD1 4HN. UK b Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow. 25 Bute Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RS. UK

Law and order policy and the spaces of citizenship in contemporary Britain

Abstract The British Conservative Party has consistently portrayed itself as ‘the party of law and order’ but, despite high levels of investment in the criminal justice system since 1979, crime and disorder show no signs of diminishing. Against this background, this paper uses policy documents and debates in the House of Commons to examine key elements of the post-1979 Conservative Governments′ law and order policy programme. This programme, which draws inspiration from both the neo-liberal and neo-conservative strands of New Right doctrine, has important implications for the meaning of citizenship in Britain. The first part of the paper examines law and order policies which are creating spaces within which responsibility for the prevention of crime and the maintenance of order shifts from the state to civil society, a strategy by which the Government intends to foster citizenship by enhancing a sense of individual responsibility for the welfare of community. The second part of the paper, by contrast, focuses on particular pieces of recent legislation which allow increased penetration of civil society by the state, a development Government critics argue erodes citizenship by circumscribing the spaces within which people can act unhindered by political interference.

Putting the Voluntary Sector in its Place: Geographical Perspectives on Voluntary Activity and Social Welfare in Glasgow

The growing political and social significance of the voluntary sector in contemporary welfare reform is reflected in a wide body of research that has emerged in the political and social policy literature since the mid-1980s. While this work adds considerably to our understanding of the changing role of the voluntary welfare sector, these accounts are largely aspatial. Yet, geographical perspectives offer important insights into the development of the voluntary sector at both micro-and macro-levels. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: first we wish to draw attention to what it is that geographers do that may be of interest to those working in the field of social policy; and second, we illustrate why such perspectives are important. Drawing on recently completed work in Glasgow, we demonstrate how geographical approaches can contribute to a greater understanding of the uneven development of the voluntary sector across space and how voluntary organisations become embedded in particular places. By unravelling some of the complex webs of inter-relationships that operate across the geographical and political spaces that extend from national to local we reveal some unique insights into those factors that act to facilitate or constrain the development of voluntary activity across the city with implications for access, service delivery and policy development. Hence, we maintain, that geographical approaches to voluntarism are important for social policy as such approaches argue that where events occur matter to both their form and outcome.

Knowledge exchange and police practice: broadening and deepening the debate around researcher–practitioner collaborations

Herman Goldstein’s observation about the weak relationship between ‘knowledge’ and ‘practice’ in policing raises two important questions. First, what different types of knowledge could be used to inform police policy and practice and, second, how is that knowledge most effectively exchanged between ‘providers’ (the research community) and ‘users’ (the police service)? The main focus of this special issue will be on the second question, of how knowledge generated through social research is transferred to, or exchanged with, practitioners so that it can be used to develop evidence-based (or at least evidence-informed or evidence-aware) practice. However, in the process of exploring this question, it will also be necessary to engage in some reflection on the first question regarding the different types of knowledge that are of value to policing. The papers in this volume will therefore help to broaden and deepen the debate around researcher–practitioner collaborations which have been explored through two earlier special issues of this journal in 2009 (Johnston & Shearing, 2009) and 2010 (Cordner & White, 2010) and in a special issue of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice (Murji, 2010). These earlier contributions have clearly demonstrated that there are now a range of innovative approaches to building strong and sustainable collaborative relationships between researchers and police practitioners which are creating new opportunities for ‘knowledge generation’ around policing policy and practice, although such collaborations are not straightforward. They rely on ending the ‘dialogue of the deaf’ (Bradley & Nixon, 2009), building relationships of trust, openness and honesty, establishing good personal relationships between ‘the right people’ (see Foster & Bailey, 2010; Marks, Wood, Ally, Walsh, & Witbooi, 2010) and developing a strategy of continuous negotiation and communication (Fleming, 2010). Yet for all this progress in our understanding of what is needed for successful collaborations between researchers and police practitioners, there is still, according to Weisburd and Neyroud (2011), ‘a fundamental disconnect between science and policing’ (p. 2). In ‘Police Science: Towards a New Paradigm’, they argue (echoing Goldstein) that this disconnect is in part a failure by the police to ‘step up its use’ of research (p. 5). However,

Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: Situated, Embodied and Emotional Practices of Voluntary Action

Abstract Examining the everyday practices and feelings of volunteering, in particular their situated, emotional and embodied nature, serves to place the experiences of volunteers centrally in accounts of what matters in the doing of volunteering and goes beyond service provision or active citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from three collaborative research projects, we present enlivened geographies of volunteering which focus on: the situatedness of formal volunteering in place and the negotiation of local ‘moral economies’ of norms and expectations surrounding access to volunteering opportunities and the practices of volunteering; complex positionings of informal volunteering in biographies of social participation; and intersections of embodiment and emotions in experiences among environmental volunteers. We contribute to the development of social geographies which are ‘more-than-representational’ and argue that connecting insights on everyday practices of volunteering with wider policy and practice agendas requires a focus on the enduring, but also emergent and excessive nature of the spaces of doing volunteering, on the relational nature of volunteering, and on opening up debates in the networks of research-policy-practice which understand spaces of volunteering as entailing more than volunteering.

The third sector in a devolved Scotland: From policy to evidence

Scotlands post-devolution government has implemented a number of policies engaging with the third sector. These sit within the UK context of New Labours welfare reform with its twin emphases on neoliberalism and neo-communitarianism. Moves by the Scottish Executive to translate these themes into the Scottish context are illustrated by policies on the relation between the state and third sector organizations, on the social economy, and on volunteering. However, as a case study of the sector in Glasgow demonstrates, significant challenges emerge for the realization of policy claims for the development of social capital and citizenship in practice.

Space, Time, and Policing: Towards a Contextual Understanding of Police Work

Studies of policing have been dominated by two types of approach: those that are focused on the minutiae of routine police work and those that are concerned with the sociolegal contexts of policing. In this paper an attempt is made to connect these two approaches by the development of a contextual understanding of police work. The authors own and other ethnographic police research in the United Kingdom are woven together to examine the time-space sequences and settings of local, routine police action. In the first part of the paper, Hägerstrands time geography is used to explore the time-space sequences of policing, highlighting the impacts of capability, coupling, and steering ‘constraints’. These constraints indicate the importance of the organisation of police work, the role of the community, and the impact of the law on the practice of policing. An important limitation of time geography, however, is its failure to scrutinise the settings of social interaction. In the second part of the paper this weakness is addressed by employing the concepts of locale and place in order to examine the time-space settings of policing, with examples to show the subtle but important differences between these concepts.