Top-down Community Building and the Politics of Inclusion

Fenneke Wekker

ISBN 10: 3319539639 / ISBN 13: 9783319539638

Published by Springer, Berlin, Springer International Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

About this Item

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - 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 facilitatedamong 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.

Seller Inventory # 9783319539638

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Top-down Community Building and the Politics of Inclusion
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin, Springer International Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3319539639
• ISBN 13: 9783319539638
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 221W x 162H x 12D millimeters 221 millimeters width by 162 millimeters height by 12 millimeters depth
• Weight: 235 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.