Thursday, February 7, 2008

With the publication of the Dept for Communities and Local Government's "Cohesion Guidance for Funders" we see why the Community Cohesion debate is such a dangerous one. The dangerous notion of "community" coupled with the incoherent notion of"social capital" is being used against the more radical grassroots BAME organisations who serve particular "communities" on the grounds that they call attention to difference and discrimination rather than bringing us all together into a cosy samosa-consuming world of "cohesion". I would urge all radical anti-racist and activist groups to challenge these assumptions as part of the consultation on the paper which is open till 26 May. The paper and a form for responses are available online at: http://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/publications/consultations/

At the same time in the news, Caroline Flint's disgraceful attack on tenants living in social housing is a classic example of the hard-faced, less touchy-feely end of the communitarian approach. Coupled together these two approaches; community cohesion as soft cop and "bash the chavs" as hard cop show the janus face of new Labour. Far from being a challenge to poverty and injustice these are both part of a massive attack on the welfare state, the "undeserving poor" (Council tenants, asylum seekers etc) and many organisations that stand up for them.

Further analysis of the DCLG paper and hopefully more discussion of caroline Flint's outrage will follow on this blog. If ever you want to see the dangers of a communitarian approach this is it. Overall the Government is set fast on an approach that aims to blame the victims, hide the real inequalities, attack the welfare state, downplay racism and other forms of discimination.

1 comment:

Andy Gregg said...

from Paul Cotterill


Andy

Thanks for this. I agree with much of your analysis. What concerns me a little though is that your 'call to arms' to activists is made in the name of the 'welfare state'. Is there not a danger here that we develop a comfortable image of the WS as this marvellous entity, in the same way that the image of a bygone community has been created (say in new East End). Amongst the activists (why only groups of them by the way?) that you call to arms (well, keyboard), there may well be a different interpretation of the 'welfare state', namely of a postwar 'spatio-temporal' fix (see Jessop, 2004) on behalf of renewed capital accumulation - not as discursivley refined perhaps as new communitarian ideologies, but all the same as inherently conservative of the status quo as the new ideological arrangements on behalf of capital. The height of the Welfare state, for example, brought with it the expllcit racism of the mid 1960s (see the stuff on immigration act I sent you offline as a counter to the New East end stuff you rightly critique), because even then the discourse of the WS apparatus was such that it contained an appeal about the worthy and the unworthy.

All i'm saying is we need to be careful what we're defending - not i suggest an earlier, seemingly gentler contorl method, but ...well whatever you choose to call it - our (historically determined?) right to identity/non-alienation, or maybe just our right to be free (was that the doors?) from oppression.


Ref: Jessop B (2004) The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity Press

Best

Paul