Our new book: ‘Rethinking Community Research: Inter-relationality Communal Being and Commonality’. (Palgrave/Macmillan2016)
“This book sheds new light on the complex inter-relations that make up class, power, local history and space. It turns community thinking on its head by understanding community not as an object but as a relational process with sociality at its core. Based on fieldwork from one market town and the work of Hannah Arendt, it demonstrates how a new approach to social practices can illuminate our understanding of commonality and communal being. Whilst community has become both a much-derided and much-touted term, this thought-provoking work shows that it is at the heart of social process. It will appeal to researchers of sociology, social policy, politics, public health and geography, as well as those involved in public policy design and implementation.” http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137514523
A special Issue of the journal The Sociological Review: ‘Being in Community: Re-visioning Sociology Vol 64 #4 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sore.2016.64.issue-4/issuetoc
The special issue develops an approach to community based upon the idea of sociality and includes articles by David Studdert ; Jane Wills; Ben Rogaly; Rachel Swann and Gordon Hughes; Valerie Walkerdine; Ellie Byrne, Eva Elliott, Gareth Williams; Simon Dawes and Michel Maffesoli.
And a ‘how-to’ guide:
Co-producing Community Arts: how to design community arts with the community, for the community. David Studdert and Valerie Walkerdine.
A practical how to guide for community artists, produced in conjunction with Artworks Cymru, describing in practical terms how to use the method described in the two publications above. Available in English and Welsh. You can view and download this here:
http://artworks.cymru/Co-producing-Community-Arts
We’d like to thank all those people involved in the Connected Communities programme for all the help we received in the course doing these projects. Projects which so have been so enjoyable and productive for us and we hope for everyone else. This has been a ground-breaking undertaking by the AHRC which has produced outcomes that we trust have taken the debates around communal being-ness and communal cohesion in positive and exciting directions.
David Studdert and Valerie Walkerdine.
