N. Geoffrey Bright

‘Off The Model’: resistant spaces, school disaffection and ‘aspiration’ in a former coal-mining community

Discussions of ‘aspiration’ influencing contemporary education policy and practice are framed almost exclusively in terms of individual – or, at most, familial – ambitions towards economic prosperity. The failure to achieve ‘social mobility’ in British society is often posed as being due to the ‘low aspirations’ of working class children, particularly in formerly heavily industrialised areas. In a classic case of ‘blaming the victim’ the social exclusion that undoubtedly exists in such areas is blamed on those who suffer it. Things would be different, the argument goes, if only people aspired to ‘get on’. This paper looks at material from an intergenerational ethnographic study of some former coal-mining communities in the north of England which are often popularly characterised as insular and lacking in ambition. In contrast to this stereotype, however, the data suggests that working class teenagers growing up in the impoverished and abandoned geography of Victorian colliery model villages, rather than suffering a failure of aspiration, often angrily and powerfully aspire – but for something contrary to the dominant model. Reviewing the ethnographic data in the light of a sociological and historical literature that attests to the exceptional nature of coal-mining communities, I suggest that such exceptionality impacts on young peoples dispositions towards the educational project as a whole through a complex process of cultural transmission. A historically and locally situated notion of counter aspiration – that I call, here, resistant aspiration – is evident. I propose, in conclusion, that an acknowledgement of such resistant aspiration might help understand the widespread ‘school disaffection’ of working class youngsters not only in these former coal-mining communities but also in other post-industrial settings – nationally and internationally – that are similarly characterised by contested histories.

Space, Place, and Social Justice in Education Growing a Bigger Entanglement: Editors’ Introduction

Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dyke) introduce this special issue of Qualitative Inquiry on space, place, and social justice in education. They explore how the thematic focus originated in a series of informal and formal discussions that came together in an international research seminar that took place in Manchester, United Kingdom, in summer 2012. That event considered how qualitative inquirers in education research are currently deploying the “spatial turn” in social theory to respond to a global context of increasingly asymmetrical power relations. Uniquely, that is, the Manchester seminar called for a discussion that articulated theoretical interrogations of space and place to practical approaches aimed at doing social justice in education and education research. Picking up topics raised by the contributing authors and relating them to their own work, the editors explore the connections, divergences, and novel productivities that are evident in the theoretical and practical approaches adopted, noting their fruitfulness for an ongoing practice of “entanglement” in which research, as an aspect of living justly, might reside.

'Non-servile virtuosi' in insubordinate spaces: school disaffection, refusal and resistance in a former English coalfield

This article reviews excerpts from a body of ethnographic data examining some young peoples disaffection from, and refusal of, the education project as a whole in a UK coalfield area. Key examples are used to illustrate intergenerational continuities and disjunctions in attitudes to formal education in these exceptional and sometimes ‘insubordinate’ localities. It is argued that reviewing such data in the light of concepts emerging from the literature on Italian autonomist politics of the 1970s — particularly Paulo Virnos work — is potentially fruitful in reclaiming a politics of educational refusal from the dual grip of a middle-class imaginary that abhors it as pathological and dangerous and a body of scholarship that seems incapable of moving beyond either lionising it as heroic or loathing it as nihilistic.

‘The lady is not returning!’: educational precarity and a social haunting in the UK coalfields

Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this article focuses on how experiences of some young people might be approached through a notion of precarity linked to the idea of a ‘social haunting’ of the coalfields. Concentrating on data gathered in the period after the 2010 change of UK government, the article considers how localities suffering under the impact of ‘austerity’ measures have also witnessed moments of vivid, carnivalesque resurgence linked to celebrations of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 and of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike during 2014–2015. These celebrations mark a watershed in the cultural and affective life of the communities, one aspect of which relates to how young people with very different educational trajectories have become involved alongside each other in those events as a result of their different experiences of precarity.

Space, Place, and Social Justice in Education

Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dyke) introduce this special issue of Qualitative Inquiry on space, place, and social justice in education. They explore how the thematic focus originated in a series of informal and formal discussions that came together in an international research seminar that took place in Manchester, United Kingdom, in summer 2012. That event considered how qualitative inquirers in education research are currently deploying the “spatial turn” in social theory to respond to a global context of increasingly asymmetrical power relations. Uniquely, that is, the Manchester seminar called for a discussion that articulated theoretical interrogations of space and place to practical approaches aimed at doing social justice in education and education research. Picking up topics raised by the contributing authors and relating them to their own work, the editors explore the connections, divergences, and novel productivities that are evident in the theoretical and practical approaches adopted, noting their fruitfulness for an ongoing practice of “entanglement” in which research, as an aspect of living justly, might reside.

Sticking Together! Policy Activism from within a UK Coal-Mining Community.

This article reflects on some aspects of a doctoral ethnographic study of young people disaffected from schooling in a post-industrial space of ruin in a former coal-mining community in England. It considers how their experiences of resistance and refusal of schooling can, in the relational ethos of non-school support settings, come to speak back to hegemonic policy, particularly around ‘aspiration’. Focusing on the example of a young peoples film project, data are assembled showing how a local culture of ‘resistant aspiration’ – itself affectively linked to sedimented traditions of insubordination – forms a site of activist possibility. In this site, the ground-level resistance of the young people and the more strategically informed interventions of a group of locally originating staff come together in a moment of policy activism that displays both scope and limitation.

“A Chance to Talk Like This”: Gender, Education, and Social Haunting in a UK Coalfield

This chapter draws on Avery Gordon’s concept of ‘social haunting’ to examine social class in some former mining villages in the north of England. It uses ethnographic research to focus on the intersection of class and gender, and examine attitudes towards education and community life more generally in former coal mining communities. Whilst it is recognised that the ‘geography of gender relations’ and ‘ideology of virility’ characteristic of such settings has been challenged by social and economic change, it is also argued that such processes continue to play out in an unfinished, revenant performance of gender which serves to limit the range of individual and community futures imaginable for young people. As an antidote, a critical community practice of ‘working with social haunting’ is proposed.