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. 

David Cameron and his box of surprises strikes again.  Is the UK about to follow in the footsteps of Bhutan and measure gross national happiness?  The nef are certainly excited, since they've been advocating the measurement of wellbeing rather than an all-out focus on GDP for a long time.  Jules Peck at LFF is also keen on the idea.  Apparently Cameron had earlier gone quiet on an idea of 'General Wellbeing', and the Spectator wonders what's happened to make talking about happiness worthwhile again. 

Of course there have been a few inevitable sniggers over the idea of measuring wellbeing coming so close on the heels of welfare cuts.  On which topic (the IDS cuts, not the sniggering), Kate Green has some insightful comment. 

Over now to my regular C of E slot and we have a gloriously learned piece about the flying bishops from Diarmaid MacCulloch.  Bishop Alan Wilson, fast becoming a regular to watch over at the Guardian's CiF, considers the Anglican covenant.  Elsewhere, the Church is copping flak for trying to flog Auckland Castle. 

Totally unrelated, but I rather enjoyed this potted bio of Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, who was one of the first female MPs (and included in Churchill's war cabinet, no less). 

Sociological Images have got a graph up from David Nutt's work on drug harm in Britain.  The rankings are very interesting, but so are the differences between 'harm to others' and 'harm to users'.  Let's pause for a moment in a dream of sensible policy.

Over at the C of E, Thinking Anglicans are reporting that 50 clergy are set to join the Ordinariate.  Some of them will be retired.  The Church has 1338 ordination candidates in training, at last count.  (Just a thought with which to read the inevitable Church in Crisis! headlines.)  Back to the flying bishops, Liturgy wonders if the faux-bishop will be having a faux-farewell? 

The IDS welfare white paper has hit and The Spectator has helpfully read it and come up with one of those ten things you need to know lists.  A big part of the whole thing is the replacement of a raft of welfare payment possibilities with a universal credit system.  But, from what I can tell, the changes won't be coming in until 2013 and will take until 2017 to be fully up and running.  What might happen then if the Coalition doesn't exist anymore? 

Dan Hodges wonders who will be Ed's guru.  I'm pretty interested in the suggestion that there might be a Labour turn to Bauman. 

An independent commission on high pay has been launched.  It is called the High Pay Commission.  It will tell us that high pay is too high.

Simon Schama (The history tsar?) has come up with 6 bits of British history that every student should know.  The Guardian book blog is challenging readers to come up with 6 of their own.  I shall think on.  What do you think? 

Seatbelts on, please.  This is going to be a biggie. 

There has been quite a lot of comment about the student protest.  I tend to agree with this suggestion from The Spectator that the violence is likely to help rather than hinder the Coalition's cause. 

There has also been a lot of political moaning about the European Court's judgment that British prisoners must have the right to vote.  I'm with Kate Green: so they should. 

Off course the other big news has been IDS and his work-for-the-dole scheme.  Well, it isn't quite.  The idea, apparently, is to pack long-term (12 months+) unemployed off on a month's community service.  Excellent comment from Jackie Ashley (who took a Guardian comments bashing for it).  More discussion on the carrot and the stick from ToryDiary.  (Though must we have the spurious 'supporting families' bits ... says this daughter-of-multiply-reconstituted-families.)

Ross McKibbin in the LRB has a must-read on the current political/economic situation.  Add this to a very interesting perspective over on the Inequalities blog on 'why the welfare state doesn't matter any more'. Elsewhere, Sunny Hundal writes on why the left shouldn't oppose all cuts and Jonathan Todd argues that Labour must consider (and articulate) multiple futures, not just certain post-cut doom.  

Oldham post-Woolas (you done good, Harriet) is shaping up to be one to watch.  ToryDiary look at whether it should be given to the Lib Dems ... or if the Tories should put up a good fight.  Regardless, we might see here the North's first real political comment on how the Coalition is going. 

Amidst all of this political talk, Kerim Friedman's look at Bourdieu and the role of the public intellectual hits the spot nicely. 

Over at the CofE, the final reccommendations from the Faith and the Future of the Countryside conference have been released.  It has been a bit of a speaking out week for the Church with ++Rowan expressing grave concerns about welfare reforms.  (Although that Telegraph link dramatically hypes up 'church in crisis' over the flying bishops!)

Michael Young (author of 1957's Family and Kinship in East London) remembered.  His life and work calls, Paul Richards argues, for a Good, not a Big, society. 

I reckon the 70s are fast becoming the new 60s as the darling decade of scholarly research.  Andrew O'Hagan writes on the 70s style. 

Whew!  Can I have the weekend now? 

The Carbuncle award is annually bestowed for the most dismal town in Scotland.  Not being a Scottish romanticist (though neither am I the ghost of Trevor-Roper), and having formerly lived outside beautiful Dundee (which works a Soviet Russia look), I imagine the nominees list to be rather long.  This year's winner was John O'Groats.  I have been.  It ain't no Cape Reinga, that's for sure.  But!  Award drama!  Groats refuse to accept it, and the residents of Denny (Stirlingshire) are desperate to have it given to them instead.  The Denny logic is that winning the award will help them clean up their derelict town centre. 

On the derelict centres and social unease front: Notting Hill.  Channel 4 have decided to fill the big gaping hole left by the end of Big Brother (here I play the world's smallest violin in lamentation) with a fly-on-the-wall series about the suburb.  Skip the first paragraph or two about reality telly promises and this Indy article has a great Notting Hill potted history. 

Also in London, the St Marylebone Society have released some amazing colour film from the Blitz.  You can watch it on the West End at War site. 

Oranges and Sunshine, is a new film about Margaret Humphreys, the social worker who blew the whistle on the 'home children' scheme.  It's directed by Ken Loach's son, Jim Loach, and is apparently set for release in the next northern hemisphere spring, which should mean I'll be in the UK to see it. 

Nick Clegg has given his speech to the Lib Dem conference, and every Guardian political writer has an opinion on it. 

Finally, in exciting anthropology of Britain news, Simone Abram is guesting at Savage Minds.  In her first post, she discusses Iain Duncan Smith's housing proposals, suggesting he views them as being and having 'magical properties'.  This might give her the distinction of being the first anthropologist to put the magic in the Conservative party.  P-p-power of voodoo.  (All of her posts will be listed here as they are published, which helps with my anthro of new media allergies.)

Now, I'm off to read 'Enacting Rural Sociology: Or what are the Creativity Claims of the Engaged Sciences?'.  Answers on a postcard.