Analysing Community Empowerment: Rationalities and Technologies of

[Neutron 60966]

برای مشاهده این محتوا لطفاً ثبت نام کنید یا وارد شوید.

• ورود
• یا
• ثبت نام

 

(Re)Analysing Community

Empowerment: Rationalities and

Technologies of Government in Bristol’s

New Deal for Communities

Julie MacLeavy

[Paper first received, June 2007; in final form, March 2008]

Abstract

Urban regeneration is increasingly framed around notions of community empowerment.

Policy programmes seek to make communities visible and then strengthen and support

them through the establishment of a leadership role in urban regeneration practices.

At fi rst glance, this appears to be a positive development. Yet commentators note how

community partnerships—seen to invoke a ‘rolling back’ of the state—are indicative

of a particular economic logic that is governing urban policy provision. Partnerships,

it is argued, constitute tokenistic organisations that do not represent the diversity of

interests within a particular area. Instead, they work primarily in support of business or

government agendas. This paper re-orientates this critique. Focusing on one example

of a community-led urban regeneration programme—New Deal for Communities

in Bristol—it explores the subjects and spaces to emerge in and through this new

form of governance. By identifying the manner in which New Deal for Communities

composes all participants as partnering subjects, it posits community engagement as

the medium through which power is being reconstituted in extremely comprehensive

ways. It then questions the possibilities for developing and sustaining alternative forms

of collaborative practice.