ABSTRACT

Others, however, ascribe a rather different role to bottom-up initiatives. Rather than focus upon third sector initiatives as part of a strategy to achieve ‘full-employment’, this perspective instead seeks to cultivate the ‘fourth sector’ in order to facilitate ‘full-engagement’ (see Jordan et al. 2000, Mayo 1996, Williams and Windebank 1999b). As such, the role of bottom-up initiatives is not to create jobs and improve employability but to facilitate alternative means of livelihood in the form of informal economic activity. At its heart is an understanding of the need to reduce the perceived importance attached to conventional employment and recognise people’s broader social contributions by valuing the vast and growing amount of informal work that takes place in society (cf. Levitas 1998, Lister 1997).