Rowland Atkinson, Lisa Mckenzie and Simon Winlow: Building Better Societies: Promoting Social Justice in a World Falling Apart

Abstract

In their new book, Building Better Societies: Promoting Social Justice in a World Falling Apart (Policy Press, 2017), Rowland Atkinson, Lisa Mckenzie and Simon Winlow (eds.) make a strong case for the ‘prosocial’ approach to societal transformation. The entire book critiques neoliberalism and the ensuing individualism that has resulted from operating society as though it were a business. Building Better Societies advances an alternative way forward: valuing communal approaches to social betterment. The book is segmented into chapters that cover first the problems (chapters 2–4), then the ideas (chapters 5– 9) and finally the future (chapters 10–14) of what building better societies through a prosocial approach would entail. This is not a novel argument, and the authors find themselves in good company with similar arguments for social justice that have been made by their contemporaries. What is novel, perhaps, is the framing of their critique as not merely an anti-capitalist approach but also a parallel advancement of a pro-social approach and the articulation of ideas supporting the advancement of that agenda. Yet advancing the agenda is also where Atkinson, Mckenzie, and Winlow could have further elaborated; not just creating the language and frame for future progress but spending more time fleshing out specific and viable alternatives. Readers of this book might be left wondering what concrete steps would be involved in moving to a prosocial society. To begin the book, the editors discuss rising inequality, name the benefactors of neoliberalist ideology (those already in positions of privilege) and problematize the sustained attack on “the social”. The editors label modern society as anti-social and call for big ideas from social scientists to break the chains collectively binding us. The contributors to the book dutifully oblige and present bold framings of a society gone awry. Throughout the book, attention is drawn to the gradual but consistent destruction of the social safety net and the erosion of social protections in favour of policies purporting enhanced individual freedom and choice. Paradoxically, these moralizing techniques for social control have come at the cost of true freedom and liberty for the many who are unable to get ahead under market-based models of social protection. In the Valuing and Strengthening Community chapter (4), that is likely of interest to most readers of this journal, Mckenzie artfully tells a story of the changing rhetoric about economic value that has come with neoliberalism in the UK. She identifies the increasing stigma directed toward working-class families, and the growing paternalism in the welfare system. She illustrates these changes through a story about Sharon (p 45), a friendly and well-connected mother of two from Nottingham, who goes from volunteering at a community kitchen 16 hours/week while also receiving income and housing support from the government, to being forced by her benefits adviser to take a paid position at a cheese-packing factory because her previous labour was not valued as real work. The ideas put forth in the book range dramatically. The authors spend time exploring the connections between masculinity and violence at the individual and community level, and then naming economic violence caused by capitalism as such (p 65). References are made to attacks on cities and the need to protect and defend the right to an urban life. One chapter explains how arts-based research can tell stories about experiences of poverty without furthering negative portrayals or distorting “the everyday realities of residents’” lives in ways that imply radical social difference at the “expense of their commonality with other neighborhoods” (p 88). Similarly, the following chapter explores exclusion in local communities and advances the case for co-production of knowledge alongside research methodologies which respect diverse ways of knowing. In order to put the social back into social policy, the authors argue the necessity to view humans as social beings rather than “rational