Place and disadvantage : the need for reflexive epistemology in spatial social science

The relationship between place and disadvantage, and particularly the question of whether, and how, geographical concentration of disadvantaged households exacerbates disadvantage is of growing concern to social science and urban policy. Despite many calls for a subtle and complex approach to constructing knowledge about these issues, a positivist approach based on statistical indicators, appears to dominate policy making. This approach reifies place and distracts attention from strategies which might effectively address disadvantage at the local level. This article describes two examples of small area redevelopment where such an approach has been used to suggest that redevelopment and dispersal of public housing concentrations are in the interests of current residents, whose lives would be improved through replacement of existing housing forms with more diverse, or at least tenure-mixed, suburbs. Yet the process by which this improvement will occur is yet to be explicated or even adequately theorised by spatial social science. The indicators used to measure the 'success' of redevelopment, such as small area employment, education and crime statistics, are likely to reveal little about the impact of such projects on the lives of the individuals most affected. A more reflexive and 'deeply engaged' research methodology is called for.