Accounts of community in an urban context: the problem of reciprocity

In recent years, research on psycho-social factors in inequalities in health has moved on from an interest in individual social networks to attempts to quantify the impact of the local social environment on individual health. This has brought to the fore the contested concept of social capital and the possibilities of community development as a tool for health promotion. Less debate, however, has focused on the equally contested nature of ‘community’ and the extent to which the same locality may be differently experienced and described by people at different life stages and in different circumstances. This paper draws on preliminary findings from qualitative research carried out in an urban ward in North Kent. This is part of a wider study comparing an urban and a rural locality. The 45 interviewees were largely drawn from three groups: young people without permanent employment, lone parents, and people with a chronic disabling health condition. In the paper I discuss the issue of reciprocity as an illustration of the way in which gender, life situation, and notions of personal and social identity interact in narrative accounts of ostensibly the same community. Reciprocity emerges from these data as a more complex and problematic form of interaction than seems to be acknowledged in much of the policy literature around social capital or neighbourhood renewal