Turning the tables: fighting furniture poverty through social enterprise

这个项目是由利物浦大学和利物浦的家具资源中心（FRC）合作开发的，探讨了FRC如何对抗家具贫困-无法负担或获得家具和家具，以促进体面的生活质量和参与社会规范的能力-作为紧缩的物质层面，通过这些物质层面，熟悉的，必要的，该项目探讨了不同经济体的观点、社会企业和循环生产的作用，以了解家庭中的家具和家具如何在社会规范范围内促进体面的生活质量。该项目旨在加强学术界对不同经济观点和材料实践研究如何结合在一起的理解，以了解社会企业如何支持人们在严峻的时代建立家庭和打击家具贫困。该项目将研究社会企业在“做好事”方面的竞争压力，同时在被视为良好商业惯例的范围内工作。此外，该研究还探索了有关物质产品生命周期和使用的新地理知识，扩展了对“拾荒者”工作的理解，这些拾荒者定位并重新使用不需要的物质产品，“分解者”将它们分开并重新使用其中的材料或将它们安全地返回环境，以及它们运作的网络。对知识的贡献像FRC这样的社会企业需要对资助者的优先事项、可用资源和关于如何满足需求和提供服务的流行正统观念做出回应。在目前的情况下，紧缩意味着必须少花钱多办事，并作出取舍。尽管社会企业很好地习惯于平衡竞争压力，但随着财务压力挤走社会和环境问题，它们可能开始遭受--并认识到它们正在遭受--使命漂移。当紧缩政策严重限制了社会企业的行动能力时，这一点尤其成问题。尽管社会企业的批评者因此认为，社会企业不足以应对严峻社会中持续的贫困，甚至是同谋，但它们也被概念化为有价值的新兴或生成空间，基层创新利基或“过渡实验室”，开创提供服务和满足需求的新方法-在这种情况下，为没有家具的人提供家具。一个多样化的经济视角表明，这些竞争压力如何影响社会企业的具体行为方式，这些方式无法事先从上面指定，但需要通过基于实践的，详细的，或对社会企业的道德规范、日常实践和活动的“详细”描述--强调它们在解决问题方面的创造潜力。影响和传播以及论文和学术产出，将为FRC制作一份最终报告。我目前正在与FRC的工作人员合作，支持他们的竞选工作，并支持创建弹性社区和更好地支持有需要的家庭的努力。研究结果将通过报告、政策简报、博客和FRC的End Furniture Poverty网站上的内容以及在社会企业和住房（特别是以社会住房为重点的会议）上的演讲进行传播。在城市一级，我将与利物浦社会企业小组合作，该小组汇集了城市地区的社会企业。主要主管和总部设在联邦储备委员会的主管都对此负责。

This project, developed collaboratively between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool's Furniture Resource Centre (FRC), explores how FRC fights furniture poverty - the inability to afford or access furniture and furnishings that facilitate a decent quality of life and the ability to participate in the norms of society - as a material dimension of austerity through which the material anchors of familiar, and necessary, furniture and furnishings are degraded or lost.The project examines diverse economies perspectives, the role of social enterprise and circular production to understand how furniture and furnishings in the home facilitate a decent quality of life within the norms of society. The project aims to enhance academic understanding of how diverse economies perspectives and material practices research can be brought together to understand how social enterprises support people to make a home and combat furniture poverty in austere times. The project will examine competing pressures on social enterprise in terms of 'doing good' while working within the bounds of what are seen as good business practices. In addition, the research explores new geographical knowledge about the lifecycle and use of material goods , extending understandings of the work of 'scavengers' who locate and reuse unwanted material goods, the 'decomposers' who pull them apart and reuse the materials in them or return them safely to the environment, and the networks in which they operate. Contribution to knowledgeSocial enterprises like FRC need to respond to funder's priorities, available resources and prevailing orthodoxies about how to meet needs and deliver services. In the current context, austerity has meant that more must be done with less, and trade-offs made. Although social enterprises are well used to balancing competing pressures, they can start to suffer from - and recognise that they are suffering from - mission drift as financial pressures crowd out social and environmental concerns. This can be especially problematic when austerity has severely constrained their capacity to act.While critics of social enterprises consequently see them as an inadequate response to continued destitution in an austere society, or even complicit in it, they have also been conceptualised as valuable emergent or generative spaces, grassroots innovation niches or 'transition labs' pioneering novel ways of delivering services and meeting needs - in this case providing furniture to people who don't have it.A diverse economies perspective suggests how these competing pressures affect how social enterprises act in concrete ways that cannot be specified in advance from above, but need to be unpacked through empirically-based, detailed, or 'thick' descriptions of the ethics, everyday practices and activities of specific social enterprise embedded in places - emphasising their creative potential in solving problems. Impact and disseminationAs well as the thesis and academic outputs, a final report will be produced for FRC. I'm currently working with FRC staff to support their campaigning work and to support the drive towards creating resilient communities and better support for families in need. The research results will be disseminated through reports, policy briefs, blogs and content on FRC's End Furniture Poverty website and presentations at social enterprise and housing - especially social housing-focused conferences. At a city level, I will work with the Liverpool Social Enterprise panel, which brings together social enterprises in the city region. Both the primary and FRC-based supervisors sit on this.