Publisher's Synopsis
This book presents an analysis of community breakdown and the divergency between community and the agencies of economic regeneration in ex-mining districts in East Durham. It confronts issues relating to planning and politics, policy responses, ways of addressing differences between those who hold positions of influence and those who do not, local community and the question of structure/non-structure within agency and community organisation. It shows how authority treated community, how community was represented to authority and how community got by when negated by authority. It applies qualitative methods to community structure in order to draw an understanding of the relations between community and authority and marginalisation and change in local cultural formations and the development of survival tactics. In doing this it contrasts the role of community in ex-mining areas to the position, policies and approaches of formal pressure groups and agencies of economic regeneration. Although this work takes a specific case study area, its findings are of wider relevance to all ex heavy industrial localities and indeed to community structures everywhere, deemed to be excluded, in the face of ongoing economic and community regeneration initiatives.
