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Participatory Ideology
From Exclusion to Involvement
Peter Beresford
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
Policy Press, an imprint of
Bristol University Press
University of Bristol
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Bristol
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UK
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© Bristol University Press 2021
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4473-6049-0 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-4473-6050-6 paperback
ISBN 978-1-4473-6051-3 ePub
ISBN 978-1-4473-6052-0 ePdf
The right of Peter Beresford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover design: Clifford Hayes
Front cover image: Brian Barnes
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Printed in Great Britain by CMP, Poole
This book is dedicated to Suzy and our grandchildren, from oldest to youngest, Charlie, Abigail, Mattie, Adam, Ryan, Poppy, Evie, Martha, Elsie, Isobel and Amy. If there’s any hope at all for planet Earth and all of us upon it, then it lies with future generations like theirs, who hopefully will have more say over the ideologies they live with than we have so far managed to achieve. All strength to them and I hope this book will help them!
Contents
About the author
Acknowledgements
Foreword Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Exploring ideology
1Ideology: an exclusionary idea?
2Ideology and us
3Imposing ideology
Part II: Reclaiming participation
4A different approach to ideology
5Participation: challenging the barriers
Part III: Towards participatory ideology
6Learning to work together: the key to inclusive involvement
7Developing our own organisations
8Key concepts for participatory ideology
9Conclusion: reclaiming ideology
References
Index
Peter Beresford has long worked in the field of participation and citizen involvement as a writer, researcher, service user, activist and educator. He is Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Brunel University London and of Citizen Participation at the University of Essex. He is Co-Chair of Shaping Our Lives, the national user-led organisation which works for the rights and say of disabled people and service users. He is a long-term user of mental health services and also Visiting Professor at Edge Hill University.
Writing this book has felt like trying to take one more big step in making sense of increasing people’s say and involvement in their lives and worlds. This has been my life’s work and during the course of it I have incurred many debts, gained many colleagues and friends, and learned much from others. It simply is true that I – like the rest of us working to increase people’s participation – would never have got to where I am without the help of very many others. As ever, there are many people I have to thank for whatever is good about this book. So I need to say a big general thank you. I also need to thank the team at Policy Press, particularly Ali Shaw for having faith in this book and bringing it to fruition, to everyone in Shaping Our Lives for all they have made possible, and to colleagues over many years at Brunel University London, the University of East Anglia and the University of Essex. Thank you all my friends and colleagues in the disabled people’s and survivors’ movements for all I have learned from you and working together, and not least my many Twitter friends who prove that social media can be a source of knowledge, strength, understanding, wisdom and support as well as cause for complaint. Thank you to all the students and colleagues I have worked with at universities who have shown real commitment to people’s participation. Thank you yet again to my partner Suzy Croft for all her help and support, even as she worked as a welfare rights worker to support disabled people victimised by ‘welfare reform’.
I also want to thank the reviewers of earlier versions of this book. Particularly I want to thank one of them, Lee Gregory. He went more than the extra mile. I was totally guided by him in undertaking the revisions I made to my first draft, not least after our daughter Ruth said she agreed with everything he said – and he also helped me with advice afterwards in preparing the revised draft, suggesting references and so on.
I additionally want to thank the community artist Brian Barnes for giving permission for his wonderful much loved Brixton mural, Nuclear Dawn, to feature in the book’s cover design.
Finally, I must return to Ruth. This time if there is one person who stands above all others in the debt I have to her, that is Ruth Beresford, our daughter. Like me, Ruth has a profound interest in involvement. It was she who first suggested to me the importance of exploring the relations of ideology with participation, the focus of so much of my work. More and more I realised how right she was to highlight this issue. It became increasingly apparent that, as far as enquiry and action were concerned, political ideology was a dead zone for involvement. This was too big a debt to ignore. I asked Ruth if she would like to co-author the book as I felt its whole inception was owed to her. But this was in the middle of her PhD and Ruth clearly has her own row to hoe. She helped me develop the idea,