Talks
Forthcoming talks
Past talks
Free Public Transport: An idea whose time has come?
Where: Manchester University Transport Economics Lecture, University of Manchester and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport When: 4th November 2009, 5pm - 7pm
Paper presented on behalf of the Greater Manchester Campaign for Free Public Transport
This paper consisted of two parts. In the first, themes of transport and social exclusion, including the problems of accessibility and 'food deserts', were expounded, drawing on preliminary evidence from a doctoral research project conducted in inner-city Greater Manchester. In the second part, Free Public Transport was offered up as a way in which we might address the social injustices resulting from differential transport access, as well as being a radical move in the right direction in terms of meeting the challenges of environmental pollution and climate change. Some suggestions were made about how FPT might be funded, and the kinds of quantifiable savings that might be made through its introduction. Finally, the emerging research project associated with the national FPT campaign was outlined.
Like (2)Mobility, Space and Deserts: urban areas in need of precipitation
Where: University Of Salford Sociology and Criminology, Salford Postgraduate Research Conference When: 8th May 2009
This paper reviews contemporary debates around the supposed existence of urban areas where the local population is unable to access a balanced variety of foodstuffs (so called ‘food deserts’), and the relationship of these phenomena to concerns regarding social and spatial exclusion. The evidence points in the direction of the existence of urban food (or more broadly ‘service’) deserts being the result of a number of contingent and variable social processes that serve to create problems of access for specific sub-populations, including those already recognised as suffering social exclusion; those in relative poverty, the elderly, and certain ethnic minority populations. A number of theories for understanding the dynamics of socio-spatial exclusion are considered, and it is argued (following Shaw, 2006) that the most pertinent are those that describe the interplay of three elements (abilities, assets, and attitudes). The second half of the piece is concerned with relating the theory of ‘food deserts’ to a research project being conducted in a case study site in the Greater Manchester area aimed at exploring links between mobility, social inequality (or exclusion) and identity.
Mobility and Inequality: Transport in Greater Manchester
Where: Fusion at the University of Sheffield, Exchange Extra When: 7th May 2009, 6pm - 9pm
A discussion of the decline of public transport in the UK, and more particularly in Greater Manchester, the rise of the automobile, the consequent reconfiguration of the built environment and the implications of this for socially excluded groups. Finally, a possible 'socialist' solution was considered: zero fare public transport.
Mobility and Inequality: Locating Movement as a Social Resource
Where: Beyond The Campus: An interdisciplinary examination of the value of research, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor. Dates: 28th January 2009 - 30th January 2009 When: 29th January 2009, 12pm - 1pm
This paper is concerned with the relationship between mobility and social exclusion. Over the course of the last century and especially during the post-war period, British cities were radically redesigned around the automobile, producing territories marked by the dispersion of resources (such as ‘food deserts’) and by serious issues relating to the circulation of people in order to access employment, education and other services. These processes have been recognised by the government of the day as constituting a discrete form of social exclusion (Social Exclusion Unit, Making the Connections, 2003) and a number of measures have been suggested in order to ameliorate their effects. This paper describes some indicators of socio-spatial and mobility-related exclusion before moving on to sketch out a PhD research project that aims to address these issues in depth, relating levels of physical mobility to an individual’s transport-related decision-making, the importance of experience in accounting for modal choice, and their position within social networks.
Intoxication, Transgression and Regeneration: The case of binge drinking in Britain as seen along a historical continuum
Where: Regeneration and Reinvention: Practices of the ‘New’ Dates: 11th September 2008 - 12th September 2008
Conference publication forthcoming in 2009
Media hysteria has permeated British culture over the last five years concerning the phenomenon of binge-drinking. Accepting McAndrew and Edgerton’s contention that drinking behaviors are socially constructed, this piece aims to examine the transformations that led to the demise of the ‘patriarchal pub’ and the emergence of the contemporary drinking establishment. This is viewed through the frame of rising consumption, and market differentiation. The following section deals with the importance of the ‘night-time’ economy as a motor for the regeneration of British urban centers blighted by traumatic de-industrialization. Cities must now compete in terms of their leisure and cultural assets in drawing in outside investment. The final section argues that the ‘patriarchal pub’, while discriminatory and exclusionary, was also socially interrogating, supplying its own community normativity. Its demise has left an atomized and anonymous mass-drinking culture which must be regulated from without. However this is a task which increasingly falls to privately subcontracted security, as government attention is diverted to‘re-education’ campaigns – policies that are notably conducive to the continued expansion of this sector of the economy.
Mobile Phones and the Public/Private Dichotomy
Where: Media, Communication & Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference 2007 Dates: 10th January 2007 - 12th January 2007
Later published in'Popular Media and Communication: Essays on Publics, Practices and Processes', Editor: Karen Ross and Stuart Price
To what extent are mobile forms of communication transforming the relations between the public and private spheres?
In recent years mobile telephony has entered the lives of individuals in varying manners and to an unprecedented extent. Practices that seemed somewhat ‘peculiar’ in the recent past are quickly being absorbed into the ‘common sense’ of everyday, taken-for-granted rituals. The classic rationale for mobile phone purchase, ‘just in case of emergencies’ appears to be in the process of being subsumed by a new generation of teenagers for whom ‘ambient co-presence’ and instant reach-ability are quite ordinary features of their social interactivity.
Nevertheless, the author wishes to resist any simple notions of technological determinism in relation to shifting notions of the public and private. For this reason, stress is placed upon contextual issues such as developments in the forms of capitalism, social organization, the labour market, relations to geographic space and authority, in order to frame the emergence of mobile telephony and its associated practices within the wider schema of advanced modernity. Furthermore, rather than the mobile marking a simple ‘break’ with the practices of social interaction of the past, the author notes the presence of much continuity and adaptation when it comes to ways in which the mobile is harnessed as a social resource. Indeed, even the frame of the question is challenged in the introduction of the piece where a short review of the fluctuating notions of the public and private across western history demonstrates that we must not view the terms as simple dichotomies, but rather (as Agamben suggests), as di-polarities, that is, as contingent organizing principles.
Binge Drinking in Britain
Where: Failing Better: postgraduate conference, Goldsmiths College, University of London When: 12th August 2006
A work-in-progress overview of initial findings into the social and historical dimensions of binge-drinking.
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