Partnerships and communities of practice: a social learning perspective on crime prevention and community safety in Scotland
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Date
2009Author
Henry, Alistair
Metadata
Abstract
This social learning analysis of Community Safety Partnerships in Scotland will
develop two sets of arguments – one empirical and one epistemological. The
empirical argument is that the well-documented difficulties in partnership working
(largely a result of the very different occupational cultures, structures, roles and
functions of the agencies generally brought on board) are not only very much in
evidence but that current ways of organising and structuring partnership working in
Scotland are also very often not conducive to overcoming them. It will be argued
that viewing partnership working through the lens of a relational social learning
perspective (Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice) provides a clear
set of recommendations for resolving these problems. These empirical arguments
shall form the main focus of the thesis but, given the theoretical perspective
employed, a related epistemological argument also emerged and shall be developed.
It is generally accepted in theoretical criminology (and elsewhere in the social
sciences) that the ideas and mentalities of the discipline have been shaped by the
institutional contexts in which actors were doing criminology or criminal justice
work (whether as practitioners or as scholars). Therefore, it will be argued that
Community Safety Partnerships are important not only as sites of criminal justice
practice but also as new institutional spaces in which ways of thinking about crime
and community safety have the potential to be transformed. The empirical and
epistemological arguments are interrelated because it will only be where the
problems of conflict and communication within partnerships can be positively
resolved that their potential to become sites of thinking that transcend traditional
criminal justice mentalities will be fulfilled.