Partnerships and communities of practice: A social learning perspective on community safety

This paper will outline a relational social learning perspective on community safety partnerships. Such perspectives acknowledge the importance of structural, organisational and cultural influences on actors (so important in this context where partners tend to be drawn from a diverse range of organisations that understand ‘crime’ and ‘community safety’ in different ways) but do not understand them in overly deterministic terms. By also giving emphasis to the everyday actions and activities of actors, social learning theories see them as being active and creative within recognised structural constraints. Therefore, within a social learning perspective structural impediments to practice, such as those found in partnerships, are not insurmountable. The paper will introduce Etienne Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ perspective and will aim to show how it provides a useful lens through which to explore the problems, and the potential, of partnership working.