an article by David Bailey (University of Birmingham, UK), Dan Coffey (Leeds University Business School, UK), Maria Gavris (Warwick Business School, UK and Carole Thornley (Keele Business School, UK) published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society Volume 12 Issue 3 (November 2019)
Abstract
Industrial policy is a potential vehicle for more participative and democratic forms of policy formation. But in Britain an ademocratic policy culture is transforming into an undemocratic one.
This article explores the roots of this in major sea changes in the industrial policy climate of Western Europe, where non-discriminatory and aspatial policy stances are now giving way under pressure to openly discriminatory policies aimed at favoured industries or locations.
The British case is contrasted with France, Germany and Italy, and their variety of responses. It is proposed that an extended notion of ‘place’ offers a basis for social dialogue.
JEL Classification: L98, O52, R11
Showing posts with label place. Show all posts
Showing posts with label place. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Monday, 8 October 2018
Migrant margins: The streetlife of discrimination
an article by Suzanne M. Hall (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) published in The Sociological Review Volume 66 Issue 5 (September 2018)
Abstract
The streetlife of discrimination emerges in the intersections of global migration and urban marginalisation. Focusing on livelihoods forged by migrants on four peripheral streets in Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester and Manchester, this article draws on face-to-face surveys with over 350 self-employed proprietors.
Despite significant variables amongst proprietors, these individuals had all become traders on streets in marginalised parts of UK cities, and the article addresses whether ‘race’ matters more than class for how certain groups become emplaced in the city. Narratives of inequality and racism feature prominently in the proprietors’ accounts of where they settled in the city and what limited forms of work are available in the urban margins.
Yet as significant to proprietors’ experiences of trade are repertoires of entrepreneurial agility and cross-cultural exchange. Through the concept of the ‘migrant margins’ the article explores the overlap of human capacities and structural discrimination that spans global and urban space. It combines urban sociological understandings of ‘race’ and inequality with fluid understandings of makeshift city-making that have emerged in post-colonial urban studies.
Such combinations encourage connections between the histories and geographies of how people and places become bordered, together with city-making practices that are both marginal and transgressive.
Full text (PDF 16pp)
Abstract
The streetlife of discrimination emerges in the intersections of global migration and urban marginalisation. Focusing on livelihoods forged by migrants on four peripheral streets in Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester and Manchester, this article draws on face-to-face surveys with over 350 self-employed proprietors.
Despite significant variables amongst proprietors, these individuals had all become traders on streets in marginalised parts of UK cities, and the article addresses whether ‘race’ matters more than class for how certain groups become emplaced in the city. Narratives of inequality and racism feature prominently in the proprietors’ accounts of where they settled in the city and what limited forms of work are available in the urban margins.
Yet as significant to proprietors’ experiences of trade are repertoires of entrepreneurial agility and cross-cultural exchange. Through the concept of the ‘migrant margins’ the article explores the overlap of human capacities and structural discrimination that spans global and urban space. It combines urban sociological understandings of ‘race’ and inequality with fluid understandings of makeshift city-making that have emerged in post-colonial urban studies.
Such combinations encourage connections between the histories and geographies of how people and places become bordered, together with city-making practices that are both marginal and transgressive.
Full text (PDF 16pp)
Wednesday, 4 April 2018
The Work of Community Gardens: Reclaiming Place for Community in the City
an article by Andrew Cumbers, Deirdre Shaw and Robert McMaster (University of Glasgow, UK) and John Crossan (University of Strathclyde, UK) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 32 Issue 1 (March 2018)
Abstract
The growth of community gardens has become the source of much academic debate regarding their role in community empowerment in the contemporary city. In this article, we focus upon the work being done in community gardens, using gardening in Glasgow as a case study.
We argue that while community gardening cannot be divorced from more regressive underlying economic and social processes accompanying neoliberal austerity policies, it does provide space for important forms of work that address social needs and advance community empowerment.
In developing this argument we use recent geographical scholarship concerning the generative role of place in bringing together individuals and communities in new collective forms of working.
Community gardens are places that facilitate the recovery of individual agency, construction of new forms of knowledge and participation, and renewal of reflexive and proactive communities that provide broader lessons for building more progressive forms of work in cities.
Full text (PDF 17pp)
Abstract
The growth of community gardens has become the source of much academic debate regarding their role in community empowerment in the contemporary city. In this article, we focus upon the work being done in community gardens, using gardening in Glasgow as a case study.
We argue that while community gardening cannot be divorced from more regressive underlying economic and social processes accompanying neoliberal austerity policies, it does provide space for important forms of work that address social needs and advance community empowerment.
In developing this argument we use recent geographical scholarship concerning the generative role of place in bringing together individuals and communities in new collective forms of working.
Community gardens are places that facilitate the recovery of individual agency, construction of new forms of knowledge and participation, and renewal of reflexive and proactive communities that provide broader lessons for building more progressive forms of work in cities.
Full text (PDF 17pp)
Wednesday, 18 January 2017
‘You can’t move in Hackney without bumping into an anthropologist’: why certain places attract research attention
an article by
Sarah Neal
(University of Surrey, UK)
Giles Mohan
and Allan Cochrane
(Open University, UK)
and Katy Bennett
(University of Leicester, UK)
published in Qualitative Research
Volume 16 Number 5 (2016)
Abstract
In social research some places and populations are disproportionately targeted by researchers. While relatively little work exists on the concept of over-research those accounts that do exist tend to focus on participant-based research relationships and not place-based research relationships.
Using interdisciplinary approaches and fieldwork experiences from a recently completed qualitative study of urban multiculture in England we develop the over-research debates in three key ways.
First, the notion of ‘over-research’ carries negative connotations and we reflect on these as well as the possibility of more nuanced readings of research encounters.
Second, we develop a more relational analysis, in which place – the London Borough of Hackney – is understood to be an animating force in the research process.
Third, we argue that our experiences of the research provide evidence that many of the participants in the project were adept and confident in their engagements with the research process.
In this way, the article suggests, disproportionate research attention may foster not research fatigue but a more knowing and co-productive research relationship.
Full text (PDF)
Abstract
In social research some places and populations are disproportionately targeted by researchers. While relatively little work exists on the concept of over-research those accounts that do exist tend to focus on participant-based research relationships and not place-based research relationships.
Using interdisciplinary approaches and fieldwork experiences from a recently completed qualitative study of urban multiculture in England we develop the over-research debates in three key ways.
First, the notion of ‘over-research’ carries negative connotations and we reflect on these as well as the possibility of more nuanced readings of research encounters.
Second, we develop a more relational analysis, in which place – the London Borough of Hackney – is understood to be an animating force in the research process.
Third, we argue that our experiences of the research provide evidence that many of the participants in the project were adept and confident in their engagements with the research process.
In this way, the article suggests, disproportionate research attention may foster not research fatigue but a more knowing and co-productive research relationship.
Full text (PDF)
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Locality and localism: a view from British Human Geography
an article by Nick Clarke (affiliation(s) unknown) published in Policy Studies
Volume 34 Issue 5-6 (2013)
Abstract
This paper considers the political geography of localism and reviews the insights of geographers regarding localism and locality. It identifies three main approaches to locality in Human Geography.
Abstract
This paper considers the political geography of localism and reviews the insights of geographers regarding localism and locality. It identifies three main approaches to locality in Human Geography.
- Regional geographers, humanistic geographers and spatial scientists view localities as relatively natural phenomena.
- Marxist and political-economic geographers view localities as social phenomena produced by uneven capitalist development.
- Post-structuralist geographers view localities as characteristically open, plural and dynamic.
- First, localism describes seemingly natural ways of life – organised to maximise authentic experiences of place in the case of Humanistic Geography and to minimise the friction of distance in the case of spatial science.
- Second, localism describes cultural-political expressions of spatial divisions of labour, including local political cultures, local proactivity in the context of large-scale economic restructuring, and actually existing, variegated, local neoliberalisations.
- Third, localism describes struggles to produce locally scaled action, including projects of local autonomy and self-sufficiency directed against the central state, movements to defend collective consumption from developers, coalitions to defend fixed capital against devaluation, and state downscaling to regulate capitalism.
Thursday, 6 June 2013
The cafe as affective community space: Reconceptualizing care and emotional labour in everyday life
Jo Warner (University of Kent) and Dawn Talbot and Gerry Bennison (Independent Scholars) published in Critical Social Policy Volume 33 Number 2 (May 2013)
Abstract
The importance of cafes in fulfilling certain political, cultural and social functions has long been acknowledged in the social sciences.
Despite this interest, there has been relatively little empirical or theoretical work which explores the intersection between the idea of the cafe and the concept of care as understood in social policy and practice.
In particular, there has been little work that considers the social value of sites such as cafes, especially in deprived areas, and the role they may play in the day-to-day lives of people who use them.
Through a detailed case study of a cafe, we examine the meaning of community, family and home in terms of the affective connections that places like cafes entail. We argue that powerful forms of everyday care work may be found in such sites, and we advocate for greater awareness in social policy of the complex and multilayered nature of emotional labour in this context.
Abstract
The importance of cafes in fulfilling certain political, cultural and social functions has long been acknowledged in the social sciences.
Despite this interest, there has been relatively little empirical or theoretical work which explores the intersection between the idea of the cafe and the concept of care as understood in social policy and practice.
In particular, there has been little work that considers the social value of sites such as cafes, especially in deprived areas, and the role they may play in the day-to-day lives of people who use them.
Through a detailed case study of a cafe, we examine the meaning of community, family and home in terms of the affective connections that places like cafes entail. We argue that powerful forms of everyday care work may be found in such sites, and we advocate for greater awareness in social policy of the complex and multilayered nature of emotional labour in this context.
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