Remaking Community?

New Labour has deployed 'community' as a conceptual framework for its vision of the 'good society'. The allocation of rights and enforcement of responsibilities at a societal level are underpinned by a logic of community 'membership'. In addition, a particular model of 'community' has been central to New Labour's understanding of the problems of 'socially excluded' individuals and neighbourhoods. This model has enabled New Labour to construct these problems in particular ways as well as devise their solutions. The solutions have included regeneration programmes like the New Deal for Communities (NDC), social order policies such as Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) and a broad agenda to 'activate' citizens to participate in the social and moral upkeep of their 'community'. "Remaking Community" addresses these interlinking uses of community in government rhetoric and policy. It explores why this concept has come to be so central to the New Labour governing project of aspiring to broker a new form of citizenship based on reciprocity and individual responsibility. The book also identifies and discusses how this social vision has manifested in a 'politics of membership' influencing New Labour's distinctive welfare reform agenda. Offering a timely analysis of welfare reform, this book make an original and important contribution to the debate on tackling social exclusion in poor neighbourhoods into the future.