Where is the 'community' in Community Wealth Building?

在经济和社会研究委员会的资助下，通过苏格兰社会科学研究生院和GCU，这位博士将研究如何实施一个表面上旨在赋予社区权力的新兴政策领域，从而抑制或加强地方民主。它将调查在苏格兰实施“社区财富建设”期间参与社区发展工作的当地人的经验，这是一种以人为中心的地方经济发展方法，旨在通过将控制权和利益置于当地人民手中，将财富重新导向当地经济。苏格兰政府最近对全国社区财富建设战略的承诺-全球首个此类战略-使实时研究其实施成为可能。与苏格兰发展信托协会合作，他们在支持社区组织方面有二十年的经验，这项博士研究将有目的地寻求在苏格兰不同社区（城市和农村，经历不同程度的剥夺）工作的数据丰富的参与者的观点，以探索那些政策表面上旨在支持的经验。由于社区财富建设本身在苏格兰的发展和实施处于实验阶段，因此这将必然是探索性的，检查它是如何在不同的地方当局地区构成的。博士生将研究政策修辞与现实之间的差异；检查地方政府如何以及以何种方式与社区团体合作，以及全国不同地方的经验如何不同；并最终检验由于这些努力而给人们的生活（以及他们所居住的社区）带来的差异。

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, via the Scottish Graduate School for Social Sciences, and GCU this PhD will examine how the implementation of an emerging policy area which ostensibly aims to empower communities can work to inhibit or bolster local democracy. It will investigate the experiences of local people involved in community development efforts during the implementation of 'Community Wealth Building' in Scotland, a people-centred approach to local economic development which intends to redirect wealth back into local economies by placing control and benefits into the hands of local people. The Scottish Government's recent commitment to a national Community Wealth Building Strategy - the first of its kind globally - makes it possible to study, in real time, its implementation. Collaborating with the Development Trust Association Scotland, who have twenty years' experience in supporting community organisations, this doctoral research will purposefully seek the views of especially data rich participants working in diverse communities across Scotland (both urban and rural, and experiencing different levels of deprivation), to explore the experiences of those the policy is ostensibly designed to support. Since Community Wealth Building itself is at an experimental phase of development and implementation in Scotland, this will be necessarily explorative, examining how it is being constituted in different local authority areas. The PhD student will examine the differences between policy rhetoric and reality; examine how and in what ways local government is working with community groups, and how experience differs in different places around the country; and - ultimately - to examine the difference in people's lives (and the communities in which they reside) because of these efforts.