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  • Community: A Contemporary Analysis of Policies, Programs, and Practices by Katharine Kelly, Tullio Caputo
  • Casey Ready
Community: A Contemporary Analysis of Policies, Programs, and Practices by Katharine Kelly and Tullio Caputo. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 128pp. Paper $24.95.

Community is not what it used to be. Conjuring images of meaningful connections, safety, caring, shared interests, positive relationships and simpler times, notions of community are nostalgic, illusive, and extremely politically attractive. Neoliberal governments have appropriated the concept of community to justify their cuts in funding for services and to uphold their belief in the value of individual and community responsibility. Community sheds needed light on neoliberal processes that have created challenges for people living and working in communities. Neoliberalism is a complex, fluid, and rather messy concept. Katharine Kelly and Tullio Caputo recognize its complications and offer no single definition of it. Its impact is not universally negative or positive, and its presence is not inevitable or total. Undaunted, they confront the challenge of outlining key components of neoliberalism. This is one of the many strengths of their work as there is a need to uncover the reach of neoliberalism and not be deterred by its ambiguity and contradictions.

Kelly and Caputo examine theoretical concepts and real-life case studies to uncover issues and concerns in their key query, “What happened to the community under neoliberalism?” (p. 37). Recognizing the challenges and contradictions in defining both community and neoliberalism, they persist, gaining the foundation needed to reveal the community-based shift by neoliberal governments and its implications. They achieve this in a slim, accessible, six-chapter book that first examines concepts and definitions of community and neoliberalism and then explores how neoliberalism is experienced in communities and community-based agencies. They use practical case studies to demonstrate a range of reactions by community-based services in response to neoliberal governments, with some acquiescing to neoliberal interests, some seizing neoliberal initiatives as opportunities to further their own agendas, and others resisting neoliberal directions. Their book presents the nuances and complexities in relationships between neoliberal states and communities and draws valuable conclusions regarding the impact of neoliberalism on communities.

Neoliberalism holds power in its claims to be “inevitable,” “natural,” “common sense,” and “the only alternative.” It needs to be named and held accountable for its impact on community. Kelly and Caputo do this. While recognizing differences in Canadian versions of neoliberalism from those in Britain and the United States, they place neoliberalism in the shift away from the Keynesian social welfare state. To neoliberals, the state exists to protect individual property rights and the accumulation of capital. Neoliberal states use processes of deregulation, privatization, regressive tax cuts, and dismantling of the social welfare state to minimize the role of government and open opportunities for market growth.

As with the challenges in defining neoliberalism, Kelly and Caputo deal sensitively with the multiple definitions of community. They share but move beyond definitions of community based on geography or space, social position, culture, religion, occupation, needs, abilities, and other sets of interests to critique the use of this term by the state. Connecting with communities is attractive to governments. It is particularly attractive to neoliberal governments as it provides an acceptable response to criticisms of cuts they have made in funding and programs. Kelly and Caputo argue, correctly, that neoliberal governments are adept in seizing the appeal of community (p. 21), then changing and appropriating it to suit their own interests. [End Page 623]

Community documents the erosion of the Canadian social welfare state through neoliberal policies and funding cuts, initiated first by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in the mid-1980s then continued by Jean Chrétien’s Liberals with a new version of neoliberalism in the 1990s. These governments made many of these changes by stealth, espousing support for a “sacred” social welfare state while decimating many parts of it. Services and organizations still existed and looked the same on the surface, but were deeply hollowed on the inside. For example, the authors cite unemployment insurance as a service that continued to exist but with dramatically changed criteria and meaning. Fewer people could access this service and...

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