Beyond sweat equity: Community organising beyond the Third Way

Abstract

This paper explores the ambivalent nature of community organisation as a response to a "crisis of authority" in post-industrial areas subject to urban regeneration. In the discourse of the Third Way, activism has been increasingly discursively framed as "participation", legitimizing a shift in welfare provision from the state onto civil society and a proliferation of conclude that the potential of this as a source of contestation depends on two dimensions of practice: (i) the development by activists of a critical understanding of how to foster or maintain long-term collective interests, identity and practices within their communities and (ii) maintaining a clear sense of separation from the state which allows power to be confronted.

Interrogating urban crisis: Cities in the governance and contestation of austerity

“…Though there is an apparent ‘flattening’ of urban governing processes as exemplified by entrepreneurial forms of urban partnership (e.g. Watkins, 2017, this issue), these conceal new hierarchies, which in turn conceal power-dynamics. Against the dominant framing that ‘there is no alternative’ the ‘expertocratic’ technocracy determines who has access to governance arrangements and who does not.…”

“…Against the dominant framing that ‘there is no alternative’ the ‘expertocratic’ technocracy determines who has access to governance arrangements and who does not. In the UK, the urban quangocracy insulates policies and spending decisions from public scrutiny illustration (Watkins, 2017, this issue). These are powerful containment mechanisms.…”

“…The most obvious one is an active pursuit of a divide-and-rule strategy targeting the contesters, trying to co-opt leaders via a series of tactics that could be explicated with reference to Foucault’s ‘technologies of power’. Yet, this strategy has a serious defect, given the gap in everyday urban politics between what is promised and what is actually delivered (Watkins, 2017, this issue). In fact, the harm caused by economic crises is distributed ‘unevenly … among socio-economic groups’ (Blanco and León, 2017, this issue).…”

“…Yet, the crash has not translated into a full-blown crisis of capitalism, or neoliberalism described by Anderson (2000: 7) as the ‘most successful ideology in world history’. With the exceptions explored in the special issue (Arampatzi, 2017; Blanco and León, 2017, Watkins, 2017, all this issue), the grip of neoliberalism seems ever-tighter, as authorities to the left and right of the political spectrum roll out more-or-less draconian austerity measures, with remarkable success in further eroding – even erasing – the legacies of post-war welfarism.…”

Urban crisis: Bonfire of vanities to find opportunities in the ashes

“…In Madrid (Martı´-Costa and Toma`s, 2016, this issue), Barcelona (Blanco and Leo´n, 2016, this issue), Detroit, Dallas, San Jose, Philadelphia (Hinkley, 2015, this issue), Athens (Arampatzi, 2016, this issue) and Nottingham (Watkins, 2016, this issue), we see not only the effects of austerity imposed as a result of the provision of state welfare for the irresponsible actions of the banking sector, but also a desire for alternatives. Common to these accounts is a continuing characterisation of the 'crazy quilts' of urban areas, but a belief among politicians and officials that these environments can be shaped through a 'will' embodied in formal policy, whilst more informal communitybased forms of innovation and solidarity remain below the radar of recognition.…”