Cooper, C. (2008). Community, conflict and the state: rethinking notions of 'safety', 'cohesion' and 'wellbeing'. Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
This book is concerned with examining how dominant notions of social wellbeing, community safety and cohesion have shaped and are shaping social policy developments. The book explores how community as a contested concept has been operationalised by both the powerful, 'to maintain the existing distribution of privilege and social wellbeing in society', and the disadvantaged, 'to challenge the existing institutional arrangements for distributing privilege and social wellbeing.' (p. 4) The research is based primarily on social policy analysis, also drawing on the author's lifetime personal experience working in English social welfare, first as a housing practitioner in the 1970s and later in higher education. The book argues that a society which prioritises economic competitiveness in the global market over other goals such as greater social solidarity and more participatory policies is unlikely to achieve-- and in fact has caused the decline in-- social wellbeing, community safety and cohesion.