Social Infrastructure as Normatively Contested: Can Cultural Value Help?

Social infrastructure – defined by its promotion of “sociability” and support for “meaningful relationships” – has proliferated public policy discourse in the UK. The underpinning aspiration is to attract investment to deliver on multiple policy agendas. When approached this way, social infrastructure becomes a policy-making tool valued for its effectiveness in achieving goals such as reducing regional disparities and strengthening communities. One issue with this, we argue, is the need to formalize and idealize the concept of social infrastructure. This often obscures that social infrastructures are normatively contested, with different user groups having different norms and agendas. In this paper we ask how the fragmentation reflecting the real state of most communities and the fact that the forms of sociability and relationality promoted are always selective in some sense - can be factored into the policymaking anchored in the idea of social infrastructure. We argue that Social Value approaches used in policymaking should be supplemented with cultural value interventions which can ensure that different normative orientations are represented in the relevant decision-making processes.