Negotiating Cohesion, Inequality and Change
Uncomfortable Positions in Local Government
By Hannah Jones
Published
Jan 14, 2015Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1447310044Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Policy PressPublished
Sep 9, 2013Page count
224 pagesISBN
978-1447310037Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Policy PressPublished
Sep 9, 2013Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1447320616Dimensions
Imprint
Policy PressPublished
Sep 9, 2013Page count
248 pagesISBN
978-1447320623Dimensions
Imprint
Policy Press
Negotiating Cohesion, Inequality and Change
How are multiculturalism, inequality and belonging understood in the day-to-day thinking and practices of local government? Examining original empirical data, this book explores how local government officers and politicians negotiate 'difficult subjects' linked with community cohesion policy: diversity, inequality, discrimination, extremism, migration, religion, class, power and change. The book argues that such work necessitates 'uncomfortable positions' when managing ethical, professional and political commitments.
Based on first-hand experience of working in urban local government and extensive ethnographic, interview and documentary research, the book applies governmentality perspectives in a new way to consider how people working within government are subject to regimes of governmentality themselves, and demonstrates how power operates through emotions.
Its exploration of how 'sociological imaginations' are applied beyond academia will be valuable to those arguing for the future of public services and building connections between the university and wider society, including scholars and students in sociology, social policy, social geography, urban studies and politics, and policy practitioners in local and central government.
Winner of the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2014
Hannah Jones is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick. She previously worked in local government in inner London, and has held positions as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, Research Associate in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University, Teaching Fellow in the Department Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Research Associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford.
Introduction: Getting Uncomfortable;
Negotiating cohesion, inequality and change;
Contradictory narratives of cohesion;
'Is there anything the council did that distracted you from extremism?';
I Love Hackney/Keep It Crap;
'We spent a lot of time trying to be known for other things';
'You need to be totally objective, but you can't be';
Thinking Inside the Box.
