Magali Peyrefitte

Sanitising the City: Exploring Hegemonic Gentrification in London's Soho:

This article will explore the gentrification of Soho, reflecting on ethnographic research undertaken in the area over the past fifteen months, to argue that the recent social, political, and economic changes in Soho must be understood in relation to private, marketized and globalized neoliberal capitalist forces. We argue that the changes to the area result in a heavily-weighted form of gentrification that works to actively and knowingly sanitize the city, removing ‘undesirable’ people and venues from the area. As such, we propose to define this process as ‘hegemonic gentrification’, and distinguish this from other forms of gentrification in order to understand the different processes that underpin these specific changes, and more broadly, it allows us to problematize these changes as regards to the ‘right to the city’, and to expand current understandings in a way that allows for a more nuanced analysis of urban gentrification and its impacts within neolibreral capitalism.

Ways of seeing, ways of being and ways of knowing in the inner city: exploring sense of place through visual tours

This paper presents an innovative insight into the complexities of the ways in which sense of place can be expressed and experienced. It particularly focuses on the phenomenological rapport participants have to the physicality of place and how it impacts on their ways of being, ways of seeing and on the construction of a sense of place (ways of knowing). In doing so it makes a case for conducting visual tours. Here I present the methodological framework that structured this approach and I give examples of how it can work. The narrative of this paper is constructed around three accounts of three different visual tours that were conducted in inner-city Nottingham. I argue that visual tours result in the combination of four types of intersecting narratives that give extra dimensions to the process of exploring ways of seeing and ways of being in the city: 1. the narrative of walking, 2. the visual narrative, 3. the narrative of the conversation in-situ 4. and finally the narrative of the written account by the researcher. All of these narratives are constitutive and constructive of a sense of place. In the case of my research on British Asian suburbanisation in Nottingham, these intersecting narratives brought to light a series of points on ways of seeing and ways of being and overall on ways of knowing the city. It highlighted a sense of place constructed around paradoxes, dichotomies and overall contrasted visions of the inner city where participants used to live and the suburbs of desirable housing where they now live. These kinds of observations are essential in understanding the way mobility and movements operate in the ‘multicultural city’.

Student-Centered Pedagogy and Real-World Research: Using Documents as Sources of Data in Teaching Social Science Skills and Methods.

This teaching note describes the design and implementation of an activity in a 90-minute teaching session that was developed to introduce a diverse cohort of first-year criminology and sociology students to the use of documents as sources of data. This approach was contextualized in real-world research through scaffolded, student-centered tasks focused on archival material and contemporary estate agents’ brochures so as to investigate changes in the suburbs that surround a university in north London. To contribute to the growing discussion on pedagogic dialogical spaces in teaching research methods, we provide empirical evidence of students’ greater engagement via group work and the opportunity to draw on experiential knowledge in analyzing sources. Beyond stimulating students’ engagement with research skills and methods, the data also show the value of our approach in helping students develop their analytical skills, particularly through a process of comparison and contrast.

Telling digital stories as feminist research and practice: a two-day workshop with migrant women in London

In this article, we look at Digital Storytelling (DS) as a specifically feminist epistemology within qualitative social research methods. Digital Storytelling is a process allowing research participants to tell their stories in their own words through a guided creative workshop that includes the use of digital technology, participatory approaches, and co-production of personal stories. The article draws on a 2-day Digital Storytelling workshop with migrant women which was set up to understand the life stories and work trajectories of volunteers working in the women’s community and voluntary sector in London. By outlining this innovative approach, the article highlights its potential and makes a case for Digital Storytelling as a feminist approach to research while taking into account epistemological, practical, and ethical considerations.

Space, power and sexuality: transgressive and transformative possibilities at the interstices of spatial boundaries

Abstract The themed section consists of articles that explore the relationship between power and space in relation to gender and sexuality by looking at processes of transgression, subversion or expansion of normative spatial practices and narratives. Using a theoretical framework that draws out power and space within a more specific context of feminist and queer literature, the articles explore the possibility to transgress, subvert or expand norms at the interstices of spatial boundaries beyond traditional binaries and hierarchies. Collectively, the articles call for a continued theoretical and methodological focus into the importance of looking at everyday sites of struggles and resistance in the crevasses, the liminal zones of space. The transgression of spatialized norms of sexuality and gender present a transformative potential that should be recognized for its political significance but, we argue, with caution as heteronormative and heteropatriarchal norms too often remain de rigueur in a neoliberal context.

Immoral geographies and Soho’s sex shops: exploring spaces of sexual diversity in London

Abstract London’s Soho, situated in the urban heart of the city has long been understood as both a cosmopolitan and diverse space where transgression and deviance, particularly in relation to the sex industry and sexual commerce, are constitutive of this area. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, we add to some of the existing debates on sexual spaces in Soho by documenting the changes to the social/sexual landscape of sex shops in this area, and look to geographers interested in the spatial politics of gender and sexuality to understand the importance of this particular place. Looking at two particular sex shops in Soho, we argue that the spatial practices in this very specific part of the city encourage a disruption of traditional hierarchies that often govern gender and sexed practices, and invite women, LGBTQ and kink communities to inhabit more inclusive spaces of sexual citizenship.

The politics of neoliberalism and social justice: Towards a pedagogy of critical locational encounter

The neoliberalisation of higher education is gathering pace and momentum on a global scale, albeit with national differences. In this context, a number of challenges and conflicting politics are emerging especially in relation to pedagogical ethos of social justice. Our article analyzes the general characteristics of neoliberal policy and practices worldwide, looking in particular at their impacts on students and teachers alike mainly in relation to the license to exercise critical thinking and social justice. Subsequently, it suggests resisting neoliberal agenda by using radical teaching methods which consider diversity and difference as social and political assets which allow meaningful dialogue across social, ethnic, national and gender groups while working to promote equality and social justice. This theoretical background informs the five papers composing this Special Issue. The authors all introduce radical and critical research and pedagogies with a struggle for social justice and against inequalities at their core—as effective tools of resistance against the oppressive and unjust conditions created by the neoliberal agendas that are structuring education worldwide. Situated in a range of national contexts, the papers provide the ground for a pedagogy of critical locational encounter, recognizing this as a site of struggle while addressing multiple and complex relationships of power and their contestation.

Prosaic sites of multiculturalism as educational encounters in neo-liberal higher education: Sociological imagination and reflexive teaching and learning in the multicultural classroom

The article reflects on the pedagogy of a first-year sociology and criminology module that was developed around the idea of ‘Researching the City’ in order to introduce students to the methodological and analytical processes of doing research in social science. Part of the assessment strategy centres around a weekly online diary which enables students to use positionality by way of reflecting on their experience of the city, of London, most specifically, due to the location of the university and the origin of the students. Expanding on Ash Amin’s idea of ‘prosaic sites of multiculturalism’, the article argues in favour of the transformative potential of a pedagogy that value experiential knowledge and is responsive to this form of knowledge in providing the theoretical and methodological tools to make sense of personal experiences in relation to structures and structural constraints. In this, the pedagogy works to develop a sociological imagination as a pedagogical route to empowering students in and out of the classroom in opposition to a neo-liberal ethos that instead values individualisation and competitiveness and is at present transforming higher education and society as a whole in the United Kingdom.