Edited Books and Journal Special Issues
A mother's hope in the midst of existential immobility from state and stigma, Jun 1, 2021
The article is situated ethnographically in households on the main social housing estate in Harpu... more The article is situated ethnographically in households on the main social housing estate in Harpurhey, North Manchester, England. It explores the affective dynamics of motherhood and imaginations of the future with a backdrop of prolonged government disinvestment. We follow the experiences of a mother and her son as they deal with moments of uncertainty and attempt to imagine and prepare for his future free from dependence on state welfare. Considering that parenting marks time in the most intimate of ways and it confronts parents with the passing of time in terms of biological "growth" that sequences time for us, this article addresses how and at what points dependence on the state, over time, reconfigures the affective dynamics of motherhood and imaginations of familial dependencies into the future.
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Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2012
The articles collected in this special section of Focaal capture, ethnographically, a particular ... more The articles collected in this special section of Focaal capture, ethnographically, a particular moment at the end of the New Labour project when the political consequences of a failure to address the growing sense of crisis among working-class people in post-industrial Britain are being felt. These new ethnographies of social class in Britain reveal not only disenchantment and disenfranchisement, but also incisive and critical commentary on the shifting and often surprising forms and experiences of contemporary class relations. Here we trace the emergence of controversies surrounding the category “white working class“ and what it has come to stand for, which includes the vilification of people whose political, economic and social standing has been systematically eroded by the economic policies and political strategies of both Conservative and New Labour governments. The specificities of class discourse in Britain are also located relative to broader changes that have occurred across Europe with the rise of “cultural fundamentalisms“ and a populist politics espousing neo-nationalist rhetorics of ethnic solidarity. This selection of recent ethnographies holds up a mirror to a rapidly changing political landscape in Britain. It reveals how post-Thatcherite discourses of “the individual“, “the market“, “social mobility“ and “choice“ have failed a significant proportion of the working-class population. Moreover, it shows how well anthropology can capture the subtle and complex forms of collectivity through which people find meaning in times of change
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Papers
Focaal
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Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
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Focaal, 2012
The articles collected in this special section of Focaal capture, ethnographically, a particular ... more The articles collected in this special section of Focaal capture, ethnographically, a particular moment at the end of the New Labour project when the political consequences of a failure to address the growing sense of crisis among working-class people in post-industrial Britain are being felt. These new ethnographies of social class in Britain reveal not only disenchantment and disenfranchisement, but also incisive and critical commentary on the shifting and often surprising forms and experiences of contemporary class relations. Here we trace the emergence of controversies surrounding the category “white working class“ and what it has come to stand for, which includes the vilification of people whose political, economic and social standing has been systematically eroded by the economic policies and political strategies of both Conservative and New Labour governments. The specificities of class discourse in Britain are also located relative to broader changes that have occurred acros...
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Focaal
The article is situated ethnographically in households on the main social housing estate in Harpu... more The article is situated ethnographically in households on the main social housing estate in Harpurhey, North Manchester, England. It explores the affective dynamics of motherhood and imaginations of the future with a backdrop of prolonged government disinvestment. We follow the experiences of a mother and her son as they deal with moments of uncertainty and attempt to imagine and prepare for his future free from dependence on state welfare. Considering that parenting marks time in the most intimate of ways and it confronts parents with the passing of time in terms of biological “growth” that sequences time for us, this article addresses how and at what points dependence on the state, over time, reconfigures the affective dynamics of motherhood and imaginations of familial dependencies into the future.
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The Sociological Review, 2017
Based on ethnographic research in Harpurhey, Manchester, in the northwest of England, this articl... more Based on ethnographic research in Harpurhey, Manchester, in the northwest of England, this article addresses the emergence of a moral economy of personhood amongst some of the poorest people in Britain today. Specifically, the article studies how new conceptions of the viable and worthy person emerge in the practice of borrowing and lending money between neighbours, as a sort of ‘safety net’ in times of financial precarity and social stigma. The humiliation experienced regularly by people who need state support to make ends meet is responded to in the local prioritization of what it means to ‘be fair’ and to express and recognize the worthy self in negotiating the terms of a loan. It is in the process of negotiation that we can see in a new light what is being responded to and fought for in the face of stigma and precarity. Despite experiencing an ever-increasing threat of poverty and destitution, we see worthy selves, fair persons, and the creation of an alternative space of hope i...
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Rhetoric in British Politics and Society
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In Katherine Smith James Staples and Nigel Rapport Editor Extraordinary Encounters the Ethnographic Interview Biography and Authentic Data 1st Ed Oxford Berghahn 2014, 2014
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Anthropology in Action, 2011
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1St Ed Oxford Berghahn 2015, Mar 1, 2015
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Sociological Review , 2017
Based on ethnographic research in Harpurhey, Manchester, in the northwest of England, this articl... more Based on ethnographic research in Harpurhey, Manchester, in the northwest of England, this article addresses the emergence of a moral economy of personhood amongst some of the poorest people in Britain today. Specifically, the article studies how new conceptions of the viable and worthy person emerge in the practice of borrowing and lending money between neighbours, as a sort of ‘safety net’ in times of financial precarity and social stigma. The humiliation experienced regularly by people who need state support to make ends meet is responded to in the local prioritization of what it means to ‘be fair’ and to express and recognize the worthy self in negotiating the terms of a loan. It is in the process of negotiation that we can see in a new light what is being responded to and fought for in the face of stigma and precarity. Despite experiencing an ever-increasing threat of poverty and destitution, we see worthy selves, fair persons, and the creation of an alternative space of hope in which social and personal worth can be expressed and recognized.
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Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2015
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Anthropology Today, 2014
This editorial looks at the underlying factors of the ‘earth quake’ victory of UKIP in the Britis... more This editorial looks at the underlying factors of the ‘earth quake’ victory of UKIP in the British local and European elections, the first time a party other than the Conservatives or Labour has topped a UK nationwide elections in 108 years.
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Anthropology in Action: Journal of Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice , 2011
This paper draws on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Higher Blackley, North Manchester,... more This paper draws on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Higher Blackley, North Manchester, England, to explore the ways in which individuals and groups who identify themselves and are identified as 'white', 'working class' and 'English' resist what they perceive as dominant ideas and discourses, deeply unsettling of their 'Englishness'. Perceptions and expectations of 'fairness' underpin social relations in Higher Blackley and this paper will explore perceptions of dominance through the local idiom of fairness. I explore how sentiments of belonging in this area are then imaginatively transposed onto national and international levels.
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Focaal, Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2012
This article uncovers the distinction between calls of the far right to address what they conside... more This article uncovers the distinction between calls of the far right to address what they consider to be an imbalance in political representation in Britain and local frustrations in Higher Blackley, North Manchester, England about feeling ignored by local and national government. Exploring how voting for the far right is used strategically in an attempt to communicate political disenchantment with the Labour Party, the article explains the shift in voting patterns as a protest against Labour rather than as a statement of affiliation with the core values of the British National Party. The extent of residents' anger is revealed as they explain the “unfairness“ of politicians' general neglect of the kind of people who live in Higher Blackley. This is compounded by perceptions of the preferential and “unfair“ treatment given to people from ethnic minorities. The article explains how the labeling of residents of Higher Blackley as white working class is rejected as also being “unfair“ because it ascribes negative attributes, wholesale, to the very people who were once respected for their participation in a Labour movement of their own making. The ethnographic idea of “fairness“ is revealed in the article as the opposite of labeling/fixing and as the acknowledgement of contingency, chance, and choice.
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Focaal, Journal of Global and HIstorical Anthropology
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Authored Books
Anthem Press, 2024
[under contract]
This book explores how interpersonal relationships are made, unmade, recuperate... more [under contract]
This book explores how interpersonal relationships are made, unmade, recuperated or ended entirely by people who are living with poverty and dependence in one of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. It addresses the effects of poverty on kinship, as well as neighbourly and friendship relations by exploring the ways in which social and interpersonal relationships are forged, maintained, and broken to ensure local, moral frameworks of fairness and its limits.
The book is based on nearly a decade (2011-2020) of sustained ethnographic research within and across households in Harpurhey, North Manchester, England. Harpurhey is a suburban area in Manchester, located just three and a half miles northeast of the city centre. This book interrogates the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey ethnographically, placing their lives and agency at the centre of analysis. It explores the everyday lives of people who live with poverty and are dependent upon state welfare support to make ends meet. Analytically, I make a distinction between the production of poverty as a political, economic and ideological effect of capitalist processes and state activity and the everyday, mundane choices and behaviours of the people who manage those effects (cf. Goode and Maskovsky 2001). Each chapter shows what may be concealed and revealed in interpersonal relationships between people living with poverty and in multiple inter-dependencies.
This book tracks and documents ethnographic examples that demonstrate the purposes and reasons that moments when the issue of poverty and ‘being poor’ feature in everyday lives and interactions in Harpurhey. The book begins by situating the production of poverty outside the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey to better focus on its lived effects. The chapters that follow provide a nuanced understanding of what it means for people in Harpurhey to live with poverty. Each chapter goes on to provide intimate ethnographic insights into the ways in which relationships are forged, maintained, ended and re-emerge in the context of dependence on state welfare, and in the knowledge that welfare reforms, public spending cuts and social and political stigma will remain enduring issues for them into the future. The relationships between persons and between persons and the state that are explored in this book are necessarily unstable and contingent. This allows for the expression of personal needs, circumstances, moral frameworks and imaginations of the future in an ever-changing post-welfare landscape. Whether individuals are navigating the interstices of the state for (largely) financial support or the intricate interpersonal relationships and obligations they have with each other for moral, social, and financial support, the viability of the person to take control over their own assets and futures, and to be recognised in so doing, is paramount to the sociality and moral reckoning of everyday life. By exploring the everyday lives of people who are managing to make ends meet whilst living with poverty, this book asks how poverty and dependence are experienced, negotiated and used in the maintenance, dissolution and recuperation of dynamic kinship, neighbourly and friendship relations of support.
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This book explores how interpersonal relationships are made, unmade, recuperated or ended entirely by people who are living with poverty and dependence in one of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. It addresses the effects of poverty on kinship, as well as neighbourly and friendship relations by exploring the ways in which social and interpersonal relationships are forged, maintained, and broken to ensure local, moral frameworks of fairness and its limits.
The book is based on nearly a decade (2011-2020) of sustained ethnographic research within and across households in Harpurhey, North Manchester, England. Harpurhey is a suburban area in Manchester, located just three and a half miles northeast of the city centre. This book interrogates the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey ethnographically, placing their lives and agency at the centre of analysis. It explores the everyday lives of people who live with poverty and are dependent upon state welfare support to make ends meet. Analytically, I make a distinction between the production of poverty as a political, economic and ideological effect of capitalist processes and state activity and the everyday, mundane choices and behaviours of the people who manage those effects (cf. Goode and Maskovsky 2001). Each chapter shows what may be concealed and revealed in interpersonal relationships between people living with poverty and in multiple inter-dependencies.
This book tracks and documents ethnographic examples that demonstrate the purposes and reasons that moments when the issue of poverty and ‘being poor’ feature in everyday lives and interactions in Harpurhey. The book begins by situating the production of poverty outside the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey to better focus on its lived effects. The chapters that follow provide a nuanced understanding of what it means for people in Harpurhey to live with poverty. Each chapter goes on to provide intimate ethnographic insights into the ways in which relationships are forged, maintained, ended and re-emerge in the context of dependence on state welfare, and in the knowledge that welfare reforms, public spending cuts and social and political stigma will remain enduring issues for them into the future. The relationships between persons and between persons and the state that are explored in this book are necessarily unstable and contingent. This allows for the expression of personal needs, circumstances, moral frameworks and imaginations of the future in an ever-changing post-welfare landscape. Whether individuals are navigating the interstices of the state for (largely) financial support or the intricate interpersonal relationships and obligations they have with each other for moral, social, and financial support, the viability of the person to take control over their own assets and futures, and to be recognised in so doing, is paramount to the sociality and moral reckoning of everyday life. By exploring the everyday lives of people who are managing to make ends meet whilst living with poverty, this book asks how poverty and dependence are experienced, negotiated and used in the maintenance, dissolution and recuperation of dynamic kinship, neighbourly and friendship relations of support.
This book explores how interpersonal relationships are made, unmade, recuperated or ended entirely by people who are living with poverty and dependence in one of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. It addresses the effects of poverty on kinship, as well as neighbourly and friendship relations by exploring the ways in which social and interpersonal relationships are forged, maintained, and broken to ensure local, moral frameworks of fairness and its limits.
The book is based on nearly a decade (2011-2020) of sustained ethnographic research within and across households in Harpurhey, North Manchester, England. Harpurhey is a suburban area in Manchester, located just three and a half miles northeast of the city centre. This book interrogates the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey ethnographically, placing their lives and agency at the centre of analysis. It explores the everyday lives of people who live with poverty and are dependent upon state welfare support to make ends meet. Analytically, I make a distinction between the production of poverty as a political, economic and ideological effect of capitalist processes and state activity and the everyday, mundane choices and behaviours of the people who manage those effects (cf. Goode and Maskovsky 2001). Each chapter shows what may be concealed and revealed in interpersonal relationships between people living with poverty and in multiple inter-dependencies.
This book tracks and documents ethnographic examples that demonstrate the purposes and reasons that moments when the issue of poverty and ‘being poor’ feature in everyday lives and interactions in Harpurhey. The book begins by situating the production of poverty outside the everyday lives of people in Harpurhey to better focus on its lived effects. The chapters that follow provide a nuanced understanding of what it means for people in Harpurhey to live with poverty. Each chapter goes on to provide intimate ethnographic insights into the ways in which relationships are forged, maintained, ended and re-emerge in the context of dependence on state welfare, and in the knowledge that welfare reforms, public spending cuts and social and political stigma will remain enduring issues for them into the future. The relationships between persons and between persons and the state that are explored in this book are necessarily unstable and contingent. This allows for the expression of personal needs, circumstances, moral frameworks and imaginations of the future in an ever-changing post-welfare landscape. Whether individuals are navigating the interstices of the state for (largely) financial support or the intricate interpersonal relationships and obligations they have with each other for moral, social, and financial support, the viability of the person to take control over their own assets and futures, and to be recognised in so doing, is paramount to the sociality and moral reckoning of everyday life. By exploring the everyday lives of people who are managing to make ends meet whilst living with poverty, this book asks how poverty and dependence are experienced, negotiated and used in the maintenance, dissolution and recuperation of dynamic kinship, neighbourly and friendship relations of support.
As an insight into contemporary British society, Fairness, Class and Belonging in Contemporary England is a timely ethnographic exploration of the ways in which the 'white', 'English' 'working classes' in a north Manchester neighbourhood expressed feelings of being 'ignored' and 'neglected' by local and national governments. Providing important insights into the implications of policy-making, the book focuses on local idioms and individual articulations of 'fairness', exploring governmental ideologies and policies of 'equality' to question the disparate connotations concerning these topics. Discussing what it means to be both 'fair' and a good English person and what this means for 'belonging' in this part of northern England, it seeks to specify how each narrative of 'belonging' and 'fairness' is marked and changed by the interlocking concerns and effects of geographical origin, familiarity between individuals and groups, political orientations, ethnicities, genders and shared histories of racial and cultural imaginations