Moving to ‘Our’ Common Ground – a Critical Examination of Community Cohesion Discourse in Twenty-First Century Britain

Abstract

Britain confronts a historic choice as to its future direction. Will it try to turn the clock back, digging in, defending old values and ancient hierarchies, relying on a narrow English-dominated, backward-looking definitions of the nation? Or will it seize the opportunity to create a more flexible inclusive, cosmopolitan image of itself? Britain is at a turning point. But it has not yet turned the corner. It is time to make the move. (Parekh, 2000: 14-15). AbstractThe paper focuses on the discourses, recommendations and programmes for facilitating community cohesion in the UK as recorded on the pages of an archive of documents such as: The Community Cohesion Review Team Report (2001), The Bradford District Race Review (2001) and The Local Government Association's Guidance on Community Cohesion (2002). These documents were commissioned in relation to the disturbances in the city of Bradford and in the towns of Oldham and Burnley in the north of England in the spring and summer of 2001.The facilitation of community cohesion, it shall be revealed in this paper, is a rather sociological enterprise involving the problematization and modification of the forms of sociation in communities and especially the structures of interaction between different communities. Community, civil society and social capital are central to this community cohesion discourse, and the towns of Oldham, Burnley and the city of Bradford are at the epicentre of this unfolding social project of attempting to alleviate disorder, disharmony and discord in these areas characterized by multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural communities.However, despite the best of intentions, the process of community cohesion facilitation as read off the pages of this archive of documents will be presented here as being blighted by three inter-related factors; (1) the practical problems associated with attempting to formulate a public policy of community cohesion on the assumption that common principles and shared values can be founded in multiethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural societies; (2) the relative de-emphasis of material deprivation and socio-economic marginalization in community cohesion 377 facilitation programmes in favour of concentrating on inter-community relationships; and (3) with special reference to Bradford, the criminalization of young male British-Asian 'rioters' in the city is shown to be inconsistent with the rebuilding and re-orientation of social capital from defensive 'bonding' to inclusive 'bridging' in the judicial aftermath that is currently gripping this city.

Moving on from ‘Anti-Racism’? Understandings of ‘Community Cohesion’ held by Youth Workers

“…That said, while the term Community Cohesion has little or no resonance with young people or the wider public, it has enabled a modal shift in youth work practice in Oldham. The (largely) shared professional understanding of Community Cohesion as meaningful direct contact among young people of different ethnic backgrounds supports the analysis of Community Cohesion as a Putnamesque critique of excessive 'bonding social capital ' (McGhee, 2003;Putnam, 2000), and the need for bridging social capital. Youth work's creation and use of informal but managed spaces for bridging contact between young people, through events, residentials and arts/sports activities is clearly connected to notions of agency (Gilroy, 2002;Greener, 2002) and to communitarian thought (Etzioni, 1995;McGhee, 2003).…”

“…This also connects with 'third way' approaches (Giddens, 1999); with McGhee (2003) characterising Community Cohesion as part of the government's wider attempts to strengthen civil society, and individual/community responsibility for it, across the range of social policy (Greener, 2002). Above all, Community Cohesion can be seen as a problematisation of excessive bonding social capital within introverted monocultural communities, and the need for greater bridging social capital across ethnic and racial divides (McGhee, 2003;Putnam, 2000).…”

“…However, there is negative evidence from attempts to create compulsory, mixed housing in terms of social class, ethnicity and ownership type (Robinson, 2005). This evidence suggests that the creation of bridging social networks (Putnam, 2000), which enables and encourages voluntary relationship-building between ethnically/socially distinct housing areas, is more likely to succeed, so emphasising choice and agency (McGhee, 2003;Greener, 2002).…”

Delivering Higher Education Policies within a Challenging Community

“…As McGhee (2005) states, the community cohesion policy has to be reviewed and rewritten to assist local authorities to tackle integration. A second criticism of community cohesion that McGhee (2003) "One of my main concerns with the current policy framework is the assimilationist tone of the rhetoric; alongside a discourse of blame directed towards new migrants and especially British Muslim communities, who are expected to show 'which side they are on', through an allegiance to a 'phoney' (Kundnani, 2005) construction of Britishness. "…”

Ethnicity, Identity and Community Cohesion in Prison

“…1 The relative emphasis given to these ideals in the government's discourse on community cohesion has been the subject of vehement critique, as has the proposed means of achieving them (see Alexander, 2004;Amin, 2002;Kalra, 2002;McGhee, 2003;Phillips, 2005;Webster, 2002). These issues are addressed in more detail elsewhere in this volume.…”