Concept (E-Journal)
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David, Frayne (9 April 2019) The Work Cure: Critical essays on work and wellness
Full text linkCommunity and youth workers find themselves working in precarious situations - sessional work, short-term contracts, threats to the services they provide - and at the same time, the people they work with are also in precarious jobs and/or dealing with benefit conditionality in particular those claiming Universal Credit.
I am writing this review in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, when these existing problems with employment/unemployment cannot be shied away from anymore and when increasing numbers of people are dependent on Universal Credit as well as food banks. There is growing recognition of the important role of not just highly skilled NHS workers but also of cleaners, warehouse workers, drivers, shop workers and social care workers. These are jobs which have long been prone to zero hours contracts, with low rates of both pay and union membership
Edinburgh Recovery Activities (2020) Letters from Lockdown, PDF available from Concept website
Full text linkLetters from Lockdown is proof that even the ominous cloud of Covid has a silver lining. Six writers were asked to respond to the theme in a creative way, and they have risen ably and admirably to the challenge with a collection that is, by turns, prophetic, wise, clever, funny, poignant, prescient and vital
David Madden and Peter Marcuse (2016) In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis
Full text linkThis book is a well-thought out and thought-provoking read. Although the focus is firmly on the US context, it does draw upon international examples with several mentions of UK movements and issues. There are 5 main sections to the book along with an introduction and conclusion. The contributions are well-researched and draw upon copious amounts of evidence to argue their case for a systemic overhaul of the contemporary housing landscape. It has an easily accessible and readable format and is arguably a \u27call to action\u27 as much as it is a factual reading
Trust and Political Life: the need to transform our democracy
Full text linkOne of the major concerns of contemporary public life centres on how much we can trust our politicians and the public institutions and services that they, with civil servants and political aides, are responsible for. This of course is not a new concern as, ever since we have had a system of representative parliamentary democracy, we have needed to trust our elected representatives and those they appoint, to undertake good governance on our behalf. However, in more recent years trust in UK national politicians and political life has been put under considerable stress. A 2011 Europe-wide Guardian/ICM opinion poll found that only 12% of those polled in the UK said they trusted politicians to ‘act with honesty and integrity’. Further, 66% stated they did not trust the UK government ‘to deal with the country’s problems’ (Glover, 2011). Political trust is central to democratic rule, and any decline in this can reduce the quality and stability of our democracy. Importantly, a reduction of trust in government and confidence in political institutions can damage the vitality of our democracy
Towards a Theory of Geekery
Full text linkIntroduction
Geekery, the quality of being a geek, or of geeking, is much misunderstood. It is widely seen as a social dysfunction, where a person has developed an unhealthy obsession with a non-mainstream topic (though it is the non-mainstreamness of the topic, rather than the depth of obsession, which creates the perception that it is unhealthy). Much has been written about the psychological implications of engaging in such behaviours
Representing community mobilisation on film: learning through and about movements and their struggles
Full text linkThis article offers a brief critical overview of some the challenges associated with media representations of community-based protest and social movements. It is followed by a discussion of three Irish documentary films - The Pipe, Meeting Room and The 4th Act - that have profiled community struggles in Dublin and Mayo. The article proposes that, taken together, the films are problem-posing texts, of potential relevance to any readers seeking to learn with and through the praxis of community development and social movements. Generative themes raised by the films include: the hegemony of particular conceptions of development and solidarity and the denigration of alternatives; the repressive character and responses of the state when faced with dissent; and the meaningfulness of and constraints on the tactics ‘chosen’ by oppressed and peripheralised communities
Margaret Ledwith (2020) Community Development: A Critical and Radical Approach, 3rd Edition
Full text linkThis third edition of Margaret Ledwith’s bestselling text extends earlier editions from 1997’s Participation in Transformation to 2005’s Community Development: A Critical Approach, with the name changing to become not just a “critical” but also a “radical” approach. Ledwith’s central argument is that community development has a key role to play in creating spaces in which to develop a counter-narrative that challenges the powerful neoliberal story that presents individualism, competition and self-interest as natural and unavoidable, and social inequality as the outcome of individual success or failure
Jorge Tamames (2020) For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US
Full text linkThere are three sections to this book, each of which contains three chapters, each of which begins with three quotations. This is a systematic author. The clear structure makes the text easy to navigate and a useful index makes it easier still. The third section fulfils the promise of the title, with analyses of the rise and considerable fall of the Podemos movement in Spain and Bernie Sanders’ promising but ultimately unsuccessful 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in America. The second section lays the ground for these two analyses, with accounts of the political economies of Spain and America, respectively, over the 35 years or so up to the recent financial crash; a major part of the argument of the book is that the current \u27populist moment\u27 can only be properly understood by locating it in its historical context, which dates back to the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s
Edinburgh Recovery Activities (2020) Letters from Lockdown, PDF available from Concept website
Full text linkA lot has been written about the impact of Covid19 but much of it relies on a ‘stock of ready narratives’ (Kehily, 1995 p. 28) that we draw on when we are telling stories about our lives. We both forge our individual narratives and take part in public narratives where the themes to be drawn on, the facts and circumstances that are considered important and the information that advances the story, can form an ideological straitjacket within which we conform. This means that the majority of narratives about the impact of the Covid19 pandemic emphasise the individual and not the structures within which we are embedded. The stories told are about how individual behaviour - mixing in crowds, not wearing masks, failing to socially distance - causes the spread of the virus but the alternative narrative - that living in poverty in poor housing increases the likelihood of catching the virus - is supressed. In my view, the great strength of this short collection is that the authors have broken out of this straitjacket and told stories that create new narratives about the experiences of lockdown that are not focused on individual behaviour alone
Guid Fer A Laugh: A seriously fun look at Scottish comedy for those that take fun seriously
Full text linkGuid Fer A Laugh has always sought to place itself as part of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls \u27the open-ended dialogue that enters into the dialogic fabric of human life\u27 (Morson & Emerson, 1990). It places a central value on the contributions of the participants and the active discourse that they create. As Buber (1965) states \u27[it is only] when we meet in the narrow ridge of the between\u27 that we discover for ourselves new discourse, new knowledge and truth. This ‘meeting in dialogue’, especially applies to laughter