Assessing the impacts of community participation policy and practice in Scotland and England

Background: Community participation has become an integral part of many areas of public policy over the last two decades. For a variety of reasons, ranging from concerns about social cohesion and unrest to perceived failings in public services, governments in the UK and elsewhere have turned to communities as both a site of intervention and a potential solution. In contemporary policy, the shift to community is exemplified by the UK Government’s Big Society/Localism agenda and the Scottish Government’s emphasis on Community Empowerment. Through such policies, communities have been increasingly encouraged to help themselves in various ways, to work with public agencies in reshaping services, and to become more engaged in the democratic process. These developments have led some theorists to argue that responsibilities are being shifted from the state onto communities, representing a new form of 'government through community' (Rose, 1996; Imrie and Raco, 2003). Despite this policy development, there is surprisingly little evidence which demonstrates the outcomes of the different forms of community participation. This study attempts to address this gap in two ways. Firstly, it explores the ways in which community participation policy in Scotland and England are playing out in practice. And secondly, it assesses the outcomes of different forms of community participation taking place within these broad policy contexts. Methodology: The study employs an innovative combination of the two main theory-based evaluation methodologies, Theories of Change (ToC) and Realist Evaluation (RE), building on ideas generated by earlier applications of each approach (Blamey and Mackenzie, 2007). ToC methodology is used to analyse the national policy frameworks and the general approach of community organisations in six case studies, three in Scotland and three in England. The local evidence from the community organisations’ theories of change is then used to analyse and critique the assumptions which underlie the Localism and Community Empowerment policies. Alongside this, across the six case studies, a RE approach is utilised to examine the specific mechanisms which operate to deliver outcomes from community participation processes, and to explore the contextual factors which influence their operation. Given the innovative methodological approach, the study also engages in some focused reflection on the practicality and usefulness of combining ToC and RE approaches. Findings: The case studies provide significant evidence of the outcomes that community organisations can deliver through directly providing services or facilities, and through influencing public services. Important contextual factors in both countries include particular strengths within communities and positive relationships with at least part of the local state, although this often exists in parallel with elements of conflict. Notably this evidence suggests that the idea of responsibilisation needs to be examined in a more nuanced fashion, incorporating issues of risk and power, as well the active agency of communities and the local state. Thus communities may sometimes willingly take on responsibility in return for power, although this may also engender significant risk, with the balance between these three elements being significantly mediated by local government. The evidence also highlights the impacts of austerity on community participation, with cuts to local government budgets in particular increasing the degree of risk and responsibility for communities and reducing opportunities for power. Furthermore, the case studies demonstrate the importance of inequalities within and between communities, operating through a socio-economic gradient in community capacity. This has the potential to make community participation policy regressive as more affluent communities are more able to take advantage of additional powers and local authorities have less resource to support the capacity of more disadvantaged communities. For Localism in particular, the findings suggest that some of the ‘new community rights’ may provide opportunities for communities to gain power and generate positive social outcomes. However, the English case studies also highlight the substantial risks involved and the extent to which such opportunities are being undermined by austerity. The case studies suggest that cuts to local government budgets have the potential to undermine some aspects of Localism almost entirely, and that the very limited interest in inequalities means that Localism may be both ‘empowering the powerful’ (Hastings and Matthews, 2014) and further disempowering the powerless. For Community Empowerment, the study demonstrates the ways in which community organisations can gain power and deliver positive social outcomes within the broad policy framework. However, whilst Community Empowerment is ostensibly less regressive, there are still significant challenges to be addressed. In particular, the case studies highlight significant constraints on the notion that communities can ‘choose their own level of empowerment’, and the assumption of partnership working between communities and the local state needs to take into account the evidence of very mixed relationships in practice. Most importantly, whilst austerity has had more limited impacts on local government in Scotland so far, the projected cuts in this area may leave Community Empowerment vulnerable to the dangers of regressive impact highlighted for Localism. Methodologically, the study shows that ToC and RE can be practically applied together and that there may be significant benefits of the combination. ToC offers a productive framework for policy analysis and combining this with data derived from local ToCs provides a powerful lens through which to examine and critique the aims and assumptions of national policy. ToC models also provide a useful framework within which to identify specific causal mechanisms, using RE methodology and, again, the data from local ToC work can enable significant learning about ‘what works for whom in what circumstances’ (Pawson and Tilley, 1997).

Art, sex, and institutions: defining, collecting, and displaying Shunga

In Edo-Japan (c.1603 – 1868) shunga, sexually explicit prints, paintings and illustrated books, were widely produced and disseminated. However, from the 1850s onwards, shunga was suppressed by the government and it has largely been omitted from art history, excluded from exhibitions and censored in publications. Although changes have taken place, cultural institutions continue to be cautious about what they collect and exhibit, with shunga largely remaining a prohibited subject in Japan. Since the 1970s there has been a gradual increase in the acceptance of shunga outside Japan, as evidenced in the growing number of exhibitions and publications. The initial impetus behind this thesis was: Why and how did shunga become increasingly acceptable in Europe and North America in the twentieth century, whilst conversely becoming unacceptable in post-Edo Japan? I discuss how and why attitudes to shunga in the UK and Japan have changed from the Edo period to the present day, and consider how definitions can affect this. My research examines how shunga has been dealt with in relation to private and institutional collecting and exhibitions. In order to gauge modern responses, the 2013 Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art exhibition at the British Museum is used as an in-depth study – utilising mixed methods and an interdisciplinary approach to analyse curatorial and legal decisions, as well as visitor feedback. To-date there are no official or standardised guidelines for the acquisition, cataloguing, or display of sexually explicit artefacts. It is intended that institutions will benefit from my analysis of the changing perceptions of shunga and of previous shunga collections and exhibitions when dealing with shunga or other sexually explicit items in the future.

Next-to-soft radiative corrections in QCD and quantum gravity

The origin of divergent logarithmic contributions to gauge theory cross sections arising from soft and collinear radiation is explored and a general prescription for tackling next-to-soft logarithms is presented. The NNLO Abelian-like contributions to the Drell-Yan K-factor are reproduced using this generalised prescription. The soft limit of gravity is explored where the interplay between the eikonal phase and Reggeization of the graviton is explained using Wilson line techniques. The Wilson line technique is then implemented to treat the set of next-to-soft contributions arising from dressing external partons with a next-to-soft Wilson line.

Handle with care: historical geographies and difficult cultural legacies of egg-collecting

This thesis offers an examination of egg-collecting, which was a very popular pastime in Britain from the Victorian era well into the twentieth century. Collectors, both young and old, would often spend whole days and sometimes longer trips in a wide variety of different habitats, from sea shores to moorlands, wetlands to craggy mountainsides, searching for birds’ nests and the bounty to be found within them. Once collectors had found and taken eggs, they emptied out the contents; hence, they were really eggshell collectors. Some egg collectors claimed that egg-collecting was not just a hobby but a science, going by the name of oology, and seeking to establish oology as a recognised sub-discipline of ornithology, these collectors or oologists established formal institutions such as associations and societies, attended meetings where they exhibited unusual finds, and also contributed to specialist publications dedicated to oology. Egg-collecting was therefore many things at once: a culture of the British countryside, from where many eggs were taken; a culture of natural history, taking on the trappings of a science; and a culture of enthusiasm, providing a consuming passion for many collectors. By the early twentieth century, however, opposing voices were increasingly being raised, by conservation groups and other observers, about the impact that egg-collecting was having on bird populations and on the welfare of individual birds. By mid-century the tide had turned against the collectors, and egg-collecting in Britain was largely outlawed in 1954, with further restrictions imposed in 1981. While many egg collections have been lost or destroyed, some have been donated to museums, including Glasgow Museums (GM), which holds in its collections over 30,000 eggs. As a Collaborative Doctoral Award involving the University of Glasgow and GM, the project outlined in this thesis aims to bring to light and to life these egg collections, the activities of the collectors who originally built them, and the wider world of British egg-collecting. By researching archival material held by Glasgow Museums, published specialist egg-collecting journals and other published sources, as well as the eggs as a material archive, this thesis seeks to recover some of the practices and preoccupations of egg collectors. It also recounts the practical activities carried out during the course of the project at GM, particularly those involving a collection of eggs newly donated to the museum during the course of this project, culminating in a new temporary display of birds’ eggs at Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.