Michael Buser

Tracing the Democratic Narrative: Big Society, Localism and Civic Engagement

Abstract This paper engages with recent policy changes in the UK surrounding the government’s Big Society and localism agenda. Examining the framework and condition through which these programmes are developing in England, the article traces the conceptual democratic narrative and considers the implications and challenges for local government, the third sector and planning. Following this review, the author links emerging critiques and suggests a broad research agenda through which to reflect on changes in democratic policy and the shifting relationships between the state and civil society.

The production of space in metropolitan regions: A Lefebvrian analysis of governance and spatial change

The language of relational geography now permeates the field and literature of planning, with phrases such as ‘fuzzy boundaries’ and ‘flows and networks’ being commonly used to express the complexity of socio-economic and governance relations. However, recent research suggests the so-called ‘relational turn’ is not only far from complete, but is unable to account for the bounded reality of urban processes. Following from these debates, this article seeks to redirect the study of urban change away from relational and absolute interpretations of space in favour of a more robust consideration and critical reflection on the social production of city-regions. Towards this objective, the author introduces an approach situated within Lefebvre’s The Production of Space to examine strategies of metropolitan regionalism in the Capital District, New York (United States). Interpreting the city-region as a social product reflecting the co-constitutive relationship of conceived, perceived and lived space spatial elements, the paper argues that the silences of lived space within metropolitan regionalism are indicative of a post-political condition where hegemonic vision, discourse and ideology deny a robust urban democracy. It is this ability to engage with the dynamism of social change and the relationships between spaces which makes Lefebvre’s spatial theory immensely valuable for the study of emerging and shifting structures of governance.

Cultural Activism and the Politics of Place-Making

In this paper, we explore the relationship between creative practice, activism and urban place-making by considering the role they play in the construction of meaning in urban spaces. Through an analysis of two activist groups based in Stokes Croft, Bristol (UK), we argue that cultural activism provides new political prospects within the wider context of global capitalism through the cultivation of a shared aesthetics of protest. By cultivating aspects of shared history and a mutual enthusiasm for creative practice as a form of resistance, Stokes Croft has emerged as a ‘space of nurturance’ for creative sensibilities. However, we note how Stokes Croft as an autonomous space remains open-ended and multiple for activists interested in promoting different visions of social justice.

Thinking through non-representational and affective atmospheres in planning theory and practice:

This article engages with recent debates surrounding non-representational theory and the affective turn in the social sciences, arguing that such thinking offers a particularly useful set of concepts for the discipline of planning. This includes a widened notion of agency to the inclusion of more-than-human bodies (i.e. material agency) and a focus on daily practice and the embodied experience of place. Calling upon the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, the author puts forward affective atmospheres as a post-humanist way of studying socio-spatial processes associated with place identity and the spatial imaginaries that animate planning activity. Recognising the co-constitutive nature of research and social worlds, the article offers a performative methodology that situates researchers directly within the material and discursive environments they seek to investigate.

Becoming ecological citizens: connecting people through performance art, food matter and practices

Engaging the interest of Western citizens in the complex food connections that shape theirs’ and others’ personal wellbeing around issues such as food security and access is challenging. This article is critical of the food marketplace as the site for informing consumer behaviour and argues instead for arts-based participatory activities to support the performance of ecological citizens in non-commercial spaces. Following the ongoing methodological and conceptual fascination with performance, matter and practice in cultural food studies, we outline what the ecological citizen, formed through food’s agentive potential, does and could do. This is an ecological citizen, defined not in its traditional relation to the state but rather to the world of humans and non-humans whose lives are materially interconnected through nourishment. The article draws on the theories of Berlant, Latour, Bennett and Massumi. Our methodology is a collaborative arts-led research project that explored and juxtaposed diverse food practices with artist Paul Hurley, researchers, community partners, volunteers and participants in Bristol, UK. It centred on a 10-day exhibition where visitors were exposed to a series of interactive explorations with and about food. Our experience leads us to outline two steps for enacting ecological citizenship. The first step is to facilitate sensory experiences that enable the agential qualities of foodstuffs to shape knowledge making. The second is to create a space where people can perform, or relate differently, in unusual manners to food. Through participating in the project and visiting the exhibition, people were invited to respond not only as ‘ethical consumers’ but also as ‘ecological citizens’. This participatory approach to research can contribute to understandings of human-world entanglements.

Atmospheres of stillness in Bristol’s Bearpit

This paper studies atmospheres of stillness in a contested urban public space known as the ‘Bearpit’. The purpose is to provide a nuanced account of stillness and its relationship to atmosphere. Drawing on an ethnographic examination of the Bearpit, the paper finds that the positive and beneficial aspects of stillness can be found in unexpected and unconventional places. However, there is no single, unifying experience of stillness, but rather a plurality of ‘stillings’. The paper highlights three forms of stillness distilled from study of the site – calmness, control and withdrawnness – and demonstrates how these modalities emerge from and contribute to the construction of atmospheres in the Bearpit. Moreover, these atmospheres have direct political consequences for those who take part in city life. The paper’s contribution is found in the advancement of non-anthropocentric understandings of atmosphere and the development of stillness as a way of understanding city life.

Machinic Assemblages of Publicness: MACHINIC ASSEMBLAGES OF PUBLICNESS

This article discusses the concept of publicness through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic thinking. Centring on the case of the Bearpit, a roundabout and public space in the city of Bristol (UK), I examine recent shifts and transformations in public culture and narrate the ways in which relatively small interventions facilitate new connections and organize public assemblages. The article makes four main contributions. First, it develops an approach to the study of publicness that highlights the interactions of machinic assemblages of material and immaterial component parts. Second, it suggests that specific forms of publicness are mediated by bright objects which stitch together and organize ecologies of connected machines. Third, it outlines publicness as a dynamic, plastic social form. Finally, it argues that the struggles for a compassionate public culture in the Bearpit are not necessarily set on a fixed trajectory toward co‐optation or a return to revanchism, but rather are part of an incessant process of unfolding and becoming public where the concerns and contestations of publicness are made visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blue space as caring space – water and the cultivation of care in social and environmental practice

ABSTRACT This paper studies three sites or ‘landscapes of care’ in Leeds, Bristol and London where water and associated built and natural environments are used to co-construct and facilitate forms of social and environmental care. Our research narrates the ways in which blue spaces are cultivated for the production of particular forms of caring bodies and sensibilities. Interpreting care as both a doing (caring for) and emotion (caring about), we draw attention to the diverse practices and distributed nature of care in these environments. Our paper has three main insights. First, we draw attention to the role of water as both a material and site of care. Second, we identify a range of more-than-human benefits associated with blue spaces and how these emerge via collaborative, non-linear and reciprocal forms of care. Third, we argue that by understanding how care works in everyday social practice, new forms of ecological care and pro-environmental ways of living with the world can emerge.