Social Capital and Community Cohesion. The Role of Social Housing in Building Cohesive Communities.

Abstract

Despite its imprecision, social capital is a powerful tool for examining how and why particular forms of social interaction lead to the health and well-being of communities, organisations, and even businesses. Community cohesion as a policy prescription emerged in the UK, following the social disturbances in certain northern cities and towns in the summer of 2001. The official reports into these disturbances identified lack of social interaction between different ethnic groups as a principal cause. Furthermore, social housing was seen as a key factor that could be used to prevent future disturbances. Accordingly, this research focuses on how the assets and forms of social capital act as good predictors of community cohesion, in the context of the New Labour government¿s aim to use social housing to build cohesive communities. Unless otherwise specified, references to ¿the government¿ throughout this thesis apply to the New Labour administration that came to power in the UK on 2nd May 1997 and ended with the Coalition administration led by the Conservatives on 11th May 2010. This thesis makes use of the linearity between the goals of social capital and the policy aims of community cohesion to match forms of social capital to specific forms of social interaction, in six selected social housing schemes in Bradford. Bradford was one of the cities affected by the disturbances in 2001. Analysis of the forms of social interaction in the case study housing schemes shows that bridging and linking forms of social capital, which could lead to enduring cohesive communities, were mainly latent in the schemes. This suggests that the peaceful co-existence in the case study housing schemes today is, possibly, postponed social conflict in the long term.