Mooney, G. and S. Neal, Eds. (2008). Community: welfare, crime and society. Maidenhead, Open University Press.
This edited book engages with the idea of community as a contested concept, examining the paradoxical way in which the concept of community has been used- both in a positive sense to represent collective well-being and good social relations and in a negative sense to describe or categorise social problems and 'problem populations'. The authors argue that this paradox makes the idea of community particularly valuable for understanding the diverse and complex ways in which social welfare and crime control policies affect each other. The book includes contributions from both historical and contemporary contexts, in the UK and internationally. The themes of contested community which are explored include policymaking, social change, social order, social cohesion, community safety, anti-social behaviour, and social mobilisations. A range of methods are used within this volume, including interviews, focus groups, secondary data analysis, policy analysis and historical research.