Lost in the ‘churn’? Locating neighbourliness in a transient neighbourhood

Abstract

This article considers the importance of everyday encounters in underpinning sociality, focusing especially on the located and material aspects of social relations. Bringing together debates about social relations, place attachment and population turnover (or 'churn'), and using research carried out in the UK city of Leicester, in an inner city neighbourhood with high population turnover, the article investigates incidences of neighbourliness, probing what happens to social relations between neighbours in a place which could be considered to be unstable in terms of population, and where conviviality could be deemed to be under threat by wider structural economic forces. Three overlapping questions are addressed: how does neighbourliness manifest itself in such conditions, where is it practiced, and how do people relate to the material environment around them when the social landscape is apparently so unstable? Drawing on in-depth interviews with inner-city Leicester residents this article considers not only the narrated practice of social and neighbourly relations in a particular setting, but also how important place is to this practice.

The making and unmaking of an urban diaspora: The role of the physical environment and materialities in belongingness, displacement and mobilisation in Toxteth, Liverpool

“…Participants said they felt like they were in their own town, as if it was walled, paralleling a kind of ‘neighbourhood nationalism’ attributed to other diverse localities in the UK (Back, 1996: 49–72). These quotes show clearly that place identity unfolds not just as an attachment to a social community, but simultaneously as a connection with the materiality of the infrastructure of the area (Burrell, 2016) – the places where childhood memories were made, where games were played and where nicknames were coined, specific sites which are remembered even after they have disappeared. A community activist, for example, drew the key landmarks on Granby Street when asked to prepare a mental map of his everyday environment and places of significance in Toxteth, including buildings long gone.…”

The fanta-sy of global products: fizzy-drinks, differentiated ubiquity and the placing of globalization

“…Certainly, for those looking to employ assemblage to the research process, there is an evident tendency to dwell on the futility of categorizing places given the complexity of these constellations and the almost limitless number of component relations. As several authors have observed (Burrell, 2016;Dittmer, 2014;Greenhough, 2012) the problem of deciding what the assemblage of study should be, and where and when to stop tracing its components, capacities and processes, is foremost among a number of difficulties and warnings that accompany assemblage-orientated approaches. This is an inherently subjective query in which the role of the researcher and the research itself becomes an integral part of the assemblage under consideration (Greenhough, 2012).…”

How do Polish immigrants in London reinforce local communities and influence the local economy?

“…Recent research has shown that some Poles in London live in communities dominated by other Poles and they do not even have any contact with the rest of the society (Burrell, 2016; Ryan et al., 2008). Coleman (1990) describes that situation as “network closure” which seems like a likely product of the combination of a weak cultural and economic capital, strong social capital and technological advances.…”