Community, inequality and everyday life workshop

MICRA collaborates with the Morgan Centre for the Study of Everyday Lives

A workshop bringing together early career researchers and staff from the Morgan Centre for the Study of Everyday Lives with members of Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing, the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity, and the Sociology department is scheduled for Tuesday, 26 March 2019. This will comprise of presentations, discussion and an opening up of questions across sub-disciplines.

The papers examine the connections between community and inequality in everyday life through a series of roundtable discussions. Research shows globalisation, migration, gentrification, austerity and cuts to public services are widening inequalities within and between communities. But while questions about community and urban change have preoccupied sociologists in post-Second World War Britain, community remains an elusive concept and a ‘problematic term’ (Gilleard et al. 2007). Repeated analyses demonstrated that its meaning is constantly in flux (Pahl, 2005), resulting in a multitude of definitions, descriptions and claims regarding its relevance for understanding everyday life (Amit, 2002).

In policy terms, the virtue in community, for providing support for vulnerable groups has been ‘rediscovered’ at a time of increasing social divisions affecting many urban communities (Wacquant, 2008). At the same time, concepts of philanthropy and ‘charity’ as models for community engagement have been challenged by discourses and movements within feminism, critical race and critical ageing studies. The aim of this workshop is to critically explore how sociologists might analyse changing social environments and theorise community.

This is a closed event, but the team are planning a follow up event which will be open to a wider audience.