Attempts to nurture community self‐help in deprived urban neighborhoods currently follow the “third sector” route of developing existing community‐based groups. Here, the implications and legitimacy of pursuing this public policy approach in relation to British deprived urban neighborhoods are evaluated critically. Analyzing both secondary data from government surveys and primary data from 400 face‐to‐face interviews, I here find that such a policy approach imposes onto deprived neighborhoods a relatively foreign culture of engagement more characteristic of affluent areas. Identifying how the participatory culture in deprived neighborhoods is more oriented toward engagement in one‐to‐one reciprocal aid (i.e., informal community self‐help) rather than participation in groups (i.e., formal community self‐help), and that some form of payment is more often than not involved, a call is made for public policy to recognize the predominance of this form of community self‐help in deprived populations and to pursue policy initiatives that seek to nurture it. How this might be achieved is then outlined.
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