Your Place or Mine: status and identity, space and place

This paper takes as its starting point an action research project which sought to reinvigorate a Research and Practice network whose members included both community-based practitioners and academic staff at a University College. It focuses particularly on one aspect of network functioning which emerged during the research process, that is the influence of the settings in which meetings were held; and uses Bourdieu's concept of habitus to discuss ways in which academic and community settings may have impacted on members' participation. The paper incorporates understandings of space and place taken from Massey (2005) alongside symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1989) in order to discuss some of the implications of socially relational space as experienced at meetings of this Research and Practice Network. It discusses network functioning in different settings (both face-to-face and virtual) and concludes with a consideration of the significance of academic spaces for members of the practitioner community