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Summary. This paper evaluates self-help and mutual aid as tools for tackling social exclusion and promoting social cohesion in deprived urban neighbourhoods. Highlighting the rationales for using self-help and mutual aid to combat social exclusion and cohesion and then drawing upon case-study evidence from a deprived neighbourhood in Southampton to investigate their nature and extent as well as the barriers preventing their usage, it finds that although self-help and mutual aid are crucial and growing components of household work practices, no-earner households are unable to benefit from this work to the same extent as employed households. Consequently, the paper proposes ways in which the barriers that prevent these households from participating in such activities can be overcome.
Introduction
In the past year, our comprehensive strategy to help those who can to help themselves, while providing support for those who most need it, has begun to take shape ... Tackling social exclusion is not just about handouts, or public spending. It is about giving people, and communities, the means to help themselves (Tony Blair, 1998, p. 26). Old Labour is the idea that you did things to people, New Labour is about enabling people to do things for themselves (David Blunkett, cited in Hughes, _1998, _p. 6).__ As the above quotes from the Prime Minister of the UK and his Secretary of State for Employment and Education display, the advocacy of self-help and mutual aid has become a modem-day mantra of government, especially in relation to resolving the problems of deprived urban neighbourhoods. Up until now, however, there has been little attempt to evaluate these forms of work as tools for tackling social exclusion and cohesion in the advanced economies. Here, therefore, we seek to answer a range of questions. What are the rationales for pursuing such an approach? To what extent are deprived populations already using self-help and mutual aid? Is such activity reducing or reinforcing the socio-spatial inequalities produced by the formal labour market? What are the barriers preventing people from participating in self-help and mutual aid? How can these be overcome? Should a laissez-faire approach be adopted? Or do we need to adopt more proactive policies to enable deprived populations to help themselves? If so, what policies are required? Are bottom-up grass-roots...