Theorising northernness and northern culture: the north of England, northern Englishness, and sympathetic magic

Cycling, bread and circuses? When Le Tour came to Yorkshire and what it left behind

“…And how is working-class community in the north of England created? There is in the north of England, as I will show, a contestation over who gets to define the north (Spracklen 2016).…”

“…Previously, people had associated Yorkshire sports fans with the violence of soccer hooligans, the dreaded Leeds United Service Crew tearing up the interiors of train carriages, fighting and chanting racist slogans (Redhead 2010). Or they saw Yorkshire sports fans as rugby league fans, wearing ill-fitting and garish jerseys, eating fast food and walking around the centre of London gawping like tourists at the sights (Spracklen 2016). Now people knew that Yorkshire and the north of England was a civilised place, with civilised sports fans.…”

Putting Faith in Vinyl, Real Ale, and Live Music: a Case Study Of the Limits of Tourism Policy and a Critical Analysis Of New Leisure Spaces in a Northern English Town

“…This may feel like a policy that promotes the local community and well-being more broadly, but the TICs are funded to promote tourism. Behind the guise of community engagement and social welfarism there is cost-benefit analysis: the TICs operate to construct a sense of Yorkshireness-green dales, sheep, drystone walls (Spracklen, 2016(Spracklen, , 2019-that is commodified and sold to consumers (Bauman, 2013;McGuigan, 2009), whether they are locals or visitors.…”

“…The setts on the High Street line the edges of the road, and are usually hard to notice because they are used for parking and market stalls. Skipton is on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park but is also an old West Riding mill town that grew rapidly like every other mill town close to running water and canals at the time (Spracklen, 2016). As well as capitalists finding new places to build factories, and people migrating down the dales to find work, the town has seen tourists flocking to it since the arrival of the railway in the 19th century.…”