Social Work and the Community
Also by Paul Stepney
SOCIAL WORK MODELS, METHODS AND THEORIES (edited with Deirdre Ford) 2000
Also by Keith Popple
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: An International Reader (edited with Gary Craig and Mae Shaw)
COMMUNITY WORK IN THE 1990s (edited with Sidney Jacobs)
RACISM IN EUROPE: A Challenge for Youth Policy and Youth Work (edited with Jan Hazekamp)
Social Work and the
Community
A Critical Context for Practice
Paul Stepney and Keith Popple
Paul Stepney and Keith Popple 2008
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martins Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978 1 4039 9126 3
ISBN-10: 1 4039 9126 X
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Printed in China
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to a number of people who have made this book possible. One is Neil Thompson who first suggested we might like to consider a scholarly critical text that explored the connection between social work and community, something both of us have had a particular interest in for most of our professional lives. Another is the late Jo Campling who as a Consultant Editor encouraged us to put these ideas in writing as a proposal to Palgrave some three years ago. We would also like to acknowledge the influence of our friend and colleague David Sawdon, who has become disabled by Motor-Neurone Disease, and whose ideas about community work and commitment to adult learning has encouraged many social work students and practitioners over the years.
Since commencing writing the book we have had the support of our families, friends and colleagues who have both encouraged us and challenged us through the gestation period. We are also indebted to the students we have taught in the UK, Finland, Hong Kong and Singapore who have unwittingly assisted us with feedback on our teaching inputs, which in turn has been informed by our researching and writing for the book. Further, we would like to thank all those at Palgrave who have patiently waited for the manuscript and together with anonymous reviewers who have provided us with helpful feedback. As with all contributions to the social work literature, however, we are responsible for any glaring errors, mistakes or plain misunderstandings.
The authors and the publisher would like to thank the following organisations and persons for granting permission to reproduce copyright material:
Peter Henriques, University of Wolverhampton, for granting permission to use the diagram on Ecological Models in ) is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO on behalf of Parliament.
Paul Stepney
University of Wolverhampton
Keith Popple
London South Bank University
Part I
The Social Construction of Community
The first part of the book, from , considers a number of wider developments and contextual themes in our understanding of community.
In of the book we provide an introduction to the idea of community before outlining its significance for the remainder of the book. The key aims of the book are outlined and in particular we establish why our arguments are important in this early part of the twenty-first century. We consider the way in which the shifting and changing nature of community has impacted on the development of social work since the end of the Second World War. We look at the way community has become a central theme in a number of TV and radio soaps as well as being a powerful aspiration in the political sphere.
In we argue that to appreciate and understand the enduring interest and appeal of the concept of community we need to explore the different, and at times contradictory and contested, theories that highlight the term. We do this by examining the contribution of community studies to our appreciation of the diversity and changing nature of community from the industrial revolution to the present time. We then explore how the British government has increasingly intervened in what is seen as deprived or dysfunctional communities in order to regenerate neighbourhoods and increase economic activity. We note that a constant feature in British social and public policy since the mid-1940s has been the focus on improving life in communities and neighbourhoods. We end by considering a highly topical study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that examines the impact of economic migration of people from Eastern Europe on communities in the UK.
In the value and the benefit of the economic free-market. We then move to examine how these have produced a range of inequalities, social problems and new patterns of exclusion that are presented through existing divisions of class, race and gender. Our concern then moves to the evolution of the UKs new communities, by which we mean economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented persons. This is followed by consideration of what this means for rethinking community as a socially constructed concept. We conclude with the view that the notion of community, although associated with continuity and tradition in popular culture, has radically changed since the 1980s.
Introduction to the Idea of Community
Introduction
This book offers a critically progressive and we hope inspiring, contribution to contemporary social work theory and practice. It is primarily aimed at assisting a developing understanding of the relationship between social work and the concept of community. It is written and published at a significant time in the development of UK social work, and social work education, which in our view has much to gain from community-based approaches. The book seeks to effectively engage with the complex social problems inherent in a twenty-first century postmodern society that has closely adhered to the demands of globalisation and neo-liberal economics.
