Academic Publications

Casey, R. and Flint, J. (2008) 'Governing through localism, contract and community: evidence from anti-social behaviour strategies in Scotland' in Squires, P. (2008) ASBO Nation: The criminalisation of nuisance (Bristol: Policy Press), pp. 103-116.
This book chapter explores how forms of accountability, partnership and contract play out within anti-social behaviour strategies in Scotland. Two key dimensions are examined: the dual and simultaneous processes of centralisation and localism within governance frameworks; and the contested concepts of citizenship and responsibility for governing anti-social behaviour, mediated by the interface between formal and informal mechanisms of social control. The chapter concludes by arguing that the ambiguities of roles, limited scales of intervention, and the resistance of actors create a disjunction between strategy rationales and delivery on the ground.
Parr, S. and Nixon, J. (2008) 'Rationalising family intervention projects' in Squires, P. (2008) ASBO Nation: The criminalisation of nuisance (Bristol: Policy Press), pp. 161-178.
In this chapter, we draw on policy texts, newspaper reporting and rich data from a three year qualitative study of six Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) to explore the discursive field in which the projects are conceptualised. In so doing, we unpack the political rationality that underpins and shapes FIP policy, and make explicit the moral justifications that are employed, the way in which target families are problematised and the presupposed distribution of tasks among governing authorities. While locating our analysis within a governmentality framework, we accept that processes of governance are fraught with contradiction and discontinuities with the outcome by no means certain. The chapter therefore also focuses on the ways in which the FIP political rationality is mediated, contested and challenged by reference to media representations and the views of project staff and partner agencies on the role of FIPs in the governance of conduct.

Powell, R. (2008) “Understanding the Stigmatization of Gypsies: Power and the Dialectics of (Dis)identification”, Housing, Theory and Society 25 (2): 87-109.Most theorizations on the stigmatization of Gypsies have centred on structural factors: issues of race, ethnicity, the role of the media and the general incompatibility of nomadism with a sedentary mode of existence. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias this paper contends that a focus on the power differentials which characterize everyday social relations between Gypsies and the settled population can enhance our understanding of the stigmatization of the former. The paper focuses on the dialectics of identification articulated by Gypsies in relation to their perceived collective similarity and difference, which is crucial in understanding their marginal position in British society. Using empirical data, the paper then explores the ways in which power differentials shape the social relations between Gypsies and the settled population, and how stigmatization serves as a potent weapon in maintaining the weak position of British Gypsies.

McKee, K. and Cooper, V. (2003) “The Paradox of Tenant Empowerment: regulatory and liberatory possibilities?” Housing, Theory and Society 25 (2): 132-146.Tenant empowerment has traditionally been regarded as a means of realising democratic ideals: a quantitative increase in influence and control, which thereby enables "subjects" to acquire the fundamental properties of "citizens". By contrast governmentality, as derived from the work of Michel Foucault, offers a more critical appraisal of the concept of empowerment by highlighting how it is itself a mode of subjection and means of regulating human conduct towards particular ends. Drawing on empirical data about how housing governance has changed in Glasgow following its 2003 stock transfer, this paper adopts the insights of governmentality to illustrate how the political ambition of community ownership has been realized through the mobilization and shaping of active tenant involvement in the local decision-making process. In addition, it also traces the tensions and conflict inherent in the reconfiguration of power relations post-transfer for "subjects" do not necessarily conform to the plans of those that seek to govern them.