1. Thinking about place
Social, Change and Communities
starting at the end

2. Thumbnail
• A client (fictional) Task
– Motivate to change
• A place (Corby)
Theory
– Major intervention
• A student
Epistemology
– Reflexive practitioner
• (Dare I say it?) An epistemology
– Social constructivism

3. This module is ‘soft’

4. Whatever is true for space and time, this
much is true for place; we are immersed in it
and could not do without it. To be at all – to
exist in any way – is to be somewhere, and to
be somewhere is to be in some kind of place
Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), p. ix

5. Space and Place
• Often ‘space’ is understood as something hollow or exterior: a container
for place.
• In common usage (even by many geographers), ‘spaces’ are transformed
into ‘places’ by naming *claiming+ and filling them. In this sense space
and place are treated as a duality, even as opposites.
• But this is overly simplistic.
• Rather than think of space as hollow or as an absence, we might
understand ‘space’ as a broader and more abstract concept than ‘place’.
• Yi Fu Tuan (1974) describes space as ‘movement’ and place as ‘pause’.
• Space as possibility, openness, the sublime, the ‘beyond’
• Some geographers (e.g., Henri Lefebvre 1974) use ‘space’ where others
might use ‘place’
5

6. Space and Place
What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we
get to know it better and endow it with value… The ideas
‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition. From the
security and stability of place we are aware of the openness,
freedom, and threat of space, and vice-versa. Furthermore, if
we think of space as that which allows movement then place
is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for
location to be transformed into place.
Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 6

7. Sensing place
‘There is no knowing or sensing a place except by
being in that place, and to be in place is to be in a
position to perceive it.’
Casey, ‘How to get from Space to Place, p. 18
‘How to get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of
Time’, in Senses of Place, ed. by Steven Feld & Keith H.
Basso (Santa Fe: School of American Research,1996)
Cf your ‘community profiles’ from last year- did you manage to convey ‘place’?

8. ‘Just as there are no places without the bodies
that sustain and vivify them, so there are no lived
bodies without the places they inhabit and
traverse.’
Casey,‘How to get from Space to Place’, p. 25

9. Senses of Place
You inhabit a spot which before you inhabit it is as indifferent
to you as any spot upon the earth, & when, persuaded by
some necessity you think to leave it, you leave it not, - it clings
to you & with memories of things which in your experience of
them gave no such promise, revenges your desertion.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed.
Frederick L. Jones, 2 Vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), II, p. 6.

10. So where are you going??
What place will you be in
(in a few months time)?
Social, change & communities

11. Experiential
11

12. Whole Module
• We start with SELF
• Then we look at OTHER
• Then we look at the intersection of SELF and
OTHER
• SELF/OTHER
• COMMUNITY and PLACE

13. Starting with YOU
• Being, working, relating and learning within
the context of uncertainty
• Uncertainty as threat
• Uncertainty as opportunity
• Resilience
• “Personal Construct Psychology-inc. ‘we can
challenge certain myths about ourselves.’
• Being true to the person not the system

14. Motivation
• The pressure to change, continuous
improvement
• Both as a student and your (future) clients.
• Intrinsic v extrinsic motivation
• Your role to facilitate the interplay
• Ambivalence
Miller and Rollnick {2002} Preparing People for Change.

15. Self as social- the SELF:OTHER intersection
• Herbert Mead- I/Self: generalised OTHER
• Identity work: the effort in maintaining
identity
• Constructing, deconstructing,
reconstructing
• MANIPULATING identity
• Frantz Fanon-race and otherness, white
man in black skin
• Edward Said, Orientalism- imagining
geographies

16. Graffiti – constructing the OTHER
• Our identity informed in
relation to OTHERNESS
• NOT ME
• Others are ‘constructed’ by
what I don’t like in myself –
scapegoat
• How do I ‘construct’ my
clients? •Graffiti does not make a
• Am I being true to their own place worse, it highlights
places that have already
identities? been neglected
•Dialectic of claiming
ownership in the context of
ownership being abrogated

17. Who am I, Sam?
• I am not who I think I am
I am not who you think I am
I am who I think you think that I am
• it's not "You are what you eat," it's "You eat
what you think you are."
• WHO ARE YOU? If you are to ‘fix’ other
people, is your identity(ies) stable?

18. Community
and Me
And my interviewee….

19. A client- how to change behaviour?
• i.e. ASBO
• Options
– criminalisation
– fine parents
– create a community centre Express Empathy
– give him a job/skills Support Self-Efficacy
Roll with Resistance
Develop Discrepancy
• All external motivators
• What about the internal motivation?

20. If one client is difficult enough?
• What about entire communities?
• What about problem estates?
• What about Kingswood in Corby?
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_445000
0/newsid_4457200/4457238.stm?bw=bb&mp=w
m&news=1&bbcws=1
• Or Shadsworth Estate in Blackburn?
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABp3rCllJjM&
feature=related

21. All of social & community work
Is now subject to the wider policy of
‘Sustainable Communities’
Or ‘Big Society’
Sustainable communities are places
where people want to live and work,
now and in the future.
They meet the diverse needs of existing
and future residents, are sensitive to
their environment, and contribute to a
high quality of life.
They are safe and inclusive, well
planned, built and run, and offer
equality of opportunity and good
services for all.

22. Response to a Problem
Too many urban neighborhoods have been blighted by oversized housing projects
and centralized redevelopment schemes.
You will visit Corby

23. Living with complexity
Chapter 1 of Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding
of Wicked Problems, by Jeff Conklin, Ph.D., Wiley,
October 2006.

24. Wicked Problems
1. There is no definite formulation of a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rules.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked
problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there
is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts
significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively
describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of
permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another
[wicked] problem.
9. The causes of a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The
choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
10. [With wicked problems,] the planner has no right to be wrong.

25. Tame Problems
Chapter 1 of Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding
of Wicked Problems, by Jeff Conklin, Ph.D., Wiley,
October 2006.

26. BUT, change?
Physical infrastructure is easy
Community infrastructure is neglected

27. Exploring the Community
Infrastructure
• Community profile- rational
• Rich picture- lived experience & gaps
• Express Empathy • Contributes to change for a peaceful, just and
sustainable future.
•Develops anti-discriminatory analyses that
• Support Self-Efficacy reach from local tostories are political the ways
in which personal
global, identifying
• Builds practical local projects with people in
• Roll with Resistance community to question their reality
•Teaches people
•Forms strategic alliances for collective action,
• Develop Discrepancy local to global to its radical agenda, with social
•Remains true
and environmental justice at its heart
•Generates theory in action, practical theory
based on experience which contributes to a
unity of praxis.
Ledwith (2007) reclaiming the radical agenda

28. Utopian Corby
Or will you
visit THIS
Corby?

29. Carnival (Bakhtin)
Hetero
glossia
Multiplicity of Languages Multiplicity of Places

30. Descriptor of Academic Level 6
• a systematic understanding of key aspects of their field of study,
• including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which
is at, or informed by, the forefront of defined aspects of a discipline
• an ability to deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry
within a discipline
• conceptual understanding that enables the student:
• to devise and sustain arguments, and/or to solve problems, using ideas and
techniques, some of which are at the forefront of a discipline
• to describe and comment upon particular aspects of current research, or
equivalent advanced scholarship, in the discipline
• an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits of knowledge
• the ability to manage their own learning, and
• to make use of scholarly reviews and primary sources (for example, refereed
research articles and/or original materials appropriate to the discipline).
• critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may
be incomplete), to make judgements, and to frame appropriate questions to
achieve a solution - or identify a range
• the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility and decision-making in
complex and unpredictable contexts

31. Assessing
• Portfolio of Engagement 25%
– Runs from now, and proves your engagement with, and
reflection on the WHOLE module
• By Dec 25% Person-centred social change
– A group based exercise with a (fictional) welfare resident
of Corby and your attempt to motivate for change
• By May- Case-study report 50%
– The groups will be required to investigate a social
development situation (i.e. Corby and sustainable
communities) and devise a portfolio of interventions.
– Each group member will then write a detailed report of
the processes of investigation, describing their proposed
project, providing full justification for it's implementation