Being in Hull - Keele University
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Welcome to

School of Sociology and Criminology

 

Keele Urban Research Network

Being-in-Hull: The Case of Bransholme

Project Leader: Mark Featherstone

As a member of KURN, I am currently engaged in studying the relationships between territoriality and marginality in Hull. This project relates to my current research on utopian / dystopian space in that it explores the ways in which public housing estates have been constructed as both idealised communal places and catastrophic anomic spaces over the course of their history. I chart this move through my research, focussing on first the notion of public housing as a utopian project, second the construction of the estate as catastrophic space, and finally contemporary regeneration praxis geared towards resolving the problems of anomic spaces through policy fixes.

My view is that these policy fixes are largely ineffective because (a) they are overly bureaucratic, working through a form of hyper-rational language that can be characterised as utopian and (b) they never address the essential problem of the macro socio-economic context of anomic spaces, which is that they are embedded in a neo-liberal policy framework that generates enormous social inequality, undermines social cohesion, and creates anomic out-groups.

My thesis is that the anomic space of the estate is simply a spatialisation of this socio-economic situation. In focussing my research on Hull, and Bransholme, a large estate on the Northern edge of the city, I seek to ground this theory in a particular case study. Through my engagement with the estate I show how regeneration policy fails to effectively touch the life worlds of the residents, which I access through ethnographic research, and my own life history, which is entwined with the history of the estate and the processes of social exclusion and social abandonment occurring within its boundaries.

Recent Papers

November, 2009 – Sociology Seminar, University of Hull: ‘Being-in-Hull: Utopia, Dystopia, and Public Housing in a Northern English City’.

November, 2009 – ESRC Seminar, Medium-Sized English Cities, Keele University: ‘Spaces of Social Exclusion: Territoriality and Marginality in Hull’.

December, 2009 – Sociology Seminar, Keele University: ‘Living on the Edge in the Forgotten City: Utopia, Dystopia, and Public Housing in a Northern English City’.


For more information on this project, please contact Mark at: m.a.featherstone@appsoc.keele.ac.uk