Does "civic engagement" work?

This study investigates how UK policies and initiatives promoting civic engagement of older people impact their embeddedness. Embeddedness, which has been the author's research theme continuously for the past ten years, describes intricate dynamic relationships between an individual and his/her physical and socio-cultural environments. This study starts from defining 'civic engagement' in relation to 'embeddedness' and then explores the concept and practices of civic engagement in the UK with a particular focus on the London Borough of Greenwich, linking Sociology and Architecture around the theme of the embeddedness. The study suggests key values for civic engagement and embeddedness and discusses them to speculate on the future of civic engagement and the embeddedness of older people. The study argues that although in reality classic bureaucratic tendencies may undermine an organisation s own policies promoting civic engagement, this is not inevitable if all the parties can understand the dynamic and transactional interaction mechanisms as and when individuals build up social networks within and beyond such organisations.