Spaces of Welfare Localism: Geographies of Locality Making

Situated in the latest incarnation of the "localism" turn, this chapter offers new theoretical insights into the rhetoric of decentralist discourses and the geographical complexities and contradictions of state-remaking realities on-the-ground. The chapter suggests that there is considerable mileage in the notion of "locality" to advance critical social policy analysis and that its earlier jettisoning may have been premature. The chapter urges for a "return to locality" to enlighten studies of social policy and advances its argument through three new readings of locality - locality as bounded territorial space, as an approach to comparative analysis, and to read spaces of flows for diverse policy fields. Taken together the chapter argues that these constitute the basis for the benefits in thinking about geography through the lens of new localities.