Community asset transfer and strategies of local accumulation

Bibliographic Data

ID3977385
AuthorsBrendan Murtagh (0000-0002-9417-6052, School of the Natural and Built Environment, The Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK, corresponding author), Philip Boland (0000-0003-1011-2447, School of the Natural and Built Environment, The Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK)
Year2019
Volume20
Issue1
Pages4-23
Publication date2019-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2017.1347270
OpenAlexW2725928302
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited44

Community asset transfer enables local groups to own or manage a government-owned facility and related services. For critics, it is merely an extension of rollback neoliberalism, permitting the state to withdraw from welfare and transfer risk from local government to ill-defined communities. The paper uses quantitative and case-study data from Northern Ireland to demonstrate its transformative potential by challenging the notion of private property rights, enabling communities to accumulate and creating local consumption circuits. It suggests that asset-led social enterprises are entangled in a mix of pro-market and alternative economic strategies which are necessarily traded off each other in the reproduction of social value. There is not an ethically pure form of asset transfer but the tactical adaptation of different modes of working, including the enhancement of state services as well as more independent forms of economic and social organisation. However, the analysis points to the political weaknesses of three specific projects and in particular, the lack of corporate working that has limited their reformist potential. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for more progressive forms of social economics and the skills, finance and practices that facilitate local accumulation strategies

Asset (computer security · Business · Economic system · Economics · Government (linguistics · Local government · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Community Development and Social Impact · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Public Administration

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