Towards Understanding Community: People and Places

At the beginning of the twenty first century, the idea of community is again being evoked to challenge the perceived loss of local senses of identity and feelings of solidarity within post-industrial and post-imperial economies. This is a timely collection written in the temporal and political context of the British New Labour Government's ongoing reliance on the word 'community'. Academics and activists engage critically with the range of ways in which contemporary ideas of community are being used and contested, examining the current theoretical and practical challenges of building and sustaining convincing senses of community in national and trans-national contexts. Contributions are organised into three thematic sections - Locating community, Justice within and between communities and Building healthy communities - each with a key focus on understanding community from action into theory and theory into action. Introductions from the editors provide summaries of key debates that set the wider theoretical and research contexts for contributions.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Towards Understanding Community - an introduction; C.J.Clay, M.Madden & L.Potts The Signature Quilt; R.Walsh PART 1: LOCATING COMMUNITY Locating Community: An Introduction; C.J.Clay The Politics of Community: New Labour and the Eclipse of Society; S.Parker Learning Communities and Tertiary Education; S.Billingham 'For All the Women Out There': Community and the Ethics of Care in the Marketing of a Breast Cancer Fundraising Event; J.D'Aloisio Contingent Communities: British Social Policy and the Invention of Refugee Communities; L.Kelly PART 2: JUSTICE WITHIN AND BETWEEN COMMUNITIES Justice Within and Between Communities: An Introduction; M.Madden Globalisation, Multiple Threats and the Weakness of International Institutions: A Community-Centred Response; S.Sweeney The Ideal of a Sustainable Community, 2006; K.Peat Community Informatics: Building Civil Society in the Information Age?; L.Keeble Working with the Community: Research and Action; G.Letherby impetus, a Movement Towards Shared Ethical Values and Human Rights; A.Short PART 3: BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES Building Healthy Communities: An Introduction; L.Potts How Communities Can Use Geographical Information Systems; S.Cinderby Community Capacity Building, Community Development and Health: A Case Study of 'Health Issues in the Community'; R.Phillips A Community of Expertise: Positioning the UK Environmental Breast Cancer Movement; L.Potts Promoting Participatory Working; P.Turton Bibliography Index

About the Author :
CHRISTOPHER J. CLAY is Head of Programme for Community Studies, York St John University, UK. Over the last 30 plus years he has occupied a variety of roles within York St John including a period in the 1970s and 1980s as a community worker. His teaching and research interests include the social construction of HIV/AIDS, surveillance and social control, and teaching and learning. MARY MADDEN is Research Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, York University, UK. She has an interdisciplinary background in English Literature, Critical Theory, Sociology and Social and Community Work. Her interests combine practical field experience with complex epistemological and methodological challenges to forms of enquiry in the social sciences. LAURA POTTS is Reader in Public Health and the Environment at York St John University. She chairs the UK Public Health Association's Environmental Pollution and Health Group and is on the board of Trustees of the Pesticides Action Network UK.