Top-down Community Building and the Politics of Inclusion

Softcover Nachdruck of the original 1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-319-85286-7
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan

Buch, Englisch, 93 Seiten, Previously published in hardcover, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 148 g

Reihe: Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series

This book explores mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion involved in practices of community building through an ethnographic study of a neighborhood restaurant in Amsterdam. It presents important insights into the advantages and empowering effects of professional, top down community building in a disadvantaged neighborhood, as well as its tensions and contradictory outcomes. The core argument of the study is that, in spite of the abserved restaurant's well-intended and well-organized attempts to create an inclusive and heterogeneous local community, it instead established one both exclusive and homogeneous. Through a set of community building practices and discourses of "deprivation" and "ethnic and racial otherness," the construction of collective fear for ethnic and racial “others" was indirectly facilitated among the white, working class visitors. As a result, insurmountable barriers were erected for non-white and non-native Dutch residents to become part of the local community. This project speaks to social scientists as well as social workers, governments, and policy-makers concerned with issues of social cohesion, informal networks, and professional community building in disadvantaged urban settings.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wekker, Fenneke

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Staatsbürgerkunde, Staatsbürgerschaft, Zivilgesellschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Ethnographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik: Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Being the Other on the Other Side.- 2. Community Building and Urban Life.- 3. Community Building Practices.- 4. Discourses of Deprivation and Ethnic and Racial Otherness.- 5. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Fenneke Wekker is a researcher, writer, lecturer, editor, and project-leader. Her research focuses on community building practices and discourses; the current welfare state transition in the Netherlands and its consequences on everyday lives of vulnerable citizens in heterogeneous urban settings; public space design and social cohesion; feelings, notions, and practices of home and belonging; and mechanisms of (institutional) in- and exclusion. She has published articles in Home Cultures and other journals.