COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesThe unproblematic presentation of youths as being ‘at risk’, often with no discussion of what is meant by thisterm, in itself alerts us to the depth with which the concept is embedded within value and belief systems – sodeeply embedded that no explanation is considered necessary (Armstrong, 2004). Yet risk is indefinable withoutrecourse to belief systems and moral codes (Lupton, 1999). Further, though the literature on resilience hasidentified a range of factors that correlate with healthy functioning in the face of adversity, its predictive power islow. We only know that resilient youth are characterised by qualities that we have come to associate withresilience: a tautology (Ungar, 2004).‘Risk’ and povertyBehaviour deemed to denote risk is often more visible in poor communities, but there are multiple constructions ofwhy this is, such as:Deliberate political focus/victim-blaming;Moral panic/media construction;Response/symptom of economic declineWeakening of informal social control, replaced by punitive formal measuresIncreasing social exclusion of marginalised groupsPunitiveness linked to socio-economic securityWhile risk certainly occurs in poor communities, the reasons underlying it are often obfuscated, particularly bythose charged with dealing with it (Burney, 2005; Coleman & Hagell, 2007).‘Risk’ and CrimeArmstrong (2004) argues that concerns about youth risk and crime reflect personal anxieties, competing socialvalues and public policy rather than issues of risk and resilience per se. In the United Kingdom, offending byyoung people has declined significantly during the 1990s. However, the British public significantly overestimatesthe extent of youth crime. Armstrong further argues that the current plethora of policy initiatives focused on ‘atrisk’ youth is the corollary of a moral panic about out of control children.Crime reduction strategies focus on psychogenic risk factors in the immediate social environment of the youngperson rather than in the wider community or socio-political structures (Armstrong, 2004). The focus on riskfactors offers a management system based on identifying/blaming ‘dysfunctional families’ while justifyingsurveillance and intervention.“The apparently inexorable growth of welfare surveillance over the families of the working class has arisen froman alignment between the aspirations of the professionals, the political concerns of the authorities, and the socialanxieties of the powerful” (Rose, 1999, p. 125).The notion of risk is additionally problematic due to its basis on decontextualised criteria for normality (Armstrong,2004). Varying and contested beliefs and values give meaning and relevance to constructions of normality, but294