Introduction

In the last chapter, I analysed how the micropolitics of community development in America were deeply influenced by the popularity and dominance of neoliberalism. The official discourse of institutional actors did not seek to challenge the key tenets of neoliberalism and instead reconstructed community development as an instrument of the free market. For oppositional actors, community development was constructed as a way to counter neoliberalism and build coalitions across difference in order to support a vibrant civil society based on equality and social justice. This chapter focuses on the micropolitics of community development in Britain from 1992 to 1997 and I have identified two discourses for analysis. The ‘Participation’ discourse is constituted by the texts, language and practices of international and domestic institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the UK government, which seek to reconstruct community development as the means by which the poor become active and entrepreneurial citizens who participate in partnerships with the state and the market in order to tackle social problems. I shall argue that community development, as understood by the Participation discourse, should be seen primarily as a tool for the on-going neoliberal project of shrinking the welfare state and marketising social relationships. In contrast to this, the ‘Transformation’ discourse is constituted by the texts, language and practices of socialist, feminist and anti-racist community development practitioners and academics seeking to subvert the neoliberal colonialisation of community development. I shall argue that the Transformation discourse seeks to construct community development as a process of critical consciousness whereby community groups seek new forms of citizenship and radical democracy to resist the privatisation of the state and public spaces.

I will begin my analysis with a short contextual discussion of the formation and structure of the community development discourses during this politically salient moment. I will briefly discuss the legacy of the neoliberal project under Margaret Thatcher especially in terms of the redefinition of key concepts such as the welfare state, citizenship and the market. I will then turn to analyse the texts and identity constructions that constitute the Participation and Transformation discourses

Thatcher's legacy in the 1990s