Neighbourhoods

‘Superficial’ relationships: near-strangers, weak ties, and older men

Back in 2009, in government guidance on meaningful social interaction, we were told that

‘for interaction to be meaningful it needs to go beyond a superficial level and be sustained.’

I was never satisfied with this and have occasionally wondered if there was a missed opportunity to champion non-meaningful interaction. I have long argued that superficial interaction is the essential ingredient in neighbouring.

It could be time to return to this theme. I’ve been exploring some of the social benefits of Good Neighbour schemes, and this has encouraged me to dust-off another, related theme – gender differences in the sense of aloneness among older people. In one scheme for which I happen to have figures to hand, 79 per cent of clients live alone.

Here’s how the two themes seem to come together, incorporating recent research I have come across. First, two papers by Sandstrom and Dunn published in 2014:

• Is efficiency overrated? Minimal social interactions lead to belonging and positive affect
• Social interactions and well-being: the surprising power of weak ties

In the first, they found that ‘people who had a social interaction with a barista (i.e. smiled, made eye contact, and had a brief conversation) experienced more positive affect than people who were as efficient as possible.’ The authors conclude that people ‘are happier when they treat a stranger like a weak tie.’ No surprise there, but as so often it is helpful to have some things confirmed by robust research.

As an aside, it may be worth noting that the sincerity of the exchange could be important. When a supermarket checkout assistant asks me ‘How are you today?’ the most they are likely to get in return is a grunt, because I know they won’t really want to know but their wretchedly-unimaginative managers have decided it’s a good idea to fill the air with unwanted vapours. There is a difference.

In the second paper, Sandstrom and Dunn report on three further experiments and note that

‘community members who had, on average, more weak tie interactions than others reported greater feelings of belonging. Furthermore, people reported greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual.’

The sampling in this study leaves me wanting further research, but still it’s tempting to say – ‘it’s official’: weak ties are good for you. Of course they are.

Next, here’s a recent paper by Sorensen and Poland, exploring ‘the space between acquaintanceship and strangerhood’. It starts by quoting Francesca Cancian who suggested that, in relationship research in later life, ‘men’s behavior is measured with a feminine ruler’. A little light went on, for me, when I read that.

Sorensen and Poland’s research used photographs to explore nuances of everyday encounters of older men living alone. The men attributed significance to what might seem to others like fleeting interactions; and all were exposed to various opportunities to form other closer relationships and friendships but ‘they sometimes described specifically choosing not to do so.’

The authors suggest that it is not the case that the men had no meaningful relationships,

‘nor can their relationships be considered inferior compared with women’s relationships, but they are clearly different, in terms of mutuality and intimacy, from the reportedly more meaningful relationships that women may enjoy and may be much less visible.’

Which brings us back to the meaning of 'meaningful' interactions.

All this makes perfect sense to me. Interactions that are apparently shallow and ephemeral, to some observers, not only have benefits in terms of social capital (and hence in terms of health and well-being); they may also be a chosen, deliberate strategy to retain human connection with what Sandstrom and Dunn call a ‘minimal cue of belonging’.

Perhaps this kind of behaviour is sufficiently strongly evidenced to characterise older men who live alone in particular, I don’t know. But either way, it is something that practitioners need to take into account, for example when it comes to designing ‘age-friendly’ environments, or when trying to organise social support at local level.

Notably, for me, it helps us to start challenging the way that as a society we have come to pathologise aloneness. Which reminds me, in my book on Neighbouring and older people I quoted the striking example from Tony Parker's The people of Providence, of 87-year-old Mrs Williams:

‘The person I like best is my neighbour next door, the one who goes and gets my pension from the post office for me. She never says anything apart from “Good morning…” She comes back and comes in and puts the money on the table and says “Good morning” again, and then out she goes.’

Previously:

• on meaningful interaction (on the Joe Public blog)
• Try a little MSI
• Untraceable near-neighbours
• Acquaintances: book review

 

Appreciating kindliness: informality in neighbourhoods

JRF’s programme on risk and trust in everyday relationships was designed to break new ground and it has done so, with a range of stimulating papers. The latest is Landscapes of helping, an absorbing report on informal helping – ‘kindliness’ - at local level, by Meg Allen, Helen Spandler, Yvonne Prendergast and Lynn Frogget. It’s based on an extended case study in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.

Perhaps because the theme overlaps strongly with issues of neighbouring and neighbourliness, I was privileged to have sight of a draft of this report. I admire the way the authors have drawn out a number of mechanisms that foster kindliness while simultaneously contributing to neighbourliness and sociality. These they describe as:

• Making kindliness palatable
• Nurturing bonders and bridgers
• ‘Creating a shared myth’ and ‘Building common cause’
• Third spaces and ‘Hubs of helping’ as ‘ways of connecting communities’; and
• Creating kinder economies.

Some of this we know about: for instance, community development practice and the literature of social capital already give us insights into how bonding and bridging capital can be nurtured, and we know quite a bit about third places, or think we do. But the first and last in the above list are striking as barely-charted areas for potential enquiry.

Talking of barely-charted areas for enquiry, this paper helps us realise how little the notion of kindliness is discussed, reflected on or researched. Here’s how the authors came through the entangling thicket of definition – acknowledging several difficulties in distinguishing concepts:

‘It was often difficult to identify boundaries between help within the family and outside; and low level help between neighbours could easily transform into longer-term more intensive support and care. We also found it difficult to distinguish between informal and more formalised (or semi-formal) help and our exploration of kindliness involved going through, and observing, semi-formal organisations who often mediate more informal relationships.

‘Similarly, while we started this research trying to distinguish between giving and receiving help, we increasingly realised that this distinction was hard to sustain. In everyday life it is not always possible, or desirable, to separate out the needs of the self and the needs of others (Munn-Giddings, 2001). People practise kindliness, not only to help others, but to help themselves, and to improve the communities in which they live.’

Ah, I recognise this part of the landscape: we’re back at the corner of Altruism Avenue and Reciprocity Road.

And it’s good to know that informal and semi-formal relations in neighbourhoods are receiving a  bit of attention at last. While JRF continue pursuing their programme, my good friend Alison Gilchrist has recently won a Plowden Fellowship to explore the theme of ‘informality’ in relation to good governance and social justice. And less gloriously, I’m currently working on a project for Nesta to produce a process evaluation and impact evaluation of Good Neighbour schemes. More on that in due course.

 

Age friendly societies in our time?

Last winter I prepared a lengthy literature review on older people and social isolation, for an exciting research project being run by WoodGreen Community Services in Toronto. The paper is now available and I hope will be very useful for the range of material it draws together. It covers material on the built and green environment; quality of life, health and well-being; and social support and connection.

The project sought an understanding of the state and breadth of knowledge about the social isolation of older people in urban areas, with particular attention paid to housing form, and formal and informal care. The coverage is of international material in English.

It was an overview rather than a systematic literature review – the huge literatures on ageing, health, quality of life, loneliness and so on, combined with a limited budget, precluded close reading of methodologies used in the material described. The bibliography covers nearly 500 separate items. Consistencies in the research emerge of course, but there are also a few fascinating inconsistencies – for example around the connection between religion, older people’s social networks, and well-being.

Two characteristics of the literature struck me in particular as I was trawling and reading. The first is the stark invisibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender older people in any content that is not specifically about them. In the review I have distributed the material that is available, across several sections, so as not to compound that effect. The second is the number of calls that are made for increased participation of older people in decision making processes, alongside comparatively few accounts of such involvement.

I’m indebted to Diane Dyson at WoodGreen and to Angus McCabe at the Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, for their support throughout.

 

Making the links: poverty, ethnicity and social networks

JRF have published a piece of research on the links between poverty and ethnicity, which examines how social networks help or hinder people in moving out of poverty. I was involved in the study in a partnership led by the Third Sector Research Centre. Among the key findings:

• People’s social networks were shaped by factors including ethnicity, class and gender, but personal characteristics, such as confidence, were also important in developing useful connections. Family and friends were seen as the basis for most relationships but there were low levels of awareness about wider social networks and how they might be used for moving on from poverty.
• People’s links beyond their own ethnic community were important, but the added dimension of racism could prevent access to ‘mainstream’ influential networks.
• Social networks tended to be ‘like with like’, so while they were used to access employment, this was often into low-paid jobs which relied on informal recruitment processes.
• Strong bonds with family and friends helped mitigate the effects of poverty. However, developing bridging and linking ties with networks that could move people on from poverty involved risks and scarce energy and resources.
• Voluntary, community and faith based organisations were seen as important for facilitating access to cross-cultural networks.
• There were examples of good practice in agencies encouraging people to consider how their social networks could help them move out of poverty. However, there was no consistency in practice between agencies.

There’s a four-page summary here. The full report is here, and if I may say so, well worth a read.

The other members of the team were Alison Gilchrist, Angus McCabe, Asif Afridi and Paul Kyprianou. This is the place for me to record that, taking into account all the consortia and partnership work I’ve been involved in over the past thirty years – where relationships with co-conspirators have meant a great deal to me and almost invariably been rewarding - it’s been an outstanding privilege to work with such a genial and inspiring group of people. I hope our work has some impact and leads onto other things.

 

Loneliness and older people: where are the frameworks that can stimulate informal connections to protect older people against loneliness?

On Friday the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt drew attention to the high numbers of people characterised by the Campaign to End Loneliness as ‘chronically lonely.’ This coincides with publication of a BBC survey, which claims that half of all adults in England experience loneliness. (The data from the survey are here (for England) and here (for GB)). The debate inevitably focused on older people, and I wonder sometimes about the loneliness of many people in late middle age.

Curious Point No.1. The Health Secretary rightly described the way we treat older people as a ‘national shame.’ He compared it to Asian cultures, where there is ‘reverence and respect for older people’ and ‘residential care is a last rather than a first option.’ Where this is the case, it makes sense to highlight it as desirable; although it wouldn’t be wise to take the comparison with Chinese culture (which is specifically referred to) too far, I think.

Take this study for instance, which finds little difference in the experience of ageing among older people in Shanghai and Canada. And then there's this UK study which found a high level of expectation for family support amongst Asian-Indian respondents, but Mr Hunt won't want to hear that this coexists with a high level of expectation for state support and an acknowledgement that the ideal of family support may not always materialise. He argued that we need to ‘restore and reinvigorate the social contract between generations.’ Indeed: so can we have a policy debate about how we do that?

Curious Point No.2. The Labour Party’s response to the speech includes this statement:

‘Families, friends and neighbours need a decent care system to back up their efforts to look after elderly people, but the reality is our care system is in crisis and has been pushed to the brink of collapse.’

I think there is plenty of truth in that; but it hardly excuses the last two Labour administrations for failing to take seriously the issue of an ageing population and for disregarding the accumulating social problems associated with the growing demand for care. Fifteen years ago it was urgent: now it is critical.

Curious Point No.3. While these news items were being churned I was in a breakfast seminar at the dear old Grauniad, on the topic of social capital and the voluntary sector. A bit passé, you might think. Surprisingly, most of the speakers fell plop into the puddle of implying that social capital = the result of what vol orgs do. Er, there must be some other sources of s.c. they could be helping with?

Debbie Ladds from the Local Trust rescued things a little by mentioning the value of setting up tea and cake sessions at local level – an example of something that works because the connections made and reinforced there are the ones that, as capital, can be invested and can bring returns. But this sort of potential remained unexplored and there was no other recognition of how informal interactions can be stimulated. Cue the same question for the Secretary of State for Health: where are the frameworks that can stimulate informal connections to protect older people against loneliness?

Ah, OK then, well cue Geoff Mulgan instead. At about the same time on Friday, over what used to be called the airwaves, he offered one suggestion on the Today programme (from 2:33:30, available for a few more days. Thanks Martin for the heads-up) suggesting that the energy within the Neighbourhood Watch network could be diverted to help look after older people who experience loneliness. I’m sure this already happens in some places informally; it might make sense to give it a formal basis, without jeopardising the informality of interaction of course.

Curious Point No.4. During the Today discussion Anthea Tinker (whose solid 1981 book on Elderly people in modern society sits right beside my desk at the moment), made the point that there are questionable assumptions about how family-oriented cultures (such as those in southern Europe) protect older people against loneliness. By way of extending the argument, consider this European research, which suggests that feelings of loneliness

‘were more prevalent in areas where living alone was rarest and where community bonds were strongest. Individual variables describing life situation did not explain the differences.’ (Emphasis added)

And finally, Curious Point No.5. The findings of the BBC survey suggest that people who practise a religion feel lonelier than those who do not; and are more likely than those with no faith to say they are experiencing greater levels of loneliness than they did ten years ago. This might be altogether unsurprising: long-held assumptions about the well-being benefits attributed to religiosity have been questioned in other respects (e.g.). I wonder if there is also something there about a proportional increase over the past decade in membership and influence of hierarchical religions (e.g. Catholicism, Islam) compared to non-hierarchical religions? Just a thought.

 

It’s who you know

Via Atlantic Cities – a short video warning us that our chances of experiencing violence are based on our social network connections. Yes, it’s a no-brainer, but the point is that someone’s looking at it systematically.

And maybe the point continues to be that the American nation will continue to research and agonise over all aspects of violent crime and explore all sorts of ways of addressing it except the obvious one. As Izzard said, ‘the gun helps.’

 

More on the benefits of neighbourliness

Via a piece by Sarah Goodyear in Atlantic, here’s some significant research evidence supporting the link between local social cohesion and positive health outcomes. Researchers from the University of Michigan studied a wide range of potential confounding variables using a large and nationally representative sample of older adults. They found that perceived ‘neighbourhood social cohesion’ was strongly associated with both stroke mortality and non-fatal stroke.

‘Each standard deviation increase in perceived neighborhood social cohesion was associated with a 15% reduced risk in stroke incidence after adjusting for age, gender, chronic illnesses, marital status, education, and total wealth. The relationship persisted after adjusting further for behavioral and psychological covariates. Even after adjusting for two individual-level social engagement measures, factors that may have confounded a respondent's perceived neighborhood social cohesion rating, perceived neighborhood social cohesion was associated with a reduced risk of stroke.’

That sounds pretty thorough to me. And towards the end of the article the authors speculate that:

‘residents may experience a lack of perceived neighborhood social cohesion because their neighborhood lacks an infrastructure that allows them to mingle and build community. A lack of these community resources may inhibit healthy behaviors.’ (Emphasis added)

In the US, according to this article, stroke is responsible for an estimated $25.2 billion in direct costs. Porportionately, the UK figure would presumably be lower but not luxuriously so. I think I spy a way of reducing it. This probably needs to be spelled out very slowly for A Politician Near You. But it’s commonsense really: investing in the local community sector to generate local social capital and cohesion will bring health benefits of huge economic significance.

Let me know if you come across a politician who gets it.

 

The social networks of refugees

A research report on Social networks, social capital and refugee integration has just been published by the universities of Birmingham and Cardiff. The study was based on an analysis of The Survey of New Refugees (SNR), augmented with a short online survey.

Among the findings:

• Social connections have a clear impact on health and language.
• Those who participate in quality English language learning get more help and have more frequent contact.
• There were clear social capital benefits from family reunion.
• Frequent contact with kin has no impact on access to employment.
• Those in contact with a formal group are less likely to need emotional support.
• No kind of social network is anti-integrative.

And there are a couple of surprises (to me at any rate). First, there seems to be comparatively low interest in associating with ‘co-national or ethnic groups’. When asked to rank 15 priorities, respondents placed greatest importance (understandably) on ‘Absence of verbal or physical attack’ (9.5) and ‘Housing’ (9.29). The lowest priority was accorded to ‘Volunteering’ (7.09) (understandably); and (surprisingly) association with ‘co-national or ethnic groups’ (7.49).

Secondly, the research challenges the model which suggests that if you spend time and energy investing in strong ties (e.g. for emotional support) that detracts from investment in weak ties and bridging social capital (e.g. for getting work). The researchers say there was ‘no evidence that having strong kin networks precludes getting support from formal networks’:

‘The positive correlations between different types of contact… provide compelling evidence against the argument that immigrant and ethnic minority communities are ‘inward looking’ and only ‘invest’ in bonding social capital... There is no evidence that receiving help from relatives and friends (widely considered as ‘bonding’ capital) is mutually exclusive with gaining ‘bridging’ social capital from ‘out-groups’ and more formal organisations.’ (p11-12)

 

Low level interaction

Hello, what’s this? Someone else who thinks that sense of community doesn’t necessarily require strong or dense local social ties? A year ago I mentioned the initial thoughts of Queensland sociologist Lynda Cheshire on community resilience in the 2011 floods. Now here she calls for more participants for her study and offers early reflections:

‘Even outside of emergencies, a good relation with neighbours has been shown to increase individuals' sense of community and attachment to place, and to improve health and well-being.

‘This doesn't necessarily mean we have to become close friends with neighbours or organise street barbecues. Low levels of interaction - such as friendly greetings when you see them, keeping an eye on each other's properties while away, and exchanging telephone numbers for emergencies is all that's really needed.’

The point being, I think, that these low level connections require much less effort to establish and maintain than do close ties, and we all have more of them, so our chances of mobilising help in time of need are going to be more efficiently increased through recognition than through close relationship.

Cheshire has been interviewing residents from flood affected streets and I’m looking forward to reading papers from the study in due course.

Neighbourliness and social networks: a little welcome attention?

In a new RSA paper Nicola Bacon argues that

‘we need to find fresh approaches that can be delivered in an age of low public spending and a shrinking state... we need to find new ways to put the lived experience of residents at the centre of regeneration policy and practice. We need to build on local assets and boost resilience in a way that both supports mobility for those who wish to leave, and stability for people who choose to stay in the areas that they call home.’

Plenty of ‘we needs’ – this is think-tank language - but not much to disagree with there. I have an open mind about whether or not ‘new ways’ or ‘fresh approaches’ are required. This is an essay about community development and I’d say there is nothing much wrong with the values, principles and processes of CD - maybe it’s the political context in which it is expected to perform magic, and the forces working in the opposite direction, that need attention.

Having said that, new tools – for local digital spaces for example, or tools like the Young Foundation’s well being and resilience measure which exploit the power of statistics - can surely help to bring a compelling persuasiveness to the local case.

So what we have is the RSA keen to keep building its presence and credibility around the practice of local social development; together with a welcome determination that the importance of local social networks should be recognised in policy, especially in times of severe financial constraint.

Emphasising the value of local social networks is here packaged as ‘turning strangers into neighbours’ - translating from the language of sociology into that of local newspapers without shaking off the questions of the kind of neighbouring and the kind of privacy that is assumed to be desirable, in policy or by 'strangers'.

Anyway, the opportunity as presented is to ‘explore the viable ways of “turning strangers into neighbours”’. The point is made strongly that

‘neighbourliness and social networks are a critical protective factors against many neighbourhood problems’

(the unedited grammar being symptomatic of the paper as a whole, I’m afraid) - but we scarcely get beyond that assertion, and I couldn’t see any ‘new ways’ of encouraging the wholesale conversion of strangers into local network connections. Just when you think something special might be coming up, the paper ends, quite abruptly.

So as with the Res Publica paper, that I reviewed six months ago, I’ve approached with a sense of optimistic anticipation and been disappointed, the redeeming factor being that important topics are being aired by influential agencies.

Maybe we’re not supposed to be bothered too much about papers like these? Are they just territory markers? It’s like we’ve got think tanks going round the policy townscape cocking their legs and spraying the conceptual lamp-posts. Guaranteed to make me go sniffy.

In this case, most people are going to find the relentless reference to the Young Foundation at best tiresome, particularly given the extensive overlooked literature on most of this stuff. Other authors like Chris Phillipson might get a mention (albeit miss-cited) if they happen to have published in a TYF publication. Lazy reference to someone called ‘Puttnam’ serves to further dissipate any confidence that had been built up in the first pages of the report. It's just a thought, but, maybe don’t publish; or treat the reader with a little more respect?

 

 

Looking out for neighbours: resilience, recognition and responsibilities

The Atlantic has a piece by Sarah Goodyear on the contribution of social connections to community resilience in time of crisis, picking up on a New Yorker article (£) by Eric Klinenberg. Hurricane Sandy came close enough for some policy makers to have their suits splashed with a little nasty reality, in turn legitimating (for a short while at least) some public discussion of these issues:

‘As cities prepare for climate change in earnest, they’re going to need to harden infrastructure, change building patterns, and overhaul government emergency procedures. But they’re also going to have to put a greater value on the human connections that can be found in walkable neighborhoods where people know each other and support local businesses.’

The assumption that walkability might be a key criterion is an interesting one, and one of the comments to the article expresses scepticism about it. I’m aware of one study (Du Toit et al 2007) which found that 'walkable neighbourhoods are not necessarily more sociable places in which to live'.

However the researchers in that, south Australian, study were looking for 'strong' social ties between neighbours - a mistake in my view (and a very common one) because you don't necessarily need strong connections, or to feel you belong to a close-knit community, to have someone look out for you in time of crisis (although they help of course).

We can’t all be, and some of us definitely do not want to be, part of a close-knit community, as I’ve suggested often enough. What might help all round would be higher levels of neighbourly recognition – meaning, having been seen around the neighbourhood from time to time, perhaps with a smile or a few words: being accessible in time of need without invading others’ privacy. It's reasonable to assume that walkable environments are more likely to give rise to what I call sequences of informal recognition, which accrue to provide a form of social capital that has largely been overlooked in study and policy.

The point also needs to be made that when crisis strikes, and there are residents who happen to lack social connections, they are going to stand a better chance of being picked up and supported if there is an active local online network that people use to communicate openly and fast. If authorities anywhere in the world really are looking to invest in community resilience, they should be looking to facilitate the development of independent, citizen-led online networks.

Meanwhile back in the UK, not dissimilar themes have been raised following a claim by Care Minister Norman Lamb in the Telegraph that:

‘We have lost the extended family because families have become dispersed. We need to rebuild that neighbourly resilience that helps people stay independent. If someone is living on their own never seeing anyone, that is a dismal existence, and it often ends up with it all collapsing and them going into a care home.’

This is followed of course by the urging of us all to do more neighbouring; and a possible new slogan – this is not ‘big society’ but (tada!) the ‘decent society.’ Capitalisation and branding to follow, presumably.

The minister said that councils should lead the way in encouraging people to help their neighbours stay out of care. ‘I want local authorities to be giving people guidance about how they can maintain their own resilience, using their friends, their neighbours, their community and in that way build resilience and reduce the burden on the state.’

Lamb’s remarks aroused some contemptuous counter-argument from Sarah Ditum on Comment is Free. And to the extent that this is about caring, she has a point – the amount of unpaid care that is being carried out for people with an illness or disability has increased and is likely to keep increasing. Her riposte resonates perfectly reasonably:

‘It's not the populace that's resigning from its responsibilities to the vulnerable; it's the government.’

The minister has generalised unhelpfully and not taken the time needed to catch up with any thinking that anyone else has been doing, or to find out what is the current state of play. And we need not dwell on the trite assumptions about 'the neighbour support that used to be there'. But still, there is a worthwhile message here if it weren't so badly packaged. It would be responsible for local authorities to issue guidance which takes account of what is already going on – if they have the time or funds to get this done.

What seems to me problematic in the language Lamb uses is his hard-wired political compulsion to individualise the response, rather than acknowledge an obvious role for community development. This is typified in referring to 'independence' without entertaining the possibility of interdependence.

This is routine political contortionism I suppose. The government would like the beneficial consequences of community development without having to accept either that some people experience disadvantage or misfortune that is not their fault, or that they can address those disadvantages by themselves (without the disempowering arbitrariness of philanthropy) if supported in doing so.

 

 

Placekeeping: bringing quality of local social life into the mix

Social Life have just published a report developing a methodology to measure social sustainability in new housing developments:

‘The aim of this project is to create a practical and cost-effective way of measuring people’s quality of life and the strength of community.’

This could be significant because, as the report argues,

‘A new emphasis on social sustainability means thinking about placekeeping as well as placemaking. It requires us to recognise that some intangibles – the emotional relationships that people who live in and use a space develop – are as important as the hard infrastructure we deliver.’

(Be warned, at the moment some of the links say ‘download full publication’ but you may only get Part 1, which itself doesn’t appear to carry links to Parts 2 and 3. Part 1 gives the deceptive impression that it's a self-contained report).

The first part seeks to demonstrate how the methodology as it stands could be applied, in this case to new developments, three of them in London. Since residents presumably moved in at roughly the same time, have similar issues to discuss, and a similar drive to get to know people, you’d expect levels of neighbourliness and satisfaction to be reasonably high for the first few years at least. Plus they just invested emotional energy in the move, so folk are more likely to be upbeat about the place. The housing provider has to really mess up to get bad marks early on.

But the real point is the development and testing of a methodology that can bring the social quality of local life into the mix. The framework applied to the four localities has three ‘critical dimensions’:

• amenities and social infrastructure
• social and cultural life, and
• residents’ voice and influence.

A fourth dimension, change in the neighbourhood, will be assessed in due course using data from the 2011 Census. These dimensions are populated with 13 indicators comprised of a total of 45 questions, mostly taken from or adapted from established surveys. The findings for the four study areas are based mainly on nearly 600 face-to-face interviews in the four sites, with site surveys and some interviews with professionals/practitioners, and benchmarked against London and national comparative data.

The first thing that might strike you is that all the indicators, and indeed the three dimensions, are treated equally. This is not addressed in the main report but is covered in section 2:

‘It is probable that different questions have different significance in explaining social sustainability, and there is as yet no evidence available that provides any rationale for weighting.’

Weighting will have to wait. Fair enough.

This is enormously thorough, detailed work, and further refinement could make it very strong. We will all have our doubts about some of the questions used but there's no doubting the soundness of the overall approach. Whether or not it becomes a standard tool as we strive to become a nation of housebuilders, it all adds to the drive to embed the factors of local social quailty of life in decision-making processes.

 

Never mind ‘birds of a feather’ – for some people, local social interaction ain’t worth the aggro

Are you and your neighbours all similar? And does it matter?

An anonymised Economist blog post takes a reported increase in neighbourhood heterogeneity from recent US General Social Survey data, and links it to an apparent increase in ideological polarisation. Wait, I can explain.

The recent data suggest that ‘Americans have never been less likely to be friends with their neighbours than before’ (yes I agree we should expect a modest level of competence in sentence construction from an Economist journo).

‘In 1974, 44% of respondents said that they had spent a social evening with neighbours more than once a month. By 2008, that number had dropped to a tick over 30%. Over the course of the study’s existence, the number has been dropping consistently.’

OK, so neighbours are less likely 'than before' to be friends. I don’t think it necessarily means they won’t interact in a socially supportive way: but let’s suppose it matters. The author suggests that

‘Reduced interaction with fellow citizens probably only reinforces a person’s own beliefs. However like-minded a neighbourhood is the odds of friends and relatives sharing similar political views seems much higher.’

Hmm, speculative, you might think, but the idea is that (a) neighbours interact less, so (b) people’s political views are more likely to get reinforced, principally by friends and relatives who are likely to have similar views. And there could be something in it, but there’s the usual stack of issues with the first bit, such as –

• neighbourliness isn’t the same as friendship, not even in the US;
• whether it’s adequate to explain neighbourliness over time in terms of spending ‘a social evening’ on a regular basis;
• whether this decline correlates with other alarm-ringing social change;
• whether online interaction detracts from face-to-face local interaction or augments it while changing it, and so on.

Oh, and the almost but not quite obvious question - if strong ties between neighbours are weakening over time, is that necessarily a bad thing?

I’m not going to rehearse that stuff here, but I do want to follow one interesting lead. The article concludes forcefully:

‘The primary culprit here is suburbanisation.’

One of the comments to the article refers to a study of social interaction and urban sprawl (Brueckner & Largey, J urban econ, 2008) which tested the hypothesis that urban density has a positive effect on social interaction. The authors preface their results like this:

‘To understand the argument, suppose that people value social interaction, and that the extent of interaction in a neighborhood is an increasing function of the area’s average population density. By putting people in close proximity, high average density could plausibly spur interaction among them.’

The paper makes an important contribution to challenging negative assumptions about suburbs. It concludes:

‘The results are unfavorable: whether the focus is friendship oriented social interaction or measures of group involvement, the empirical results show a negative, rather than positive, effect of density on interaction.’

Somewhat half-heartedly, they add a rider, which I have raised myself from time to time: it's possible that people who are less inclined to sociability could be more inclined to inhabit certain kinds of housing or areas of greater density. That’s assuming they have much choice in the first place.

But I want to go back to the initial assumption that ‘people value interaction’. Allowing for a small percentage of humankind who maybe don’t, I don’t think anyone’s disputing that basic generalisation; but there needs to be acknowledgment of the differential extent to which that value is attainable.

If you live in an attractive, peaceful, relatively affluent area where the stress levels are generally low, then the cost of investing in social interaction is low. But in some neighbourhoods there are serious real or perceived risks in establishing social contact with a view to interaction. If you try to start talking to someone at the bus stop or in the lift and they mug you, or you justifiably fear that they might, you will be less inclined to seek out social interaction. And if other factors are negative (eg a disordered local environment, poor services, badly maintained housing, child ill-health, domestic violence, do I need to go on?) the risk is too high for the perceived benefit. If the risk is too high, people don't try to connect. And they keep themselves to themselves.

So at no extra cost (tada!) here’s a very special reward for readers of this post who have got this far… a unique never-to-be-repeated offer of an exquisitely-wrought principle: ‘birds of feather’ is a red herring. Indeed it could also prove to be a wild goose; more research is needed. The homophily principle - or come to that, the heterophily principle, if there is one - is neither here nor there: what matters for social policy is to address residents’ differential cost-benefit assessment of the value of social interaction. You do that by improving the quality of life for those who most need it. Unh, that should put the cat among the pigeons.

 

The hidden wealth of informal activities

Instinctively I flinch at the phrase ‘hidden wealth of communities’ because I just think, here they come, the Haves want to take that as well.

Well it’s been tough for the rich and powerful lately and they’ve started to get a little uneasy about the rate of return on their enormous investments. And really, one can’t help thinking that poor people just have to work harder, it’s not good enough, let’s see what else we can plunder from them. What’s this social capital they have, couldn’t we make something out of that?

The model’s straightforward: if only poor people would do more with their social capital – all those network connections made in clubs and pubs and community centres, my dear fellow, places where they laugh at stuff one simply wouldn’t comprehend – public services would become obsolete or cost less to run and profit would be easier to make at the top.

Yes, it could be deemed offensive for people with lots of money to describe the social capital of people on low incomes as ‘wealth’, and then to try to exploit it. Having said that, semantic niceties aside, it does matter how local social connections give rise to informal and formal participation; and how they in turn relate to formal governance. I’d subscribe to the view put forward back in 2005 by Paul Skidmore and John Craig in Start with people (an unacknowledged precursor of some elements in current policy thinking):

‘we need to create greater value from the connections popular participation creates between public services, civil society and our structures of democratic representation.’

But it’s taking so long to get policy recognition for the value of those interactions, while all the time the third places we need for this associational life are increasingly threatened. Even the stoutest defender of the current government, and they do exist, stout ones anyway, could hardly deny the assertiveness (some might call it wanton vandalism) of its deconstruction of the public realm. It doesn’t help.

Start with people explored the connections within and beyond civil society that are forged in community organisations. So, more broadly, does this recent report from ResPublica, Clubbing together, by Keith Cooper and Caroline Macfarland, sub-titled unfortunately ‘the hidden wealth of communities’. It explores the potential for a greater ‘club-culture’ in the UK. It offers a review and a very welcome discussion of the largely forsaken place of local clubs and community centres in associational life, mostly well-written, if clearly rushed.

Will this report push the pace among policy makers, to help protect and promote local civil associations? There’s a crucial section on page 31 which refers to social impact statements and cites a Public Administration Select Committee report, ending – you might almost think inspirationally - with these points:

‘A better recognition of the hidden wealth of informal activities [that’s more like it] requires this more sophisticated understanding of how casual connections contribute to our national social capital stocks… Leisure pursuits, as ‘crucibles of casual connections’ that are purposive, pooling, and encourage inclusive social mixing, should be recognised and promoted in policy implementation as vehicles for cultivating social value.’

Yes, more please. And among the report’s recommendations there’s a strong and much-needed case made for social value impact statements. Coming from this source, it may be heard, and if there’s anything left of the public realm by the time it gets processed, some good will come of it.

Meanwhile, back on page 31, the authors break down the category of 'casual connections' and point out the need

‘to distinguish between the kinds of connections we form when engaged in purposive activity from (sic) non-purposive types of chance activity, such as bumping into friends or family at the shops or striking up conversations with strangers at bus stops.'

They note that

'Purposive casual connections are forged and fostered in situations where people indulge in activities for a particular purpose and social outcome, when engaging in sport or team activities, other competitive games such as bingo, or educational leisure such as arts classes.'

Which of course has long been one of the arguments for adult learning, so wretchedly underfunded by recent governments. I merely mention. It doesn't mean that we can dismiss ‘non-purposive casual connections': we're told that these more informal encounters

'are unlikely to lead to social actions.’ 

The word ‘directly’, inserted about four words from the end, might have helped saved this sentence, otherwise it’s an unfortunate remark which weakens the whole approach. Non-purposive casual connections are fundamental – everything else would fall over without them. It would be difficult to describe or account for social life (adapting a phrase used by David Morgan which I quoted here) without passing and fleeting acquaintances. Apart from anything else, they give rise to a lot of other encounters and activities. In social relations, the trivial is massively significant. The 2008 CLG guidance on ‘meaningful interaction’ made the same mistake. We have been here before a few times.

That is not to say that casual connections in purposive surroundings are not important, of course they are. Just don’t diss the superficial, ok? You see why this paper is such a frustrating read, by turn informative and insightful, then inadequate and misguided.

As an example of the latter, and I’m really not worked up about this, there’s a shallow section on ‘From online to face-to-face interaction’ which embarassingly fails to grasp the extent or nature of local online interaction. This would not be a problem if the authors didn’t decide to pronounce on the subject with such assumed authority.

Local social technologies have moved on a long way from ‘cyber balkanisation’ – the phenomenon whereby online participation is perceived to cluster around interest not locality (and no, Putnam didn’t coin the term, it goes back at least to Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson in 1996. I published something on this in New statesman in about 99. It's past).

Just a glance at Keith Hampton’s work, well-known as the leading researcher in this field, would have helped; or even some extensive, well-respected, ahem, home-grown UK primary research carried out a couple of years ago. After that, when chapter four begins on the premiss that 'individuals have adapted their group behaviours to changing socio-cultural and technological environments' without reference to Barry Wellman and networked individualism, it's hard to retain much confidence.

Where I feel this paper fails most, however, is at what may be the most difficult task, which is explaining what the traditional concept of membership means in the network society. Is association through membership, with or without the tradition of unionism, co-operatives and mutual societies, an anachronism or a social necessity? Personally I suspect it's a characteristic of hierachical societies dominated by organisations rather than networks, but I'm ready to be persuaded otherwise. In spite of an interesting section on ‘From consumers to members’, this paper doesn’t get near an answer.

My sense of disappointment in the squandered opportunity of this paper is barely allayed by the possibility that ResPublica's access to policy makers might have some effect. Perhaps shrewdly, they adopted a smart technique to promote the report among people in positions of power, while discouraging those in community development or community action from taking any notice – they got Eric Pickles to launch it. 

But still, the unexpected attention on clubs is welcome. My excellent friend Ruth Cherrington, an authority on working men’s clubs, will doubtless be as pleased as the rest of us that at last some policy attention might be paid to the ‘untapped value’ of ‘membership environments’. But only a big society sleepwalker would overlook the likelihood that there would be attempts to capture and exploit a celebration of ordinary people’s community lives mutually-constructed against the odds.

With a couple of exceptions, the recommendations are disappointingly unambitious, characterised by the customary passing of the buck to local authorities, using the standard reality-blind formula of ‘local authorities need to consider [insert  favourite topic] as an alternative to closure’.

Maybe that last phrase, ‘alternative to closure’, needs a little more reflection among right wing think tanks. Taking the right's approach to public libraries as an example - often offered as one of the key reasons for the tories to get a thorough hammering as soon as moderate middle class people can get to the polling stations – it’s worth noting that an alternative to closure is sometimes, ahem, keeping things open.

(My dear chap, why didn’t we think of that?)

And that's it really - arguing for investment in informal social networks is vital but seems pointless in a policy context dominated by the demolition of the public. 

One last thought. I mentioned Skidmore and Craig’s Start with people, an uneven work but one that should not be overlooked. With all the recent fuss about the ‘innovation’ of localism as if it were an invention of this government, you might be surprised to read this on p88 – published seven years ago:

‘subject to certain safeguards, if local communities can demonstrate sufficient popular support they should be granted a right of initiative to propose a local intervention and require local authorities to bring forth a proposal and vote on it.’

Even their best ideas aren't new.

 

Adult learning and social relationships

The social and health benefits of adult learning are hardly in doubt, and now they've been quantified. 

In a report for Niace, Valuing the impact of adult learning, Daniel Fujiwara found that, for adults, participating in a part-time course leads to:

• improvements in health, which has a value of £148 to the individual;
• a greater likelihood of finding a job and/or staying in a job, which has a value of £224 to the individual;
• better social relationships, which has a value of £658 to the individual; and
• a greater likelihood that people volunteer on a regular basis, which has a value of £130 to the individual.

So will this lead at last to some sensible government investment in community education? Might there be a policy maker somewhere who wants to see an increase in the proportion of the population who are healthier, more content, have more supportive networks, are more employable and who contribute to society? Non? Oh well, just thought I’d ask.

Previously:

Adult learning: why it matters

Neighbourhoods are both physical and social environments

This is helpful, from Rob Wheway on the Guardian’s public leader’s network this morning:

‘Neighbourliness happens without payment and would be categorised as voluntary. Politicians and staff assume this means the voluntary sector, which leads them to focus on the services that local and national charities provide, rather than considering what factors in the social and physical environment make people more likely to be neighbourly...’

‘It is not fear of stranger danger that makes the difference; it is the dominance of the car which limits neighbourliness...’

And especially his last para:

‘We need to understand more of how we create both the physical and social environment in which people feel sufficiently secure, empowered and valued to be more neighbourly and more active citizens.’

Neighbourhoods are both physical and social environments and the more we live in a network society, the more neighbourly behaviour is likely to be distinguishable from other relations.

So please can we have a considered, informed, practice-oriented debate on Rob's last point, bringing together planners, architects, social care managers, youth workers, resident activists, resident non-activists, housing association officers, community development workers… And policy makers.

 

Jubilee street parties: a note for the reluctant

A few conversations just lately have confirmed that I’m not the only one to find the coming weekend of Jubilee street parties a distasteful prospect.

There are at least two kinds of diffidence, which get mingled easily: one caused by the rampant unreflective nationalism of the moment, the other by the familiar sense of enforced sociability.

People feel under pressure to conform on both counts but it’s legitimate to feel reluctant. Streets Alive estimates that two million people will be having a street party of some sort: that leaves about 60 million who won’t be.

Still, it’s a little scary how many apparently rational grown-up people turn into anthem-humming attention-standing serfs at the sight of those silly red white and blue flags. Even more scary to discover how many of them live around you.

Meanwhile, UK Uncut held an alternative jubilee street party in Manchester the other day, with ‘austerity bunting’, a ‘Clegg and spoon race’ and 'upper-class austerity twits'. That's the spirit.

Chris Gittins, the source of street party insight and experience, argues against the assumption that street parties are a 'celebration' of the Jubilee:

‘street parties are for life, not just for Jubilees. In any street there are a wide range of views about the Queen and the royals, but they still want a street party together.’

Which is fair enough, but for those who think that neutral unbranded street parties are a good idea, unless you’re governing the process with a few likemindeds, you’re unlikely to be able to stop the royalists dominating.

So what to do? Personally, I’ll shuffle out there for a short while as a courtesy to my neighbours, especially those who have put organising effort in. I get on well with them all but the artificiality of the occasion and any tatty, halfmast nationalism will finish me off quickly I think.

97 per cent of neighbouring surveys say neighbouring ain’t what it used to be

The chorus of popular survey reports lamenting the decline of neighbouring continues to swell and boom. I don’t scour for them systematically, but I have at least half a dozen per year from the last few years. What I most long for is the moment when one of my neighbours rushes in to tell me about new survey results they've just found, showing that X per cent of neighbours share information with each other.

Today’s survey results come from the Ordnance Survey, although since there’s nothing about it on their website thus far, I can’t tell you what they think it shows, nor why they had it carried out.

Here are the headlines:

• 35% of those surveyed do not know their neighbours’ names
• 29% said lack of community spirit and anti-behaviour (sic) were the two biggest problems in their neighbourhood
• 17% of parents in the study stated they never let their children play outside
• 11% said they rarely or never visit their high street
• 25% said a community forum where they could air their concerns would help tackle community issues, whilst 29% claimed that a source of local information would help tackle community issues.

As always, it’s hard to comment without seeing the questions, especially on the first two of these points (all neighbours’ names? Any neighbours’ names? Some neighbours’ names?). Perhaps they will be made available in due course.

I promise to do an extended update of my previous review of popular surveys, because I do think there are things we might learn from them.

A related but separate phenomenon to examine is the media-political obsession with telling us how we are no longer neighbourly, and we all were, unfailingly, in the past of course. They chant the mantras, hoping to light upon some magic combination that will cure all social ills.

My thanks to the dependable Chris Gittins of Streets Alive who offered some commonsense observations when interviewed about the issues on BBC Breakfast this morning.

 

Pubs and taverns

According to the Lost Pubs Project, in the UK pubs are currently closing at an accelerating rate of 50 each week. While there's been a fair amount of froth around parliament (eg), acknowledging the implications and condemning the tied pub model, there doesn't seem to have been much to challenge the trend.

Apparently something similar has been happening in Chicago. This article suggests the problem is mainly down to the sheer bureaucratic awkwardness of getting a license. One commentator complains:

"Getting a new tavern license issued in a residential neighborhood is brutal. It's virtually impossible."

The problem sweetly illustrates the extent to which social value, publicness and local economies are intertwined. Perhaps policy makers everywhere could appreciate and value the role of pubs in stimulating local social capital, as well as their role in the local economy. Here's a start: Scott Martin who owns Simon's Tavern in Andersonville, Chicago, says that when he bought the place 17 years ago, he found a shoebox containing $80,000 in IOUs.

Previously:
More on local pubs
Why pubs need the CIA

Online, local social capital, and network diversity

Some years ago there was interest in the possibility of what was known as ‘cyber-balkanisation’ – the expectation that online activity would create silos of communities of interest at the expense of diversity of networks; and perhaps that local communities based on face-to-face contact might atrophy as a direct consequence. I even wrote an article for the New Statesman about it, it must have been at least ten years ago.

Now here’s research to confirm that social networks are not less diverse when mediated online, and that online use makes a ‘positive and substantive total contribution’ to network diversity and hence to the social capital that is accessible through personal networks.

This is the most recent output from Keith Hampton and his colleagues based on the data collected for the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

I've just posted a summary review of the paper over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog. The journal article linked above is subscription only, but Keith offers a draft here.

 

20 per cent of us don't want neighbours to handle our post

Here's a dilemma for the postal services which policy makers need to acknowledge. According to recent research carried out by Consumer Focus, one in five people are unhappy for any of their neighbours to receive any of their post.

Royal Mail have proposals to leave undeliverable items with neighbours as a matter of policy (it happens already but is not standard practice, it seems).

'For non-signature items, if the neighbour is at home and accepts the item the postman will deliver a notification card to the addressee. This will detail the address of the neighbour.'

Taking in deliveries for a neighbour is widespread practice and has obvious advantages, being more efficient and lubricating local interaction. Where I live it happens a lot. I've pointed out before that it's one of relatively few ways in which older people, often at home when others are out, can play a simple, valued, trusted neighbourly role.

But if you don't get on with or even recognise your neighbours, or are particularly sensitive about the content of some of your post, you might at least want to have a choice about whether the Royal Mail takes this course. Eighty per cent of respondents thought they should be able to opt in or opt out of having a neighbour receive their post.

If Royal Mail go ahead with their proposals, it will go against the sensitivities of a sizeable minority. Note the lack of specificity in the research finding - 20% don't want any neighbour to handle any of their post. But if they pander to that minority, they contribute further to the undermining of the role of the neighbour and the aspirations of modern governments to increase local social capital.

So how hard would it be to systematise the preference for receipt of undeliverable post by a neighbour? Not something that should be beyond our uses of technology, I think. And if that happens, and we all start to register one way or the other on a database evidencing trust in our neighbours, what a fascinating dataset we'll have.

There is a little discussion about this issue following an apparently pseudonymous Guardian Comment is Free article (written by someone with inside knowledge - a postal worker perhaps? - who has yet to discover that some neighbours are female - ah so it can't be a postal worker then).

Call me old fashioned, but maybe nostalgia isn't the only problem

Here's a curiosity. Ryan Shorthouse in Prospect magazine has a go at both Philip Blond (Red Toryism) and Maurice Glasman (Blue Labour - you still with me?) for their 'nostalgia for a "golden age" of British communities'. Quite right too. 

[Start of short Kev rant, partly lifted from a forthcoming paper] The contemporary media-political rhetoric is partly problematic because it finds 'community' historically still within reach, through the living-memory images from the nostalgia industry. (I often think we would gain greater insight discussing the assumed decline of neighbourliness in early modern England). Our politicians and journalists invite us to do penance before the curling monochrome prints of streets where doors were always left open and everyone knew everyone. The problem is not that this mythology is entirely misleading – it isn’t, not entirely - but that it is packaged as universally flawless, implicitly recoverable, and key to the resolution of expensive problems of social policy. For politicians and political commentators to peddle this rhetoric uncritically is either ignorant or disingenuous. [Rant ends].

Perversely, Shorthouse ends his article by claiming that market forces and private capital

'could sustain and improve public services that people rely on. Revitalised community life will only really come from improving the skills of individuals: boosting education levels and improving employability, for instance.'

Well, and one or two other things we can all think of. A reliable economy would help, one that is not held to ransom by the Tories' dear friends in the financial sector and rescued at the cost of public services that are used by people who happen to be below their lofty field of vision. Meanwhile we all have to be patient while the current experiment in 'progressive conservatism' demonstrates quite how education levels and employability will be boosted by cutting education funding and closing libraries.

Call me old fashioned, but I too think that it's in society's interests for people to associate more, and more pro-socially, at local level. But we're not likely to achieve that with the current vicious assault on the public realm or by decimating services that people need just to give them the strength to reflect on their own circumstances.

 

Does austerity cause increase in knowing neighbours' names?

Between 2008 and 2010 the proportion of American adults who say they ‘know all or most of their neighbours by name’ increased by some 11 per cent, to 51%. In 2008, 31 per cent said they did not know any of their neighbours by name: two years later, this had dropped to just 18 per cent.

This comes from the latest output from the collaboration of Keith Hampton and his colleagues with Pew Internet Research - a study of the impact of social networking sites on levels of trust, personal relationships and civic and political involvement in the USA. (I’ll be posting some thoughts on the main findings of that study, over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog shortly). The authors note that:

It might be that the persistence of the poor economic conditions of the American economy has prompted – or necessitated - that people to turn to their neighbors for informal support. It would be premature to suggest that this current trend is part of a gradual increase in social capital in America.

I’ll make my customary point here briefly about the assumption behind the question – knowing someone’s name implies a level of relationship not necessarily consistent with people’s understanding of neighbouring (certainly not mine). Knowing someone by name implies a stronger relationship than is necessarily needed or wanted. So as I’ve noted before, this emphasis perpetuates the unfortunate habit of over-privileging strong ties in the understanding of local social relations. The basis of neighbouring is recognition, which does not depend on knowing names, as nicely illustrated in this quotation from last year’s Gumtree research:

'It's true I don't know many neighbours by name, but we recognise each other, know who lives where and are aware of each other's routines. If something is out of place, we notice. We also pick up the litter in the street and close each other's gates when the postman leaves them open.'

The closest comparable recent UK data I have found offers responses to the statement ‘I know my immediate neighbours’ names’ with a return of 83 per cent (Circle Anglia Community Census carried out by ComRes 2009). Maybe this can be compared with the 81 per cent in the Pew survey who know some, most, or all by name.

A final point from the Pew report, which is mainly about the impact on social relations of the use of technologies: the authors found

'no indication that different types of technology use predict neighboring. Internet and non-internet users are equally as likely as others to know at least some of their neighbors.'

The main point of this post though is to suggest that the positive effect of austerity on local social relations is probably not fanciful and is certainly worthy of closer scrutiny. Any self-respecting community development worker knows that nothing succeeds like adversity.

And if an economic decline does have a positive effect on local social relaitons, does the reverse apply?

 

 

Let there be strong networks

Here’s another report calling for policy to bolster social networks – this one is from the International Longevity Centre UK, Can localism work for older people in urban environments? In this case the call is ‘to strengthen interpersonal, intergenerational, and multigenerational networks, particularly in urban areas.’

This accumulating acknowledgement that our dependence on institutions has left us vulnerable, as a society, is not misplaced in my view. The echo is familiar, as is the echo of the echo. Network poverty was worthy of more research attention than it got in recent wealthier times. Now that we really need some data on it, I suspect we’re going to be leaning heavily on the RSA study because I’m not sure there’s a great deal else to go on.

So what does it mean, to a policymaker, this call to help strengthen social networks? How should policy respond?

I’d start with a requirement that local policies should avoid doing damage to existing local social networks, a bit like the duty to involve. Vicki Nash suggested something similar, ‘community proofing,’ some years ago.

It would mean for instance that a new supermarket or road widening or library closure could not be approved without an intelligible analysis of its impact on local social networks, an analysis that in turn would inform public consultation. It wouldn’t take us long to develop the methodology, once we had to. I’ve suggested before, the reason we don't have the methodology to demonstrate the social value of local amenities that stimulate social networks is because no political value has been placed on human processes that are informal and organic.

Will that change, with all these calls to strengthen networks? Is there the political will to acknowledge that local social interactions have value which plays out in, and profoundly affects the costs of, other social provision?

The requirement to avoid network damage does not have to be accompanied by a given standard of social network strength, to which all neighbourhoods should be expected to aspire. Wrong approach, don’t go there.

But yes it should set us thinking about other ways of enhancing informal interaction, for example through the design of local spaces and dwellings; placing more than crudely economic value on local third places; support for local online networks; policies that discourage unnecessary car use and encourage walking; promotion of the principle of local (walkable) services and local (walkable) schools… All these will seem eminently sensible, if they don’t already, once there is government-level recognition of the essential value of informal interactions and the local social networks that they represent.

All this has drawn me back to a book chapter I wrote on policy and local social relations, here, in which I noted that

‘social relationships in neighbourhoods are organic, requiring a healthy ecology that reflects informality and also requiring that most of the time formality keeps its distance.’

And in which I quoted Robert Ellikson’s observation that

‘…lawmakers who are unappreciative of the social conditions that foster informal cooperation are likely to create a world in which there is both more law and less order.’

 

 

National schemes to promote neighbourliness: what impact?

Some early results have been released from the evaluation of Neighbours Day Aotearoa 2011, which took place at the end of March. The survey is still open.

• Those who thought their neighbours would be "highly likely" to ask them for help increased by over 25% after Neighbours Day Aotearoa 2011.
• 57% felt more positive about their neighbours/neighbourhood.
• 74% said that they would be likely to participate with their neighbours in 2012, and a further 22.1% said they might.

Influence and local social networks

About ten years ago in community development and policy circles there were lots of conversations about using social network analysis to get at understandings of 'community' and thereby contribute to policy. To their credit, folk at the RSA just got on and did it, and have now published the second report of their Connected communities project.

This one is called Power lines and looks at social exclusion in terms of isolation from networks of influence and power. The report suggests that

'people feel a greater sense of empowerment if they have a larger and more varied number of local connections and relationships.'

Social networks reflect the ways power plays out, so that influence accumulates from influential connections, and exclusion accumulates from weakness of social ties.

Hence the authors' recommendation that local public bodies should assess their funding for community groups on the contribution that groups make 'to building stronger, more diverse social networks.'

'In particular, initiatives should seek to connect those who are currently isolated or at risk, with others.'

The hard bit is working out how. There's plenty to build on, and firm justification. Asif Afridi, in a review for JRF published in March, suggests three main ways in which social networks can address poverty:

• They can enable the sharing of resources (time, expertise, support) and information (job opportunities, benefits advice, influence).
• They can provide mutual support and opportunities to learn or develop skills (support to start a business, for example).
• They can create strength in numbers and enable collective action or voluntary effort (improving a local area, for example, or social campaigning, or ensuring a voice in local affairs).

Understandably, the report does not dwell on what it means to have or not have a sense of influence and empowerment. But it provokes questions for me, which I'm not sure have been answered in previous work either in this project or for instance by MORI (Searching for the impact of empowerment) or in the important National Empowerment Partnership paper (which I discussed about a year ago)...

To begin with, who wants to have influence? What do we know about the sort of people for whom it does or doesn't matter to be able to influence policy?

And then I suppose I'd like to know, is wanting to have influence associated with believing you have influence? Are there survey data that tell us who says they want to have influence; and a comparable data set that tells us who thinks they have influence? Looking at that would be a start, after which we should maybe see if we can find out who actually exerts influence.

Finally, two quick reminders. Using social network analysis to help understand meanings of 'community' is not new. For instance, it's been used in the debate about the idealisation of late medieval English villages as harmonious close-knit communities. People were found to have manifold external connections, which tells us a little about our assumptions of levels of cohesion in the past - and maybe hints at unrealistic expectations in the present.

And it's worth remembering that Geoff Mulgan was writing about network poverty in relation to digital technologies as long ago as 1990, possibly earlier. Notwithstanding the pioneering work of people like Barry Wellman and Keith Hampton, and the important contribution that the Connected communities project is making, we maybe should have got further by now.

 

Pétanque, seule

I had a previous example of this apparent evidence of the relentless decline of social capital, poorly photographed in the south of England.

I got this one using the wretchedly feeble camera on my Blackberry. Spotted several hundred miles further south, on the Mediterranean coast last weekend.

Neighbourhood environment clearly affects neighbourliness

For a long time, I've been saying that neighbourliness can be 'designed-out', and asking why it cannot more deliberately be 'designed-in'. The literarure is gradually starting to accumulate and this question gets a little extra feeding from some interesting research recently published in Environment and behavior (subscription, online first).

The researchers used measures of the physical environment in ten neighbourhoods in Portland, Oregon, and found

'a greater probability of higher levels of neighborliness as the total number of positive physical-environment characteristics increased.'

Judiciously they used the neighbourliness index from the 2003 social capital report on the General Household Survey.

Strikingly, the results were unchanged

'after controlling for race, self-reported health, perception of safety, years of neighborhood residence, age of house, market value of house, and proportion of homeowners in neighborhood.'

The authors point out that causality is not demonstrated: conceivably, people who are disposed to be neighbourly give rise to neighbourly environments. But it seems more likely that it is the other way round, don't it?

The picture I took some years ago in an area called The Roger in Joao Pessoa, Brasil. I've chosen it because it reminds us that there are probably quite a lot of features not solely to do with the physical environment, that influence neighbourhood interactions. Like for example: low volume of cars, favourable weather, people having stuff to do outdoors, dogs, children, impromptu seating arrangements contrived in community spaces and so on.

Neighbours Day Aotearoa

I’m fascinated by the momentum for nationally coordinated, policy-sanctioned efforts to stimulate social capital. One day perhaps it will be possible to study and compare the expressed objectives and reported outcomes of some of these schemes.

Our kiwi friends had their inaugural national celebration of neighbourliness, 26-27 March. Hopefully there will be some useful evaluation material to emerge: at least they’re giving it some thought. One of the founders, Rebecca Harrington, is reported here on Scoop:

'Because the idea of Neighbours Day Aotearoa is focused on locally organised gatherings in homes, backyards, or footpaths across the country, gauging exact levels of participation was always going to be a challenge.

'The indicators we have are the visitors to the website, media coverage, participants in social media, and direct contact from individuals (which was hard to keep up with)' she says. 'A huge number of websites have helped spread the word, and we’ve discovered mentions published in all kinds of places we didn’t know about from kindergarten notices to businesses’ staff newsletters. So we think the real level of involvement is a lot higher than we can see or measure.'

The pic is from here.

Can you have local community when you don’t need to have it?

Pseudonymous comment on Carlone Carter’s article on street parties, in the Economist:

‘…when people are poor, vulnerable etc, they need to support each other. When people are rich they don't. Perhaps it is in human nature for people not to care about each other once they are not vulnerable...or perhaps its a negative externality of our neoliberal society. Perhaps you need government intervention..as when my local council sent out SMSs asking us to check on neighbours since apparently people have been dying at home without anybody knowing. Surely what ever the cause, the decline in community is not a thing we should aspire to.’

 

 

Reflections on bonhomie snake-oil and social pharmaceuticals

Disasters like hurricane Katrina or the recent earthquake in Japan understandably give rise to examples of neighbourliness and generalised discussion on the nature of community. I posted some points on post-Katrina social capital here.

Here's an example of an article considering sense of community, following the Christchurch earthquake. The author, Emma Woods, writes:

The resiliency of areas not only depended on how extensive the damage was, but also on what resources were available and how well these were pooled. A friend in one of the most damaged areas of Christchurch told me how one of her neighbours had a generator, several had barbecues and all shared the food that had been in their freezers. Everyone had something they needed and something they could share.

The stories that emerge in this genre are not dissimilar to historic forms of 'necessity neighbouring' which became institutionalised, for instance in the mythology of British urban communities in the first half of the twentieth century. People share and collaborate and support one another partly because it is in their interests to do so, as well as out of a sense of common humanity. It seems to me that only a theoretical psychologist would feel compelled to separate these two motivations rigidly. If humans were able completely to separate altruism from long-term self-interest (of self, family, species...) then I suspect we would not have evolved as social animals.

People rightly recognise enormous value in the social phenomenon of community when it emerges to play its part after a disaster, and it's not unusual to hear regrets voiced about how our societies have 'lost' the values that are starkly evidenced when adversity strikes. What is meant, I think, is 'wouldn't it be nice if we could have the community bit without the adversity?' Unfortunately the question  tends to be asked with so little reflection on people's motivations to connect with each other, that it becomes meaningless. It might be better to understand the metabolism of community and study the micro-conditions under which the flourishing of highly-visible communal support emerges.
 
Sense of community during times of large-scale crisis serves to fuel the interest already committed by policy makers who have been searching for strategic devices to stimulate routine neighbourliness. Yup, we're talking social chemical engineering, you just need a prescription-oriented culture and the elixir that captures the market.

Schemes like the Big Lunch or l'incroyable pique-nique or European Neighbours' Day - or even the Big Lottery's recently-announced People Powered Change programme (see David Wilcox's report here) - all appear to be macro-level attempts to stem the supposed decline in social capital and sell us all some universal-cure bonhomie snake-oil. This industry sector appears to be growing rapidly. The Prime Minister has a term for it, wait, no, i've forgotten it again.

Apart from asking where the money goes and where it might go if it didn't, it might help if we could be reassured that what is being injected into the social system is genuinely pro-social and not antibiotic (ie a substance that destroys micro-organisms). If you work at micro-organic level, it's easier to see, and necessary to care, whether (a) it is appropriate to talk in diagnostic terms, (b) any prescription is called-for, and if so (c) it is working. Personally I distrust this social pharmaceutical industry strongly.

The ‘request scruple’ and the demand for neighbourliness

Our society seems to be crying out with a perceived need to stimulate neighbourliness. The assumption is that the supply of neighbourliness in many residential populations is simply inadequate for the demand: people are not neighbourly enough, it seems, and the entire social structure is in jeopardy. The hunt is on to invent ways of stimulating neighbouring. So here's the Campaign to End Loneliness starting to capture ideas for instance, and we have one or two over on the 50 Ways site also. Is this the right approach?

Back in 2009 I had the privilege of editing the English language summary of a Dutch PhD thesis submitted by my friend Lilian Linders.

The study was about ‘the significance of proximity’ and looked at the nature of informal care at neighbourhood level. What Lilian found and describes is starting to excite the social welfare field in the Netherlands, and there are good reasons to reflect on her conclusions.

The research was carried out in a low income urban area, perceived as fairly cohesive in the traditional sense, with a population of about 2,400, clamped between an industrial zone and several highways. (I was driven close by last week, as it happens). Lilian speaks of ‘informal care’ in a very broad sense, she means I think the full range of informal support provided, including informal care and some very intimate tasks carried out by known co-residents repeatedly.

‘Apart from the willingness to help a neighbour, a plethora of problems like poverty, alcoholism, incest, disease, divorce, debts, domestic violence and loneliness was found. Therefore the dividing line between givers and receivers of informal care is blurred. The model is one of mutual aid.’

She found that most support was provided one-to-one, not on a collective (‘community’) basis, but simply because people knew each other. It had everything to do with trust at a personal level.

One of the things that Lilian latched onto, with keen insight, was the reticence in requesting neighbourly support. She calls this the ‘request scruple’ – a reluctance to ask for help. This contrasts sharply with the ‘support scruple’ – the reluctance to offer support.

Neighbours prefer social distance and are surprisingly reluctant to ask for support. Nonetheless, they do help each other, on an individual one-to-one basis, in personal and sometimes demanding and intimate circumstances.

The reluctance to ask for support extends to friends, acquaintances and family members, largely because of the fear of dependency and the social ideal of autonomy.

Lilian’s key finding is that the request scruple is far more of an impediment to informal care than is a shortage in the supply.

This helps to clarify the argument that informal care is not a consequence of neighbourhood cohesion: it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you have a cohesive neighbourhood, people will care for one another in time of need. That depends on personal relationships.

One last point. Lilian draws attention to the significance of mutual support between vulnerable people. This is a tidy example of the difference between the Dutch approach and the English. Big society thinking clobbers away at notions of charity and philanthropy, thinking those of us with some kind of surplus should be supporting those without. In the Netherlands, as I have been describing in recent posts, there is serious policy impetus behind the principle of informal care and mutual support.

You can see a clear English language presentation summary of Lilian’s work here.

Speaking to the study tour group last week, Lilian's colleague Rick Kwekkeboom had some important points to add, particularly around the invisibility of informal care. She noted that informal support only becomes visible when it is over-loaded. The role for formal services is to help people to care for one another and not get overburdened.

I don't see the request scruple as a peculiarly Dutch phenomenon. In the UK we could do with an approach to social support that acknowledges these nuances of mutual support, and is less obsessed with some kind of charitable or philanthropic motivation.

Previously:

Social networks and informal support

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

Other posts tagged 'Informal support'

 

Social networks and informal support: the big shift for policy

It’s obvious that informal support and social networks can be critical to the way society looks after its members. When people can use their social networks to get support without going through formal agencies, there are social and economic benefits. Has the time finally come for this logic to be recognised in policy? (Image from Viil Lid).

I happen to think this is quite a big deal. I’m just back from an utterly absorbing study tour in the Netherlands, organised by my friend Jan Steyaert for researchers from the Centre for Social Justice in the UK. We were exploring policy issues around the changing nature of social care in the post-welfare society, and Eindhoven is replete with thought-provoking initiatives and articulate people who have been reflecting on the significant shifts implied for practitioners and citizens. I tagged along to make wonky observations in the background, a role to which I seem to be peculiarly suited.

The basis of lots of urgent fresh thinking is the 2007 Social Support Act (known as the Wmo) which requires a shift in care work and social work towards what is known as ‘welfare new style’. Of course, as in the UK and elsewhere, much of this is driven by the mismatch between increasing care costs and shrinking public funds; but here, unlike with big society, there is immediate and valuing recognition of people's pre-existing connections.

The main points that dominated discussion of Dutch care practice were these:

• Focus on the strengths and resources of the individual, not on their problems
• Map, stimulate and involve the individual’s social network as a key resource
• Emphasise collective rather than individual support solutions
• Use professional care as a ‘last resort’.

I think this is both radical and exemplary. Quite apart from the community development principle of bringing collective solutions into the frame, here we have at last got governmental justification for stimulating social networks, with policy makers pushing care agencies of all kinds to pay due attention to people’s social connections. For example, one disability adviser who visits people with particular needs begins with a conversation based on a simple social network mapping template. Expect to see rapid standardisation of social network mapping in the Dutch public sector.

No-one seemed to know how the idea came so marvellously to be given such primacy, but here it is. And the logic is straightforward. For a long time it has been apparent that formal care is too dominant, has unacknowledged negative effects, and is provided at unaffordable levels. Ergo, we need to recognise and invest in informal support; ergo, we need to emphasise and encourage social networks – especially at local level. Why has this not happened before or elsewhere? Is it because we don’t make measureable claims for the part played by social networks, because we can’t see the results? Is it because no budget gets attached to them, so no-one with influence wants to ‘own’ them? Incidentally, this is not about consigning professional care to insignificance, but about re-establishing an appropriate balance between formal and informal.

In theory the Wmo seems to use the term ‘informal care’ with reference mainly to long term intensive carers. But the term seemed also to be used to imply what we might call informal support, thus covering a broad spectrum from low-commitment, dip-in dip-out five minute neighbouring; through something regular perhaps like weekly shopping with or for a frail elderly person; to high-intensity 24x7 unpaid care for someone with physical disabilities. This breadth of meaning may reflect developments in thinking since the act, and would account for the emphasis on social networks.

One advice worker rationalised the process by saying that as a society,

‘We have to go back to normal and look after each other.’

And so philosophical and anthropological questions about ‘community’ get raised. On what scale and under what circumstances is it 'normal' to provide informal support to others? The nostalgic plea doesn’t work very well, I suggest: some people challenge the mythology of the close-knit community, others point to the downsides and the basis in necessity neighbouring, and so on. Against that, we need some basis on which to establish the levels of trust that can in turn give rise to useable network connections.

An acknowledged problem for the Dutch approach is that many people are reluctant to ask for support, to make claims on their social network, to invest in their social network or exploit it for such purposes. One observation we heard was that in some cases ‘the social network is broken’. Another story concerned an individual who appeared at first to have no appropriate sources of support, then when they went out onto the street with the social worker there was plenty of recognition by others and the individual acknowledged,

‘yes of course I have a network, but I didn’t want the network to know my situation’.

We heard about this on several occasions and in particular in the significant research of Lilian Linders – which I happen to know a little about and which I will describe in a separate post in the near future.

 

 

Harvest, neighbourliness and altruism

I generally treat narratives of the decline of neighbouring with cautious respect. Here's a comment responding to a post on the global Irish Central site, raising a valid point about the impact of technology on local social relations, which I don't recall having heard before:

'When I visited Ireland as a child, saving the hay was a community event. The neighbors would pitch in and help each other. The mechanization of farming has removed that shared sense of community gained from helping one's neighbors.'

There's no doubt that community involvement in the economically-critical harvest applied in many countries over centuries. We think of Levin over-exerting himself with the serfs, in Anna Karenina. Excluding imaginative aristocrats, most of the participants in such scenes would have experienced intermittent mutual dependence which defined community for them. The basis was necessity neighbouring: individuals had self-interested motivation for co-operating with their neighbour (and coercive religious practices often did the rest). Failure to maximise the harvest, perhaps with too few hands available to bring it in before the weather changed, seriously threatened the chances of the whole village getting through the winter.

We might also ask about some of the oppressive social structures under which this sometimes tortuous labour was unavoidable (no apols for sounding momentarily marxist) - who was benefitting most from this skilled, physical, coordinated effort? - and therefore the conditions under which the mutual commitment that we call 'community' arose.

By all means we should reflect on the contrasts (and similarities) between local social relations in other societies and those that prevail today. But let's at least recognise that versions of 'community' which may have become scarce and and are now regretted, had their basis in motivations that were not necessarily altruistic, and in economics that were not necessarily inclusive.

The contemporary challenge might be expressed thus: how does neighbourliness and sense of community emerge in societies that lack identifiable, manifold mutual dependence?

 

Locality, diversity, and internet use

A new study published by Keith Hampton and colleagues confirms that internet use has little if any negative impact on the diversity of people’s networks. There are now fewer and fewer voices claiming that internet use will lead to the rapid descent of the human race into dysfunctional incommunicative bestiality (religious leaders and academics like John Locke in his book The devoicing of society have tried to spread misguided alarmism). Things have settled down a bit lately and hopefully with this research, based on and reinforcing last year's Pew study (which I reviewed here), we can all get back to what we were doing.

(Image from).

The article assesses network diversity and technology use in relation to participation in traditional social settings including public spaces, semi-public spaces, religious institutions, voluntary groups, and through neighbourhood ties. It concludes that the use of social media primarily supports diverse networks through participation in these settings. On the whole, internet users have networks that are more diverse than those who do not use the internet, although causality cannot be demonstrated definitively:

There may be bi-directionality; use of traditional social settings may drive some technology use, which in turn drives more use of the settings.

The importance of local place is thoroughly re-confirmed, even without reference to neighbourhood online sites:

The findings show only limited evidence that place-based relations have less resonance with Internet users; this was in one setting (neighborhoods) for one type of technology (social networking sites) – and an alternative explanation, as has been found in other research (Hampton, 2007), is that those with few neighborhood ties are more likely to adopt social media... Place is not lost as a result of the affordances of new technologies, but place-based networks are reinforced and made persistent.

The authors go on to conclude that social networks may be more persistent now than at any point in modern history.

ICTs afford relationship maintenance in ways that reduce the likelihood that ties will ever become completely dormant. Unlike in the past, when networks of high school and neighborhood ties were abandoned with marriage (Kalmijn, 2003) or migration (Hagan et al.,1996), it is increasingly likely that both the relation and the content of the relation’s messages remain persistent over time as “friends” on social networking services and as data stored and engaged with online. As our finding about the use of social networking services suggests, this directly benefits network diversity and access to social capital.

 

Accept no substitute

This paper by Anna Coote, published today, is quite simply the best statement on big society yet, IMHO.

In her presentation at today's launch, she emphasised that big society cannot be seen as separate from the public spending cuts:

'Big society and the cuts are all about replacing paid with unpaid labour.'

'When things go wrong, there is a grave risk that we shall only hear the voices of those who can shout loudest or whip up the most colourful media outrage.'

'We must not undermine the support systems already out there'.

The main concern of most civil society organisations, she argues, is that

'efforts to reduce the deficit will undermine the very networks and groups that are most needed as life gets tougher for those who are already the most disadvantaged.'

Coote's conclusion was that:

'The cuts make the best ideals of the big society impossible to realise.'

 

Sport for the Haves

Today Nesta launched the Neighbourhood Challenge to try to highlight ways of stimulating local social action.

“Community organisations across England are invited to apply to the 18-month programme. NESTA will select ten organisations and provide them with funding to trial an approach to community organising that reflects their own vision for what will work best in their area.

We will provide the practical tools and high-quality training needed for participating organisations to help people in their communities create local campaigns, innovative community projects and new social enterprises that address their passions and priorities. We will also provide micro-finance to support the development of local projects and establish local challenge prizes to incentivise community-led innovation.”

Deadline for expressions of interest is 22 November.

Some good will come of this. But the first thing that struck me at the launch is how desperately tasteless it was to be in a plush central London location with a free breakfast among a large number of affluent be-suited people talking in very general ways about 'communities' that are characterised by high levels of apathy and low aspirations; and offering residents of those distant neighbourhoods a chance, by competition, to improve their lot.

Statistically their chances of winning through in that competition are likely to be very small. They are expected to put in a bit of effort, symbolically making pleas to the powers that be, and then in all probability just knuckle down to things as they were before; or get picked off by the developers. What sport this must seem to the Haves - get the peasants to do a wee dance in their quaint custom, then show a little favouritism to a handful.

Perhaps I'm being slightly unfair, but it was all so reminiscent of the ghastly mistakes the Labour administration made in its early years with challenges and competitions - dressing the excluded in costumes and getting them to jump through hoops. As if a process of lottery is a legitimate way of reducing deadly disparities in the quality of life.

I hope the Neighbourhood Challenge will result in at least ten decent projects and lots of shared learning: I don't see why it shouldn't. While that's going on I just want to offer a few thoughts here about some of the assumptions that underpinned the speeches I heard this morning.

First, the C word was used throughout, by a succession of speakers, apparently as a synonym for neighbourhoods. What this tells us is that they hold vague assumptions about consensus and cohesion in localities, based on slight experience or poor understanding.

Secondly, much was taken for granted about how straightforward is the role of community organiser. This was revealing: it's beginning to become clear that the notion of community organising under Big Society is going to be pretty much value-free. They won't wait around for people to discuss and refine the values and principles that might guide their work, nor refer back to the previous efforts of the community development field. We want 5,000 community organisers please, using this simple template, male and female, by autumn next year, just get on with it.

Thirdly, the rhetoric of power remains seductive and uncritical. The forthcoming localism bill will bring radical new 'powers', we're told, but as soon as people start to talk about this they refer to devices like petitions, possibly the most blunt and unhygienic item in the toolbox of democracy. Surely by now, we should be able to talk about how power gets transferred and exercised at local level - and how it feels - in a more nuanced way.

Fourthly, there was much carefree talk about the power of local online, and the perceived 'need' to focus this on the problematisation of local issues. But local online is still a very imperfect democratic environment. The approach espoused was to encourage people to use online to articulate their concerns about local issues. A hall for loud voices. I humbly suggest that it would be more sensible to encourage the development of lots of digital conversations at local level about all sorts of things, from which the real concerns of a wider variety of residents would emerge.

My last point is about the nature of the localities in question, the 'communities' from which expressions of interest are sought. Behind the Neighbourhood Challenge there is talk of targeting areas defined as 'low in social capital'. Public sector funding cuts are going to have an atomising effect: how far is social exclusion, and the effects of social justice, going to be identifiable in these terms? Are those who suffer network poverty likely to be clustered into ghettoes? In some ways it might be better if they were, but my suspicion is that the toxic effect of the recession will be more distributed, far harder to track, far less amenable to our fancy mapping technologies.

 

 

Neighbours these days: not recognised, not interested?

Legal and General's Next door strangers survey report got some press coverage earlier this week (eg) and more to come I gather.

It's gloomy but what I like about this one is the recognition of recognition. It goes further than assessing socialisation with neighbours and knowing their names, claiming that 70% of respondents 'wouldn't recognise their neighbours if they passed them in the street'.

This echoes a point in the literature about the fractured nature of contemporary neighbouring compared with the sense of collective neighbouring experienced (and evidenced) in close-knit neighbourhoods in the past. The necessity neighbouring of close-knit neighbourhoods disguised major disadvantages which we would not wish to see return in the looming effects of the recession. Most of those self-defined communities were gradually eroded by relative economic wealth and by diversity (the latter reflected in the Legal and General study) so the need for 'manifest neighbouring' has diminished. But that does not mean that recognition is any less important, indeed one could argue that it's more important, and I think this study highlights it in a smart way:

'On average, Brits would only be able to pick one in three of their neighbours out of a line up.'

At one point the report refers to the notion of 'immediate recognition' which I also like. Of course, as often with reports like this, we aren't told the wording of the questions so it's sometimes hard to interpret the findings. But as I've suggested before, we can still draw conclusions from even the most 'methodologically-carefree' of studies. To be fair, generally it's not the methodology but the writing-up that is a bit carefree. Here's an example:

'Our findings indicate that people feel less responsibility for looking out for suspicious activity in their street...'

Note the word 'less'. Less than when or less than who? Implicitly I think I'm supposed to hear 'less than they used to be'. As so often, the language contributes to the narrative of decline, without justifying it. We simply don't know if neighbourliness has declined, although it's what we'd expect, but we're surrounding ourselves with assumptions which make it harder to see either other benefits or how the role of neighbouring may have changed.

There's one other striking finding that I'd like to dwell on:

'More than a third (35%) of us don’t believe that we should have any responsibility for the safety or security of our neighbourhoods.'

Someone should tell David Cameron and the orchestral conductors of Big Society: if some of the co-producers haven't turned up, others are gonna have to play louder and longer. This is a good example of where we could do with more from the data: if 35% said 'no' to whatever the question was, what proportion said yes and what proportion said 'don't know' or declined to answer? Just 16% of 'don't knows' might suggest, for instance, that less than half of us are prepared to co-produce the safety of our own local environments. That would be surprising and not be good news at the best of times: these are not the best of times.

Legal and General are an insurance company and they have their products to sell, which is fine. They are under no obligation to package the data in any way that doesn't suit them. But with reports like this I'm entitled to wish that just a little more resource might be put into the interpretation and presentation of the results, and some way found of making the data available: that would be a real service beyond the commercial sphere.

Press release is here.

 

Previously:

Five per cent have no contact with neighbours.

Shock news: neighbourliness might or might not be in decline.

 

 

Why neighbouring matters

I just opened the Facebook pages for '50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour' and I'm looking forward to seeing people's ideas and suggestions, whether or not they are lyrically consistent. I'm keen to see whether anyone can improve on Nick Buckley's 'Just take in a parcel, Marcel'...

Meanwhile, here's the wordy justification bit in the background:

Not everyone lives in a neighbourhood, but everyone has the right to try to improve their locality by improving relations with those around them. This principle is seldom acknowledged in policy. Yet mutually-supportive connections that generate trust between residents can make an enormous difference for a wide range of social policy measures.

Neighbouring is already subject to policy influence. Decisions affecting planning, local transport, local trade, schools, welfare, safety, parks and so on, all have an affect on whether or not people encounter their neighbours and have something in common which they feel able to talk about.

Of course, individual choices also have an affect. If you only ever get into a car when you leave your home, you’re less likely to recognise your neighbours and have a supportive relationship with them. If you don’t have – or don’t use – a local park, café, pub, post office or community centre, you’re less likely to meet other local people in a safe, neutral space. You’re also less likely to know the young people who share your neighbourhood – who almost certainly occupy it more than you do.

One way to persuade policy makers that neighbouring is worth taking seriously is to focus in on the sort of actions that make it easier to meet other neighbours. The idea behind ’50 Ways’ is to make a loud statement about why neighbouring matters and what can be done to stimulate it.

'50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour'

Last night to a somewhat exploratory Big Society event - as Tim Davies has noted, 'a rather chaotic open space event packed into a small space in the DCLG offices' (pic by Paul Clarke).

Lots of ideas spilling out, some specific, many at a high level of generality as we all experiment with this new syntax of not-quite-policy. Even I was surprised at some of the determined theoretical pondering and the persistence of conceptual bullet-pointing. I've been told I could conceptualise for Britain; but for once I came over all practical. Perhaps it was just that I'm still creaky and wembly from the weekend's flu-blast, perhaps partly it was the reassuring first half of Paul Twivy's introductory speech (the second drifted into social enterprise land and I lost the path, no matter).

First, a general point. About five years ago there were some evangelical jamboree-style events around the new Labour notion of 'Together We Can'. They were characterised by a refreshing if puzzling sense of welcome suddenly offered to the community sector, without any relinquishing of the agenda by the centre. I was struck last night by the comparison. The language and issues have not really changed: the style, however, couldn't be much different. Whereas TWC events were anti-septic, anti-sceptic, and highly-orchestrated, last night's open session - albeit inevitably dominated by the London twitterati - was fluid, confusing, creative - and consciously, almost riskily, under-managed.

I stood in a corner with Roxanne Persaud and Nick Buckley for a conversation about how neighbouring is a fundamental ingredient of Big Society, given the principles of local connection and involvement in issues of common interest. I asked how we overcome the shyness/privacy barriers that constrain people from making those initial connections that result in neighbourly behaviour. We seem to need more devices like street parties and clean-ups that will just get folk started; and I argue that for neighbouring to work, we don't need much more than basic recognition (but we do need fewer cars on our pavements).

The forthcoming Gumtree research (to be launched next week, trailed here) makes the point that shyness is a big barrier and people don't like to impose themselves. Can Big Society help us raise awareness large-scale, and bring the inhibition bar down a notch or two? Nick came up with the phrase '50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour' and we kicked things off with the first few... pavement freecycling, bench in the front garden, communal wheelie bins etc. And this from Roxanne - networked multi-user games in temporary public wifi spaces.

Working on the idea later today.

'When you have a dog you know everyone'

"I live in a block of flats and I'm on the second floor and all my neighbours are fine, we all know each other. When you have a dog you know everyone - before I had a dog I didn't know anyone. We've got half the world in my street but we're all fine, we all get on."

From a selection of comments on knowing thy neighbour, collected by the Tottenham, Wood Green and Edmonton journal in north London.

The Big Nudge: can it accommodate awkwardness?

Yesterday I shuffled from a meeting with someone working on Big Society, to an event about how to get citizens involved in public policy. This latter was the launch of findings from the 'Rediscovering the civic' project run by the universities of Southampton and Manchester, known as 'nudge-nudge, think-think' because of the experiments exploring the effect of policies which 'nudge' people into prosocial behaviour, and those which encourage people to think through the issues in the hope of prosocial consequences.

Inevitably, set in the heart of Whitehall with an array of learned speakers, the debate was at a high level of generality while acknowledging the significance of the political moment. Combined with the preceding meeting, it's helped to clarify for me quite where Big Soc fits and what it might mean.

First, the suspicion that the thinking behind Big Society has been based on a shallow appreciation of the realities of the community sector have been confirmed. That can be remedied, perhaps is being remedied (well, they invited me along for a chat!).

Second, we are all starting to see more clearly where it has come from, historically. Take these two quotes, via former Blair advisers, which are going the rounds:

(i) Matthew Taylor referring I believe to a Norwegian journalist who pointed out that Labour's failure was a failure of public mobilisation, having campaigns like child poverty that should have been public campaigns which they turned into technocratic exercises. Can't argue with that. (You can? Go on then).

(ii) Attributed to David Halpern, something like this - 'we're not trying to do more with less. We're trying to do more with more, and that comes from the social fabric'. I've heard this discussion elsewhere, when people say the Big Soc is just what we were trying to do before... Yes, at local level it can certainly look like that. But wouldn't it have helped if new Labour managerialism, and all the arrogance of previous administrations (not that much different), had been supportive instead of so often obstructive and (to pick up a point made by Sue Goss yesterday) infantilising? To put it another way, did previous administrations culturally stifle public involvement? To me these are little insights which can help measure the change to a new context.

Third, insights from Phillip Blond of ResPublica, revealing the centrality of nudge to Big Society. He said that nudge is a modern way of referring to tradition or tacit knowledge, which has become derided and devalued in recent decades.

'Tradition is already a pre-selection of how we should live. Nudge is about group behaviour.'

For Blond, it seems that the Big Society is about restoring the public value of tradition, of accepted shared forms of collective life. Neither De Tocqueville nor Putnam got mentioned, which I suspect is a good thing: whatever is being invented here, it's more than US-style bowling together, because of the political niceties.

Still, association is key in Blond's view:

'There's almost no context in which association is not part of the determinative answer. And yet we do not have the conceptual architecture to make association desirable, to help it happen.'

Don't we? He spoke about making this happen around the issues that people care about 'in their communities', proceeding to an immaculate if not quite intentional definition of community development, without mentioning 'community development'.

But, fourthly, Michael Saward challenged Blond's 'unitarian' interpretation of good citizenship as uncontroversial and universally accepted. That may be unfair, I can't say, but it gets back to a central problem for the Big Society which Saward himself had raised at the outset of yesterday's discussion:

'Will awkward citizens be welcome in the Big Society?'

I've raised this question here in a different way myself: what does BS mean for the local activist who is moved to confront social injustice, not just for the cakestall mafia? When street reps in Shipley talk to me about the tensions between being a 'good citizen' (reporting disorder, keeping an eye out for drug drops, liaising with agencies etc) and campaigning to become empowered and overcome inequalities (activism in the local political arena), it feels like Big Society is not ready to provide the frameworks for that activism, to accommodate awkwardness.

Yesterday's material helps me visualise Big Society as one big nudge towards prosocial action, and I have no problem with that. But if and when Big Society does recognise the need to engage at the level of social justice, it will need to do so in a way that does not feel to local activists like assimilation or an attempt to neutralise whatever frustration, anger, resentment, bitterness they may be feeling.

Shock news: neighbourliness might or might not be in decline

There are two surveys of neighbourliness around at the moment, one I already trailed, carried out by YouGov for Co-Operatives UK, the other carried out by Fresh Minds for Gumtree.

It's great to have some data to get to grips with all of a sudden. I'll prepare a more detailed review as there is likely to be an event anounced soon, so just a few thoughts right now. I'm using the Co-Ops report written by Ed Mayo, I can't find the questions that were asked or any other data; and a preliminary summary of the Gumtree research, no final version being available yet. I'm grateful to Gumtree for permission to quote from this document.

The big headline from the Co-Ops study is that people in the UK are 'less than half' as neighbourly in 2010 as they were in 1982 when a set of interviews were carried out by MORI. As I mentioned the other day, their 'Good Neighbour Index' is based on 'the total number of people helped by their neighbours divided by the number whose neighbours have given them problems', so the statistic comes as no surprise.

You'd want to take account (the report doesn't) of the possibility that in 2010 people might more frequently and readily get some forms of help, like emotional and financial support, from remote others (beyond the neighbourhood) than they did in 1982. You could also speculate that there are more and better opportunities to report nuisance behaviour to authorities now than in the past, which encourages people to describe certain forms of behaviour as giving them problems. At the very least you'd reflect on the fact that the 2010 survey was carried out online and the 1982 survey wasn't. And maybe take account of significant changes in average household size.

Points like these are more by way of explanation for the statistic than challenging it directly: but they do raise the question of whether the model of neighbourliness represented by the Co-Ops index is capable of accommodating shifts in the social role of neighbouring. The study presents a chummy model of neighbouring which is essentially about helping each other out.

Many people prefer a model of neighbouring which is based on an ongoing respect for privacy coupled with mutual recognition, so that help can be mobilised in case of need. If you were measuring neighbourliness for that model, you'd ask different questions and expect to come up with a different answer.

The Gumtree report is determinedly upbeat, with  more of an emphasis on attitudes to neighbourhood than on behaviour within it. The main headline is eyebrow-raisingly counter-intuitive:

27% of people with a long commute to work every day know 11 or more of their neighbours, whereas the majority of those who commute less know only 0-3 neighbours.

As with the Co-Ops and so many studies, what is meant by 'knowing' a neighbour appears to be 'know by name', which just perpetuates the unfortunate habit of over-privileging strong ties in the understanding of local social relations. This study is also an online survey, incidentally, and some thought needs to be given as to how that affects the results.

A second headline from the Gumtree findings is that neighbourliness has increased during the past 18 months. The researchers say that:

Even though we couldn’t detect a clear correlation between the recession and neighbourliness, people across the nation did indicate having tried to be friendlier and more neighbourly in the last 18 months.

I need to go deeper into some of this material but for the moment there are three areas to reflect on:

 

• The Co-Ops research raises for me what might be a critical issue of 'crossing the threshold'. It seems that people are far less likely to go into one another's homes. The americans call it 'refrigerator rights'. In the 1982 study to which the Co-Ops survey is compared, 26 per cent of respondents said they never called round next door. The proportion of responses in 2010 is 43 per cent. The decline could be related to changes in average household size, because smaller households create fewer reasons for mutual friendly invasion. Having an online sample is likely to cause distortion. There are various other possible factors of course, including the kinds of thing which lead people to keep their doors locked and not answer anyone. We need to keep an eye on this one.
• Nuisance neighbours: has there really been a rise? The Co-Ops research suggests a doubling and the world of anecdote supports that. The past couple of days I've been in Shipley, attending a housing and environment committee meeting, hovered a few hours in the community centre, followed by a street reps meeting, and there's no shortage of stories about difficult neighbours. We need to explore these findings: is it worse in general, worse in terms of severity of offence, or not much different? I heard a story yesterday about a deranged individual throwing a tv out of a flat three floors up; but I heard of exactly the same in Ruislip, west London, in about 1976.
• The lending of keys. I'm a great believer in this as an indicator of trust at the most local level, and it's helpful that both these surveys asked about it. Unfortunately they don't clearly distinguish holding a neighbour's key from having one's key held by another, but here's a little comparison:

Keys held by neighbour

Manchester neighbourliness review (2004): 26% (49% for those aged 65-74 yrs)
Co-Ops survey (2010): 27%
Gumtree (2010): 45%

I've no idea how the discrepency can be explained, but it is perhaps a little warning about drawing conclusions from a single set of data.

Finally, the Gumtree report finds that people want to be more involved locally but often are unsure how to take the first step. The classic example is when they miss the chance to introduce themselves to new neighbours, and find years later that they still haven't because a comparably straightforward opportunity does not arise. The report raises important questions about what devices - like street parties or online networks - might be appropriate to help people form connections. The data we are sifting through in the Networked Neighbourhoods study should help here: watch this space (or this one).

 

Selfishness: living in an 'impoverished emotional culture'

Occasionally you hear arguments defending individualism, and claiming that it is not directly related to issues of exclusion, disengagement or uncivil behaviour. The tide seems very much against these views now though, the bankers and the MPs have seen to that.

Here's an item in the Daily Mail, with its squeaky-clean reputation as a stalwart defender of selfless collectivism, reviewing a book called The selfish society by Sue Gerhardt, and folding-in some points from the Catholic Church's Choosing the common good report and the Children's Society's Good childhood inquiry.

Focusing on the influence of consumerism, Gerhardt identifies problematic styles of parenting which combine material indulgence with emotional neglect, speaking of 'an impoverished emotional culture'. The Good childhood inquiry emphasised the negative impact of individualism. So are we more selfish, or is it just that the ways our selfishness and selflessness play out have changed - perhaps not unlike the way our connections changed over a few decades from geographical community to social network?

We may find out. According to their latest bulletin, ippr is beginning a new programme of work exploring selfishness, in partnership with the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).

'The work will provide unique analysis, drawing on a comprehensive range of data sets together with new evidence to assess how attitudes and values have changed.'

I can't imagine they'll keep the results to themselves.

Attaching values to neighbouring

Lloyds TSB published some pop survey results the other day, of interest because of the categorisation. People were asked to score their neighbours from zero to 10 in the following categories:

• 'Friendliness' – refers to how friendly they are when you meet
• 'Consideration' – is a respect for your home in not being overly noisy or damaging your property
• 'Vigilance' – watching over the neighbourhood and offering to monitor your home when you're away'
• 'Tidiness' – how tidy the property and surrounding area is
• 'Tolerance' – how patient and tolerant they are to your behaviour

Apparently Bradford leads the national rankings with the most considerate and tolerant neighbours. Glasgow has the friendliest, Swansea hosts the tidiest and Manchester is home to the most vigilant locals.

The survey is oriented towards property prices and insurance of course, a theme which keeps recurring these days not just as a preoccupation of the conservative mentality, but as a measure of or justification for co-production. Expect more of this in the coming months.

Various sources, eg GMTV, Channel4, Telegraph.

What makes a neighbourhood network?

How do local connections between residents get fused into an effective communicative network that comes in time to underpin everything else that happens?

I got into an interesting discussion yesterday at Balsall Heath in Birmingham, where I was lucky enough to be picking up wisdom from people like Paul Slatter and Hannah Worth from Chamberlain Forum, Ben Lee from NANM, Elke Loeffler from Governance International, plus Dick Atkinson and the folk from the famous Balsall Heath Forum.

I'd heard and read plenty about Dick and about what had been achieved at Balsall Heath, and this was my first visit. It's a hugely reasuring place, unpretensiously displaying the commonsense of ordinary people getting stuff done locally.

But I wanted to know, how come? There are active street 'stewards' (with or without the title) in 15 sets of 3-4 streets. I liked Dick's remark that

'With a bit of support and encouragement people do more than they think they can.'

This gives the forum a firm foundation of local people who are continually ferreting away at issues. OK let's be clear: we're talking about unpaid, unelected active local citizens, who 'have emerged out of street life' (Dick's words) in numbers that are sufficient to cover an area with a population of 14,000, loosely linked through neighbourhood management and an elected forum. According to the website

There are 22 residents groups, and 70 Street Stewards. So the whole neighbourhood is covered. Everyone knows someone and the sense of mutual self-help is fostered.

So I'm slightly enviously think about why this hasn't quite happened in Shipley, where I've tried to help out every so often over the years. Having a resident-employed resident, Abdullah, who supports the street stewards and takes some of the pressure off them, must make a difference. He tells us about the advantages of living in the neighbourhood where you work - you get a better response, people don't think you have a hidden agenda: 'they don't see me as a threat'.

And this can be very proactive work. We heard a story of two residents doorknocking because of an eyesore front garden, to discover a man on his own who badly needed, and was given, support.

But none of this, nor the recorded history of Balsall Heath Forum, quite explains how local networks grow and strengthen in some places and not in others. Informality is obviously crucial. But how come the initial connections, presumably between a few willing, motivated, slightly uncertain folk, have ramified and come to underpin a significant amount of what can be done now without the clumsy machinery of the city's formal services?

We didn't come up with an explanation, but I certainly came away with a clearer sense of the fundamental significance of an informal communication network in driving social change at neighbourhood level. For sure, if I'd been shown a unique ingredient I wouldn't have trusted it anyway.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

The amount of emotional or instrumental support that you receive from your social network, and the amount that you give, can be calculated and represented on a reciprocity scale.

So you might give a lot of practical help to others and not need much yourself at the moment, scoring positively for instrumental reciprocity. You could have been going through a hard time and be needing more emotional support than you've been able to offer others, scoring negatively for emotional reciprocity.

Back in 1992, as I've been reading, some Dutch researchers plotted these scales for a large sample of older people. As we'd expect, instrumental support given decreases sharply with age. The researchers found that instrumental reciprocity began to decrease at the age of 64, echoing that rather crummy Beatles song.

More interestingly, they identified a turning point, where a relative surplus of instrumental support given changes into a relative deficit, at approximately the age of 66. Of course, you can expect your social network to decrease in size as you get older, and your reciprocity scale will also be affected by living in a care home where most of your instrumental needs are going to be catered for. The research seems to suggest that a sizeable minority of older people do deliberately seek to increase the amount of emotional support they give as their ability to provide instrumental support declines.

Unfortunately, as a society we're not very good at providing contexts for emotional support, so that too many older people experience a sense of dependence rather than interdependence, submerged below the hoizontal line in the graph.

I'm hoping there has been some follow up to this research: I've not found it yet, but would be keen to learn of it.

van Tilburg et al. Flow of support. In: Living arrangements and social networks of older adults, VU University Press, 1995.

Social justice, trust and generosity

Super post from Julian Dobson about fairness and how our frantic politicians have assimilated it as a central concept as a way of talking about social justice:

'to ensure everyone plays by the rules, we spend more and more time checking for abuses and seek to create fairness by finding new ways to stop people getting something for nothing. So we give destitute asylum seekers a handout of just over £5 a day to meet all their needs, on the grounds that they might abuse the system if we were any kinder.'

It reminds me of a distinction which I still find I have to make occasionally, between neighbourly relations based on trust and neighbourhood watch which is based on distrust. There is something about generosity of spirit and meanness of spirit, which Julian brings out:

'every successful project I've come across and that has made a difference in its locality... has worked by cultivating a culture of generosity.'

 

Let's hear it for neighbourhood groups: Conservative party launch of the Big Society

In the 1980s if UK politicians talked about community action at all it was defensively, because the notion was subversive, anti-establishment, tainted with radicalism and, typically, intensely confrontational.

Today eleven members of the Conservative party shadow cabinet (yes, eleven, including the party leader David Cameron) presented their ideas for 'the Big Society' which are dominated by plans to stimulate involvement in neighbourhood groups. Given the party's realistic aspirations to be in government within a few weeks, these policies constitute a justification for neighbourhood action at the highest political level.

It was genuinely peculiar to sit and hear the emphasis placed on the role of local residents in social policy. The single phrase most repeated through more than three hours of speechifying (shame about the talking-heads format, they still have a bit to learn in that respect) was 'neighbourhood groups'. They are, we were told, 'the essential building blocks' of the policy.

The three key promises are:

• strengthen and support social enterprises (I'm sure I wasn't the only person surprised at how little emphasis was placed on social enterprises)
• stimulate the creation and development of neighbourhood groups in every area
• encourage mass engagement in neighbourhood groups and social action projects.

Financial incentives are promised 'for people to come together to form neighbourhood groups in the poorest areas', and funding for 5,000 independent community organisers (note: 'will have the skills needed to raise funds to pay for their own salaries').

On page 5 of the document you can read the powers and rights that will be assigned to neighbourhood groups. The list begins:

'Neighbourhoods will be able to bid to take over the running of community amenities, such as parks and libraries that are under threat'.

Threat from where? Understandably, this will be widely read as 'funding for parks and libraries is not gonna be great, but we'll support voluntary action to run them: and if it runs into the sand after a while, that's the community's decision.'

So this, boys and girls, is what localism means - local people being given support to run facilities like schools and parks, or taking over ownership of closed down shops. In his introductory remarks, Oliver Letwin equated the Big Society squarely with social capital, and part of the assumption is that in controlling their own resources local people will also generate much-needed social capital. Empowerment featured frequently in the speeches: local government hardly at all.

Most of the nine points in the neighbourhood powers list imply local consensus, using the N word where so often in the past the C word would have been used. This cheerily-assumed consensus is one of the areas where som elearning might be needed, but for now, the onus is on the community sector to respond to this extraordinary challenge.

If people react saying 'they don't understand the messiness of neighbourhood life - or the inertia, the separation and exclusion...' that won't get us far. Neighbourhood politics can be very intense, but you wouldn't have guessed that from today's speeches. Nor do we know whether grants will be available to unconstituted groups. All that reality-checking is yet to come.

Scepticism about individual choice being packaged as neighbourhood action won't help either, because great stress was placed on membership of neighbourhood groups. Make no mistake, there is, radically, a collective dimension to this policy: it's not just promoting individual civic behaviour (although the sop to the party traditionalists is to call it 'collaborative individualism').

So there I sat, listening to a potential Conservative prime minister say that the role of the state is to agitate for community engagement (speech here). And I remembered the day in 1997 when I heard a representative of the brand-new exciting-new socially-dynamic Labour government say 'we know things can't all be done quickly, we're planning for ten years'. I rushed back to my colleagues at Community Development Foundation with the message - c'mon, c'mon, we've got ten years to prove community development works.

Well, we didn't. Now I reread the phrase in today's document: 'We will encourage mass engagement in neighbourhood groups and social action projects' and it seems to me this is another chance; because the welfare state and a society of institutions are things of the past, and you can't do without support for local involvement.

Press release.
 

Co-delivery in freezing conditions

In this time of big freeze, many people have had to park their cars away from their homes, if they live on ungritted side streets and/or their street is on an incline.

This can lead to the scenario I witnessed in a nearby street on Sunday morning, of at least thirty residents out with their shovels chipping away at the ice to make the road useable. The scene from the foot of the hill was worthy of Breughel. I stopped to note all the conversations that were taking place: no doubt there's plenty of new social capital available to people now.

By contrast, here's another local tale, of a resident who went out to clear her stretch of the road, shovelling and chipping away at the stubborn ice. A neighbour appeared and said, 'are you working for the council now then?'

The traditional passive model of service expectation dies hard, but I suspect its demise will accelerate in the coming big spending freeze.