4 results
seven - Loïc Wacquant, gender and cultures of resistance
-
- By Lynda Measor
- Edited by Peter Squires, John Lea, University of Leicester
-
- Book:
- Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 09 May 2012, pp 129-150
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Loïc Wacquant focuses on sections of the urban proletariat who are ‘the most marginalised’ in the post-industrial world. He denounces, with Old Testament fury, contemporary neoliberal policies that assign men and women, respectively, to the carceral and assistantial wings of the state. Wacquant considers some very crucial and important issues, and while this chapter offers some criticism, it aims mainly to buttress the insights developed by the approach he takes. Wacquant offers relatively little detail about the pains of the daily lives of the ‘precariat’.
The central concern in this chapter is that he gives scant consideration to evidence of resistance, contradictions or ‘counter-publics’ (Fraser, 1990), arising from the ranks of the dispossessed. As Mayer observes, ‘struggles do not seem to exist’ (2010, p 98). Accordingly, my first aim in this chapter is to develop our understandings of the conditions these ‘urban outcasts’ encounter, and of the responses they make, by analysis of ethnographic data, generated in research with UK teenage mothers. This approach asserts the importance of considering the view ‘from below’, and the development of insights into the perspectives of those ‘caught in the cracks and ditches of the new economic landscape’ (Wacquant, 2009, p xiv). It is drawn from critical sociology and social history work that emphasises the study of ‘distinctive activities of freedom’ (Linebaugh, 2003, p 3) and the development of ‘vernacular publics’ (Sarkar, 1997, p 37) which indicate the continued vitality of what Bahktin has referred to as the ‘second life of the people’ (Bakhtin, 1984).
Wacquant also pays little attention to gender in this recent work (Gelsthorpe, 2010; Mayer, 2010). Accordingly, the second aim of the chapter is to consider data drawn from a study of ‘young welfare mothers’ to enhance our understandings of the significance that dimensions of gender inequality have in assembling and reinforcing the conditions of this ‘precarious fraction of the proletariat’ (Wacquant, 2009, p 310).
twelve - Young women, community safety and informal cultures
-
- By Lynda Measor
- Edited by Peter Squires
-
- Book:
- Community Safety
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 05 July 2006, pp 181-198
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Community safety policy is one of a number of initiatives governments have developed to address crime and related problems of disorder and insecurity. Community safety policy has grown slowly in importance and significance since the 1980s and now stands as the essential core of a collection of strategies (Tilley, 1994; Crawford, 1997; Gilling, 1997; Hughes, 1997; Stenson, 1998). Various critiques of community safety approaches have developed within criminology (Crawford, 1997; Hughes, 1998; Stenson, 1998; Garland, 2000; Coleman et al, 2002). Little attention has been paid, however, to the implications that community safety approaches may have for women in communities – as opposed to men or children.
This chapter explores the implications that community safety policies have for young women. It does not aim to offer a broad analysis of all the gender implications of the shift to community safety approaches. It is based on one research study of young women who live in a particularly deprived area, where they perceive the risks to their safety and their well-being to be high. The chapter focuses on data that indicate the strategies adopted by some of them.
Background and methodology
The evidence in this chapter is not drawn from direct research into criminology or fear of crime. Rather it emerged in a project that studied teenage pregnancy funded by the Department of Health (Bell et al, 2004). The study was qualitative and sought to understand more about the factors that influence young women who become pregnant in the UK. The research project was based in three separate sites throughout the UK, but the data in this chapter are all drawn from one site, a seaside town in the South East of England that had higher than average rates of teenage pregnancy.
The argument developed here is that these data offer insights that can be applied to understanding some of the barriers to the development of effective community safety strategies. There are methodological difficulties that must be acknowledged. The research was a small-scale study and we must be cautious of drawing generalisations from it. The data are reported by and derived from individuals who discuss the actions and motivations of others.
one - Below decks on the youth justice flagship: the politics of evaluation
- Edited by David Taylor, Susan Balloch
-
- Book:
- The Politics of Evaluation
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 January 2005, pp 21-40
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
“Criminologists have ceased to play, or be allowed to play, a significant part in the public debates about crime and crime policy, and one consequence has been that these debates have become less sophisticated and more simplistic, relying upon slogans, soundbites and partisan populism.” (Paul Wiles, Criminologist and former head of the Home Office Research Unit)
Introduction
Our interest in evaluation has been arrived at almost by accident. Perhaps it is the same for everyone. Driving our particular focus on this issue have been our recent experiences as local evaluators for a series of young offender projects. Reflecting upon those experiences has brought us to a recognition of the close (and mutually reinforcing) relationships between the government's strategy for young offenders and the process of evaluating the resulting ‘interventions’ within which we were implicated as evaluators. As we argue in this chapter, there is a clear and direct connection between the new and quasi-scientific language of ‘programme evaluation’ operating within a strict and supposedly ‘evidencebased’ discourse of ‘what works’ and the new ‘actuarial–interventionist’ logic of contemporary youth justice (Feeley and Simon, 1992, 1994). Here, we attempt to develop a critique of both, although never losing sight of their intimate connection.
Setting a context
Before developing our critical commentary upon the evaluation process that accompanied the rolling out of the Youth Justice Strategy, following the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, it is important to describe something of this strategy and the central role of evaluation within it. The government was clearly committed to an ‘evidence-based’ approach to tackling youth crime, as elaborated by the Audit Commission Report of two years earlier (Audit Commission, 1996). In the same vein, the rigorous cataloguing of outputs and rapid dissemination of ‘what works’ findings regarding demonstrable ‘good practice’ which might be replicated in new settings were very much part of the overall strategy (Goldblatt and Lewis, 1998; Home Office, 1998; Hope, 2002). Accordingly, when the newly established Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) were presented with an opportunity to submit special project bids to the Youth Justice Board (YJB), an evaluation component (of around 5% of each project funding bid) had to be identified.
eleven - Rounding up the ‘usual suspects’: police approaches to multiagency policing
- Edited by Susan Balloch, Marilyn Taylor
-
- Book:
- Partnership Working
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2001, pp 223-242
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The phrase ‘multiagency policing’ emerged, ostensibly describing a new approach to policing, in the early 1980s. To some extent it reflected a development from the renewed (post-Scarman, 1981) enthusiasm for ‘community policing’ and a greater recognition of the need for more local consultation over policing priorities. However, despite emerging as one among a number of processes ‘opening-up’ policing and rendering police decision making rather more visible than in the past, multiagency policing never settled entirely comfortably alongside simple notions of greater local accountability.
Multi- or interagency policing was specifically promoted by a Home Office publication in 1990, Partnership in crime prevention (Home Office, 1990), and then endorsed in the paradigmatic Morgan Report of 1991 (Home Office, 1991). However, ‘multiagency policing’ always implied something more than just partnership or joint working and could have some potentially far-reaching implications. In this article the phrases ‘multiagency’ or ‘interagency’ policing are used fairly interchangeably as referring to the same generic forms of project management. Equally the term ‘partnership’ policing is sometimes referred to – and preferred – by some commentators. While there may be differences of interpretation and emphasis implied by these different phrases – which can sometimes be important – in this article we are concerned with a number of more generic issues.
This paper reflects our research into how participants in multiagency policing schemes viewed the initiatives. Interagency working is a political process in which agencies (in this case, largely the police) pursue their own interests together with those of the wider ‘community’. Often, multiagency working appears to be about creating ‘community interests’ (to which different agencies need to respond), or legitimating certain conceptions of ‘community interests’ that may or may not coincide with police aims and priorities. The police enter schemes with multiple objectives, sharing (or off-loading) problems, acquiring additional resources, obtaining support, and for better management of demand for their services. Examples in this paper suggest multiagency initiatives involve calling in stakeholders and service representatives (the ‘usual suspects’) to achieve policing objectives (‘help the police with their enquiries’).
What can be involved?
Multiagency policing implies the police are no more responsible for crime problems than the fire brigade are for fires. While the police respond to crime, this may not be the defining ‘service’ response. A profound rethink about crime prevention and management has occurred over recent years.