Localism, Narrative and Myth

毫无疑问，本届政府的目标是提高地方社区自主决策的能力。目前正在议会审议的2011年地方主义法案承诺给予社区"挑战“目前提供公共服务的方式的权利，如果社区资产受到关闭的威胁，则”有权购买“社区资产，如果在地方全民公决中能够收集到足够的选票，则”有权建设“。然而，在2011年的《地方主义法案》中，“社区”或“地方”没有法律的定义，也没有白色文件讨论立法干预的背景或理由。相反，“地方”的概念和地方主义的政治逻辑被认为是广泛理解的。正是这种表面上的理解，在对法律的和行政实践进行更仔细的审查时很少明显，这构成了本研究的调查基础。利用从为这个项目创作的故事、电影和照片中收集的“数据”，我们将调查是否有任何共同的主题或反复出现的理解，这些主题或理解在艺术中传达了“地方”的想法。特别是，我们将考虑是否建设的“本地”是单一的和单一的地方主义法案和其他法律的和行政规定似乎建议，或是否在社会科学研究表明，地方的想法是关系，多重和动态的。我们将考虑“地方”是否可以被封闭，每个地方都是原子性的，与下一个地方分开，或者地方是否是关系性的，相互整合，并在区域，国家和全球范围内进行决策的地方和地点。我们将用来调查这些研究问题的迭代方法是创新的，并已被设计为反映这种紧张关系之间的单一和重叠的理解的地方。借鉴当地的叙述，口头和视觉，分析和半结构化的采访与创意参与者的结果，我们将确定这些代表性的“当地”是否是不同的和/或更好的概念，当地比那些经常在政策和媒体辩论。考虑到这一政治项目的突出性，我们还将研究“地方”的叙事结构是否可以为地方主义的逻辑提供任何政治理由，即社区应该做出地方决策。除了两篇合著的学术论文和一份项目报告外，我们的研究结果将在Antonia Layard的ESRC地方主义，法律和治理奖学金下建立的博客上发表。这包括研究结果和（在创意参与者同意的情况下）当地的视觉和口头表演。博客的访问者将能够观看电影和听到的故事，以及阅读我们如何分析他们，看到调查问卷和阅读结果摘要。通过这种方式，我们打算使研究过程透明化，并通过提供评论设施，使研究过程具有互动性。我们将向关注地方主义和叙述的政策制定者和实践者分发报告（包括RTPI、城市中心、CABE、新的地方政府网络、全国地方理事会协会、庇护所、CPRE、历史城镇论坛、艺术理事会、创意伙伴关系和BBC）。我们已经与这些组织中的许多组织建立了联系，我们将把我们的研究结果纳入已经为PI奖学金协调的政策和传播活动中。这将增加澳大利亚人权委员会研究的价值，并在研究理事会的方案之间建立富有成效的联系。

There can be can no doubt that the current Government aim to increase the ability of local communities to make decisions for themselves. The 2011 Localism Bill currently making its way through Parliament promises to give communities 'a right to challenge' the ways in which public services are currently provided, a 'right to buy' community assets if they are threatened with closure and a 'right to build' if sufficient votes can be gathered in local referenda. Yet there is no legal definition of either 'communities' or 'the local' in the 2011 Localism Bill and there was no White Paper discussing the context or rationale for the legislative intervention. Instead, the concept of 'the local' and the political logic of localism are assumed to be widely understood. It is this apparent understanding, which is rarely evident on a closer examination of legal and administrative practice, which forms the basis of enquiry for this research. Using the 'data' gathered from stories, films and photographs created for this project, we will investigate whether there are any common themes or recurring understandings that inform ideas of 'the local' in the arts. In particular, we will consider whether the construction of 'the local' is singular and unitary as the Localism Bill and other legal and administrative provisions seem to suggest or whether, as research in social science indicates, ideas of locality are relational, multiple and dynamic. We will consider whether 'the local' can be enclosed, with each locality atomistic and separate from the next, or whether localities are relational, integrating with each other and places and sites of decision-making at regional, national and global scales. The iterative methodology we will use to investigate these research questions is innovative and has been designed to reflect this tension between the unitary and overlapping understandings of the local. Drawing on the narratives of the local, both oral and visual, the analysis and results from the semi-structured interviews with the creative participants we will determine whether these representations of 'the local' are different and/or better conceptions of the local than those routinely employed in policy and media debates. Given the saliency of this political project, we will also investigate whether narrative constructions of 'the local' can give any political justification for the logic of localism, that communities should make local decisions. In addition to two co-authored academic papers and a project report, our research findings will be presented on the blog to be established under Antonia Layard's ESRC Fellowship on Localism, Law and Governance. This includes both the findings from the research and (with the creative participants consent) the visual and oral renditions of the local. Visitors to the blog will be able to watch the films and hear the stories as well as reading how we have analysed them, see the questionnaire and read a summary of the findings. In this way we intend to make the research process transparent and, by providing a facility for comments, interactive.We will disseminate the report to policymakers and practitioners concerned with localism and narrative (including with the RTPI, Centre for Cities, CABE, the New Local Government Network, the National Association of Local Councils (NALC), Shelter, CPRE, the Historic Towns Forum, Arts Councils, Creative Partnerships and the BBC). We already have links with many of these organisations and we will incorporate our findings into the policy and dissemination events that are already to be coordinated for the PI's Fellowship. This will add value to this AHRC research as well as providing productive linkages across Research Councils programmes.