Following on from my last post about boundaries and the Big Society, both Mil and Tracey have got some questions which make the whole thing curiouser and curiouser.  (I'm talking about this here at about the same time as the cogs in me 'ead are ticking over, so I hope that I am not about to hideously misrepresent either of them!)

Mil has a great post up about the possibility that the Big Society is designed for exclusion.  It's well worth a read, and not only because he mentions my post in it (thanks chap!).  He rightly asks that, if the Big Society is exclusionary, what are the reasons behind who is in or out?  It's a question Tracey, in her comment to my post, reorients slightly:

"It's not just the 'who', but what aspects of human life/ action can be included." (my emphasis)

In an earlier post, Mil had brought up the spectre of the classic Tory old boys' network, arguing that we can see this in the re-(financial)elitisation (my ridiculous made-up word, not his) of the universities. 

I think this pursuit of Tory vested interests is very much a part of the picture.  That tells us a bit about inclusion.  Not everything, but a bit.  

In her comment, Tracey points out that:

"The 'dangerous' classes result in a lot of work and movement of money to keep people like me in a job"

Maybe this tells us another little bit about why some people/aspects have to be 'out'.  (And I'm hoping that Tracey will come along and put the reference to Bauman on the 'dangerous classes' in the comments.)  We know (thanks, Karl) that the structure of a capitalist economy requires that some people lose (although, of course, when I say "we know", we make a good fist of carrying on as though we don't).  But, Tracey is I think suggesting that something similar has to happen to maintain (what I'm going to call right now) an economy of benevolence like the Big Society. 

Which, to come back to Mil's point, seems to suggest that designing for exclusion must be integral to it. 

I'm conscious that I haven't done Tracey's "what" as well as "who" point justice, but it probably sits very well with Mil's question about the evidence for exclusion.  I've suggested in my comment to his post that if we accept the design for exclusion thesis, then a good place to be evidence hunting might be in the moments where we're being reassured/reminded of the Coalition's "best intentions".  The fragments to be pulled out here will likely help with those "what" and "who" questions. 

I'm sure I will be batting some of these ideas around more later on, but, in the meantime, what do you reckon? 

I went yesterday to Tracey's PhD confirmation seminar.  She's working in Port Melbourne (a Melbourne suburb) and her big question is "should we call it a community?"

It's a really good question and the 'should', as she discussed, opens up all sorts of questions like: who has the ability to call it a community? 

This got me thinking a lot about the Big Society.  It often seems to me that what Big Society advocates use as examples are things that I would consider small-scale community action.  Should we call it a community, then?  And, what if we call it community? 

Tracey, in her response to a question, mentioned Anthony Cohen's The Symbolic Construction of Community.  Cohen is an absolutely vital anthropologist of Britain and his community theorising is deeply linked to analysis from British fieldwork.  

(Bear with me, this is the bit when it gets more interesting!)

Cohen says, it should be obvious from the book title, that communities are symbolically constructed and, also, bounded.  Symbols are used to unite.  Symbols are also used to exclude. 

So if we call the Big Society community, this raises a very big question about symbolic boundaries.  Who is excluded from the Big Society and how does this happen? 

I don't know about you, but the first thought that jumps out at me is about the IDS welfare reforms.  'Big Society' might be the OED word of the year but I'm increasingly convinced that we cannot understand the Conservative articulation of it unless we read it together with 'workshy'.  So it might be missing the point to press for more examples of what the Big Society is, or isn't.  It might be more worthwhile to ask who it is, or isn't.