Where is the 'community' in Community Wealth Building?

由经济和社会研究理事会资助，通过苏格兰社会科学研究生院，和GCU这个博士将研究如何实施一个新兴的政策领域，表面上旨在赋予社区权力，可以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民的经验，这是一种以人为本的地方经济发展方法，旨在通过将控制权和利益交给当地人民，将财富重新引入当地经济。苏格兰政府最近致力于一项全国社区财富建设战略-这是全球首个此类战略-使得有可能真实的研究其执行情况。与苏格兰发展信托协会合作，他们在支持社区组织方面有20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）工作的特别是数据丰富的参与者的意见，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处于发展和实施的实验阶段，这将是必要的探索，研究它是如何在不同的地方当局领域构成的。博士生将研究政策修辞和现实之间的差异;研究地方政府如何以及以何种方式与社区团体合作，以及全国各地的经验如何不同;并-最终-研究人们生活的差异（以及他们居住的社区）由于这些努力。

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.