Cold shoulders and napkins handed: gestures of responsibility

Laurier, Éric; Philo, Chris

doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00205.x

Cited by 153 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Evidently, the 'life-changing' milieu of the Sure Start Centre was importantly constituted out of 'getting the kettle on', arms around shoulders, having chats, making sandwiches, washing up, and so on. In keeping with a number of geographers, we are keen to emphasise the significance of such banal acts to people's lives, and especially to the types of caring performed at places like the Sure Start Centre (Parr 2003, Kraftl 2006, Popke 2006, Laurier and Philo 2006, Horton and Kraftl 2006, Kraftl and Horton 2007, cf. Valentine 2008.…”

Section: "All You Can Do Is Get the Kettle On": Small Acts Kind Wordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small acts, kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

Horton

Kraftl

2009

Emotion, Space and Society

130

143

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Small acts, kind words and 'not too much fuss' 2 Small acts, kind words and "not too much fuss": implicit activisms AbstractIn this paper, we suggest that social scientists' accounts of 'activism' have too-often tended to foreground and romanticise the grandiose, the iconic, and the unquestionably meaning-ful, to the exclusion of different kinds of 'activism'. Thus, while there is a rich social-scientific literature chronicling a social history of insurrectionary protests and key figures/thinkers, we suggest that there is more to 'activism' (and there are more kinds of 'activism') than this. In short, we argue that much can be learnt from what we term implicit activisms which -being small-scale, personal, quotidian and proceeding with little fanfare -have typically gone uncharted in social-scientific understanding of 'activism'. This paper will reflect upon one example of this kind of 'implicit' activism, by representing findings from interviews undertaken with 150 parents/carers, during an evaluation of a 'Sure Start' Centre in the East Midlands, UK. From these interviews emerged a sense of how the Centre (and the parents/carers, staff and material facilities therein) had come to matter profoundly to these parents/carers. We suggest that these interviews extend and unsettle many social-scientific accounts of 'activism' in three key senses. First: in evoking the specific kinds of everyday, personal, affective bonds which lead people to care. Second: in evoking the kinds of small acts, words and gestures which can instigate and reciprocate/reproduce such care. And third: in suggesting how such everyday, affective bonds and acts can ultimately constitute political activism and commitment, albeit of a kind which seeks to proceed with 'not too much fuss'.

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Section: "All You Can Do Is Get the Kettle On": Small Acts Kind Wordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small acts, kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

Horton

Kraftl

2009

Emotion, Space and Society

130

143

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“…Although Amin (2002) pessimistically suggests that social interactions have declined and city streets are spaces of transit that produce little actual connection between strangers, still many different types of encounters take place, such as holding doors and sharing seats on public transport. Such encounters express a mode of togetherness which is one facet of mutual acknowledgement (Laurier and Philo, 2006;Soenen, 2006). Such mundane friendliness and compassion increase the potential for further development of deeper and more extensive social relations.…”

Section: Neighbourhood Contacts In Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Community development in contemporary ethnic-pluriform neighbourhoods: a critical look at social mixing

Smets

2011

Community Development Journal

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Many disadvantaged neighbourhoods increasingly face pressures from globalization, modernization and individualization, which have arguably helped to accelerate a decline in local-level social cohesion and social maintenance mechanisms. Many governmental officials, politicians and community development workers consider community development a tool for improving mutual solidarity and social maintenance, leading to improved social cohesion, liveability and safety in these neighbourhoods. Today, 'mixing' strategies are popular tools for linking residents with a different ethnic and/or class background. The assumption is that once people are enabled to mingle, bridging social capital will develop easily. However, in practice, contact between heterogeneous groups and individual residents does not develop spontaneously. Once positive encounters take place, this may lead to the development of mutual trust, which is crucial for the development of successful citizens' initiatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere, a process worthy of more attention from professionals and researchers.

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“…Moreover, accounts in this context have registered the significance of particular, often subtle, quotidian affective intensities -like generosity, care, trust; or anxiety, disappointment, antagonism -in the passing constitution of events, ethics and solidarities which are, in effect (if not intent or name) politics, albeit often of a kind aside from structural normatives (Anderson and Harrison, 2006;Dewsbury, 2007). Such politics, and such intensities, can be adjudged affirmative, touching and hopeful (Laurier and Philo, 2006;Cloke et al, 2008;Kraftl 2008); equally, of course, they can be disappointing or troubling (Valentine, 2008), insidious or exclusionary (Pain, 2001;Pain and Smith, 2008).…”

Section: Articulations Of Policy and Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What (Else) Matters? Policy Contexts, Emotional Geographies

Horton

Kraftl

2009

Environ Plan A

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This paper reflects upon a particular, policy-oriented evaluation of a Sure Start Centre: a small element of a UK-Government programme addressing children's well-being in 'deprived' neighbourhoods. Specifically, and contra some chief social-scientific accounts, we seek to acknowledge how 'policy' and 'emotion' were inseparable in this project. We suggest that policy and media discourses, and much extant research, regarding Sure Start have been characterised by a particular apprehension of what matters, which constitutes a particular assumption about how policy interventions, in 'deprived' neighbourhoods and elsewhere, should be evaluated. In marked contrast, we propound qualitative data wherein users of the Sure Start Centre articulated how this facility mattered to them. Our aim is not simply to reiterate a twofold truism: policy is always emotional; emotions are latently political. Rather we consider how, in the wake of this truism, more combinative, open-minded encounters between bodies of socialscientific endeavours conventionally labelled 'policy-relevant' vis-à-vis 'theoretical' might yield more careful apprehensions of the emotion/affect in policy, and the politics of emotions/affects. 2 What (else) matters? Policy contexts, emotional geographies PrefaceWe exit the Sure Start Centre 1 , tape recorders and notebooks in hand. A sunny day. We get in the car and sit, speechless. My co-researcher begins to weep; she hits the steering wheel, sobbing. I sit silent, numbed. For hours, days, afterwards, the story we have just heard tumbles through my head, over and again.

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Cold shoulders and napkins handed: gestures of responsibility

Cited by 153 publications

References 36 publications

Small acts, kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

Small acts, kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

Community development in contemporary ethnic-pluriform neighbourhoods: a critical look at social mixing

What (Else) Matters? Policy Contexts, Emotional Geographies

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