Community Conflict And The State

Community safety is a narrowly defined concept that allows states to ignore arguably more serious threats caused by pro-market policies and the actions of major corporations. This book redresses the idea of what constitutes a social harm and outlines a policy agenda. Cooper analyzes how notions of community, conflict, dangerousness and safety have been used and understood in British social policy.

By offering a conceptually grounded treatment of these themes, the book seeks to encourage the reader to reflect on the practical policy-oriented application of these ideas under New Labour, particularly in relation to community safety. The final chapter concludes by revisiting theses four core notions, and in doing so, seeks to expose the myths and contradictions that commonly accompany broad-range concepts of this nature.