Housing and environmental issues Essay

Community development officer: CDOs should have: †¢ the ability to communicate with a wide range of people †¢ the ability to manage a budget †¢ sensitivity in dealing with multi-cultural issues, such as religion †¢ networking skills and a good memory for names and faces †¢ the ability to work on their own initiative †¢ Commitment to social inclusion issues. CDOs may work for a local authority; he must also involve public decision in multi cultural communities housed by the associations. Public involvement in regeneration is widely held to be a good thing. There are very few who write about or comment on regeneration, however it is defined who do not claim that public involvement is an important if not essential component of effective and successful regeneration. And to a great extent this has been the position in the UK and elsewhere for well over a century. However, there are very few studies that have set out to measure and to analyse the impact of public involvement. In other words, few researchers have attempted to see what difference it makes in practice to involve the public and whether any such differences are positive, in the sense of being both anticipated and desired. There are, nevertheless, many studies that shed some light on the processes of public involvement and draw conclusions about its impact in specific cases. The conclusion of many of these studies is that public involvement did not work very well in practice: it was embarked upon too late; insufficient resources were provided to make it effective; the local environment was not very conducive; and key decisions continued to be taken by people not living in the areas affected. The importance of involving the public in attempts to improve and regenerate neighbourhoods has been recognised for many years. However, the consensus around the value and potential benefits of greater public involvement has probably never been stronger, not least because government has put it at the centre of its plans to modernise both the delivery of public services and the very processes of government. A simple theory of public participation The political imperatives driving forward the agenda of public participation are well established, but three stand out at present. First is the belief that participation is intrinsically good and worthwhile, and hence more participation is desirable. Second is the growing acknowledgement that many major policy issues do not appear to be capable of obvious resolution – they can be termed ‘wicked problems’ for this reason (Rittel and Weber, 1973). An obvious consequence of this recognition is to take a more open approach to their resolution, in other words to allow a wider range of partners into the arena of policy debate and hence to share the burden of resolution. Finally, there is a clear belief that greater participation is needed to stem if not reverse the apparent decline in social capital charted by Putnam (2001) and his followers (see DeFilipis, 2001). A slightly broader set of factors can be derived from the wider academic literature where at least four distinct explanations of or justification for greater public participation in government generally are apparent. Instrumentalist conceptions point to the fact that individuals are the best judges of their own interests and hence by participating in policy debates and political discussions they are best able to articulate and advance these interests. The job of government then lies in the aggregation of individual interests and the balancing of conflicting positions into a plausible public interest. Communitarian conceptions take a different approach and advocate a more collective or social approach among the participating public, such that a negotiated view of the public interest is provided to rather than by government. Of course government may then have to perform further rounds of aggregation or even facilitate further rounds of negotiation or consensus building, but the public plays a more prominent part in the social construction of their own idea of public interest. In this conception there is some degree of aggregation but government is still left to aggregate, adjudicate or reconcile the possibly conflicting views of different communities or even coalitions of communities. Educative approaches suggest that public participation helps in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of policy issues; of the ethical dilemmas and the need to make trade-offs for example between price and quality or between the achievement of short and long term priorities. Finally, expressive conceptions of participation emphasise the opportunity that political participation gives individuals to express their political identity. Through active campaigning, displaying posters, attending rallies, donating money or time, one is able to demonstrate to the world at large that fact that one is a feminist, a socialist, a conservative, a nationalist and so on. It is of course important also to bear in mind that political participation can involve much more than voting in periodic elections, or even campaigning in them. Attending meetings about issues of local or international concern and taking part in participatory events such as juries, consensus conferences or citizens juries are also important as is participation in ongoing campaigns or lobbies, again from local (save our school) to global (save our planet) issues. There is something of a paradox here, in that there is plentiful data available on formal political involvement in voting, but relatively little available on the more prosaic but nevertheless significant everyday acts of involvement, such as going to meetings or simply engaging socially and maybe politically with ones neighbours (Hoggett and Bishop, 1986). In recent years some regular and extensive surveys have begun to provide valuable data of this type, but it is still the case that many sophisticated models of community engagement, civic renewal and social capital, have been constructed on flimsy empirical foundations (Prime, Zimmeck & Zurawa, 2002). But to develop a simple model of participation we need to consider in some more detail questions along each of the three main dimensions implied in the expression: public participation in planning or policy making. Robert D. Putnam That Western society has changed dramatically since the middle of the 20th century. There is less agreement about what caused the changes, and whether they have been beneficial. One barometer of change in Western society is the level of ‘social capital’ (a concept popularised by Robert D. Putnam), which results from high levels of investment by citizens in their community. Putnam’s investigation of American society, Bowling Alone (2000), considers the full range of changes affecting America (and all western societies): declining participation in institutional Christianity; less involvement in sport and recreational clubs, politics, charitable causes, and volunteer work; and a radical re-shaping of the family though divorce, a lower birth rate, and a disinclination to marry at all. These trends, Putnam argues, result in diminished social capital. Putnam’s analysis of America holds for the three Anglophone members of George W. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing,’ America, Britain and Australia, and may explain why hawkish, right-wing governments are the people’s choice at the start of the 21st century, despite an unprecedented liberality and inclusiveness throughout the second half of the 20th century. Putnam notes a range of factors responsible for civic disengagement: suburban sprawl; the popularity of television and electronic media; changed work patterns, including the large-scale entry of women into the workforce; and generational changes resulting in the ‘replacement of an unusually civic generation by several generations [Baby Boomers, Generations X and Y] †¦ that are less embedded in community life’ (p. 275). In the United States, where voting is optional, these developments dilute democracy, and societies with low participation rates tend to become distrustful. Untrusting citizens call for tougher; ‘law and order’ focused governments, resulting in the election of increasingly right-wing political parties. Social capital: 1. Definition The concept and theory of social capital dates back to the origins of social science; however, recent scholarship has focused on social capital as a subject of social organization and a potential source of value that can be harnessed and converted for strategic and gainful purposes. According to Robert David Putnam, the central premise of social capital is that social networks have value. Social capital refers to the collective value of all â€Å"social networks† and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other. Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society’s social interactions. Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions that underpin a society; it is the glue that holds them together However, social capital may not always be beneficial. Horizontal networks of individual citizens and groups that enhance community productivity and cohesion are said to be positive social capital assets whereas self-serving exclusive gangs and hierarchical patronage systems that operate at cross purposes to communitarian interests can be thought of as negative social capital burdens on society. 2. History of the research on the concept Robert David Putnam, if not the first one to write on the issue, is considered as the major author on the concept of social capital. He is a U. S. political scientist and professor at Harvard University, and is well-known for his writings on civic engagement and civil society along with social capital. However, his work is concentrated on the United States only. His most famous (and controversial) work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences. Though he measured this decline in data of many varieties, his most striking point was that virtually every traditional civic, social, and fraternal organization had undergone a massive decline in membership. From his research, a working group has formed at Harvard University and is called Saguaro Seminar. Most definitions around the social capital concept, notably those used by the World Bank, come from Putnam’s work and this research. 3. Measuring social capital The Saguaro Seminar, in the continuation of Putnam’s work, has been elaborating various means to measure the level of social capital in different contexts. It says on its website that measurement of social capital is important for the three following reasons: (a) Measurement helps make the concept of social capital more tangible for people who find social capital difficult or abstract; (b) It increases our investment in social capital: in a performance-driven era, social capital will be relegated to second-tier status in the allocation of resources, unless organizations can show that their community-building efforts are showing results; and (c) Measurement helps funders and community organizations build more social capital. Everything that involves any human interaction can be asserted to create social capital, but the real question is does it build a significant amount of social capital, and if so, how much? Is a specific part of an organization’s effort worth continuing or should it be scrapped and revamped? Do mentoring programs, playgrounds, or sponsoring block parties lead more typically to greater social capital creation? Measuring social capital: Towards a theoretically informed measurement framework for researching social capital in family and community life. by Wendy Stone. Research paper no. 24, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2001, 38p, ISBN 0 642 39486 5 To inform the Institute’s Families, Social Capital and Citizenship project, this paper contributes to the development of clear links between theorised and empirical understandings of social capital by: establishing a theoretically informed measurement framework for empirical investigation of social capital; and reviewing existing measures of social capital in light of this framework. The paper concludes with a statement of guiding principles for the measurement and empirical investigation of social capital in family and community life. Social Capital as Credit Social capital, or aggregate reputation, is a form of credit. Some formal transactions can be supported by social capital. Informal transactions are rarely underpinned by financial credit or legal agreement and instead rely entirely social capital. We all have our internal calculators keeping tacit track of who is doing wrong and who is doing right, the health of the relationships and adjusting our actuarial tables according to experience. While undertaking government activities environment problems should also be considered. As it has became a global issue we need to take care of everything. Globalisation and cultural identity It is fair to say that the impact of globalization in the cultural sphere has, most generally, been viewed in a pessimistic light. Typically, it has been associated with the destruction of cultural identities, victims of the accelerating encroachment of a homogenized, westernized, consumer culture. This view, the constituency for which extends from (some) academics to anti-globalization activists (Shepard and Hayduk 2002), tends to interpret globalization as a seamless extension of – indeed, as a euphemism for – western cultural imperialism. In this discussion which follows we approach this claim with a good deal of skepticism. we will not seek to deny the obvious power of globalized capitalism to distribute and promote its cultural goods in every corner. Nor will we take up the argument – now very commonly made by critics of the cultural imperialism thesis (Lull 2000; Thompson 1995; Tomlinson 1991) that a deeper cultural impact cannot be easily inferred from the presence of such goods. What we will try to argue is something more specific: that cultural identity, properly understood, is much more the product of globalization than its victim. Identity as Treasure To begin, let us sketch the implicit (for it is usually implicit) reasoning behind the assumption that globalization destroys identities. Once upon a time, before the era of globalization, there existed local, autonomous, distinct and well-defined, robust and culturally sustaining connections between geographical place and cultural experience. These connections constituted one’s – and one’s community’s – ‘cultural identity’. This identity was something people simply ‘had’ as an undisturbed existential possession, an inheritance, a benefit of traditional long dwelling, of continuity with the past. Identity, then, like language, was not just a description of cultural belonging; it was a sort of collective treasure of local communities. But it was also discovered to be something fragile that needed protecting and preserving that could be lost. Into this world of manifold, discrete, but to various degrees vulnerable, cultural identities there suddenly burst (apparently around the middle of the 1980s) the corrosive power of globalization. Globalization, so the story goes, has swept like a flood tide through the world’s diverse cultures, destroying stable localities, displacing peoples, bringing a market-driven, ‘branded’ homogenization of cultural experience, thus obliterating the differences between locality-defined cultures which had constituted our identities. Though globalization has been judged as involving a general process of loss of cultural diversity, some of course did better, some worse out of this process. Identity as Cultural Power Let us begin with identity, a concept which surely lies at the heart of our contemporary cultural imagination. It is not, in fact, difficult in the prolific literature of analysis of the concept to find positions which contest the story of identity as the victim of globalization. Identity and Institutional Modernity This brings the central claim that globalization actually proliferates rather than destroys identities. In this respect we depart somewhat from Castells’s position: in setting identity as a sort of autonomous cultural dynamic, surging up from the grassroots as an oppositional force to globalization, Castells really fails to see the rather compelling inner logic between the globalization process and the institutionalized construction of identities. This, in other way, lies in the nature of the institutions of modernity that globalization distributes. To put the matter simply: globalization is really the globalization of modernity, and modernity is the harbinger of identity. It is a common assumption that identity-formation is a universal feature of human experience. Castells seems implicitly to take this view when he writes: ‘Identity is people’s source of meaning and experience’ (1997: 6). But whilst it is true that the construction of meaning via cultural practices is a human universal, it does not follow that this invariably takes the form of identity construction as we currently understand it in the global-modern West. This form of ethnocentric assumption has been recently criticized both by anthropologists and media and cultural critics. Globalization and Modernity To appreciate this, it is necessary to take a more complex view of the globalization process than is often adopted – certainly in the polemical discourses of the anti-globalization movement, where globalization is essentially understood as the globalization of capitalism, achieved in its cultural aspect via a complicate western dominated media system. This more complex, multidimensional conceptualization, which views globalization as operating simultaneously and interrelated in the economic, technological-communicational, political and cultural spheres of human life, is in fact relatively un-contentious – at least in principle – within academic discourses. But the cultural implication, rather less easily swallowed by some, is that globalization involves not the simple enforced distribution of a particular western (say, liberal, secular, possessive-individualist, capitalist-consumerist) lifestyle, but a more complicated dissemination of the entire range of institutional features of cultural modernity. References Putnam, R (2001) Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community, Touchstone, London Tomlinson, J (1999) Globalisation and culture, Policy Press, Cambridge Social capital: http://www. jrc. es/home/report/english/articles/vol85/ICT4E856. htm http://www. envplan. com/ http://www. infed. org/thinkers/putnam. htm http://www. naturaledgeproject. net/NAON_ch11. aspx