ABSTRACT

This chapter considers historical as well as current political influences, including the way successive governments have mobilised notions of community and civic engagement as an organising tool for social and welfare policy-making. Using the example of the Big Society and Cameron's later Life Chances Strategy, the chapter explores the concepts of 'community' and its use in government discourse and policy-making with particular reference to what it draws on and adheres to, what it ignores or from what it seeks to disassociate itself. The relationships between children, their families, communities and society more generally, the focus of Bronfenbrenner's ecological and later bio-ecological systems theory, are governed, to a greater or lesser extent, by policy. Localism is a way of distinguishing between dominant 'national' and 'global' dimensions of economic, social, and political organisation. Models of community help in the understanding of the connectedness of individuals into social groups or entities and the power contained within such communities to effect or resist change.