Partners in Power: Governing the Self-sustaining Community

Abstract

The language of community is widely diffused in both social theory and in public policy. Under New Labour it finds expression in obligations on health authorities and local councils to consult and collaborate with their communities in formulating and providing services. Yet such initiatives often treat community as an already existing entity, a proper noun that refers to a solid and stable reality. This article analyses the contemporary appeal of community and outlines some of the problems of trying to think of `it' in the abstract, as a reified essence. Instead, the article offers a different way of thinking about community, as an assemblage of artefacts - political rationales, expert discourses, administrative technologies and bodies - that constitute `its' manifold components in precise historical contexts. Drawing on Foucault's insights into governmentality, the article traces the discursive ways in which managers utilize these empirical resources in the specific setting of an urban regeneration scheme.